Photo by Jamie Street on Unsplash
By Jo Nova
We’re facing the sixth mass extinction but carbon accounting games are a performance art and almost no one cares that the largest emitter on Earth has gaping holes in their numbers.
One reader in The Wall Street Journal, pointed out that The Onion saw this coming years ago:
“China Vows to Begin Aggressively Falsifying Air Pollution Numbers.” (2014)
We live in an era where satire became the news.
The Paris Agreement allows everyone to set their own targets, and to define their own terms (and retrospectively as well). So China decided it would count “carbon intensity”, rather than carbon output. But it didn’t define carbon intensity. Normally it means the amount of CO2 emitted per unit GDP — which would work well for China with its rapidly growing economy. But something else is going on.
In the last five years China had promised to cut emissions by 18%, but all the official statistics suggested it was only getting 12% of the way there. Then a miracle happened and suddenly China leapt to a 17.7% reduction, just in the nick of time.
The Ecoworriers team at Carbon Brief are probably the only ones who do care and they drilled through all the detail. But being as generous as they can, even they can’t explain where 380 megatons went.
To put that in perspective, Australia’s entire annual emissions was 459 megatons. It’s like someone just said Oopsie to 80% of our national emissions.
So the rules are loose, and China is taking advantage of every loophole. The CCP knows that the UN isn’t going to turn up with guns to say “pay up”. But there is a price. The whole renewables project that China profits from looks just that much more dodgy, and so does the CCP. Who can trust anything they say?
China Cooks the Carbon Emissions Books
The Editorial Board, Wall Street Journal
Unlike the West’s green radicals, China isn’t willing to sacrifice its economy to meet its climate pledges. But Beijing isn’t above cooking its carbon books to gull Western activists into thinking it is.
At United Nations climate conferences in Copenhagen in 2009 and Paris in 2015, Beijing vowed sizeable reductions in the amount of carbon China emits per dollar of gross domestic product, or carbon intensity. Subsequent national planning documents reiterated this goal.
Old-style accounting implies China’s emission grew by a huge 1,430 megatonnes in the last five years. But the new carbon-intensity figures imply only 690 megatons of CO₂ growth, creating a 730 megatonnes from CO₂ gap.
By Lauri Myllyvirta, Carbon Brief
A major change in the way that China measures its core climate goal has effectively halved the growth in the country’s carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions over the past five years.
Here’s one slight of hand — only coal burnt in pursuit of energy counts. Not coal converted to plastics, asphalt, rubber, chemicals or fertilizer.
A footnote in China’s latest statistical communique offers a brief description of carbon intensity as relating to the CO2 emissions from “energy activities and industrial production”.
This indicates that the carbon-intensity calculation now includes industrial process emissions and excludes non-energy uses of fossil fuels, shown by the “new scope” in the figure above.
Remember China’s huge coal-to-liquids program that I wrote about two months ago? Every year nearly 400 million tons of coal are converted to fertilizer, chemicals, plastics, jet fuel and diesel.
And some of these accounting tricks make sense. The Tupperware containers for example, are legitimately holding their CO2 (for now). But even that trick doesn’t account for the missing CO2.
So China treats us like mugs and we cheer it on. Why?
I don’t know why they even bother with the dodgy* accounting.
The Left and the anti-energy lobby in general allow China to do whatever they want with their blessing.
Anti-energy (i.e. anti-CO2, anti-nuclear and anti-dams) policies are strictly for Western countries which the Left are trying their hardest to destroy, and at which they are succeeding.
*For our US friends “dodgy” means “shady” “sketchy” or “shifty” in your vernacular.
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The solution to this nightmare is to completely forget about CO2 “accounting” and renewables, and simply remove from power those who force them on us. We are nearly there – Donald Trump and Javier Milei and one or two others are in, and when we remove Keir Starmer, Anthony Albanese, Mark Carney, Emmanuel Macron and a few others, together with their parties, then we will have got there. For this, Xi Jinping is irrelevant, just a different (major) problem.
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I fear that ultimately every Nation, every People will need to physically test the path of Communism to it’s fullest extent. I remember being told “The burnt hand teaches best,” and have by observation found that it’s true. The only way a True Believer can be broken of this mad ideology is to live it with no hope of change barring change they drive themselves.
That many Environmentalists push this collective view just amazes me. The Desolation of Communism is well known, but it’s just “it wasn’t done right.” What they seem unable to comprehend is that it cannot be done right, as it requires heavily centralised power to be placed in the hands of the absolute last people who should have it: those who want it. They not only fail to understand politics, they can’t parse Human Nature. They will only respond to Pain.
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“at this point, what difference does it make?”
[Hillary Clinton, Jan. 23, 2013]
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“It’s only a piece of paper”
[slimeball politricks everywhere every time]
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The UN relies on compliant left leaning governments cooperation, and soon after the UN was established after WW2 and left infiltration began the then Australian Labor Government Attorny General Evatt QC (a member of the then communist far left faction that later caused a split dividing Australian Labor Party with Democratic Labor Party formed by the Labor disgruntled right factions) recommended that as many agreements and treaties as possible should be signed with compliant member nations governments and the governments them legislate into law and create regulations and compliance systems.
In Australia the system of government resulted in Commonwealth of Australia Federal Government legislation being legislated by Federation of States governments as they have more powers and areas of responsibility than Federal does for internal affairs.
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We need to run a poll. See how many people have woken up after the last 20 years of bullshit.
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I don’t think too many.
It’s because of the parallel campaign of the Left to dumb down the education system starting in about 1970.
This was the first thing essential for their plans.
They have effectively removed from students basic literacy and numeracy skills, general knowledge about science and nature, real history (they only teach revised history and a hatred of Western Civilisation), the ability to reason, think independently or do their own research etc..
And now in the Stupid Country (Australia), children have been banned from social media so they cannot have access to alternative opinions or educational materials not in conformity with the indoctrination they receive at school. It wasn’t “mere” incompetence that led to that decision but quite deliberate as the Left supercharge the level of indoctrination.
The next level is for the Left to ban home schooling so the state has complete control of the mind of your child and their indoctrination. It is already banned over much of Europe.
My grade 5 teacher is still alive and I am in contact with him. We often chat about his great beneficial influence on my education and lament what has happened to the schools. I was fortunate to have got through school and university before the dumbing-down was complete.
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In my opinion and from observations and conversations most Australians cannot explain the Federation of States and system of government and have little interest in politics generally unless it impacts their lives, what used to be described as hurting the hip pocket nerve.
For example cost of living is now a hot subject when speaking to most Australians and including electricity price rises of course, but try and explain the transition to renewable energy away from fossil fuels background and most have no understand whatsoever.
Housing, the States are responsible for public housing, approval of building and construction development applications and even public land release for new housing developments, and then with local government the roads and all the other services required. And therefore when Federal Immigration as since may 2022 allows an average per year of 424,300 additions to the population (period 2013-2022 Coalition average was 168,700) it is State governments that carry the costs and the responsibilities for providing services including housing for the growing population.
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“cannot explain the Federation of States and system of government”
A system that has effectively destroyed by horizontal and vertical fiscal equalisation.
Under this system, states that decide not to exploit their own mineral wealth, and so not receive potential mineral royalties, are compensated by GST payments from states that do exploit mineral resources.
The GST was intended to fund the needs of the state where it was collected, now it is taken to fund the desires of states that refuse for ideological reasons to raise their own funding.
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Similar to United States of America system of government.
GST was created for State and Territory governments to have a revenue stream that had been requested for decades, the States wanted a share of income tax by tax collected by state via Australian Federal Taxation Office. The compromise was Howard Government proposed and accepted by Council Of State Governments (COAG) that included abolishing Federal Wholesale Sales Tax (range 17-22% on goods) in return for Goods & Services Tax of 10% at retail level.
The distribution formula was agreed to by all parties and consitions included assessment of state revenue, mining royalties and tax a major example. And therefore smallest population Tasmania receives more per capital than the other states, maybe not Territories. States also agreed to abolish several state taxes including payroll tax and stamp duties – since stamp duty has GST added, most state taxes were not abolished after the GST Agreement was signed.
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‘…the States are responsible for public housing…..’ Exactly, Dennis. Then somebody explain why the hell we have or need a Federal Minister for Housing and an entire department of clock watchers in Canberra filling in their days doing what? The federal government builds NO houses, yet constantly tells the gullible public that they are doing their utmost to help young Australians to get on the housing ladder. Their actions (policies) tell an entirely different tale. They need to be DOGE’d now.
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China and the NON OECD countries have had a free ride for the last 38 years. Just spend 5 minutes online and look up the data, but I think even that’s too difficult for the delusional true believers and con merchants.
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BTW we were all supposed to be dead in 10 years and yet Prof Guy McPherson was so sure of his delusional fantasy in 2016.
But don’t worry there are plenty more left wing loonies stepping up to add to their latest fantasies and even silly Mann believes we have 50 more years left to atone for our sins.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2026/06/04/oh-no-were-all-dead-according-to-a-2016-arizona-mass-extinction-prediction/
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Jo,
The “Onion” is a satirical publication in much the same way is The Babylon Bee.
The headline was intended as a joke about widespread international skepticism regarding the reliability of some Chinese environmental statistics.
The satire works because, at the time:
China was experiencing severe air-pollution problems.
There had been allegations and studies suggesting some local authorities may have manipulated environmental data.
Yet the central government was publicly promising stronger action against pollution, with Premier Li Keqiang declaring a “war on pollution” in 2014.
In other words, The Onion’s joke was essentially:
“Instead of fixing the pollution problem, China will just fake the numbers.”
But that was satire, not an actual policy announcement. In fact, contemporary reporting shows Chinese leaders publicly committing to reduce pollution and strengthen enforcement, not to falsify data.
The article became well known because it was plausible enough that some readers initially mistook it for real news—something that has happened with Onion stories on several occasions.
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Richard,
I’m pretty sure Jo knew that that Onion article was satire. Good satire too: the mark of the very best satire is how true it turns out to be, despite being ridiculous.
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Sorry. I probably should have labeled it satire. I’m sure there are readers who don’t know (especially younger ones in Australia).
The Onion used to be (or seem) very funny. But it lost that https://theonion.com/.
Looking through it now is like wandering the ruins of an old mansion. We can see the architecture of what should be jokes but aren’t, because the Onion isn’t speaking truth to power anymore. Can anyone find something to laugh at?
Look, how weird, at the InfoWars page. I had forgotten they bought out the giant Alex Jones thing. Apparently just to kill it? That, right there, is the core reason The Onion can’t make anyone laugh anymore. They are the machine.
PS: I added a line in the post.
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United Nations listed developing countries are not required to reduce emissions, after all they deserve economic growth and prosperity at the expense of developed countries.
sarc
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And China, with a space program, massive armed forces, and nuclear weapons, remains officially a “developing nation”.
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The Little Red Book has been replaced by the Little Green Playbook. Convince woke Westerners you are “doing your bit” to save the planet whilst using any source of energy available (including the nasty planet-killing ones) to manufacture renewable energy components.
A shipload of almost 5000 BTD cars (Build Their Dreams) has just arrived in Australia. Hundreds of unwitting customers await…
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Man made climate change was a hoax, it’s now just a scam. Possibly the biggest scam ever.
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The heading suggests something bad. We should be all cheering China for doing the heavy lifting in enhancing the biosphere.
The Chinese economy is still accumulating wealth and not a lot of its production comes from recycling. So they are correct in not counting the carbon that is bound in materials until they have a mature economy with lower growth and higher recycle.
China’s population peaked in 2021 so economic growth will eventually slow.
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China is doing something bad. It’s being a bad global citizen, saying one thing but profiting from deception and lies.
If they were emitting gigatons of carbon dioxide but being honest about it and explaining why that is a good thing, they would be doing the world a favor and leading the way.
The CCP see themselves as supreme leaders, but they act like just another malevolent self-serving dictatorship. Their judgement is terrible. They could be building alliances, and trust, instead they create enemies everywhere they go. No one believes anything they say.
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China cooks the books on everything … is anyone ever seriously believing anything that comes out from them officially? GDP numbers are cooked, even a prior premier of China (Li Keqiang) had his own formula to understand the true financial position of the country. COVID deaths, youth unemployment (no longer measured) …. on and on it goes (population stats, trade data, ag yields, etc)
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A timely article. It seems to be quite difficult to obtain exact information on China’s electrical energy sources. The renewables enthusiasts always tout how much solar and wind is being added, but the actual figures as to which electrical energy sources China uses, and the percentages of each energy source, seem difficult to establish. Does anybody have the percentages for early 3026, or even end of 2025?
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I do not have the breakdown but from past research “renewables” are mostly referring to hydro electric schemes and dams on major rivers in China.
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