Reference: The giant climate fraud in Copenhagen, Bangkok Post, December 13, 2009

An article breathlessly promoting climate catastrophe hysteria claims that "Himalayan ice is rapidly vanishing and will be gone by 2035 so the great rivers of Asia that are born there will shrivel and cease" to provide water to a quarter of humanity (The giant climate fraud in Copenhagen, Bangkok Post, December 13, 2009).

The preposterous and scientifically impossible idea that the Himalayan ice will be gone by 2035 comes from the IPCC which initially cited a research paper that claimed that Himalayan glaciers will be gone by 2350. As this statement may not have contained the fear factor that the warmists wanted, the date has been whittled back to 2035 without explanation and Himalayan glaciers have been gradually expanded to include all Himalayan ice.

As for rivers running dry, the IPCC specifically targets the Ganges river claiming it will go bone dry by 2035 because of vanishing ice. Kindly note that the Ganges derives less than 5% of its water from glacial melt.

Cha-am Jamal
Thailand

Reference: Low carbon is the economy of the future, Bangkok Post, December 12, 2009

In their hour of desperation, what the rich countries are saying to the poor countries is this: Look, there are just too many of you and if you all end up living high off the hog like we do, there would be way too much carbon dioxide and that would be bad for global warming. So please, stay in your place and keep the status quo - with you as the white man's burden and we the all powerful rich, able and willing to take care of you with billions of Euros of aid should global warming devastation strike (Low carbon is the economy of the future, Bangkok Post, December 12, 2009). Unfortunately for the rich, the poor countries are not falling for this line for they know well that if their rate of economic growth is not ambushed by carbon dioxide emission reduction schemes of the rich, by the year 2100, when global warming devastation is predicted to strike, they will be so rich that they will be able to take care of these problems all by themselves. What's more, if the rich are serious about committing economic suicide in their vain attempt to control the planet's climate, it is they that will be the poor countries in 2100 freeing up resources for the newly rich; but not to worry, because the newly rich countries of the future will be able and willing to take care of the newly poor and to help them weather the storm of global warming with billions of Bahts, Rupees, and Yuans in aid and assistance.

Cha-am Jamal
Thailand

Reference: Warming trend is clear, Bangkok Post, December 9, 2009

It is reported that the summer melt of Arctic ice was the third most extensive on record in 2009, second 2008, and the most extensive on record in 2007; and that these data show that our carbon dioxide emissions are causing Arctic ice to gradually diminish until it will be gone altogether ( Warming trend is clear, Bangkok Post, December 9, 2009).

In fact, the data show the exact opposite. If the claimed trend were correct, Arctic ice would not have fully recovered after the 2007 summer melt and the 2008 and 2009 summer melts would have been progressively greater not less. For the argument in the article to hold water, the 2009 autumn ice extent needs to be the lowest on record with 2008 the second lowest and 2007 the third lowest; and in fact this is what the IPCC had predicted in 2007, but that is not what happened.

The case against carbon dioxide is not clear but murky and sinister.

Cha-am Jamal
Thailand

Reference: CO2 models falling short, Bangkok Post, December 7, 2009

In the Pliocene warm period the earth was warmer than it is now but with atmospheric carbon dioxide about the same as it is now. This state of the world is inconsistent with the global warming climate model in which warming is driven primarily by atmospheric carbon dioxide. The obvious conclusion is that the global warming climate model is wrong and carbon dioxide is not the principal driver of global warming. However, unwilling to give up on their war against carbon dioxide, the warmists have devised a fudge factor - an unknown and unobservable latent heat effect - that would explain why it is cooler now than the Pliocene (CO2 models falling short, Bangkok Post, December 7, 2009) noting that not now, but a few hundred years from now, extra heat from the carbon dioxide that is already in the air now will make the data come out right and validate their climate model. It is clearly an exercise in pushing the Copenhagen agenda and not unbiased scientific inquiry.

Chaa-am Jamal
Thailand

Reference: Editorial to the world urges action on global warming, Bangkok Post, December 8, 2009

A global editorial on global warming calls for decisive action in Copenhagen to cut carbon dioxide emissions (Editorial to the world urges action on global warming, Bangkok Post, December 8, 2009) saying that "The question is no longer whether humans are to blame". Yet, that is precisely the question in Copenhagen. The agenda there is based entirely on the ability of human beings to control the world's mean surface temperature by attenuating their use of fossil fuels. The proposal to cut CO2 emissions would make no sense otherwise.

The editorial also claims that "climate change has been caused over centuries and has consequences that will endure for all time"and that inaction in Copenhagen will cause "half of all species to become extinct". These are highly charged and grossly inaccurate statements. Our use of fossil fuels could not have been causing climate change for centuries because we have not been using fossil fuels in any quantity for that long. As for specie diversity, earth's prior climate history for millions of years shows that episodes of climate change - particularly global warming - have been associated not with a reduction of specie diversity but with veritable explosions in the number of species during which many old species die off and many more new ones are created. These data have caused the theory of evolution to be revised to include the idea that mutations occur not at random but under environmental stress.

It would be a sad chapter in human history if we commit economic suicide Jim Jones style in the vain and Quixotic belief that we are in control of the planet's climate. Our climate has never endured and has never been stable and has always been dynamic and ever changing. The human race, even with all its knowledge and technology, is insignificant on a planetary scale. On what basis do we expect to be able to stabilize nature? We appear to be in the grip of some kind of mass insanity.

Cha-am Jamal
Thailand

Reference: Himalayan glacier melts to hit billions of poor, Bangkok Post, December 7, 2009

In 2007, the IPCC issued a report citing data on the retreating Gangotri glacier in the Himalayan mountains that showed that the rate of retreat had accelerated from 19 m/yr in 1971 to 34 m/yr in 2001. They extrapolated the observed acceleration forward and wrote that global warming devastation due to carbon dioxide was only a decade away for people who depend on the Ganges and other rivers with headwaters in the Himalayas.

This scenario continues to be widely disseminated in the media (Himalayan glacier melts to hit billions of poor, Bangkok Post, December 7, 2009) in spite of more recent data that show that the predicted acceleration has not occurred; with the IPCC going so far as to vilify Indian scientists who who published the data as climate change deniers.

In any case, the idea that glacial retreat in the Himalayas will cause the Ganges river to dry up is inconsistent with the observation that the river derives less than 5% of its water from glacial melt. Also of note is that a gradual decline in overall glacial mass worldwide began in 1850, well before fossil fuel consumption and atmospheric carbon dioxide rose to levels that the IPCC has identified with man-made global warming. Therefore it is not a carbon dioxide issue.


Cha-am Jamal
Thailand

Reference: Don't put the South on the road to permanent poverty, Bangkok Post, December 5, 2009

The global warming alarm began in the early 1990s at about the same time that Deng's new China began its economic ascent. Instead of welcoming China into the global economy, the West responded with paranoia, fearing that a billion Chinese living like Europeans would put a strain on the world's supply of energy and resources and threaten the comfortable lifestyle of the rich nations. It is possible that the global warming agenda of controlling how much fossil fuel gets used, is mechanism to ensure the rich nations' continued access to energy as well as to keep rich nations rich and poor nations poor.

Reference: Climate change's dealmaker, Bangkok Post, December 5, 2009

The implication that higher carbon dioxide emissions from economic growth in Southeast Asia causes extremes weather in Southeast Asia (Climate change's dealmaker, Bangkok Post, December 5, 2009) is contrary to global warming theory which alleges only a global relationship between atmospheric carbon dioxide emissions and temperature. With less than 5% of the world's energy consumption, the region does not hold any leverage at all in global climate patterns even in the most extreme climate sensitivity assumptions. Therefore there can be no causal linkage between fossil fuel consumption in Southeast Asia and typhoons in the region.

As a footnote, the inclusion of a photo of the 2007 drought in southern China is disingenuous because no meaningful correlation can be drawn between carbon dioxide emissions and a history of droughts in southern China recorded in the fang zhi for thousands of years.

Cha-am Jamal
Thailand

Reference: Climate warming on harvest, Bangkok Post, December 3, 2009

The shrill warning about the catastrophic effects of global warming on Chinese agriculture boils down to the tautology that IF sufficiently extreme weather events occur and IF they devastate agriculture, THEN "the impact on the economic and social development of China would be incalculable". Much of the global warming hype is now being delivered as pure hypothetical statements of this nature; so much so that even their position appears to have retreated from a science argument ("the science is settled and we are right") to a Biblical one ("you can't afford to fret about whether we are right or wrong because we could turn out to be right").

Cha-am Jamal
Thailand