ClimDown ’17: we pay you a penny per thought on the Americoparisian pullout

via Climate Scepticism
https://cliscep.com

In case you’ve been on a peyote bender in the Atacama, there’s been game-changing news in the climate “world.” Donald Trump officially renegged on America’s warmth-guilt payments in gay Paris (the non-Texan one) this week.

While most skeptics feel the US should probably have negged on the treaty from the get-go, more sobre voices are describing the announcement as a literal act of war against the Earth herself. The President’s geno-suicidal decision—say clear-thinking people everywhere—has single-handedly turned the world’s preeëminent hyperpower into an untouchable “scientific outcast.”

Congratulations, meanwhile, to the winners (below) of our valid scientific opinion poll. Your views were more chromatic, and therefore publication-worthy, than those of the thousands of losers we didn’t select. Remember to check your e-wallets for your $0.01 USD (1.29 × 10^-22 bitcoins, or 1.57 × 10^-23 for those who opted to be paid in bytecoins).

With added ado, I now present our Survey Results—anonymized for clarity, cherry-picked for effectiveness and Summarized for Policy Makers. ■

What does the US withdrawal from Paris mean to you?

Thank you, Mr President, for bringing our boys home—but what business did they have there to begin with? The beguiling alleys and laneways of old Paris are notorious death-traps for infantry, and Baron Haussmann made no secret of modelling her naked, geometric boulevardes on machine-gun firing ranges. New Rule: from now on, we count to ten before invading anywhere that’s been nicknamed ‘the graveyard of empires.’

Actuary
Sacramento, CA
United States

I’d give President Trump six stars if Amazon would let me. Pulling out of Jacques felt almost as good as pulling out of Iraq, which was almost as good as pulling out of Barack. It’s shaping up to be the American Century!

Building contractor
Syracuse, NY
United States

Monsieur le Trompe likes to act the bouffon, but he intuits something his predecessors never could: that Americans are lovers, not fighters. For us Parisians—heirs to Charlemagne—this was less a siege than an exercise in shooting fish in a barrel containing nothing but fish. Using a MAUL. Alors braveaux, Messieurs Obama et Bush! The Sacred Territory just got even sacreder with the blood of the flower of your youth. Please donate again.

Jubileur
Clichy Sous Bois
France

Madness. Sheer madness. Empirecraft 101 says you withdraw in stages. Instead, we’re about to see whether cold turkey kills France, or just hospitalizes her. She is, after all, an idea; the Land of the Franks was a cartographic fiction at the best of times. Absent a draconian, torture-happy regional strongman to keep the more internecine elements in line, the papier-mâché peace between her Sunni and Shi’a départements won’t last six months. When Paris is burning, will we finally heed the lesson any Khanate, Reich or Raj in history could have taught us?

Girl (9½)
Todmorden
UK

Mission accomplishée… non! Yet again, it seems our keenest military minds thought the world’s problems could be solved by coming, seeing, and bombing a couple of arrondissements and banlieux back to the Renaissance. Well, two killed-in-action sons later (our youngest got lucky: he’s C3-paralysed courtesy of an IED in Montmartre), all I can say is: d’oh! As you can imagine, the missus and I won’t be happy unless there are some stockings with reduced Christmas bonuses at the Defense Department this year.

Disgruntled
Tucson, AZ
United States

I believe it was me who put it best: Trump’s failure to go along with whatever the rest of the world is doing represents ‘a shameful abdication of American leadership,’ I thundered.

Minority Whip
Washington, DC
United States

The whole idea of climate is obviously a hoax, but would it have killed us to remain in Paris a bit longer—maybe take in some shows? (I for one could have used another day at the Louvre.) Heck, would it have cost us a single dollar we didn’t volunteer to pay? By now the Realpolitik of Klimapolitik is a familiar tune, and this year’s feel-good magico-scientific honor-system circle-fap was no different. The most “binding” “document” that ever “emerges” from the “process” is a large alcohol tab. In short, We The People call on President Trump to stop being a pussy and go back to the City of Love, but this time we also demand a stopover in Singapore.

Teacher’s aide
Harrisburg, PA
United States

Dear America, don’t let the door hit your ass on the way out to the cold. And you might as well take India, China and the rest of the strictly-ironic participants with you, since they seem to find this whole process so amusing. Good riddance to bad faith, I say. The sooner the coal-powered crypto-denying rogue-state element is out of here, the sooner the other 19% of us can get on with crafting a meaningful, global response to the climate issue—which is the greatest threat to life on Earth since telomere attrition.

Political attaché
Abuja
Nigeria

As a vendor of tourist maps, miniature Eiffel towers and scale models of baguettes, I’m stupéfait. This is how Americans repay half a century of warm French hospitality? They’re lucky it goes against every fibre of our national character to hold a grudge, or tourists from Podunk, Wisconsin might find themselves on the receiving end of a less-verbose-than-usual welcome in my croissanterie tomorrow.

Patisseur
Neuilly-sur-Seine
France

Weep. Weep for Princess Gaia Organa, our shared mother. Everyone alive today will remember where they were, what they were teaching and who they were thinking about boning on Wednesday afternoon, when millions of voices cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced. As an Australian climate academic I’m scared of very, very little—but I fear something Alderaany may have happened.

Scientist
Canberra
Australia

O, what hath Trump wrought this time? According to scientists the Earth now has a flu, so you just know Mars and Venus are going to have a runny nose and the shits by the end of the week too. See, America: this is what happens when you allow a scientific dyslexic to occupy the highest, most ovoid office in the land. If only there were a stupidity shot your GP could give you every year, at the start of the ignorance season. Why are our medical scientists dragging their feet? That’s the real story here: the gratuitous annual hecatomb of zero point six trillion dollars in health research. For what? A slightly better med for the impotence all my other meds are causing? Um, what was the question? Yours sincerely, &c.

Tuna trucker
Antikythera
Greece

I’ve always supported both Donald Trump and the office of Donald Trump, but by dragging America into full-scale hostilities with the Earth itself, I feel our current Administration has gone slightly too far. How many times did the world’s scientists try to tell us: wait until Northern winter to attack the planet, when studies show it’s most vulnerable! But this President doesn’t really Do Science, does he? Sigh.

Systems Analyst
Albuquerque, NM
United States

Hail to the Chief! I’m a proud military mum who’s thanking God that my boys will be fighting an inanimate, oblate spheroid this time. It’ll be wonderful to have them home by Christmas for a change.

Housemaker
Trenton, NJ
United States

The desire to mock, shame and ostracize the US for its recent signs of madness is not only understandable but laudable. However, as a member of Gujarat’s dalit caste who has Hansen’s disease over 80% of my body and can’t remember where I put the other 20%, I want to challenge the world community to come up with a more imaginative, sensitive and inclusive lexicon of shunning. Please do not publish this, as the leprosarium I live in runs on American aid.

Pariah
Gandhinagar
India

Have I woken up outside America? Last time I checked, only Congress had the power to make war on planets—”foreign or domestic,” in the beautiful and lucid prose of our forefathers. You can ask anyone: I’m the last person who’d ever defend the Earth, much less the loathsome “environment” associated therewith, but still… the Constitution matters. Impeach this peroxide-drunk himbo while there are still some procedural traditions left unmocked.

Pharmaceutical supplies
Cherbourg, FL
United States

Four days ago, from the rooftops of Paris, our loud, proud leader put the planet itself on notice that a state of war exists between America and Nature. This is obviously a nuanced issue about which reasonable people can disagree. On one hand, the Earth has had it coming for years now. On the other hand, would you send your son or daughter into battle for a Commander in Chief who so casually throws away the element of surprise? Right now, there are villages in China getting all their energy needs met by the rotation of Sun Tzu in his grave.

Interior designer
Baltimore, MD
United States

via Climate Scepticism https://cliscep.com

June 4, 2017 at 08:13AM