L A Times Publishes Beijing-Funded Propaganda, Conceals China’s Massive Coal Use & Emissions

Guest Essay by Larry Hamlin

The L. A. Times regularly runs a paid insert in its Sunday Edition called China Watch which is characterized by other news agencies as being Beijing-Funded Propaganda with the latest edition of China Watch shown below.

This practice by the L A Times has been addressed in other news publications as noted in the article below from the Daily Caller which notes the Times has received over $650,000 for publishing this propaganda as of July 2020.

This latest edition of China Watch hypes China’s efforts at wind power but makes no mention of China’s huge and growing use of coal fuel that makes that nation the leading global emissions producer accounting for 29% of all global CO2 emissions as of  2019.

The subject of China’s massive emissions is never addressed by the L A Times that is constantly harping for more emissions reductions by the U.S. while completely ignoring and concealing the massive and growing emissions by China that have increased by over 3.7 billion metric tons since 2005 while the U.S. was reducing its emissions by over 900 million metric tons during this same period. 

China’s emissions climbed dramatically since 2005 because it increased its coal use by over 47% during this period while the U.S. reduced its coal use by just over 50%. 

The U.S. CO2 reductions were primarily achieved by increased use of lower cost, higher efficiency and lower emission natural gas obtained through fracking to replace higher emission coal fuel. 

According to EIA increased use of natural gas accounted for about 62% of the U.S. emission reductions since 2005. EIA data shows that between 2005 and 2019 U.S. cumulative CO2 reductions from fuel substitution of natural gas replacing high emission coal fuel resulted in 3.4 billion metric tons in CO2 reductions. 

The L A Times has never addressed this huge natural gas driven CO2 emissions reduction benefit and in fact endorses Biden’s and the Democratic Party’s energy and emissions incompetent war against use of lower cost, higher efficiency and lower emission natural gas obtained through use of fracking technology.  

The huge CO2 emission reduction benefits of using natural gas are demonstrated by the U.S. emissions reduction chart shown below. Even more significant is the fact that U.S. CO2 emissions reductions will be sustained well into the future because of increased use of natural gas with the U.S. having ceased increasing global emissions at all since 2005 while sustaining a reduction of nearly 1 billion metric tons from its peak CO2 emissions levels. 

The L A Times conceals the enormously beneficial fuel substitution and emission reductions outcomes achieved by natural gas and demands that Americans pay trillions in increased costs to further reduce emissions so China can continue to hugely increase its emissions because of its ever upward growing use of fossil fuels. 

The Times dishonestly claims that the U.S. must increase its use of high-cost unreliable renewables by making the absurd argument that these reductions will “fight climate change” while fully knowing that global emissions will only continue to climb ever upward because of China and the other developing nations increased energy and emissions growth.  

China’s huge growth in CO2 emissions (measured in billions of metric tons) is shown in the graph below. The reduction in U.S. emissions since 2005 in clearly displayed with China’s increased emissions easily swallowing up these reductions. China’s year 2019 emissions are nearly twice those of the U.S.

China’s increased coal fuel use and rising emissions not only dominate emissions outcomes relative to the U.S. they dominate emissions outcomes relative to the entire world’s emissions as shown below (measured in billions of metric tons of CO2) with China and India’s ever sharply rising emissions controlling all global emissions increases since 2005.

China’s uses staggering amounts of coal fuel as a part of the Asia/Pacific region of the world as shown in the graph below with China accounting for about 67% of that regions total coal fuel use. The Asia/Pacific region dominates use of coal fuel and consumes over 77% of all global coal use. 

China uses 2.5 times more coal fuel than all 37 nations that make up the world’s developed countries (OECD nations include the U.S. and EU), uses more than 7.2 times more coal than the U.S., obtains about 58% of its total energy use from coal (compared to U.S. coal use of about 12% of its total energy) and accounts for more than 51% of all coal fuel used in the world. 

These massive coal fuel use numbers compare to the reality that China’s uses wind and solar for only about 4% of its total energy needs while the U.S. uses wind and solar for about 5.2% of its total energy. 

China’s electricity relies on coal fuel for about 65% of its total electricity while the U.S. uses coal fuel for only about 24% of its total electricity with further opportunities to increase its use of natural gas and reduce future coal use. The Asia/Pacific region electricity needs are hugely derived by use of coal (diagram below) compared to North America’s electricity needs that rely predominantly on lower cost, higher efficiency and lower emission natural gas as well as nuclear.

China uses its renewable energy advocacy schemes as political propaganda to try and conceal its massive and growing use of coal and other fossil fuel. The L A Times contributes to this propaganda fiction by its failure to address China and the other developing nations dominance in global CO2 emissions driven by coal and other fossil fuel use and by concealing the huge emission reduction benefits achieved by the U.S. because of increased use of natural gas.

Not only do China and India (and other developing nations) dominate present global energy and emissions use these nations as leaders of the world’s developing nations have clearly announced plans for further growth of coal and other fossil fuels use in the future with the L A Times concealing this clearly established reality.

In the pandemic year of 2020 China actually increased its coal fuel use and generated 53% of the world’s coal-fired powered more than nine percentage points higher than five years earlier and saw its coal-fired generation rise by 1.7 percent.

Additionally, China added 38.4 GW of new coal-fired projects in 2020 more than three times the amount built by the rest of the world and approved 46.1 GW of new coal-fired projects more than the previous three years combined. 

Furthermore China has taken on the role of promoting increased use of coal fuel in the future by partnering with other developing nations as noted below and provides financing, engineering, construction and operation services to aid these projects.

Coal accounts for 56 percent of electricity generation in Indonesia, 34.3 percent in Vietnam and 29.3 percent in Cambodia.      

India is also increasing its use of coal fuel to supply growth for its energy sector as noted in the article below.

As the article notes India is going ahead with commercial coal mine auctions where 67 mines across the country were offered for auction to support future increased coal power plants, is constructing 36.6 GW of new plants and has plans for an additional 29.3 GW of coal plants in the pipeline. 

These actions and plans reflect that these nations are growing their economies and will be significantly increasing their fossil energy production capabilities to support these growth objectives as noted in the graph below reflecting that energy consumption will increase significantly in these growing developing nations while remaining stable in the US and EU.

Biden, the Democratic Party, the L A Times and other ill-informed climate alarmists are completely out of touch with global energy and emissions realities with their incompetent schemes mandating that the U.S. destroy its economy while reducing emissions here at the cost of trillions of dollars so that developing nations can continue to significantly increase both their fossil energy use and resulting emissions while significantly growing their economies.