nothing on other water issues elsewhere..... in a neighboring country ‘down under’ The Guardian in the UK reports increasing social media and news coverage blaming “arsonists” for a more extreme swing of the Indian Dipole climate wise, not merely weather wise.... they cannot call their farmers uneducated or also blame land neighbors so they are stuck with The Arsonists are to blame.... not anything having to do with burning a few billion years of the real solar power... plant “fossils” in just a few decades.  when do folks stop blaming others?  all other others for what really is no GLOBAL action on or for any of this?

is this the software app that takes a keyed address and records it? asks for your name too. in the year 2019. and now yet another announcement that it really is working on all browser and OS platforms. it also contains some original code, now ‘commented out’ so it is not executed, that says “hello world!” that was used to get this project originally bootstrapped.

computer coding requires reading a lot of technical books. it’s no coincidence at all that Marc Zuckerberg, Bill Gates and Elon Musk are standouts for folks with a love of reading books and journals.  
 

in 20 years I have only seen or met 5 people in ‘real life’ that were at all engrossed in reading a book... while in Thailand, and that included my teaching and living on campus at a Thai university.  At a Thai university.  one year at a very large campus.  of the 5 readers, in 20 years.... only one was reading a nonfiction selection, and that was was a very poor selection.  Something about how everyone should have less than a 40 hour workweek, a small paperback.... but I can’t forget as it was the only non fiction book I’d ever seen anyone avidly reading.

in Thai culture reading is explained away as ‘a different way of thinking’ (that is not ‘Thai’) and with some joke about ‘book learning’ being dumb or something about a bunch of folks ‘must have all read from the same book’ etc. etc.
 

meaning it is cultural, therefore any amount of magical thinking is just more nonsense.

“The Alarmists” again. sounds a lot like blaming local northern smoke on “uneducated farmers” and arsonists.

well, waiting for peer reviewed science articles to definitively link this to “climate change”.... which is now only a political agenda because politically and socially it is way too late for us to do anything to scale, in time.... is like waiting for a CPA or chartered accountant to mention the words “going concern” in a auditors report before deciding maybe you should sell the stock or even short it.  in spades.  Dr. Mann has even coined a term for this, “scientific reticence”.

get ready for a probable return of a positive ENSO in 2021.     combine that with Mandy Freund et. al. In Nat Geoscience, May 2019, on elevated Central Pacific El Niño events, and not even the girlie men will continue to rant about “alarmists”.  that’s what the guys and gals in Potsdam with a long range model on this are now predicting.

but Thailand still has one of the highest literacy rates in the world!  look it up on Wikipedia.

and even more amazingly, Thai students study the upper diglossia extensively.... as well as English as a third language.  but English is actually, from a Thai perspective.... two languages not just a third one to learn.

unlike the Thai dialects, English is written and read different from how it is spoken.... intentionally... so even more to their credit, Thai students not only succeed at having to also learn English as a third language.... but they are taught in spoken English, and spoken Thai, but are only assessed on written English as any assessment of a spoken language is difficult in classrooms with 40 or 50 students each, as well as that quite contrastively, ‘multiple guess’ exams are quite easy to score up.

but one of the world’s highest “literacy rates”.  

look at the FRED chart for the world’s biggest oil exporter.

Trade Balance: Goods and Services, Balance of Payments Basis (BOPGSTB)

running fiscal and trade deficits, which are linked along with endless tax cuts and the biggest military spending on Earth.

the twenties... here we are.  we could still go massively lower, even if Thailand’s economy was to shrink.

3 hours ago, Stargrazer9889 said:

Seems like there are wild fires on California every year now, not sure what they can do to get less of them but some sort of plan should be taken. I sure would not build near the danger area, with this happening so often.

Geezer

the article on the front page of The Guardian, this morning, republished from Nature.... one of the top 2 or 3 peer reviewed science journals, says that that danger area is all of the 2nd large rocky planet. Ya know... the 2nd of only 2 with active volcanoes and gases that allow life as well as fires to be made by “Man” as well as nature [sic].
 

and.... that we already now seem to have crossed a threshold that is “one way” even if we were to “solve” the aerosol effect problem as well as do the “carbon removals” agreed to in Paris 4 years ago now.

so what!  it's not a major source of fresh water for a billion people or so.   

is it???

yet we are, with the "we" being some of our not-so-far-away-at-all neighbors, about to test such a scenario.  and they also have a serious lack of underground water as well already.  on top of that.  like they say in California, also a place with borderline water situations, 'it's as if we are standing on the rail road track and see a choo choo train coming straight at us blowing it's horn and we say to ourselves 'Gee!  I hope that train don't hit us!''.

 

we are all the same.

it’s not any different here!  there are, especially amoung the young, many folks who believe ‘everyone should learn Pasa Thai’ yet even after making it the number number academic subject in school, taught as a 2nd language, for decades on end now.... no one uses it for real conversation.

ordering food. Yeah.  You can do that.  Simple food.

watching TV? Well, yeah.  duh.
 

but bring up the topic of learning the lower diglossia.... endless nonsense that is spoken very genuinely and convincingly, but defies reality just as much as the endless goofy talk about Co2, and water vapor, as a green house gas.

5 hours ago, Peter Denis said:

@moderator

Please close this thread, as the answer is crystal clear.

>> NO health-insurance needed for entry or extension based on an original Non Imm O Visa.

the Nikkei Asian Review states in an article just today that it will be a requirement for all retirees in Thailand on any kind of one year visa.  So maybe more clarification will be needed.  
 

published 5 hours ago:

Tourism proves hazardous to Thai hospitals' financial healt

As of Oct. 31, foreigners residing in Thailand on one-year visas -- mainly retirees -- must have their own insurance.

no.  Pasa Thai as the 2nd language, and a foreign language such as English as a 3rd language, as it is now... only taught as to grammar and spelling and simple spoken phrases but not as a written language, except for fake assessments.... is the biggest thing holding back Thailand.

and make no mistake, at least anywhere north of Uttaraditt I know absolutely for sure that even in 2019... Gahm Mueaang is everyone’s first language.  Not the school required upper diglossia.  Yet huge studying and teaching efforts are still plowed into the idea of a diglossia, with all foreign languages a poor 3rd language.... except for some Bangkok and other elites that live as separate from everyday Thai as 80% of most ‘farlang’ and other foreigners do.

they mean to exports and tourism? and consumption... by folks with their money overseas, which is not necessarily only “foreigners”.  the nominee folks, with foreign “street names”.

if that money continues to return... along with the obvious new trend to be as liquid.... locally where one lives.... continuing to pulsate more and more conspicuously (negative rates even at some point on Italian and Greek debt).... we could go to the teens against the dollah.  easily.

yeah, that’s a worry.  unless you are an everyday Thai person making 20 Baht here and 30 Baht there... and the Baht is also becoming more “real”... something you can buy stuff with.

it’s probably that many immigration folks see the 800k method to be simple and easy paperwork, and that’s why they want to push it.  And we also are seeing it that way, us retirees.

so then the question is why wouldn’t someone oblige?  even with Thai health coverage a few million THB is needed if you are not ambulatory enough to get back to your home country.  and for myself, I would add I don’t want to ever go back to the USA, let alone enter my 7os or 80s, still quite healthy, but not able to pay my way in the Thai hospital system.

so 800k is what makes sense to most of us now, and 65k gets attention as.... why? and please, a Thai retail bank account is quite safe, there are lots of other things to worry about if you worry about a large Thai retail bank having such problems.  really.

how about inviting American professional baseball teams to practice in Thailand and do exposition games!  we could give tourists and USA expats all over Asia another reason to visit Thailand!  and basketball games!  etc.

for every one kilometer "flown" by one person in a commercial jet we can add about 300 grams of carbon GHG directly into the atmosphere that persist in it's climate effects for almost 100 years and that we then measure in parts per million as a gas molecule in that atmosphere.  that took countless millions of years to sequester from the atmosphere, but "man" is burning in a few decades. 

excellent!  even more tourism.  more airplanes.  pulling a bandage off slowly hurts, let's rip it off with the scab.  while we talk about "lost dreams"... and that someday in 2100 something some ice will begin melting.  but not in 2015-2016, an El Nino that rivaled all prior positive ENSO's, that Freund in May 2019 says has doubled in recent decades and that Xu et. al also confirmed but specifically for the Chao Phraya river basin......  duh. 

future generations?

just like the the USA "Climate Believers" who "believe" this is only about some ice melting.... in 2100 something.  vote for The Dems!  they will sign some more international agreements and (i) do nothing real and (ii) make sure aviation is exempt from everything except some "CORSIA offsets"... beginning in 2027... on SOME air travel.  and maybe also talk about their "lost dreams".  blah blah blah blah.  folks that have not read anything... that was peer reviewed... since 2012... and certainly not anything in 2019, beginning with Rosenfeld et. al. in Science, February 2019.    

WHAT future generations? of green mold? 

vote Trump 2020.  and finish that improved border wall.... for bottom of the totem pole Climate refugees from Mexico and upper South Amerikee.

 

can’t be true.

although it is getting to be a bit of a police state... similar to the USA... that a significant cohort of British are not just literate, but read non fiction and some science stuff, Britain will always be first rate for as long as that matters or is still possible anywhere.
 

on Earth.  

duh.

[ on the police state comment.... I’m still a little miffed at Roger Hallam being picked up out of a cafe days ahead of the XR protest just because he pretended he was gonna fly a toy drone.... but only a tiny bit miffed ]

science supports this 100%.  we need more....shopping malls and also....  expensive golf resorts and fancy 4 and 5 star Trump hotels to encourage more people to.... travel.  only a few hundred million account for the current 4 or 5 billion passengers!  11,000 scientists agree, yesterday in the western world, that this would accelerate the end of multicelled creatures.  a giant "bahn soap".   let's do it!  quickly!  it's partah tyme!!!!!  believe it.  

p.s. don't teach any science to folks younger than 65.

more Shopping Experiences!

imagine that!!! a Real Life!

a wonderful product by Toray is called 'heat tech' and sold at Uniqlo.  it's as marvelous for the cold as the 'airism' shirts are for the rest of the year.... unless you are working in the sun of course.  I love these new shirt technology products almost as much as shrink-to-fit 501's.  no need for black turtlenecks.... or those awful cargo shorts that most of the farlang wear, almost as a uniform, probably even to Doi Inthanon!

this is not any different from Al Gore's, and the New York Time's, 'it's only about some ice melting in 2100'.   but if you are a science person, someone who reads science journals, and understands people as well... both of those... 'it' is about social divisiveness, social chaos, food, water, heat stroke in an extended grid failure... along those lines and not in 2100 or 2050.  Bangkok in 2050 won't matter to anyone because the observations and science post 2015, and especially this year, point to our having been way too optimistic.  not just on the Arctic but aerosols and the timing of the crossing of other thresholds as well, such as the ENSO teleconnections i.e. Freund et. al. in May 2019 Nat. Geoscience. of course, Rosenfeld et. al. in Feb. 2019 Science has to be cited as it was the big kahuna of 2019, on aerosols.  

Lookie Lou .... uneducated rice farmers..... plus some mysterious arsonists, according to some other girlie men.... are also setting fires in California. 

what in the world?  using an effective 'tag' that the New York Times used to use about a year back or so before it switched back to simply referring to these kinds of stories, about smoke in Chang My, and wildfires in California.... as 'about ice that may begin melting in 2100'.  that's the USA explanation... but we have a local 'farlang' explanation.

smoke.  and not the 'smoke' we used to see 'coming from our mouths' in the cold season... and that hasn't been observed for several years.. the same years these arsonists and uneducated rice farmers began burning paddy in northern Thailand, California, Indonesia.... and what little is still left of the Amazon 'rain forest' (do they still call it a rain forest?)........   

but they have a solution.  mandatory 'safety black outs' for many [N.B. many] Californians. maybe that could solve Chiangmai's problem too! 

oh! and no small plastic shampoo bottles in hotels.  that's not a joke.  it's a new law in California.  believe it or not.  

so!  maybe another solution.  'safety black outs' for just a few days at a time.  but only where uneducated farmers live, not where there are precious tourists.  without shampoo bottles. 

 

most folks want a simple answer.  here is another!

100% cash, no real estate, mostly all THB, for the first time since 1982.

you don't know the answer to the question why until you no longer can keep asking it.

there is a reason why liquidity is so important to a small cohort of investors relatively suddenly in 2019. how about the one that 98% of the " general population" have such clever as well as banal denial narratives about. yeah, that is why why.

the C word.  that has expensive golf resorts, fancy hotels (air travel) and a better border wall (for deniers who figure its a slow transition... in 2100 something but have not been keeping up with the literature and.... observations). Climate Change.  or rather... science. not the pretend and share feelings about.... Climate Change.

perhaps Nyezhov mistakes what Crazy Alex means.  Crazy Alex is pointing out that most of us make up simple narratives, with an evil face in it.  instead of pointing the finger at our dumb selves.  look at the bigger issue, whereas everything we do and consume involves GHG emissions yet even the folks like Extinction Rebellion in the UK will point a finger at "fossil fuel companies".  but Extinction Rebellion's plan is that after they "win" the politician's attention, they will ask for "people's assemblies" to be set up to solve the extinction problem.  but that is nonsense because we already have had "people assemblies" work on this and come up with nothing really and..... what they are doing is avoiding mentioning all of the consumer stuff ('bright shiny objects'), especially air travel and tourism, which if they had not been passing the buck on.... and mentioned directly... Extinction Rebellion would never have even gotten started.  they'd have lost their ranks... Climate "believers"  have always been quite ready to talk about 'evil corporations' and share their feelings such as Greta Thunberg's "lost dreams" but as soon as anyone mentions anything stronger than CORSIA offsets... beginning in 2027... on only some air travel... they would all go home and disappear in 2 secs. 

[ if you are familiar with what happened this month in the UK.... all but Roger Hallam would have gone home.  but notice, Hallam had been ejected into a "splinter group".... as well as busted in a cafe days before anything got started. hmmmm... more evidence of the above?  I think so, he should have always been front and center of the group.  with the other beginners of XR.  ]