Reference: Non-water flushing, Bangkok Post My Home Magazine, April 22, 2010

It has been a long and bitterly cold winter in the Himalayas with record snowfall; and so I was surprised to read in the Bangkok Post that the Mekong River is drying up because "the amount of ice and snow in the Himalayas this winter is less than usual, and much of it melted in January and February" due to global warming (Non-water flushing, Bangkok Post My Home Magazine, April 22, 2010). Has the global warming juggernaut reached such momentum that even actual weather data don't matter?

Cha-am Jamal

Thailand

Reference: Book Reviews, Bangkok Post, April 23, 2010

The reference to the New World natives as Injuns or Indians certainly derives from "los indigenas", the Spanish term for native people. The popular folklore that the term has something to do with India is fanciful speculation.

Cha-am Jamal

Thailand

Reference: Less ice less pups, Bangkok Post, April 19, 2010

Changing wind patterns in the Arctic Oscillation cycle - not temperature - had caused an extensive summer melt of Arctic sea ice in 2007 and a low Arctic ice extent in October of that year. Nevertheless, global warming activists seized on this melt data as the leading indicator of climate change Armageddon with headlines saying that the Arctic "is screaming", that it is the "canary in the coal mine", and that polar bears and other creatures in the Arctic are dying off and facing imminent extinction. They said that melting sea ice had set up a positive feedback system that would cause the summer melts in subsequent years to be greater and greater until the Arctic became ice free in the summer of 2012 unless we acted immediately to cut carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuels.

Press releases and "research papers" in this vein continue to this day even though the trend in the summer melt extent has been going in exactly the opposite direction and even though Arctic ice has made a complete recovery from its 2007 melt and even though no actual empirical study of animal populations has shown that their numbers are diminishing.

The 2007 ice data have given such momentum to global warming advocacy that even now, in 2010, in the face of overwhelming data to the contrary, we find find two articles in the Bangkok Post still screaming about Arctic creatures endangered by global warming. Clearly, there are still too many scientists out there whose livelihood depends on publishing papers that support the war against carbon dioxide.

Cha-am Jamal

Thailand

Reference: Ice cap thaw may awaken Icelandic volcanoes, April 17, 2010

Global warming scientists have come up with the bizarre idea that carbon dioxide causes volcanic eruptions in Iceland. The argument goes that carbon dioxide emissions cause global warming, global warming in turn causes glaciers in Iceland to melt, and melting glaciers lighten the weight of the ice cap on volcanoes and thereby trigger eruptions (Ice cap thaw may awaken Icelandic volcanoes, April 17, 2010).

It is clearly a sinister attempt to ride the media wave created by the volcanic eruption under the Eyjafjallajoekull glacier and to use that fear factor to sell their war against carbon dioxide. The reality is of course very different. Melting glaciers do not cause volcanic eruptions. Volcanic eruptions cause melting glaciers.

We now know that much of the glacier melt that the global warming people tried to pin on carbon dioxide was actually caused by geothermal activity under the ice not just in Iceland but also in the West Antarctic Ice Sheet and in Greenland. They have not learned from their prior errors committed while dishonestly overselling the global warming hype and are about to commit VolcanoGate right in the heels of HimalayaGate and dozens of other humiliating retractions.

Cha-am Jamal

Thailand

Reference: Forecasters predict good monsoon season, Bangkok Post, April 15, 2010

For about two years now the global warming people have been warning us that our carbon dioxide emissions will weaken and delay the monsoon in South Asia with devastating results that were to include drought, crop failure, and and hunger (Climate change to delay monsoon in South Asia, Bangkok Post, March 20, 2009). Yet, the 2009 monsoon came right on time not at all delayed or weakened and whatever devastation it may have caused came as floods and not as drought (Flash floods from heavy monsoon rains, Bangkok Post, July 21, 2009); and the 2010 monsoon is expected to do the same (Forecasters predict good monsoon season, Bangkok Post, April 15, 2010). Those who make policy decisions based on the long term forecasts of the IPCC that cannot be checked against data may wish to consider that all - every one - of their shorter term forecasts that can be checked against ensuing data have been proven false.

Cha-am Jamal

Thailand

Reference: 800 flee eruption, Bangkok Post, April 15, 2010

In the heydays of the global warming movement glacial advances were ignored and glacial retreats exaggerated and ascribed to carbon dioxide emissions. Geothermal effects were not considered even after it became known that the melt data on the West Antarctic Ice Sheet were taken from a region with volcanic activity under the ice (The fire below, Bangkok Post, April 28, 2008). Now that the volcano under the Eyjafjallajokull has erupted and broken through the ice for all to see, can we expect yet another retraction from the IPCC with respect to retreating glaciers in Iceland along the lines of their retraction of the state of impending catastrophe about retreating glaciers in the Himalayas?

Cha-am Jamal

Thailand

Reference: Nuclear dead end, Bangkok Post, April 15, 2010

All energy consultants who are Green activists are motivated primarily by their Green agenda and in this instance that agenda happens to be to oppose nuclear power production (Nuclear dead end, Bangkok Post, April 15, 2010). Although their opinions need to be heard and balanced with those of the nuclear power industry, it is necessary for policy makers to remain objective as they weigh these extreme and biased viewpoints.

Cha-am Jamal

Thailand

Reference: Kingdom sees big struggle to remain carbon neutral, Bangkok Post, April 14, 2010

Bhutan is currently carbon negative, not carbon neutral (Kingdom sees big struggle to remain carbon neutral, Bangkok Post, April 14, 2010), and a struggle if any, not to remain but to achieve carbon neutrality, would require a massive increase, not a decrease, in energy consumption by this tiny country whose main feature is extreme poverty in isolated valleys among towering and uninhabitable mountains. Although Bhutan is often mentioned in the context of global warming, it's energy consumption and carbon neutrality are really quite irrelevant when one considers that the USA alone consumes more energy in a few minutes than what Bhutan consumes in a year. Nor is Bhutan a model for other countries to emulate unless things like poverty, illiteracy, and poor medical and infrastructure services are worth emulating.

Cha-am Jamal

Thailand

Reference: America will be just fine, Bangkok Post, April 7, 2010

On the one hand, Western pundits warn us about the dangers of an impending "population bomb" brought about by overpopulation. We are told that the planet is being overwhelmed by the sheer number of people on it and will soon be unable to supply us with sufficient food, water, shelter, and energy and so we must do everything we can to control the population growth rate.

On the other hand, we find that the Western nations themselves are scrambling for population growth to the point that the United States is now counting on a vigorous fertility rate to boost its population to 400 million by the year 2050 as a way of gaining economic advantage over nations with more stable populations (America will be just fine, Bangkok Post, April 7, 2010).

We thus find that the same nations that fund anti-fertility programs to limit population growth in Asia and Africa are, at the same time, gloating about their ability to increase fertility and growth rate of their own populations.

These contradictions raise serious questions. Is population growth good or bad? Is the population bomb a global problem or a localized one? To protect the planet from the population bomb should the population growth in some areas be restricted while that in others encouraged?

Cha-am Jamal

Thailand

Reference: Droughts, floods sped up Angkor's demise, Bangkok Post, March 31, 2010

Scientists studying the Angkor ruins in Cambodia have found that the city died in the 15th century from extreme weather events in the form of alternating periods of floods and drought. Climate scientists may wish to take note of these findings so that they may become aware that extreme weather events such as droughts and floods are not unique to a post-industrial world subjected to the carbon footprint of human activity. Thereby they would be spared the extraordinary effort they make to link every instance of extreme weather to carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuels.

Cha-am Jamal

Thailand