cooked

Loads ok for me...

As far as I'm concerned it's a miracle that they even make an attempt at parking. Part of this is due to poor engineering, the spaces are generally too narrow and are rarely angled, just to squeeze in an extra car. They then rent out the best places in front of the store entrance to car salesmen etc.

Generally a Thai, when he suddenly notices that he is passing in front of a house or shop he needs to visit, stops. Blocking traffic for ten minutes or so is no problem for him, and out here in rural Thailand it is just the same - they seem surprised to see a car on the road although they will generally, eventually, move over.

I run into the same delivery truck on the same bit of road 2 - 3 times a week doing this.

I can't see also why anyone would base their argument on a set of postulates about one aspect of climate change over a 17 or 19 year period,taken in isolation,

It was the UN's IPCC (in the person of Ben Santer, quoted previously) which chose the 17-year period as the acid test for global warming, not the skeptics. The 17 years has come and gone, and the alarmist predictions have flopped. Their game, their rules, and they lost.

which completely ignores other events and processes currently taking place around the planet.

The scare has always been about the warming, and only the warming. If there is no warming, you can cancel all the consequences that are supposed to flow from that: sea level rise, extreme weather, glacier retreat, biodiversity loss and so on. The warming has to come first for the rest to make any kind of sense.

Surely taking one isolated set of observations cannot be regarded as proof in anyone's book especially of such a vast and point term process.

Skeptics have nothing to prove (more specifically, we believe in the null hypothesis). The alarmists have something to prove, i.e. that they are right when they claim that something terrible is going to happen if mankind does not mend its ways.

Carl Sagan used to say that: "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence". Judged by that standard, the alarmists have completely failed to make their case, after 30 years of trying, and hundreds of billions of dollars squandered.

Where does this concept of 'alarmists' come from? These are 99% of peer reviews that have seriously studied the evidence and didn't atart running around in circles with their hands clasped over their heads. There are very few sceptics in the scientific community.

I remember one folks hero, the guy that decided that measles immunisations caused autism, he later had to admit that his claims were ungrounded. He did make a lot of money out of his actions though, and quite a few children dies as a result.

There doesn't seem to be much point to me in getting all upset about this stuff, whether it happens or not there is nothing we can do about it, apart from building vast underground self sufficient communities that would emerge after a few thousand years, blinking, into the brave new world. No amount of collecting old bottles is going to change things much in the long term.

The scare is not about, and only about, warming, but about climate change, mostly for the worse.

Interesting.....

http://rickbradford.co.uk/ClimateChangeFacts.html

http://rickbradford.co.uk/ClimateModel.pdf

Blimey, Rick's good at maths!

Any more denialists on this topic should be forced to assure us that they have both read (without moving their lips) and understood at least 90% of these articles, before we take them seriously.

@cooked

I know all about this 'no change in 17 years' stuff, and I don't deny it, but without knowing what was measured, and how, it is still a very small piece of information in a huge pool of evidence that indicates the contrary.

You do know what was measured and how -- it was in my post. What was measured was the global mean temperature and how it was measured was by a satellite system designed to carry out this measurement.

This is important because the UN scientists predicting dangerous warming said this could not happen if their theories were correct. More specifically, it means that the computer models on which the supposed climate disaster is being predicted are wrong. All of them. The UN's IPCC examined 73 different models of how the scientists claimed that the world warmed in response to extra CO2. They all predicted significant warming.

As Dr. John Christy, professor of atmospheric science and director of the Earth System Science Center at the University of Alabama Huntsville (UAH), said:

"I compared the models with observations in the key area the tropics where the climate models showed a real impact of greenhouse gases. All 73 models predictions were on average three to four times what occurred in the real world."

If the models are this far off, they have no predictive ability whatever, and so the future predicted catastrophe is cancelled forthwith.

"October 1st marks the 17th year of no global warming significantly different than zero, agreed Dr. Patrick Michaels, director of the Cato Institutes Center for the Study of Science. And those 17 years correspond to the largest period of CO2 emissions by far over any other 17-year period in history."

If you can't see the significance of these results, then the fault does not lie with the data.

Ah, yes, right, I see it differently now, how silly of me.

^^

The 'basic fact' is that the global mean temperature, as measured by the satellites sent up to perform this task, show zero warming in the past 17 years.

Here on Planet Earth, that hardly corresponds to a 'conspiracy theory','being in denial', or 'grasping at straws'.

It is scientific data, which you could easily check for yourself.

You ever looked at a graph of how the dollar goes up and down against the Thai Baht? The fact that it loses value for a month or so doesn't mean that it will continue to do so. 17 years? We are talking about hundreds and thousands of years as a time period. I have seen the glaciers melting in the Alps over a period of 40 years. The Greenland ice sheet is diminishing, Antarctic ice is threatening to do something very naughty at present. I know all about this 'no change in 17 years' stuff, and I don't deny it, but without knowing what was measured, and how, it is still a very small piece of information in a huge pool of evidence that indicates the contrary.

There isn't all that much historical data on glaciers.

Until about 20 years ago, they were too hard to get to, and too hard to measure, and not many were interested.

I beg your pardon? They are easily accessible in Switzerland, admittedly the pictures that were painted do offer some evidence. There are means of measuring where glaciers were previously (I learnt this stuff in Geography classes at the age of 15). Why do you think that scientists have been investigating core samples of Antarctic and Greenland ice for a long time now? The records concerning ice ages etc go back over 800 000 years.

Farang comes from the Persian word. Wikipedia: It is generally believed that the word farang originated with the Persian word farangi, meaning foreigner. This in turn comes from the word Frank via the Arabic word firinjīyah, which was used to refer to the Franks, a West Germanic tribe that became the biggest political power in Western Europe during the early Middle Ages, and from which France derives its name. Due to the fact that the Frankish Empire ruled Western Europe for centuries, the word "Frank" became deeply associated with Latins who professed the Roman Catholic faith by Eastern Europeans and Middle Easterners.

According to Rashid al-din Fazl Allâh, farang comes from the Arabic word afranj.[2]

In either case the original word was pronounced paranki (പറങ്കി) in Malayalam, parangiar in Tamil, and entered Khmer as barang and Malay as ferenggi.

RIGHT that's that sorted out. Second: what's wrong with being racist? I was 'Der Englander' in Switzerland for many years despite having Swiss citizenship and got many useful contracts because of this.

Third: my wife will say 'I see Farang in village today' or 'Teacher is Cambodia lady' or Chinese or Lao. or she says 'Swiss lady' (Thai wife of a Swiss) or German or Norwegian... The Burmese are called Burmese and they get exploited left and right, it's not so bad being a Farang. As for the OP: go and take a long walk off a short plank will you?

To hell with being politically correct, haven't you guys got anything else to do?

^^

The 'basic fact' is that the global mean temperature, as measured by the satellites sent up to perform this task, show zero warming in the past 17 years.

Here on Planet Earth, that hardly corresponds to a 'conspiracy theory','being in denial', or 'grasping at straws'.

It is scientific data, which you could easily check for yourself.

You ever looked at a graph of how the dollar goes up and down against the Thai Baht? The fact that it loses value for a month or so doesn't mean that it will continue to do so. 17 years? We are talking about hundreds and thousands of years as a time period. I have seen the glaciers melting in the Alps over a period of 40 years. The Greenland ice sheet is diminishing, Antarctic ice is threatening to do something very naughty at present. I know all about this 'no change in 17 years' stuff, and I don't deny it, but without knowing what was measured, and how, it is still a very small piece of information in a huge pool of evidence that indicates the contrary.

Repeat after me: CO2 levels have been steadily rising, in prehistory due to slash and burn agriculture, during the middle ages due to the making of charcoal for the manufacture of steel, the Industrial revolution really caused a sharp rise in the production of CO2, and things are getting worse. The oceans have been absorbing the CO2 for millennia and are slowly losing their capacity for absorbing more.

Increased CO2 = warming, raising of sea level and the rest.

I realise that some people refuse to accept basic facts that don't fit in with their preconceived ideas but incessantly falling back on conspiracy theories and so on is being in a state of denial, grasping at straws to support their 'theories'.

I don't think that a human population of one milliard or so would be ideal, I think more in terms of hundreds of thousands. The planet will be ok as soon as it gets rid of humans.

Sorry, one attachment too many.

Maybe what I make aren't really tortillas in that case, I mix a little wheat flower in with the corn flower.

I wonder why, when helping hands are at a premium, the family is deprived of a good part of its workforce?

As in child labor you mean ?

How politically incorrect of me. As in barely enough money to send the kids to school and feed the family, does that sound better?

I always worked helping my father on holidays from age about seven, I think, I enjoyed it. Might do some good for the layabouts you see in the UK, not labouring but collecting ASB orders.

Good answer. I think it's about 40% of Thais that are in agriculture. In Europe many of the holidays were organised around harvest time and hay making (as well as religious holidays)and they are still there where they were originally. I would have expected to be take the rice harvest into account as some provinces have this as their principal crop.

There is also no obvious religious holiday period that coincides with the holidays; in fact a big religious festival has started here today on the first day of school.

Just a thought, on what basis are the school holidays times as they are? I drove our little girl to school this morning and realised that we are right at the beginning of the rice harvest. I wonder why, when helping hands are at a premium, the family is deprived of a good part of its workforce?

The Nissan Almera I wanted to test drive had been in an accident, so I bought one without trying it out, as I have, come to think about it, always done over the years.

The dealers must get tired of fixing accidentally damaged cars.

Being a recent arrival with my Thai wife in the last 4 weeks and also 'self insured' I am very interested in this as I have pre existing conditions which make it impossible to get 'private' insurance covering these conditions.

1. Is this cover generally available now (albiet a mistake in the initial fineprint..lol) and how and where does one apply?

2. I have applied for and now waiting on my 'yellow book' but wont apply for my non-immi O marriage extension for another 3 weeks. I arrived with a 3 month visa. Is the 'yellow book' sufficient to apply for the cover or do I have to wait until my marriage extension is granted?

3. Lastly, my wife tells me that public hospitals can offer private level consulting and services after normal 'hours'. One of the hospitals she mentioned is the 'kings' hospital (can't recall a name as such) in Bangkok where they also apparently have the very latest cardiac medical facilities (my main issues) equivalent to most in the 'western world'. Can anyone shed any light on these claims as I know I can get good cardiac care here at a number of private establishments but wasn't aware the 'public' system had the same level of doctors or facilities?

The cover is available now at those hospitals which have interpreted it as such, which moist have, but some are saying only for migrants.

My information is that Banglamung is issuing it to farang, TV members have gotten it there.

Hospitals vary in the documentation they require, suggest you go to the main thread in the health forum and read the report from member who got the card at Banglamung. Some places look at your visa extension, some do not.

Does one need to register at the government hospital of your district or is there free choice?

Logically this will be your local government hospital, just the same as Thais have to do. I do NOT want to find myself in our local hospital and this is why I have no interest in this scheme. Self insurance and a minimal health insurance for me.

Beware of the dreaded liver fluke that can be transmitted via unsterilised fish sauce. You die, statistics show that people from Isaan have a very high rate of liver cancer.

I'm fairly sure that we have a soil born disease here as the wife had been growing tomatoes and aubergines on the same plot for some time. The aubergines do alright for a bit and then wither away, as do the tomatoes. So this year I am trying growing bags (sacks of a decent compost I found in Chiang Mai flower market). If at first you don't suck seeds...

Earthing electrics is to do with health and safety..... That is why it is ignored as unnecessary in Thailand.

its not ignored. the codes require it in our province and i havent seen a house built without 3 wire in years

Like I said.... the Thais ignore the earth, that is my experience.

Getting metaphysical, aren't we? Beware of earthing individual apparatus, if you do have a problem you may find the surge going through your computer. I was advised to attach an earthing wire to the back of my computer to prevent the small shocks that it keeps giving me. I didn't do this, fortunately.

All the stuff in this house was earthed when we got here... piece of wire attached to a nail embedded in concrete under a roof.

Come to sunny Isaan, hub of the two pin plug.

Our neighbour uses old flip flops to start charcoal. Adds that extra special taste.

I occasionally use

http://www.zamzar.com/

which converts just about anything to anything.

Sorry, I just found an online version for the Almera on line:

Gasoline engine (model with three–way
catalyst)
GUID-C2CEEF81-4F44-4719-A071-99D42B048FAD
CAUTION:
Do not use leaded gasoline. Using leaded gasoline will damage the three-way catalyst.
Use UNLEADED REGULAR gasoline or gasohol (up to
E20*) of at least 91 octane (RON).
*: Gasohol is alcohol blended gasoline. For example,
“E20” is a mixture of approximately 20% fuel ethanol
and 80% unleaded gasoline.

So I am still wondering why she said not to use Gasohol 95.

Thanks. Maybe I will continue to use the 91 until the first 10 000 Km service.