Climate Tricks 61, Hysteria and tantrums over Trump's withrawal from Paris Agreement

Finally, US President Donald Trump has officially dumped the Paris Agreement of 2015. He declared yesterday,

“We will cease honoring all non-binding agreements”, and “will stop contributing to the green climate fund”.

“The bottom line is that the Paris Accord is very unfair to the United States”.

“This agreement is less about climate and more about other countries getting a financial advantage over the United States”.

“The agreement is a massive redistribution of United States wealth to other countries.”

“Compliance with the terms of the Paris accord… could cost America as much as 2.7 million lost jobs by 2025.”

“India makes its participation contingent on receiving billions and billions of dollars in foreign aid.”

“We need all forms of available American energy or our country will be at grave risk of brown-outs and black-outs.”

“Withdrawing is in economic interest and won’t matter much to the climate.”

“We will be environmentally friendly, but we’re not going to put our businesses out of work… We’re going to grow rapidly.”

“Foreign leaders in Europe, Asia, & across the world should not have more to say w/ respect to the US economy than our own citizens.”

“It is time to exit the Paris Accord and time to pursue a new deal which protects the environment, our companies, our citizens.”
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The agreement funds a UN Climate Slush Fund underwritten by American taxpayers

• President Obama committed $3 billion to the Green Climate Fund – which is about 30 percent of the initial funding – without authorization from Congress
• With $20 trillion in debt, the U.S. taxpayers should not be paying to subsidize other countries’ energy

The deal also accomplishes LITTLE for the climate

• According to researchers at MIT, if all member nations met their obligations, the impact on the climate would be The impacts have been estimated to be likely to reduce global temperature rise by less than .2 degrees Celsius in 2100.

When I checked the US stockmarkets yesterday... Did the investors cheer Trump's decision?


I am actually an agnostic about President Trump's policies in many sectors but when it comes to climate and energy policies, I support him. Planet Earth has experienced climate change many times since it was born some 4.6 billion years ago. How can the UN and governments fight something that naturally occurs?

The higher the climate alarmism, the higher the climate extortion becomes. $100 billion/year starting 2020 on top of promised foreign aid to developing. Many governments of developed countries are angry at Trump's decision because they promised a lot, they raised expectations a lot, even if they do not have such big money or cannot squeeze more taxes from their people to give away. They only expected that US taxpayers will shoulder a big portion of such climate extortion. 

Now the annual huge parties and junkets involving thousands of "planet saviours" aka annual UNFCCC meetings will be pared down. No more $ hundreds of millions a year of US taxpayers' money to bankroll their huge parties and junkets.

As expected, lefties' and alarmists' heads blew and hysteria, angst and tantrums were flying anywhere. See a short compilation of such hysteria at WUWT,The craziest reactions to Trump pulling out of the #ParisAgreement

When I posted this subject in my fb wall, one alarmist stranger Cesar Cifra unloaded a series of personal attacks.

This Cifra is a friend of my friend and fellow UPSE alumni Romy Bernardo. I asked for data (like below, last 4,000 years global temp.) and this Cifra responded with ad hominems, what a lousy and low-life mind.

http://www.greenworldtrust.org.uk/Science/Images/Main/Warm_periods.jpg

Anyway, this Trump decision is a big blow to the climate alarmism and global ecological socialism movement. A big blow to the UN and many governments whose revised purpose of existence is to tax-tax-tax their citizens as much as possible to "fight climate change" even if CC has been happening naturally, cyclically, for the past 4.6 B years.
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See also:
Climate Tricks 58, Inability to disprove past global warming precedents, December 16, 2016
Climate Tricks 59, Trump's climate advisor to reverse US government alarmism, January 20, 2017 
Climate Tricks 60, Alarmism by the socialists and global ecological central planners, January 28, 2017

Energy 89, DOE not concurring with PH's Paris agreement, good

Some PH Senators declared that the Senate will ratify the Paris Agreement of more expensive, unstable electricity "to save the planet" even if the DOE did not concur with it. Portion of the report said, "32 of the 33 agencies having already submitted their certificates of concurrence to Malacañang."

(Phl to ratify Paris climate pact in July, Philippine Star, January 10, 2017)

The agency or department that did not concur with the PH (actually CCC) commitment to the Paris Agreement is the DOE, thanks Sec. Cusi.

“In the Cabinet, officially I have the only department that has not concurred in the ratification of the climate [pact].”

“I cannot concur on the ratification of the climate change [pact] because that can be used against DoE in approving the kind of power plants that we are going to have,” he said.

Mr. Cusi said the country’s pledge to cut carbon emissions by 70% means reaching a level that has already been met -- in 2015.

“What does it mean? Wala na tayong gagawin [We can’t do anything],” he said, referring to curtailing the country’s development."

(Energy department calls for foreign funding of global warming measures, BWorld, Dec. 12, 2016)

Many big countries like the US, Germany, UK, have not ratified their Paris commitment. Those who ratified are mostly small countries. $100 B a year of climate money transfer from developed to developing countries has become a huge extortion project that will produce huge disappointment from beggar countries. Almost ALL developed countries are already heavily indebted, they have huge public debts, don't have enough money for their own citizens. And they will give away huge money to developing countries, many of whom are led by despots and corrupt leaders, will not happen.

The degree of climate extortion varies. While the "consensus" is $100 B a year starting 2020, some UN officials and planet saviours want $500 B a year. Less flood or no flood or more floods; less snow, no snow or more snow, that money should be given to them.

As for energy prices, Meralco generation charges for Sept-Oct-Nov 2016 below. All these power plants are using coal and nat gas, except TMO, a peaking plant that uses oil. WESM prices are cheap, down to only P2.54/kWh last Nov. Which means FIT Allowance will be high so that pampered solar and wind plants at P8 to P10+ per kWh will remain "viable" through expensive electricity imposed on all energy consumers nationwide.

Sec. Cusi's energy realism should be supported against energy alarmism by other agencies and groups.

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See also:
Energy 86, Germany's RE on a wild ride, December 30, 2016 

Energy 87, Europe's rising electricity prices as more wind and solar are added, January 03, 2016 

Energy 88, Letter to ERC re petition by 3 wind companies for higher FIT, January 10, 2016

Energy 85, Trump transition team questions for US DOE

I find the 74 questions sent by Mr. Trump's transition team to the current DOE leadership as frank and highly sensible. But there are many news reports attacking the letter and questions, saying they infringe on DOE scientists' independence, etc., and they cite only a few of those 74 questions.

Reposting below those questions as posted by Willis Escenbach, The DOE vs. Ugly Reality last December 10, 2016, also Willis' comments on some of them. Good work, Willis.
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Questions for DOE

This memo, as you might expect, is replete with acronyms. “DOE” is the Department of Energy. Here are the memo questions and my comments.

1. Can you provide a list of all boards, councils, commissions, working groups, and FACAs [Federal Advisory Committees] currently active at the Department? For each, can you please provide members, meeting schedules, and authority (statutory or otherwise) under which they were created?

If I were at DOE, this first question would indeed set MY hair on fire. The easiest way to get rid of something is to show that it was not properly established … boom, it’s gone. As a businessman myself, this question shows me that the incoming people know their business, and that the first order of business is to jettison the useless lumber.

2. Can you provide a complete list of ARPA-E’s projects?

Critical information for an incoming team.

3 Can you provide a list of the Loan Program Office’s outstanding loans, including the parties responsible for paying the loan back, term of the loan, and objective of the loan?

4 Can you provide a list of applications for loans the LPO has received and the status of those applications?

5 Can you provide a full accounting of DOE liabilities associated with any loan or loan guarantee programs?

6 The Department recently announced the issuance of $4.5 billion in loan guarantees for electric vehicles (and perhaps associated infrastructure). Can you provide a status on this effort?

BWorld 92, Climate action and Asian energy realities

* This is my article in BusinessWorld last Friday.

Planet Earth is estimated by geologists and other scientists to be 4.6 billion years old. In that period, the world has experienced a series of warming-cooling-warming-cooling cycles. So global warming and climate change (CC) have been there as natural (i.e., nature-made) and cyclical events. See dozens of paleo-climate data and charts that date back to thousands, millions and billions of years ago here: https://wattsupwiththat.com/paleoclimate/.

Yet for decades now, we have been bombarded by the United Nations and other institutions and individuals who deny nature-made climate change and climate cycle, deny that global cooling can take place after a global warming phase. Owing to such denials, anthropogenic or “man-made” climate change can only be fought via man-made and UN-directed solutions like large-scale and endless subsidies to intermittent renewable sources.

Such is the dominant global belief and being formalized during the annual UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), like the Conference of Parties (COP) 22 meeting in Marrakech, Morocco from Nov. 7 to 18 this year.

The goal of the 160+ intended nationally determined contributions (INDCs) is to “hold the average global temperature rise below 2 ºC and 1.5 ºC above pre-industrial levels.” (source: UNFCCC, “Aggregate effect of the intended nationally determined contributions: an update Synthesis report by the secretariat,” May 2016)

It is another confused document from the UN.

For instance in Figure 14, p.64, the “Key climate hazards identified in the adaptation component of the communicated intended nationally determined contributions” are the following, in order of “hazards.”

Top 5: Floods, Droughts, Higher temperatures, Sea level rise, Storms.

Next 5: Decreased precipitation, Changes in precipitation timing, Vector/water-borne diseases, Increased precipitation intensity, Desertification/land degradation.

In short, the climate “hazards” for the planet according to the UN are more floods, less floods, and no flood; more rains, less rains and no rain; more storms, less storms and no storm. So regardless of the weather and climate, we should send more money to the UN and various government climate bureaucracies, give them more power, more global climate travels and meetings. And they will demonize fossil fuels like coal and oil to “save the planet.”

Such scenarios and proposals are very detached from the realities and needs of many countries, developed and developing alike.

Here are the data from the Asian Development Bank (ADB) released only two weeks ago (see table).

Almost all of the big and developed economies in the region have high reliance on coal and/or natural gas, among the most prominent fossil fuels in the planet. The Philippines in particular has low national electricity production compared to many of its neighbors in north and south east Asia, only 75 billion kWh in 2013. The country also has a very low per capita electricity production of only 690 kWh/person.

Over the past two weeks, I have attended several conferences and meetings and the subject of “expensive electricity” and “insufficient supply of power” would crop up naturally even if the events are not specifically focused on energy.

These events include the DTI’s pre-summit consultation on FTAs and manufacturing industries last Nov. 3, pre-summit consultation on innovation and competitive industries last Nov. 4. One participant said that while garments are labor-intensive, textiles are energy-intensive and they can feel the pinch of high electricity prices.

Meanwhile, during the Philippine Economic Society (PES) annual conference at Novotel Cubao last Nov. 8, the two sessions on energy economics and competition policy have also touched on these subjects including competition in power generation companies and monopolies in power transmission and distribution.

In the Agribusiness commercial legal and institutional reform (AgCLIR) roundtable at Makati Shangri-La last Nov. 11, many agri-business enterprises in the country brought up the matter of high electricity costs.

Last but not the least, during the Asian Legal Business (ALB) -- Thomson Reuters’s Competition Forum at Dusit Thani in Makati City last Nov. 15, one of the speakers, Dr. Raul Fabella of UPSE mentioned pricing under monopoly and duopoly or oligopoly, like in power distribution and generation.

The over-riding concern for the Philippines and other developing economies in Asia and the rest of the planet is how to hasten and sustain economic growth so that job creation and poverty alleviation can also be sustained. Having cheap and stable electricity is a major part in realizing this goal.

Forcing expensive and unstable energy sources to “fight climate change” as pushed by the UN and participating governments is contradictory to the above goal. After all, climate change from warming to cooling in natural cycles did happen in the past and continues to happen today.

Governments therefore, should be more realistic and not alarmist in pursuing that over-riding goal. Less ecological central planning, less energy rationing, less climate bureaucratism would be consistent with poverty alleviation.

Bienvenido S. Oplas, Jr. is the president of Minimal Government Thinkers and a Fellow of SEANET and Stratbase-ADRI.

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See also:

BWorld 82, No FIT for geothermal and other renewables, please, October 02, 2016
BWorld 84, Eliminate red tape in the Philippine energy sector, October 08, 2016
BWorld 87, Economic, fiscal and energy policies of the Duterte administration, October 17, 2016

BWorld 90, Who should set the energy mix, government or consumers?, November 12, 2016 

BWorld 91, Free trade means faster growth in manufacturing, November 14, 2016

Energy 81, Trump's climate and energy policies

Anthropogenic or "man-made" climate change (CC) hypothesis is actually 5% climate science and 95% political science. A realistic view is that CC is natural (ie, 'nature-made') and cyclical (warming-cooling-warming-cooling...). So a change in political leadership of one of the major players will significantly increase the % share of real climate science and reduce the share of political science.

Some big news reports a day after Donald Trump was elected as the next US President.

"While vowing to “cancel” the international Paris climate accord Obama championed, Trump would also rearrange domestic energy and environmental priorities. He wants to open up federal lands to oil and gas drilling and coal mining. He wants to eliminate regulations he calls needless. He would scrap proposed regulations for tighter methane controls on domestic drillers. And he wants to shrink the role of the Environmental Protection Agency to a mostly advisory one and pull back the Clean Power Plan, Obama’s proposed plan to push utilities toward lower carbon emissions." https://www.washingtonpost.com/.../trump-victory.../

"Global markets were thrown into disarray as results from the U.S. poured in. Wind turbine makers led the biggest declines in five months. Vestas Wind Systems A/S dropped 9.7 percent Wednesday after dropping 8.1 percent Tuesday when management announced a bleaker outlook for next year." http://www.bloomberg.com/.../trump-victory-seen...

"Shares in Vestas Wind Systems A/S plunged after U.S. voters unexpectedly propelled Republican nominee Donald Trump to the presidency, sparking concern that the renewable- energy industry will face future political headwinds.

The world’s biggest maker of wind turbines fell as much as 14 percent and traded 6.6 percent lower at 440.10 kroner as of 12:50 p.m. in Copenhagen. Stock of the Danish company already lost ground last week after U.S. polls tightened, bringing this year’s declines to about 10 percent." http://www.bloomberg.com/.../vestas-sinks-as-trump...

"On climate change, abandoning the Paris Treaty would be primarily of symbolic importance, since implementation has always been the biggest obstacle. China’s announcement of a 19% increase in coal capacity over the next five years demonstrates just how little committed many of the signers are. Possibly, President Trump will try to reduce federal support for renewables, but since that would cause the loss of many jobs and Congress has already extended the Production Tax Credit for five years, it’s not clear that much will be done, or at least not very quickly." http://www.forbes.com/.../what-will-president-trump.../...

  

Lord Christopher Monckton of Brenchley (UK) wrote:

1. U.S. withdrawal from the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, from the Paris climate agreement and from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

2. Termination, on environmental and humanitarian grounds, of all Federal Government payments to foreign entities in connection with climate change... https://wattsupwiththat.com/.../in-light-of-recent.../

"Many years ago, Lord Monckton predicted America would be nation to lead the world to freedom from the anti-humanist greed of the green movement. Lord Monckton’s prediction has now come to pass.

In my native Australia, in Europe, across the world, in the bleak halls of the United Nations, the climate elite were gathering for one final great push to claim the future. Their plans are now in ruins." https://wattsupwiththat.com/.../09/the-end-of-the-green-age/

From Marc Morano: “Climate sanity has been restored to the U.S. No longer do we have to hear otherwise intelligent people in charge in DC blather on about how UN treaties or EPA regulations will control the Earth’s temperature or storminess." http://www.climatedepot.com/.../trump-wins-u-s.../

"The US president-elect "cannot prevent the implementation" of the landmark Paris pact, inked in the French capital last December, said Segolene Royal, France's environment minister and outgoing head of the UN climate forum.

"As I speak, 103 countries representing 70 percent of (greenhouse gas) emissions have ratified it, and he cannot -- contrary to his assertions -- undo the Paris Agreement," she told French radio station RTL." https://www.yahoo.com/.../climate-diplomats-push-back...

Their big problem is that hundreds of those "planet saviours" from developing countries, NGOs, etc were paid for by US taxpayers, courtesy of Pres. Obama's embrace of climate alarmism movement.

"Paris accord in limbo?

As for the Paris Climate Agreement, Trump can either ignore it or withdraw from further climate talks. Since Obama bypassed congress by calling it an accord—a treaty requires approval by the Senate—Trump could repeal the executive order Obama used to implement the agreement." http://us.blastingnews.com/.../here-s-what-a-trump...

"The bigger concerns, climate researchers, strategists and activists say, is if Trump prevents the U.S. from meeting its target of reducing its greenhouse gas emissions or keeps the country from taking more ambitious climate action. The U.S. has promised to reduce emissions 26-28 percent by 2025 compared to 2005 levels, a goal many say may be within reach simply based on the market forces already pushing out older coal plants in favor of natural gas." https://insideclimatenews.org/.../marrakech-morocco... 

"SEVENTH, cancel billions in payments to U.N. climate change programs and use the money to fix America's water and environmental infrastructure."

http://www.npr.org/.../here-is-what-donald-trump-wants-to...

"Seven actions to protect American workers:

....

★ FIFTH, I will lift the restrictions on the production of $50 trillion dollars’ worth of job-producing American energy reserves, including shale, oil, natural gas and clean coal.

★ SIXTH, lift the Obama-Clinton roadblocks and allow vital energy infrastructure projects, like the Keystone Pipeline, to move forward.

★ SEVENTH, cancel billions in payments to U.N. climate change programs and use the money to fi x America’s water and environmental infrastructure."

https://assets.donaldjtrump.com/_landings/contract/O-TRU-102316-Contractv02.pdf

The climate alarmism movement with the goal of more UN, more government, more carbon taxation, more renewables cronyism, more and endless global climate junkets, more climate loans, would be reeling now because the "party might be over soon."

More real climate science, less political science. More market in science debates, less government interventions in debate.

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See also:
Energy 78, AEMO on the S. Australia blackout last Sept. 28, October 13, 2016 
Energy 79, Germany Energiewende's €520 Billion Cost By 2025, October 17, 2016 
Energy 80, Power outages in 2010, October 21, 2016 
Spencer, Watts, Gosselin and Bastardi on Clinton vs. Trump, Elections 2016, November 05, 2016

BWorld 83, Climate change, the UN and 'Clexit'

* This is my article in BusinessWorld last September 08, 2016

Last weekend, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon declared during the G20 summit in China that “climate change scepticism is over.” This statement is wrong on two counts.

First, the term climate change (CC) skepticism or “CC denial” is wrong because skeptics recognize climate change, having happened in the past and currently taking place in the present. However, skeptics only believe that climate change is natural and cyclical, or it is “nature-made” and not man-made. Thus, the appropriate term should be “anthropogenic/man-made skepticism” and not “CC skepticism.”

Second, the debate is not over and was never settled.

If the debate is “over,” then how come that the UN (UNEP, WMO, IPCC, FCCC, etc.) could not answer (a) how much of current CC was man-made and nature-made? Is it 100-0, or 90-10, or 75-25, or 51-49? And (b) what was it like before this “man-made” CC, less flood, no flood, or more flood? Less storms, no storm, or more storms?

A Web site (http://wattsupwiththat.com/paleoclimate) used Greenland surface temperature as proxy for global temperature, and galactic cosmic rays’ (GCRs) volume.

GCRs are charged particles from exploding stars that wander through the universe including our solar system. They help in the formation of cloud cover in our planet, so that more GCRs mean more clouds. The presence of GCRs in the Earth’s atmosphere is regulated by the sun. Active sun through more total solar irradiance (TSI) means less GCRs that can enter the solar system and hence, less cloud, contributing to global warming. A weaker sun means more GCRs and hence, more clouds, contributing to global cooling.

Temperature changes in Greenland are measured in temperature anomaly (or deviation from the average temperature) while changes in GCRs are measured in carbon -14 anomaly (or deviation from the average volume of carbon -14). The author has shown there is correlation between GCRs count and Greenland temperature cycle of warming-cooling.

This correlation between GCRs and global temperature has been studied and shown by a known Danish physicist Henrik Svensmark many years ago, and followed up by hundreds of other papers by other physicists and geologists worldwide.

Recently, a group of scientists from the National Space Institute at the Technical University of Denmark (DTU Space) and the Racah Institute of Physics at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem has shown the link between large solar eruptions (or their absence) to changes in Earth’s cloud cover based on over 25 years of satellite observations. They wrote,

“Earth is under constant bombardment by particles from space called galactic cosmic rays. Violent eruptions at the sun’s surface can blow these cosmic rays away from Earth for about a week. Our study has shown that when the cosmic rays are reduced in this way there is a corresponding reduction in Earth’s cloud cover. Since clouds are an important factor in controlling the temperature on Earth our results may have implications for climate change,“explains lead author on the study Jacob Svensmark of DTU. (Source: WUWT, “Svensmark publishes: Solar activity has a direct impact on Earth’s cloud cover,” Aug. 25.)

These and other scientific studies show that all the huge annual climate meetings of the UN and national governments for many years are based on questionable if not wrong hypothesis and assumption that natural factors like the Sun, GCRs, clouds, water vapor, are not the main drivers of planet Earth’s climate, that it is only human emission of carbon dioxide (CO2) that drives the “unprecedented, unequivocal” global warming. Therefore, their solution that more UN and governments’ interventions, taxation, and regulations will “fight man-made” warming and CC is wrong.

And that is how various global associations and alliances of independent-minded scientists and NGOs were formed. The most recent of which is “Clexit,” http://clexit.net/.

Inspired by “Brexit” or Britain’s exit from the huge EU bureaucracy, “Clexit” or Climate Exit from UN FCCC, the climate alarmism and energy cronyism was formed last August.

Here is part of the summary statement made by Viv Forbes, Founding Secretary of “Clexit”:

“For developing countries, the Paris Treaty would deny them the benefits of reliable low-cost hydrocarbon energy, compelling them to rely on biomass heating and costly weather-dependent and unreliable power supplies, thus prolonging and increasing their dependency on international handouts. They will soon resent being told to remain forever in an energy-deprived wind/solar/wood/bicycle economy.

“Perhaps the most insidious feature of the UN climate plan is the “Green Climate Fund.” Under this scheme, selected nations (“The rich”) are marked to pour billions of dollars into a green slush fund. The funds will then be used to bribe other countries (“developing and emerging nations”) into adopting silly green energy policies.

“Carbon dioxide does not control the climate. It is an essential plant food and more carbon dioxide will produce more plant growth and a greener globe.”

“Clexit” now comprises 158 members from 23 counties. The “Clexit” Committee is headed by Dr. Václav Klaus, an econometrician and former prime minister and president of the Czech Republic, as Hon. Patron. “Clexit” President is Christopher Monckton from UK, an expert reviewer for the IPCC’s Fifth Assessment Report on CC and author of numerous peer-reviewed papers on climate sensitivity and mitigation.

The few but deep members of “Clexit” include the following:

• Official IPCC reviewers but dissented from the final public IPCC reports prepared by political appointees.

• Meteorologists, climatologists, physicists, radiation experts, climate modelers, and long-range forecasters who show that the assumptions and forecasts of the greenhouse-driven computer models are faulty.

• Organic chemists, biologists, physicians, naturalists, graziers, foresters and farmers who know that extra carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is beneficial for Earth’s biosphere.

• Sea level history and measurement experts who can prove that there is nothing unusual or alarming about current fluctuations in sea levels.

• Geologists and geographers who have studied eons of climate history via ice cores, stratigraphy, paleontology, deep-sea drilling, historical records, glaciers, ice sheets and landscapes and can show that CC is normal and today’s climate is not extreme or unusual.

• Astrophysicists, geologists, and researchers who have studied the cycles of ice ages and the climate effects of the Milankovitch cycles in Earth’s orbit -- obliquity, eccentricity and precession, and say that the 1,000 year climate averages are trending towards the next glacial epoch of the Pleistocene Ice Age.

• Medical researchers who point to evidence that exposure to cold are up to 20 times more lethal than exposure to heat.

• Power engineers and logistics experts who say that wind and solar power cannot run modern industrial societies, modern transport, or big cities except by installing massive overcapacity and gigantic transmission webs at exorbitant costs. 100% wind/solar is a recipe for blackouts and starvation.

• Politicians, businessmen, columnists, lawyers, army officers, and bloggers who see that this political agenda will destroy the freedoms we cherish.

The formation of “Clexit” was not prompted or supported by any industry, corporation, group or lobby nor have they had any say in the association’s statements or conclusions.

The “anthropogenic CC” camp is driven by a desire for more, bigger UN, and governments. They desire more government regulations, taxation or subsidy of energy, transportation, manufacturing, down to micro household lifestyle.

A “Clexit” is a way to regain scientific objectivity, economic rationality, and protect individual and enterprise freedom from ever-expanding UN and governments, local and national.

Bienvenido S. Oplas, Jr. is the head of Minimal Government Thinkers, a SEANET Fellow and “Clexit” temporary regional director for Southeast Asia.

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See also: 

BWorld 70, Wind power firms corner billions of FIT money, July 09, 2016
BWorld 76, Solar can never power the PH and Asia, August 06. 2016 

BWorld 79, Brownouts, coal power and the electricity market, August 21, 2016 

BWorld 80, Declining share of agriculture in GDP, September 11, 2016 

BWorld 81, Property rights are human rights, September 30, 2016 

BWorld 82, No FIT for geothermal and other renewables, please, October 02, 2016

Climate Tricks 46, More alarmism --> more climate money expectation --> more disappointment

The main irony of climate alarmism is this. 

1. Top climate activists and UN officials paint very scary, very alarming scenario 100 years away,

2. People and climate activists from developing countries demand more climate money, hundreds of $ billions per year of money (ie, more alarmism, more climate extortion), 

3. Officials from rich countries, their economies already saddled in heavy public debts, resist the huge climate money blackmail,

4. More disappointment, even anger, with deadlocks.

This is repeated yearly in all the past Conference of Parties (COP) meetings by member-governments of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (FCCC).

Take this story for instance last December 04, 2015:

“PARIS, France - Angry developing nations warned Thursday that increasingly tense UN talks aimed at averting catastrophic climate change would fail unless a bitter feud over hundreds of billions of dollars was resolved.

Negotiators from 195 nations are haggling in Paris over a planned universal accord to slash greenhouse-gas emissions that trap the Sun's heat, warming Earth's surface and oceans and disrupting its delicate climate system.”

http://www.abs-cbnnews.com/world/12/04/15/un-climate-talks-turn-hostile-over-money

Some stories at the end of the COP 21 meeting, December  11, 2015:

"Britain and other rich countries face demands for $3.5 trillion (£2.3 trillion) in payments to developing nations to secure a deal in Paris to curb global warming. Developing countries have added a clause to the latest draft of the text under which they would be paid the “full costs” of meeting plans to cut emissions." http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/environment/article4637269.ece

"The night saw an ugly brawl as US Secretary Of State John Kerry threatened that developed countries would walk out of the agreement if they were asked to commit to differentiation or financial obligations. “You can take the US out of this. Take the developed world out of this. Remember, the Earth has a problem. What will you do with the problem on your own?” he told ministers from other countries during a closed-door negotiation on the second revised draft of the Paris agreement." 

ISSUES THAT HAVE DELAYED AGREEMENT

Should developed countries have a legal obligation to pay for climate change

Should developing countries, that do not have historical responsibility for emissions, also contribute to the fund

Should burden-sharing be based on current economic capabilities or a combination of historical emissions and current economic capabilities

Should the actions of developing countries be linked to the provision of finance and technology or should they be treated at par with developed countries going forward

Should there be a periodic review of delivery of finance and technology by developed world or not

Should the long-term goal be to keep global temperature rise below 1.5 degree by the turn of the century or should it be somewhere between 1.5 degree and 2 degrees

Should poor and vulnerable countries continue to hold the right to file for damages against permanent loss caused to them because of climate change.

http://www.business-standard.com/article/current-affairs/us-threatens-to-walk-out-of-paris-pact-over-financial-obligations-115121100913_1.html

"Reacting to second version of the draft, Adriano Campolina, ActionAid Chief Executive, said, "In the closing hours of the Paris talks we have been presented with a draft deal that denies the world justice.

"By including a clause for no future claim of compensation and liability, the US has ensured people suffering from the disastrous impacts of climate change will never be able to seek the justice owed to them." http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/.../50136956.cms... 

So here are some of the ironies and hypocrisy of climate alarmism movement.

Irony/hypocrisy 1: more alarmism, more extortion for climate money, more anger and disappointent.

Irony/hypocrisy 2: more hatred of fossil fuel, more use of fossil fuel with thousands of airplane flights to reach Paris from tens of thousands of climate negotiators + hangers on.

Irony/hypocrisy 3: many planet saviours hate nuclear power, then they go to France, enjoy uninterrupted electricity while France is the #1 nuke-dependent country in the planet. In 2013, 76% of its total electricity output came from nuke.

Greenpeace irony/hypocrisy very clear. They oppose nuke power, declaring, "End the nuclear age" http://www.greenpeace.org/internati.../en/campaigns/nuclear/

And they are in France, the #1 nuke-dependent country in the planet. The 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th nuke-dependent countries are Ukraine, Sweden, S. Korea and the US, 2012 data. 

Source: International Energy Agency (IEA), 2014 Key World Energy Statistics.

The planet is fine, it does not need self-proclaimed "planet saviours" and just undergoing the old and tested climate cycle of warming-cooling-warming-cooling, endlessly, with or without humans and their SUVs. 

The planet's inhabitants though need to be spared and saved from those climate charlatans whose goal in spreading climate alarmism is more government, more global ecological and energy central planning. Alarmism now simply digs its own contradictions and problems. 

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See also:

Climate Tricks 42, SDGs and Jeffrey Sachs, oil and warming planet, August 05, 2015 

Climate tricks 43, Interview at Sonshine Radio, DZAR 1026, August 08, 2015 

Climate Tricks 44, Scary predictions in 2009, August 11, 2015 

Climate Tricks 45, On "vanishing" snow and "Godzilla" El Nino, November 13, 2015 

BWorld 29, Paris COP's emission cut targets vs. energy needs, December 06, 2015

BWorld 29, Paris COP: Emission cut targets vs. energy needs

* This is my article in BusinessWorld last November 27, 2015.

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To fight poverty and unemployment, increased electricity supply at cheaper rates should be made available in the country, spurring growth, which creates more jobs and entrepreneurial opportunities.

High poverty incidence and darkness kill people. They are more exposed to dangerous informal sector work, criminals and robbers lurking in dark corners, more prone to road accidents due to dimly-lit streets roads, more prone to fires due to frequent use of candles.

Thus, the 21st Conference of the Parties (COP) in Paris this coming Nov. 30 to Dec. 11 should not be used to hamper or even kill cheaper and reliable electricity sources in the future.

The Philippines’ Climate Change Commission (CCC) however, sent an ambitious plan to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change last October. It said:

“The Philippines intends to undertake GHG (greenhouse gas; CO2) emissions reduction of about 70% by 2030 relative to its [business as usual] scenario of 2000-2030. Reduction of CO2 emissions will come from energy, transport, waste, forestry and industry sectors. The mitigation contribution is conditioned on the extent of financial resources, including technology development & transfer, and capacity building, that will be made available to the Philippines.”

What is the reference period, 70% of what by 2030?

In an Oct. 2 BusinessWorld report, “Philippines makes conditional offer to cut emissions by 70%,” it said:

“If fully implemented, the Philippines’ carbon emissions should drop 70 percent by 2030 from 2000 levels, said Lucille Sering, head of the country’s Climate Change Commission.”

70% drop from 2000 levels. Wow.

And in another report, CCC Deputy and Assistant Secretary Joyceline A. Goco said that their initial estimates showed that the Philippines would need around $12 billion to $15 billion in support to achieve its intended nationally determined contributions.

The basis for such ambitious and unrealistic commitment rests on questionable, if not wrong scientific data. There was global warming in the past century coinciding with the rise in CO2 emission from human activities and modernization, true. But there was also global warming during the Medieval Warm Period and the Roman Warm Period, when there was not even bicycles during that time.

The current big El Niño that affects the Philippines and other countries in the tropics is true, we can expect drought conditions in the dry months of December-May.

But to say that it is the “Godzilla” of El Niño, the biggest and warmest of all time as reported in many papers, is not true. The big El Niño in 1997-98 was more severe than the current one. (See chart)

Meanwhile, following are the numbers for electricity production in big Asian economies. Not included in the list are Asian economies with low electricity consumption, or those which consume less than 30 billion kilowatt-hours (kWh) like Afghanistan, Bhutan, Brunei, Cambodia, Laos, Mongolia, Myanmar, Nepal, and Sri Lanka.

The sources and distribution of such electricity output per country is also given. The table is divided into two parts: those countries which have 90% or more of their total electricity production coming from fossil fuel sources, and those below 90%. (See Table 1) 

Our four more developed Asian neighbors -- Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore and Hong Kong -- have fossil fuel dependence of 92% to 100%. They can attract more manufacturing and other industrial players; more hotels, financial institutions and malls because they have stable, reliable and more affordable electricity supply. And they create more high value jobs to their economies, and that partly explains why their people have generally escaped from poverty and high unemployment.

For other Asian countries with less than 90% dependence on fossil fuels, their big hydro power and nuclear power have filled up the gap. For instance, production of nuclear power in million tons oil equivalent (mtoe) in 2012 were as follows: S. Korea with 34 mtoe, China with 22 mtoe, Taiwan with 9 mtoe, India with 7 mtoe.

Singapore with only 5.5 million population consumed almost 47 billion kWh; Hong Kong with only 7.3 million people consumed almost 39 billion kWh; Malaysia with only 30 million people consumed 134 million kWh. In contrast, the Philippines with 101 million population consumed only 73 million kwh or nearly one-half that of Malaysia’s consumption when the Philippine population is more than three times that of Malaysia.

There is a need to further expand energy production in the Philippines, make the supply of electricity more abundant and the price to go down and more stable.

Today is a good opportunity to expand power generation capacity from conventional sources -- coal, liquefied natural gas and oil (West Texas Intermediate) and coal. Their prices have been declining since the past few years. (See Table 2) 

More electricity supply at cheaper prices is a must to sustain the fast growth of the Philippine economy. This is more evident in many industries that are electricity-intensive like manufacturing, hotels and business process outsourcing that are open almost 24/7.

It is doubtful that the CCC’s target of 70% cut in carbon emission by 2030, 70% from 2000 level, has any realistic basis, even if the targeted $15 billion of climate money is given to the country. It seems that the reduced emission target was taken with little considerations for the electricity needs of the country.

Bienvenido S. Oplas, Jr. is the head of Minimal Government Thinkers, Inc. and a Fellow of the South East Asia Network for Development (SEANET).

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See also:
BWorld 25, Feed in tariff means expensive electricity, November 14, 2015 
BWorld 26, IPRI 2015 in APEC economies, November 19, 2015 

BWorld 27, The rich getting richer, the poor getting middle class, November 21, 2015

BWorld 28, Economic freedom in Asia, November 28, 2015

Energy 48, US energy subsidies and global energy consumption, November 06, 2015

Energy 49, Malaysia's and Singapore's bright nights and nat gas power, November 21, 2015

From Kyotoism to Paris climatism

On May 31, 2011, I made these observations:

Kyotoism, the philosophy that the Kyoto Protocol (KP) of binding carbon emission reduction by many rich and industrialized countries will help "save the planet", is dying. KP was adopted in 1997 in Kyoto, Japan, and became binding by 2005. It will expire by the end of 2012. Thus, the rush by the UN and many governments to have a new binding agreement that will supplant KP by 2013.

The point organization to prolong climate alarmism -- more environmental regulations, more carbon and energy taxation, more climate bureaucracies and frequent global climate meetings/junkets, more climate loans -- is the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UN FCCC). Thus, there have been huge global climate meetings called the Conference of Parties (COP) in the past, particularly the COP 15 in Copenhagen, Denmark in December 2009, then the COP 16 in Cancun, Mexico in December 2010. The next COP meeting will be in Durban, South Africa, this coming December 2011.

Here's the latest update: four countries, the US government (original non-signatory to KP) will be joined by the governments of Japan, Russia and Canada that will not sign any KP part 2. The reason is that "the Kyoto format did not require developing countries, including China, the world's No. 1 carbon emitter, to make targeted emission cuts."

So you have the world's biggest carbon emitters -- China and the US, plus Japan, Russia, Canada -- not signing another round of "Earth-saving" deep emission reductions. The UN officials and bureaucrats particularly involved in climate alarmism -- IPCC, FCCC, UNEP, WMO -- would be panicking by now. If many rich country governments are not convinced of the "urgent necessity" to save the planet, and these same countries have serious fiscal problems like huge public debt, the next move could be the reduction of UN funding, and that might affect all their globe-trotting lifestyle to scare the world.

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/environment/climate-change/kyoto-deal-loses-four-big-nations-20110528-1f9dk.html#ixzz1NqwXnC00

This illustration possibly explains why public belief in AGW is flatlining or may be declining. When there is more drought, less rain, less snow, they called it "man-made warming". When there is more rain, more snow, they still call it "man-made warming."

Meanwhile, this UN Press Release in 2008 was cool, or hotly kidding. It quoted the head of the UN General Assembly that they projected 50 to 200 climate emigrants or refugees by 2010. Where are those millions of climate migrants/refugees last year?

http://www.un.org/press/en/2008/ga10725.doc.htm

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Update:
Next month, thousands of climate officials, negotiators and planet saviours will burn tons of petroleum flying from anywhere in the planet to Paris, France, for the UN FCCC meeting, November 30 - December 11. They will mainly talk about climate money, who should give how many billions of dollars to whom, to "save the planet."

One big problem for the planet saviours: some of them will not accept billions of dollars a year. They want trillions of dollars a year.

The climate alarmism movement  has successfully dug its own hole and graveyard of disappointment, angst and anger. As the movement paints more scary scenarios, they further raise the cost of preventing that scary and fictional scenario. Now the  cost of climate extortion keeps rising.
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See also:

Climate tricks 43, Interview at Sonshine Radio, DZAR 1026, August 08, 2015 

Climate Tricks 44, Scary predictions in 2009, August 11, 2015 

TIME mag. on global warming (3), October 04, 2015 

Global warming hits the Arctic, October 11, 2015

Demography 23: The UN, Depopulation and Climate

This is one more proof that the UN is the springboard of Malthusian eco-socialism and global central planning. This lady is the Exec. Secretary of the UN FCCC, the club of governments to "save the planet." Story from Jews News, April 27, 2915.

For the UN, more people = more energy demand = more CO2 emission = more "man-made" climate change. Therefore, to "fight CC", the planet should have less CO2 emission, less power plants (mostly from fossil fuels), less people. Ang galing ano.

One more reason why the UN should shrink. Its top bureaucracy are becoming explicit eco-socialists.

When the UN IPCC was established in the 80s or earlier, it was meant as an activist body with an implicit goal of expanding governments and the UN -- via more environmental and energy regulations. But unlike before, the UN climate officials were less explicit in their advocacy for eco socialism. Now they are more explicit.

Here in the ASEAN, India, etc., people are optimistic about our "young and big population", more producers and consumers, more entrepreneurs and workers. At the other side of the globe, in one building in NYC, international bureaucrats there are plotting how to shrink Asian and other population. They are thinking of de-industrialization and energy poverty, lower standards of living and lower life expectancy, then global population will decline.

These three stories are from WUWT. 

1. Overpopulation: The Fallacy...

"Global warming and climate change are simply the emotional threats used to confront overpopulation. The problem is the world is not overpopulated.

The insanity of it all is that none of what they think matters because there is no overpopulation, no shortage of resources or any connection between CO2 and climate change. It is a story of science without evidence or at best-concocted evidence from Malthus through the COR to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)."

(2) Riddley: IPCC and OECD...

"TCOR and later UNEP’s Agenda 21 adopted and expanded the Malthusian idea of overpopulation to all resources making it the central tenet of all their politics and policies. The IPCC was set up to assign the blame of global warming and latterly climate change on human produced CO2 from an industrialized expanding population. They both developed from false assumptions, used manipulated data and science, which they combined into computer models whose projections were, not surprisingly, wrong. The result is the fallacy of global warming due to human CO2 is a subset built on the fallacy of overpopulation."

(3) Opinion: CO2 is the demon because...

"These IPCC and OECD reports are telling us clear as a bell that we cannot ruin the climate with carbon dioxide unless we get a lot more numerous and richer. And they are also telling us that if we get an awful lot richer, we are likely to have invented the technologies to adapt, and to reduce our emissions, so we are then less likely to ruin the planet. Go figure."

The successor to  Malthus negativism is Dr. Paul Ehrlich. Two short articles from Steven Goddard, Real Science.

I think the Earth's resources are infinite -- minerals, fossil fuels like oil and gas, coal, geothermal, etc. The Earth's core keeps regenerating itself, pushing up hot gases and molten rocks upwards, mineralizing otherwise "ordinary" rocks and soil, forever. New islands are created, the whole PH archipelago is a product of volcanic and EQ movements, our lands rose from under the sea. Centuries from now, we'll have the Bentham Rise/Plateau, possibly same size as Luzon. Rising consistently from under the sea. But by then, it can be another country.
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See also:
Demography 19: Top 30 Countries in Population by 2050, August 05, 2013 
Demography 20: Presentation at ILS, DOLE, on Population and Growth, November 19, 2013 
Demography 21: China Overtaking the US' GDP Size in 2014?, May 02, 2014 
Demography 22: Japan's Depopulation and Migration Policy, May 11, 2014 
Climate Tricks 38: Arrest Climate Change Deniers, April 11, 2015