Reference: Sea rise is virtually unstoppable, Bangkok Post, October 1, 2009

Ahead of the Bali meeting in 2007, climate scientists had flooded the media with press releases that were increasingly alarmist in their pitch to save the planet from carbon dioxide, so much so that they got carried away and announced that it was too late to save the planet for we had passed the tipping point. Apparently, the damage done by the carbon dioxide already in the air had put into motion irreversible non-linear changes that would lead us to climate doom whether or not we cut emissions. Soon thereafter, having realized their folly, they quickly reversed themselves just in time for Bali by saying that there was still time to save the planet after all (Still time to avert the worst, Bangkok Post, September 27, 2007). Clearly they have not learned from that experience for here we are in 2009 coming up on the Copenhagen meeting, and as they raise the pitch and volume of their prophesy of climate doom, they have invoked the tipping point yet again (Sea rise is virtually unstoppable, Bangkok Post, October 1, 2009) saying that the melting of ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica is a runaway process feeding on itself and there is nothing we can do to prevent a 2-meter sea level rise that will make "many island nations disappear". In the next few days there will surely be another clarification along the lines of "there is still time" if only we commit to even deeper cuts in carbon dioxide emissions. The politics of fear require that no matter how scary your prophesy, you must be able to hold yourself out as the savior.

Cha-am Jamal
Thailand