10 Reasons Why We Should Pay Attention To The Climate Talks And Not Donald Trump

Today was the start of the United Nations Conference on Climate Change, and while this is super important, we are all a whole lot more likely to see news on Donald Trump's latest antics than anything happening at the climate talks.

10. If the talks don't reach an agreement to make sure that global warming stays below 2º C, the Earth is going to get real hot.

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If we continue to live the way we are now, global warming will get to between 4 and 5º C. Which would cause serious consequences "for food and water security, infrastructure, ecosystems, health and the risk of conflict" according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. (And incidentally the humidity would not be very good for Donald Trump's hair.)

9. Pope Francis is a pretty cool dude and he thinks that we need to act.

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Pope Francis has talked about the interconnectivity that we have with others and with the environment. He spoke about the obligation we have to the environment in his encyclical Laudato Si'. Unless you want to read Donald Trump's Never Give Up and just give up on the future of our country in general. Or Crippled America, which I'm assuming is a prediction about what the country will be if he's president.

8. Donald Trump thinks that global warming is just a hoax.

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Because, you know, the UN likes wasting time talking about issues that aren't real.

7. Donald Trump is the real life Once-ler

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In 2013, he had his workers cut down 400 trees that were on the Potomac River just so that golfers could have a better view and in the process causing destabilization of the river.

6. Donald Trump once tweeted that the Chinese created global warming to make U.S. manufacturing non-competitive.

He's great at finding scapegoats and coming up with conspiracy theories but not so great at coming up with ways to fix the problem. Which is what the UN is trying to do.

5. He thinks that the cold and snow prove that global warming is fake.

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In 2013 he tweeted "It’s snowing & freezing in NYC. What the hell ever happened to global warming?" But the fact that the 10 hottest years on record have all been after 1998 probably means nothing.

4. He called President Obama naive for his statements on the Paris climate talks.

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He said "If you’re talking about global warming or climate change, you have to make the whole world behave." Oh, so like the Paris climate talks?

3. He believes that the Earth is actually cooling.

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He said that in the 1920's people talked about global cooling. First of all, the idea of global cooling was actually based on a 1970's article and the author of this article has since accepted that the Earth is warming and doesn't want anyone using his article to refute global warming. And even if people had believed this in 1920, it would still be a terrible idea to ignore all of the data that has come out in the past 95 (!) years.

2. He also tweeted that "we could use a big dose of global warming" because it was cold out.

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Global warming is not something we want, but nice try.

1. And finally, we should be paying attention to the Conference on Climate Change and not Donald Trump because he's taking away attention from issues that are actually important.

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No hard feelings Donald Trump.