A (highly visual) follow-up to yesterday's piece on the death of climate change hysteria

If you want to convince skeptical friends who don't like reading, these charts tell the whole story.

I like a good kicker.

I don’t mean Brandon Aubrey (of Dallas Cowboys fame). Kickers are what reporters call an article’s last line or two, ideally offering a punchy end to reward readers who’ve stuck with them.

Lots of you seemed to enjoy the kicker to yesterday’s piece on President Trump’s decision to stop pretending carbon dioxide is a dangerous pollutant.

Sure, mocking Leonardo DiCaprio’s hypocrisy is easy, but that doesn’t make it any less fun (or necessary). Being lectured about carbon emissions by a private-jet flying elite never sat well with me — or, apparently, with many of you.

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(Cowboys? Eagles? Giants? Broncos? Doesn’t matter, we’re all on the Unreported Truths team here! Join us, for pennies a day.)

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Leo’s hypocrisy aside, the real problem with the environmental hysteria of the last 25 years is that it ignored the reality of global economic growth outside the West.

Wealth takes energy, and oil, natural gas, and even coal are still the world’s main energy sources. And so, after decades of hysteria about carbon dioxide and climate, the world is emitting more carbon dioxide than ever. Meanwhile China, which is by far the largest global emitter, continues to add coal-fired power plants at a stunning rate. Unreported Truths readers probably intuitively sense this reality, but the numbers are more shocking than you know.

These three charts (one of which I posted yesterday) tell the story.

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1: Annual global carbon dioxide emissions have risen roughly 60 percent since 2000:

2: Even though the United States, the European Union, and Japan have reduced their emissions by about 25 percent over that period and now make up barely one-fifth of the world’s emissions combined:

SOURCE

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3: Yet China’s coal-powered electric plant spree is actually accelerating:

SOURCE

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So, yeah, that’s pretty much the whole story.

Show it to anyone who insists that Trump and ExxonMobil are letting polar bears fall into the sea, or causing droughts in the Sahara, or whatever.

What’s particularly infuriating about this is that in their desire to lecture ordinary Americans about their sins, academics and the legacy media simply ignore the truth that China now emits about three times as much carbon dioxide as the United States.

The New York Times offered a typical whopper last month:

China remains the world’s largest user of coal, but is working to decrease its usage. Overall, Chinese carbon dioxide emissions have been flat or falling for 21 months now.

Yes, that figure is correct.

Except somehow the reporter forgot to mention that China’s carbon output rose almost fourfold from 2000 to 2024.

As a wise UT reader commented in response to yesterday’s piece:

Trump didn't kill the climate cult. Covid did. We learned that "science" "experts" world wide had two characteristics: they marched in lockstep, killing dissent (which didn't seem scientific) and they lied without conscience (which didn't seem human).

There will no further science-based scams for a generation at least. There will be plenty of other scams but none will be successful if they appeal to "science".

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(Who watches the watchers? Me, that’s who! With your help.)

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Finally, today’s kicker.

In keeping with today’s format, it’s a picture of everyone’s favorite environmental hero, the star of that not-at-all-heavy-handed climate change parable Don’t Look Up, on a yacht in Ibiza last summer:

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Don’t worry, he’s definitely thinking about carbon emissions!