Donald Trump's Climate Remarks In UN Speech Were, Um, Something

Trump had some rather, um, interesting things to say
at the UN General Assembly Tuesday, including
some wild assertions regarding 
climate change and clean energy. 

That was quite a speech Donald Trump gave at the United Nations Tuesday. 

I wish I thought to count the number of untruths utter during the speech.  It sure had me reaching for my Tylenol, despite Trump and RFK's distain for the pain medication. 

Since this is a weather and climate blog, I'll ignore for all most of the problematic things Trump said on a wide variety of topics, and stick to the subject at hand here. 

Trump had plenty so say on climate change and clean energy in the rambling, hour long address.  They were things we heard from him before, that climate change is a hoax, that clean energy is bad, yada, yada, yada. 

Still, it's worth exploring just what he said, and doing some fact checking, just for laughs and giggles. 

As always, Trump has a remarkably dark vision of the world.

Climate change, he said, is "the greatest con job ever perpetrated on the world.....The carbon footprint is a hoax made up by people with evil intentions, and they're heading down a path of total destruction."

I suppose we can make a case that we are eventually "heading down a path of total destruction," but that's not because climate change is a hoax. It's more because that climate change is inflicting more and more and worse and worse weather disaster on the world's populace. 

Trump dismissed the often forecasts climate change scientists have made over the years. "All of these predictions made by the United Nations and many others, often for bad reasons, were wrong....They were made by stupid people."

Never mind that climate prediction models, even those made half a century ago, were more or less accurate. But I guess we have to ignore all that, since scientists with years of education and training are clearly just stupid people.

Trump stuck with the subject: "They said global warming will kill the world, but then it started getting cooler. So now they could just call it climate change, because that way, they can't miss. It's climate change, because if it goes higher or lower whatever the hell happens, there's climate change."

I think Trump is referring to a worn out trope about some publications way back when the Bee Gees were discoing their way to fame and fortune back in the 1970s. 

The world started to warm a bit starting near the turn of the 20th century as our burning of fossil fuels began to have an effect. But then there was a very slight cooling trend from the 1940s to the 1970s.  That cooling trend is now understood to be the result of air pollution that dimmed the sun a little. Plus a natural climate cycle contributed a tiny bit to that cooling. 

By the 1970s, sensationalistic magazines informed us based on that bit of cooling a new ice age was coming. Meanwhile, behind the scenes, most climate scientists were accurately convinced the world was going to warm up. 

They were right, obviously. Air pollution was cleaned up, the sun shone more brightly as a result, the climate cycle ended, and that's when climate change really rocketed up. 

Trump added another overused trope when he made that crack about the terminology regarding global warming changed to climate change.  Calling it climate change is actually more accurate. Sure, the world is warming up.  But that's causing bigger storms, bigger floods, bigger droughts. Saying it's global warming is incomplete since so many other things are going on, too. 

But anyway, Trump plowed on. 

"Immigration and the high cost of so-called green renewable energy is destroying a large part of the free world........Countries that cherish freedom are fading fast because of their policies on those two subjects. You need strong borders and traditional energy sources if you are going to be great again."

He had more to say on the topic.   

"(Europe) has a long way to go, with many countries being on the brink of destruction because of their green energy agenda....Both the immigration and their suicidal energy ideas will be the death of Western Europe."

It's probably way too much to get into immigration policy here, but I'm at a loss how clean energy will mean the end of nations. Trump didn't explain it, other than to say countries who have green energy policies allow the nations that emphasize fossil fuel to take all the manufacturing jobs somehow. 

Back in July, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres declared the world has "passed the point of no return" on the shift to renewable energy and said the fossil fuel era will end soon.  And I haven't seen evidence that nations with stricter green energy policies are doing worse than ones clinging to dependence on fossil fuel.

Trump also said that clean energy is too expensive and "doesn't work."  Which leaves me mystified.

If it doesn't work and is too expensive, why was 80 percent of the growth in electricity generation around the world from renewable and nuclear sources. And why does solar and wind account for 16 percent of U.S. electricity, surpassing coal?

You'd think the U.S. and other nations and international business interests would have long since abandoned renewables if they "didn't work." But whatevs. 

Trump had a wee bit of accuracy when it comes to China. He said China produces most of the world's wind technology, but doesn't use wind technology, Instead, it relies on coal and gas. 

That's partially true. Wind turbines and solar accounts for 20 percent of China's electricity generation, but China is still the world's largest coal consumer. In 2024 China accounted for 58 percent of global coal use.

It seems like much of the coverage of Trump's UN speech centered around a malfunctioning teleprompter and balky escalator at the UN. 

But Trump's climate and clean energy remarks, along with a whole host of other weird things he said. are an embarrassment to the U.S. And puts the world in just a little more danger it certainly does not need.