Trump’s claim, followed by the truth
The Toronto Star is keeping a tally of all Trump’s falsehoods. He made 19 of them in the speech on withdrawing from the Paris Accord.
“And exiting the agreement protects the United States from future intrusions on the United States’ sovereignty and massive future legal liability. Believe me, we have massive legal liability if we stay in.”
Source: Speech on Paris climate accord
In fact: The agreement does not create any legal liability, independent experts in environmental law have told various publications.
“Of course, the world’s top polluters have no affirmative obligations under the Green Fund, which we terminated.”
Source: Speech on Paris climate accord
In fact: This is so misleading that we’re calling it false. The U.S. itself is one of the world’s top polluters, and nobody at all has any affirmative obligations under the Green Climate Fund. Trump creates the impression that the fund treats the U.S. more harshly than others though this is not the case.
“And nobody even knows where the (Green Climate Fund) money is going to. Nobody has been able to say, where is it going to?”
Source: Speech on Paris climate accord
In fact: There is a detailed list of funding recipients on the Fund’s very own website. Click the “Browse Projects” button and you can read all about them – a hydro project in Tajikistan, a flood management project in Samoa, a project to help farmers in Sri Lanka’s dry zone, and many more.
This isn’t subtle. He just says things that are the opposite of the truth, quite shamelessly. He says nobody knows where the money is going to when it’s easy to find out where the money is going to – and it’s all like that.
He lies like a psychopath.
If it talks like a psychopath and walks like a psychopath….
Maybe Donnie “Believe Me” Trump knows that his ardent supporters will never follow up to get easily obtainable information. Or maybe that gives him too much credit; he has, by happy coincidence, tapped into a constituency for which words and information are disconnected, as they are for him.
Slightly off-topic, but I found this story both infuriating and sad:
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/04/us/education-climate-change-science-class-students.html
Even a smart 17-year-old kid can be so blinded by an irrational belief that she can’t even engage with a discussion of climate change. Or maybe I’ve been so blinded by political correctness, elitism, and the liberal MSM that I can’t see that she’s right?
@Helicam —
From the article you linked:
That’s true of all kinds of beliefs. I’m seeing it all the time when I talk to people about transgender issues.
I was pleased to read that most of the kids in the class wound up accepting the evidence for climate change, though.
@Lady Mondegreen
The hopeful part is, indeed, seeing that many kids are willing to accept the evidence and change their position; it’s sad to me that other kids (I expect it of adults) are so locked into a fixed set of beliefs that they can’t be swayed. But I suppose religious indoctrination, for example, provides a template for that kind of thinking.
I’ve had this pet peeve for a long time: you don’t “believe in” climate change any more than you believe in electricity or carpentry. You may understand it or you may not, but you don’t “believe in” facts.
I think it’s way more important than is on people’s radar to avoid using the wrong frame of reference. This “belief” BS is based on the hooey that it’s all just some kind of white-coated religion. People should stop helping the loonies by using their words!
(Not in ref to this site. Just venting about the news and media.)
@quixote, you’ve heard of epistemologists’ definition of “knowledge” as “justified true belief,” surely.
.
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(That’s enough Philosophy out of me for tonight.)
@quixote
I agree & despise the shift to this language (while adopting it myself, unfortunately). “Accept” would be a somewhat better word, with the wish that those who don’t “accept” climate change, or evolution, or the fact that the earth is round should be seen as frankly delusional.
Tillerson is visiting New Zealand at the moment. He took exception to a question from a reporter asking if he was bothered by Trump’s erratic decision making (he actually said “I take exception…”). He qualified the remark by saying Trump had run on leaving the Paris accord and cancelling TPP and that both actions had been confirmed after a deliberative process representing “the will of the American People”. Huh. He responded to a question about Trumps use of Twitter by saying that the Presidents style worked for him and it wasn’t his (Tillerson’s) job to tell him how to communicate.
It was noted by accompanying US journalists and the ProtectiveDdetail that never had they seen so many thumbs down and middle fingers being presented to an American motorcade before. Go figure…
Also, a poll of 40,000 readers of the Stuff website, heavily skewed toward middle aged conservative voting men, gave Trump just 15% support and strongly suggested that NZ should look to either UK or China for world leadership. China edged out the U.K. by a smidgen. Remember, this was a poll dominated by middle aged conservative men, not women and/or liberals or young people. The political scientists involved declared Trump would be unelectable in NZ. One can only hope.
quixote #5 / Lady Mondegreen #6
I think the distinction between justified and unjustified belief is probably more important than the one between belief and knowledge. As far as I’m concerned, to believe (in) a proposition X simply means to regard X as (most likely) true. there is nothing in the definition of “belief” that says beliefs can’t be justified (“belief”≠”faith”). Once we concede that all “beliefs” are created equal, all the loonies have to do is point out that technically we can’t really “know” anything (e.g. there is no way to disprove solipsism), and it seems to follow that climate change, evolution, external reality etc. are no less rooted in blind faith than God, the Boogeyman or the claim that Obama tapped Donnie’s phone.
(This isn’t just hypothetical btw. In my militant skeptic/atheist days I frequently came across some version of the argument that “since there is no certain knowledge, my blind faith is neither more nor less “rational” or “justified” than anything else”.)
I am again struck by the prominence of themes of victimization. It’s quite the pattern. Watch how frequently Donnie tells his supporters he and they and the US in general are being treated unfairly, how they’re the victims, how everyone else is ganging up on them. And any complete fabrication in support of this thesis is game.
Scary because it can justify horrors in reprisal. As so many demagogues have worked out. The resentment it breeds is useful so many ways.
Bjarte Foshaug, well put.