Kerry rejected the claim that the agreement \u201csunsets,\u201d thus allowing Iran the relatively unfettered ability to proceed with building a nuclear weapon. A number of provisions of the agreement expire over time. Several provisions last for 10 years, including a limit of 5,060 operating centrifuges and curbs on research and development on advanced centrifuges. Other provisions last for 15 years, including a variety of caps on uranium enrichment, international inspector access in no more than 24 days, and prohibitions on new heavy-water reactors and reprocessing. Meanwhile, continuous surveillance of centrifuge production areas would last for 20 years, while continuous surveillance of uranium mines and mills would last for 25 years. Iran must comply with the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. This commits Iran to not pursuing nuclear weapons. So Kerry was right that the agreement as a whole does live on, and scrutiny of Iran\u2019s nuclear ambitions will continue indefinitely. But his statement glosses over the fact that a number of key elements of the agreement expire in 10, 15, 20 or 25 years. On balance, Politifact rated the claim Half True.<\/p>\n
Cheney said that one of the agreement\u2019s fundamental flaws is it allows Iran to continue to enrich uranium. However, the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, or NPT, was designed in part to allow countries to pursue the peaceful use of atomic energy while preventing them from turning their nuclear materials and technology into weapons.\u201d Cheney is incorrect in asserting that the NPT prohibits enrichment by non-nuclear weapon states,\u201d said Daryl Kimball, executive director of the Arms Control Association. \u201cArticle IV of the treaty does not \u2018allow it,\u2019 nor does it prohibit it.\u2019 \u201cUltimately, while it\u2019s debatable whether the treaty grants nations the right to enrich, if a non-nuclear nation wants to enrich uranium for peaceful purposes, the treaty doesn\u2019t stand in the way. Politifact rates the claim False.<\/p>\n
Santorum garbles message on climate change<\/p>\n
Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum claimed: \u201cThere was a survey done of 1,800 scientists, and 57 percent said they don\u2019t buy off on the idea that CO2 is the knob that\u2019s turning the climate. There\u2019s hundreds of reasons the climate\u2019s changed.\u201d What he\u2019s referring to is a finding by the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in its fifth report. The IPCC has said it is \u201cextremely likely\u201d (a 95 percent confidence level) that humans are causing climate change. The IPCC also said it is \u201cvery likely\u201d (a 90 percent confidence level) that greenhouses gases are the driver.<\/p>\n
Santorum\u2019s 57 percent figure doesn\u2019t hold up.\u201d You don\u2019t get anywhere near 57 percent when surveying the broad earth science community, and you get very close to full consensus when you ask the experts in climate science,\u201d said Peter Doran, a professor of earth science at Louisiana State University. National Science Board member James Powell surveyed scientific journals, finding that the consensus in the literature is about 99.9 percent. And multiple independent studies have \u201casked scientists directly\u201d and found consensus levels of around 97 percent, said William Anderegg, who studies climate change at Princeton University. \u201cThose studies were rigorously peer-reviewed and thus should be considered more credible than a blog post that misreads an institute report,\u201d he said. Essentially, Santorum garbles a blog\u2019s textbook misinterpretation of a survey. Politifact rates the claim False.<\/p>\n
Chip Tuthill is a longtime Mancos resident. Website used: www.politifact.com.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
rejected the claim that the agreement \u201csunsets,\u201d thus allowing Iran the relatively unfettered ability to proceed with building a nuclear weapon. A number of provisions of the agreement expire over time. Several provisions last for 10 years, including a limit of 5,060 operating centrifuges and curbs on research and development on advanced centrifuges. Other […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6367],"tags":[83],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-109732","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-mt-columnists","tag-mancos"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/109732","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=109732"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/109732\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=109732"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=109732"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=109732"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=109732"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}