Is Trump Right That Global Warming Is a Hoax?
In 2012, Donald Trump said, "The concept of global warming was created by and for the Chinese in order to make U.S. manufacturing non-competitive." In September 2025, at the UN General Assembly, he called climate change "the greatest con job ever perpetrated on the world."
That same week, Xi Jinping promised at the UN to cut China's greenhouse gas emissions by 2035. China is now the country adding solar and wind power faster than any other. The nation accused of being behind the hoax is preparing for warming, while the nation shouting "hoax" is pulling back. A strange mystery indeed. Who's right?
Air bubbles in Antarctic ice preserve ancient air exactly as it was. Analyze them, and CO2 barely changed from the year 1 to 1800. But after the Industrial Revolution it rose steeply, and the rise since then is more than 15 times larger than the swings of the previous 2,000 years.
The oceans flipped too. Seafloor sediments off Indonesia show the ocean slowly cooling for nearly a thousand years. After the Industrial Revolution the direction reversed, and since 1970 the world's oceans have been warming about ten times faster than they used to cool. In 2024 the oceans were the hottest since records began.
Skeptics have a point. In the Middle Ages, when CO2 was unchanged, the waters off Indonesia were about as warm as today, and in the Little Ice Age they got much colder. Over individual decades, there have been times when CO2 rose but the ocean cooled. That means natural forces like volcanoes, the sun and ocean currents are powerful too.
But past changes happened in some regions, over centuries. Now almost the entire planet is warming within decades. That hasn't happened in the last 2,000 years.
So how do we know CO2 is the culprit?
First, the sun's energy, measured by satellites since 1978, has actually decreased slightly. Yet the Earth kept warming.
Second, if the sun were the cause, both the upper and lower atmosphere should warm together. In reality, the lower layer is warming while the upper layer is cooling. That pattern appears only when greenhouse gases trap heat below.
Third, satellites show that the heat escaping to space has decreased precisely at the wavelengths CO2 absorbs. It's a direct picture of CO2 blocking heat's exit.
And the added CO2 carries the chemical fingerprint of fossil fuels. The culprit is the coal and oil humans have burned.
By the data, global warming isn't a hoax. So why do the U.S. and China move in opposite directions?
China is the interesting one. It's still the world's biggest emitter, but it dominates the markets for solar panels, batteries and electric vehicles. The more the world cuts carbon, the more Chinese products sell. China is worried about warming and sees it as an opportunity at the same time.
If America were the world's number-one maker of solar panels and batteries, would Trump still call warming a hoax? For Trump, isn't the American economy more important than global warming?
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That same week, Xi Jinping promised at the UN to cut China's greenhouse gas emissions by 2035. China is now the country adding solar and wind power faster than any other. The nation accused of being behind the hoax is preparing for warming, while the nation shouting "hoax" is pulling back. A strange mystery indeed. Who's right?
A two-thousand-year chart that suddenly spikes
Air bubbles in Antarctic ice preserve ancient air exactly as it was. Analyze them, and CO2 barely changed from the year 1 to 1800. But after the Industrial Revolution it rose steeply, and the rise since then is more than 15 times larger than the swings of the previous 2,000 years.
The oceans flipped too. Seafloor sediments off Indonesia show the ocean slowly cooling for nearly a thousand years. After the Industrial Revolution the direction reversed, and since 1970 the world's oceans have been warming about ten times faster than they used to cool. In 2024 the oceans were the hottest since records began.
The oceans always swung by about a degree
Skeptics have a point. In the Middle Ages, when CO2 was unchanged, the waters off Indonesia were about as warm as today, and in the Little Ice Age they got much colder. Over individual decades, there have been times when CO2 rose but the ocean cooled. That means natural forces like volcanoes, the sun and ocean currents are powerful too.
But past changes happened in some regions, over centuries. Now almost the entire planet is warming within decades. That hasn't happened in the last 2,000 years.
Three pieces of evidence that identify the culprit
So how do we know CO2 is the culprit?
First, the sun's energy, measured by satellites since 1978, has actually decreased slightly. Yet the Earth kept warming.
Second, if the sun were the cause, both the upper and lower atmosphere should warm together. In reality, the lower layer is warming while the upper layer is cooling. That pattern appears only when greenhouse gases trap heat below.
Third, satellites show that the heat escaping to space has decreased precisely at the wavelengths CO2 absorbs. It's a direct picture of CO2 blocking heat's exit.
And the added CO2 carries the chemical fingerprint of fossil fuels. The culprit is the coal and oil humans have burned.
Global warming is only the backdrop
By the data, global warming isn't a hoax. So why do the U.S. and China move in opposite directions?
China is the interesting one. It's still the world's biggest emitter, but it dominates the markets for solar panels, batteries and electric vehicles. The more the world cuts carbon, the more Chinese products sell. China is worried about warming and sees it as an opportunity at the same time.
If America were the world's number-one maker of solar panels and batteries, would Trump still call warming a hoax? For Trump, isn't the American economy more important than global warming?
