Saturday, March 19, 2011

Earth Hour and Global Warming BS

Sangandaan '93
Richard James Mendoza
3/19/2011



Next Saturday, many gullible people are going to participate in what is called “Earth Hour”, a 60 minute ritualistic orgy of the environmentalists where they turn the lights off in a symbolical (but futile) attempt to reduce their carbon footprints. This year, it will be held on March 26 at 8:30 p.m. on each country’s respective time (meaning, the event wouldn’t be held simultaneously but in a staggered pattern). Sadly, the Philippines is one of the event’s participants. Indeed, it is saddening as most aren’t yet aware of the blatant misinformation and scaremongering led by the so-called environmentalists along with the mainstream media about global warming/climate change or whatever name they’ve given to it (I wish they’d make up their minds about the naming convention).

What’s so special about carbon dioxide (CO2) that makes these kinds of people react wildly? In their words, it causes the so-called “greenhouse effect” wherein the sun’s rays enter the Earth’s atmosphere and the atmospheric gases (for them, it’s CO2) act like the glass panes on a greenhouse, reflecting the sun’s rays inside the atmosphere, thus only allowing few of the remaining sun’s rays to escape (in the form of heat). But a little research shows that CO2 doesn’t even have a significant amount to affect the Earth or its temperature for that matter. In fact, it is only about less than 1% of the atmosphere’s component. And where are all these CO2 stored if it isn’t even a significant part of the atmosphere? The answer lies in our oceans. These vast bodies of water release carbon dioxide in very slowly and if my memory serves me right, it’s around 800,000 years.

If one would look at the CORRECT graphs and figures, one could see that the flux of temperature is followed by the flux of carbon dioxide. In other words, fluctuations in carbon dioxide FOLLOW fluctuations in temperature, not the other way around as these people would like you to think. Looking at the previous sentence, one might wonder why I said “CORRECT graphs…” with obvious emphasis on the word “correct.” The reason is the so-called “Hockey stick” figure, famously used by Al Gore in his documentary “An Inconvenient Truth.” The “graph” shows the rather steady line in the past centuries but suddenly rises in the 20th century, giving an impression of a hockey stick. Later investigations found out that the data and the graph itself were manipulated, thus losing its merit even to the alarmists.

Some might ask: “But what about the greenhouse effect?” It turns out that the term “greenhouse effect” is nothing more than “a deceptive term,” according to W.R. Pratt, in a booklet entitled “CO2: The Debate Is Not Over” which can be found in this link: http://www.spinonthat.com/CO2_files/CO2tdino.pdf (PDF file, requires Adobe Reader). According to Pratt, “The term was first coined in 1824 by Joseph Fourier to describe the way the atmosphere is warmed by the heat from the Sun. But it is John Tyndall, who according to some, it is claimed, is responsible for proving that the Earth has a greenhouse effect. It is strange then that in his book entitled Contributions to Molecular Physics in the domain of Radiant Heat written in the 1860s when he was professor of Natural Philosophy at the Royal Institution (previously known as the Hidden College) that the closest he comes to alluding to anything like a greenhouse effect is a reference on page 117 to the atmosphere behaving like a dam on heat energy from the sun. However even this is an extremely inaccurate and unhelpful analogy because there are only two dynamics invoked in the example of a dam: The water flowing down hill and the wall of the dam across the path of the body of flowing water. However the dynamics involved in the heat energy from the Sun entering the Earth’s atmosphere are so numerous that they simply cannot be quantified.”

Again, some might ask: “But how about climate change? This is a dangerous threat to our planet.” Cut the trap, will you? The climate is ALWAYS changing. As matter of fact, the only thing constant in this world is change! Why are people allowing these liars to brainwash them and not even bother to ask? Because “the debate is over,” they say. But no, science is not about consensus. There would be and should be always a debate to discuss the different theories that are continually appearing. Even the Big Bang theory is no exception. And yet, we have these prevaricators shoving their goods into our throats saying “The debate is over!” They are no different from the so-called “civil society” that I’ve seen here in our country.

How about the Earth Hour? Don’t even bother joining their farcical orgy and burning candles. It’s an exercise in futility. Question: If these alarmists are SO concerned about reducing carbon dioxide and “saving the planet,” as they claim, why don't they do these things? Here, I have a list of methods to reduce carbon dioxide. It’s from www.globalwarminglies.com with some editions. Without further ado, here are some of the ways to reduce carbon dioxide and “saving the planet”:

STOP breathing: When you exhale, you release CO2.

Don’t drive: We all know how bad driving is.

Don't live in a house/apartment/condo or any building that uses gas or electricity: Homes produce 2-3 times as much CO2 as cars.

Don't wear shoes or any sort of clothing produced in a factory: Grow a cotton field and make your own clothes by hand.

Quit school: Those school buildings produce more CO2 in a year than you do in 20 years.

Eat meat raw: Whether you're using gas or electric both produce CO2.

Turn off this monitor and computer: You hypocrite.

Don't use toilets; urinate or defecate in your backyard: The water in your house is cleaned and sent to your house using pumps that use electricity.

Stop exercising: Increasing your heart rate increases the amount of oxygen you take in and turn into carbon dioxide when exhaling.

And my personal favorite...

DIE: Dying younger means you will do all of the things above less. Living a year less means you will save the earth 8.4 tons of CO2 every year you're not here!

Now, why not these so-called environmentalists do the list (especially the last item), thus culling some idiots in the process? Well, as they say: “Do as I say, not as I do.” In short, hypocrisy! In conclusion, let me quote a few lines from a song by Kamikazee entitled “Ert”:

“As far as I can tell,
This place just looks like hell,
Controlled by hate and greed
Self-centered goals and dreams…”

Friday, March 18, 2011

Pinoys' daily tsunamis

DIE HARD III
Herman Tiu Laurel
3/18/2011



While the world’s attention has been diverted to the Japan earthquake, tsunami and nuclear crisis, the many tsunamis on Filipinos continue daily, wave upon wave. This month, the final 2010 figure on the nation’s debt servicing for interest and principal payments hit a staggering P690 billion. That’s practically half of the national budget; up 10 percent from 2009. This gobsmacking payment is being made despite Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) Gov. Amando Tetangco’s continuing boasts that the country has around $63 billion in foreign exchange reserves simply lying idle in various financial instruments.

Such tsunami of hubris and arrogance can only come from a government that thinks very lowly of the Filipino public, assuming that the people are unable to see through its farce of staying in the good graces of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) while pummeling the people more with burgeoning taxes.

In the wake of what the country is witnessing in the Japan disasters, there has been quite a lot of speculation about how the Philippines could cope if anything similar happened here. Government is, of course, yakking about preparedness for such events. Seriously though, given the financial state of the Philippine government, if anything close to what hit Sendai, Japan were to happen today, the country would just be a little better off than Haiti in the aftermath of its own killer quake.

In particular, if a mega-quake were to hit the coast around the capital, Manila Bay will be drained for a few moments and an equally gigantic tsunami will soon engulf the city up to the limits of Makati and Malabon-Navotas, up to Obando, Bulacan. Even Cavite will most probably see the same devastation as Minami Sanriku, with the death toll reaching the equivalent of the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami.

If we consider the state of preparedness and availability of equipment and leadership that we witnessed during the massive “Ondoy” flood, then the Philippines will be in real trouble if a magnitude 9.0 earthquake and tsunami were to hit us today. During Ondoy, government wasn’t even able to gather enough rubber boats; and we certainly know of the sorry state of our Air Force’s helicopter fleet (which used to number hundreds in Marcos’ time but is today down to two dozens).

A country that is drained of P690 billion (or $16 billion) just for debt servicing will simply never have the resources to prepare itself nor the equipment and supplies necessary for survival and reconstruction from monumental disasters such as what we have seen more frequently around the globe. Just think: The estimated cost of Japan’s devastation at $100 billion is already about the total debt of the Philippines at P4.4 trillion.

Added to this murderous debt servicing is the annual tsunami of the siphoning off of people’s resources to the Big Corporatocracy, which, on record (as Gloria Arroyo economic adviser Joey Salceda pointed out before Big Business in 2010), has swallowed down P1 trillion every year, like huge earthquake fissures chomping down huge trucks and structures. Truly, the Filipino people have long been hemorrhaging even before any epochal physical or tectonic disaster has ever hit the country.

The daily scene in Metro Manila’s streets, for one, is no different from the disaster-ravaged lives in the Sendai Shinruku area today: Children in ragtag clothes shivering in the cold nights (even if there’s no winter here); thousands of homeless in the alleys and side roads; and makeshift houses of cardboard and salvaged tin sheets dotting the landscape of blighted areas.

But that’s not all. Yet another great Philippine tsunami is also at work here — the tsunami of idiocy.

The debate over nuclear power in the Philippines has resurfaced in the aftermath of the feared Fukushima nuclear meltdown. It is right for Mark Cojuangco to back down from his proposal, as he did so already. But the anti-nuke proponents are now making hay in pushing their agenda — the promotion of solar and wind energy.

The problem here is that these baby energy methods (solar and wind) are just as idiotic as the previous insistence of the pro-nukes to borrow $1 billion for nuclear energy given the fact that the Philippines is sitting atop one of the richest hoards of geothermal energy in the world.

This information is backed by no other than the US Geological Surveys agency. Moreover, it is also a well-known fact among the world’s geothermal authorities that the Philippines is a pioneer in this field and has one of the best crops of geothermal engineers and technicians ever. So why is geothermal energy being deliberately side-stepped?

While we have to live with this disaster area called the Philippines because we were born here and grew up here, there comes a time when we need to ask: How much longer can we hang on? This, especially as the tsunami of idiocy has reached all the way to the top, with Aquino III writing off P6 billion in tax debts of an oligarchic company’s power plant in Pagbilao, Quezon, at a time when the Philippines continues to reel from the financial tsunami of the national debt and the continuous exploitation by the corporatocracy.

Maybe a real, physical, tectonic and oceanic tsunami would be a blessing — to wipe off such idiocy from the face of this country, in order to finally allow the authentic Filipino spirit to rise and reign over this land.

(Tune in to Sulo ng Pilipino, Monday, Wednesday and Friday, 6 to 7 p.m. on 1098AM; TNT with HTL, Tuesday, 8 to 9 p.m., with replay at 11 p.m., on GNN, Destiny Cable Channel 8, on “Philippine energy alternatives;” visit http://newkatipunero.blogspot.com for our select radio and GNN shows)

Monday, March 14, 2011

Learning moments

DIE HARD III
Herman Tiu Laurel
3/14/2011



Global media enhance the learning moments from last Friday’s dramatic magnitude 8.9 earthquake and tsunami in Japan. We have learned again from this latest earthquake and tsunami. First, that we have not seen the peak of the earthquake intensities our earth and Mother Nature are capable of: The 1995 Kobe 7.2-magnitude earthquake demonstrated the physical devastation to industrial infrastructure, the 2004 Indian Ocean undersea quake visually highlighted the trans-oceanic devastation in lives (240,000 killed) a tsunami can wreak on coastlines of continents thousands of miles apart, the Sichuan magnitude 8 earthquake in China in 2008 pictured for the world the impact of such seismic disasters in a mountain setting as landslides blocking rivers threaten inundations of already hard hit quake refugees. The Christchurch, New Zealand quake shows that no place on earth, even the idyllic, can be complacent. The current Sendai quake highlights the risk of mega-quakes to nuclear power plants.

The world, especially the Philippine proponents of the new nuclear power project, undoubtedly watched with great anxiety the events at the Fukushima 1 nuclear power plant. Commissioned 40 years ago and the oldest of the over 50 nuclear plants in Japan, the Light Water reactor Fukushima 1 power plant’s regular cooling system was disabled by the quake; its emergency power knocked out by the tsunami and back up battery-power cooling system didn’t suffice to cool down the reactor. While the Japanese military moved in emergency power the nuclear reactor continued overheating until explosions destroyed its concrete outer shell and broadcast all over the world. I followed the Fukushima events closely from the Japanese cable news NHK while following the analyses on RT (Russia Today, more comprehensive on Fukushima than CNN, BBC or Al Jazeera). Early evening the NHK put on screen the Japanese spokesman announcing that a total meltdown and major radiation leak had been averted.

For the past decade I have advocated the development of geothermal energy for the Philippines and crusaded against the proposal for a $1-billion new nuclear power plant. We are one of the richest in the world in geothermal energy, it makes no sense to indebt ourselves by another billion dollars and be dependent on uranium fuel monopolized by industrial countries. Our geothermal energy has proven to be one of the cheapest and most reliable for our energy needs. However, neither have I subscribed to the fear mongering of anti-nuke activists who caused our Bataan Nuclear Power Plant to be mothballed, which led to massive power shortages and billions wasted. The Fukushima power plant crisis should compel advocates of the new billion dollar nuclear power plant to pause; we hope they all join instead the campaign to push geothermal energy development to the maximum. The lesson of Fukushima for Filipinos: geothermal is the only alternative.

The Sendai, Japan earthquake and tsunami shifted the world’s focus away from Libyan crisis. Gadhafi started to turn the tide after the surprise of the armed insurrection that started in the eastern city of Benghazi. Today, it is clear that the turmoil in Libya is not the “people power” as it was in Tunisia or Egypt. The turmoil was a very well planned and deliberate attempt at a coup d’etat with armed insurrection. Western allegations of Gaddafi’s air force firing on civilian protestors were debunked by Russian satellite monitoring which showed no such flights. RT (Russia Today) also debunks alleged bombings as its resource persons said that no proof has been shown by the West that these have occurred, only CNN, BBC and Al Jazeera footage of jets flying overhead. Billowing plumes shown by Western media may really be artillery explosions. Rebel forces in expensive SUVs highlighted the “rich rebels,” as Argee Guevara noted; giving him the impression that the issue in Libya is not poverty, unlike in Tunisia and Egypt; the issue in Libyan is control of oil.

Two important developments in the Libyan situation are: 1) Hillary Clinton’s admission that Benghazi, stronghold of the rebels is the origin of many Afghan and Iraq al-Qaedas; 2) the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) and Arab League’s call for instituting a “No fly zone” over Libyan. Hillary report strengthened Gadhafi’s claims. The GCC and AL states are practically ruled by Western installed feudalistic clans where the more authentic “people power” are even today being suppressed violently. Amr Mousa, secretary general of the AL, is one of the two Western candidates to replace Mubarak. Gadhafi has criticized these Arab groupings repeatedly for their failure to oppose Western invasion of Iraq, inaction on the Palestine-Israel issues and subservience to the West. The only real independent, sovereign leader in this question of the “No fly zone” is Muammar Gadhafi, and if he survives this conspiracy against the socialism of Libya Gadhafi may just become the Arab people’s new Nasser.

In the Philippines, the people missed one learning moment when the mainstream media downplayed the P6-billion illegal tax write off Aquino III gave to Mirant and “Team Energy,” the past and present owners of the Pagbilao power plants, by Executive Order 27 of the President which does not have any legal cover for such as act. Taxation is the exclusive province of Congress. PeNoy cannot afford P 5.4-billion subsidy for millions of MRT-LRT commuters but he can afford it for one foreign power company?

(Tune to Sulo ng Pilipino, M-W-F, 6 to 7 p.m. on 1098AM; TNT with HTL, Tuesday, 8 to 9 p.m., replay at 11 p.m., on GNN, Destiny Cable Channel 8 : “ARMM Hocus PCOS?”; visit our blogs, http://newkatipunero.blogspot.com and listen to our select radio and GNN shows)