Climate (short)change

Climate (short)change

(Herman Tiu Laurel / DieHard III / The Daily Tribune / 11-25-2013 MON)

 

We can’t tell yet at this time how Super Typhoon “Haiyan” (“Yolanda”) came to be declared as the “biggest storm in history” by both Philippine and international media; but it was the case almost everywhere.  The Philippine Daily Inquirer on Nov. 8 bannered, “Strongest typhoon makes fifth landfall,” while the Philippine Star on the same day claimed, “’Yolanda’ most powerful cyclone in history to make landfall.”  But what are the facts now emerging?

 

The Philippine Atmospheric, Geophysical and Astronomical Services
Administration or Pagasa, the country’s official weather monitoring agency, published in its news release that “Yolanda (Haiyan), 2013, wind speed 147-171 mph (miles per hour)” is only the seventh strongest typhoon to hit RP, with the top howler still being Typhoon “Sering” (“Joan”), 1970, at 171-193 mph.

 

Typhoon2000.com, meanwhile, lists Typhoon “Reming” (“Durian”) as the strongest at 198.839 mph or 320 kph (kilometers per hour).  Although Yolanda is without doubt one of the strongest typhoons to ever hit the Philippines, it is certainly not even among the top five.  How did the distorted headlines on this start?

 

Based on my review, it has become apparent that even local media took their cue from international reports on “history’s strongest storm” that started around Nov. 8.  It may not be a coincidence that this seeming disinformation started just two days before the 9th annual United Nations Climate Change Conference held in Warsaw, Poland that lasted until Nov. 22.  If such news distortion was indeed by design, it has been quite effective.

 

Many global and local news outfits reporting on Haiyan only started correcting themselves with updated information the first few days after the devastation hit, but it was already too late to correct the impression left in the minds of many that Yolanda or Haiyan was a “historic storm.”

 

As events unfolded, accurate storm data were completely drowned out by stories of human tragedy and unimagined destruction wrought by a typhoon on a woefully unprepared nation.

 

Climate change alarmists thus had their day hyping their agenda on global media with the Philippines’ “crying boy” making headlines all over the world demanding precipitate, thoughtless conformity to the actions desired by climate change merchants of cap-and-trade profiteers.

 

It is safe to believe that the global media audience was shortchanged in the run-up to the super typhoon’s landfall on the Philippines--shortchanged by climate change fear peddlers into believing that Haiyan was the strongest ever due to the climate change phenomenon they are warning about.

 

The term climate change as “the” crisis of the times is by itself a sly or ingenious formulation for the real advocacy of these fear peddlers--Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW) or man’s carbon emissions as the cause of adverse weather patterns.  But as “global warming” projections have not been supported by objective weather temperature data the past two decades, their propaganda has shifted to “climate change.”

 

Robert M. Carter, paleontologist, stratigrapher, marine geologist, and environmental scientist at the University of Adelaide, wrote in “Ten facts and ten myths on climate change” that the “climate has always changed, and it always will,” later debunking the myth that “the late 20th Century increase in AGT (average global temperatures) caused an increase in the number of severe storms (cyclones), or in storm intensity” with “Fact 10: Meteorological experts are agreed that no increase in storms has occurred beyond that associated with natural variation of the climate system.”

 

Carter continued with more facts: “weather balloons and satellites’ measurements since the late 50s show NO atmospheric warming since 1958; carbon dioxide is a minor greenhouse gas… (while) water vapour, contributing at least 70 percent of the effect, is by far the most important…”

 

In “Climate Change: The Philippines’ Haiyan Typhoon is Not the Result of Global Warming” (GlobalResearch, Nov. 15, 2013), Michel Chossudovsky writes: “The tragedy in the Philippines has contributed to reinforcing a consensus which indirectly feeds the pockets of corporations lobbying for a new deal on carbon trade.  Cap-and-trade is a multibillion dollar bonanza which is supported by the global warming consensus … In 2008, Simon Linnett, Executive Vice-Chairman of Rothschild’s acknowledged the nature of this multibillion dollar business: ‘As a banker, I also welcome the fact that the ‘cap-and-trade’ system is becoming the dominant methodology for CO₂ control.  Unlike taxation or plain regulation, cap-and-trade offers the greatest scope for private sector involvement and innovation’ (Telegraph, Jan. 31, 2008).”

 

Chossudovsky adds: “In the Philippines, the social impacts of natural disasters are invariably exacerbated by a macro-economic policy framework imposed by Manila’s external creditors … The government of Benigno Aquino has embarked upon a renewed wave of austerity measures which involves sweeping privatization and the curtailment of social programs.  In turn, a large chunk of the State budget has been redirected to the Military which is collaborating with the Pentagon under Obama’s ‘Asia Pivot’.”

 

The climate change lobby is actually a climate shortchange of the developing world, including the Philippines, while the US “pivot” is shortchanging the country into its next major conflict-for-profit project.

 

(Catch Herman Tiu Laurel’s weekly show at GNN Destiny Cable Channel 8, Skycable Channel 213, and www.gnntv-asia.com, Saturday, 8:00 p.m. and replay Sunday, 8 a.m.; tune in to 1098 AM, Tuesday to Friday, 5 p.m. to 6 p.m.; visit http://newkatipunero.blogspot.com; and text reactions to 0923-4095739)