Reference: Climate change just the tip of the iceberg, Bangkok Post, October 31, 2009

The proposition that man is the steward of the planet and that it is possible and our duty to micromanage planetary processes is derived from a state of egotism that has become separated from reality (Climate change just the tip of the iceberg, Bangkok Post, October 31, 2009). The earth's climate is not stable, it has never been stable, and it is not possible for man to achieve climate stability. The idea that man's management of the planet can extend a stable Holocene for 2000 years contains many inconsistencies. Will the Holocene end without our intervention? Why 2000 years? Does the author have inside information about the Holocene's schedule? The fact that we have a Holocene at all is evidence of the unstable nature of a planet that is mostly an icy place with brief interglacial epochs in one of which we now find ourselves. It is not possible for us to manage this process or to control it; far less to ensure for ourselves another two thousand years of the kind of weather to which we have become accustomed.

Cha-am Jamal
Thailand

Reference: A fallout of global warming, Bangkok Post, October 29, 2009

In 2005 there was a drought in Guangdong and and the warmists said it was a fallout of global warming caused by carbon dioxide. In 2007 there was a flood in Guangdong, and we were told once again that carbon dioxide was to blame. Now, in 2009, there is again a drought and a drinking water shortage in Guangdong and these too are apparently the result of too much carbon dioxide in the air ( fallout of global warming, Bangkok Post, October 29, 2009). In fact, China's very extensive historical weather record in the Fang Zhi shows that cycles of drought and flood have been characteristic of this region for 2500 years long before atmospheric carbon dioxide rose above 300 ppm. Guangdong's growing drinking water crisis has been studied at length and it has been attributed to rapid industrialization and the equally rapid population rise due to the large numbers of migrant workers flooding into the region. Floods, droughts, and the drinking water shortage in Guangdong are not related to carbon dioxide.

Cha-am Jamal

Thailand

Reference: Melting glacier uncovers island, cnet news, April 28 2007

A well circulated article about global warming compares Landsat phtotos taken on 8/11/1985 and 9/5/2002 and claims that carbon dioxide from fossil fuels is melting the icesheet over Greenland and exposing rocky peninsulas previously covered by ice (Melting glacier uncovers island, April 28, 2007). Please note that a significant amount of summer melt takes place between these dates. The comparison does not yield trend information from year to year because it is confounded by seasonal changes. To draw conclusions about long run trends in ice mass once would have to compare the ice on the same date for more than just two arbitrary years neither of which is recent.

Cha-am Jamal
Thailand

Reference: Staring at melting point, Bangkok Post, October 26, 2009
.

It is great irony that the global warmists who took away the livelyhood of the polar bear hunting guides in Nunavut by causing the animal to be listed as a threatened species and who are even now pushing for is further classification as an endangered species, should be shedding alligator tears for the suffering in Nunavut that they have caused (Staring at melting point, Bangkok Post, October 26, 2009) presenting the plight of Nunavut instead as being caused by global warming and using these people as pawns in a game to push their Copenhagen agenda. In fact, there is no evidence that the polar bear population is dwindling or that the species is threatened by global warming. The now famous Bambi-like photograph showing a polar bear on a small and fast-melting ice-floe that has been used effectively by the warmists to make their case that global warming was melting the ice cap in 2007, was in fact taken in 2004 at the height of the summer melt. The polar ice cap is a seasonal phenomenon with the summer ice cap being less than half its size in winter.
.

Cha-am Jamal
Thailand

Reference: Rising seas threaten Shanghai, Bangkok Post, October 20, 2009

It is claimed that the use of fossil fuels has raised atmospheric carbon dioxide to well above 300 ppm since 1979, and that in turn, CO2 has trapped solar heat, melted glaciers and ice-sheets, and raised sea levels to a point that Shanghai is becoming inundated with sea water (Rising seas threaten Shanghai, Bangkok Post, October 20, 2009). In fact, the inundation problem in Shanghai was first noted and measured by geologists back in 1921 when atmospheric carbon dioxide was below 300 ppm. The problem is attributed to subsidence caused by the removal of ground water and the weight of the buildings in the downtown area of the city. The subsidence continues to this day and it is estimated that Shanghai is sinking at an annual rate of more than one cm per year. It is illogical, irresponsible, and mischievous to attempt to relate Shanghai's subsidence problem to carbon dioxide emissions and the Copenhagen agenda.

Cha-am Jamal

Thailand

'

.

.

.

Reference: Climate refugees add strain to seething Bangladesh capital, AFP, October 18, 2009

It is alleged that Bangladeshis displaced by cyclone Sidr in 2007 are "climate refugees" because they have been rendered homeless by a climate change event that was caused by carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuels and it suggests that cyclones like Sidr will continue to ravage this poverty stricken nation unless we forge a plan in Copenhagen to reduce CO2 emissions (Climate refugees add strain to seething Bangladesh capital, AFP, October 18, 2009). The authors of this article should know that cyclones with intensity equal to or greater than that of Sidr form on the Bay of Bengal during late summer and fall with great regularity. They are a natural phenomenon and not something that is caused by human activity and therefore not something that can be mitigated by attenuating human activity. In the alleged climate change era described as 1979 to the present, there were 14 cyclones that made landfall in Bangladesh. In the correspondng 30 years prior to 1979 there were 19 cyclones in Bangladesh one of which - the 1970 storm - was the most destructive in recent times and was the proximate cause of the separation of Bangladesh from its union with Pakistan. The mother of all Bay of Bengal cyclones occured in 1737. These events occured when atmospheric CO2 was less than 300 ppm. Bay of Bengal cyclones have not increased in frequency or severity since atmospheric carbon dioxide has risen above 300 ppm. If they had, the authors would not have to reach back three cyclone seasons to find one of sufficient severity to serve their purpose. It is not possible to relate cyclone activity with atmospheric carbon dioxide content.

.

.

Cha-am Jamal

Thailand

Reference: Arctic will be ice-free in 20 years, Bangkok Post, October 16, 2009

An alarm has been raised that the extreme extent of the summer melt of Arctic ice in 2007 was caused by carbon dioxide emissions and it portends that in 20 years global warming will leave the Arctic Ocean ice-free in the summer raising sea levels and harming wildlife (Arctic will be ice-free in 20 years, Bangkok Post, October 16, 2009). Kindly note that it is not possible for melting sea ice to raise the sea level and that the 2007 summer melt occurred during a time of global cooling and therefore it could not have been caused by global warming. In fact, the 2007 summer melt phenomenon was the result of shifting ocean currents that brought warm tropical waters further north than normal. A shift in ocean currents is a natural variability and is not caused by carbon dioxide emissions. In any case, the forecast based on 2007 data that the summer melt would leave less and less ice and that ice recovery in winter would progessively weaken in ensuing years has been proven false by 2008 and 2009 data. The mis-match between data and forecast is possibly the cause of the apparent state of confusion among warmists who have issued forecasts since 2007 that the Arctic would be ice free in summer by 2012, 2020, 2030, 2040, 2050, and 2100.

Cha-am Jamal
Thailand

The world's first climate refugees, The Age, July 29, 2009

South Pacific coral atolls are by-products of volcanism. First a volcanic island emerges from the ocean floor. Then, corals grow all around the island to form coral reefs. Finally, the volcanic island begins to sink by subduction and goes completely under water, leaving only a ring of coral islands visible above water. Such a ring of coral islands is called a coral atoll. It's existence implies that somewhere in the middle of the atoll is a sinking volcanic island because the atoll could not have formed otherwise. The atoll itself remains above water as long as the rate of sinking does not exceed the rate of coral growth and begins to go under water otherwise. The Carteret Islands in the South Pacific are coral atolls. That some of these atolls are sinking and becoming inundated by seawater is a tragic but natural event having to do with geological forces beyond our control. These events are not caused by carbon dioxide and they cannot be modulated in any way by cutting CO2 emissions. In fact, these are not climate events. People who abandon sinking coral atolls for higher ground are therefore not "climate refugees" and their plight has nothing whatsoever to do with our consumption of fossil fuels. The continued attempt to link carbon dioxide with sinking atolls is inconsistent with what we know about coral atolls and with the observation that all atolls are not affected. Rising sea level does not inundate selectively.

Cha-am Jamal
Thailand

Reference: Volcanoes stirred by climate change, Bangkok Post, October 7, 2009

Vulcanologists, apparently eager to tap into the mother lode of research funding available for climate change, are eager to look into the idea that global warming could increase volcanic activity and volcanic activity in turn could cause more global warming (Volcanoes stirred by climate change, Bangkok Post, October 7, 2009). "I don't think we should be scaremongering" they said and then went right ahead with the scary albeit hypothetical proposition that if such a non-linear relationship existed between volcanoes and global warming then the climate change Armageddon predicted by the warmists would be that much worse and would happen that much quicker. They point out that as of now they have no data and will need lots of money to gather data because gathering data from volcanoes is dangerous. However, there is a danger that the vulcanologists may unwittingly throw a monkey wrench into the basic global warming hypothesis for if they end up showing that volcanic activity causes climate change, it could undermine the rationale for the war against carbon dioxide. To maximize research funding they might wish to emphasize the first relationship - that global warming causes increased volcanic activity - and not interfere with the something in which "the science is settled" and for which there is "scientific consensus".

Cha-am Jamal
Thailand

Reference: Warming ocean melts Greenland glaciers, Bangkok Post, October 7, 2009

The melting of glacial tongues and sea ice in Greenland and the Arctic (Warming ocean melts Greenland glaciers, Bangkok Post, October 7, 2009) have to do with shifting ocean currents and the El Nino effect both of which are natural events. These phenomena do not imply that glaciers themselves are melting, nor that the Arctic is being warmed by atmospheric carbon dioxide trapping heat. Climate scientists with a global warmist agenda, even after admitting these events are natural and not man made, find it necessary still to bring up carbon dioxide emissions and rising sea levels in the same breath. Clearly there is no causal connection between carbon dioxide emissions and shifting ocean currents; or between how long a glacial tongue takes to melt and rising sea levels. Climate scientists continue to lose credibility by interpreting short term natural variability as long term trend and making alarming forecasts of doom. Only if a mass balance shows that snowfall minus glacial flow to the ocean is negative and only if this process can be shown to be a long term trend and not a singular event, can rising sea level be inferred; and the projected sea level rise can be considered calamitous only if the time frame is sufficiently short. A two meter sea level rise over a few decades may be calamitous but the same rise over thousands of years is not.

Cha-am Jamal
Thailand

Reference: Effects of Arctic warming seen as widespread, Bangkok Post, October 7, 2009

The article on Arctic ice (Effects of Arctic warming seen as widespread, Bangkok Post, October 7, 2009) is based on a paper published in 2008 and that paper was based on data taken in 2007 at a time when the annual summer melt was more extensive than normal. The deep summer melt of 2007 had encouraged global warmists to claim the melt as a dramatic effect and therefore proof of global warming, and also to make a forecast that Arctic ice would not fully recover in the following winter, and that therefore there would be less and less ice each successive summer until the Arctic became ice free in 2012. It has not worked out that way. The summer melt of 2008 was not greater than that in 2007 but less and the melt in 2009 was lesser yet. The ice made a full recovery in both 2007 nd 2008 and it looks like it will do it again in 2009. Although the data are moving exactly contrary to the forecasts of 2007, these forecasts and their fear factor continue to re-surface in the media as if 2008 and 2009 had not yet happened.

Cha-am Jamal
Thailand

Reference: No change US blasted at talks, Bangkok Post, October 7, 2009

It appears that the Europeans have taken the high road scolding developing countries and blasting the USA for doing so much less than they have done to mitigate climate change (No change US blasted at talks, Bangkok Post, October 7, 2009). Europe has committed to cutting carbon dioxide emissions at least 20% by 2020 although it is not clear at this point how much of that reduction will be achieved by reducing the amount of carbon based fuels used in Europe and how much of it represents offsets purchased by rich Europeans from poor developing countries. The developing countries are in a fix. They are expected to run carbon offset programs for the Europeans that they can't claim as their own while at the same time being scolded by Europeans for not cutting their own emissions. Apparently they will be given some kind of "international development aid" by the Europeans to achieve the emission reduction targets the Europeans want but there is a monkey wrench in that program too. Both sides agree the amount needed is 100 billion Euros per year but the Europeans have yet to offer anything close to that figure. Besides, as economist and author Christopher Lingle has pointed out, international development aid is a failed model and a rat hole through which more than $2 trillion have passed in the war against poverty without measurable results. Are we expected to believe that the same program will work in the war against carbon dioxide?

Cha-am Jamal
Thailand

Reference: Vanishing islands look to the world, Bangkok Post, October 4, 2009

One cannot but sympathize with the hardships of a nation that consists of nine tiny atolls straddling the middle of nowhere amid the vast South Pacific and subjected to nature's whims (Vanishing islands look to the world, Bangkok Post, October 4, 2009). They live in the path of South Pacific tropical cyclones that form annually during the cyclone season and that often cause coastal erosion and crop damage not to speak of the loss of life and property. As well, the land they live on is not terra firma but instead a dynamic and ever changing balance between coral growth and a sinking underwater volcanic island on which the atoll is perched; gaining elevation when the rate of coral growth exceeds the rate of subduction and sinking when the rate of subduction exceeds that of coral growth. These are cruel equations but neither can be changed by cutting carbon dioxide emissions.

Cha-am Jamal
Thailand

Reference: A thermostatic time bomb, Bangkok Post Brunch Magazine, October 4, 2009

The claim that our carbon dioxide emissions are causing the ice on Mount Kilimanjaro to melt is based on a comparison of the ice extent in 1993 with that in 2001 and the hysterical prediction at that time that continued use of fossil fuels will cause the peak to become ice free by 2016. Since then, however, other facts have come to light that have discredited the global warming hypothesis in explaining the loss of ice on Kilimanjaro. It is therefore surprising to see that the Bangkok Post is still carrying the Kilimanjaro icon as a call to arms in the war against carbon dioxide (A thermostatic time bomb, Bangkok Post Brunch Magazine, October 4, 2009). As it turns out, the loss of ice was due to aridity and not warming; the process is sublimation not melting; and it started at least as early as 1912 when atmospheric CO2 was below 300 ppm. Furthermore, the ice appears to have stabilized and the various projections of its demise by 2016, 2020, or 2030 have all been withdrawn.

Cha-am Jamal
Thailand

Reference: Nature warns climate talkers, Bangkok Post, October 2, 2009

An editorial column claims that typhoon Ketsana "carries a sinister message" for climate change policy makers now meeting in Bangkok and that the sinister message is for them to "shape up or face the fatal consequences" (Nature warns climate talkers, Bangkok Post, October 2, 2009). Kindly note that typhoons in the South China Sea, cyclones in the Bay of Bengal, and hurricanes in the Caribbean are natural events we have had all along even when atmospheric CO2 was less than 300 ppm. Ketsana, Nargis, and Katrina cannot in any way be related to carbon dioxide. It is not possible for Ketsana to send any message, sinistra or destra, to meetings about reducing carbon dioxide emissions.

Cha-am Jamal
Thailand

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

Reference: China's growth could exceed planet's resources, Bangkok Post, September 30, 2009

In the good old days the European races consumed all the resources of the planet and lived well and the rest of the world cooperated by staying poor and supplying resources and energy to fuel European wealth. This arrangement is now changing. About 3 billion Asians in China, South Asia, and Southeast Asia are undergoing rapid economic growth with steeply rising income and consumption - particularly the consumption of minerals and fossil fuels - to the point that it now seems that they aspire to live like Europeans. That is a scary prospect for the rich nations (China's growth could exceed planet's resources, Bangkok Post, September 30, 2009) because it implies competition for scarce resources with a population many times their own, living at the same standard of living and therefore consuming immense amounts of energy and resources. From their perspective, this scenario is intolerable and cannot be allowed to happen. Initial pleas to the Asians that they must not all drive cars, buy refrigerators, and live in heated and air-conditioned homes, that they must go back to their quaint ways and ride bicycles, have not had any success in stemming the Asian economic onslaught. That is why I believe the Europeans need something like a global warming Armageddon. Armed with that scenario, they can now tell the teeming Asian multitudes that they can't all live like the Europeans do because that would overload the planet somehow and that overload would destroy them. That, I believe, is the genesis of the fossil fuels to Armageddon connection by way of carbon dioxide and global warming.

Cha-am Jamal
Thailand

Reference: Cleaning up our act, Bangkok Post, September 28, 2009

Programs like the CDM, cleverly worded Orwell style with the D standing for development, allow the North to get the South to run carbon offset programs and sell the offsets to the North (Cleaning up our act, Bangkok Post, September 28, 2009). In the end it is the South that carries out the emission reduction but it is the North that claims them as "offsets" in order to meet their emission reduction targets. They have the money and they mean to continue their high energy consumption and high standard of living to which they have become accustomed. The rich get richer by continuing to consume immense amounts of energy per capita. The poor get poorer by selling them their energy resources as they have been doing all along, and now, by also selling them their carbon offsets. The carbon trading scheme and perhaps the whole global warming thing could very well turn out to be an elaborate mechanism to ensure continued flow of energy to the North in the face of limited non-renewable resources and increasing energy demand from a rapidly developing South.

Cha-am Jamal
Thailand

Reference: It is already too late for the coral

As long as we have studied coral reefs we have observed mass coral die offs in bleaching events that are often followed by regeneration and recovery. These days, however, scientists see all coral bleaching as anomalous and therefore symptomatic of global warming, as if they had never seen coral bleachings before. In 2006, they issued an alarm that "it was already too late for the coral" saying that mass coral bleaching was devastating the Great Barrier Reef and human activity involving carbon emissions was to blame. The bleaching event had occurred early in 2006. By the end of the year the supposedly devastated coral had made a complete recovery all by themselves. Thereupon, climate scientists who had once doted on the GBR as proof of carbon dioxide's devastation simply went silent on the issue.

Cha-am Jamal
Thailand

Reference: Edge back from the abyss, Bangkok Post, September 22, 2009

Starting sometime this month the global warmists have injected the word "abyss" into their lexicon and as usual with warmist terminology, the word connotes fear and urgency with repetition and confusion substituting for meaning. Last week Ban Ki-Moon told us that we were approaching the abyss and if Copenhagen failed we would soon find ourselves at the abyss. This week we are told by Jose Manuel Barroso that we are already at the abyss and success at Copenhagen will help us to back away from the abyss (Edge back from the abyss, Bangkok Post, September 22, 2009). Besides the terminology, Mr Barroso also appears to be confused about the data and forecasts presented by the very people whose science supposedly legitimizes his message. He writes that "climate change is happening faster than we believed only two years ago" whereas in 2009 the IPCC and others have actually backed away from their more extreme forecasts of 2007 in all aspects of climate change including temperature, ice melt, and sea level rise. In their desperation ahead of Copenhagen, the warmists have become more confused and less credible than ever.

Cha-am Jamal

Thailand

Reference: Why the Copenhagen talks offer us one last chance, Bangkok Post, September 21, 2009

Ban Ki-Moon says that he went to the Arctic Ocean and was horrified to see the remains of a glacier that just a few years ago was a majestic mass of ice and that had just collapsed - not slowly melted - just collapsed. He thereby became convinced that the only resolution for the "climate crisis" is a successful emission reduction agreement at the Copenhagen meeting in December (Why the Copenhagen talks offer us one last chance, Bangkok Post, September 21, 2009). This message is incredibly garbled. There are no glaciers in the Arctic Ocean. The glaciers in Greenland that climate scientists had once said were flowing faster into the ocean because of climate change have since slowed down to a normal rate of flow and are no longer retreating. Glaciers don't "collapse".

The Secretary General goes on to say that he traveled by ship to the Polar ice rim and that in just a few years that ship will be able to travel all the way to the North Pole because the polar ice will have been completely melted by our carbon dioxide emissions. Current exaggerated projections by the UN's own climate scientists is that the Arctic will become ice free in summer around 2060 if we do not reduce CO2 emissions. That's 50 years from now, not "just a few years". In any case, it now appears that the minimum summer ice extent in the Arctic is not diminishing but in fact it is making a recovery and so the ice free Arctic forecast may be revised yet again.

He also states that thawing permafrost is even now releasing methane into the atmosphere. He is concerned because methane is a more potent heat trapping gas than carbon dioxide. This statement is completely false. The scenario of thawing permafrost in Siberia releasing methane is a forecast made by climate scientists and not one that has been observed. According the the IPCC, if we don't reduce our carbon emissions, Siberian permafrost may thaw and that thaw may release methane into the atmosphere in quantities sufficient to accelerate global warming. No climate scientist has claimed that these changes are now occurring. Incidentally, these forecasts have been rejected by Russian scientists.

Cha-am Jamal
Thailand

Reference: Brussels not amused by Berlusconi's antics, Bangkok Post, September 19, 2009

Citing the high cost of the EU carbon emission reduction plan ill timed to coincide with a long and painful global recession, Italian premier Silvio Berlusconi announced that Italy will not comply and moreover that he intends to use Italy's veto power to block the measure. The frustration with Italy in Brussels is best understood in these terms. Their attempt to tarnish and sideline Berlusconi using sensational tabloid press sex stories (Brussels not amused by Berlusconi's antics, Bangkok Post, September 19, 2009) is simply a desperate warning the prime minister to not use Italy's veto power. The EU are not amused because Berlusconi has forced them into a reality check with respect to their ambitious but misguided war against carbon dioxide.

Cha-am Jamal
Thailand

Reference: Action needed fast to save Maldives from drowning, Bangkok Post, September 19, 2009

Climate change scientists have warned the Philippines and the Maldives that if they fail to cut their carbon dioxide emissions they face devastation from intense typhoons, drought, and food shortage in the case of the Philippines and inundation by rising sea levels in the case of the Maldives (Action needed fast to save Maldives from drowning, Bangkok Post, September 19, 2009). This kind of scenario of death by climate change where each country suffers directly from its own carbon dioxide emissions is contrary to what climate scientists have told us in the past - that the whole world is affected by the sum total of global CO2 emissions. Neither the Maldives nor the Philippines produces sufficient emissions to have a measurable impact on global atmospheric CO2 concentration. If they are about to be destroyed by typhoons and rising seas, there is absolutely nothing that these countries can do about it for even if they stop using fossil fuels altogether the effect on global atmospheric CO2 will be immeasurably small.

Cha-am Jamal
Thailand

Reference: Arctic sea ice pack at record low, Bangkok Post, September 19, 2009

It is reported that the summer melt of Arctic sea ice in 2009 has reduced it to its third lowest extent on record continuing an overall decline symptomatic of climate change (Arctic sea ice pack at record low, Bangkok Post, September 19, 2009). It should be noted that the "record" used goes back only to 1979 when satellite data started becoming available. Our record of history prior to that shows more extensive summer melts including an open Northwest Passage. It should also be noted that the third greatest summer melt since 1979 follows in the heels of second place 2008 and first place 2007. This progression does not show a continuing overall decline but the exact opposite particularly when one considers all the carbon dioxide emissions since summer of 2007 and the global warmists' 2007 forecast that the summer melt would continue to increase in 2008 and 2009. Therefore the data presented are not consistent with climate change nor symptomatic of it.

Cha-am Jamal
Thailand

A succinct list of the flaws in the case for man-made climate change (extracted from Andrew Freedman's Washington Post blog

Flaw number 1: Hurricane Katrina was not a particularly severe storm. It made the news because it happened to make landfall in a vulnerable location. Yet the global warmists selected Hurrican Katrina to make their case that carbon dioxide emissions was increasing the severity of storms.

Flaw number 2: If you visit the Florida State Hurricane data center (http://coaps.fsu.edu/~maue/tropical/global_running_ace.jpg) you will find that hurricane intensity and frequency are not increasing as claimed by the global warmists. In fact, since the 1990s, hurricane activity has been decreasing even while we were using fossil fuels and emitting more CO2 than ever before.

Flaw number 3: The 2007 summer melt of Arctic sea ice was grossly misinterpreted and misrepresented as a cataclysmic event even though the satellite data of Arctic sea ice extent used go back only about 30 years and even though we have plenty of credible anecdotal data that the Northwest Passage had been open in recorded history.

Flaw number 4: First we were told that Antarctica was warming due to CO2 emissionf from fossil fuels. When challenged with hard data from weather stations that showed the continent was actually cooling they argued that this kind of cooling was consistent with their man made global warming hypothesis.

Flaw number 5: First they predicted that CO2 emissions will increase the frequency and severity of El Nino events. When asked why we have not had a severe El Nino since 1998 they said that El Nino was a very complicated climactic event with many inter-related variables and therefore they are unpredictable.

Flaw number 6:


Flaw number 3:

Reference: Arctic thaw threatens much of world, Bangkok Post, September 16, 2009

The unusually extensive summer melt of Arctic ice in 2007 had triggered forecasts of global warming doom that said that the ice would not fully recover with ensuing summer melts cutting deeper and deeper into the ice extent until the Arctic became ice free by 2030, 2050, or 2060 according to various forecasts. In the following two years, the Arctic ice summer melts and winter recoveries have been contrary to these assumptions. The Arctic ice extent did in fact fully recover from the 2007 melt, and the 2008 summer melt was less than that in 2007 not more, again with full recovery the following winter. This counter forecast trend continued in 2009 with a summer melt that is even less than the one in 2008. Clearly the the trend in the summer melt cycle of the Arctic is moving exactly in the opposite direction but the same forecast of diminishing Arctic ice is being sold to us over and over again (Arctic thaw threatens much of world, Bangkok Post, September 16, 2009). Interested parties may view the data for themselves by visiting the National Snow and Ice Data Center at nsidc.org.

Cha-am Jamal
Thailand

Reference: The Population Bomb, Silent Spring, ozone holes, and climate change

The essential idea in environmental extremism is that human activity is bad and that the planet needs to be saved from human beings, as if we were aliens from Mars and not of the earth. All of their crusades have been built on hysteria rather than objective scientific inquiry and none of them has withstood the test of time being eventually proven false. Their common denominator, that human beings are fundamentally bad for the planet, endures even though Paul Ehrlich's "Population Bomb", has been completely discredited as rubbish. So we find that Ehrlichism has been resurrected yet again, this time by the global warmists. Bright minds at the London School of Economics have come up with the idea that, since it is caused by people, we can fight climate change by getting rid of people. They have proposed that we should save the planet from people simply by not giving birth to more of them. Being economists they have boiled it down to pounds and shillings with the equation that a condom costs less than the cost of climate change mitigation to offset the carbon footprint of the human whose birth was prevented by the condom. It is surprising that we take these people seriously enough to have labeled the essential ingredient of life in the carbon cycle as a pollutant and to stand ready to commit economic suicide in order to wage war against carbon dioxide.

Cha-am Jamal
Thailand

Reference: The effect of carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuels on glaciers in Greenland

In 2005 two glaciers in Greenland were found to be moving faster than they were in 2001. Scientists concluded from these data that the difference observed was a a long term trend of glacial melt in Greenland and that carbon dioxide was the cause of this trend. The assumed trend was then extrapolated forward and we were told that carbon dioxide would cause the land based ice mass of Greenland to be discharged to the sea and raise the sea level by six meters. They said that the only way out of the devastation was to drastically reduce carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuels.

However, in 2009, just before a meeting in Copenhagen where these deep cuts in emissions are to be negotiated, it was found that the glaciers had returned to their normal rate of discharge. In other words, the changes observed in 2005 did not represent a trend but a temporary natural phenomenon that had been grossly misinterpreted.

Undeterred by data, scientists are now saying that we should make those reductions in carbon dioxide emissions anyway because the miscue by scientists in this case serves to show how little they know about these things, how wrong they could be, and therefore how much greater the danger carbon dioxide could pose for humanity. In other words, the less they know the more urgent their message. If there had been a way of holding climate scientists accountable, they might not have been so brash .

Cha-am Jamal
Thailand

Reference: Rich must commit more, Bangkok Post, September 12. 2009

There will be no deal struck in Copenhagen as the pre-meeting bickering makes clear (Rich must commit more, Bangkok Post, September 12. 2009). Citizens of rich nations face an unsavory cost/benefit analysis in which the benefits are global but the costs are local. At the same time the poor nations find that their per capita emission is already well below the most ambitious target of the rich nations. The bottom line is that CO2 emission is a proxy for energy consumption and energy consumption is a proxy for the standard of living and no rich nation is willing to reduce their standard of living. More bad news for Copenhagen lies in the data. The warmists are surely praying for a monster hurricane or some other equally dramatic weather data prior to Copenhagen and they may yet get that wish but so far the data have not cooperated with them. There have been a flurry of press releases by the warmists all of them reruns from 2005 and 2007 and yet all dutifully published by a pliant media but datawise it's been all quiet on the global warming front except for bad news. The US NOAA announced that the continental USA has been cooler than normal in August, 2009 even as the warmists are trying to promote August as an unusually hot month.

Cha-am Jamal
Thailand

Reference: THAI fails to transfer four long-range jets, Bangkok Post, September 11, 2009

The A-340 is dead having lost its entire market share to twin engine designs because it is expensive to operate. There are now only 18 orders left in the books at Airbus for the A-340 and even these few orders are disappearing fast as cancellations come in. There is no residual demand for this aircraft in the airline or air cargo market and THAI's failure to find a single operator to bid for it is testament to this well known reality. It is surprising to read that the staff at THAI were "dumbfounded" when they received no bids except from an aircraft dismantler who is offering junkyard prices (THAI fails to transfer four long-range jets, Bangkok Post, September 11, 2009). One would think that those who work for an airline would have been clued in to current market conditions.

Cha-am Jamal
Thailand

Reference: A plan to issue ration cards for energy to fight climate change

The Institute for Public Policy Research in the UK has put forward a plan to fight climate change by rationing energy. The program would include gasoline, natural gas, heating oil, electricity, diesel, and even airline tickets and holidays. According to the plan each person or perhaps each household will be issued ration cards for a prescribed amount of energy each month and when the that amount has been consumed, excess consumption will be possible only by purchasing very expensive permits or perhaps by making purchases in the black market. Whether intentional or not, the climate change agenda is playing into the hands of the right wing conspiracy theorists who had warned us that climate change was a ruse for big brother to take control of our lives.

Cha-am Jamal
Thailand

Reference: Himalayan nations' first climate talks, and Nepal villagers on climate change frontline, Bangkok Post, September 9, 2009

It is claimed that carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuels are causing Himalayan glaciers to melt and threaten devastation (Himalayan nations' first climate talks, Bangkok Post, September 9, 2009). The available data do not support this conclusion. It is true that some glaciers are retreating but that is due to natural cycles of weather patterns and not global warming and the proximate cause of the retreat is aridity and not temperature. In fact, there is no evidence that the mean annual temperature in the Himalayas has risen in the last decade. More to the point, not all glaciers are retreating. Most are stable or advancing. Taken as a whole, total glacial mass is currently not decreasing. It should also be mentioned that the many sad anecdotes about Nepalese men who leave their families behind to seek work in India (Nepal villagers on climate change frontline, Bangkok Post, September 9, 2009) are irrelevant to the climate change issue for they represent a well known historical migration pattern that has to do with poverty and not carbon dioxide.

Cha-am Jamal
Thailand

A reader of the Southland Times writes:

The IPCC climate model assumes that the residence time of CO2 in the atmosphere is 50 to 200 years while recently published research shows that CO2 has a residence time of 5 to 15 years. The lower residence time of CO2 greatly reduces its effect on climate to the point of being negligible.

Posted by

Cha-am Jamal
Thailand

Reference: Action needed to avoid the abyss, Bangkok Post, September 6, 2009

Ban Ki Moon has described the effect of carbon dioxide emissions on climate as "our foot is stuck on the accelerator and we are heading towards an abyss". If "abyss" is another word for what has previously been described as the "tipping point", the Secretary General might wish to consult his own agency charged with the global warming agenda for these people have declared repeatedly between 2005 and 2007 that "it is already too late" for we are now "past the tipping point" and that we are doomed because mitigation of man-made climate change is no longer possible. Yet, here in 2009, we are somehow only approaching the abyss but not there yet. As it has in the past, the rising volume of fear rhetoric signals that we are approaching not an abyss, but a meeting on climate change in which they intend to extort from us the kind of agreement they want by making sure that we are sufficiently scared

Cha-am Jamal
Thailand

Reference: Luxury beachfront property in Australia is sinking, IHT, September 4, 2009

The coast of SE Australia consists mostly of beaches and these beaches are not stable landforms but a dynamic ever changing interface between land and water subject to violent erosion as well as the formation of sandbars. Coastal erosion along these beaches is an ongoing and natural phenomenon that has been recorded for more than a hundred years and has been related by hydrologists to the effect of east coast low pressure systems and tropical cyclones in conjunction with high tide. Coastal erosion of this nature in Australia is not new. What's new is the penchant these days to link all destructive natural events to global warming as if these kinds of events did not always occur. Media journalists and editors should evaluate the content of these stories and press releases for themselves with critical thinking of their own instead of printing like sheep.

Cha-am Jamal
Thailand

The politics of global warming

The global warming arena has taken on all the colors of a global tort case with hapless poor nations in Asia, Africa, and the South Pacific playing the role of the injured party goaded on by slick ambulance chasing tort lawyers in the form of the global warmists. Both of these parties are motivated to overstate the pain and suffering allegedly thrust upon the poor nations because that simultaneously ensures continued funding for the warmists and maximizes the possible payoffs to the poor nations. Objectrive scientific inquiry and scientific honesty are forced to take a back seat when large amounts of money are at stake.

Cha-am Jamal
Thailand

Reference: Ban makes climate plea in Arctic Circle, Bangkok Post, September 3, 2009

After the 2007 summer melt, climate scientists had predicted that Arctic ice would not fully recover and that therefore there would be less and less Arctic ice every winter until the Arctic became ice free in 2030 and that carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuels were to blame. Instead, the ice fully recovered in 2008 and these forecasts are now irrelevant given post 2007 data. Yet the 2007 forecast has taken on a life of its own now putting the top man in the United Nations in the embarrassing position of being the poster boy for a lame duck prophesy (Ban makes climate plea in Arctic Circle, Bangkok Post, September 3, 2009). Greenpeace, the organization that got the Arctic ice melt scare started, is now back-pedaling on the idea and under questioning on BBC's “Hardtalk”, Gerd Leipold, the retiring leader of Greenpeace withdrew from that position saying that they had erred.

Cha-am Jamal

Thailand

Reference: Fresh form of H1N1 is much more severe, Bangkok Post, August 30, 2009

The warning from the WHO that the H1N1 virus could mutate into fatal pulmonary distress (Fresh form of H1N1 is much more severe, Bangkok Post, August 30, 2009) is curious for several reasons. First, this characteristic of the virus is not new but something that has been known since day one. Why is it being presented as new information? Second, the 1918 Spanish flu also got started in early northern summer and was also relatively mild through the summer but got virulent at the end of August. So is history the scientific basis for the sudden warning of virulence? Third, if the WHO is right why are we rushing to make vaccines against the known mild strain when it is the virulent strain from which we need protection? Finally, a high fatality rate is a tragedy in the short run but a blessing in the long run. Pandemics need their hosts to be alive long enough to walk around and spread the disease. If the hosts die too soon so does the pandemic.

Cha-am Jamal

Thailand

Reference: Rising tides threaten Pacific Islands, Bangkok Post, August 30, 2009

Atolls in the South Pacific form when a volcanic island begins to sink by subduction and they remain above water as long as the rate of sinking is less than the rate of coral growth and become indundated otherwise. This process cannot in any way be related to carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuels and cannot in any way be mitigated by by the various proposals to be put forth in the upcoming Copenhagen meeting on climate change (Rising tides threaten Pacific Islands, Bangkok Post, August 30, 2009). The observed inundation of some of the atolls could not have been caused by sea level rise for that would have affected all atolls equally.

Also, the claim that carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuels has caused an increase in the severity and frequency of natural disasters - an idea that got started with hurricane Katrina - is contrary to the data for they show no such increase. The 2007 tsunami in the Soloman islands cited in the article as evidence was a volcanic event and therefore unrelated to the carbon dioxide content of the atmosphere.

Cha-am Jamal

Thailand

Reference: Water crisis in parched northern China, Bangkok Post, August 26, 2009

The Chinese kept meticulous weather records for thousands of years and these records show a recurring pattern of extreme droughts and floods. The most severe drought in recent history was the drought and famine of 1877 - a time when atmosphereric carbon dioxide was under 300 ppm. The aridity of northern China can also be understood in terms of the expanding Gobi desert now encroaching on Beijing. Droughts in China are natural events. They are not caused by carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuels.

Cha-am Jamal

Thailand

Reference: Mississippi down under crippled, Bangkok Post, August 26, 2009

Southeast Australia is not at all like the lush green state of Mississippi (Mississippi down under crippled, Bangkok Post, August 26, 2009) for it is a semi arid drought prone area with a history of severe droughts during many of which its primary river system had gone bone dry. The current drought down there is part of this weather pattern, not man made, and not caused by carbon dioxide emissions from the use of fossil fuels.

Cha-am Jamal

Thailand

Reference: Tilapia exports to be promoted, Bangkok Post, August 25, 2009

The claim that the white meat of tilapia is more healthy than red fish meat (Tilapia exports to be promoted, Bangkok Post, August 25, 2009) is inconsistent with the facts. All fish are not good sources of omega-3 fatty acids but the color of fish meat may not be used to make this distinction. In fact, farm produced tilapia and catfish contain a harmful combination of omega-3 and omega-6 fatty acids that makes their meat even more risky than pork bacon or hamburger (Popular fish contains potentially dangersous fatty acid combination, Science Daily, July 10, 2008). Sustained consumption of these fish may actually cause rather than prevent heart disease.

Cha-am Jamal

Thailand

The Copenhagen Protocol

The Montreal Protocol went bust when it became apparent that ozone depletion over polar regions was part of a natural cycle and not man made. Thereafter, the Kyoto Protocol was necessary to ensure continued funding for the Montreal Protocol fearologists. Now that the Kyoto Protocol is about to expire without result, these scaremongering scientists have set the stage in Copenhagen for yet another round of fear-based extortive funding to support the lavish lifestyle to which they have become accustomed.

Cha-am Jamal

Thailand

Reference: Global warming impacting Greenlanders' daily lives, Bangkok Post, July 29, 2009

The global warming article about ice fishing in Greenland ("Global warming impacting Greenlanders' daily lives", Bangkok Post, July 29, 2009) is yet another in a long series of fluff AGW press releases put out to ratchet up the hype ahead of the Copenhagen meeting. Fluff AGW articles surreptitiously imply but do not show that choking our economy to reduce CO2 emissions will have any effect on the problem being described. It is sinister propaganda.

Cha-am Jamal
Thailand

Reference: Study confirms rising sea levels, Bangkok Post, July 27, 2009

After sustained criticism from skeptical scientists the global warmists have revised their forecast for the rise in sea levels by the year 2100 from several meters to 38 cm give or take 20 cm (Study confirms rising sea levels, Bangkok Post, July 27, 2009). In releasing the rather innocuous new figure the warmists had to try extra hard to maintain the scare level saying that the lower figure does not mean we are safe and that things could turn out to be much worse and we should maintain our fear level and stay scared. Their motivation is that a loss in the fear level could put at risk their economically suicidal mitigation programs that they expect to sell in Copenhagen during a time of economic stagnation.

Cha-am Jamal
Thailand

Reference: Why the media likes global warming scare stories

In his book "Myths, lies, and downright stupidity", reporter and media man John Stossel writes as follows: "The people who bring us story ideas are alarmed. Then we get alarmed, and eager to rush the news to you. We know that the scarier and more bizarre the story the more likely it is that our bosses will give us more air time or a front-page slot. The scary story, justified or not, will get higher ratings and sell more papers. Fear sells." So there it is right from the horse's mouth. Now we know the genesis of a media awash with global warming scare stories and insufficient reference to inconvenient scientific details and rational debate.

Cha-am Jamal
Thailand

Reference: Flash floods from heavy monsoon rains claim 36 lives, Bangkok Post, July 21, 2009

Since the beginning of this year global warmists have been warning us that climate change will weaken and delay the monsoon in South Asia with devastating results including crop failure and hunger (Climate change to affect monsoon in South Asia, USA Today, February 27, 2009; Bangkok Post, March 20, 2009) and yet the 2009 monsoon in South Asia is right on time and not at all weakened and whatever devastation there is in it is in terms of heavy rains and floods not droughts (Flash floods from heavy monsoon rains claim 36 lives, Bangkok Post, July 21, 2009; Heavy monsoon rain claims 26 lives in Pakistan, Bangkok Post, July 20, 2009). Somebody ought to point out to the Secretary of State now visiting Asia to peddle the climate change agenda that global warming scientists have made many short term forecasts that can be checked with subsequent weather data and none - not one - of these forecasts has been proven true. Asians are rightly wary of her message as it is unlikely that they would want to commit economic suicide just to play the flawed climate change game of the rich nations.

Cha-am Jamal

Thailand

Reference: Ireland in dire straits, Bangkok Post, April 21, 2009

Earlier this year columnist Paul Krugman wrote that Ireland had been hit particularly hard by the global financial crisis and that it serves as a canary in the coal mine for the rest of the world to see what's coming down the pike as this crisis unfolds (Ireland in dire straits, Bangkok Post, April 21, 2009). If that is true, I have bad news for those on their toes awaiting an allegedly imminent recovery. At the time Krugman's column was written, the Bank of Ireland's GDP growth forecast for 2009 was 4%, up from -3% in 2008 and heading for recovery. Since then, the Bank has progressively reduced this estimate in stages back into negative territory and all the way down to -8.5% with five months of growth forecast revisions yet to come. The Bank's forecasters are now saying that their economic growth rate will stay in the red through 2011. The alleged imminent recovery has now been postponed even by forecasters who have a history of making rosy forecasts and then revising them downwards. The canary appears to be telling us that the much awaited economic recovery is not imminent and we really don't know how long this thing is going to last or how deep it's going to get.

Cha-am Jamal

Thailand

Reference: Energy and earthquakes, Bangkok Post, July 15, 2009

Your article on geothermal energy states that interest in this technology is driven by the Obama adminstration's support for renewable energy (Energy and earthquakes, Bangkok Post, July 15, 2009). The economically feasible rate of heat extraction in geothermal plants, given the high cost of drilling and the high cost of insurance against environmental damage, will greatly exceed the rate at which the site can be naturally re-heated and therfore these sites will eventually become functionally depleted. The total amount of energy that would be available worldwide with this technology is rather large and geothermal energy could theoretically provide all our energy needs for hundreds of years but it is not renewable. An exhaustible energy source, no matter how long the useful life, cannot be considered to be renewable. The issue is a deeply sensitive one mostly because it determines whether the geothermal industry can benefit from funds that have been earmarked by the US federal government for renewable energy development.

Cha-am Jamal

Thailand

Reference: Argentinian glacier defies global warming, Bangkok Post, July 8, 2009

A climate change scientist evaluates the rapid advance of a glacier in Argentina as follows: "We are not sure why this happens. But not all glaciers respond equally to climate change" (Argentinian glacier defies global warming, Bangkok Post, July 8, 2009). In other words, they don't take data to test the hypothesis because their hypothesis is deemed correct by definition. They take data to test the data. If the data support their theory the data are deemed to be good. Otherwise the data are deemed spurious and additional theories are needed to explain how these observations could occur in the age of global warming. In this kind of science, the man-made global warming hypothesis cannot be proven wrong no matter what the data.

Cha-am Jamal

Thailand