5 claims Trump used to justify pulling the US out of the Paris agreement — and the reality by Dana Varinsky, Dave Mosher and Ariel Schwartz on Jun 1, 2017, 7:40 PM Advertisement
 On Thursday, President Donald Trump announced that he will begin the process of pulling the US out of the Paris climate agreement. The accord, signed by all but two countries, aims to keep the world from warming more than 2 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels, a threshold that scientists say could save the planet from the worst case scenarios of climate change. During a White House press conference, Trump outlined his reasons for leaving the agreement. Many of them, however, were based on questionable data. Here are some of Trump's main arguments for exiting the pact — and what the numbers say about them. SEE ALSO: Trump is pulling the US out of the Paris agreement — here's what that could do to the environment Job losses  Donald Trump suggested that US compliance with the Paris accord could "cost America as much as 2.7 million lost jobs by 2025, according to the National Economic Research Associates." The report on which that claim is based has been widely criticized by environmental groups. As the World Resources Institute pointed out, the NERA study uses a scenario in which the US’ industrial sector is forced to reduce the country’s overall emissions by nearly 40% in 20 years. That calculation doesn’t take into account the role of other sectors in reducing emissions. The WRIalso faults the NERA report for assuming a low rate of clean energy innovation. That rate was calculated by the Department of Energy as a minimal case that “may underestimate advances.” What’s more likely, the National Resources Defense Council suggests, is that the development of clean energy technologies will accelerate. Even since 2016 — the energy outlook the NERA report uses — solar costs have decreased by about 8%. Today, solar jobs vastly outnumber those in coal, and those numbers continue to grow — a recent report from the International Renewably Energy Agency estimated that employment in the solar industry expanded 17 times faster than the US economy overall in 2016.
Just a tiny temperature increase  Trump also suggested that the Paris agreement would only lead to a minuscule reduction in global temperature. "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," he said. "Tiny, tiny amount." A detailed analysis of the impact of the Paris goals by Climate Interactive suggests those numbers are off. Global temperature is going to rise — there is no scenario in which there will be an overall reduction. But let’s assume that Trump meant a reduction from the projections of temperature increases that would happen without the Paris agreement. Under a “business as usual” scenario in which past trends continue, the expected temperature increase in 2100 for this scenario is 4.2 degrees C (7.6 degrees F). If all nations fully achieve their Paris pledges, however, the average global surface temperature in 2100 is expected to be 3.3 degrees. That means the accord would lead to a reduction of nine tenths of one degree, not two. Nine tenths of a degree on a global scale is huge. Since the industrial revolution, average global temperatures have risen 0.99 degrees Celsius, according to NASA. That's not so far from .90, and we’re already seeing plenty of dramatic changes around the planet. Even a reduction of two tenths of a degree would not be “tiny” — it’d be 20% of the increase we’ve already seen. Trump went on: "In fact," he said, "14 days of carbon emissions from China alone would wipe out the gains from America — and this is an incredible statistic — would totally wipe out the gains from America's expected reductions in the year 2030." That claim also does not appear to be accurate. With the US abandoning its commitments, Climate Interactive calculates that by 2025, the country will emit 6.7 gigatons of CO2 per year instead of the 5.3 gigatons of CO2 per year that the US would have emitted under the agreement. That’s a difference of 1.4 gigatons annually. As of 2013, China emitted 9.2 gigatons of carbon dioxide per year — which comes out to 0.025 gigatons per day. 14 days' worth would be 0.35 gigatons — far less than the annual US decrease.
A negative economic impact on the US  In his speech, Donald Trump suggested that remaining in the agreement would cost the US economy “close to $3 trillion in lost GDP and 6.5 million industrial jobs, while households would have 7,000 less income, and in many cases, much worse than that.” Trump didn’t cite a source for that statistic, but he suggested in a speech on April 29 that the cost would be $2.5 trillion — and non-partisan website Factcheck.org looked into that claim. White House spokesman Steven Cheung told Factcheck.org that the number came from a report published by the conservative Heritage Foundation in April 2016. Factcheck.org ran Heritage’s analysis by Roberton C. Williams III, a resource economist at the University of Maryland and a senior fellow at the economic analysis nonprofit Resources for the Future. Williams said the Heritage estimate was correct based on the methodology the foundation used. But according to calculations done by Resources of the Future, the US could reach its Paris goals with a much lower carbon tax rate over less time (either a constant rate of $21.22 per year until 2025, or a rate that starts at $16.87 and increases by 3% each year in the same period). By those numbers, the US’ GDP would see a decrease between just under 0.10 percent and 0.35 percent per year from now until 2025.
See the rest of the story at Business Insider
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