The safest place to be... Palawan but......

Those of us in the Philippine environmental science profession learn in undergraduate geology that Palawan is the most aseismic place in the whole country. For one thing, the island is a piece of the Eurasian continental crust that was ripped from the mainland as a result of the formation of the South China Sea more than 30 million years ago. Palawan is a continental island as compared to the other Philippine islands, which are called "oceanic" meaning their origin is from the oceanic crust. Volcanism built these islands.

In graduate school, we had to pass the master's level course on geological oceanography. I was fortunately under Dr Margaret Goud-Collins (who is now affiliated with Woods Hole) who had not a few class days devoted to how Palawan came to be. I fact the evolution of this island is linked with the evolution of the Sulu and South China Seas. Palawan is relatively aseismic since it is far from any plate subduction zone. In contrast the islands of oceanic Philippines are seismic since they are near these zones and as a consequence, are volcanic. But before Filipinos complain of the bad reputation, the islands came to be due to volcanism. There would be no Philippines without volcanoes. Filipinos depend on their very existence in the archipelago to volcanoes.

The final exam only had one question. How did Palawan form? If that sounded easy, think again. It took me more than three hours to hand in the examination paper!

Now comes the Philippine Daily Inquirer with its banner headline on Palawan. The reporters interviewed Dr Mahar Lagmay, one of our productive volcanologists having published many scientific studies on the discipline. While it is good that the public will have an idea of that scientific fact, we have to be more circumspect. Before we promote Palawan as the next real estate, "earthquake free" development destination, let us remember that

1) Palawan has a unique biodiversity from the rest of the Philippines
2) It is also the most forested island we have left
3) Palawan has also problems with resource extraction
4) Palawan also has a water problem (which is related to rapid population growth)
5) Palawan is home to several indigenous cultures one of which has preserved the traditional Philippine writing system.

With only about 682,000 people, (population density of around 47 per sq km) Palawan is the second to the least populated province in the Philippines. Only another geologically, ecologically and biologically distinct province, Batanes, beats Palawan in this category. Also Palawan is the largest province at 14,649.7 sq km.

If Palawan follows a development route that encourages migration to the island, the island's ecosystems may be stressed. As a continental island, Palawan's soils are less fertile than those found in oceanic Philippine islands. With an expected greater population, it is likely that the island cannot produce food more than what the present population requires. Ecosystem degradation in the Visayan islands have caused a lot of people to migrate to Palawan. The estimated population growth rate is close to 5%, with half of that attributable to migration. The lack of major rivers (since the island is so narrow, but long) and a distinct monsoonal climate contributes to the water problem.

Palawan thus is a threatened island ecosystem. What it least needs is the influx of uncontrolled real estate developments (with seasonal migrants from Metro Manila and other urban centers) which can contribute more to the water problem as well as the waste disposal problem. While tourism can and is a real cash earner for the island economy, this has to be balanced with the aim of maintaining ecosystem integrity. Palawan citizens are well aware of the risks and opportunities

I hope the Philippine Daily Inquirer counterbalances its banner headline with one specifically discussing Palawan's threatened environment. The ultimate ecological nightmare is that we could turn Palawan into another Boracay!

Ben Vallejo

If you want peace, cultivate creation

Pope Benedict XVI deserves more attention from the media besides the usual criticism for his defence of traditional Catholic belief and practice. The media and blogosphere have not really digested what Benedict is doing now on January 1, 2010 in his message for the World Day for Peace. He is providing a critique of environmentalism and pointing a way forward and in doing so building a theology of the environment. A theology of the environment is not new nor it is particularly Roman Catholic. In fact the environmental mystics of the last 200 years were not even Catholic or nowhere religious but secular. I can name three, Henry Davis Thoreau, Edward F Ricketts and Rachel Carson. Carson has been called a "witness for nature" and is environmentalism's first saint. Her death from cancer which could be linked to her work on toxic pesticides gives even a martyr's patina to her life. Ricketts, the dear friend of John Steinbeck "broke through" in his understanding of nature which Steinbeck memorably puts into prose in "the Log from the Sea of Cortez" Steinbeck explores the meaning of the tidepool and how it relates to the heavens and why the death of a sardine isn't really the end.

The fact that secular environmentalists have mystical experiences divorced from formal religion should interest theologians. It reminds us of the various ways that the secular can encounter the Divine, which cannot be just dismissed as mere delusion.

Nonetheless, Benedict the razor sharp professor of theology builds upon John Paul II's 1990 January 1 message on the environment in which he maintained that environmental problems are really moral problems. No human institution on the planet can challenge the Roman Catholic Church as an expert on the human condition. For once it is the oldest continuing institution in the Western World or in the world for that matter. Benedict cites the ancient Greeks for their philosophical view that nature cannot be considered as a "heap of refuse" and it needs to be sustained. But the present environmental crisis is really a consequence of greed which comes from pride, the First of the Seven Sins. We have to look at our lifestyles.

All environmental, economic and political decisions have a moral dimension and consequence. We have to recover and renew the values that will provide a solid basis for human development. And one of these values is the Principle of Intergenerational Equity. Whence before this was just a ethical principle, Benedict XVI's elevates it to a theological teaching in the 2010 message. Roman Catholics are now obliged to follow it. This is where Benedict daringly moves forward. This equity is also requires an intergenerational solidarity which involves redistribution of the benefits of exploitation of the environment, not just in time but in space.

Benedict is not ignorant on the promise that Science can do to achieve this goal. Science and technology are the best if not the only ways to reach the goal but these must be anchored on "the values of charity, justice and the common good" Technology according to the Pope has to be in the service of human development not the other way around.

Benedict also gives a critique of environmental philosophies that exclude God such as ecocentrism and biocentrism.

He writes

" If the Church’s magisterium expresses grave misgivings about notions of the environment inspired by ecocentrism and biocentrism, it is because such notions eliminate the difference of identity and worth between the human person and other living things. In the name of a supposedly egalitarian vision of the “dignity” of all living creatures, such notions end up abolishing the distinctiveness and superior role of human beings. They also open the way to a new pantheism tinged with neo-paganism, which would see the source of man’s salvation in nature alone, understood in purely naturalistic terms. The Church, for her part, is concerned that the question be approached in a balanced way, with respect for the “grammar” which the Creator has inscribed in his handiwork by giving man the role of a steward and administrator with responsibility over creation, a role which man must certainly not abuse, but also one which he may not abdicate. In the same way, the opposite position, which would absolutize technology and human power, results in a grave assault not only on nature, but also on human dignity itself"

All of this according to Catholic teaching is consistent with its pro-life stance. Benedict does not move away from earlier teaching. And alluding to Galileo, he writes that the book of nature is one and indivisible.

Benedict in this latest message, brings the Catholic Church fully into the environmentalist side and is the environmentalist heavyweight voice on the social and moral issues involved. And this is now part of the Social Teaching of the Church. While this is not considered dogmas as the Holy Trinity or the Immaculate Conception are, Catholics have an obligation to obey.

What Is Brewing at the CRU?

There is a quietly unfolding event known as the CRU Hack. The CRU is the UK's East Anglia University's Climatic Research Unit and coordinates climatology research.

An unknown person recently broke into the CRU's computer system and removed a number of documents. The mysterious cracker then published the data on the Internet. Anthropegenic global warming (AGW) skeptics claim those e-mails and files prove the researchers are attempting to skew the results of their studies to show there is global warming. The CRU asserts that nothing of the sort is going on — the documents from the CRU Hack are being taken out of context and they have sound reasons for what is going on behind the curtain.

I suspect the out of context defense will hold in some cases. For example, there is one e-mail where the author uses the word "trick" and skeptics claim this amounts to a nefarious plot. Not true say the researchers, the trick was just an obscure but legitimate mathematic or statistical method. I go with the later, I recall many discussions on how to solve a problem and one person saying "the trick is…". The infamous "hide the decline" is harder to account for without knowing more details of what was being discussed. However, the plain and simple reading of the note is not good for the CRU crew.

A more serious problem is the deletion of data from the CRU's database(s). In my previous post I go over the notion of data outliers. My central point is researchers frequently and rightly exclude certain collected data from analysis. However, generally accepted standards dictates researchers report all raw data and justify data exclusions from further analysis. The inclusion or exclusion of data may be open to debate and further experimentation and that makes good science.

I am aware of a number of justifications for discarding this data. One of them is the raw data went through quality assurance procedures and combined with other sets of data therefore that raw data is no longer needed. That does not pass the smell test, what about those quality processes? Sometimes that justification is combined with the need to save storage space, which does not improve it.

Phil Jones (currently embattled CRU Director) back in October of 2009 states:

The research unit has deleted less than 5 percent of its original station data from its database because the stations had several discontinuities or were affected by urbanization trends. When you're looking at climate data, you don't want stations that are showing urban warming trends, so we've taken them out. Most of the stations for which data was removed are located in areas where there were already dense monitoring networks. We rarely removed a station in a data-sparse region of the world.

So, in essence Mr. Jones asserts the missing data tends to register warmer temperatures than what is warranted or that excessive reports from a given area are removed. Those are real justifications open to debate, if only we had the data, we do not and so we have to take Mr. Jones at his word.

This event does not prove or disprove anthropogenic (or otherwise) global warming. It just calls into question the research the promoters of anthropegenic global warming use to support their contentions and policies they believe we need to implement. Further and more rigorous research may indeed uphold the view the earth is warming or it may not.

Collapsing Philippines

This is a response to Professor Flor Lacanilao's letter to the Inquirer which should come out this week.

The Philippines is actually in the initial stages of collapse. A society that isn't able to feed itself is unlikely to adapt to rapid environmental change and will face political unrest followed by social breakdown. We are a "victim" of our own physical geography which is disaster prone since our high islands have narrow coastal plains and rivers tend not to lose much of their energy as they near the sea. The islands once forested were able to hold the water and regulate the flow. Now this has broken down. This is the same story for Rapa Nui which Jared Diamond uses as a textbook example.

That the country was not really able to feed itself is evident from demographic responses to pestilential events in the colonial period. We have to recall that Miguel Lopez de Legazpi gave up on Cebu and Iloilo as suitable for the colonial enterprise since these islands have little water resources. It was only when Legazpi heard about Sulayman's Maynilad (which was really a trading city) did the conquistadors rethink their options. The Philippines as composed of disaster prone island ecosystems were really on the edge. The sociological study of pestilence by Luis Camara Dery documents these environmental events and consequential pestilence, the root of many revolts and unrest.

Demographers estimate that during the start of Spanish colonialism there were 6 M Filipinos. Right after the Americans consolidated their rule, the Philippine population was 9-10 M. In three hundred years the net population growth was just about 3 M! The disasters effectively kept the population low and this was guaranteed by colonial policy. The environmental roots of the Philippine revolution is metaphorically described as a failure in the production of ilang ilang flowers. A series of droughts in the 1880s caused major agrarian unrest. Rizal's Noli Me Tangere and El Filibusterismo describes the events even if in fiction.

It is clear from ecological historical evidence that the Philippines can support at most 30 M people without damaging its environment's capacity to support the population. The 30 M mark was reached during the American colonial period. Rapid environmental deterioration can be said to have started during the Commonwealth period. The Japanese occupation made things worse. Colonialism made environmental deterioration worse since colonial policy is always to extract resources from the colony.

Since then it has been bad. The OFW phenomenon can be viewed as a environmental crash safety valve, as Larry Heaney said in a lecture at the US Embassy. The export of human labour is a symptom of environmental unsustainability and if viewed in political terms is another expression of colonialism. I agree with Prof Lacanilao our adaptation to environment change should come from local resourcefulness and not foreign aid, which in itself is symptomatic of non sustainability. We have to manage population growth or risk society's collapse.

Ben Vallejo

Overpopulation Turned Typhoons Into Calamitous Catastrophes

OVERPOPULATION was a major reason for the sheer apocalyptic scale of the Ondoy-Pepeng diluvial calamity.  I don't thing this simple and straightforward fact can be denied.

At every level of discourse,  population policy has to inform any long term Reconstruction and Disaster Preparedness plans about how many people we must be prepared to serve in some future disaster. It makes a big difference if we are planning systems to protect 100 million, 125 million or 200 million people.

Overpopulation created our overcrowded cities with their teeming slums and urban sprawl.

Overpopulation filled full our waterways with our own garbage,  that later,  submerged the neighborhoods of rich and poor alike.

Overpopulation created the thousands of pockets of vulnerable millions that have suffered Ondoy and Pepeng.

Overpopulation is what forced millions into the Marikina Valley where there ought to have been one of Manila's main watersheds and parklands, cheek by jowl with La Mesa Dam and the highlands of the Sierra Madre to the east.  Overpopulation is what caused the megaslums and gated residential communities up and down the Manggahan floodway.

Overpopulated societies foster poverty and unemployment, and the widespread lack of proper food and water, since whatever is available is being diminished by an ever growing denominator of millions more mouths to feed, clothe and shelter. And rescue!

Overpopulation magnifies the woeful inadequacy of the govt to deliver emergency relief and long term reconstruction. Every reconstruction plan and every attempt to achieve a secure "preparedness" against the next Ondoy or Pepeng is forced to deal with a population that is increasing at a rate of more than 2 million people per year.

The Catholic Church will be forced to surrender its traditional opposition to artificial birth control, if the relationship between Overpopulation and Disaster Preparedness  is firmly established in the public's sphere.

How Manila Does Flood Ways

I first posted this video on Facebook last week, but I am still asking the question of readers:
Does the presence of kangkong plantations IN the Manggahan Floodway present a problem during storm induced flooding like Ondoy-Pepeng?

By the way, I think the folks who gave us GOOGLE EARTH ought to get a Nobel Prize for a marvelous tool worthy of the Ages instead of... but I bet Barack Obama would agree--if he's as great as I hope he can be--that the Norwegians are guilty of premature exultation and international emotional blackmail.  

Sinisingil tayo ng Kalikasan (Nature is demanding payback)

Ironically, I was in the Philippine Coast Guard typhoon response and rescue exhibit in Manila when TS Ondoy's deluge hit Metro Manila. I was following the storm on real time satellite apps on my mobile phone and was shocked to see that the storm's core was compact and consolidated. This meant a deluge will come. Checking on the PAGASA forecast, I saw that the forecast still said "gusty winds"

I have seen and experienced these kinds of storms in northern Australia. During my first year there as a PhD student in 1997, a tropical low dumped a year's worth of rain in 6 hours. The university got washed out. Cars in the student parking lot were piled on top of another as the flash flood rushed from the eucalyptus covered hills. There were no casualties. Six hours before, people were advised to seek higher ground. Those in buildings were advised to seek the higher floors and stay put. Some friends were trapped in the library building and did not go hungry since even the library had emergency rations!

Australia is prone to such disasters since the dry soils cannot absorb that much water in a short time. Water flows down the hills into the gullies. Australians especially those in the regions are aware of how bad a natural disaster could be. The Aussie Bureau of Meteorology comes out with this boing boing boing alert on TV (30 minute intervals) and the radio about cyclones.

My life in Oz primed me to be disaster alert for both of the main dangers of the dry (bushfires) and the wet (floods and landslides). This is one priceless benefit that an Australian education gave me.

So when I saw the satellite pic on my phone, I advised people that coming back to Quezon City will be hazardous but we have to try since being in Manila will be more dicey. We were on the road when the deluge hit at 9:30 AM. I noticed that street floods rose with an horrible rapidity. On Santa Mesa, we saw the water rise one meter in a few minutes and this was a portent of the dangers to come. We were able to traverse the deep water but when we got to the San Juan City-Quezon City boundary at 10:30, we were amazed to see that Aurora Blvd can give Cagayan de Oro a run for its tourist money! The whole street was like a white water rafting paradise!

All that white water was rushing towards the San Juan area in Ermitano. The water reached up to the edge of the huge Mt Carmel Church (which is built on top of a knoll).

We succeeded to pass through the little that remained unflooded in New Manila. Upon reaching the Roxas and Kamuning districts, it was just to dangerous and I told the driver to seek the highest ground. The highest one was a Catholic charismatic church. The priest had opened the church to stranded people. And we were the first to be there. And 30 minutes later, the flood of Metro Manila's environmental refugees came in.

Many of them came from areas in the city that never has been flooded at all. Whereas before many were from the lower socio-economic classes, many were middle class and one family 2nd floor condo unit sank in 8 feet of water while they were away.

With two UERMMC 3rd year medical students checking for vital signs among the refugees, we organized a sort of triage until two doctors came. I was concerned about the senior citizens caught by the flood and the small children and babies who had to evacuate without their baby bottles.

We were there for 8 hours since parts of Quezon City leading to Diliman were under 3 meters of water. Friends couldn't believe that while our car "survived" Santa Mesa, it could not survive Kamuning! This was simply unbelievable!

Anyway, one of the women from a lower socio economic background broke down and saying "sinisingil na tayo ng kalikasan" (Nature is demanding payback!). Nobody in the church blamed God or the Devil for this disaster but us. Nobody thought the disaster is a punishment from God.

The woman and her family listed the environmental determinants. 1) Garbage, 2) Too many people in the city, 3) Corruption and 4) Climate change

An upper middle class refugee said that PAGASA failed in its forecasting but I told them that given PAGASA's lack of equipment and funding, it can only forecast the best it could. It can never forecast as well as the Australians could. The Doppler radars that could have advised many on the amount of rain that would fall (worth one case of bottled water per square meter) weren't yet installed and operational.

Many were in disbelief that this kind of disaster could befall Manila.

We all are now environmental refugees.

The wages of sin on the environment is death!

SOURCE: Philippine Commentary

Rat eating pitcher plant

British botanists made public their discovery of a new carnivorous plant from Palawan that makes Audrey II in the Little Shop of Horrors closer to reality. Named Nephentes attenboroughii after nature documentary filmmaker Sir David Attenborough, the plant is big enough to eat a rat. Attenborough was reported to have been much flattered. The honour was more than what a BAFTA or a Queen's honour could give.

I am not surprised at all.

The Philippines remain as a place where evolution is on overdrive. Among the mammal groups whose evolution is on overdrive are rats and mice. The Philippines has probably the world's most number of endemic rodent species. Luzon has cloud rats, shrew mice etc. Mindanao has rock mice etc.

With few predators save for snakes, it isn't unusual that a plant will go into the rat eating game.

Now in the aftermath of the le affaire Le Cirque et Bobby Van, Pinoy wags have had a field day. Some wags want the plant to decorate the House of Representatives or the Palace by the River. Can the plant gobble a congressman or a president? As for the latter, the wags say an unqualified "yes"!

After the claims for perks affair in the British parliament, Brit wags want it too inside the Commons!

Too bad that these plants can't survive outside their misty mountain habitats. In fact it is illegal to collect pitchers and some are on the endangered list. Pitchers sold illegally in Manila die of the heat and possibly the pollution.

Some mad scientist can genetically engineer one to be pursuit predator specializing in congressmen!


SOURCE: Philippine Commentary

What Good Is The Catholic Church in Economics, Politics, Education, Religion and Morals?

From the point of view of the Democracy and the Constitution, the Roman Catholic Church (RCC) as an institution is what we call a Non-government Organization (NGO). Just like the Communist Party of the Philippines, or Greenpeace, or an ideologically driven newspaper like the Philippine Daily Innuendo (all of whom support and find common cause with it), the RCC has taken very definite positions on the fulcrum issues of Philippine society, and just like them deserves to be scrutinized for the validity, reasonability and consequences of its policies and actions. In the next few weeks I propose to do just that in several key areas:

(1) I've already begun with its position on Population policy, which I think bears important significance on the long-term economic prospects of the country See my recent posts under the label of population. Here I've been developing the idea that while the RCC's birth control policies are not per se the CAUSE of hunger, poverty and economic underdevelopment, (which is the disdainfully weak rhetorical position of its defenders), their undeniable consequence in the form of overpopulation, strictly limits the efficacy of any solutions to the problems that face Philippine society and vastly diminishes any gains that are achieved. Overpopulation has a structural, multiplier effect that exacerbates those problems, places pressure on natural resources such as water, land and the ability of society to feed, clothe, shelter and educate the people. As such, I've come to the conclusion that the RCC's position on birth control is essentially an issue of social justice and moral compass.

(2) In the economic realm, the Church has adopted entirely regressive policies on such key issues as mining, genetically modified organisms, nuclear power and globalization, which deserve to be examined and understood in the light of its apparent adoption of radical, fear-mongering environmentalism as a secular component of its religious tenets.

(3) In politics, it has aligned itself with the liberal fascist policies of the Arroyo administration and holds captive a large part of the electorate by acting as a de facto political party, uber alles, of which all the other parties are mere factions (think about it!). This is a situation that suits its theocratic inclinations just fine, because while it wields political power indirectly, yet effectively, it has complete deniability of responsibility in the results of the fractious multiparty system and inutile governance!

(4) In education, the Catholic Church completely dominates the private school sectors, powerfully influences the public school system (since it trains virtually all the teachers and functionaries that run it!) and sabotages science education along the lines that conform to its reactionary world view and sentimentally looks back upon Spanish Taliban times as its halcyon days of complete domination in this field.

(5) In religion and morals, the RCC is an almost complete failure, both in its teaching magisterium and in the example set by its hierarchy. It does not teach Christianity at the level of Biblical study, but rather concentrates on liturgical extravaganzas that have weekly, monthly, seasonal and holiday components, and as in the days of yore, utilizes sacraments and ceremonies as cultural artifacts that circumscribe Filipino social life. Its dominance on the educational system is founded on its captivity of the market among middle and upper classes and the inability of the public school system to deliver quality education to the masses. (Why? because every year 2 million new births long ago swamped the ability of society to provide "free universal education"--the biggest joke of all).

(6) On social issues, the Church sets the worst example on the matter of GAMBLING, where its corrupt relationship with the PAGCOR represents an entirely unhealthy and demoralizing factor for which its leaders ought to be pilloried and put to shame. (Meanwhile, a guy like Archbishop Oscar Cruz has been ordered arrested for libel while his confreres at the CBCP inaugurate and sanctify massive new enterprises for gambling and vice.)

I encourage Philippine Commentary readers to join me in a thorough re-examination of the Roman Catholic Church's role in society. In my humble opinion, they are presently an integral and essential part of the problem, when they could and should be part of the solution instead.

I speak both as a loyal citizen of the Republic as well as a member of the Catholic Church, both which I simply refuse to surrender to Men in Skirts and Funny Hats whose conceptions and positions are mostly bankrupt and backward from a moral and intellectual standpoint.

Really Inconvenient Truths

The Really Inconvenient Truths: Seven Environmental Catastrophes Liberals Don't Want You To Know About - Because They Helped Cause Them

Author Iain Murray's new book is discussed by the author himself at this remarkable seminar at the Heritage Foundation.

The story of Rachel Carson (whom Al Gore and the liberal environmental movement consider an idol and heroine) and the global malaria tragedy will cause anyone who hears it to never see environmentalism as populist cult and secular religion quite in the same way again.

Mr. Murray also exposes the role of biofuels such as corn and sugar-based ethanol in the unfolding food price crises and the wholescale destruction of the world's forests. Meanwhile, here Sen. Migz Zubiri and DOE Secretary Angelo Reyes are continuing to beat the biofuels drum as if they do not hear the ominous warnings against this entirely deluded leap. Mr. Murray calls the biofuel mandates in Europe and the US, and of course here in the Philippines, "an affront to the ideals of humanity." He notes as an example that the 450 pounds of corn needed to produce 25 gallons of ethanol could feed one person for a year. The corn burned as automobile fuel in the US alone in 2006 would've have fed 260 million people for a whole year.

Most significantly he presents the alternative to Al Gore's "decarbonization" proposals in the form of a comprehensive conservative strategy for addressing global environmental problems.

Listen to the whole thing!

Is Global Warming the New Y2K Bug Without a Deadline?

PLANETARY EMERGENCY Since CNN has been showing large chunks of the polar ice caps slipping noiselessly but ominously into the sea, many are quite convinced that the world will end not in fire or ice, but in another Flood. In fact some think we are already in the midst of a planetary emergency because of catastrophic man-made Global Warming, even if more polar bears die from hunters than drowning. But is the price of further human progress the end of the world? Have we made war on the Earth itself, as Al Gore suggests and are locked in a relationship of Mutually Assured Destruction? Can a tax save the earth from the laws of economics and thermodynamics, as well as close the Gap between the Rich and the Poor? Do the rich nations of the world owe pollution reparations to the poor nations, and do poor nations have an equal right to pollute the atmosphere, at least for a while until they have both sinned the same amount against Gaia? Is green the new yellow journalism? Is global warming the new Y2K Bug without a deadline?

Update: Contrarians at Bali More than 100 scientists led by physicist Freeman Dyson and veterans of the IPCC itself have signed an open letter (full text) to UN's Ban Kie Moon urging adaptation instead of futile attempts to "fight" climate change with sin taxes.

Upon hearing he had won the Nobel Peace Prize last October, former US Vice President Al Gore said that, "We face a true planetary emergency. The climate crisis is not a political issue, it is a moral and spiritual challenge to all of humanity. It is also our greatest opportunity to lift global consciousness to a higher level."

A TAX TO SAVE THE POLLUTION SINNERS OF THE WORLD Gore repeated this basic theme in his 2007 Nobel Peace Prize Lecture in Oslo and Bali this past week. He proposes a grand and sweeping solution to global warming in clarion call speeches that have energized a global environmental movement to "fight" climate change...with taxation that will also by the way, close the Gap between the Rich and Poor. Gore is way beyond just the US Presidency.

AL GORE (Nobel Lecture): "This week, I will urge the delegates in Bali to adopt a bold mandate for a treaty that establishes a universal global cap on emissions and uses the market in emissions trading to efficiently allocate resources to the most effective opportunities for speedy reductions...

We also need a moratorium on the construction of any new generating facility that burns coal without the capacity to safely trap and store carbon dioxide.

And most important of all, we need to put a price on carbon -- with a CO2 tax that is then rebated back to the people, progressively, according to the laws of each nation, in ways that shift the burden of taxation from employment to pollution. This is by far the most effective and simplest way to accelerate solutions to this crisis."

Here also is the Nobel Lecture of R.K. Pachauri of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, this year's co-winner with Gore for work on global warming, summing up the scientific data and the general consensus that it is "anthropogenic" or man made--but not necessarily how to deal with it.

According to Al Gore, the way out of this Global Warming problem is by imposing a new global sin tax based on the amount of carbon dioxide pollution a given activity represents, shifting the tax burden "from employment to pollution." For example, if I take a vacation that involves jet travel, I ought to be taxed according to my share of the damage done to the environment as a result of my flights, with the tax proceeds being used for environmental remediation. Of course, the assumption is that the governments or institutions that end up with my sin tax can effectively undertake remedial efforts or channel the taxes in such a way as to offset at least the amount of damage I've caused, and not just fund bureaucracy and regulators' polluting vacations!

It's not a new idea. Taxation is the economic mainspring of Gore's "organizing principle for human civilization". Yale University Professor of Economics, William Nordhaus (pdf) has analyzed Gore's proposals and concludes that they would result in $12 trillion of climate mitigation -- at cost of $34 trillion in taxes.

BEFORE BALI WAS KYOTO Writing in the Wall Street Journal University of Buckingham's Prof. Julian Morris points out some interesting facts about the Kyoto Protocol:

Even if the Kyoto Protocol were fully implemented — not just by the EU, but by all of the more than 160 signatories — and its restrictions kept in place until 2100, its effect on the climate would barely be discernible. It would merely delay the projected warming by less than a decade over the course of the next century. Meanwhile, the economic cost has been estimated at between 0.1% and 3% of gross world product. Even at the lower end, that is an enormous price to pay for essentially no benefit.

Ron Bailey of ReasonOnline in a dispatch from Bali :

RON BAILEY: "In his 1992 book, Earth in the Balance, Gore argued, "We must make the rescue of the environment the central organizing principle for civilization." Man-made global warming is an economic and technical problem of the sort that humanity has solved many times. For example, forests are expanding in rich countries because they have well-developed private property rights. Also in rich countries, regulations have helped once polluted rivers and lakes to become clean and have drastically cut air pollution. One of the keys to solving environmental problems is economic growth and wealth. Economists have identified various income thresholds at which various air and water pollutants begin to decline, with many indicators improving once GDP per capita in a country reaches around $8,000 per year. So keep in mind that anything that unduly retards economic growth also retards ultimate environmental clean-up, including global warming.

In any case, global warming is not the result of environmental sin; it is the result of human progress creating another commons problem. We do not need to "lift global consciousness"; we need to find a cheap, low-carbon source of energy. I have no doubt that man-made global warming is an economic and technical problem that an inventive humanity will solve over the course of the 21st century."

Regular readers of Philippine Commentary may recall my previous postings on Garrett Hardin's famous article in the peer-reviewed journal Science (1968) on The Tragedy of the Commons which is particularly relevant to Global Warming--a problem that involves the global commons. Here the sense of the word "tragedy" is that of Alfred North Whitehead: "The essence of dramatic tragedy is not unhappiness. It resides in the solemnity of the remorseless working of things."

An important conclusion about problems involving public commons is that there is no "technical solution" to the basic problem. It's like the game of tic-tac-toe. There is no way to win once all players become familiar with the game. Keeping the "commons" publicly accessible inexorably leads to the destruction of the commons. The only solution is to turn such commons into private property. I don't know how we do that to the global commons.

I am also not sure yet how Gore's ideas fit into this framework. If the new CO2 tax he is proposing is likened to a sin tax, we only have to look at the continued prevalence of gambling, drinking and smoking to wonder if this is the right way to go. On the other hand, if it spurs the development of new technologies that don't have the problem of discharging CO2 into the atmosphere, could a case not be made for such taxes being beneficial?

Not if they degrade human living standards or retard economic development, since the more immediate needs of food, shelter and clothing cannot easily be sacrificed for the dubious benefit of seeing a graph move in the right direction at the IPCC headquarters in the UN.

BEING LIKE THE COCONUT TREE...There is an entirely Filipino way of looking at this, which may be more universal than the parable referred to implies. Perhaps the right way to deal with global warming is to accept the fact that it may be the inevitable product of the Laws of Thermodynamics, that it is unavoidable unless we want to shun the elementary and tangible benefits of industrializaon and modernizing human societies and communities. In which case, we would want to put more of our efforts into ADAPTATION to a warmer, wetter world. Maybe it means giving up large coastal areas over the course of the next few centuries. Maybe it means living in and conquering the undersea territories of the earth--about two thirds of it waiting to be recovered. Maybe it means bending to the weather and rising to the technological challenge, instead of flagellating ourselves for inventing refrigerators and jet airplanes and lengthening the human life span and building air conditioned cities.

I'm with those who say science and technology ought to lead the way on this one, not the politicians or the prophets of doom of the environmental religion.

Something to keep an eye on too is the possibility that all the planets are warming and that something happening with the sun is responsible for global warming on earth and not human activities. The polar ice caps on MARS have reportedly been shrinking too, over the century since we've been imagining water channels built by Martians there have drained them to supply vast civilizations of err, Rednecks.

Repent Ye Spreaders of Pseudoscience!

Green Is The New Yellow Journalism

Sun Star Cebu reports on the joyous reaction of "religious leaders" to a TRO on GMO rice:

KORONADAL CITY -- Oblates of Notre Dame Sister Pat Babiera, justice and peace coordinator of the Diocese of Marbel, assailed Bayer for trying to introduce genetically modified rice variety Liberty Link 62 (LL62) in the country. "Consistent with our advocacy stance for preserving the integrity of creation­-we laud the temporary restraining order issued by a court stopping the Department of Agriculture and the Bureau of Plant Industry from approving the application of the genetically-modified rice Bayer LL62," she said in a statement.

As a "religious leader" naturally Sor Babieri also teaches little children that they will go to hell if they don't believe her male colleagues in skirts and funny hats can literally turn Mompo into real blood and bread into human-divine flesh. I don't suppose her Greenpeace pals would care to question her sincerity and consistency in this regard? What Sor. Babieri and friends need to do is start eating a lot more of that Vitamin-A loaded golden rice GMO. It may improve their eyesight, if not their politically-addled brains.

The Manila Times' Dan Mariano quotes the RTC Judge Evangeline Marigomen's reasoning:

“With the unfavorable publications and debates these genetically modified organisms have spawned, it is but prudent that the approval…of the application of [Bayer] be restrained in the meantime considering that rice is a staple on the dining table of the Filipinos,” Judge Marigomen said.

Of course, Filipinos may freely eat as a staple on their dining table, all that rice from palay that has been dried on the roadsides, where asbestos particles from the brake-lining of buses, jeepneys and cars, and their lead-containing exhausts freely mix with the non genetically modified grain.

Seems that PDI's Rina Jimenez David may be trying to make up for all the free column space and open mike time she's been giving the anti-GMO campaigners of Greenpeace by pointing to the work of Dr. Nina Halos in introducing the DNA identification to solve criminal cases. Maybe all that late night television watching of shows like CSI has actually convinced her that science really is a good thing, on the whole, even though she had to first take a pot shot at GMOs by calling them "Frankenfoods" in her lead today. She forgot to mention, conveniently of course, that the Nobel Prize in Medicine this year went to inventors of a most wonderful and beneficial Genetically Modified Organism (GMO) -- designer mice. (But please, don't eat them yet, Sor. Rina). She needs to get the lead out of her lipstick.

All over the Philippines, the Greenpissers are setting up slick looking displays full of scientific and technologic sounding clap trap in shopping malls, doing everything they can to miseducate the Filipinos about biotechnology and genetic engineering, where Judge Marigomen probably picked up most of her information about these issues. But this story, about the approval of pest-resistant GMO corn in the Philippines (after 25 years of safe production all over the world) should drive them up a wall considering what spectacular failure their campaigns have turned out to be in stopping it.

Ah, but corn farmers in Mindanao and Visayas who annually lose between 50 to 100% of their corn crop to the corn-borer weevils, will certainly have plenty to rejoice, since the corn-borer resistant variety of corn will triple their annual yield and do more to raise their standard of living than going to shopping malls listening to all that strange drivel from the so-called environmentalists. Next time you see these fairy tale tellers at a mall, ask them if they really want diabetics to eschew the human insulin they get from genetically modified e-coli bacteria and go back to using pig insulin instead since it is so much more natural!

REPENT YE SPREADERS OF PSEUDOSCIENCE AND SUPERSTITION!

What these "campaigners" and "religious leaders" cannot afford to allow Filipinos to understand of course is that "genetic engineering" is no different from "plant breeding"--except that by understanding the science of DNA, we have replaced luck and chance with systematic biology and engineering.

The Gene Revolution is doing far, far more to solve the problems of hunger and poverty than these ideologically motivated troglodytes ever will, for whom the point is not really the dangers of biotechnology but the old fight against multinational companies and imperialism!

Though no technology is without its dangers, biology and medicine really ought to be left to the scientific community--who have always been the first to raise safety concerns, caveats and problems, only to have their warnings hijacked by brochure and manifesto writers whose expertise is in making green the new yellow journalism.

Now then, if they decide to go on a hunger strike again as they did against BT Corn a few years ago, we really must all insist that this time they don't give up once they get hungry.

Oh, and how dare those evil multinational corporations like Glaxo Smith Kline fight malaria without getting Greenpeace's permission.

Nobel Prize for Genetically Modified Organisms, Boo for Hunger Stats and Chilling out on Global Warming

THE GENE REVOLUTION: Greenpeace, the radical environmental organization that's been spreading pseudoscientific claptrap in our shopping malls lately, won't like this, but the Nobel Prize Committee this year once more honors work on genetically modified organisms (GMOs) by two Americans and a Brit who developed those wonderful and highly versatile designer or knockout mice, work that has led to all kinds of discoveries, therapies and drugs to treat human illness.

The Nobel Assembly at Karolinska Institutet has today decided to award the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for 2007 jointly to Mario R. Capecchi, Martin J. Evans and Oliver Smithies for their discoveries of "principles for introducing specific gene modifications in mice by the use of embryonic stem cells". This year's Nobel Laureates have made a series of ground-breaking discoveries concerning embryonic stem cells and DNA recombination in mammals. Their discoveries led to the creation of an immensely powerful technology referred to as gene targeting in mice. It is now being applied to virtually all areas of biomedicine – from basic research to the development of new therapies.

The Nobel awards goes a long way to filling the vacuum of scientific information on GMOs and genetic engineering that the Greenpeace activists have been assiduously filling with their mixture of pseudoscience and fearmongering about GMOs, especially of plants like Bacillus Thuringiensis (BT) corn, golden rice (Vitamin A built in) and all kinds of revolutionary GMOs that are doing more to solve the problem of hunger in the world than anything else. The Green Revolution did it in the sixties, now the Gene Revolution is on. Though of course Greenpiss activists never mention such stunning successes like the genetically modified E-coli bacteria that have been producing human insulin for decades so we don't have to get it from pigs. The sad thing is that these ideological numbskulls seem to have all the front page space they want from the usual newspapers and broadcasters who seem to turn to no one else for authoritative information on the scientific pluses and minuses of the technology.

Related: Attack of the Rainbow Warrior

IS SWS MEASURING HUNGER OR HARVEST SEASONS? Speaking of hunger, Mahar Mangahas and SWS claim that a new record in hunger incidence has just been recorded by them. No doubt they have collected and analysed their data professionally as they always do. But if you know about frequency analysis, go to the SWS website and run their quarterly time series data through your handy dandy fft alogorithm and tell me that the periodicities revealed don't suggest they are measuring something else. I shall give a hint: hunger nearly always peaks in the quarter just before the June and December harvests and highest in Presidential election years. Heehee! (Remember this is SELF-RATED hunger they are measuring.) I have always maintained that this is not a scientific survey because there is no independent event or process to verify or falsify the data, like elections do for their highly accurate and scientific voter preference surveys. Just because they use scientific methods to collect the data, doesn't mean the survey question sets up a scientific survey. It's not clear to me how a positive answer to the question "have you experience hunger at least once due to lack of food" amounts to "Moderate Hunger". Although it cannot be denied that hunger and poverty exist in the Philippines, the SWS survey's quantitative data is largely meaningless and only good for propaganda to beat the government over the head with. In an indirect rebuttal, it is amazing to me that at a time when dollar remittances and the Philippine dollar reserve is at an all time high, that hunger would also be at record levels..but how many days is it till Christmas harvest season?

Related Philippine Commentaries:

Hunger Stats Reveal Vicious Filipino Addictions to Alcohol, Cigarettes, Shabu, Jueteng Prostitution

Food For Thought About SWS Hunger Stats


CHILL OUT! The Washington Post has an excellent op-ed by Bjorn Lomborg on Global Warming. He avoids the two extremes of Al Gore's millennarianist doomsaying and the "atheism" of the global warming skeptics, saying, "We shouldn't ignore climate change or the policies that could attack it. But we should be honest about the shortcomings and costs of those policies, as well as the benefits." and "It's estimated that by 2050, global warming will cause almost 400,000 more heat-related deaths each year. But at the same time, 1.8 million fewer people will die from cold." He takes particular aim at the inutility of the Kyoto Protocols, pointing out a number of interesting assessments by the scientific community. For example,

"Global warming will claim lives in another way: by increasing the number of people at risk of catching malaria by about 3 percent over this century. According to scientific models, implementing the Kyoto Protocol for the rest of this century would reduce the malaria risk by just 0.2 percent."

Read it all and Chill Out!