Top 100 Corp. Taxpayers, 2009

One way of looking at the biggest corporations in the country is the list of the biggest corporate taxpayers.

Below are the top 100 for 2009, the latest data available. Local telecomm giants Smart and Globe top the list. Units in P Million.



1. SMART COMMUNICATIONS INC., 10,196.06
2. GLOBE TELECOM, INC., 5,495.36



3. CHEVRON MALAMPAYA LLC, 4,190.84
4. SAN MIGUEL BREWERY INC., 3,578.81
5. NESTLE PHILIPPINES INC., 3,549.02
6. PLDT COMMUNICATIONS AND ENERGY VENTURES, INC., 3,528.25
7. SHELL PHILIPPINES EXPLORATION, B.V., 3,237.25
8. MANILA ELECTRIC COMPANY, 2,794.39
9. FORTUNE TOBACCO CORPORATION, 1,879.59
10. SM PRIME HOLDINGS INC., 1,815.18

11. HOME DEVELOPMENT MUTUAL FUND, 1,744.91
12. TEAM SUAL CORPORATION, 1,598-25
13. FIRST GAS POWER CORPORATION, 1,512.80
14. HOLCIM PHILIPPINES, INC., 1,437.65
15. ENERGY DEVELOPMENT EDC CORPORATION, 1,427.76
16. METRO RAIL TRANSIT CORPORATION, 1,356.51
17. QUEZON POWER (PHILIPPINES), LIMITED CO., 1,344.64
18. CE CASECNAN WATER AND ENERGY COMPANY, INC., 1,082.63
19. MANILA WATER COMPANY, INC., 1,047.94
20. PHILIP MORRIS PHILS MANUFACTURING INC., 1,008.74

21. GMA NETWORK INC., 1,007.55
22. PNOC EXPLORATION CORPORATION, 953.03
23. MONDE NISSIN CORPORATION, 904.60
24. MEAD JOHNSON NUTRITION PHILIPPINES, INC., 899.97
25. WYETH PHILIPPINES INC., 878.06
26. UNILEVER PHILIPPINES,INC., 836.50
27. SAN MIGUEL FOODS INC., 807.42
28. SHELL PHILIPPINES LLC, 755.52
29. SUPERVALUE, INC., 742.03
30. UNITED LABORATORIES, INC., 675.86

31. FGP CORPORATION, 657.14
32. ROBINSONS LAND CORPORATION, 645.38
33. PHILIPPINE DEPOSIT INSURANCE CORPORATION, 633.58
34. THE COCA-COLA EXPORT CORPORATION, 599.67
35. INTERNATIONAL CONTAINER TERMINAL SERVICES INC., 598.55
36. KEPCO PHILIPPINES CORPORATION, 596.94
37. REPUBLIC CEMENT CORPORATION, 554.13
38. HANJIN HEAVY INDUSTRIES AND CONSTRUCTION CO., LTD., 553.06
39. CBK POWER COMPANY LIMITED, 502.50
40. MERCURY DRUG CORPORATION, 495.56

41. THE HONGKONG AND SHANGHAI BANKING CORPORATION, 485.67
42. COLGATE PALMOLIVE PHILIPPINES INC., 475.22
43. MEGAWORLD CORPORATION, 471.91
44. KEPCO ILIJAN CORPORATION, 471.63
45. PHILIPPINE LONG DISTANCE TELEPHONE COMPANY, 468.28
46. AVON COSMETICS INC., 464.60
47. CHEVRON GEOTHERMAL PHILIPPINES HOLDINGS, INC., 459.37
48. TOYOTA MOTOR PHILS CORPORATION, 458.30
49. PHILEX MINING CORPORATION, 455.31
50. ABS-CBN CORPORATION, 425.20

51. SIEMENS POWER OPERATIONS INC., 423.06
52. ASIAN TERMINALS INC., 421.76
53. MANILA INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT AUTHORITY, 421.47
54. PHILIPPINE PORTS AUTHORITY, 411.90
55. MONSANTO PHILIPPINES, INC., 384.01
56. METROBANK CARD CORPORATION, 376.05
57. AYALA LAND INC., 371.70
58. ALASKA MILK CORPORATION, 361.56
59. MONDE M.Y. SAN CORPORATION, 355.47
60. KRAFT FOODS (PHILIPPINES) INC., 343.75

61. DAVAO LIGHT AND POWER CO., INC., 338.62
62. SUPER SHOPPING MARKET, INC. 331,828,773.00
63. BAUANG PRIVATE POWER CORPORATION, 329.94
64. PHIL RECLAMATION AUTHORITY (FORMLY: PEA), 314.22
65. SAN MIGUEL CORPORATION, 312.04
66. CITIBANK, N.A., 299.46
67. PEPSI-COLA PRODUCTS PHILIPPINES INC., 297.66
68. TAIHEIYO CEMENT PHILIPPINES, INC., 296.59
69. DM CONSUNJI INC., 283.33
70. ZUELLIG PHARMA CORPORATION, 279.56

71. BANCO DE ORO UNIBANK, INC., 273.35
72. CATHAY PACIFIC AIRWAYS LTD, 272.86
73. COCA COLA BOTTLERS PHILIPPINES INC., 271.87
74. CARGILL PHILIPPINES, INC., 270.18
75. CITI CORP FINANCIAL SVCS. & INSCE BRKGE PHILS. INC., 263.15
76. THERMA LUZON, INC., 255.80
77. CHEVRON PHILIPPINES INC., 249.11
78. EMPERADOR DISTILLERS, INC., 244.65
79. JOLLIBEE FOODS CORPORATION, 242.65
80. FIRST ASIA REALTY DEVELOPMENT CORPORATION, 240.33

81. DMCI PROJECT DEVELOPERS INC., 239.56
82. MITSUBISHI MOTORS PHILS CORPORATION, 239.25
83. PHILIPPINE GAMING MANAGEMENT CORPORATION, 237.50
84. BANK OF THE PHILIPPINE ISLANDS, 234.91
85. TANDUAY DISTILLERS INC., 233.07
86. METROPOLITAN BANK AND TRUST COMPANY, 232.51
87. TEAM ENERGY CORPORATION, 227.98
88. FORT BONIFACIO DEVELOPMENT CORPORATION, 224.11
89. YAKULT PHILS INC., 220.84
90. PEPSI COLA FAR EAST TRADE DEVELOPMENT COMPANY, 218.86

91. PROCTER AND GAMBLE DISTRIBUTING PHILIPPINES, INC., 217.93
92. RIO TUBA NICKEL MINING CORPORATION, 215.87
93. AMERICAN POWER CONVERSION CORPORATION, 213.12
94. APO CEMENT CORPORATION, 210.20
95. GOLDEN ARCHES DEVELOPMENT CORPORATION, 20611
96. BANK OF MAKATI A RURAL BANK, INC., 205.56
97. FILINVEST LAND INC., 205.56
98. UNIVERSAL STOREFRONT SERVICES CORPORATION, 203.53
99. ROCKWELL LAND CORPORATION, 200.74
100. VISAYAN ELECTRIC CO., INC., 194.75

source: Bureau of Internal Revenue, www.bir.gov.ph

Weekend fun 4: IPCC and Pachauri cartoons

Al Gore and Rajendra Pachauri, the IPCC Chairman, are the two most important global personalities in the anthropogenic global warming (AGW) or simply "man-made warming" drama. And not surprisingly, not one of them is a scientist. Al Gore is a politician, Pachauri is an economist from India. Yeah, Pachy is right, they were several times bigger than Madoff.

The pictures and cartoons here are taken from various sources in the web like cartoonstock.com, not one of which I originally created.

Three years ago, December 10, 2007, Al Gore and the IPCC, represented by Pachauri, were the recipients of the Nobel Peace Prize (NPP) award for their effort to "save the planet". The IPCC 4th Assessment Report (AR 4) was released in November 2007 or a month before the NPP awarding. Note also that the IPCC Summary for Policy Makers (SPM) was released in February 2007. The summary and recommendations were released 9 months ahead of the main report! The (political) conclusions were released ahead of the scientific study! That's indeed more political science than climate science.

Thus, this cartoon describes the political science nature of AR4, calling it "scrap book 4". Of course, it's not exactly a "scrap book". It's more of a political science book with climate data and projections. AR 4 has reports on 3 working groups (WGs). WG1 is about the physical science of AGW. WGs 2 and 3 are about mitigation and adaptation. So two-third of AR4 is about policies and politics.

Here, Pachy is either overseeing a "man-made warming" project. Or "skeptical" scientists are melting the IPCC man-made warming drama and hypothesis. These cartoonists really have good sense of humor.

Another cartoon, depicting IPCC and Pachy intolerance to skeptical reports and scientists who question the AGW hypothesis. The term "skeptics" refer only to non belief that past warming of the planet was due to humanity's carbon emission. Skeptical scientists and researchers admit that there was indeed global warming that happened in the past century, the same way that global cooling also happened about two centuries ago.

This is about the "Himalayangate" scandal. IPCC AR4 has one section there predicting that the glacier in the Himalayas -- where Mt. Everest is -- will melt totally by 2035. It was later discovered that the source of that claim is not from any peer-reviewed study or journal paper, but from a World Wildlife Fund (WWF) report. WWF is not a scientific body, it is an activist and advocacy NGO. When it was discovered prior to the Copenhagen COP 15 meeting last year, Pachauri denied that it was a scandal and stood by the AR4 report. It was only a few months after the Copenhagen meeting that Pachy admitted the mistake.

The "Himalayangate" scandal was only one of about 129 other "gates" scandals in AR4. See them here, http://notrickszone.com/2010/12/07/climate-science-scandals-list-of-gates-balloons-to-129/. Hence, this cartoon of the IPCC being riddled with bullets and scandals.

Pachy the top climate bureaucrat in the world, has one intellectual output. He has written a book, "Return to Almora" -- "a 'smutty' romance novel, laced with steamy sex, lots of sex. Oh, and Shirley MacLaine." See the discussion about his book, http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/01/30/ipcc-now-in-bizzaroland-pachauri-releases-smutty-romance-novel/.

Finally, the IPCC and the recently-concluded COP 16 meeting in Cancun, Mexico. As endless global meetings and negotiations for more and deeper carbon emission cuts to "save the planet" go nowhere, and as severe cold hammer many countries in the Northern Hemisphere, even reaching Cancun with record December lows, the cartoon depicts an apologetic IPCC team. Of course it's a joke. IPCC team do not and will not apologize. They even threatened and publicly announced that the next report, AR 5 that will come out in 3 to 4 years, will be more alarmist in its findings of "accelerated warming". Again, the conclusions have been made 3 to 4 years ahead of the actual report.

Happy weekend.

China Watch 9: Liu Xiaobo, Human Rights and the NPA

Today is International Human Rights Day. Every December 10 every year is human rights day. And on this day, two significant events happened in the Philippines.

One is that the President has ordered the release of the health workers who have been detained for nearly a year now, called the "Morong 43". The Philippine military hauled them on charges of being members of the Communist Party of the Philippines - New People's Army (CPP-NPA).

The CPP-NPA were receiving some indirect assistance from the China communist government in the 70s under the leadership of Mao Tse Tung. The founder of the CPP, Joma Sison, was a hard-core Maoist. He patterned the CPP revolution on three communist thinkers, Marx-Lenin-Mao. The kind of revolution they want to pursue is mainly Maoist -- use of farmers, rural workers, to "encircle the cities" in an armed revolt and capture state power.

The second important event today is the decision of President Aquino to join other countries who will boycott the awarding ceremony of the Nobel Peace Prize awards in Oslo, Norway, today.

This year's awardee is Liu Xiaobo, a Chinese dissident who was among the leaders of the Tiananmen rebellion in 1989 that resulted in the Tiananmen massacre. Liu was imprisoned then, got out, imprisoned again on other charges later, got out. And about a year ago, he was sentenced to 11 years of imprisonment.

China's government violently opposed the decision of the Nobel Peace prize committee, so it launched a diplomatic offensive and pressured some countries not to participate in the awarding of the prize.

I think the China government simply over-reacted, its OA. Nobel is a private foundation, not a government or a multilateral institution. If it was the UN, or any state government around the world that gives that Peace award, the China government has every reason to react negatively diplomatically.

So now, what if Rotary International, or Mason International, or the International Red Cross, or Transparency International, or any other private and international NGO will give a similar award on peace and non-violence, to any other Chinese dissident, past or present, the China government will again launch another negative diplomatic assault?

It is true that President Aquino and the Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) were so embarrassed by the hostage-taking and death of many HK-Chinese hostages a few months ago. China reacted angrily with the massacre inside the tourist bus. So P.Noy does not want China to be angry again, and this should be the main reason why the Philippine government will boycott the Nobel Peace Prize awarding ceremony. In this case, the PNoy government danced along with the over-reaction of the China government.

Back to the NPA. The National Democratic Front (NDF), the chief negotiator in behalf of the CPP-NPA, made a mistake earlier of making the "freedom of Morong 43" as their no. 1 precondition before they will resume peace talks with the Philippine government. It's like implying, "they're our buddies, set them free first, then we can talk". The detained health workers would not want the public to think that way.

Lesson: Big government, like the China communist government, can be evil. The right to dissent, the right to self-expression, is part of human liberties. So long as words do not call for violence, like calling for an armed overthrow of a government, critique of corrupt and dictatorial governnts are rightful privileges of people in a free society.

The same way, the CPP-NPA-NDF dream of estabilishing socialism and a socialist government in the Philippines, their main strategy of armed struggle and violent overthrow of the Philippine government, is evil. Many civilians, including health workers like the Morong 43, have been trapped and hostaged in the endless but hopeless goal of establishing a socialist government via armed revolution,

If they want health socialism, education socialism, housing socialism, pension socialism,management socialism, etc., then they should work in the open, non-armed, battle for ideas. They should bring books and blogs, not armalite and grenades.

The Big Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) and their corruption is directly proportional to the corruption and idiocy of the CPP-NPA. If the AFP is not heavily corrupt along with the politicians, the communist rebellion would have ended a long time ago.

It is important that NGOs should remain independent -- independent from government, independent from politicians, independent from communist rebels, independent from other bodies that rely on coercion for their continued existence. That way, they will not be indebted to those politicians, government agencies, and can praise or criticize when it is due.

* See also: China Watch 8: World's Largest Economies in 2010, August 16, 2010

What's wrong with Economics, part 3

A friend from one of my discussion ygroups commented to my previous article, What's wrong with Economics, part 2.

His comments were "technicolorful" and contains rather convoluted imagery of my earlier arguments. Below are his major critique of my paper, in italics. The --> are my reply to him.

1. Nonoy's textbook definition is fundamentally flawed on two fronts. His definition only considers “ALLOCATION” or distribution of resources, when, in fact, economics is more about “PRODUCTION.” In fact, we measure growth of the economy in terms of gross domestic PRODUCT (GDP) or gross national PRODUCT.”

--> First of all, the definition "Economics is the study of proper allocation of limited resources given limited wants" is NEVER my own definition. He is right, it is textbook definition. By Paul Samuelson, by Gerry Sicat, by Dornbusch and Fischer, by Todaro, who else? I think many of them book authors accepted that brief, simple and beautiful definition of Economics.

--> Economics is also about production, and about consumption. That is why I put a flowchart of production-consumption in the economy in that article. But whether it is production or consumption, it is the allocation that is more important.

Right now, I have one hour of free time before I go home. What will I do with this one hour -- write a paper on voodoo science of man-made warming, or answer backlog emails, or share photos in facebook, or reply to him? With just one hour, it is impossible for me to do all of those, to produce many papers. I have to allocate and prioritize my one hour. To produce a paper within one hour is no problem with me, it is easy. It is the allocation of limited time, of what paper to produce within one hour that is a problem.

I chose to reply to him and postpone the production of other papers on other topics by tomorrow, or by next week. See the value of allocation, and not just production or consumption?

2. Another fundamental error is the fact he accepts the widespread perception that resources are scarce or limited. Unfortunately, when one starts from this premise, logic automatically leads you to the conclusion that because resources are scarce and the population is growing unchecked, let us go Malthusian and push for population control measures -- which is essentially a euphemism for institutionalized genocide.

--> Resources are limited, whether you accept them or not. It is a fact. One day has only 24 hours, not 100 or 500 or 1 million hours. Only 24 hours. We allocate our time among sleeping, resting, working, driving the kids to school, meeting friends or business associates, attending functions and parties, etc. within 24 hours.

Our monthly pay is limited, whether it is P10k or P100kor P1M or more per month, we adjust our personal and household budget and spending based on our limited average monthly income.

Because we accept that resources are limited, how in hell does the logic lead one to believe that I or any other person/s who believe in limited resources, go towards advocating Malthusian logic and genocide? This is like saying that "Because one accepts that resources are limited, then we should send a human space mission to explore Alpha Centauri and other galaxies outside of Milky Way in the universe." Really far out, really off-tangent. It's illogically funny, actually.

3. Nonoy’s archaic definition of economics is a system that is intended for animals, which do not have any idea of how produce but only squabble with each other about how to share in the economic pie as prey or predator.

--> Haaa?? To allocate one's time within 24 hours per day, whether to sleep 4 hours or 10 hours, and work just 5 hours or 20 hours, is a system for animals?

I have this feeling that when some people have marked you as a free marketer, and they hate free market philosophy and policies, then there is a tendency to attack many or all that you say. Even to the point of becoming illogical and sounding idiotic.

But then again, I like it when people self-destruct. The more they attempt to clarify their points, the more that they actually obfuscate and mudify their arguments. I enjoy seeing that. That is why I ask them to post more, to attack more my ideas.

Bring them on. They make my day.

Compulsory Licensing deviation

(Note: this is my article today in thelobbyist.biz)

Compulsory licensing (CL) is a policy tool by the State to use an invention by someone which has been granted intellectual property rights (IPR) protection like patents and trademarks, and give it to other people or groups without the IPR holder’s consent, purportedly to address some issues affecting “national interest”.

In short, the State grants a property rights protection then removes or violates the same right it has invented and granted. This speaks how the State respects or disrespects the rule of law.

While CL can be applied in various IPR products and inventions, it gains notoriety in medicines. Global trade agreements even include TRIPS flexibilities where CL can be more easily declared and imposed by any developing country government.

My two good friends in Britain, Alec van Gelder and Philip Stevens, co-authored a new paper, The Compulsory License Red Herring. This 18-pages long paper was published by the International Policy Network (IPN, London) last month and deals with repeated pressure by certain groups to declare CL to several anti-HIV/AIDS drugs that are still patented.

In this paper, Alec and Philip argued,

…While it is true that few compulsory licenses have been issued in the past decade, access to medicines has increased rapidly… While there remain considerable barriers to access, these have little to do with IPRs. IPR standards have improved in many regions – and this may actually have increased access to medicines in general and ARVs in particular.

The following facts are apposite:

* 65% of first-line anti-retroviral medicines are now produced by generic manufacturers;

* Many second- and third-line ARVs that are protected by patent rights are being manufactured in India and other developing countries with rights-holders consent.

* Many other first-, second-, and third-line medicines protected by patent holders are being manufactured in India without the consent of rights-holders, yet these companies have to date not registered legal challenges to this production.

* Options to promote access and to encourage sustainable downstream R&D through differential pricing are being explored by the private sector.

IPR protection like patent is important because it allows the drug inventors who spent huge amount of money in expensive R&D, long and repeated clinical trials with various subjects (from animals to people), complying with various inspections and regulations by government drug administration office. Inventing effective and safe drugs is very costly and risky. The patent system allows the inventors to have exclusive use of their successful invention for x number of years, they can sell the product at a price that will allow them to recoup their expenses and make some profit.

When this kind of protection can be dishonored anytime, then potential inventors will be discouraged from further invention, or will be discouraged from bringing into developing country markets those useful drugs that are available in rich countries that respect IPRs.

Instead of discouraging inventors, the State should encourage more inventors, more innovator pharmaceutical companies, to develop more powerful, more disease killer drugs, and let them compete with each other. After sometime, the patent of those drugs will expire anyway, then even plentier generic manufacturers will produce the same drug molecule and sell at much cheaper prices.

The CL red herring or diversion is a non-productive exercise that saps more energy and resources of various sectors and players, energy that could have been used in more productive health activities like more public awareness and education about AIDS, more modern health facilities especially in rural areas, more preventive measures.

Bringing in the State to disrespect what the State has granted and protected in the first place, is one lousy way of using our tax money.

Philippine delegation to Cancun: 51 officials

I've been wondering how much we, Filipino taxpayers, pay for all those climate alarmism. LIke the creation of more climate bureaucracies -- last year alone, they created at least 2 new bureaucracies, the Climate Change Commission (CCC) and Renewable Energy Commission (REC). Then there are climate change task forces or offices at some provincial governments, city governments, and municipal governments.

Then there are endless climate loans, courtesy of the WB, ADB, OECF (Japan) and other foreign aid bodies. These are several billion dollars of new loans by the Philippines alone for environment and energy sectors to reduce carbon emission, to "fight climate change."

Then there are endless global climate meetings. I dont know how many climate officials the Philippine government sent to Copenhagen last year. And there are bi-monthly global meetings prior to Copenhagen, prior to Cancun.

This year at the Cancun, Mexico meeting of the UN FCCC, 16 Conference of Parties meeting (COP 16), the Philippine government sent 51 officials, wow! Here's a news report today, Positive Cancun outcome expected: Philippine delegate sees ‘balanced package’

... and the launching of processes for mitigation and finance," said Antonio G. M. La Viña, Ateneo School of Government dean and a member of the 51-man Philippine delegation, in an e-mail to BusinessWorld.

Wow, 51 climate officials and negotiators! I would assume that all of them are government officials, not including environmental NGO leaders. Because if that is the case, we ask -- Do we taxpayers pay for the plane fare, hotel, other expenses of fellow private citizens attending governmental functions?

The COP 16 meeting is held in the luxurious Moon Palace Hotel in Cancun, here. See more pictures of the hotel and brief discussion at Cancun capitalism vs. climate socialism. The Mexican government would spend about $67 million for hosting the event alone. Individual bills of participants not included yet.

More climate loans?

Meanwhile, there was a demonstration yesterday in front of the WB Manila office, where climate activists do not want climate loans dispenser WB to take charge of climate loans racket. What? These two groups should be hugging each other. One group wants more money and climate loans for "climate justice" lobby, the other group wants more governments borrowers to "save the planet."

And then again and again, we keep asking, everyday, every month, every year -- Is the planet burning? Does it have a high fever? Is the continiously rising?

And here is one answer -- satellite temperature data of the lower troposphere, data from Remote Sensing System (RSS) and the Univ. of Alabama in Huntsville (UAH). Period covered is between 2 big El Nino, 1998 to 2011. Click on the graph to see a larger image. Graph plotted interactively from http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/rss/from:1998/to:2011/plot/uah/from:1998/to:2011

Where is "unequivocal warming"? CO2 concentration in the atmosphere keep rising, from about 365 parts per million (ppm) in 1998 to 390 ppm this year. By AGW theory of more carbon emission, more warming, then global temperature should be rising in step with CO2 level in the atmosphere.

The rise in CO2 is there, almost linear rise. Where is the warming?

Prolonged drought and bad El Nino is due to man-made warming.
Prolonged rains and winter, and bad La nina is also due to man-made warming.
Where is rationality here?
Is climate science = political science?

Global student performance ranking, 2010

The Organization of Economic Cooperation Development (OECD), a club of the world's developed and industrialized countries, conducts a survey every 3 years of high school students' performance in reading, math and science. This is done through its Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA). Its 2009 survey, covering half a million students from 60+ countries, was done and the results were released yesterday. Some stunning result: students from "Confucian Asia" like China (represented by Shanghai), Singapore, Hong Kong, S. Korea and Japan, excelled.

Here's the chart from The Economist. The only non-Confucian Asian students in the top 5 in reading, were those from Finland and Canada. The students from tiger Asian economies also excelled in math.

American students ranked 11th in reading score, and 28th in math. German students ranked 14th in reading and 13th in math. While British students ranked 19th in reading and 23rd in math.

The seeds of top engineers, scientists, educators and researchers around the world in the future have been planted. They are in Confucian Asian economies.

If China will keep its friendliness to market policies, then the millions of Chinese entrepreneuers and businessmen will be able to tap their millions of highly-educated countrymen.

If China will reverse the pro-market policies and revert back to strict socialist policies, then either it will lose the economic momentum, or it will lose its highly-educated citizens to companies abroad that value private property rights, rule of law and free market policies.

Climate blackmails and regulations

This is the same title of the powerpoint presentation I gave last November 24 at the Rotary Club of Makati Urdaneta (RI District 3830), 36 powerpoint slides.

Among the pictures I showed in my paper, images use by the alarmists for their climate blackmail campaigns, is this one -- the Earth is burning! That our planet simply does not have a fever, it is burning with terrible warming, caused by humanity and their cars, their air-con houses, malls and offices; in short, caused by economic modernization.

Another alarmist picture, a news headline, is this one by TIME magazine itself. Polar ice is melting fast due to man-made warming, the polar bears are endangered, so be worried. Now with severe winter for 4 years straight in the Northern Hemisphere (UK for instance, has 9 deaths per hour during last year's winter directly related to severe cold stress), severe rains and flooding in many tropical countries, alarmists are telling us to be worried also. So their message is -- it does not matter if there is global warming or global cooling, we just have to be worried. And when we are worried, then we will be scared to death to follow everything that they say -- like more energy taxation, more ecological regulations, more global climate junkets, more carbon trading and climate loans racket.

So, is the Earth burning? Or has high fever?

The latest satellite data of the lower troposphere says NO. There is no burning Earth syndrome, not even high fever indicator. The November 2010 global temperature anomaly was only 0.38 C, or one-third of 1 deg C warmer than normal compared to average global temperature from 1979 to 1998, from UAH satellite data. Graph source: http://www.drroyspencer.com/

And here is Nino 3.4 region of the Pacific Ocean sea surface temperature (SST) anomaly as of December 5, 2010. It's still in the negative territory, with temperature anomaly of -1.4 C colder than normal. Current 2010-2011 La Nina trend looks similar to the 2007-2008 La Nina. Graph source, http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/enso/indices.shtml

Recently too, the "ice-free Arctic summer in less than 10 years" scare has been drumming up as the Cancun climate talks are on-going. This lie repeated over and over just will never go. Well, liars are liars, so they show only some pictures of icebergs breaking apart for instance, but they cannot show any graph to prove their point that Arctic ice in general is "melting at an alarming rate".

Here is the Arctic sea ice area as of December 5, 2010. Arctic ice are melting-growing every single year, repeated every decade. Current sea ice area there is nearly 10 million sq. kms. It should reach its peak of about 14 million sq. kms. by March-April next year. There is no way that Arctic ice will become zero in the near future, or even in a distant future. Pure lies by the alarmist fanatics. Graph source, http://wattsupwiththat.com/reference-pages/sea-ice-page/

So, next time those fanatics tell us to "be worried, be very worried", tell them, "You just want our money, more regulations, more and bigger government, more climate junkets."