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Al Gore’s Convenient Mall of Asia Version
SMX Convention Center, SM Mall of Asia, June 8, 2010. “Ladies and Gentlemen, the President of the Philippines.” Not all of those posh looking people who paid at least 10% of an ordinary Filipino’s monthly salary to attend this one-way-conference bothered to stand up on this announcement. The days of Gloria Macapagal Arroyo were counted, and President elect Benigno Simeon “Noynoy” Cojuangco Aquino III with his slogan “Kung walang corrupt walang mahirap” (If there is no corruption, there is no hardship) was not yet proclaimed officially. There was at least a foretaste of the new hope with five multimedia screens, a team of (Gaia?) worship singers and dancers: “We are the world… we can make a difference … if we just help each other…” Many songs that are 30 years old are en vogue in the Philippines. Then along came the opening speaker. SM Prime President Hans Si urged people to minimize their carbon footprint without sacrificing comfort. He knew what he was talking about since he counts as one of the richest people in the Philippines. And when Al Gore eventually started his two hour one-man-show, he praised him and SM Prime repeatedly as a business leader (and main sponsor) in the fight against global warming.
The Filipino people are generally more light-hearted than people from the U.S., Canada and most of Europe when it comes to star gossip, so hopefully the hardcore global warming skeptics among you don’t expect another cynical Gore bashing blog entry as you read this far. Al Gore rumors and assault allegations are just timely. Let’us give Al and Tipper Gore a break, since baby boomer convenience divorces have become quite popular in the States, particularly among the rich.
Let’s come back to the Mall of Asia. Journalist Cheche Lazaro asked Al Gore about what triggered the turning point in his life when he became an environmental advocate. Al Gore ‘s son’s tragic car accident in 1989 “left a deep impression on our family” and after recovering from struggling to save his life, Gore said to have looked at nature and saw it in all its beauty , “how about if we once lose it all, it became so precious to me just like the life of my son…” Instead of campaingning for the 1992 U.S. presidency, Gore wrote his first bestseller Earth in the Balance. He did not mention that it contained his vision of a Global Marshall Plan, which was pursued further as Global Marshall Plan Initiative by various NGOs in 2003, one of them is the Club of Rome of which Gore is a member. On that night, Gore seemed to downplay his stand on a rigid population control to save the planet (as initiated by the Club of Rome). But it may be enlightening to regard the following statements of Gore in the context of the following quote from the book “The First Global Revolution” (1991) where the Club of Rome openly admitted, that the whole green ideology is just an artificial hoax serving as a tool to grab power.
“It would seem that men and women need a common motivation, namely a common adversary to organize and act together… The scapegoat practice is as old as mankind itself. When things become too difficult at home, divert attention by adventure abroad. Bring the divided nation together to face an outside enemy, either a real one or else one INVENTED for the purpose.”
“In searching for a new enemy to unite us, we came up with the idea that pollution, the threat of global warming, water shortages, famine and the like would fit the bill. All these
dangers are caused by human intervention, and it is only through changed attitudes and behaviour that they can be overcome. The real enemy, then, is humanity itself.”
In his Memoirs, David Rockefeller admits, that the goal of all this is to unite the whole planet under a single government:
“Some even believe we are part of a secret cabal working against the best interests of the United States, characterizing my family and me as “internationalists” and of conspiring with others around the world to build a more integrated global political and economic structure – one world, if you will. If that’s the charge, I stand guilty, and I am proud of it.”
Backed up by so much power, Gore stood boldly in front of the Filipino audience to make the following statements:
- Temperature is going up far more rapidly than ever before in the history of the planet.
He quoted Roger Revelle the originator of the CO2 global warming theory (CAGW) who is said to have admitted that it was wrong before he died. The much disputed hockey stick graph from Mann et. al 1999 sticks out like a sore thumb in the IPCC Third Assessment Report (TAR 2001) up until now.
- CO2 level rose at a faster rate and melting virtually all ice caps. It will more than double in 35 years if we continue like that
Nobody in the audience objected. Well, we are in the Philippines where ice is commonly non existent outside the fridge and the palengke (market). So what? And maybe Gore meant CO2 output, not CO2 concentration. And maybe he had -CO2 doubling since the beginning of industrialization- in mind …No, the presented graph insinuated clearly another doubling of CO2 level as from now. Where were the scientists in the audience to clarify this? The answer is – there was no room for questions. The questions had to be presented in advance to the host. And poor Gore claimed that night not to be paid for a scientific dialogue.
Next are claims about global warming melting glaciers of Himalaya and Kilimanjaro.
- 40% of people depend on water from Himalaya
Why did Gore bring that up? The 2007 IPCC report, which won the panel the Nobel Peace Prize, was the one saying that the probability of Himalayan glaciers “disappearing by the year 2035 and perhaps sooner is very high”. It caused shock in Asia, where about 2 billion people depend on meltwater from Himalayan glaciers for their fresh water supplies during the dry seasons. The Asia Society Task Force Report states deforestation as a major cause of water shortage and floodings in the Indus, Ganges and Mekong river area. Because glacier melt amounts to up to 70% of water flow of the Ganges river and 55% of other rivers, accelerated glacier melt has actually improved water security again before summer monsoon arrives. Another raised fear in that study that the Mekong river may run dry for lack of glacier water in about 30 years was again based on the 2007 IPCC landmark report. Since a new study recently reveiled that the feared disappearance of Himalayan glaciers by 2035 was far from possible, even the UN climate chief admitted the mistake on Himalayan glaciers warning. And Gore had to admit to the Asian audience that the IPCC report contained “just one mistake”. The next slide showed an ice spike of the disappearing glacier of Kilimanjaro. He did not say that similar to the Himalayas, deforestation, not global warming, played a major role in the lack of precipitation that lead to the retreat of tropical and subtropical glaciers and of course no mention that the Kilimanjaro was one out of nine scientific errors in Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth” as found by a British high judge in 2007. The Kilimanjaro landmark slide quickly faded into the history of CO2 reconstructed by antarctic ice cores. Nice effect!
- A recent MIT study reveiled that storm intensity went up by 50%. The intensity 4 and 5 goes up whereas the number of storm goes rather down. The increased ocean temperatures are the reason why there are stronger tropical storms
Gore was actually referring to ocean heat content of the three dimensional ocean which some studies say it reached the peak in about 2004. Since then it did not get warmer anymore. So the next slides showed “the first typhoon ever in Brazil 2004, Hurricane Gustav which “hit New Orleans again (2008). It didn’t even hit the news”. Did you hear it in the news? “(Ondoy 2009) brought the largest rainfall ever to the Philippines” “Guatemala City, May 31, 2010, a sinkhole 100 meters deep opened up”.
- “This is how it looks like now” (slide Arctic sea ice September 2007). Some say it will disappear in 5 years, some in 10, some in 20 years
- “Global temperature will go up 3°C this century, this is the least, some say it can go up by 12°C this century
Now the latter is a gross exaggeration. An increase of 3°C depends on future population growth, emissions and climate sensitivity and is about in the middle of the IPCC 2001 emission scenarios. At the moment, temperature goes up 0.14 to 0.18°C per decade.
Of course Gore didn’t fail to mention David Wakes’ new mass extinction threat and the increasing dead zones in the oceans. “Deceases spread in higher latitudes and altitudes” and he talked about
“massive deforestation in Indonesia” followed by the “3rd generation of biofuels” that should no more compete with food and water ressources.
The Filipinos needed a break. The good news presented by Gore in front of the departing President Arroyo was that the Philippines managed to stabilize their CO2 emissions. Really? What is really good is his mentioning of the Philippine’s leadership in the advancement of geothermal power and some tree planting efforts. Less serious are his praising of battery powered jeepneys. Come on, did you see any? At the end, Gore got even involved in a discussion whether the Philippines should activate their newly built nuclear power plant. To the surprise of many, Gore does generally favor nuclear power.
NoyNoy aquino will be our symbol for our hope that the Philippines will someday be a better country..*-