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Saturday, December 26, 2020

Energy 137, Piki Lopez's climate and energy alarmism

My column this week in BusinessWorld,  https://www.bworldonline.com/electricity-supply-demand-and-climate/ has partially mentioned and criticized the paper and speech of Mr. Piki Lopez. I will expand that in this blog post, hard data do not conform with some of his alarmist narratives.
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"Forging collaborative pathways for a decarbonized and regenerative future — 2"
By Federico "Piki" R. Lopez,  Chair and CEO, First Philippine Holdings Corporation
December 7, 2020 | 6:09 pm

https://www.bworldonline.com/forging-collaborative-pathways-for-a-decarbonized-and-regenerative-future-2/

1. "Today our way of life has set us on a trajectory of 3 to 4 degrees C of warming by 2100. This current path will clearly be catastrophic and turn the Earth into an unlivable and socially disrupted planet way before then and surely within the lifetimes of our children."

--> Climate change is about natural warming-cooling cycle, purely cyclical and natural, with or without humans and their SUVs, coal, oil or nuke power plants. And in paleoclimate data, global temps do not rise or decline 3 to 4 C within decades.

a. Global temperature the past 5,000 years,
https://i2.wp.com/www.greenworldtrust.org.uk/Science/Images/Main/Warm_periods.jpg


b. Global temperature and CO2 concentration in the atmosphere, last 400,000 years,
https://i0.wp.com/www.appinsys.com/globalwarming/GW_Part1_PreHistoricalRecord_files/image023.gif


2. "This year we saw record high temperatures in both the Antarctic and the Arctic...(For perspective: the Greenland ice sheet in the Arctic has 7.3 meters worth of sea level rise in them; Antarctica, the world’s ice locker, has 58 meters worth of potential sea level rise built in.)"

--> "record 
high temperatures in both the Antarctic and the Arctic", where did he get that? Less ice in the Arctic compensated by more ice in Antarctica this decade, they have their own natural ice-melt cycle there yearly. Sea level rise when the ice there melt-grow yearly. Nothing, nada to worry from emotional alarmism.

a. Arctic ice extent, 1980s to 2020. Data as of Nov. 15, 2020.


b. Antarctica, 


https://wattsupwiththat.com/reference-pages/sea-ice-page/

3. "In October 2018, the UN IPCC was clamoring for us to cut CO2 emissions in half by 2030, and take it all the way down to Net Zero by 2050 if we want to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees C by 2100. That’s roughly a 6-7% annual reduction in carbon emissions till 2050. Just for perspective, this year travel and transport reductions and the economic slowdown from COVID-19 is expected to reduce carbon emissions by 7-8%. In other words, we need a COVID-scale crisis every year till 2050 just to keep the planet livable!"

--> Cut big carbon emissions where, from China and India? As of 2016, this is how it looked in some countries alone. Coal plants in the US, Australia, Indonesia, Malaysia, Taiwan, Vietnam not included in the illustration.

https://wattsupwiththat.com/2017/07/03/forget-paris-1600-new-coal-power-plants-built-around-the-world/

And why would anyone ever say that "
we need a COVID-scale crisis every year till 2050 just to keep the planet livable!" Such a very irresponsible statement. We "need" these national and global lockdown dictatorship? For what, to prevent less flood and more flood, less storms and more storms, less rats and more rats?

4. "How long can even the strongest, most resilient communities withstand this relentless and repeated pounding year after year if they can lose everything they have at least 20 times a year?"

--> Those average 20 typhoons a year in the PH that enter the PH area of responsibility (PAR), more than half make actual landfall, the others just enter then exit in the ocean and sea within PAR. 

So are the global tropical storms getting plentier, more frequent than in the past? Far out.


How about cyclone energy, are they getting stronger, more virulent than in the past? Far out.

http://climatlas.com/tropical/

5. "Our way of life and patterns of production and mass consumption now use 1.75 Earths annually. That’s 75% more than the Earth can replenish each year.... All the main life support systems of our planet, from our oceans, forests, air, soils, biodiversity, and freshwater resources are all in decline."

--> "all life support in decline", again where did he get this? From a trash can? The planet's life support for humanity is never diminished, never reduced, never in decline. Otherwise, modernity has stopped many years and decades ago. 

https://www.visualcapitalist.com/2000-years-economic-history-one-chart/

It's unfortunate that many famous businesspeople like Mr. Lopez, even the Ayalas, WEF guys can morph into gloom-doom, horror story tellers.

If people are more honest and objective, more factual and not emotional, they will just laugh at all the climate horror alarm narratives. And if they should be consistent in their anti-fossil fuel agenda, then they must demonize not only coal and oil but also natgas. Which in the first place is wrong because humanity has developed and modernized via cheap, abundant, reliable fossil fuel energy.
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