blueyeshk

FIRMS fire map, last 24 hours.

Capture.JPG

No fires in the mountains directly north west of Chiang Mai. I wonder if there is some enforcement going on there.

I think it's because there's nothing there! Draw a line between Chiang Mai and Mae Hong Son and there's very little inbetween apart from mounntains, there's only really one road.

U better broaden your horizon and take a trip beyond the city there are much more people living there than you think.

It feels good that my annual escape route worked out also this time perfectly- greetings from Bali see u back in June

FWIW I live in rural Mae Rim and everyone around here seems very very aware of 16th February being the last legal burning date and nobody has dared burn since, I think attitudes are slowly changing.

Must be regional attitude adjustment. In our valley in Lamphun province, the locals obviously haven't heard about the government edict based on our casual observation of the number of fires burning throughout the village and regional forest. Actually, they know, but everyone is just playing dumb.

They dont play.

LM up 20 Baht in 711

Yup, but how is it possible when the government said they would raise the price with 5-10 baht????

The 5 to 10b rise was for locally produced cigarette.... imported ciggies seem to have been hit nearly double.

Can someone name any locally produced cigarettes? Can anyone name any cigarettes that have increased price by between 5 and 10 Baht?

Wonder,sms... And a half dozen more which are in the lower rack of 7/11

It's ok I wrote this post clearly overthinking meanwhile it's even a kind of tourist entertainment to visit the drug prison inmates in BKK and highly appreciated. And I don't care even if there were a little chance of somebody pulling my leg.

It doesn't matter where u go 200 km north of Bangkok it's starts to get nasty and damn unhealthy.

Any news on this self updating fire map?

I removed it in the OP as it hasn't updated since December 25th and not sure if it will come back live. In the meantime you can look here - https://firms.modaps.eosdis.nasa.gov/firemap/

The firemap is operational again and can be seen just after the OP as I re-enabled that post.

Just had a look to the fire map the governments restrictions not only put out all fires in Thailand but in whole Asia - what a success story

A family which has a member here in prison for drug offenses ask me to visit him. Now I just have to take into consideration if this could have a negative impact on my future visa application - what do you think? Or is it over thinking by me?

Every 8 hrs self updating fire map

http://www.ehabich.info/images/synchro/asia.jpg

In Order to celebrate the burning restrictions which are in full force since yesterday I saw last night all mountain sites in Pai on fire plus additional forest and field fires one have to admit you can count on these announcements.

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Aosion home use UV lamp flying insects mosquito killer lamp mosquito trap

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Aliexpress has plenty I work with a plug in blue light never had a mosquito in my sleeping room again at least not alive for long. I plug them in at 18.00 or so and by bedtime I unplug & I can be sure nothing will disturb me.

I got 355 days so somehow it adds on over time

Very clear thoughts put in words most of it I can sign except :

Of course household burning is the most hazardous but I can follow their thoughts as well they know where it will end up anyway. As everywhere in Asia waste-to-Energy Or similar technologies are not in place most of the household waste will be burned in uncontrolled burning sites anyway the rest they dig in on dumpsites only a fraction will be recycled. So why not burn it directly? It's a disgusting thought but except some trial facilities there is no other solution than above. Massive investments which generate employment and return of investment is needed fast and now. Do you know exactly where your household waste ends up? I do and I don't feel good about it so I do my best on a personal level to reduce my impact. And here we are besides rising the topic again and again and sharpen awareness that's exactly what everybody can do on a daily bases reduce and avoid at your home.

I didn't want to think too much about waste disposal at the local or government level because I I know that what you wrote is correct and true. But I also thought it better to think about what it is that needs attention and why rather than the how. And actually there's probably not a lot of mileage in considering high temperature incinerators for power unless we can be assured there's a method of collection to supply the incinerators, one that the people will use. Another aspect of course is that any time we start to think about large capital expense the issue of corruption arises hence the focus shifts away from results to bank account balances and vested interests. For those reasons I suspect it's better to focus on solutions that don't involve large expense as they probably have a better chance of being successful.

I am not so sensible about corruption- it's bad as of our standards- but if this is the way to get things done - all infrastructure projects are built on this- than let it be done with corruption. I don't care about money and the flows. If this would have the site effect to breath air free of dioxins and toxins. Worldwide it's a huge business so I can not understand why they don't put their fingers in this honey pot normally they are all over money making machines.

A mixture of thinking aloud, trying to analyze the problem and find some solutions - perhaps useful to evoke thought and to educate new commers to some aspects of the problem:

We can almost rank the types of burning in terms of how dangerous the pollution is: plastic and household waste is probably the top of the list, corn stubble second, rice stubble third and leaves and grass fourth.

Of those four categories, household waste burning is opportunistic, it gets burned as a bi-product of something else being burned, usually leaves and grass, it therefore follows that if the primary burning was better controlled, less burning of plastics would occur and we could eliminate the worst offending cause of pollution. But for that to happen we'd need two things, 1) less litter in public areas, and 2) households to make better use of waste disposal services - the first is a hugely difficult problem globally for which I don't have a solution other than rigid enforcement and perhaps prison labour set to work clearing the trash from road sides, both pipe dreams in Thailand at this moment in time. The second, household waste disposal, must be free (not even 10 baht a month else it wont get used) and it must be frequent. Note: over the years this aspect of life here has improved and come a long way, it has much further to go however.

The third category, rice stubble, is only burned sometimes, more often, judging from what I see of the farmers land outside my front door, it gets ploughed under, only once in the past six crops have I seen him try to burn and even that was very limited. But this farm is very large, on flat lowland and the owner has a couple of tractors and ploughs, he's not the average small holder by any means so perhaps slightly unique. The point is however rice stubble can be ploughed under; it doesn't have to be burned.

Leaf and grass burning is the least harmful of the four but is likely to be the catalyst for the burning of household waste, hence in many respects it makes it the most dangerous, if nothing else it is the most prolific, absolutely everyone does it including moi! The sheer volume of leaves that fall and carpet the ground at this time of year is actually quite staggering, phenomena I'd never appreciated whilst living in Muang. I think the only people who burn this category is homeowners wanting to clean up their gardens, estate owners clearing up their roads, government agencies who try to reduce long grass at the sides of roads and freeways, unmechanized small holders wanting to clear land for planting and rural villagers and hill tribes wanting to stimulate growth of mushrooms - essentially everyone is in on this act from national to local government all the way down the chain to mom and pop neighbors!

So the most prolific source of burning is the least harmful, but because it is so prolific it becomes the most harmful as a result of scale and ancillary burning. There’s no easy and simple answer to this although any imitative must start with an example set by national, regional and local government, as long as the army is seen to be burning road side grass, every farmer in the country will believe it’s OK to do the same.

I've left corn stubble until last because it is acknowledged to be so dangerous and because of Mapguys earlier assertion that much of this results from large scale burning (which I don't dispute) plus it links nicely with the subject of crop shifting. I don't know the ratio of land planted under corn versus any other crop in Thailand so it's difficult to quantify the problem in terms of volume or scale. What is known however is the health hazards associated with burning corn stubble are well documented and this is agricultural waste that can't readily be ploughed under, it's simply too large and won’t break down quickly. Incinerate it at high temperatures perhaps, dig it up and haul it away, all labour intensive and potentially expensive. But if corn is the large landowner crop of choice, perhaps government could implement controls governing the crop and the disposal of associated waste, a little action aimed at a handful of landowners could provide big results - likely to happen, extremely doubtful.

And if the cost becomes so great the farmer is likely to switch to a more profitable crop, “the devil you know….” springs to mind here!

So what can we conclude from all of this, assuming the above is largely correct? Well the most obvious point is that rice stubble, long believed to be the major cause of pollution here, doesn’t need to be burned but it does need to be ploughed – free Amphur ploughing services for small holders would go a long way towards reducing this cause of pollution and wouldn’t cost the earth.

We can also conclude that progress has been made with garbage collection, even in rural areas, but again there's a long way to go. When the service becomes so widespread and behaviors altered that make using the service important, pollution rates should fall - the question however of what happens to the collected waste is another story which we wont tackle here just yet, small steps and all that!

Finally, government needs to get serious about the pollution problem and lead by example, it simply isn't good enough that Amphurs and state departments burn road side grasses et al and/or that government resources are used for the task.

Very clear thoughts put in words most of it I can sign except :

Of course household burning is the most hazardous but I can follow their thoughts as well they know where it will end up anyway. As everywhere in Asia waste-to-Energy Or similar technologies are not in place most of the household waste will be burned in uncontrolled burning sites anyway the rest they dig in on dumpsites only a fraction will be recycled. So why not burn it directly? It's a disgusting thought but except some trial facilities there is no other solution than above. Massive investments which generate employment and return of investment is needed fast and now. Do you know exactly where your household waste ends up? I do and I don't feel good about it so I do my best on a personal level to reduce my impact. And here we are besides rising the topic again and again and sharpen awareness that's exactly what everybody can do on a daily bases reduce and avoid at your home.

Thank you for the answer and hints hope this post is useful for other I just ordered at lazada was just a click away;)

Very early very harmful this year.

I am due to buy a new laptop should have 14-15' any recommendation on model and more important shop to buy at in Chiang Mai or do you suggest an online dealer?

Do all of you know where your household waste ends up? Not that the seasonal burning of forest,fields and such is a lesser problem but the constant 24/7 burning of unsorted household waste on uncontrolled burning sites is as much of a hazardous problem at least if not the bigger one. It just less obvious until you look into it.

I am so sad this post will die soon - as declared by the government all burning will stop by17th of February

Just some of the burning sites around me:

Living in Pai - air pollution is a growing concern besides the month of February to April where the north of Asia is nearly inhabitable due to smoke and burning I am deeply concerned by the many uncontrolled low heat waste/ rubbish burning sites within the valley. All sorts of toxins , dioxins and heavy metals are getting airborne and enriched in water and earth. This considered I feel much saver in the west. And I see huge problems involving for Asia if not existing waste-to-energy and other technologies soon will be in place with force. Every village in Asia has its own rubbish 24/7 burning site a very disgusting thought.

I wonder if there was one journalist out there doing a proper research and put 10 min of his own work behind the news and mentioned that insane increase on imported tobacco instead of copy and paste from your neighbor. So far I couldn't see any news about it what a poor mirror they have to look into.

the finance ministry need to explain/investigate how their proposed 5-10 baht increase turned into 20-25 baht or 26-30%, something just not quite right there

or have they somehow managed to only apply such an increase to farangs - nothing would surprise me, don't understand why Thais are not complaining about this increase

My explanation is the media reported 3% 5-10 bht increase was solely focused on Thai manufactured cigs all imported tobacco was neglected to report on -typically happen with copy/paste journalism -Everything possible in amazing Thailand - so beer /wine next ready for the ride?

My L&M's went up by 23%. I believe they are not imported.

They are look on the pack!

If you want to go local you either have to look in the bottom row of 7/11 or buy your pack of tobacco at the market and do a YouTube course on how to enrich and treat natural tobacco