BWorld 270, Debating with Mr. RE

* This is my article in BusinessWorld last November 27, 2018.

In a paper, “Setting up the debate with Mr. Coal,” published in BusinessWorld yesterday, Mr. RE and climate scam Eddie O’Connor of wind-solar lobby made new wild claims but did not answer the points I made against his previous paper.

In my paper, “Corrupted science to justify renewables cronyism” in BusinessWorld last Oct. 11, I made these points that the RE/climate scam did not respond to:

(1) “Earth’s climate history is one of natural warming-cooling cycles since the planet was born some 4.6 billion years ago.” I showed there a chart, ”450 Million Years of Unrelatedness between Atmospheric CO2 and Temperature.”

In his paper yesterday, O’Connor showed a chart of ocean heat content the past 50+ years. Sorry but planet Earth was not born in the ’60s as starting point of temperature measurement. Here is another chart showing warming-cooling cycle (see Figure 1).

(2) “Solar price of P9/kWh at P54/US$ is not 2.9 cents but 17 cents/kWh. Wind price of P8.5/kWh at P54/$ is not 4.1 cents but 16 cents/kWh.”

In his paper yesterday, Mr. O’Connor made other wild and fake claims:

(1) “Of course, the developers of wind and solar agree to abolish mandatory dispatch.”

This is lie #1. Mandatory dispatch was put in the RE law of 2008 (RA 9513) because it was demanded by the solar-wind developers. Cost upon dispatch includes the total price (capex and opex; WESM price + FIT-All) and not just the marginal price. In 2018, the total price of solar is P9+/kWh, the total price of wind is P8.50/kWh, data from ERC.

(2) “Regarding abolishing the feed-in-tariff. It is not hard to agree to this, as it is already abolished.”

Lie #2. FIT is still there, not abolished. The FIT-Allowance in our monthly electricity bill has been rising from 4 centavos/kWh in 2015 to 12.40 in 2016, 18.30 in 2017, and 25.32 centavos /kWh since June 2018 billing.

(3) “I am alarmed, indeed devastated by the disappearance of some 60% of species by 2020 due to global warming.”

Lie #3. In a paper published in Nature this year, Steinbauer and 52 other scientist-co-authors reported “a continent-wide acceleration in the rate of increase in plant species richness, with five times as much species enrichment between 2007 and 2016 as fifty years ago, between 1957 and 1966… consistent across all [continental regions], with no single region showing the opposite pattern.” (See Figure 2.)

(4) “I am afraid that Mr. Oplas is a latter day flat earther for denying climate science.”

Lie #4. I believe in climate change and global warming, they are true, they are happening. What I do not believe is that they are “man-made.” On the contrary, the climate/RE scam and square-earther is the big denier: (a) deny that global warming has many precedents and not ‘unprecedented’; (b) deny that climate change is natural and cyclical; (c) deny that global cooling can happen after global warming phase; (d) deny that natural factors — the Sun, galactic cosmic rays, water vapour, clouds, geological degassing, AMO/PDO in the ocean, etc. — are big factors for climate change.

Finally, square-earthers (e) deny that coal remains a big if not biggest source of electricity for many Asia-Pacific economies (see Figure 3).

Square-earthers produce lots of lies and fake stories to fool the public so that the people will keep subsidizing their expensive, intermittent solar-wind energy.

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See also: 
BWorld 267, Poverty data vs banking, mobile phones and Internet access, November 23, 2018 

BWorld 268, Market-oriented reforms in the Senate, November 24, 2018 

BWorld 269, IPR, private property and prosperity, November 27, 2018 

Energy 118, Climate lies to justify RE subsidies, December 04, 2018