The New Axis of Evil

With the world facing climate catastrophe, even the limited efforts to mitigate it are being actively sabotaged.
The saboteurs? Saudi Arabia, Russia, Kuwait and the United States

Link

If anything qualifies as genuine evil, this does. So I hereby declare these oil producing nations as the new Axis of Evil.

Discuss.

Considering the US is presently run by a captain planet villain I would say we belong there. This is what happens when you vote in comic villains into office. Where is Batman when you need him?

What catastrophe?

The greatest scale of the worst case scenario turns out to be no big deal. And that was the message just last month given to us by alarmists. Or don't you believe the Trump Administration?

Meanwhile - peace and prosperity. All time record lows for unemployment. Growth rates specifically claimed to be impossible just a couple of short years ago.

Boo yah, baby !

The tryouts for sycophantic minions are going on over in TK. please submit these applications there. Thanks a bunch.

We should all follow the French example and impose a big tax on fossil fuels.

^It might be a good idea for the US, Russia, and China to form a new 'troika of peace.' The UN is practically useless, largely operates as just a Jew-hating club.

None of the big 3 are ever going to invade each other, M.A.D. being the reality we all know it to be, and each could save a large chunk of defense budget by recognizing that truth. There would be pitfalls about dealing with "our bastards", but we already deal with them anyway to some extent.

National debt greater than your GDP and unemployment that got so low throughout Obama's tenure sure:



But seriously, no, no big deal at all, naturally.

Ignore the actual scientists and listen to the voices in your ass again.

I don't know what the solution is, but the outcomes we're facing here are somewhat worse than a few weeks of rioting.

Supposedly, their objections are less about the tax and more about wage stagnation. Not that France has seen the kind of wage stagnation that the US has, but one of the things I love about the French is their willingness to riot over shit that Americans don't even bother to think about. YMMV.

Indeed, as evidenced by the total lack of cessation when Macron reversed the fuel tax....

That appears to be an example of how not to do it.

Oh, can I play too? After 21 months on the job, some economist compared actual numbers (I think was Mulvaney, but data are data). So let's compare the last 21 mos under Obama in contrast to the first 21 mos. of Trump:

Total # of Americans working = UP 36% .
Total # of Americans working Full-Time = UP 47%.
Increase in weekly earnings up 40%; increase in earnings since tax cuts, up around 76%.

Job openings during Obama's last 21 mos. = 857 job openings per month. Yes, eight hundred and fifty seven full stop
In contrast, we've had 75,000 per month under Trump.

Jobs growth under Obama, were 157,000/mo. avg.
Increased to 214,000/mo. under Trump, (36% increase).

US economy on track for first 3% growth year since 2005 (reminder: Obama was president starting in 2009).

Oh, and some actual quotes:
-Obama "you'd need a magic want to carry out what Trump promised "

-Krugman: market will tank under Trump; new "secular stagnation"

-Obama: you can't drill your way out of oil shortages [US close to energy independence first time in history]

-Larry Summers - 2% is the "new normal," and 3% growth a thing of the past, a fantasy.

You drank the juice, pal, which will happen when you live in an information-bubble that echoes what Obama says, a bubble often pushing the same junk being presented as news over here.

So I don’t know him well. Is Tuttle an act or is he really this dumb?

"Some economist", "I think", but apparently the US department of labour seems to disagree with your "I think", as does the NY Times:


along with pretty much any independent source state side or otherwise:



but that's besides the point isn't it? Because all of this is your way of detracting from the fact you keep insisting global warming is a conspiracy despite all the evidence collected worldwide for over a century and little details like the ice caps which are pretty hard to explain by recourse to the US job market....

If a government's policies result in mass popular discontent, the policies will be reversed or the government will be replaced by one that will reverse them. Even here in liberal California, we recalled and replaced a governor over a very unpopular increase in car registration fees. Even though these fees were rescinded before the election, the damage was done and the governor was turned out of office.

So, if dramatic action is required to address climate change, this is the dilemma: people want to tackle the problem, but not if it hits them in the wallet.

I really can't tell, he just seems not to realise how weak his case is.

Yes.

Agreed, but I'm not sure the French situation is as informative as it might appear here. The rioting wasn't about fuel taxation per se, it was about a raft of issues pertaining to the Macron administration more broadly, which I and others did allude to in the thread. The fact his reversal on fuel taxation had precisely zero impact on the rioters position should be telling here and there are numerous issues which are plaguing his presidency which led to this situation, not least being wages and defence spending, not to mention very mixed messages regarding immigration.

When confronted with facts, resort to insults.

Sounds like absence of any persuasive argument.

The US economy changed as if a switch was thrown - I'm living it, I'm loving it. It's RL.

Perhaps not in total, but that definitely seems to be the spark that ignited the demonstrations.

Reversing course may not save an official. As I said, it didn't save Gray Davis here in California. Once public anger is focused on you, even undoing the policies that ignited that anger may not be enough to dissipate it.

I have no desire to persuade you, I've given you sourced facts, you've referred to "some econcomist", whose name you aren't sure of, with no referencing, in complete contradiction to the official figures supplied both by your own government, the US press and external economic thinktanks, all of which I have provided.

Unemployment in the US has been steadily declining since 2007, but that's got nothing to do with the ever rising mean global temperature, the melting ice caps, the increasingly unstable climate and chaotic weather patterns or the carbon emissions that thousands of scientists working independently have confirmed are causing them.

Again agreed, it was the ignition not the fuel source and once the riots had gained momentum they had to run their course you're right on that score.

However for me the take home lesson there is the public need to be educated, they need to be sympathetic to the idea of making sacrifices and the reasons behind that. They need to be on side and all this deliberate political maneuvering we are seeing is incredibly short sighted. See @Tuttle as an example, you mention a process which is in play and could very realistically spell the end of the human race and he starts prattling on about the US economy because that's the shit he's been fed by a politician willing to let the rest of us burn for his ego.

You had facts?

It's almost as though there's an agenda.....

No, total coincidence. Don’t look any farther, it’s the scientists trying to make money.

Ohhhh, you mean the vast sums available to researchers all over the globe which make oil company profits look like peanuts?

How much is an average university salary again? a trillion? No, that can't be right...

@Tuttle has degrees at both trump university and DKCC (Dayton kitchen's community college). So he is fully qualified to pull shit from the highest regions of his colon.

Apparently him claiming he heard somewhere about some economist he can't name is "facts", but government figures backed by the press and independent bodies are insults

If you guys are going to keep using truth and facts you are being unfair to those who make shit up and are wrong. That is fucking prejudiced. It is not @Tuttle and the rest of the right wing goober's fault that they are mentally dysfunctional. Oh wait, I am sorry, that is not the correct term. I should say republican. I am getting used to our new PC language requirements from the snowflakes on the right. Oh yeah, I am not supposed to call them snowflakes. They are fox news viewers.

Ok I think I have this straight now. The republicans and fox news viewers like @Tuttle are using alternative facts and in the spirit of inclusiveness we have decided to allow them to speak. Please take that time to do something useful and smile and nod on occasion as it lets them know how much you care about their sporadic mental emissions.

You got it. There is nothing more to it, and he is convinced that is enough and you are crazy for expecting more.