Recently we asked you, our readers:
What does the United States’ complete pullout from the Parisian front (less the couple of thousand ‘military advisors’ we left behind, *wink wink*) mean to you?
In case you’ve been on a peyote bender in the Atacama, that was an allusion to some game-changing news: Donald Trump has officially renegged on America’s warmth-guilt payments in Paris this week. (That’s gay Paris—not the one in Texas.)
It’s a move being criticized by everyone.
Whereas skeptics argue that the US should have negged on the treaty from the get-go, more sobre voices are describing this week’s announcement as a literal “act of war against the Earth” herself. The President’s geno-suicidal antics, according to clear-thinking people everywhere, have single-handedly turned the world’s preeëminent hyperpower into an untouchable “scientific outcast.”
I now present our Survey Results: anonymized for clarity, cherry-picked for effectiveness and summarized for policymakers. ■
Thank you, Mr President, for pulling out of Paris. But what business did our servicemen and servicepeople have there to begin with? The city’s beguiling alleys and laneways are death-traps for modern infantry, and Baron Haussmann infamously modelled her shadeless, geometric boulevardes on machine-gun testing ranges.
New Rule: from now on, we count to 10 before invading anything UNESCO classifies as a Graveyard of Empires.
Sacramento, CA
United States
I’d give President Trump six stars if this was Amazon, and if you were allowed to do that on Amazon.
Pulling out of Jacques feels almost as good as pulling out of Iraq, which was almost as good as pulling out of Barack.
This is already shaping up to be the American Century!
Syracuse, NY
United States
Monsieur le Trompe may like to act the bouffon, but he grasps something his predecesseurs never did: that you Americans are lovers, not fighters.
For us Parisiens—the true heirs to Charlemagne—this “conflict” hasn’t been a siege so much as 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.
Clichy Sous Bois
France
Madness. Sheer madness. Empirecraft 101 says you withdraw in stages.
Now we’re about to find out if cold turkey kills France, or merely hospitalizes her.
She is, after all, an idea; the Land of the Franks was a cartographic fiction at the best of times. Absent a torture-happy strongman to keep the more internecine elements in line, the papier-mâché peace that now obtains between her Sunni and Shi’a départements won’t last six months.
When Paris is burning, will we finally learn the lesson any Khanate, Reich or Raj in history could have taught us?
Todmorden
UK
I believe it was me who first put it best: Trump’s failure to go along with whatever the rest of the world was doing ‘represents a shameful abdication of American leadership.’
Washington, DC
United States
The whole climate thing is obviously a scam, but would it have killed us to remain in Paris a bit longer… maybe take in some shows? (I for one could have spent a whole ‘nother day at the Louvre.)
Hell, would the climate talks have cost us a single dollar we didn’t want to pay? The most “binding” “document” that’s ever “emerged” from these “processes” is a large alcohol tab. Why should this year’s feelgood honor-system politicoscientific circle-fap be any different?
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.
Harrisburg, PA
United States
Dear America, don’t let the door hit you on your way out to the cold. Please take India, China and the rest of the strictly-ironic participants with you, since they seem to find their solemn climate undertakings so amusing.
Good riddance to bad faith, I say.
The sooner all the crypto-denier rogue states and petrocratic energy junkies are out of here, the sooner the remaining 19% of us can get on with crafting a meaningful, global response to the climate threat.
Which is the greatest enemy of life on Earth since telomere attrition.
Abuja
Nigeria
Weep. Weep for Princess Gaia Organa, our shared mother.
Everyone alive today will remember where they were, what they were teaching and where they were thinking about skiing next Christmas on Wednesday afternoon, when millions of voices cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced.
I’m an Australian climate academic, so I’m scared of very, very little—but I fear something truly Alderaany may have happened this week.
Canberra
Australia
As a hardworking vendor of maps, miniature Eiffel towers and scale models of baguettes, the only word that covers it is stupéfait. I’m stupéfait.
This is how Americans repay half a century of warm French hospitality?
They should count themselves lucky that it goes against every fibre of our national character to hold a grudge. Otherwise some tourists from Podunk, Wisconsin might find themselves on the receiving end of a less-verbose-than-usual welcome in my croissanterie tomorrow.
Neuilly-sur-Seine
France
O, what the hell hath man wrought this time?
According to scientists, the Earth now has the flu, which means Mars and Venus are next. Mark my words: the whole solar system is going to have a runny nose and a tickly, unproductive cough by the end of the week.
I hope you feel clever, America. This is what happens when you let a scientific dyslexic occupy the highest, most ovoid office in the free world.
If only there were a stupidity shot your GP could give you people every year, around the start of the ignorance season. Why are medical scientists dragging their feet on this? That’s the real story here: the gratuitous annual hecatomb of zero point six trillion dollars in health research. And for what? A slightly better pill for the impotence all my other pills are causing? Um, what was the question? Yours sincerely, &c.
Antikythera
Greece
The liberal media, but I repeat myself, is right:
Our Commander in Chief just declared war on the planet.
Now, I believe in both Donald Trump and the office of Donald Trump. So it’s hard for me to say this, but by dragging America into full-scale hostilities with the Earth itself he’s gone slightly too far.
How many times did the world’s scientists try to tell us: hey guys, you really ought to wait until Northern winter to attack the planet, when studies show it’s most vulnerable!
But this guy doesn’t do Science, does he? Sigh.
Albuquerque, NM
United States
Hail to the Chief! I’m a proud military mom who’s thanking God that her boys will be fighting an inanimate, oblate spheroid this time. It’ll be great to have them home by Christmas for a change.
Trenton, NJ
United States
The desire to ostracize, mock and shame our American cousins for their recent episode of insanity is not only an understandable but a laudable one.
That said, can we please cut the “leper” and “pariah” jibes?
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 inclusive lexicon of shunning.
Please do not publish this, as US foreign aid pays for the leprosarium I live in.
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.
Ask around: I’m pretty much the last guy 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 unflouted!
Cherbourg, FL
United States
Four days ago, from the rooftops of Paris, our leader loudly put the planet on notice that a state of war exists between America and Nature. This was obviously a considered, multifactorial decision with which reasonable people can agree or disagree.
On the one hand, the Earth has had it coming for years. On the other hand, would you send your son or daughter into battle for a Commander in Chief who so casually squanders the advantage of surprise?
Right now, several villages in China are powered entirely by the revolving cadaver of Sun Tzu.
Baltimore, MD
United States
■
Congratulations to the winners [above] of our valid scientific survey. 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).
Climate Scepticism 
1.29 × 10-22 bitcoins is hardly worth commenting on this thread
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Hahaha listen to Mr Moneybags here… or should I say listen to respected academic, Professor M.B. Here, PhD, here.
I hate to break it to you Alan, but for those of us on the side of—shall we say—incredulisme climatique, 1 bit-cent is nothing to sneeze at. Living the life of luxury on the guv’ment mammary gland in return for spreading capnophobia among the mugglery would be nice, but we’re either not dishonest, or (more often) not smart enough to pass the Mandarin Exam.
So we take work where we find it.
One might well call us two-bit whores, but we deniers take a certain quiet pride in knowing that at least we’re not ￡200-thousand-a-year whores like certain people. OK, there’s no point pretending the 800-pound (or 1153 €uro) gorilla in the room is in some other room: I’m talking about certain people here. Say no more.
Avagoodday sir. I said Avogadro’s Number, sir! *slams down receiver*
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Be the first to like this.
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Brad. What a googleplexian response to the mildest form of monetary concern. Have you not heard of the minimum wage (not to mention the dying wage, so beloved of well paid politicians)?
I would never call you a two-bit whore – you’re not even offering that.
The industrial mammary gland has so much bigger teats. But as a climate denierista I have, to date, received nothing from my big oil sponsors. Perhaps my bursary is in the post.
Are you suffering insomnia or are hints about a sojourn in the European heartland of climatic insolvency correct?
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Whoa: you’re a deniah, Alan??
Just when you were restoring my faith in believah academia—while flattering my image of myself as an ecumenical, bridge-building heir to Voltaire—I find out the reason you’re so…. reasonable… is as banal as that?
I thought we were killing two birds with one stone. Now, like so many victims of Schroedinger’s cats, our avian quarry rises from the fossil quarry like a quantum Lazararopterus, takes wing and abandons me to my disillusions?
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Brad. Banal, yep that’s me. I deny lots of things, and with the supreme (or subprime) confidence of a UEA academic. As to being reasonable, I vehemently deny it.
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At last!! Interruptus on what was being done to Western Civilisation.
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Brett. Whoa there! Fair payment for a fair day’s work is at the heart of the problem of what is being done to Western civilization. Don’t you realize that election fever has infected Europe and a ripe pustule will erupt in the UK this week? Getting one’s due reward for honest toil is a major plank supporting the whole edifice. Abject opposition to swindling money bags like Brad, who will not even pay a widow’s mite for tedious work, is most material to discerning what is wrong with our society.
“Up the workers”
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It is good to be Trumphant about Paris but the cult is still in full swing. Earlier this week, the church of England Commissioners and the state pension fund of New York passed a resolution requiring ExxonMobil to publish an annual statement about the impact of climate change on its business. Justin Welby or the Pope? Which one is more disagreeable? There is surely only one way to find out….
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MiaB. Could you be suggesting a Harry Hill TV Birp like escapade between the two pontificating personages? This would be a major departure from the deeply held tradition of the show in that HH always used the fight to decide what or who he liked best. The clashing of the Good Shepherd crooks would be symbolic of competing hockey sticks. Oh the symbolism would not be lost on the worthy.
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Brad Keyes says: 05 Jun 17 at 1:40 pm
“Hahaha listen to Mr Moneybags here… or should I say listen to respected academic, Professor M.B. Here, PhD, here.”
Brad,
Please consider, or giggle upon this!
Will Janoschka
June 7, 2017 at 4:09 pm
Will Janoschka June 5, 2017 at 6:07 pm
Graeme No.3 June 5, 2017 at 4:28 pm
(“Will Janoschka:The weight is the downward pressure exerted by some bloke sitting on a cloud, somebody called Loschmidt.”)
“Such gravitational compression, includes higher temperature at higher gas density\pressure, truly exists, in every known case!”
This only confirms that EM ‘radiance’ (potential) from any compressible fluid at any ‘frequency’ is not a high power function of temperature’ alone, but a much more complex function of measurable pressure, density, and temperature, of such compressible fluid within any known gravitational field!
Your Climate Clowns have no scientific knowledge, only religious\political fantasy!
My most renowned peer reviewer, kitten Shadow, adds,
“vvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvv”, while seriously licking my face. 🙂
All the best!-will-
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“It is good to be Trumphant about Paris”
Being more disagreeable than anyone, I don’t agree to agree to that. You should never look directly at the Lost Ark de Triumph. It causes complacency, and complacency -> Tod. I’ll rest on my laurels when I’m tot wie Toht, Danke.
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Best evah!
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Brad Keyes says: 05 Jun 17 at 1:40 pm
“Hahaha listen to Mr Moneybags here… or should I say listen to respected academic, Professor M.B. Here, PhD, ”
Why listen to any to any arrogant academic? They are but recent history never to return! They have much useless education, but no experience, craft, or skill!
“So we take work where we find it. One might well call us two-bit whores, but we deniers take a certain quiet pride in knowing that at least we’re not ￡200-thousand-a-year whores like certain people. OK, there’s no point pretending the 800-pound (or 1153 €uro) gorilla in the room is in some other room: I’m talking about certain people here. Say no more.”
“Avagoodday sir. I said Avogadro’s Number, sir! *slams down receiver*
Indeed! How he gets so many accurate digits from nothing but worry? Not academic arrogance but “engineering measured precision” with always the same ‘worry’! -will-
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“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. This is really shaping up to be the American Century! Building contractor Syracuse, NY United States”
Indeed. Not some academic glorified ‘might be’ or ‘should be’, but what now ‘is’. The very minimum of what must ‘now’ be dealt with!
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Alan Kendall says: 06 Jun 17 at 6:55 am
“Brett. Whoa there! Fair payment for a fair day’s work is at the heart of the problem of what is being done to Western civilization. Don’t you realize that election fever has infected Europe and a ripe pustule will erupt in the UK this week? Getting one’s due reward for honest toil is a major plank supporting the whole edifice. Abject opposition to swindling money bags like Brad, who will not even pay a widow’s mite for tedious work, is most material to discerning what is wrong with our society.
“Up the workers””
Alan,
Your views\considerations are extremely myopic! Fair wages are always the conjugate of greed!
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Who are you calling myopic Will? I had eye surgery last week and now am bionically assisted (guaranteed 0.05% plasticated).
The phrase should work both ways, so should also state “a fair days work for a fair wage”. But invariably both fail to reflect reality. Work that I would give money to avoid doing (cleaning in a morgue, caring for the incontinent) get only basic wages, whereas many managerial positions get more than a hundred times the average salary in a company- no one IMO is worth that. Road workmen stand around leaning on their shovels, whereas committed people often work for a pittance. In my opinion I didn’t deserve the very high salaries I earned when I worked for industry (money for old rope, but I didn’t refuse it) and, as my wife often remarked, I would have gone to work for virtually no salary when I became an academic.
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Alan,
“Who are you calling myopic Will?”
Well, he was looking at you when he said that. So I’d guess he was addressing you. How much longer do the doctors say you have to wear that patch, Alan? 😉
“I had eye surgery last week and now am bionically assisted (guaranteed 0.05% plasticated).”
Verily, we are now living in the Plasticene.
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Alan Kendall says: 07 Jun 17 at 2:51 pm
Who are you calling myopic Will? I had eye surgery last week and now am bionically assisted (guaranteed 0.05% plasticated).
The phrase should work both ways, so should also state “a fair days work for a fair wage”.
“a fair days work for a fair wage” True BS. Never ever in this ‘is’! Should or should be, must only be be conjecture of idiots! Do you have any idea of what the word ‘conjugate’ may actually mean, (negative inverse)? I have had the lens is each eye replaced by a very lovely young eye sturgeon! She never accused me of being 0.1% bionic! Only ‘I can grin too’ -will-! 🙂
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Will. 0.5% replacement? My, must you have big, big eyes!!! I get my other eye upgraded next month, then I’ll be able to spot the teeny weeniest flaw of logic.
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BTW Will. the word conjugate (or conjugation) has more than a dozen meanings across mathematics, the sciences and in linguistics. My new eye is a stickler for faux precision.
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Alan Kendall says:
07 Jun 17 at 4:47 pm
Will. 0.5% replacement? My, must you have big, big eyes!!! I get my other eye upgraded next month, then I’ll be able to spot the teeny weeniest flaw of logic.
Please read again, 0.1% by mass for both eyes! Please try to read what is clearly written. You seem to have no idea of scientific logic! BTW ‘mathematically conjugate’, is always negative inverse! Complex conjugate is more difficult; as the orthogonal dimension must always be ‘imaginary’ !!
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Guys, get a room!
Er, I mean a conjugal trailer.
Alan, when the inevitable occurs and they make a biopic about you, will the protagonist be myopic, bionic, monopic, ironic, Byronic, or all of the following?
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Yes Will but I calculated my lens to occupy 0.05% of my worthy self and wrote that figure in my post. So mind your ad homs por favor. I think if you consult my true friend Wikki you will find many more varieties of conjugate than you seem to want to admit to. I remembered conjugation in cell division way back when I did A level zoology. Not everything is mathematics.
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Alan Kendall says: 07 Jun 17 at 6:10 pm
“Yes Will but I calculated my lens to occupy 0.05% of my worthy self and wrote that figure in my post.
Indeed’ I calculated the same value for self! What is ‘your’ problem?
” Wikki you will find many more varieties of conjugate than you seem to want to admit to.”
Is the formal definition of ‘conjugate’ some insane concept of brainwashed earthlings, or instead a precise mathematical formulation? You insist on confusing precise definition with ignorant acceptance of political nonsense!
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Typical mathematical arrogance. 😞
Spirogyra reproduces by lateral conjugation.
Conjugated systems in chemistry are very aromatic.
When I failed to learn French at school, I failed to learn verb conjugations.
Mathematics should not commandeer words for its exclusive use.
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For some reason the supine comes to mind. We dutifully learned it to understand Latin only to find out that it was very rarely used.
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Alan, Welby should fight for his convictions. But he needs to know that gauchos never fight fair, and Jesuits are ridiculous
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MinB. You appear to be lost, having entered a wormhole between to threadverses with the Archbishop of Canterbury. You lie somewhere between this one and “Conversation in a Straitjacket” and, despite its rarity, have been rendered supine and unintelligible. 😇
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Will Janoschka says: 07 Jun 17 at 5:34 pm
“Please try to read what is clearly written. You seem to have no idea of scientific logic! BTW ‘mathematically conjugate’, is always negative inverse! Complex conjugate is more difficult; as the orthogonal dimension must always be ‘imaginary’ !!”
War’s ma penny per thought\fart?
Brad Keyes says: 07 Jun 17 at 6:05 pm
“Guys, get a room! Er, I mean a conjugal trailer.”
But you never say what you mean by conjugal\conjugate. Are you a Closet Climate Clown (CCC)?
War’s ma penny per thought\fart?
Alan Kendall says: 07 Jun 17 at 7:55 pm
“Typical mathematical arrogance. 😞 Mathematics should not commandeer words for its exclusive use.”
Indeed, thou glorious word God; except with proper definition of intended meaning! are you also a CCC?? as above:
You seem to have no idea of scientific logic! BTW ‘mathematically conjugate’, is always negative inverse! Complex conjugate is more difficult; as the orthogonal dimension must always be ‘imaginary’!!
War’s ma penny per thought\fart?
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Interesting that Will only values his thoughts at a penny a piece and, seemingly (according to his own words) equivalent to a fart.
Even Will’s post of this thread (07 Jun 17 at 2:20 pm) containing the sentence “Fair wages are always the conjugate of greed!” has within it proof that the word “conjugate” is not confined to mathematics. Greed is not evaluated using SI units.
H/u to a helpful soul
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Alan Kendall says: 11 Jun 17 at 12:07 pm
“Interesting that Will only values his thoughts at a penny a piece and, seemingly (according to his own words) equivalent to a fart.”
And what do you value as your ‘thoughts’? Certainly not the whole toilet!
“Even Will’s post of this thread (07 Jun 17 at 2:20 pm) containing the sentence “Fair wages are always the conjugate of greed!” has within it proof that the word “conjugate” is not confined to mathematics. Greed is not evaluated using SI units.”
Prat tell ‘proof of just what’? SI units are not part of mathematics itself, but of engineering as used in mathematical mensuration. Can you confirmed CCC folk ever bring yourself to even a hint of what ‘your words’ may possibly mean to any outside your arrogant academic clique? Just what are your units of mensuration of greed and it’s conjugate ‘fair\fare\farie wages’?
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Brad Keyes says: 07 Jun 17 at 10:22 am
“Being more disagreeable than anyone, I don’t agree to agree to that.”
Challenge accepted, General Schwarzkopf\pimple! Sir!
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Will “Just what are your units of mensuration of greed and it’s conjugate ‘fair\fare\farie wages’?”
Not really for me to say. It was you that introduced the concept and the proposition that the term “conjugate ” was entirely confined to mathematics. I would even question your proposition that greed is the conjugate (= negative inverse) of fair wages. In fact I would not have linked the two concepts -greed and fair wages – together at all.
Your use of the words “arrogant academic clique” might indicate an antipathy towards academia. You should know that most of my time in academia I felt an outsider, not a member of a clique at all. My government and industry employment set me somewhat aside from my peers.
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Alan Kendall says: 11 Jun 17 at 1:03 pm
(Will “Just what are your units of mensuration of greed and it’s conjugate ‘fair\fare\farie wages’?”)
“Not really for me to say. It was you that introduced the concept and the proposition that the term “conjugate ” was entirely confined to mathematics. I would even question your proposition that greed is the conjugate (= negative inverse) of fair wages. In fact I would not have linked the two concepts -greed and fair wages – together at all.”
What are your units of mensuration of each? If you cannot measure such; how do you propose that either can be physical (of this world)? How can the two fantasy concepts be shown to be ‘not mathematical conjugates’ My symbolic algebra:
Greed ($) (⊹,⊹,⊹)’fair wages’ (-1/$)
Forcing ($)² = -1 Thus ($) is imaginary, or more likely for the vernacular.
($) + 1/($) = ZERO.
I prefer the understandable ($)² = the sum of Greed and “fair wages”!
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Will. About conversations with you sometimes, William Shakespeare said it best in The Life and Death of King John (Act 3, scene 4):
You are “…as tedious as a twice-told tale, / Vexing the dull ear”.
Enough!
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Alan Kendall says: 11 Jun 17 at 2:37 pm
“Enough!”
OK! Sorry! I thought\fart, (another penny), Brad could use help in vexing the dull ear!
OTOH Billy Shake-isotropically was really good with your kind of woording\wearding. 🙂
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