Dear US voters,
the world is holding its breath. The stakes are high in the upcoming US elections. At stake is a million times more than which email server one candidate used, or how another treated women. The future of humanity will be profoundly affected by your choice, for many generations to come.
The coming four years is the last term during which a US government still has the chance, jointly with the rest of the world, to do what is needed to stop global warming well below 2°C and closer to 1.5°C, as was unanimously decided by 195 nations in the Paris Agreement last December. The total amount of carbon dioxide the world can still emit in order to have at least a 50% chance to stop warming at 1.5 °C will, at the current rate of emissions, be all used up in under ten years! This time can only be stretched out by making emissions fall rapidly.
Even 2°C of global warming is very likely to spell the end of most coral reefs on Earth. 2°C would mean a largely ice-free Arctic ocean in summer, right up to the North Pole. Even 2°C of warming is likely to destabilize continental ice sheets and commit the world to many meters of sea-level rise, lasting for millennia. Further global warming will likely lead to increasing extreme weather, droughts, harvest failures, and the risk of armed conflict and mass migration.
Meltwater on the Greenland Ice Sheet. Photo with kind permission by Ragnar Axelsson.
In case you have any doubts about the science: in the scientific community there is a long-standing consensus that humans are causing dangerous global warming, reflected in the clear statements of many scientific academies and societies from around the world. None of the 195 governments that signed the Paris Agreement saw any reasons for doubting the underlying scientific facts; doubts about the science that you see in some media are largely manufactured by interest groups trying to fool you.
You have a fateful choice to make. The policies of candidates and parties on climate change could hardly be more different. Hillary Clinton would continue to work with the international community to tackle the global warming crisis and help the transition to modern clean and renewable energies. Donald Trump denies that the problem even exists and has promised to go back to coal and to undo the Paris Agreement, which comes into force today, the 4th of November 2016, as culmination of over twenty years of negotiations.
Please consider this carefully. This is not an election about personalities, it is about policies that will determine our future for a long time to come. While the presidential race has gotten the most attention, voters should consider climate not just at the ‘top of the ticket’, but all the way down the ballot. Don’t make a choice that you, your children and your children’s children will regret forever.
David Archer, Rasmus Benestad, Ray Bradley, Michael Mann, Ray Pierrehumbert, Stefan Rahmstorf and Eric Steig
I have been observing climate and weather for more the 70 years, 60 of those as a trained biogeographer and plant ecologist and later as a farmer. I grew up in NH and will soon spend retirement summers in Quebec, a couple of hundred kilometers north of my birth home. The climate and weather of my part of Quebec is now substantially warmer than experienced by me as a child and college student back in the 1950-60s in NH. The boreal forests in Quebec are changing over to beech-dominated forests, a species once dominating much further south.
I have farmed the same ground for over 25 years, paying close attention to weather and so ultimately climate. I not only have bugs and mites of summer but my fields a full of germinating summer weeds. We are now a lot dryer and warmer (esp. winters) than 20 years ago.
“the damage from this election will be measured in geologic time”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-environment/wp/2016/11/09/trump-victory-reverses-u-s-energy-and-environmental-priorities/
So….How did that work out for you?
I can’t imagine what will happen after Jan 20 2017. So many Republicans disendorsed Trump. Will the Republican party come together on getting Mexico to pay for a wall? Will they sign up to banning Muslim immigration? Doubtful.
Republican voters will find that a lot of promises will be broken, and they probably won’t care as long as Trump makes noises about the establishment like he did during the campaigns. Trump’s success has very little to do with actual policy.
Obamacare, the economy and climate change policy are most at risk. My hunch is the party will keep Trump from effecting irresponsible foreign policy (int trade deals notwithstanding). But let’s not kid ourselves that his views on climate change had much influence on Trump being elected. Our interests didn’t feature much in the campaigns.
Don’t make a choice that your children will regret (today?) This aspect is compellingly true far beyond America.
“The U.S. is bifurcating into a nation of economic winners and losers, and this distinction is seeping into American culture. The dignity gap grows every time those who lose out start hearing, “We don’t need you anymore.”
Who falls on the wrong side of this dignity gap? These days it is working-class men. In his new book “Men Without Work,” my colleague Nick Eberstadt shows that between 1965 and 2015 the percentage of working-aged men outside the workforce increased to 22% from 10%. Many millions more are underemployed. The employment-to-population ratio for men aged 25-54 is 6.8% lower today than it was in 1930, in the teeth of the Great Depression.”
http://www.wsj.com/articles/how-donald-trump-filled-the-dignity-deficit-1478734436
There’s a reason for everything and far too often, like with agw/cc drivers, those reasons are little known and poorly understood.
Just as the most outspoken blame and attack climate scientists as liars engaged in a global conspiracy it is equally far easier to jump to false ‘logical’ conclusions and instead blame whole groups of people for how they voted.
Then falsely labeling them as being the ‘other’, the ‘enemy’ and ‘the problem’ when they are not… and never were.
Dan, Since this is a science blog site, data matter. And anyone interested can go research RCP and Polls to their hearts content.
They can also draw their own conclusions based on the actual data too. :-)
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/latest_polls/
Peter Smith. Tell me why we didn’t we have ice ages in past when CO2 was above 400pm? One simple answer is that GHG forcing is larger and albedo forcing from milankovich. The forcing per century from change in CO2 is 2-3 order of magnitude higher than that for milankovich. CO2 is the 60 ton truck.
SA,#83–
No, it is not a cliff, and the 1000 feet with spikes won’t kill you any deader than a simple 100 foot drop.
The fact is that the cliff metaphor is a poor one because it is binary. Our dilemma is not; 3 C would not be the same as 5 C. Since our chances of avoiding 2 C just took a serious hit, it is all the more important that we don’t persuade ourselves of the futility of any effort by an unwarranted descent into Boolean algebra.
What now ? With a president that denighs climate change and a vice president that doesnt believe in evolution. Was this scenario put into the models ?
B&T 102: In reality you don’t want trump, because he will end your gravy-train
BPL: In all my years (40+) of research into habitable planet astronomy and climate science, the number of fat government grants I’ve gotten for my research approaches almost, I would say, very nearly one. Almost. But not quite.
Try not to post about things you know nothing about, eh?
@SecularAnimist
Good to see you’re so open to scientific debate…
Robert Reich was in WJC’s cabinet
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/nov/10/democrats-working-class-americans-us-election
Here’s a thought – now seriously, if American’s can’t run their own nation properly or well, what makes them believe they can (or have a right to) run the rest of the world?
Last count there are over 1000 mil bases nsa/cia sites around the world – during Hillary’s SoS term US arms sales doubled to a new all time record.
Maybe the Earth will be coming up Roses when there are 2000 US Mil Sites world wide and another 300K marines all over the shop and a $30 Trillion National Debt?
Who’s got time to solve climate change and poverty when there’s a planet of 7 billion people to run?
Just sayin’ :-)
I know, Logic hurts sometimes. :-(
The target is to keep global warming below 2 degC with respect to pre-industrial time. This target is enshrined in many international treaties, national strategies and laws, therefore already established as common knowledge world wide.
Where do we stand now?
Seems to me neither NOAA, the WMO, nor any other national climate agencies are giving the relevant, exact observed value. Not this number, directly comparable with the established target. At least not in the information release headlines that get distributed.
Need of a voter is to get the answers, simple and relevant. The voter does not want to compute it from a multitude of different numbers, each with endless explanations.
Could I please see somewhere official an information release headlined:
“Global warming for 2016 was 0,96 degC with reference to the pre-industrial average.”
I came here today to check out latest info for a class presentation (Biology) on the apparent increase in rate of AGW. It looks to me like temperature increase has gone through a new inflection and is progressing at a faster rate, like it did in the 1970’s.
I saw this thread and found it amazing, in more ways than one. To me, choice between bigshot wannabes in the election was like selecting which toadstool to eat. However, we need more than 1 1/3 political parties and getting of the Clintons has to be the first step. Neoliberals are not welcome, and people finally woke up to that fact. They put sweet liberal icing on a cow-dung cake. They jobjacked our economy and have engineered trade deals that force GMOs down the throats of anybody we trade with. Killery Clinton oversaw the destruction of Libya which had become a leader in aiding development in Africa. They did manage to “rescue” 400 tons of Ghadafi’s gold to finance operation though.
I grew up in a blue collar neighborhood that had rust colored streets and houses from a GM plant to the west and everybody was union. The plant is now a parking lot that nobody uses. Union people take care of each other, that’s what the unions were about. Everybody is in it together. The “deplorable” 1% have been trying to get rid of them since forever because they want slave labor, and if they can fool every man into acting for only his own self-interest, none will be able to stand up to the power amassed at the top. I voted a Democratic ticket, but Trump was my choice at the top. No more of the Bush-Clinton crime family, and pay for play politics. Back in the 1980’s, GHW Bush was smuggling cocaine into Mena, Arkansas with Clinton as his partner. It gets sleazier from there, as 2 psychopaths try to outdo each other and prove they can be trusted as partners in crime. And if people don’t know about this, take another sleeping pill, because you will never figure it out.
So I’m not boo-hooing the result at all. I am just surprised that it took so long. People seem to spend way too much time watching TV and getting programmed with what the 1% want people to hear. It contains precious little truth, because if you’re getting it from there then you really don’t matter.
No comments after Nov 8th. Everyone must be packing up or writing resumes for Hollywood: “20 years experience in sci-fi disaster stories. Have imagination will travel.”
Wait Wait…the data clearly showed Hillary would win. The science on this is settled. This is only an anomaly, there was warp in the space time continuum that had not been figured into our original models.
After a slight correction, the science has determined that Chelsea will win in 2010.
‘liberal’ Russell Brand insightful as always re ‘mindsets’ and ‘conditions’ re US elections @3mins in
https://youtu.be/w3Ou5uFFn8Q?t=3m4s
Now the Paris Agreement has been signed by 193 Parties, and ratified or otherwise joined by 109 Parties representing 77 percent of global emissions. This updates the numbers quoted in #60. Thank you COP22, week one.
Russell #69:
The President directs foreign policy, engaging as appropriate representatives from relevant United States government agencies, and negotiates, concludes, and signs international treaties and agreements. United States law distinguishes among treaties, congressional-executive agreements and sole-executive agreements. Article II, Section 2, Clause Two of the US Constitution gives the President power to make or enter into treaties with the “advice and consent of two-thirds of the Senate.(18) Congressional-executive agreements go through the normal legislative process and therefore require approval by the ordinary majorities in both houses of Congress before being sent to the President for approval. Sole-executive agreements are those that can be entered into by the President. All three classes are considered treaties for the purposes of international law.(19) The US has joined the Paris Agreement as a sole-executive agreement.(20) [Pg.4]
http://www.wri.org/sites/default/files/Domestic_Processes_for_Joining_the_Paris_Agreement.pdf
http://www.wri.org/publication/domestic-processes-joining-paris-agreement
#114:
So they elect one of the 1% as President.
#113:
There is no such thing as an exact observed value of any measurement, let alone the global average surface temperature or its anomaly. This may be the start of all your other problems with getting a value for something that is not a trivial observation.
However, for people who like detail, some data sets and various tools are easily available: http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/ https://www.skepticalscience.com/trend.php
#109:
Wasn’t that the A1FI (fossil intensive) scenario? About 4 degrees C of global warming over the next 100 years (on top of the 1 degree we’ve already got).
Thank you.
Walt #114
Fine, so I guess if you are stuck in a (increasingly infrequent) blizzard you would choose to run into a burning house to get out of it?
And how, for crying out loud, do you think Trump and a Republican congress and soon a Republican Supreme Court will be good for the values of organized labor, solidarity, and community you write about in comment?
Sorry dear working-class brother, but as fellow Michiganer Michael Moore said, you confused electoral politics with anger management – and now all of the dwindling population humanity over the next several thousand years will be paying for it. I dearly wish you had not voted at all. I am quite confident that In a couple years, you will deeply regret that you did.
Walt:
Congratulations, you got the government you deserve. Now own the consequences. You say it looks to you “like temperature increase has gone through a new inflection and is progressing at a faster rate, like it did in the 1970’s”? Kid, you ain’t seen nothing yet. I’m just glad I don’t have kids of my own.
HRC may not be a saint (saints don’t run for President, do they), but whatever you read about her on Infowars.com, she at least paid lip service to putting the brakes on AGW. You just elected a guy who’s proud to deny AGW even exists. Whether he and the deniers who voted for him believe it or not, the USA is responsible for the lion’s share of AGW, and even our unilateral policy decisions could buy time to keep the warming below 2 degrees. This election was pretty much the world’s last hope for that, and now there’s no telling where GMST will level off.
The roughly 1 degree C of warming to date is already costing at least $100 billion a year in the US alone, and the cost of the additional 1/2 to 1 degree we’re committed to will be much higher. You just guaranteed they won’t stop there. Even if Trump does bring back the blue-collar jobs that kept your neighbors in the middle class, how are their kids gonna make a living when they’re paying for 4 to 6 degrees of warming and beyond? Better not let them know who you voted for in 2016!
Thanks kid, you just destroyed our country. Yeah, you’re a freakin’ genius alright.
125 Mal Adapted – feeling better now? LOL
Congratulations, ALL Americans got the government you deserve. Now own the consequences. And ignore history at your peril.
GW Bush inherited 9/11 from the incompetent Clinton presidency.
Obama inherited the GFC from both the incompetent Clinton and GW Bush presidencies.
And Clinton, GW Bush and Obama all inherited the incompetent, delusional insanity and corruption of Congress for decades.
Infowars.com ‘commentary & theories” is irrelevant to the known historical facts.
Meanwhile, this is true “the USA is responsible for the lion’s share of AGW” and it is also ground zero for climate science denial and political inaction via Congress for DECADES now.
That’s a fact. Thanks America, you just destroyed our planet. Yeah, you’re a freakin’ genius alright Mal Adapted. Better not let them know who you voted for in 2016! :-)
Better not let them know who you voted for in 1992, 1996, 2000, 2004, 2008, 2012, or 2016! Or the 2 years in between. :-)
from RCP It Wasn’t the Polls That Missed, It Was the Pundits
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2016/11/12/it_wasnt_the_polls_that_missed_it_was_the_pundits_132333.html
“What occurred wasn’t a failure of the polls. As with Brexit, it was a failure of punditry. …people gravitated toward unreliable approaches such as reading the tea leaves on early voting or putting faith in Big Blue Walls, while ignoring things like the high number of undecided voters [+5% that was].
They selected these data points rather than other possible indicators, such as the significant late break in the generic ballot that could have led them in a different direction. To be blunt, people saw what they wanted to see, and then found the data to support that view. So don’t blame the polls.”
Polling, it’s a little bit like GCMs, natural biases, and the interpretations of various “pundits/experts” in the media and involved in Politic$
Now that the Trumpalypse has occurred, heaven help us, and Trump is apparently (as of this writing) threatening to pull the US out of the Paris agreement by the fastest means possible, a new calculation needs to be done. Suppose the US abandons its Intended National Contribution to emissions reduction and goes back to something like a business-as-usual level of emissions for at least another four years. By how much must the sum-total INDCs of all other signatories to the treaty increase so as to make up for the loss of the American contribution?
Indeed, two calculations need to be done, since it is known that the reductions agreed to under Paris even if perfectly implemented are not nearly enough to hold the temperature increase to 2 deg. C. Jim Hansen and others have warned that even the 2 deg. C ‘guardrail’ is likely not sufficient to save West Antarctica; we might have a chance of saving Bangladesh if we hold the increase to the ‘aspirational’ goal of ‘only’ 1.5 deg. C (though I am not confident even of that). Let those who know how do the math and tell the world precisely what sum total INDCs would be required by members of the UNFCCC to hold temperatures to no more than 1.5 deg. C above preindustrial levels, assuming no help from the USA.
Meeting that target will merely be the most difficult thing by far that the human species has ever done. But we had best start by knowing the numbers.
I knew the US would fuck up! Humanity always does. It’s the stupid stupid!
If RealClimate is organized as a 501c(3) charity, it would be good to consult a tax attorney about this post. It seems to me that it goes beyond voter education and amounts to an endorsement. That would not be allowed under the tax code. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/501(c)_organization
[Response: RC is not any kind of charity. -gavin]
Well that went well. Climate change denial is a subject for psychologists.
It is testable and observable.
Walt @ 114, I agree Hilary Clinton and the “neoliberals” did get some things wrong. But they did not get everything wrong.For example free trade is a good thing, as it increases the rate of wealth creation.
The problem is free trade can hurt some groups of blue collar workers. The solution is government financial help for these people through retraining allowances, income support, etc, something The Democrats would be sympathetic to.
Now people have elected an administration that will destroy free trade, increase the price of goods for blue collar workers, not create better jobs, and is ideologically opposed to any financial assistance to low income people.
And added onto this is climate change denial on a grand scale, and a whole range of other insane policies.
You have no idea what a nightmare America has just elected.
There is some hope. As I understand it a US president cannot serve more than two consecutive terms, which means that Trump will not be in power for more than eight years. How much harm can he do in that relatively short time? When his power surge comes to an end we’ll just have to hope that the US population doesn’t choose to replace one sociopath with another.
T 126: GW Bush inherited 9/11 from the incompetent Clinton presidency.
BPL: The Clinton administration did everything it could to warn that Al Qaeda was planning a major attack. An FBI agent reported that some middle easterners on tourist visas were taking piloting classes, but skipping landing and take-off. The director of the C.I.A. forwarded a memo titled “Osama bin Laden determined to strike in U.S.” Madeleine Allbright warned Colin Powell that the Bush administration’s biggest worry would be terrorism.
As far as missing 9/11 goes, the responsibility rests squarely on the Bush administration. Do your homework.
nigelj @133, There is one positive achievement arising from the unreasonable and unscientific attack that has been waged against Climate Science and that is it has made Climate Science one of the best quality fields of Science. Economics however, is a pseudo-Science as evidence by the propensity of its high Priests to dismiss anything that may disturb their cherished theories by calling them externalities.
I have posted this comment as I feel that your comment was beyond that Pale, especially since the Policies you wax lyrical about are a good part of the ultimate cause of the catastrophes that have befallen us.
Thomas, #128–
“Polling, it’s a little bit like GCMs, natural biases, and the interpretations of various “pundits/experts” in the media and involved in Politic$”
Yes, it is. I followed the RCP poll aggregate pretty religiously in the runup to the election, and the polling mean is fairly close to Hilary’s share of the popular vote–IIRC, the RCP average was at 1.9% on election day, while she ended up winning the popular vote by about 1%. I’m not a stats guy, so I’m not sure how to derive margin of error on an ensemble of polls, but for each poll separately the margin of error is on the order of 3%, I think. The problem is one of distribution: HRC’s votes are much ‘bunchier’ than the opposition. Exhibit ‘A’ would be California, which she won 62%-34%.
I think that this is spot on:
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/12/upshot/this-election-highlighted-a-growing-rural-urban-split.html?_r=0
What perplexes me is how hard it apparantly is to convey the urgency of a problem that is so severe and obvious.
Even to this date, many people sincerely believe it is not happening. So many of them in fact that one of them could be elected president.
Worse, among the ones that do, not enough people seem to care. The problem gets pitifully little media exposure.
Maybe we weren’t evolved to deal with problems of this scale and type. I don’t know, I honestly don’t know what to do. The world needs a wake-up call, but how?
re: 106.
Wow, that was exactly my point. The data are clear. Which you utterly fail to comprehend. Learn about polls and statistics before making ridiculous claims. Start with “margin of error” which you have no clue about. Then look at the actual vote. Note who had the most. And look at the poll margins. This is not rocket science. It is called “learning”. Try it.
“Congratulations, ALL Americans got the government you deserve.”
No. No Americans deserve this government, not even the ones who voted for it.
Lawrence @ 136, I would agree economics is not a terribly well developed science, and isn’t perfect. As some say it sometimes makes astrology look good. The Washington consensus on privatisation, monetarism, and general deregulation is very dubious and even the IMF are backtracking over this.
However free trade is but one aspect. I think it stands well on its theoretical merits and it has lifted many in the third world out of poverty. It has been good overall for America. There’s a very strong consensus in the economics profession that free trade is good for everyone including America. I suggest you read the link below, but I can post quite literally hundreds more.
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/26/upshot/economists-actually-agree-on-this-point-the-wisdom-of-free-trade.html?_r=0
Of course free trade is good for America overall, but has hurt some minority groups.
As I said previously free trade has its downsides that need to be mitigated, and neither Republicans or Democrats have done this well, however I struggle to believe the world should go back to protectionism.
The protectionist mindset can become a closed mindset. I used to support protectionism by the way, but it just raises the price of goods and creates inflation. However closed mindsets on trade will encourage closed mindsets on other things, including climate science. Its a return to the dark ages.
If Trump “must” bring back tariffs it should be narrow and selective with some real target on things that might work.
Externalities are quite correct. Free markets and capitalism in general work well for many things, but do generate negative externalities especially on environmental matters. This is where markets fail to inherently resolve certain types of problems. Climate change is essentially a negative externality, and it can only be resolved through government regulation, or schemes like cap and trade etc. Take your pick.
Adam Lea:
He will appoint at least one Supreme Court justice. It would be hard to fill the current vacancy with someone worse than Antonin Scalia was, but how many more SCOTUS seats will become vacant while Trump is in office?
I’m personally worried about Trump’s support for the so-called new sagebrush rebellion, the strategy to privatize federal public land under the guise of “returning” them to the States. High Country News has been covering the issue closely. The federal public lands are priceless repositories for what remains of America’s dwindling biodiversity heritage, and removal of the constraints public ownership places on commodity extraction will have irreversible impacts. Presidents come and go, but extinction is forever.
137 Kevin McKinney, things really closed in the last week eg at the end RCP had
– 272 Clinton/Kaine vs Trump/Pence 266
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2016/president/2016_elections_electoral_college_map_no_toss_ups.html
The day before elections on RCP, Trump had a lead in NC, FL, OH, Maine CD1, NV and Iowa, and had seriously closed the gap in Penn. NH was a almost a tie – all were significant shifts on prior weeks and days.
Trump captured the blue wall/swing states by
Michigan 19,000
New Hampshire 127
Pennsylvania 67,000
Wisconsin 26,000
subtotal only ~112,000
and also won
Arizona 81,000
Florida 129,000
Iowa 146,000
North Carolina 177,000
It was very close only 80K per state over 8 states
Trump lost Virginia (solidly blue) by only 183,000
I wrote on the 7th to friends that HRC is now in a much worse position than Obama was in 2012. 538 was then repeatedly saying Trump could win, the gap was closing. I also said that IF Trump wins PENN. then he’ll probably win the election.
Behind the scenes and not picked up in the media is that the polling shift TO Trump had began BEFORE the Comey letter to Congress and continued to grow as “undecided voters decided” and some decided not to vote at all (5 million less democrats voted for HRC president than in 2012 for Obama – that’s a HUGE figure)
RCP had a 2% gap for it’s AVG, but the trend (ala climate temps) was all shifting to Trump in the last week. See the Harper(R) Poll it had moved 3% to Trump since mid Sept. Hilary was ~9% ahead in Sept in Penn.
Note these Oct 31st Penn. polls and consider the detailed questions, beyond Trump getting closer to HRC versus a month before.
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/docs/2016/Gravis_PA_October_31st_2016.pdf
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/docs/2016/Remington_Research_Pennsylvania_October_31_2016.pdf
margin of error varies ±1.7% & 2.77%
Donald Trump: 43%, Hillary Clinton: 45%, Undecided: 6%
18% of Democrats & 37% of Non-Partisan were voting for Trump.
11% of Non-Partisan were Undecided
HRC was only ahead in the Philly area – Trump ahead everywhere else by large margins.
Most individual polls nationally had a very large 5-7% avg still Undecided at the end.
538 as well had changed their “advice/odds” in the last week that it was very possible for Trump to win – IF the swing towards him continued in key states.
It’s pretty clear now that Millennials did not come out for HRC like they did for Obama, and so a large part of Sanders supporters stayed home — HRC never got a spike in the women’s vote either, and Trump won the white women vote despite the punditry and massive media reporting about it.
On the 5th Nov I was saying to friends IF Trump can win Florida OR Pennsylvania on the night, then he will have a very good chance of winning.
Because I believed if he can win either of those two close races, then the national trend in other states will likely get him over the line. The trouble was all the “noise” going on in polls and media comments & bloviating – few were looking at the details in the polling data and how MOST POLLS had clearly shifted direction more and more in the end of October and the last week especially.
I was calling it a close race and much closer than any of the media pundits and political gurus said it was. By the Monday Trump’s polls had him in a much better position than Romney was in 2012.
Like the RCP no-toss up map, I felt it was 50-50 who would win it.
Trump nailed it due to the small margin of 112,000 votes across Mich, Wisc. and Pennsylvania = 46 Electoral College Votes
Plus Trump’s HUGE turnaround in Florida, Ohio, and North Carolina – where at one point HRC was leading in all of them by +5% for a long time!!!
In the last several weeks the polls (esp RCP/538) were very much pointing to the direction things were heading at a rapid rate.
Reminds me about the climate science data, and it too still gets insufficient attention by the “media/political/economics class”.
Florida tells the story
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2016/president/fl/florida_trump_vs_clinton_vs_johnson_vs_stein-5963.html
and North Carolina
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2016/president/nc/north_carolina_trump_vs_clinton_vs_johnson-5951.html
and Pennsylvania though a more delayed swing occurring – HRC lead collapsing from ~8% to ~2% in Nov.
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2016/president/pa/pennsylvania_trump_vs_clinton_vs_johnson_vs_stein-5964.html
and in Michigan
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2016/president/mi/michigan_trump_vs_clinton_vs_johnson_vs_stein-6008.html
see FOX 2 Detroit/Mitchell from August 11% down to 3% in Nov.
and Trafalgar Group (R) @ 2% to Trump in last Nov Poll.
There was a significant (false) Bias towards HRC and numbers of Women being polled across most sources.
AND in Ohio – HRC also led in that state various times – a big signal was happening during October.
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2016/president/oh/ohio_trump_vs_clinton_vs_johnson_vs_stein-5970.html
The Emerson Poll went from 2% HRC, to a Tie, to 7% for Trump. Election night was 8.5% Trump.
It was the movements and the trends in “individual polls” that was telling the correct story, and not the variation from one poll to another. cheers
Almost all the Polls were doing the same thing near the end of October.
LM 1316: Economics however, is a pseudo-Science as evidence by the propensity of its high Priests to dismiss anything that may disturb their cherished theories by calling them externalities.
BPL: Externalities are part of economics and help extend the theories. Denial that externalities exist is characteristic of the Austrian school of economics, which is not a school of economics at all, but a cult. Economics is very much a science, since it is based on empirical observation and experiment, and advances are ratified by peer review and the scientific consensus.
121 Patrick
To evade Constitutional norms of advice and consent the Paris agreement has been adduced not as as treaty, but an extension of the UNEP convention ratified by Bush 41.
It’s a suave piece of international lawyering, but rebranding UNEP is not the same as ratifying a new instrument.
“Plus Trump’s HUGE turnaround in Florida…”
Yeah, once Florida was called I knew it was pretty much over.
Lawrence McLean
Sorry, that’s denialism as much as AGW-denialism is. BPL is correct that Economics is very much a science, to the extent it is based on empirical observation and experiment, and advances are ratified by peer review and consensus (full disclosure: my brother is a Professor of Economics). That’s not to say there aren’t cherished theories and “schools” of economics that don’t pass muster as science, but it’s fallacious to judge the entire discipline by them.
The concept of externality is central to the sub-discipline of Environmental Economics. It played a key role in the landmark environmental-protection laws of the 1960s through the 1990s. It allowed economists to show that pollution, biodiversity loss and wilderness degradation were real costs of natural resource exploitation that were being socialized while the benefits were being privatized.
There is nothing we can do to stop the warming short of restoring our ozone layer to pre world war two levels.
For the Record: Sunday, November 6, 2016
“We’re seeing a dead heat, in fact, we’re seeing that all over the country, seeing that in Pennsylvania, seeing it in Colorado,” Priebus said on CBS’s “Face The Nation.”
“Donald Trump is closing and he’s got the momentum going into Tuesday.”
They’re very good operations that we’ve spent millions and millions of dollars in,” Priebus said about states in the midwest. “We believe that Pennsylvania and Michigan and Wisconsin could quickly move onto our board.”
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2016/11/06/rnc_chair_reince_priebus_pennsylvania_michigan_and_wisconsin_could_quickly_move_onto_our_board.html