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.  

UN Says 2023 Global Heating Was "Red Alert" But Is the Message Too Doom And Gloom?

"Red Alert."

The UN's World Meteorological Organization called
climate change in 2023 a "red alert" but is dire
messaging the best way to encourage the public
to take action on climate change?

That's the conclusion of the World Meteorological Organization regarding the effects of climate change in 2023. 

The annual WMO Global Climate report is essentially the last word reviewing the crazy weather and climate events of 2023. 

 Records were smashed last year for the amount of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere,  land and water temperatures, and the melting of glaciers and sea ice. 

 "'Earth's issuing a distress call,' U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said. 'The latest State of the Global Climate report shows a planet on the brink. Fossil fuel pollution is sending climate chaos off the charts.'"

 The Associate Press writes:

"WMO said the impacts of heat waves, floods, droughts, wildfires and tropical cyclones, exacerbated by climate change, was felt in lives and livelihoods on every continent in 2023.

'This list of record-smashing events is truly distressing, though not a surprise given the steady drumbeat of extreme events over the past year, said University of Arizona climate scientist Kathy Jacobs, who also wasn't involved in the WMO report.

 'The full cost of climate change accelerated events across sectors and regions has never been calculated in a meaningful way, but the cost to biodiversity and to the quality of future generations is incalculable.'"

Other quick takeaways in the WMO report: 

--- Extreme weather is undermining socio-economic development around the world

--- The cost of climate inaction is higher than the cost of climate action

--- The increasing pace of transitions to renewable energy does provide hope. 

 The United Nations' goal of holding the extent of climate change to within 1.5 degrees Celsius above the pre-industrial average.  It's unclear whether that goal is even attainable. 

The 13 consecutive months through February averaged a bit more than that 1.5 degree threshold.  El Nino worked in concert with climate change to boost global temperatures to that level. 

As La Nina takes hold as expected later this year, the world will probably cool a tiny bit to a level below that 1.5 degrees. So it's not yet a permanent change. But at the pace we're switching to renewables, it looks like we'll blow past UN goal within a couple decades - so much for that idea

GLOOM/DOOM NOT HELPFUL?

The UN World Meteorological Organization report was released with a serious gloom and doom vibe, but was that really a good idea?   

According to Resilience.org, not really. 

"It turns out that critics are right to worry that doom and gloom can demoralize the public into inaction. We found that this strategy had no effect on policy support or climate beliefs. 

And doom and gloom even backfired when it came to more effortful behavior. When faced with the enormous stakes of the climate crisis, personal actions - and perhaps even policy change  - can seem futile. People withdraw or disengage." 

Doom and gloom messaging is great for social media clicks, the research shows, but not for motivating people.  

Potential audiences and societies in general are complex, so there's no one way to communicate about climate change and what people can do about it.  Different people responded differently to a variety of climate messages. The response varies country to country. 

Resilience.org continues:  "Sadly, we did not find a silver bullet for spurring climate action. But our research found several messages that moved the needle on climate change beliefs and actions. We suspect that similar lessons apply to other issues, from strengthening democracy to public health. In fact, we were recently part of a similar project designed to reduce affective polarization and found that several messages either didn't work or backfired. " 

However, framing messaging through a moral or ethical lens seems to be the most effective. 

Latest UN Climate Report An Exercise In Justified Worry

People are just beginning to digest the latest big fat report from UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which was released Monday, but the initial news reports on it paint a grim picture. 

Latest UN report on climate change, released this
past week, has a gloomy outlook. 

I mean, check out the lead paragraph of the Associated Press summary article on this thing:

"Deadly with extreme weather now, climate change is about to get so much worse. It is likely going to make the world sicker, hungrier, poorer, gloomier and way more dangerous in the next 18 years with an 'unavoidable' increase in risks, a new United Nations science report says."

The AP article goes on:

'"The cumulative scientific evidence is unequivocal: Climate change is a threat to human well-being and planetary health,' says the major report designed to guide world leaders in their efforts to curb climate change. Delaying cuts in heat-trapping carbon emissions and waiting on adapting to warming's impacts, it warns, 'will miss a brief and rapidly closing window of opportunity to secure a liveable and sustainable future for all.'"

Among the unhappy nuggets in the report:

Today's children who are still around in 2100 will see four times more climate extremes than they do today, even if the world's temperature goes up by another few tenths of a degree.  If temperatures go up by a little more then 3 degrees Fahrenheit by then, they would feel five times the number of disasters like floods, storms, heat waves and droughts. 

The report says that 3.3 billion people are already highly vulnerable to climate change and 15 times more likely to die in extreme weather. Large numbers of people are already being displaced by climate change. 

By 2050 - less than 30 years from now, about a billion people will face coastal flooding problems form rising seas, and many will be forced out of their homes from flooding, tropical cyclones and sea level rise. 

Some places could become uninhabitable, and others will become too hot for people to work outdoors. That's a problem if you're trying to grow crops, the AP notes. 

It's not just us humans that are having and will have a tough time with climate change. 

Vox outlines some major issues different species face with just a little more warming  

The IPCC says that 14 percent of all plants and animals on land would face a high risk of extinction.  If there's three degrees of warming, up to 29 percent of species on land could go extinct. 

Local populations of species are already decimated by climate change, even if the entire species isn't gone yet. 

Individual climate-related events can wipe out entire swaths, even majorities of some species. A subspecies of marsupial was essentially erased in a 2005 Australian heat wave. The enormous wildfires in the same nation decimated iconic Australian koala bears. 

The Pacific Northwest heat wave last June killed millions of ocean, lake and river aquatic animals. Just a little more warming could eliminate 90 percent of the world's already suffering coral reefs. 

The bottom line is the news in the latest report is bad, perhaps worse than most people would have believed.  As the New York Times reported:

"'One of the most striking conclusions in our report is that we're seeing adverse impacts that are much more widespread and much more negative than expected,' said Camille Parmesan, an ecologist at the University of Texas, Austin and one of the researchers who prepared the report."

 A lot of discussion regarding climate change is how we adapt to it. But the report indicates we need to step up the rate of adaptation. And if nothing is done to sharply reduce greenhouse emissions, things will have gone too far for any of us to adapt. 

The New York Times goes on: 

"'There has been the assumption that, 'Well, if we cannot control climate change, we'll just let it go and adapt to it,' said Hans-Otto Portner, a marine biologist in Germany who helped coordinate the report. But given the expected risks as the planet keeps warming, he said, 'this is certainly a very illusionary approach.'"

Here's the problem as I see it:  I know that most governments can walk and chew gum at the same time. But issues other than climate change facing the world are incredibly complex. The pandemic isn't over.  We have what really amounts to a global crisis with Russia's monstrous invasion of Ukraine. 

Sure, the fact that we're close to the point where climate change will limit humanity's ability to feed itself, climate change is the ultimate crisis. But you can't just blow off the other crises. 

Even if nations commit to aggressively combating climate change, which is a big if, do we have the bandwidth to actually get the job done? And done on time?

The IPCC estimates we'd have to eliminate almost all carbon emissions by 2050 to get a handle on things. That's only 28 years from now. Meanwhile, judging from the new record high for the level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere set last year, emissions continue to rise. 

It's not like the IPCC hasn't been giving us a head's up on all this for the past couple of decades at least. 

The AP again here:

"The panel of more than 200 scientists puts out a series of these massive reports every five to seven years, with this one, the second of the series, devoted to how climate change affects people and the planet. Last August the science panel published a report on the latest climate science and projections for future warming, branded 'code red' by the United Nations."

The AP quoted climate scientist Katharine Hayhoe of the Nature Conservancy as calling this latest report as the "Your House is on Fire" report. 

However, she and others still advocated hope.  The AP article again: "It's really bad and there's a good chance that it will get worse,' Hayhoe said. 'But if we do everything we can, that will make a difference....That's what hope is."

"'Fear is not a good advisor and never is,' German vice chancellor and minister for climate and economy told the AP. 'Hope is the right one.'"