Reference: Govt denies Hmong beaten, Bangkok Post, March 31, 2009

The land of smiles for some is the land of ogres for others (Govt denies Hmong beaten, Bangkok Post, March 31, 2009). Thailand's policy with respect to foreigners in the Kingdom has two faces and it is particularly tilted against its Asean neighbors. One would think that policies based on the spirit of Asean and the principle of a common Asean identity would work otherwise.

Cha-am Jamal

Thailand

Reference: A split in the ranks, Spectrum, March 30, 2009

Political power derived from the military's hierarchy of ranks is a fragile thing because it relies on the robustness of the indoctrination that makes the lower ranks take orders and obey without question. History shows us that this system can fall apart particularly when the highest ranks have abused their position. It seems from Larry Jagan's analysis (A split in the ranks, Spectrum, March 30, 2009) that an extreme concentration of power and wealth in the inner circle of the junta may have created just this kind of instability in Burma and that therefore the junta may be crushed under the weight of its own success. Burma may be ripe for revolution but that revolution may come not from without, but from within the army itself. 

Cha-am Jamal

Thailand

Reference: Past the point of no return, Bangkok Post, March 25, 2009

The global warming scaremongers should have learned by now that there is an optimum level of fear at which research funding is maximized. The idea that global warming is past the "tipping point" or a point of no return (Past the point of no return, Bangkok Post, March 25, 2009) is well beyond that optimum. No research funding for mitigation of global warming will be forthcoming if mitigation is not possible. They had entered this trap before back in 2007 and then quickly recanted saying that "there is still time" (Reference: Still time to avert the worst, Bangkok Post, September 27, 2007) but here they are again all caught up in their own hysteria leading up to the Copenhagen meeting.

Cha-am Jamal

Thailand

Reference: Low carbon growth is the model to adopt, Bangkok Post, March 24, 2009

An article citing economist Nicholas Stern argues that developing countries including Thailand should switch to a "low carbon growth model" (LCGM) in order to save the earth from climate change catastrophe (Low carbon growth is the model to adopt, Bangkok Post, March 24, 2009). It presents an oversimplification of the issue to the point that it is actually inconsistent with what was proposed by Mr Stern (see "The Economics of Climate Change" by Nicholas Stern) who argued that the LCGM is viable only if it can first be demonstrated by the developed countries and only if all of the technologies required can then be transferred costlessly to the developing countries. Currently the developed countries emit 10 to 20 tonnes of carbon per year per capita and the wordwide average is 4.5 tonnes. The Nicholas Stern plan to mitigate climate change calls for a reduction of the worldwide average to 1.0 tonnes per capita. No developed country has yet demonstrated that economic growth is possible at this Spartan rate of carbon emission and no technology has been proposed for developing countries to achieve economic growth at this emission rate. Denmark is cited in the article as a leader in LCGM technology and yet their per capita carbon emission is 9.7 tonnes, far from the target of 1.0 tonnes and that relatively large rate of 9.7 tonnes does not coincide with economic growth but with recesssion. The call for Thailand to adopt LCGM is premature. We are decades if not centuries away from methods and technologies that will allow the developed economies to continue economic growth at the per capita carbon emission rate of Bangladesh.

Cha-am Jamal

Thailand

Reference: The latest threat to the polar bear, Bangkok Post, March 22, 2009

It is reported that the polar bear's survival as a species is threatened not only by climate change that is melting Arctic ice but also by hunters who shoot them (The latest threat to the polar bear, Bangkok Post, March 22, 2009). In this regard one should note that in October 2007 the global warmists sounded an alarm because of the extent of the summer melt of Arctic ice that year and issued a dire forecast and warning that the Arctic was on its way to becoming ice free once again and that therefore the polar bear should be declared an endangered species under the Endangered Species Act. Since then, however, Arctic ice has made a great comeback and is now at normal levels. As well, the polar bear population is healthy and strong enough for the Canadian government to issue hunting licenses to cull the herd. All of the proposals from global warmists to protect the polar bear were audited and rejected as unscientifc (http://www.forecastingprinciples.com/Public_Policy/PolBears.pdf). 

The polar bear is therefore not a protected species under the Endangered Species Act. Yet the hysteria already created in the media about the alleged impending demise of the polar bear continues unabated because it has taken on such momentum that it now runs on pure inertia having run out of a rational basis given the data.

Cha-am Jamal

Thailand

Reference: Fight for your rights, Bangkok Post, March 20, 2009

Motorists who have had to deal with the claims department of insurance companies cannot but sympathize with Khun Jessada's plight after he was rear ended by someone he describes as "a crazy expat" (Fight for your rights, Bangkok Post, March 20, 2009), and yet it must be said that most expats here are good drivers, much better than Thai drivers, and that most Thai drivers, though mild mannered, polite, kreng jai, and jaidee otherwise, often turn into The Hulk once behind a steering wheel, and take risks on the road that will make you gasp. It is strange irony for a Thai driver to lecture allegedly crazy expats on driving safety and etiquette.

Cha-am Jamal

Thailand

Reference: Antarctica ice collapses were regular, Bangkok Post, March 19, 2009

New data from the Ross ice shelf show that the West Antarctic ice shelf collapses every 40,000 years or so and that this process has been regular feature of this ice shelf for millions of years (Antarctica ice collapses were regular, Bangkok Post, March 19, 2009). These melting episodes can raise the sea level by as much as 5 meters but the process takes a thousand years or more. Clearly, this phenomeon cannot be linked to human activity and it does not present grave and imminent threat to humanity. 

Cha-am Jamal

Thailand

Reference: Singapore PM urges Burma reconciliation, Bangkok Post, March 19, 2009

Singapore has urged the Burmese junta to reconcile with the opposition and offered to "do what we can to help the junta to revive ties with the US and Europe" (Singapore PM urges Burma reconciliation, Bangkok Post, March 19, 2009) while at the same time providing the financial leakage needed to undo the West's sanctions and a safe haven for the Generals' offshore bank accounts. What Singapore is really interested in is money. They want that Burma should provide a more lucrative environement for Singaporean businesses. References to democracy and human rights are simply the lip service needed to make their position more palatable to their other business partners.

Cha-am Jamal

Thailand

Reference: Bangkok seeks Dutch help to avoid sinking, Bangkok Post, March 17, 2009

Bangkok is sinking at about 2 or 3 cm per year and this phenomenon is blamed for the increasing severity of floods that occur when a rain swollen Chao Phraya River coincides with unusally high tides and it seems logical that Dutch technology would be applicable here because the Dutch know how to reclaim sunken land (Bangkok seeks Dutch help to avoid sinking, Bangkok Post, March 17, 2009). None of this has anything to do with global warming however, and it is curious to see global warming being invoked every time this issue comes up. 

Cha-am Jamal

Thailand

Fear the fearmongers

It is now being recognized in both political and scientific circles that the economic cost of an imaginary mitigation program to ward off assumed man-made global warming is more scary than the climate catastrophe that the fearmongers are selling (Obama climate plan could cost $2 trillion, Washington Times, March 18, 2009). That is why the global-warmists are raising the stakes in the fear game ahead of their Copenhagen meeting (Nobody listens to the real climate experts, Daily Telegraph, March 15, 2009).

Cha-am Jamal

Thailand

Reference: Singapore-made biofuels to power cars in Europe, Bangkok Post, March 7, 2009

A new biofuels plant in Singapore is to make bio-diesel from palm oil and sell the product to Europeans at around $900 per ton at a time when real diesel is available at $600 per ton (Singapore-made biofuels to power cars in Europe, Bangkok Post, March 7, 2009). Perhaps the reason for targeting the European market is that there is a greater likelihood of finding a high degree of gullible environmentalism that might motivate consumers there to pay more for diesel if they get can a warm and fuzzy feeling of having done something good for the environment. The reality of course is dramatically different here in Asia where the rapid growth in palm oil plantations has been called an environmental disaster by all concerned parties that even include the global warmists themselves who once pushed biofuels as a panacea for global warming and created this mess in the first place (Asia's growing oil palm farms seen as climate change threat, Bangkok Post, November, 2007).

Cha-am Jamal
Thailand

Reference: Developing responsibility, Bangkok Post, March 8, 2009

Tens of thousands of climate scientists flew in from around the world to gather in Bali in 2007 and Poznan in 2008 and they are going to do it again in Copenhagen in 2009, and yet, these thousands of brilliant minds have yet to come up with practical plan of action for mankind to mitigate climate change that is allegedly being caused by human activity (Developing responsibility, Bangkok Post, March 8, 2009). The elusive nature of this agreement likely derives from a mis-specified and flawed problem statement for mankind neither causes climate change nor has any leverage over nature to mitigate climate change. To appreciate the relative irrelevance of man on a planetary scale consider that if one could amass at one place and at a single point in time the cumulative total of all the energy mankind has ever produced from fossil fuels, one would not have enough energy to cause a single hurricane. Copenhagen is a do or die meeting for the global warmists, and given the current state of global economics and nature's refusal to cooperate with the dire predictions of the warmists, it is more likely to be die than do. That will be a good thing because it will force these thousands of scientists to go home and get real jobs that create real economic value instead of spinning the global warming wheel and diverting so much research funding into a black hole.

Cha-am Jamal
Thailand

Reference: Thai carbon sellers need to be wary, Bangkok Post, March 6, 2009

Whether or not it was designed for that purpose, the international carbon trading scheme works as a mechanism for the developed economies of the world to stay rich by paying the undeveloped economies of the world to stay undeveloped and poor and thereby to not compete with the for scarce natural resources that the rich countries need to stay rich. It's a form of colonialism that is smarter and more treacherous than the clumsy old methods of bygone centuries.

Cha-am Jamal

Thailand

Excerpts from the Statement to the U.S. Senate Environment and Public Works Committee by William Happer, Cyrus Fogg Brackett Professor of Physics Princeton University, made on February 25, 2009.

"The current warming period began about 1800 at the end of the little ice age, long before there was an appreciable increase of CO2. There have been similar and even larger warmings several times in the 10,000 years since the end of the last ice age. These earlier warmings clearly had nothing to do with the combustion of fossil fuels. The IPCC summaries for policy makers are not dispassionate statements of the facts of climate change. The IPCC has made no serious attempt to model the natural variations of the earth's temperature in the past.If you can't model the past, where you know the answer pretty well, how can you model the future? 

By looking at ice cores from the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets, one can estimate past temperatures and atmospheric concentrations of CO2. These records show that first the temperature goes up, and then the CO2 concentration of the atmosphere goes up. There is a delay between a temperature increase and a CO2 increase of about 800 years. This casts serious doubt on CO2 as a climate driver because of the fundamental concept of causality. A cause must precede its effect.

CO2 is not a pollutant and it is not a poison and we should not corrupt the English language by depriving "pollutant" and "poison" of their original meaning. CO2 is absolutely essential for life on earth. Commercial greenhouse operators often inject CO2 as a nutrient for their crops. Plants, and our own primate ancestors evolved when the level of atmospheric CO2 was about 1000 ppm far above our current level of about 380 ppm. We are all aware that "the green revolution" has increased crop yields around the world. Part of this wonderful development is due to improved crop varieties, better use of mineral fertilizers, herbicides, etc. But no small part of the yield improvement has come from increased atmospheric levels of CO2. Crop yields will continue to increase as CO2 levels go up, since we are
still far from the optimum levels for plant growth of 1000 ppm.

Many of the frightening scenarios about global warming come from large computer calculations, "general circulation models," that try to mimic the behavior of the earth's climate as more CO2 is added to the atmosphere. Climate models use increasingly capable and expensive computers. But their predictions have not been very good. For example, none of them predicted the lack of warming that we have experienced during the past ten years. All the models assume the water feedback is positive, while satellite observations suggest that the feedback is zero or negative.

This brings up the frequent assertion that there is a consensus behind the idea that there is an impending disaster from climate change, and that it may already be too late to avert this catastrophe, even if we stop burning fossil fuels now. We are told that only a few flat-earthers still have any doubt about the calamitous effects of continued CO2 emissions. There are a number of answers to this assertion.  First, what is correct in science is not determined by consensus but by experiment and observations. Historically, the consensus is often wrong. Secondly, I do not think there is a consensus about an impending climate crisis.There may be an illusion of consensus. The climate-catastrophe movement has enlisted the mass media, the leadership of scientific societies, the trustees of charitable foundations, and many other influential people to their cause. Hysterical op-ed's lecture us today about the impending end of the planet and the need to stop climate change with bold political action. Many distinguished scientific journals now have editors who further the agenda of climate-change alarmism. Research papers with scientific findings contrary to the dogma of climate calamity are rejected by reviewers, many of whom fear that their research funding will be cut if any doubt is cast on the coming climate catastrophe. Even elementary school teachers and writers of children's books are enlisted to terrify our children and to promote the idea of impending climate doom. Children should not be force-fed propaganda masquerading as science."

Cha-am Jamal

Thailand