Of course, the progressive left has a habit of crying wolf on the climate change story. In the first place, guess when Pres. Obama signed the Paris Climate Accord. Well, it was way back in April 2016. Just think, our planet is so fragile that one president could "save" it merely by signing an "executive agreement" and then another could "destroy" it by rescinding that agreement a year later. Who would have thought the pen was so powerful?
We have lost track about exactly when the polar ice caps were to have melted; was it 2000, or 2004, or 2016? It was all of these, according to various predictions by Al Gore and his fellows. Actually, the polar ice cap right now is as thick as it was in 1940, and the island nation of the Maldives still exists, despite warnings that it would have been drowned years ago. Each year since New Orleans reeled from the effects of Hurricane Katrina, Al Gore and his fellows have warned that we would be plagued with more hurricanes and more powerful hurricanes, due to climate change (We guess we should capitalize those latter two words, to indicate their central importance). Actually, in the years since Katrina, America has experienced one of the mildest stretches of hurricanes in history.
Now we don't expect everyone to make correct predictions, and certainly not all the time, but after a couple decades of predictions being spectacularly wrong, why do people continue to put stock in any predictions those people continue to make? When have they been right? We think there is powerful evidence that much of the powerful evidence for the powerful evidence of "global warming" can be assigned to the fact that so many of our temperature readings are taken in urban sites or a heavily paved airports. Why do the people who put so much faith in the theoretical laboratory experiments of "the greenhouse effect" also ignore the easily provable "heat island effect" of concrete?
How, you may ask, dare President Trump revoke a treaty that the United States willingly entered into. Well, it is because this is one of those times when President Obama used his "pen and phone" to approve the agreement. Had he submitted it to the Senate (which has the constitutional authority to ratify treaties), President Trump could not wave it away. The fact that President Obama did not make it a treaty means that it is not a treaty, and is a mere presidential order, which can be undone at a flash. [Aside - one reason why President Obama did not submit it as a treaty is that he knew it could not attain the two-thirds of the Senate required to pass a treaty].
President Trump has a couple of what we think are pretty solid reasons for rejecting the accord. One, it will produce a reduction of (get this!) 0.2 of a degree in global temperatures by the year 2100. Now we are going to venture that year-to-year, the global temperature variation may exceed that fraction of a degree. Whether that 0.2 of a degree will have a significant effect on global temperatures or as President Trump says, is "tiny, tiny" is a matter of conjecture - but let's not forget the cost, which is a reduction in the US Gross Domestic Product of $3 trillion by 2040. That is about a 6% reduction in wealth, which means a big leap in the poverty rate. How can anyone view that as beneficial? There may be things worth destroying our economy for, but a reduction of 0.0025% from the average July high temperature in Washington DC (79.2˚ to 79.0˚) is not among them.
But, according to the critics of President Trump's decision, that 0.2˚ that we now will not be reducing temperatures by will lead to mass extinctions, the submersion of the Marshall Islands, and more heatwaves, droughts and wildfires. As we have said, from year to year in any given place, the temperature is likely to vary more than that 0.2˚. Hard to believe that would write finis to the Marshall Islands. What's more, pulling out of the accord will not bring a halt to any technological advances or research in solar, wind, biomass, geothermal, hydro, fossil fuel, nuclear or any other kind of energy. By the way, since President Bush pulled the US out of the Kyoto Agreement in 2005, the US has attained an 18% reduction in greenhouse gases. This should be credited to clean coal technology and the increased use of natural gas. That progress also will continue. The marketplace is a much better arena for making such decision than any bureaucrat's desk.
Energy in America is around 40% cheaper than in Europe. So let's see: for the prospect of nearly unmeasurable decline in temperatures, the Paris Accords would have led to a massive reduction in America's wealth, a catastrophic increase in poverty, and a huge leap in energy prices. The planet won't heat up much if at all from the President's decision, but the temperature of the folks who believe in man-caused climate change sure rose a lot.