From Watts Up With That?

L A Times Hypes “Green China” the World’s Champ of Global Coal Use & CO2 Emissions While Demanding U.S. Declare a “Climate Emergency”

Guest essay by Larry Hamlin

The L A Times has been publishing a section in its newspaper for years called China Watch which tries to portray China as “green” as discussed in a prior WUWT article here.

The August 20th, 2023 Edition of the Sunday L A Times ridiculously juxtaposed two articles in this papers edition by hyping praise for China in its latest China Watch Section for its “Home on the Range” article headline addressing a “Green Push Benefits” project in a Mongolian Province as noted in the two photos shown below while also demanding in its Editorial Section that Biden declare a “Climate Emergency” for the U.S. as shown in the Times editorial below.

According to Energy Institute year 2022 data the U.S. has reduced its use of coal since 2005 by 57% (predominantly by switching to use of lower emissions, high efficiency and lower cost natural gas which Democrats have tried to impede) while China increased its already dominate coal use by 58% during this same time period thus further establishing its title as the world’s champion global coal burning nation by consuming 54.75 percent of all worldwide coal use. 

U.S. year 2022 coal consumption is now only about 6% of global coal use. The Times makes no mention of China’s massive and growing use of coal which is far and away the dirtiest of all CO2 emissions energy consumption fuels.

Additionally, the world’s non-OECD nations led by China and India have increased coal use since 2005 by over 175% and now account for over 82% of all the world’s consumption of coal. 

This huge and still rapidly growing growth in coal use consumption accounts for why the non-OECD nations are responsible for over 66% of all year 2022 global CO2 emissions and why the U.S. reduced CO2 emissions since 2005 by over 1 billion metric tons while the non-OECD nations increased CO2 emissions by over 8.2 billion metric tons during this same period.

The L A Times conceals this readily available data regarding energy use consumption and emissions demonstrating its dishonesty, distortion, and deception in promoting massively costly and globally irrelevant efforts here in the U.S. that have no ability to control or meaningly change the worldwide energy and emissions outcomes as hyped in the Times feeble “Climate Emergency” propaganda trying to falsely support the need for such action.

The L A Times idiotic propaganda based “Climate Emergency” alarmist hype that the U.S. should “increase renewable energy, restrict fossil fuel extraction and protect Americans from wildfires, heat waves and storms” is both pathetic and ludicrous since these claims completely fail on grounds of the irrelevancy of both their proposed measures and their claimed outcomes. 

Global energy and emissions data available for decades, as discussed above, clearly establishes the futility of the U.S. and other OECD nations flawed and failed attempts to drive world outcomes on global energy use and resulting emissions. The Times has always concealed and ignored this pivotal reality as a part of its completely dishonest climate alarmist’s propaganda campaign. 

As for the L A Times phony claims that its proposed irrelevant and false hype that a U.S. declared “Climate Emergency” would protect the nation from “wildfires, heat waves, storms” these claims are completely bogus since actual data demonstrates there is no emergency regarding such claims.

Measured global and regional wildfire data is addressed here and notes:

“Since 1998, NASA has been using satellite instruments to precisely measure the world’s total acreage burned by wildfires. NASA’s website reports a relatively steady and consistent decline in global wildfires since 1998. Meanwhile, since 1998, there has been a 24 percent decline in lands burned by wildfires.

The significant decline in wildfires since 1998 continues a trend that has been occurring throughout the era of modest global warming. In the peer-reviewed Journal of Geophysical Research, scientists report, “a notable declining rate of burned area globally” during the period from 1901 to 2007.

The same holds true in the United States. National Interagency Fire Center data show more than twice as much U.S. land burned on average each year prior to 1950 than in any wildfire year in recent decades.”

The Times heat waves claims are false as noted here:

“There is not much new about media hyperbole in weather reporting, but July’s climate alarmism may be more breathless than usual. Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and other social media were inundated with posts containing flaming red maps of Southern Europe and Northern Africa.

“July 2023 will probably be the world’s hottest month in hundreds, if not thousands, of years,” said top NASA climatologist Gavin Schmidt. One Twitter user (with 22,000 followers) claimed, “After the hottest day and week, we are now experiencing the hottest month ever (in about 120,000 years, based on paleoclimatology). As we keep warming the planet, we will soon experience global temperatures not seen in the past million years!”

When questioned about the justification for his claims, the tweeter responded that scientists had “discovered there was a glacial period, which many people know about from a movie called Ice Age.” Imagine substantiating scientific claims by referencing a Hollywood movie! Such is the sorry state of critical thought.

These commentators conveniently ignore below average temperatures in Southeast Asia, Eastern Europe and large swaths of Russia. In fact, people in my city here in India were wearing sweaters during the same week despite it being the middle of a tropical summer.

Even in the U.S., temperatures have not been as dangerous as portrayed. Chris Martz, a meteorologist, notes that “the entire Lower 48 is only nine-hundredths of a degree Fahrenheit above average [relative to 1991-2020]. Month-to-date temperatures are much cooler this year than just last year and are nothing compared to 1980 or 2011.”

Furthermore, NOAA temperature anomaly measured data using its most accurate USCRN temperature stations across the contiguous U.S clearly shows no trend of increasing warming since the network began operation in 2005 as shown below.

Note that NOAA’s July 2023 measured U.S. temperature anomaly data was exceeded in the prior years of July 2006, July 2011, July 2012, July 2017, July 2020, and July 2022. Yet the incompetent and propaganda driven climate alarmist media falsely proclaim a “climate emergency” exists in 2023. What a bunch dishonest and science clueless drivel.   

There is no scientific basis that supports the L A Times purely politically contrived and preposterous propaganda demand for a “climate emergency” to be declared in the U.S. 

Such a clearly dishonest campaign would only damage the U.S. economy by hugely increasing energy prices and destroy energy reliability while allowing and in fact encouraging China and the other non-OECD nations to continue to further grow their massive use of coal and other fossil fuels while greatly increasing their already hugely dominate emissions.