Reference: Get tough stand could spur more mayhem, Bangkok Post, April 13, 2009

We hope the government is reading your insightful analysis of a get tough policy (Get tough stand could spur more mayhem, Bangkok Post, April 13, 2009). Whether we agree or disagree with them there is no doubt that the red shirts are a reality in Thailand's political landscape. The way out is to negotiate a compromise. The compromise might include for example the departure of Abhisit, the selection of a new prime minster from the ruling coalition, and a timetable for elections. We might also consider designing and implementing a formalized mechanism other than violent street protests through which civil society can get involved in some kind of participative democracy. What happened in Pattaya did not shame the country. It showed the world that Thailand is a place where people are free to protest against their government without the risk of being labeled as insane and thrown into mental institutions. There is a lesson in democracy here for delegates from places like Burma and China. 

Cha-am Jamal

Thailand

 

Reference: Somali pirates warn of disaster, Bangkok Post, April 12, 2009

The world's societal, political, and economic system is based on the assumption that people on earth are organized into nation states and that these nation states have effective governance and legitimate leaders who can represent their interests in the global forum. Many of the lingering and apparently unsolvable problems worldwide persist because this assumption is flawed. There are many areas around the world that are recognized as a nation state or a part of a nation state but where the people are unable to govern themselves. The world needs an agency at the UN level with sufficient funding and muscle effectively to govern its ungoverned areas. The war against terrorism and high seas piracy as well as international development programs would make more sense and be more effective under such an umbrella organization.

Cha-am Jamal

Thailand

Reference: By 2020 Laos to gain developed country status, Bangkok Post, April 12, 2009

Laos is currently described as an LDC - one of the world's least developed countries. It would take more than a miracle for Laos to transform itself from extreme poverty into one of the world's developed countries at par with places like Germany in eleven years (By 2020 Laos to gain developed country status, Bangkok Post, April 12, 2009). One would first have to target the country's progress from LDC to developing country or newly industrialized country at par with countries like Thailand and Malaysia. If and when that occurs it would then be rational to formulate strategies and time frames for the country to gain developed country status. Such lofty goals are unrealistic in its current state.

Cha-am Jamal

Thailand

Odd menu items in Thai restaurants

Fried shrimp w/ onion gings

Shrimp sasame and poke on toasted

Steamy nails

Grilled lamp with Thai spicy

Pan-fry blow trout

Deep-fried featherback fish cakes

Deep-fried horseface loach fish

Fresh crap with chilli fish sauce

Scald squit

 Daft beer

 Steam fishy seafood

Pock pock dick mango salad

 Service warm not charge

Reference: Alaska coasts melting, Bangkok Post, April 8, 2009

When permafrost melts, the soil above it subsides and along the coast this process causes erosion and the Beaufort coast of Alaska has been eroding in this manner for thousands of years. The rate of erosion depends of the concentration of ice in the permafrost. The more ice you have the faster it will erode and the ice concentration varies over a large range along the thousand miles or so of this coastline. The finding that a small 40-mile strip of this coast eroded very quickly in 2007 ( Alaska coasts melting, Bangkok Post, April 8, 2009) does not in itself lead to any conclusions of a general nature for the data are limited both in space and in time. Erosion in this part of Alaska is a natural process. To make generalizations from a miniscule portion of this coast over a brief time span will surely lead to erroneos conclusions. Back in 2005, the warmists had raised a similar alarm that man made global warming was melting the vast peat bogs of Siberia and that the melt would release enough methane and carbon dioxide to bring about climate change Armageddon by virtue of a non linear process gone berserk. It did not happen. We have not heard much about Siberia since then. The global warmists are a moving target busy ignoring data that don't serve their purpose, digging for those that do, and duping the media with sensational press releases. Clearly, they are not engaged in objective scientific inquiry.

Cha-am Jamal

Thailand

Reference: Warming blamed for collapse of ice bridge, Bangkok Post, April 6, 2009

The headline of the article notwithstanding, the actual text about the observed melting in the Wilkins Ice Shelf (Warming blamed for collapse of ice bridge, Bangkok Post, April 6, 2009) states that the concerned scientsts "believe the warming in the Antarctic Peninsula is related to global climate change although the links are not entirely clear". In other words what we are dealing with is faith not science. A possible reason for the lack of clarity in the links is that it is not possible to ascribe a highly localized phenomenon to things that are allegedly global in nature. The Antarctic Peninsula is a small bit of the Antarctic continent and it is anomalous in more ways than one. Temperature and ice data from the whole of the continent do not support the global warming hypothesis because the continent as a whole is not getting warmer and its total ice content is not decreasing.

Cha-am Jamal

Thailand

Reference: Loophole aids identity theft, Bangkok Post, April 3, 2009

With respect to the ID card musical chairs that are possible in Thailand and the legal loopholes that were demonstrated in a recent case involving a faked death for financial gain (Loophole aids identity theft, Bangkok Post, April 3, 2009), one should note that these loopholes are not unique to Thailand and are rather common all over Asia. As a famous example consider the case of Mr Nguyen Tat Tanh of Vietnam. While in Kunming, China, he purchased the identity card of a dead beggar named Ho Chi Minh allegedly to hide from certain embarrassing political accusations. Later in life, he maintained two identities - one as Ho Chi Minh, Communist Party supremo, and the other as Tran Dan Tien, journalist and writer. It was the very same Tran Dan Tien who was the author of the now famous interview with Ho Chi Minh. This imaginary interview became the source material for later biographies of Ho Chi Minh that served to enshrine him as a national hero. Of course this is not to say that Mr Nguyen Tat Tanh is not deserving of his hero status with or without the help of Mr Ho Chi Minh or Mr Tran Dan Tien.

Cha-am Jamal
Thailand

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

Reference: Warming to wipe out most life on earth, Bangkok Post, February 27, 2009

James Lovelock, of Gaia fame who rose to prominence as a guru of environmentalism in the 1960s, says that by the year 2040 carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuels will turn Europe into a desert and that by the year 2100 the entire planet will be dead except for a few isolated oases that will sustain no more than one in seven of us and that the rest of us will perish (Warming to wipe out most life on earth, Bangkok Post, February 27, 2009). He further contends that global warming is now past the tipping point and the earth is hurtling its way to certain death because of the carbon dioxide we have already emitted and that there is nothing we can do about it now. In the last paragraph of the story we find that he came to these frightening conclusions by doing nothing more than reading the 2001 IPCC assessment report. That report did in fact contain the "tipping point" argument but subsequent IPCC assessments in 2005 and 2007 revised those findings and withdrew the tipping point scenario saying that there is still time to save the earth by controlling our CO2 emissions. Further research recommended for Mr Lovelock would be to read these later IPCC reports and to also consider that all of the short term forecasts in the 2001 and 2005 reports that could have been emprically tested in subsequent years have been proven to be false.

Cha-am Jamal

Thailand

Reference: Melt in Antarctica much faster, Bangkok Post, February 26, 2009

Global warming scientists report that the melting of Antarctica is more severe than "previously thought" because the melt is not limited to the Antarctic Peninsula but extends to West Anarctica as well (Melt in Antarctica much faster, Bangkok Post, February 26, 2009). These scientists apparently have not read reports by their fellow global warming scientists claiming that the Antarctic melt imposed by man-made global warming was not limited to Western Antarctica but was continent-wide (Global warming hitting all of Antarctica, Bangkok Post, January 23, 2009). What or what was not previously thought is apparently not well understood. Also of note is that a localized melting of a specific glacier located above known volcanic activity underneath the ice ( The fire below, Bangkok Post, April 28, 2008) might be explained in ways other than global warming since one would expect that global warming would be more global in nature.

Cha-am Jamal

Thailand

Reference: Divorce hits climate, Bangkok Post, February 25, 2009

Australian authorities are urging married people not to divorce on the basis that living separate lives would increase their carbon footprint and exacerbate global warming (Divorce hits climate, Bangkok Post, February 25, 2009). It is an absurd proposition. There are likely many good reasons to marry and to stay married but surely global warming is not one of them. The global warming hype has become a circus and this character of the movement removes all doubt that their arguments are more theater than substance.

Cha-am Jamal, Thailand

Reference: When the figures don't add up, Bangkok Post, February 13, 2009

The review of the book "The numbers game" describes the so called "Texas sharpshooter" fallacy in science (When the figures don't add up, Bangkok Post, February 13, 2009). It holds that if one shoots randomly in the general direction of a barn, and if after many shots have been fired, a bulls eye is drawn around a naturally formed random cluster of bullet holes, then the random shooter will appear to be a sharpshooter. What it means in terms of scientific research is that hypothesis must be tested by a different set of data than that used to develop them, for otherwise one falls prey to circular reasoningt. The climate model of the IPCC contains this very fundamental scientific flaw because there is only one history. The historical climate data that are used to develop the model and its empirical parameters are the same data that are used to validate the model. Even worse, as new data evolve, the IPCC incorporates them into the model selectively to ensure that their twin hypotheses, that human activity causes global warming and that global warming holds cataclysmic consequences unless mitigated in accordance with the Kyoto Protocol, are not challenged in any way. 

Cha-am Jamal

Thailand

Reference: Group floats plan to keep rising sea out, Bangkok Post, November 26, 2007

It has been more than a year now that scientists and climate experts sought a budget of 100 billion baht to build a sea wall 80 kilometers long from the mouth of the Ta Chin river to the Bang Pakong river to protect the city of Bangkok from being inundated by the sea that was projected to rise by 20 cm per year due to man-made global warming (Group floats plan to keep rising sea out, Bangkok Post, November 26, 2007). The following year, the fear factor was further stoked by one of these climate experts with a forecast that sometime during October of 2008, global warming will give us a Nargis-like tropical cyclone that will cause a killer storm surge and devastate Bangkok and Samut Prakarn (Fear of a storm surge in Samut Prakarn, Bangkok Post, August 27, 2008). Happily, as of this date, the sea level has not risen at all let alone by 20 cm; and October of 2008 has come and gone with no cyclone and no storm surge. Sadly, however, the media that had allowed itself to become embroiled in spreading fear have yet to hold their fearologists accountable or to give us a post-hoc report on their prophecies of doom.

Cha-am Jamal

Thailand

 

Reference: Rohingya ugly, Bangkok Post, February 12, 2009

Asians unfairly target Westerners when in comes to racism often unable to detect accepted social behavior among themselves as racism. As a case in point compare the weeks of turmoil in the Asian media over a reference by Prince Harry to a fellow cadet from Pakistan as "our little Paki friend" to the apparent acceptance of the Burmese junta's persecution and genocidal expulsion of one of their ethnic minorities because they are dark skinned and ugly looking and unlike the Tibeto-Chinese Burmans who are fair and soft skinned (Rohingya ugly, Bangkok Post, February 12, 2009).

Cha-am Jamal

Thailand

 

Reference: Australia must go greener to prevent fires, Bangkok Post, February 13, 2009

The scare scenario used by global warmists depends on what's making the news. After Hurricane Katrina, they scared us with hurricanes. After floods in China, they scared us with floods. After a drought in Africa they scared us with droughts. And now, right after the tragic forest fires in Australia, they are scaring us with forest fires (Australia must go greener to prevent fires, Bangkok Post, February 13, 2009). They have an uncanny ability to relate any and all natural disasters to greenhouse gas emissions from fossil fuels as if natural disasters were unnatural and therefore man-made.

Cha-am Jamal

Thailand

Reference: New sudy warns of climate time bomb, Bangkok Post, February, 16, 2009

It is reported that nature could emit 1000 billion tons of carbon into the atmosphere from the Arctic permafrost and unleash climate change devastation upon us (New sudy warns of climate time bomb, Bangkok Post, February, 16, 2009). In comparison, the 10 billion tons per year of carbon dioxide we emit from fossil fuels seem irrelevant. The global warmists appear to have over-reached once again in their scare strategy; for faced with overwhelming natural forces that would kill us anyway, we would be less motivated to continue funding the Kyoto Protocol and its future incarnations. In 2007, scientists had announced that global warming had reached a "tipping point" - some kind of point of no return - and that we were doomed; that even if we cut carbon emissions climate change was now irreversibly upon us and there was no escape. Realizing their tactical error they soon released a revised assessment saying that there was still time for scientists, properly funded, to save the earth (Still time to avert the worst, Bangkok Post, September 27, 2007). There exists an optimal degree of scariness that maximizes funding and exceeding the optimal degree could itself become a tipping point for global warming researchers.

Cha-am Jamal

Thailand

Reference: Australia must go greener to prevent fires, Bangkok Post, February 13, 2009

The attempt by global warmists to link every large scale every human tragedy with global warming (Australia must go greener to prevent fires, Bangkok Post, February 13, 2009) surely erodes their credibility and does more harm than good for their cause particularly since they have yet to redeem themselves from their Katrina misadventure. Australia has a history of bush fires and it has been determined that this particular one was a work of arson. It is a scandalous thing to use such a tragic event to hype global warming. 

Cha-am Jamal

Thailand

Reference: Birds shifting north global warming cited, Bangkok Post, February 11, 2009

It is reported that from 1966 to 2005 the annual surface temperature in the United States went up by an average of 3 Celsius degrees due to global warming and that as a result half of the 305 species of migratory birds studied that fly south for winter compensated for the increased temperature by cutting short their southward migration by an average of 56 km (Birds shifting north global warming cited, Bangkok Post, February 11, 2009). These findings are inconsistent and incomplete. It is not possible to compensate for 3 Celsius degrees of warming by moving only 56 km northward. Also the report fails to explain why the other half of the 305 species was left out of the study and whether the findings are biased by this omission. 

Cha-am Jamal

Thailand

Reference: Diamonds back theory of earth impact before cooling, Bangkok Post, February 11, 2009

It is claimed, in an article about another alleged mass extinction event, that a 10 km wide meteor struck the Yucatan Peninsula in Mexico 65 million years ago and caused the mass extinction of dinosaurs (Diamonds back theory of earth impact before cooling, Bangkok Post, February 11, 2009). It is true that in Chicxulub, Mexico, there is a crater that measures 180 km across and is about 65 million years old, and that, coincidentally, dinosaur bones can be found in geologic formations dating back about 65 million years and older but not since. It is tempting to conclude that climate change induced by a meteor caused a mass extinction of dinosaurs until you take a closer look at the data. There is at least a 300,000 year gap between the supposed meteor event and the last of the dinosaur bones and no one can come up with a good reason for climate change to take that long to cause mass extinction; or for meteors to take that long to cause climate change. Mass extinction theory is full of holes and is not as universally accepted as scientific fact as this article implies. 

Cha-am Jamal

Thailand

What global warming scientists can learn from greenhouse operators

Carbon dioxide is called a "greenhouse gas" because it is injected into greenhouses for the purpose of feeding the process of photosynthesis. A greenhouse is a heated building made of transparent material in which vegetables such as tomatoes are grown during weather when it would be too cold to grow these plants outside. Specially designed greenhouse heaters are used to keep the greenhouse warm. The heating requirement during daylight hours is computed as heat losses through the walls and ventilation less the heat gained by solar radiation. 

Carbon dioxide injection is used to maintain a CO2 level in the greenhouse of anywhere from 500 ppm to 5000 ppm according to the amount of solar radiation available for photosynthesis and other factors. If global warming scientists are right, that a change in atmospheric carbon dioxide from 300 to 380 ppm can cause a significant increase in heat entrapment, one would think that the heating requirements of greenhouses during daylight would be different for different CO2 levels. Yet, ceteris paribus, the heating requirement of greenhouses does not change measurably over a large range of carbon dioxide concentraton. In other words even at 5000 ppm, CO2 does not cause greenhouse warming.

Footnote: It should be noted that CO2 is normally generated by burning fossil fuels, and then fed to the greenhouse plants as a nutrient. In that way carbon from fossil fuels is recycled into living matter in the plant. A part of the weight of a hothouse tomato used to be a fossil fuel. And out here in the atmosphere with all that fossil fuel injecting CO2, our food chain surely contains carbon derived from fossil fuels. Part of your body weight used to be oil. 

Cha-am Jamal

Thailand

Reference: The WAIS is melting

Recently global warming scientists have renewed their old story with new vigor that carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuels is causing the West Antarctic Ice Sheet to melt and that its complete melting will raise sea levels by seven meters unless we do something about greenhouse gas emissions (Maybe it's time to heed the warnings, Bangkok Post, February 8, 2009). These reports omit the effect of sub-glacial volcanic activity in a highly localized phenomenon that is absent from the bulk of Antarctica. A reference to the under-ice volcanic activity may be found at the Science Daily website at http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/01/080120160720.htm. It includes the following statement: "The subglacial volcano has a 'volcanic explosion index' of around 3-4. Heat from the volcano creates melt-water that lubricates the base of the ice sheet and increases the flow towards the sea. Pine Island Glacier on the West Antarctic Ice Sheet is showing rapid change and BAS scientists are part of an international research effort to understand this change."

Cha-am Jamal

Thailand

Reference: Maybe it's time to heed the warnings, Bangkok Post, February 8, 2009

A Bangkok Post editorial says that if the West Antarctic Ice Sheet (WAIS) were to melt in its entirety, the sea level would rise by seven meters and cause a great inundation of Biblical proportions (Maybe it's time to heed the warnings, Bangkok Post, February 8, 2009). The statement is a hypothetical truism. The relevant information has not been provided. We don't know if the WAIS will melt and if so how long that process would take and we don't know whether our selection of energy source would make a difference. The further claim that climate change will turn California into a desert by reducing snowfall in the Sierra Nevada takes no measure of the role of the Colorado River in irrigating what used to be a desert into an agriculturally productive area or of recent trends in snowfall in the Sierra. My guess is that the real purpose of these allegedly scientific reports is to serve a marketing function ahead of the Copenhagen meeting that will likely decide the fate of the global warming agenda and its financial benefits to the scientists engaged therein.

Cha-am Jamal

Thailand

Reference: Three factors for good putt, Bangkok Post, February 8, 2009

The time that the average Thai golfer takes these days to line up a putt is absurd. I imagine that this practice derives from a desire to imitate Tiger Woods (Three factors for good putt, Bangkok Post, February 8, 2009). That in itself is fine and good; but something must be done about the extreme slowness of play that it encourages. 

Cha-am Jamal

Thailand

Reference: India already hit by rising temperatures, Bangkok Post, February 3, 2007

It had been reported for some time right up until 2007 that carbon dioxide emission from the use of fossil fuels is melting so much ice and causing so much thermal expansion of the oceans that the consequent rise in the sea level has inundated 2 out of 104 islands in the Sunderbans mangrove forests that straddle India and Bangladesh (India already hit by rising temperatures, Bangkok Post, February 3, 2007). These reports have now ceased. The Sunderbans form the delta of three giant rivers - the Ganges, the Meghna, and the Brahmaputra - and although there is river erosion that destroys existing islands, in the net, the millions of tons of silt end up making more islands than erosion takes away. The delta is not a static thing but ever changing and  always growing by virtue of the amount of silt the rivers bring and deposit in the delta. That two out of 104 islands were taken by the rivers is not an unusual occurrence and in the net since then there are more islands in the delta than there were when the IPCC issued the alarm that global warming was flooding the delta. 

Cha-am Jamal

Thailand

Reference: India already hit by rising temperatures, Bangkok Post, February 3, 2007

For about two years from 2005 to 2007 the IPCC and its entourage of global warmists raised a hue and cry saying that carbon dioxide from fossil fuels was causing the Gangotri glacier in the Himalayan mountains to melt and retreat at an accelerating rate (India already hit by rising temperatures, Bangkok Post, February 3, 2007). The rate of retreat in 2001 was estimated to be 34 meters/year compared with 19 meters/year in 1971. This rate of acceleration was projected forward and we were told that catastrophe and devastation were only a decade away for hundreds of millions of people who depend on rivers fed by the glacier and that the retreat of the Gangotri was a clarion call for their cause.

This clarion has now gone silent possibly because the rate of retreat did not accelerate but slowed to 12 meters/year in 2006 and by 2008 it had stopped altogether. No reason was given for such a big difference between forecast and reality. Instead, the Gangotri glacier, once the darling of the IPCC, was simply forgotten and the global warmists went elsewhere to fish for data that would support their cause.

In the period since data collection began, most of the recorded retreat occurred between 1780 and 1933 well before atmospheric carbon dioxide began to rise.

Cha-am Jamal

Thailand

A letter to President Obama

Mister President

Global warming is a scam. A correlation between x and y in historical survey data does not establish causality because it could mean that x causes y or that y causes x or that a third unobserved variable causes both x and y or even that the correlation is spurious and it does not contain any causality information whatsoever. Causality may only be inferred from controlled laboratory experiments and there has been none. Please don't let the global warming junk science derail your economic stimulus plan. Please take a good unhyped unhysterical cold logic look with that well-wired brain of yours at what the global warming people are saying. It will not make sense. What's worse, they are actually cheering on the economic meltdown because it will lower greenhouse gas emissions. These people are the enemy of your economic revival plan. Please do not trust people who are happy about recession to help you in your efforts to revive the stalled economy.

Cha-am Jamal

Thailand

Reference: Stoking the fear factor in India, Bangkok Post, February 1, 2009

To defend Islamic extremism and terrorism by pointing fingers at Hindu and Sikh extremists is communal bigotry at its worst (Stoking the fear factor in India, Bangkok Post, February 1, 2009). Nothing positive can be achieved for Muslims, Hindus, Sikhs, for India, or for humanity at large by this kind of narrow minded communalism. Let the Hindus clean their house. Muslims must clean theirs.

Cha-am Jamal

Thailand