In trying to make sense of climate there are all kinds of ways you need to exercise caution about claims people make. For instance “We will not survive continued carbon sink weakening as atmospheric CO2 will increase faster and faster from it alone”, which is extremely dubious even in its take on carbon sinks let alone human extinction resulting if it does get slightly warmer. Especially when the authors of claims like this one don’t seem to be paying attention to revolutionary new findings on carbon sinks, and claim wildfires are increasing when they’re not. The market for “carbon offsets” is another area where the capacity, and incentive, to engage in jiggery-pokery are enormous (and media skepticism is tiny). But it’s also important to understand that even basic things like global figures for human emissions depend in governments whose fidelity and competence are equally suspicious. For instance Communist China, which uses the iron boot to fake even stats on bees. So do you believe them on carbon? Bloomberg does.

The Epoch Times reports the strange, revealing case of the unfortunate veterinarian Luo Zhifei, who did not seek fame but the secret police sought him. He was “a Chinese local government employee in rural Guangdong”, which seems a fairly safe place to hide, and his job was collecting farming stats in Paitan. What could go wrong?

Well, almost anything. The hapless Luo, or possibly not so hapless since he escaped to the United States last year, explained that:

“To me, working for the government meant job security. I heard that ... the government in Guangdong was relatively transparent, and did more to serve the people. That’s what I thought before I started the job.”

What a chump. Working on law enforcement paperwork he found that police bullied and extorted farmers over invented offences like using the wrong pesticide on a lychee tree. When he objected, he was himself bullied then transferred to the animal farming production district in Paitan, which seems to be Chinese for “nowhere”. But in China there’s nowhere to hide, with all the land owned by the state and state-imposed collectives, and the truth as well.

Thus he was explicitly told that since the central planners had decreed that GDP would rise by 5% in 2023, he had to report a 5.5% increase in production even if he knew perfectly well that the farmers were actually losing money. And then came this honey of a blunder:

“In December 2023, Luo openly questioned the price of honey in local statistics. Luo’s unit reported that the price of honey was 50 yuan (about $7) per kilogram, while the price was only about 26 yuan. Luo said he knew the real price because he had conducted an unauthorized survey of beekeepers on his own time and produced a report.”

It is a tribute to the human capacity for courageous integrity that he would do such a thing. And a tribute to the human capacity for cowardly mendacity that when he warned colleagues that if everyone were making stuff up the authorities wouldn’t have the information they needed to make good decisions, he was cut off in mid-speech, interrogated, told he was breaking the National Security Law and also that he couldn’t quit his job and get treated for depression before being told he must be out of his mind and forced to sign a document to that effect.

Proving that he was in fact sane, he fled. But remember, next time someone tells you that humans emitted this or that number of megatonnes of carbon last year, that the world is full of governments whose capacity to do anything including count is in grave doubt, and also of governments who will put a bullet in your head if you deny that 2+2=5.

It’s no basis for making policy, or writing a news story. Yet here’s Bloomberg writing with a straight typeface, in defence of American bureaucracy, that:

“China’s government is reviewing the fallout for the nation’s scientific research from President Donald Trump’s moves to withdraw funding from some US agencies and halt publication of certain categories of data. Several Chinese ministries and bodies have in recent weeks started assessing potential disruption to their work, and made efforts to determine the extent to which some activities have become reliant on data published by the US, according to people familiar with the matter, who asked not to be identified to discuss details that aren’t public.”

At no point did the story exhibit any of the qualities one would like to associate with reporting. Instead it blathered:

“Reviews being carried out by the Chinese ministries will examine if domestic sources can replace the use of US data that’s now unavailable, the people said.”

Sure. If you want ones that came out of the barrel of a gun. Which Bloomberg seems to:

“Beijing has sought in recent years to reduce its dependence on foreign sources for critical technology and products. Past US actions have only accelerated China’s push for self-reliance, much like how US curbs on chip sales have spurred growth in the country’s home-grown semiconductor industry. China views climate science as a geopolitical battleground. President Xi Jinping wants his country to become a weather superpower and have a bigger say in global meteorological governance. Beijing spent nearly 500% more on climate diplomacy from 2013 to 2023, following a familiar strategy of offering financial help to other countries to boost the use of Chinese technology and services. Meanwhile, the Trump administration has stopped US scientists from participating in key United Nations climate change assessments, Reuters reported earlier this year. In the US, job losses and funding cuts have impacted the collection and availability of data in fields like climate, weather and health. Hundreds of employees have been fired at NOAA as part of the Trump administration’s broader efforts to shrink the federal government.”

You would never know from that story that the reason people use American statistics is that a free society has better data and a less mendacious government due to the relentless scrutiny of journalists who…

OK, maybe not. But it used to. And should again.