Trump Lied [Greg Laden's Blog]

I got a letter from a Minnesota-based teacher who is getting inundated by students asking questions about Paris. Many of those questions are dogwhistles (the students do not realize that) indicating that they’ve been getting their information from Trump supporters, or so I can confidently guess. (The school is in an area where many voted for Trump.)

Here’s my response. Short version: he lied about everything.

Most people in Minnesota who have asthma have it because of coal plant generated pollution. Shutting down the coal plants is a primary step in reducing climate change. So, even without climate change, if we could replace coal plants with clean energy production, which we can do, why would we not do that? Anybody in the room have asthma? Anybody in the room not know that asthma is not just an inconvenience, but a potential cause of death?

(And the list of diseases and disorders goes way beyond Asthma)

President says: “The green fund would likely obligate the United States to commit potentially tens of billions of dollars of which the United States has already handed over $1 billion. Nobody else is even close. Most of them haven’t even paid anything — including funds raided out of America’s budget for the war against terrorism. That’s where they came.”

Other countries have contributed a great deal. The US is the biggest per capita producer of Carbon, and stands to be in the top three countries to benefit from the economic benefits of Paris. So, we pay 3 billion of a total 10 or 11 billion.

This money is not from defense funds, that’s just a scare tactic. It comes from the State Departments economic support funds. In other words, it comes from human rights and such. Trump should love that.

Plus the money does stuff. We’ll get a return on that investment. Like less asthma.

President says: “We’re getting out, but we will start to negotiate, and we will see if we can make a deal that’s fair.”

NO, actually, you get to negotiate if you are in. The agreement was set up to have continuous negotiations.

President says: “China will be allowed to build hundreds of additional coal plants. So, we can’t build the plants, but they can, according to this agreement. India will be allowed to double its coal production by 2020.”

Bald faced falsehood. There are no such restrictions or permissions on any country as part of Paris. The expectation is that market forces and consideration of other issues such as disease will reduce the use of coal very quickly over the next few decades.

Kids in todays classrooms will still have kids with asthma, because this is all going very slowly, but the grandkids will hear the word “asthma” and think the same thing folks today think when they hear “gout” or “scurvy” or “rickets.” Diseases that don’t happen any more.

President says: “Compliance with the terms of the Paris accord and the onerous energy restrictions it has placed on the United States could cost America as much as 2.7 million lost jobs by 2025, according to the National Economic Research Associates. This includes 440,000 fewer manufacturing jobs — not what we need.”

This is based on a study funded by the anti-science foundations US CoC and the American Council for Capital Formation, and others. It is pretty much made up.

The future jobs in this country are in clean energy. Solar and wind are creating jobs at a much higher rate than coal/gas/etc. Rebuilding the electric grid is going to require people, Americans specifically, and is going to support businesses. Especailly good for Minnesota. 75% of the North American new clean energy infrastructure was built by two companies based in Minnesota, and much of the trucking done to complete those jobs was done by a trucking company based in Minnesota.

President says: “Even if the Paris Agreement were implemented in full, with total compliance from all nations, it is estimated it would only produce a two-tenths of one degree — think of that, this much — Celsius reduction in global temperature by the year 2100. Tiny, tiny amount.”

First, that is not a small amount. Second, the Paris deal was compared in an MIT report to market forces working on their own. So, the Paris deal is market forces plus a little extra. Why is Trump against that? Third, the Paris deal is also the framework to allow countries to adjust the overall changes needed as time goes on. There are uncertainties, esp. with respect to carbon sinks. This is not a reason the Paris deal does not make sense. It is the reason the Paris deal does make sense. Without the deal, an optimistic 0.2 degree difference would become a 0.5 degree difference. That’s huge.

Maybe it would help if we changed units. Use the new unit I just invented, the “Trump”. There are 10,000 Trumps in a Kelvin. So, the Paris deal gives us 2000 Trumps. That’s YUGE!

President says: “China will be able to increase these emissions by a staggering number of years, 13. They can do whatever they want for 13 years. India makes its participation contingent on receiving billions and billions and billions of dollars in foreign aid from developed countries.”

China is slated to cut its carbon use more than most other countries, as does India. This is just looking at a long term projection/plan and cherry picking part of it and ignoring the rest.

President says: “Believe me, we have massive legal liability if we stay in.”

Believe me, we have massive legal liability if we get out. Remember all those kids with Asthma? When the US is the only country causing a worldwide disease and people realize that, we will have liability.

President says: “As someone who cares deeply about the environment, which I do, I cannot in good conscience support a deal that punishes the United States, which is what it does.”

Noe he isn’t, no he doesn’t, and no he shouldn’t.

See this post for many links to many commentaries about Trump’s folly. See this post for the Washington Post’s fact checking, which I used in part for this commentary.

from ScienceBlogs http://ift.tt/2rtIpUE

I got a letter from a Minnesota-based teacher who is getting inundated by students asking questions about Paris. Many of those questions are dogwhistles (the students do not realize that) indicating that they’ve been getting their information from Trump supporters, or so I can confidently guess. (The school is in an area where many voted for Trump.)

Here’s my response. Short version: he lied about everything.

Most people in Minnesota who have asthma have it because of coal plant generated pollution. Shutting down the coal plants is a primary step in reducing climate change. So, even without climate change, if we could replace coal plants with clean energy production, which we can do, why would we not do that? Anybody in the room have asthma? Anybody in the room not know that asthma is not just an inconvenience, but a potential cause of death?

(And the list of diseases and disorders goes way beyond Asthma)

President says: “The green fund would likely obligate the United States to commit potentially tens of billions of dollars of which the United States has already handed over $1 billion. Nobody else is even close. Most of them haven’t even paid anything — including funds raided out of America’s budget for the war against terrorism. That’s where they came.”

Other countries have contributed a great deal. The US is the biggest per capita producer of Carbon, and stands to be in the top three countries to benefit from the economic benefits of Paris. So, we pay 3 billion of a total 10 or 11 billion.

This money is not from defense funds, that’s just a scare tactic. It comes from the State Departments economic support funds. In other words, it comes from human rights and such. Trump should love that.

Plus the money does stuff. We’ll get a return on that investment. Like less asthma.

President says: “We’re getting out, but we will start to negotiate, and we will see if we can make a deal that’s fair.”

NO, actually, you get to negotiate if you are in. The agreement was set up to have continuous negotiations.

President says: “China will be allowed to build hundreds of additional coal plants. So, we can’t build the plants, but they can, according to this agreement. India will be allowed to double its coal production by 2020.”

Bald faced falsehood. There are no such restrictions or permissions on any country as part of Paris. The expectation is that market forces and consideration of other issues such as disease will reduce the use of coal very quickly over the next few decades.

Kids in todays classrooms will still have kids with asthma, because this is all going very slowly, but the grandkids will hear the word “asthma” and think the same thing folks today think when they hear “gout” or “scurvy” or “rickets.” Diseases that don’t happen any more.

President says: “Compliance with the terms of the Paris accord and the onerous energy restrictions it has placed on the United States could cost America as much as 2.7 million lost jobs by 2025, according to the National Economic Research Associates. This includes 440,000 fewer manufacturing jobs — not what we need.”

This is based on a study funded by the anti-science foundations US CoC and the American Council for Capital Formation, and others. It is pretty much made up.

The future jobs in this country are in clean energy. Solar and wind are creating jobs at a much higher rate than coal/gas/etc. Rebuilding the electric grid is going to require people, Americans specifically, and is going to support businesses. Especailly good for Minnesota. 75% of the North American new clean energy infrastructure was built by two companies based in Minnesota, and much of the trucking done to complete those jobs was done by a trucking company based in Minnesota.

President says: “Even if the Paris Agreement were implemented in full, with total compliance from all nations, it is estimated it would only produce a two-tenths of one degree — think of that, this much — Celsius reduction in global temperature by the year 2100. Tiny, tiny amount.”

First, that is not a small amount. Second, the Paris deal was compared in an MIT report to market forces working on their own. So, the Paris deal is market forces plus a little extra. Why is Trump against that? Third, the Paris deal is also the framework to allow countries to adjust the overall changes needed as time goes on. There are uncertainties, esp. with respect to carbon sinks. This is not a reason the Paris deal does not make sense. It is the reason the Paris deal does make sense. Without the deal, an optimistic 0.2 degree difference would become a 0.5 degree difference. That’s huge.

Maybe it would help if we changed units. Use the new unit I just invented, the “Trump”. There are 10,000 Trumps in a Kelvin. So, the Paris deal gives us 2000 Trumps. That’s YUGE!

President says: “China will be able to increase these emissions by a staggering number of years, 13. They can do whatever they want for 13 years. India makes its participation contingent on receiving billions and billions and billions of dollars in foreign aid from developed countries.”

China is slated to cut its carbon use more than most other countries, as does India. This is just looking at a long term projection/plan and cherry picking part of it and ignoring the rest.

President says: “Believe me, we have massive legal liability if we stay in.”

Believe me, we have massive legal liability if we get out. Remember all those kids with Asthma? When the US is the only country causing a worldwide disease and people realize that, we will have liability.

President says: “As someone who cares deeply about the environment, which I do, I cannot in good conscience support a deal that punishes the United States, which is what it does.”

Noe he isn’t, no he doesn’t, and no he shouldn’t.

See this post for many links to many commentaries about Trump’s folly. See this post for the Washington Post’s fact checking, which I used in part for this commentary.

from ScienceBlogs http://ift.tt/2rtIpUE

We’ll always have Paris [Greg Laden's Blog]

If you are upset about Trump and upset about Trump pulling the US out of the Paris agreement, please let me help you get through the day.

Trump announcing that the US is pulling out of Paris does not mean the end of Paris, the end of action on climate change, or much else about global warming. I’ll explain why in a moment. The US pulling out of Paris could even be interpreted as better than the US staying in. I’ll explain that too.

I’m not saying that Trump should have pulled out, I’m just saying that at the moment, if you are deeply concerned about the climate and the future, which you should be, don’t let this get you down too much because when you add up all the complications and nuances, Trump’s decision about Paris is not that different than his decision about immigration. A big league tweet followed by an awkward presentation of his racist America First agenda followed by not much.

First, I’m going to list a few reasons that PAREXIT is not the end of the world. None of these arguments individually means much, but this will give you an idea of how this is not YASBTTTD (yet another simple bad thing that trump did). Then, I’ll tell you the real meaning of PAREXIT and why, in my view, this will backfire on Trump. Then, I’ll give you a few money quotes and links to commentary by my smart and trusted colleagues so you can read all about it.

1) We have made arrangements and are part of Paris already, and leaving the Paris agreement therefore will take time. It will likely take a few years, which is longer than trump will be President. Here is the President of the European Commission explaining that since Trump does not “get close to the dossier” (translation: can’t read or think) he has announced a thing he can’t really do.

2) There are almost 200 nations in the agreement, and the US would have been only one of them. Yes, we are the bigliest and the bestliest and among the most polluting and all that. But think about this for a second. How many times in the past has there been something like a 200:1 ratio of countries on two different sides of something? Answer: Never. Not once has that ever happened. Even Hitler had a couple of other bad hombres on his side. The sheer yugeness of this imbalance makes what Trump does not count for much. See below for more aspects to this part of PAREXIT.

3) If the US were to remain an active participant in Paris, with Trump and his anti-environmental, anti-planet Republicans in charge, they would ruin the agreement. Right now, there are a lot of people quietly breathing a sigh of relief that the next few years of acting on Paris can ignore the US.

Trump has said and done a lot of dumb things, and among those things have been a number of serious insults to other countries. The whole building a wall along the Mexican border thing is a good example. Trump’s attack on a huge portion of the world, directly, and insult to everyone else, indirectly, with his stance on Immigration seriously affected the view other countries have of the US. His coziness with Putin pisses off Europe. Every chance he has had to be nice vs. insult a foreign leader, he’s chosen the bully-brat approach and mostly insulted.

All this together made everyone else in the world look at Trump with suspicion. But, world leaders remained diplomatic, sometimes even hopeful, said nice things, and tried to live with it all.

Then, Trump went to the Middle East and Europe. While in Europe he violated the old proverb, “Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak and to remove all doubt.” By the time Trump returned to the US, his standing among world leaders was pretty nearly ruined.

But not totally ruined, there may have been some hope, and he still got along with the Orb People.

But then, PAREXIT happened and the Trump is now on the very edge of being a full on pariah globally, and the US is teetering on the edge of utter irrelevance in the areas of diplomacy, trade, or anything that requires cooperation or conversation. The following graphic is optimistic, allowing for a tiny bit of hope which we assume Trump will erase within the next week or two.

And that is the true meaning of PAREXIT

This all sounds bad but it can be good, and here’s why. Once the rest of the world is allowed to no longer take the US seriously, and more importantly, once the rest of the world is required to not take the US seriously for their own preservation and protection, then they can do something about trump and the Republicans.

For example, if other countries are trying to meet Paris goals, they may need to suspend trade with the US. If you are Argentina and you are mostly non-fossil fuel powered, you can’t really buy cars or electronic parts from the Dirty US, can you? You’ll get them from Germany or France. If you are Mexico, and you are trying to meet Paris goals, you can’t let American based airlines land in your country. It is not Trump that is going to shut down all the trade agreements. It is everyone else.

When US business that supply manufactured good and technology overseas are shut down by the Paris countries (= all the countries) and all those nice people in Wisconsin and Michigan who want to fly down to the Maya Riviera next January can’t, the disastrous nature of Trump’s decisions and Trump himself will gain special meaning.

And it goes on from there. The US has to negotiate and communicate and get along. Remember just a few days ago when the UK intelligence services said they would stop sharing certain information with the US because of photos from Manchester being released? That was a line of crap. The photos were released to news agencies by a British based source. That was something else going on. It was the UK intelligence services creating an opportunity to “USEXIT” the special relationship before it became a disaster, because trust with the US was gone. Just to be clear, the thing that keeps getting called the “special relationship” is not just some valentine’s day card aphorism. It has a specific meaning. It means that the US and the UK share intelligence between each other at the same level that we share intelligence within our own services. No other two countries do that, or maybe a couple but not most. The UK has been for years in a special place within that special relationship, having experienced the worst case of double-agent caused loss of trust ever, years ago, and ever since then the Americans have been able to hold the UK’s feet to the fire and make them feel bad whenever necessary. It was like the UK had an affair and the spouse (the US) could never really trust them again. Now, with Trump, the shoe is on the other foot, an the UK is seriously reconsidering the marriage.

Every single thing the US does from now on will be tainted, until Trump is gone and not replaced by the equivalent. The US is now a second-level power. It is now Russia, China, and the EU (with Germany leading) that run the world with Japan.

Look for big moves. Look for the “G-7 minus one” because if you are the other 6 countries in the G-7, you do not want Trump at the table. Maybe Mexico will build a wall and make Trump pay for it. Other things. Many other things.

PAREXIT is not about Paris or the climate. It is about the end of American exceptionalism, and there are both bad and good things about that.

And now the other things. Some of this is from before PAREXIT but very much related.

A Veteran’s Day warning: Trump’s climate policies will create more war, more refugees

Donald Trump’s climate policies would create dozens of failed states south of the U.S. border and around the world. They would lead to hundreds of millions of refugees and more authoritarian demagogues like Trump himself.

Trump’s policies would assure that a tremendous number of people become veterans of one of the ever-growing number of climate-related conflicts.

Trump just cemented his legacy as America’s worst-ever president

Trump’s withdrawal from the Paris treaty is a mostly symbolic act. America’s pledges to cut its carbon pollution were non-binding, and his administration’s policies to date had already made it impossible for America to meet its initial Paris climate commitment for 2025. The next American president in 2020 can re-enter the Paris treaty and push for policies to make up some of the ground we lost during Trump’s reign.

However, withdrawing from the Paris treaty is an important symbolic move…

REFERENDUM NOVEMBER 3, 2020 ON TRUMP’S WITHDRAWAL FROM PARIS AGREEMENT NOVEMBER 4, 2020

Trump’s withdrawal from the Paris Agreement means that the United States formally abdicates its role as world leader on November 4, 2020. By coincidence, the United States will hold a referendum vote – and, make no mistake, it will be a referendum vote – on November 3, 2020.

RL Miller, cofounder of Climate Hawks Vote, states: “Trump’s fuck you to the world redoubles our determination to end his regime. We will take back Congress in 2018, expose him for the traitor and grifter that he is, and elect climate candidates up and down the ballot, culminating in the election of a climate hawk President on November 3, 2020 to restore America’s place in the world.”

Paris Agreement: What Experts Say vs. What the White House Says

In President Trump’s speech today announcing his intention to pull the US out of the Paris Agreement, there were several false and misinformed statements.

Trump falsely claims Paris deal has a minimal impact on warming

In a speech from the White House Rose Garden filled with thorny lies and misleading statements, one pricks the most: Trump claimed that the Paris climate deal would only reduce future warming in 2100 by a mere 0.2°C. White House talking points further assert that “according to researchers at MIT, if all member nations met their obligations, the impact on the climate would be negligible… less than .2 degrees Celsius in 2100.”

The Director of MIT’s System Dynamics Group, John Sterman, and his partner at Climate Interactive, Andrew Jones, quickly emailed ThinkProgress to explain, “We are not these researchers and this is not our finding.”

Trump’s Paris exit: climate science denial industry has just had its greatest victory

The foundation for Trump’s dismissal of the Paris deal – and for the people who pushed him the hardest to do it – is the rejection of the science linking fossil-fuel burning to dangerous climate change.

Or rather, Trump’s rejection of the Paris deal was built on the flimsy, cherry-picked and long-debunked talking points of an industry built to manufacture doubt about climate science. Once you fall for those arguments, making an economic case suddenly feels plausible.

Trump Abandons Paris Climate Deal At Bidding of Fossil Fuel Interests

Condemnation from environmental groups was swift.

“President Trump’s decision to exit the Paris Climate Agreement sends a dangerous signal to the rest of the world that the United States values fossil fuel industry profits over clean energy innovation and the health and well-being of our citizens,” Earthworks’ Executive Director, Jennifer Krill said in a statement. “The over 12 million people living within a half mile of an oil and gas facilities deserve action to reduce air pollution, not head-in-the-sand climate denial.”

Tobacco To Fossil Fuels: Tracing the Roots of Trump’s Claims on Paris Climate Deal

To understand why President Donald Trump pulled the United States out of the global Paris climate agreement, we might start by looking at the sources he relied on to justify his decision.

But we’re not going to start there, but we will end there.

Instead, let’s go back to the early 1990s….

from ScienceBlogs http://ift.tt/2rjEbjJ

If you are upset about Trump and upset about Trump pulling the US out of the Paris agreement, please let me help you get through the day.

Trump announcing that the US is pulling out of Paris does not mean the end of Paris, the end of action on climate change, or much else about global warming. I’ll explain why in a moment. The US pulling out of Paris could even be interpreted as better than the US staying in. I’ll explain that too.

I’m not saying that Trump should have pulled out, I’m just saying that at the moment, if you are deeply concerned about the climate and the future, which you should be, don’t let this get you down too much because when you add up all the complications and nuances, Trump’s decision about Paris is not that different than his decision about immigration. A big league tweet followed by an awkward presentation of his racist America First agenda followed by not much.

First, I’m going to list a few reasons that PAREXIT is not the end of the world. None of these arguments individually means much, but this will give you an idea of how this is not YASBTTTD (yet another simple bad thing that trump did). Then, I’ll tell you the real meaning of PAREXIT and why, in my view, this will backfire on Trump. Then, I’ll give you a few money quotes and links to commentary by my smart and trusted colleagues so you can read all about it.

1) We have made arrangements and are part of Paris already, and leaving the Paris agreement therefore will take time. It will likely take a few years, which is longer than trump will be President. Here is the President of the European Commission explaining that since Trump does not “get close to the dossier” (translation: can’t read or think) he has announced a thing he can’t really do.

2) There are almost 200 nations in the agreement, and the US would have been only one of them. Yes, we are the bigliest and the bestliest and among the most polluting and all that. But think about this for a second. How many times in the past has there been something like a 200:1 ratio of countries on two different sides of something? Answer: Never. Not once has that ever happened. Even Hitler had a couple of other bad hombres on his side. The sheer yugeness of this imbalance makes what Trump does not count for much. See below for more aspects to this part of PAREXIT.

3) If the US were to remain an active participant in Paris, with Trump and his anti-environmental, anti-planet Republicans in charge, they would ruin the agreement. Right now, there are a lot of people quietly breathing a sigh of relief that the next few years of acting on Paris can ignore the US.

Trump has said and done a lot of dumb things, and among those things have been a number of serious insults to other countries. The whole building a wall along the Mexican border thing is a good example. Trump’s attack on a huge portion of the world, directly, and insult to everyone else, indirectly, with his stance on Immigration seriously affected the view other countries have of the US. His coziness with Putin pisses off Europe. Every chance he has had to be nice vs. insult a foreign leader, he’s chosen the bully-brat approach and mostly insulted.

All this together made everyone else in the world look at Trump with suspicion. But, world leaders remained diplomatic, sometimes even hopeful, said nice things, and tried to live with it all.

Then, Trump went to the Middle East and Europe. While in Europe he violated the old proverb, “Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak and to remove all doubt.” By the time Trump returned to the US, his standing among world leaders was pretty nearly ruined.

But not totally ruined, there may have been some hope, and he still got along with the Orb People.

But then, PAREXIT happened and the Trump is now on the very edge of being a full on pariah globally, and the US is teetering on the edge of utter irrelevance in the areas of diplomacy, trade, or anything that requires cooperation or conversation. The following graphic is optimistic, allowing for a tiny bit of hope which we assume Trump will erase within the next week or two.

And that is the true meaning of PAREXIT

This all sounds bad but it can be good, and here’s why. Once the rest of the world is allowed to no longer take the US seriously, and more importantly, once the rest of the world is required to not take the US seriously for their own preservation and protection, then they can do something about trump and the Republicans.

For example, if other countries are trying to meet Paris goals, they may need to suspend trade with the US. If you are Argentina and you are mostly non-fossil fuel powered, you can’t really buy cars or electronic parts from the Dirty US, can you? You’ll get them from Germany or France. If you are Mexico, and you are trying to meet Paris goals, you can’t let American based airlines land in your country. It is not Trump that is going to shut down all the trade agreements. It is everyone else.

When US business that supply manufactured good and technology overseas are shut down by the Paris countries (= all the countries) and all those nice people in Wisconsin and Michigan who want to fly down to the Maya Riviera next January can’t, the disastrous nature of Trump’s decisions and Trump himself will gain special meaning.

And it goes on from there. The US has to negotiate and communicate and get along. Remember just a few days ago when the UK intelligence services said they would stop sharing certain information with the US because of photos from Manchester being released? That was a line of crap. The photos were released to news agencies by a British based source. That was something else going on. It was the UK intelligence services creating an opportunity to “USEXIT” the special relationship before it became a disaster, because trust with the US was gone. Just to be clear, the thing that keeps getting called the “special relationship” is not just some valentine’s day card aphorism. It has a specific meaning. It means that the US and the UK share intelligence between each other at the same level that we share intelligence within our own services. No other two countries do that, or maybe a couple but not most. The UK has been for years in a special place within that special relationship, having experienced the worst case of double-agent caused loss of trust ever, years ago, and ever since then the Americans have been able to hold the UK’s feet to the fire and make them feel bad whenever necessary. It was like the UK had an affair and the spouse (the US) could never really trust them again. Now, with Trump, the shoe is on the other foot, an the UK is seriously reconsidering the marriage.

Every single thing the US does from now on will be tainted, until Trump is gone and not replaced by the equivalent. The US is now a second-level power. It is now Russia, China, and the EU (with Germany leading) that run the world with Japan.

Look for big moves. Look for the “G-7 minus one” because if you are the other 6 countries in the G-7, you do not want Trump at the table. Maybe Mexico will build a wall and make Trump pay for it. Other things. Many other things.

PAREXIT is not about Paris or the climate. It is about the end of American exceptionalism, and there are both bad and good things about that.

And now the other things. Some of this is from before PAREXIT but very much related.

A Veteran’s Day warning: Trump’s climate policies will create more war, more refugees

Donald Trump’s climate policies would create dozens of failed states south of the U.S. border and around the world. They would lead to hundreds of millions of refugees and more authoritarian demagogues like Trump himself.

Trump’s policies would assure that a tremendous number of people become veterans of one of the ever-growing number of climate-related conflicts.

Trump just cemented his legacy as America’s worst-ever president

Trump’s withdrawal from the Paris treaty is a mostly symbolic act. America’s pledges to cut its carbon pollution were non-binding, and his administration’s policies to date had already made it impossible for America to meet its initial Paris climate commitment for 2025. The next American president in 2020 can re-enter the Paris treaty and push for policies to make up some of the ground we lost during Trump’s reign.

However, withdrawing from the Paris treaty is an important symbolic move…

REFERENDUM NOVEMBER 3, 2020 ON TRUMP’S WITHDRAWAL FROM PARIS AGREEMENT NOVEMBER 4, 2020

Trump’s withdrawal from the Paris Agreement means that the United States formally abdicates its role as world leader on November 4, 2020. By coincidence, the United States will hold a referendum vote – and, make no mistake, it will be a referendum vote – on November 3, 2020.

RL Miller, cofounder of Climate Hawks Vote, states: “Trump’s fuck you to the world redoubles our determination to end his regime. We will take back Congress in 2018, expose him for the traitor and grifter that he is, and elect climate candidates up and down the ballot, culminating in the election of a climate hawk President on November 3, 2020 to restore America’s place in the world.”

Paris Agreement: What Experts Say vs. What the White House Says

In President Trump’s speech today announcing his intention to pull the US out of the Paris Agreement, there were several false and misinformed statements.

Trump falsely claims Paris deal has a minimal impact on warming

In a speech from the White House Rose Garden filled with thorny lies and misleading statements, one pricks the most: Trump claimed that the Paris climate deal would only reduce future warming in 2100 by a mere 0.2°C. White House talking points further assert that “according to researchers at MIT, if all member nations met their obligations, the impact on the climate would be negligible… less than .2 degrees Celsius in 2100.”

The Director of MIT’s System Dynamics Group, John Sterman, and his partner at Climate Interactive, Andrew Jones, quickly emailed ThinkProgress to explain, “We are not these researchers and this is not our finding.”

Trump’s Paris exit: climate science denial industry has just had its greatest victory

The foundation for Trump’s dismissal of the Paris deal – and for the people who pushed him the hardest to do it – is the rejection of the science linking fossil-fuel burning to dangerous climate change.

Or rather, Trump’s rejection of the Paris deal was built on the flimsy, cherry-picked and long-debunked talking points of an industry built to manufacture doubt about climate science. Once you fall for those arguments, making an economic case suddenly feels plausible.

Trump Abandons Paris Climate Deal At Bidding of Fossil Fuel Interests

Condemnation from environmental groups was swift.

“President Trump’s decision to exit the Paris Climate Agreement sends a dangerous signal to the rest of the world that the United States values fossil fuel industry profits over clean energy innovation and the health and well-being of our citizens,” Earthworks’ Executive Director, Jennifer Krill said in a statement. “The over 12 million people living within a half mile of an oil and gas facilities deserve action to reduce air pollution, not head-in-the-sand climate denial.”

Tobacco To Fossil Fuels: Tracing the Roots of Trump’s Claims on Paris Climate Deal

To understand why President Donald Trump pulled the United States out of the global Paris climate agreement, we might start by looking at the sources he relied on to justify his decision.

But we’re not going to start there, but we will end there.

Instead, let’s go back to the early 1990s….

from ScienceBlogs http://ift.tt/2rjEbjJ

Reflections on the politics of climate change

The science of climate change is clear. Scientists know that the Earth is warming and that humans are the reason. We also know that the Earth will continue to warm in the future; however, we can do something about it. We can dramatically change the trajectory.

If the science is so clear, why are there still so many people that don’t accept it? Why are there so many people who try to deny the evidence? Well, the why is something I will try handling in my next post. Here, I want to describe where things are, as I see them. Mind you, this is only my perspective, living in the USA, working on climate science and climate communication on a daily basis.

For various reasons, acceptance of climate science breaks down along ideological lines. First, a majority of people in every state in the US believes, for instance, that the Paris Accord is a good thing, that the USA should participate. It turns out, however, that there is higher acceptance of climate science and acceptance of the importance of action on the coasts (California, Oregon, Washington, New York, etc.). 

There are exceptions to this rule but I am generalizing. It also turns out that the more liberal your politics are, the more likely you are to accept the science and the solutions. With respect to politics, the results are stunning. Vast majorities of Democratic and independent voters are supportive. Interestingly, small majorities of even conservative Republicans are supportive.

There are other correlations. For instance, the more religious, particularly conservatively religious someone is, the more likely they are to doubt or deny the science. But again, this is a generalization and it has exceptions. In fact, some religious leaders have become climate-action leaders. Perhaps the best example is Pope Francis. Now, I am not saying that conservatives are not as intelligent as liberals, I am just pointing out that certain political and religious ideologies correspond to viewpoints on science.

The correlations don’t end here. A hugely important work on the underlying motivations of people who deny the reality of climate change was performed by Dr. Naomi Oreskes in her book (and accompanying movie) Merchants of Doubt. One of her central conclusions is that the denial of human-caused climate change is driven by peoples’ distrust of the government and of government solutions to a problem, particularly when the solutions may impinge on personal freedoms. 

While there is a clear relation between a scientist’s knowledge of climate change and their understanding of the human influence, such a relation is not apparent in the general public. So, if you look far and wide to find a scientist who claims humans are not a major influence on climate, it is very likely that scientist is not very knowledgeable about the topic, does not work in the area very much, or has a history of faulty research. 

Conversely, the scientists who accept the consensus view are more likely to publish more, do more research and just know more. However, if you talk to people on the street, this view breaks down. I see this in my own interactions with people. I often run across general audience members who have a pretty good grasp of the science but they discount the effects. Or, people who know very little about the science but they fully accept it. What is most astonishing to me is where this all leaves us. Donald Trump has announced that America will withdraw from the Paris climate treaty. My view is, it would be better for us to leave the agreement so we cannot sabotage it from the inside. But, only time will tell.

But back to where this leaves us. We have a situation in the USA and around the world where certain countries and certain political groups have inextricably aligned themselves with one or another side of this issue. For instance, in the USA, denial of human-caused climate change has become a litmus test for Republican candidates. The same is true in other countries. This is a real tragedy because Republicans don’t want to pollute the planet. They don’t want to screw things up for our future generations. But, their wholesale denial of the reality of climate change is doing just that.

From a political standpoint, if we think about the silly things President Trump is doing and how it will affect the world, the one thing he may be most remembered for is his climate inaction. Climate change will have very long lasting consequences that we will be dealing with long after he is gone. Long after other issues like immigration, the economy, debt, jobs, terrorism, or new words like “covfefe” have passed from our minds, the implications of our climate effect will linger. Frankly, no challenge we are facing (except perhaps a potential nuclear war) presents the consequences that climate change does. 

And this, sadly, will be the legacy of conservatives in my country. As we wake up to more severe weather, more droughts, heat waves, rising seas, severe storms, the world will remember that these issues could have been solved long ago but for an ideology and tribalism. It will be the job of scientists, historians, and the media to continually remind people of this. Climate change could have been solved. Those who will be blamed will certainly claim “But I didn’t cause this climate change. You cannot blame this on me!” But we can and we have to. People need to be accountable for their actions. If you are someone who has stood in the path of climate action, you own the results.

Click here to read the rest

from Skeptical Science http://ift.tt/2rsRzAA

The science of climate change is clear. Scientists know that the Earth is warming and that humans are the reason. We also know that the Earth will continue to warm in the future; however, we can do something about it. We can dramatically change the trajectory.

If the science is so clear, why are there still so many people that don’t accept it? Why are there so many people who try to deny the evidence? Well, the why is something I will try handling in my next post. Here, I want to describe where things are, as I see them. Mind you, this is only my perspective, living in the USA, working on climate science and climate communication on a daily basis.

For various reasons, acceptance of climate science breaks down along ideological lines. First, a majority of people in every state in the US believes, for instance, that the Paris Accord is a good thing, that the USA should participate. It turns out, however, that there is higher acceptance of climate science and acceptance of the importance of action on the coasts (California, Oregon, Washington, New York, etc.). 

There are exceptions to this rule but I am generalizing. It also turns out that the more liberal your politics are, the more likely you are to accept the science and the solutions. With respect to politics, the results are stunning. Vast majorities of Democratic and independent voters are supportive. Interestingly, small majorities of even conservative Republicans are supportive.

There are other correlations. For instance, the more religious, particularly conservatively religious someone is, the more likely they are to doubt or deny the science. But again, this is a generalization and it has exceptions. In fact, some religious leaders have become climate-action leaders. Perhaps the best example is Pope Francis. Now, I am not saying that conservatives are not as intelligent as liberals, I am just pointing out that certain political and religious ideologies correspond to viewpoints on science.

The correlations don’t end here. A hugely important work on the underlying motivations of people who deny the reality of climate change was performed by Dr. Naomi Oreskes in her book (and accompanying movie) Merchants of Doubt. One of her central conclusions is that the denial of human-caused climate change is driven by peoples’ distrust of the government and of government solutions to a problem, particularly when the solutions may impinge on personal freedoms. 

While there is a clear relation between a scientist’s knowledge of climate change and their understanding of the human influence, such a relation is not apparent in the general public. So, if you look far and wide to find a scientist who claims humans are not a major influence on climate, it is very likely that scientist is not very knowledgeable about the topic, does not work in the area very much, or has a history of faulty research. 

Conversely, the scientists who accept the consensus view are more likely to publish more, do more research and just know more. However, if you talk to people on the street, this view breaks down. I see this in my own interactions with people. I often run across general audience members who have a pretty good grasp of the science but they discount the effects. Or, people who know very little about the science but they fully accept it. What is most astonishing to me is where this all leaves us. Donald Trump has announced that America will withdraw from the Paris climate treaty. My view is, it would be better for us to leave the agreement so we cannot sabotage it from the inside. But, only time will tell.

But back to where this leaves us. We have a situation in the USA and around the world where certain countries and certain political groups have inextricably aligned themselves with one or another side of this issue. For instance, in the USA, denial of human-caused climate change has become a litmus test for Republican candidates. The same is true in other countries. This is a real tragedy because Republicans don’t want to pollute the planet. They don’t want to screw things up for our future generations. But, their wholesale denial of the reality of climate change is doing just that.

From a political standpoint, if we think about the silly things President Trump is doing and how it will affect the world, the one thing he may be most remembered for is his climate inaction. Climate change will have very long lasting consequences that we will be dealing with long after he is gone. Long after other issues like immigration, the economy, debt, jobs, terrorism, or new words like “covfefe” have passed from our minds, the implications of our climate effect will linger. Frankly, no challenge we are facing (except perhaps a potential nuclear war) presents the consequences that climate change does. 

And this, sadly, will be the legacy of conservatives in my country. As we wake up to more severe weather, more droughts, heat waves, rising seas, severe storms, the world will remember that these issues could have been solved long ago but for an ideology and tribalism. It will be the job of scientists, historians, and the media to continually remind people of this. Climate change could have been solved. Those who will be blamed will certainly claim “But I didn’t cause this climate change. You cannot blame this on me!” But we can and we have to. People need to be accountable for their actions. If you are someone who has stood in the path of climate action, you own the results.

Click here to read the rest

from Skeptical Science http://ift.tt/2rsRzAA

What will the death of the Milky Way look like? (Synopsis) [Starts With A Bang]

“Unless one says goodbye to what one loves, and unless one travels to completely new territories, one can expect merely a long wearing away of oneself and an eventual extinction.” -Jean Dubuffet

In the far future, all the galaxies within our Local Group will merge together, with enough gas and stellar material to form trillions upon trillions of new stars. But the amount of fuel is finite, and gravitational interactions are chaotic. At some point, the star forming material contained in our galaxy will come to an end, while more and more stars and stellar remnants are ejected from the galaxy. What will be left, at that point?

When a large number of gravitational interactions between star systems occur, one star can receive a large enough kick to be ejected from whatever structure it’s a part of. We observe runaway stars in the Milky Way even today; once they’re gone, they’ll never return. Image credit: J. Walsh and Z. Levay, ESA/NASA.

Just a few stellar corpses orbiting in a halo of dark matter around a central, supermassive black hole. That mass will grow larger and larger, up until a certain point. Once it’s grown all it can, Hawking radiation will result in the decay of that central black hole, unbinding the last structures of normal matter. In the end, there will be nothing left but a large, massive clump of dark matter in the abyss of empty space.

The simulated decay of a black hole not only results in the emission of radiation, but the decay of the central orbiting mass that keeps most objects stable. Image credit: the EU’s Communicate Science.

Need something to look forward to? How about the death of the Milky Way, and the return of the Universe to a cold, empty, unstructured state!

from ScienceBlogs http://ift.tt/2rjem3k

“Unless one says goodbye to what one loves, and unless one travels to completely new territories, one can expect merely a long wearing away of oneself and an eventual extinction.” -Jean Dubuffet

In the far future, all the galaxies within our Local Group will merge together, with enough gas and stellar material to form trillions upon trillions of new stars. But the amount of fuel is finite, and gravitational interactions are chaotic. At some point, the star forming material contained in our galaxy will come to an end, while more and more stars and stellar remnants are ejected from the galaxy. What will be left, at that point?

When a large number of gravitational interactions between star systems occur, one star can receive a large enough kick to be ejected from whatever structure it’s a part of. We observe runaway stars in the Milky Way even today; once they’re gone, they’ll never return. Image credit: J. Walsh and Z. Levay, ESA/NASA.

Just a few stellar corpses orbiting in a halo of dark matter around a central, supermassive black hole. That mass will grow larger and larger, up until a certain point. Once it’s grown all it can, Hawking radiation will result in the decay of that central black hole, unbinding the last structures of normal matter. In the end, there will be nothing left but a large, massive clump of dark matter in the abyss of empty space.

The simulated decay of a black hole not only results in the emission of radiation, but the decay of the central orbiting mass that keeps most objects stable. Image credit: the EU’s Communicate Science.

Need something to look forward to? How about the death of the Milky Way, and the return of the Universe to a cold, empty, unstructured state!

from ScienceBlogs http://ift.tt/2rjem3k

Astronomers detect gravitational waves

Swedish Academia Is No Meritocracy [Aardvarchaeology]

After almost 14 mostly dismal years on the academic job market, I find it a consolation to read an opinion piece in Times Higher Education under the headline “Swedish Academia Is No Meritocracy“. In my experience this is also true for Denmark, Norway and Finland. In Norway, for instance, the referee board that evaluates job applications isn’t external to the department: it is headed by a senior employee of the department itself. With predictable results.

In Scandinavia, people who didn’t get their jobs in fair competition are handing out jobs to their buddies without any fair competition. But I see encouraging signs that the PR disaster that recently befell Gothenburg University’s philosophy department may have put a scare into the whole sad business. At least temporarily. Meanwhile, I’m finishing my sixth archaeological monograph. Never having had a longer contract than 28% of one academic year.

from ScienceBlogs http://ift.tt/2swxVmG

After almost 14 mostly dismal years on the academic job market, I find it a consolation to read an opinion piece in Times Higher Education under the headline “Swedish Academia Is No Meritocracy“. In my experience this is also true for Denmark, Norway and Finland. In Norway, for instance, the referee board that evaluates job applications isn’t external to the department: it is headed by a senior employee of the department itself. With predictable results.

In Scandinavia, people who didn’t get their jobs in fair competition are handing out jobs to their buddies without any fair competition. But I see encouraging signs that the PR disaster that recently befell Gothenburg University’s philosophy department may have put a scare into the whole sad business. At least temporarily. Meanwhile, I’m finishing my sixth archaeological monograph. Never having had a longer contract than 28% of one academic year.

from ScienceBlogs http://ift.tt/2swxVmG

How stigmatized are undervaccinated children and their parents? [Respectful Insolence]

I’ve discussed several times over the last several years my impression that the media have become in general less tolerant of antivaccine views. At least, the media seem less willing to indulge in “tell both sides” false equivalence. Back when I started blogging, I routinely used to bemoan how news stories about vaccines or autism would almost inevitably include obligatory quotes from antivaxer like J.B. Handley, Jenny McCarthy, and sometimes even Andrew Wakefield. More recently, over the last five years or so, such tropes seem a lot less common. I don’t have any solid evidence to back up my impression, but I’m not alone in it. I’d like to think it was because of evidence, but generally I’ve attributed much of this change to the the downfall of one of the most famous antivaxer of all (at least before the rise of Donald Trump, and even then most people didn’t know that he has antivaccine views), Andrew Wakefield. When Wakefield lost his medical license and the was revealed to be a fraud, it provided a handy shorthand way to dismiss antivaccine views. Again, that wasn’t my preferred way to have won people over, but stories tend to be more effective than evidence.

It’s against that backdrop that I came across a story about a study examining how the mothers of unvaccinated children are viewed by other people. From the story in the Vancouver Sun:

Mothers of unvaccinated children are judged harshly by other people and their children are more likely to be shunned by other families, according to a study from the University of B.C.

And it really matters why the child is unvaccinated.

Those moms who outright refuse to vaccinate their kids are viewed most negatively, said co-author Nicholas Fitz, now a research associate at Duke University in Durham, N.C.

“On measures of social distance — like would you let your child befriend an unvaccinated child or work on a school project together — across the board unvaccinated children suffered from stigma,” he said. “People felt the most anger and the least sympathy for the refusal group and viewed the mothers as a danger to the community.”

But, because of the perceived health hazard, the child is most likely to be shunned.

“They don’t want the family to move into the neighbourhood … and they don’t want their children to play with (unvaccinated) children,” he said.

The authors Carpiano et al themselves discuss how parents in the US are frequently judgmental of each other in the introduction to their study and point out that vaccination has become another area where judgmental attitudes can come into play:

In addition to these cultural expectations, media coverage of undervaccination has heavily focused on “anti-vaxxer” parents (mostly mothers), who refuse vaccinations for their children. This small, but vocal proportion of parents of the total undervaccinated population—more likely to be white and higher SES and thus with greater capacity to undertake healthy practices—are (a) known for rejecting certain evidence-based medical recommendations, (b) engaging in emotionally-, time-, and (often) financially-absorbing “intensive mothering” practices centered extensively on managing a child’s development; as well as (c) often identifying with essentialist notions of mothers as the best caregivers for their children (Reich, 2016 ; Hays, 1998). Popular media has even characterized anti-vaxxers as dangerous (e.g., Sriram, 2015). This attention paid to anti-vaxxers has contributed to misconceptions and even stereotypes about other vaccine-hesitant parents who refuse or delay vaccinations for their children (e.g., Haelle, 2015).

Of course, antivaxers are dangerous, but I always try to distinguish between vaccine-hesitant parents who have fallen under the sway of antivaccine views and the hard core antivaxers themselves, who spread the message. The former can be reached; the latter are virtually unreachable with rare exceptions.

In the study by Carpiano et al itself, the authors consider three issues:

• Is undervaccination stigmatizing for the parent and the child?
• Do stigmatizing attitudes depend on the reason for undervaccination?
• What are the policy consequences of undervaccination attitudes?

Guided by these issues, the authors sought to investigate three questions:

1. To what extent does the causal reason for a child’s undervaccination status predict people’s: a. Evaluations of child undervaccination (in terms of attribution theory-based emotional reactions and/or mother judgment-based differentness, credibility, and dangerousness) and b.Stigmatizing behavioral orientations (i.e. social distance and discrimination) towards undervaccinated children and their parents?
2. Do people’s evaluations of child undervaccination explain differences in stigmatizing orientations observed across different undervaccination reasons?
3. Do these undervaccination evaluations and stigmatizing orientations predict support for specific child vaccination policies?

Carpiano et al examined these questions by designing a survey-embedded vignette experiment that was administered in 2015 using Amazon’s Mechanical Turk (MTurk), an online crowdsourcing Internet marketplace that allows individuals and businesses (referred to as Requesters) to coordinate the use of human intelligence. It’s a tool that’s been increasingly used to recruit subjects for social science experiments like this one. Carpiano et al designed a survey-embedded vignette experiment with checks for whether or not the participants paid attention to the instructions and had understood the survey items. Overall, the sample surveyed included 1,469 participants representing at least 46 US states and Washington, DC. The four vignettes were about a mother who either has:

1. Concerns about vaccinations and has decided to refuse vaccinations for her child (“refusal”).
2. Concerns about vaccinations and has decided to delay some of her child’s vaccinations (“delay”)
3. No concerns about vaccinations but whose job and family demands have made it difficult to schedule medical appointment so her child has only received some vaccinations (“time constraint”)
4. No concerns about vaccinations and has decided that her child always receives recommended vaccinations (“up-to-date;” the control condition).

The mother in each vignette was randomized to be:

• either white (and named “Molly”) or Hispanic (and named “Maria”)
• either high or low socioeconomic status (in terms of education and job).

The authors note:

We selected Hispanic (versus White) because, in addition to Hispanic being a minority demographic group in the US, at the time we developed the study (i.e. following the Disneyland measles outbreak), politicians and pundits had publicly raised concern about illegal immigrants (often portrayed as being Hispanic) being unvaccinated and thus posing a risk for spreading disease (e.g., see Kessler, 2015). Hence, randomizing the mother’s demographics enabled us to determine if they influenced respondents’ reactions to the undervaccination condition at hand. As further context, US White and Hispanic children ages 19–35 months had similar 2014 national coverage rates for most vaccines and dosages (Hill et al., 2015).

The authors then asked questions about how the parents in the vignettes were viewed, stigmatizing behavioral orientations, and policy support. Results of evaluation measures for the vignette parents are shown in this figure:

Basically, undervaccination reflected negatively on the mohter. Anger and blame at the mother were highest for mothers refusing vaccines, less so for mothers who were time-constrained. These time-constrained parents also evoked much more sympathy than the other groups, which makes intuitive sense.

Here are the results on stigmatization:

What these results suggest is that both unvaccinated children and their parents are socially stigmatized, but that the child is stigmatized more than the parents, as the differences in the scores between fully vaccinated children and the undervaccinated were much greater than the differences in stigmatization between the parents. The authors themselves note in the discussion:

Third, participants reported even stronger social distancing attitudes towards the undervaccinated child than the mother. This suggests that children bear the bigger burden in undervaccination—in addition to not being protected from one or more vaccine-preventable diseases, they may be the recipients of courtesy stigma via the stigma of their parent’s decision/inaction (Phelan et al., 1998). We further discuss this idea below in relation to advancing stigma research.

It also turns out that those who read different vignettes also ended up with different attitudes towards what should be done to encourage vaccination. Those who read the refusal vignettes tended to be more supportive of punitive measures, such as banning unvaccinated children from school, but the differences were not large. For instance, those who read the vaccine refusal vignetted were only 24% more likely to support banning undervaccinated children from school. In addition, those who read the delay condition were only 15% more likely to support more education and services and 16% more likely to support reporting school vaccinated rates, while those reading the time constraint condition were 30% less likely to support a fine or a tax on parents of undervaccinated children.

So basically, the results of this study show that negative portrayals of antivaxers appears to be having an effect. However the message is being received, via the media, the Internet, or other sources, the parents of undervaccinated children are viewed negatively, and the reason matters. Outright refusers are viewed the most negatively, and time-constrained parents the least. The latter group even provokes a fair measure of sympathy. This does not bother me. What does bother me is that the children are stigmatized more than the parents. It bothers me because it is not the children’s fault that they were born to parents who won’t protect them from infectious disease, whatever the reason for their refusal or delay of vaccines.

The authors, to their credit, tackle the issue head on. They note that social stigmatization can work in changing behavior, noting the most obvious example, smoking. They then point the similarities and differences between smoking and vaccine policies:

Our investigation also informs stigma research more generally. First, it highlights the interplay of evaluations and consequences for the parent and child. Stigma research has considered how family members of stigmatized persons can also be stigmatized as recipients of courtesy stigma (Phelan et al., 1998). Child undervaccination extends the courtesy stigma concept, as the focus of the stigma is both the parent and the child—for mutual and distinct reasons. A child’s (under)vaccination status is a consequence of the parent’s actions, regardless of whether those actions are by choice or constraint. This status is beyond a child’s control, yet the child bears the burden of any negative consequences from parental (in)action. Thus, the child risks being doubly stigmatized as both the identified child of a vaccine-hesitant parent and a perceived health risk.

Second, our focus on stigma of undervaccinated children and their parents provides important angles to scholarship on the ethics of using stigma (or more broadly, denormalization) as a policy tool for modifying behaviors (see debates between Bayer, 2008a ; Bayer, 2008b and Burris, 2008; and Bell et al., 2010 ; Bayer, 2010). Given that vaccinations are necessary for ensuring the health of a community (including people who cannot be vaccinated), they juxtapose individual and public rights (as well as the role of government). This situation is similar to anti-smoking policies and second-hand smoke, but is more complex in that it entails the parent (as the decision maker) and child (as a beneficiary and health risk). This additional dimension is essential in ongoing debates about stigma and policies that aim to address adult and child health conditions and behaviors (e.g., eating unhealthy foods, obesity).

Of course, hard core antivaccine parents feed on any perception of stigmatization. How often have you read posts by such parents ranting about how they feel judged when interacting with health care providers, the press, and others? They revel in painting themselves as the persecuted minority, sometimes going to ridiculous extremes, such as donning a yellow badge with a syringe on it patterned after the Yellow Star of David that the Nazis required Jews to wear, thus likening their “plight” to that of the Jews during the Holocaust. Indeed, antivaxers are quite enamored of Holocaust analogies, either with vaccines causing a Holocaust or laws requiring children to be vaccinated before they can attend school being likened to Nazi-ism. Even mildly vaccine-hesitant parents can be turned off by excessive judgment.

Basically, stigmatization is highly problematic because it is the children who suffer far more than the parents, even as they are unnecessarily left vulnerable to infectious diseases. Also, we basically know that stigmatization only makes the beliefs of committed antivaxers stronger and increases their will to resist. However, this group of antivaxers is, as I pointed out at the beginning, different from the mere vaccine-averse. Their numbers are smaller, even though they are much louder and more responsible for spreading antivaccine beliefs. The question is whether stigmatization has an effect on vaccine-hesitant parents and whether it makes them more likely to vaccinate or less likely—and at what cost, given that it is the children who suffer far more than the parents. While it’s encouraging that parents of undervaccinated children are not viewed favorably because it indicates that pro-vaccination views predominate and that the reason for not vaccinating matters, we have to ask: How can we as a society maximize the social pressure to vaccinated without harming the very children that suffer from not being vaccinated? The answers to those question await further research.

from ScienceBlogs http://ift.tt/2rM1lkl

I’ve discussed several times over the last several years my impression that the media have become in general less tolerant of antivaccine views. At least, the media seem less willing to indulge in “tell both sides” false equivalence. Back when I started blogging, I routinely used to bemoan how news stories about vaccines or autism would almost inevitably include obligatory quotes from antivaxer like J.B. Handley, Jenny McCarthy, and sometimes even Andrew Wakefield. More recently, over the last five years or so, such tropes seem a lot less common. I don’t have any solid evidence to back up my impression, but I’m not alone in it. I’d like to think it was because of evidence, but generally I’ve attributed much of this change to the the downfall of one of the most famous antivaxer of all (at least before the rise of Donald Trump, and even then most people didn’t know that he has antivaccine views), Andrew Wakefield. When Wakefield lost his medical license and the was revealed to be a fraud, it provided a handy shorthand way to dismiss antivaccine views. Again, that wasn’t my preferred way to have won people over, but stories tend to be more effective than evidence.

It’s against that backdrop that I came across a story about a study examining how the mothers of unvaccinated children are viewed by other people. From the story in the Vancouver Sun:

Mothers of unvaccinated children are judged harshly by other people and their children are more likely to be shunned by other families, according to a study from the University of B.C.

And it really matters why the child is unvaccinated.

Those moms who outright refuse to vaccinate their kids are viewed most negatively, said co-author Nicholas Fitz, now a research associate at Duke University in Durham, N.C.

“On measures of social distance — like would you let your child befriend an unvaccinated child or work on a school project together — across the board unvaccinated children suffered from stigma,” he said. “People felt the most anger and the least sympathy for the refusal group and viewed the mothers as a danger to the community.”

But, because of the perceived health hazard, the child is most likely to be shunned.

“They don’t want the family to move into the neighbourhood … and they don’t want their children to play with (unvaccinated) children,” he said.

The authors Carpiano et al themselves discuss how parents in the US are frequently judgmental of each other in the introduction to their study and point out that vaccination has become another area where judgmental attitudes can come into play:

In addition to these cultural expectations, media coverage of undervaccination has heavily focused on “anti-vaxxer” parents (mostly mothers), who refuse vaccinations for their children. This small, but vocal proportion of parents of the total undervaccinated population—more likely to be white and higher SES and thus with greater capacity to undertake healthy practices—are (a) known for rejecting certain evidence-based medical recommendations, (b) engaging in emotionally-, time-, and (often) financially-absorbing “intensive mothering” practices centered extensively on managing a child’s development; as well as (c) often identifying with essentialist notions of mothers as the best caregivers for their children (Reich, 2016 ; Hays, 1998). Popular media has even characterized anti-vaxxers as dangerous (e.g., Sriram, 2015). This attention paid to anti-vaxxers has contributed to misconceptions and even stereotypes about other vaccine-hesitant parents who refuse or delay vaccinations for their children (e.g., Haelle, 2015).

Of course, antivaxers are dangerous, but I always try to distinguish between vaccine-hesitant parents who have fallen under the sway of antivaccine views and the hard core antivaxers themselves, who spread the message. The former can be reached; the latter are virtually unreachable with rare exceptions.

In the study by Carpiano et al itself, the authors consider three issues:

• Is undervaccination stigmatizing for the parent and the child?
• Do stigmatizing attitudes depend on the reason for undervaccination?
• What are the policy consequences of undervaccination attitudes?

Guided by these issues, the authors sought to investigate three questions:

1. To what extent does the causal reason for a child’s undervaccination status predict people’s: a. Evaluations of child undervaccination (in terms of attribution theory-based emotional reactions and/or mother judgment-based differentness, credibility, and dangerousness) and b.Stigmatizing behavioral orientations (i.e. social distance and discrimination) towards undervaccinated children and their parents?
2. Do people’s evaluations of child undervaccination explain differences in stigmatizing orientations observed across different undervaccination reasons?
3. Do these undervaccination evaluations and stigmatizing orientations predict support for specific child vaccination policies?

Carpiano et al examined these questions by designing a survey-embedded vignette experiment that was administered in 2015 using Amazon’s Mechanical Turk (MTurk), an online crowdsourcing Internet marketplace that allows individuals and businesses (referred to as Requesters) to coordinate the use of human intelligence. It’s a tool that’s been increasingly used to recruit subjects for social science experiments like this one. Carpiano et al designed a survey-embedded vignette experiment with checks for whether or not the participants paid attention to the instructions and had understood the survey items. Overall, the sample surveyed included 1,469 participants representing at least 46 US states and Washington, DC. The four vignettes were about a mother who either has:

1. Concerns about vaccinations and has decided to refuse vaccinations for her child (“refusal”).
2. Concerns about vaccinations and has decided to delay some of her child’s vaccinations (“delay”)
3. No concerns about vaccinations but whose job and family demands have made it difficult to schedule medical appointment so her child has only received some vaccinations (“time constraint”)
4. No concerns about vaccinations and has decided that her child always receives recommended vaccinations (“up-to-date;” the control condition).

The mother in each vignette was randomized to be:

• either white (and named “Molly”) or Hispanic (and named “Maria”)
• either high or low socioeconomic status (in terms of education and job).

The authors note:

We selected Hispanic (versus White) because, in addition to Hispanic being a minority demographic group in the US, at the time we developed the study (i.e. following the Disneyland measles outbreak), politicians and pundits had publicly raised concern about illegal immigrants (often portrayed as being Hispanic) being unvaccinated and thus posing a risk for spreading disease (e.g., see Kessler, 2015). Hence, randomizing the mother’s demographics enabled us to determine if they influenced respondents’ reactions to the undervaccination condition at hand. As further context, US White and Hispanic children ages 19–35 months had similar 2014 national coverage rates for most vaccines and dosages (Hill et al., 2015).

The authors then asked questions about how the parents in the vignettes were viewed, stigmatizing behavioral orientations, and policy support. Results of evaluation measures for the vignette parents are shown in this figure:

Basically, undervaccination reflected negatively on the mohter. Anger and blame at the mother were highest for mothers refusing vaccines, less so for mothers who were time-constrained. These time-constrained parents also evoked much more sympathy than the other groups, which makes intuitive sense.

Here are the results on stigmatization:

What these results suggest is that both unvaccinated children and their parents are socially stigmatized, but that the child is stigmatized more than the parents, as the differences in the scores between fully vaccinated children and the undervaccinated were much greater than the differences in stigmatization between the parents. The authors themselves note in the discussion:

Third, participants reported even stronger social distancing attitudes towards the undervaccinated child than the mother. This suggests that children bear the bigger burden in undervaccination—in addition to not being protected from one or more vaccine-preventable diseases, they may be the recipients of courtesy stigma via the stigma of their parent’s decision/inaction (Phelan et al., 1998). We further discuss this idea below in relation to advancing stigma research.

It also turns out that those who read different vignettes also ended up with different attitudes towards what should be done to encourage vaccination. Those who read the refusal vignettes tended to be more supportive of punitive measures, such as banning unvaccinated children from school, but the differences were not large. For instance, those who read the vaccine refusal vignetted were only 24% more likely to support banning undervaccinated children from school. In addition, those who read the delay condition were only 15% more likely to support more education and services and 16% more likely to support reporting school vaccinated rates, while those reading the time constraint condition were 30% less likely to support a fine or a tax on parents of undervaccinated children.

So basically, the results of this study show that negative portrayals of antivaxers appears to be having an effect. However the message is being received, via the media, the Internet, or other sources, the parents of undervaccinated children are viewed negatively, and the reason matters. Outright refusers are viewed the most negatively, and time-constrained parents the least. The latter group even provokes a fair measure of sympathy. This does not bother me. What does bother me is that the children are stigmatized more than the parents. It bothers me because it is not the children’s fault that they were born to parents who won’t protect them from infectious disease, whatever the reason for their refusal or delay of vaccines.

The authors, to their credit, tackle the issue head on. They note that social stigmatization can work in changing behavior, noting the most obvious example, smoking. They then point the similarities and differences between smoking and vaccine policies:

Our investigation also informs stigma research more generally. First, it highlights the interplay of evaluations and consequences for the parent and child. Stigma research has considered how family members of stigmatized persons can also be stigmatized as recipients of courtesy stigma (Phelan et al., 1998). Child undervaccination extends the courtesy stigma concept, as the focus of the stigma is both the parent and the child—for mutual and distinct reasons. A child’s (under)vaccination status is a consequence of the parent’s actions, regardless of whether those actions are by choice or constraint. This status is beyond a child’s control, yet the child bears the burden of any negative consequences from parental (in)action. Thus, the child risks being doubly stigmatized as both the identified child of a vaccine-hesitant parent and a perceived health risk.

Second, our focus on stigma of undervaccinated children and their parents provides important angles to scholarship on the ethics of using stigma (or more broadly, denormalization) as a policy tool for modifying behaviors (see debates between Bayer, 2008a ; Bayer, 2008b and Burris, 2008; and Bell et al., 2010 ; Bayer, 2010). Given that vaccinations are necessary for ensuring the health of a community (including people who cannot be vaccinated), they juxtapose individual and public rights (as well as the role of government). This situation is similar to anti-smoking policies and second-hand smoke, but is more complex in that it entails the parent (as the decision maker) and child (as a beneficiary and health risk). This additional dimension is essential in ongoing debates about stigma and policies that aim to address adult and child health conditions and behaviors (e.g., eating unhealthy foods, obesity).

Of course, hard core antivaccine parents feed on any perception of stigmatization. How often have you read posts by such parents ranting about how they feel judged when interacting with health care providers, the press, and others? They revel in painting themselves as the persecuted minority, sometimes going to ridiculous extremes, such as donning a yellow badge with a syringe on it patterned after the Yellow Star of David that the Nazis required Jews to wear, thus likening their “plight” to that of the Jews during the Holocaust. Indeed, antivaxers are quite enamored of Holocaust analogies, either with vaccines causing a Holocaust or laws requiring children to be vaccinated before they can attend school being likened to Nazi-ism. Even mildly vaccine-hesitant parents can be turned off by excessive judgment.

Basically, stigmatization is highly problematic because it is the children who suffer far more than the parents, even as they are unnecessarily left vulnerable to infectious diseases. Also, we basically know that stigmatization only makes the beliefs of committed antivaxers stronger and increases their will to resist. However, this group of antivaxers is, as I pointed out at the beginning, different from the mere vaccine-averse. Their numbers are smaller, even though they are much louder and more responsible for spreading antivaccine beliefs. The question is whether stigmatization has an effect on vaccine-hesitant parents and whether it makes them more likely to vaccinate or less likely—and at what cost, given that it is the children who suffer far more than the parents. While it’s encouraging that parents of undervaccinated children are not viewed favorably because it indicates that pro-vaccination views predominate and that the reason for not vaccinating matters, we have to ask: How can we as a society maximize the social pressure to vaccinated without harming the very children that suffer from not being vaccinated? The answers to those question await further research.

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