Gerontion

And as wikipedia continues:

"Widespread use of the term "politically correct" and its derivatives began when it was adopted as a pejorative term by the political right in the 1990s...Within a few years, this previously obscure term featured regularly in the lexicon of the conservative social and political challenges against curriculum expansion and progressive teaching methods in US high schools and universities...

Hutton reports:

"Political correctness is one of the brilliant tools that the American Right developed in the mid-1980s, as part of its demolition of American liberalism. . . . What the sharpest thinkers on the American Right saw quickly was that by declaring war on the cultural manifestations of liberalism — by levelling the charge of “political correctness” against its exponents — they could discredit the whole political project."

Moreover, commentators claimed there never was a “Political Correctness movement” in the US, and that many who use the term do so to distract attention from substantive debate about racial, class and gender discrimination and unequal legal treatment. Similarly, Polly Toynbee argued that “the phrase is an empty right-wing smear designed only to elevate its user.”

Commenting on the UK's 2009 Equality Bill, Toynbee wrote that:

"The phrase "political correctness" was born as a coded cover for all who still want to say Paki, spastic or queer, all those who still want to pick on anyone not like them, playground bullies who never grew up."

Which repeats rather nicely what I said. Thank you for bringing that up.

…Anyway, be under no illusions, all internet traffic through Thai ISPs is already proxied, logged and filtered. Some ISP do this better than others, but this is a requirment since 2008. The law (Computer Crimes Act B.E.2550) forces your ISPs need to keep a lot of details about every page you access from Thailand (URL, timestamp, ip source, login ID/phone number/etc.), and retain it for a lot of time.

I wouldn't worry too much about that. Yesterday I stumbled - purely by accident your honour - on that video of you-know-who in her birthday suit. Astonishingly, this was via wikipedia - hardly secret agent super-hacker stuff. If they can't manage to find that and block it, I wouldn't lose too much sleep over authorities checking on what ISPs are allegedly logging.

Heat stress and lack of water - both of which are consequences of climate change - are likely to adversely affect crops. It's true that Co2 fertilization may boost production but significant rises in CO2 are likely to lead to serious disruption to rainfall and run-off from glaciers - which is happening already - which will put major stresses on food production.

Why do you consider that this is a problem and who are you to take such a patronising stance and dimiss my post as rubbish? What qualifies you to have a more informed opinion than me or anyone else. Where do we all get our knowledge from and based on that form an opinion on a subject?

Because the existence of the ozone hole is a matter of fact, not of opinion. To state that it's "a load of poppycock" is just rubbish. If you don't believe me, do some research for yourself.

There are other schools of thought other than your own on the existence of the ozone layer

Really? Schools of thought which state that there isn't a hole? Could you provide some support for that?

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I did have a quick scan of the Feynman link. I didn't see anything which would lead me to think he would describe climate science as a cargo cult.

Regarding modelling, does it provide perfect knowledge? No. Does it provide sufficient knowledge? Yes. I don't understand how the fact that we don't have an experimental earth into which we can pump gigatons of CO2 and then see what happens several hundred years later leads to the conclusion that we can make no useful or reasonable predictions about the future. If we wind back a model to 1800 and it correctly forecasts the weather in 2000 then that's a fairly good reason for believing that it's predictions for the future are worth attending to. As for climate records, those for England go back several centuries and proxies go back thousands of years; paleo-climatology is well established field.

I suspect the more mild results are likely, and it seems to me that the extreme predictions are somewhat less credible.

I have to go on what others say in this. I read serious science journalism but not the journals - which I don't have the background to understand - and it's clear that almost every bit of research points to the situation being considerably worse than the 2007 IPCC report stated. Most people talk about a range of possibilities. I don't have preset opinions on this; I listen to what others say.

That is human nature, not a con job. Since the field itself self selects for only positive results, it is expected that the magnitude of these responses should grow over time. Earlier predictions should have more credibility.

No. In a young science especially, predictions will improve with time. Astrophysics wasn't better 50 years ago. And your statement that "the field itself self selects for only positive results" can - without something to support it - be totally discounted.

So understand I never implied AGW was a con. You said that. I implied that what is happening in AGW is human nature within any profession, and we need to take that into account. My own guess is about 30% of what we hear on AGW is credible, and most of that I think will turn out to be the earlier studies where consensus was not yet dramatically biasing the results.

Well, it has to be either a con or a mistake. If it's not a con then you're saying that 70% of the scientists or all the scientists 70% of the time - or some combination of these - are mistaken. You'd need pretty strong evidence for this. I can't see any.

There are many possible things that could be causing it, but they will not receive funding.

Again, that's certainly a possibility but in the absence of any evidence to support the assertion it would be a little odd - and very unscientific - to believe that.

^^ I suspect - but obviously can''t prove - that you're a liar. I don't think you've ever heard anyone describe themselves as "politically correct" or an opinion as "not politically correct". Unlike you, I am left-wing and have mixed with a lot of other left-wing people for decades and I've never heard anyone other than rightwing cocktrumpets - a group which I'm pretty confident would include you - use the term, and then only to smuggle in their noxious political opinions - something which you clearly have by the truck-load. But, thanks anyway, for illustrating my other point that the OP needn't worry too much about an absence of bigotry and stupidity amongst expats in Thailand.

climatologist simply does not have reliable data to compare against, unless they have developed a crystal ball I don't know about.

Even within computer models, that's not true. They have past climate data against which they can judge the predictive power of their models.

However, does 400 part per million (0.04%) CO2 cause a significant effect?

A much more honest way of saying that is "does increasing by a third concentrations of CO2 cause a significant effect?" Besides, we know and have known for a century about the greenhouse effect on Earth - with lower levels of CO2 - so the answer to your question is yes.

it is only extreme hubris that would allow us to believe we can have any control over what is happening.

For someone who makes a deal over understanding science, it's a bid odd to see a religious argument being made. And besides, three billion years ago, cyanobacteria evolved the ability to photosynthesis and in the process poisoned the atmosphere with oxygen. If single-celled organisms can do it, so can we.

As I said in my post above, if it's all wrong then either there's an extraordinary mistake or there's an extraordinary con. You seem to be hinting that it's the latter but it would be insane - really, insane - to believe that without any supporting evidence. For anyone who's not an expert on this field - and the chances of someone who is an expert on this posting on a shitty forum like this is so vanishingly small that it's essentially impossible - the whole thing comes down to trust. Do you trust a shed load of experts or do you not? If you chose not, then you better have a pretty dam_n good reason not to trust them. This old chestnut of funding is wheeled out time after time but, again, I've never seen anything which makes me think that there's anything to it. Who are all these people who are being turned down for funding? There must be a lot of them by now so why aren't they kicking up a fuss? Have they been brought into the conspiracy too? And why doesn't this apply to everything else? Why not disbelieve the electron theory of electricity and instead go for the very-small-gremlin theory? It's the same dissembling bastards looking for research funding, after all.

Now, some might say, "Do you believe everything you're told?" To which the answer would be, no. Plenty of people are telling me that there's a huge conspiracy and I don't believe them because I've got no reason to. I do believe that the world is warming, that CO2 is a greenhouse gas which is increasing in concentration and that the former is being caused by the latter. I'm not a climate scientist - I have the knowledge of an educated layman who's taken an interest in this - but I do know that the first two parts of this are unarguably correct. The only thing which could be questioned is the causal link. Well, if CO2 isn't causing the world to warm we need to find (i) what is and (ii) what mechanism is suppressing the forcing effect of CO2? As far as I know, there isn't an answer to this.

But the shifts in temperatures are said to have occurred for eras w/out human intervention,

If what explains past changes in temperature can't explain the current changes in temperature, then that doesn't matter. And it turns out that the causes of past warming can't explain the current warming whereas the fact that we're pumping vast amounts of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere can.

it seems even the most eminent scientists have a thousand colliding theories

It might seem that that's the case but that view doesn't accurately reflect reality. You'll find only a handful climatologists - Lindzen and Singer, for example - who think that anthropogenic climate change isn't real. There has been a concerted effort by the fossil fuel industry to create the impression that the science is undecided and they've been very successful in this but this but if you look at the studies I mentioned - the Oreskes study of published papers or the STATS survey of opinions of climate scientists are two important ones but there are more - you'll find that the overwhelming majority are firmly behind theories of anthropogenic climate change.

the Big Problem is over population

Population growth is clearly a problem but the areas with the fastest growing populations are also the areas with the lowest emissions of CO2. Climate change is really a problem which is being caused by the wealthy but suffered by the poor.

The most funny theory i heard so far is that RICE cultivation is awfully bad for the environment

It's true, unfortunately. Flooding paddy for rice cultivation produces a lot of methane, which has a far stronger greenhouse effect than CO2.

Sorry.

Well, it varies on the dogs. Some only bark when there's an immediate threat but some bark at absolutely everything. We've got one about 200 metres away from us - close enough to hear but not close enough to be a problem - which barks constantly every night, all night. Trees, frogs, the wind, someone driving down the road half a kilometre away, leaves falling. Pretty much everything which it can sense makes it bark. As I said, it's far enough away for it not to be a problem but if it was next door, it would have come to a sticky end by now.

I would think the fire crackers would be noisier than the dogs.

Well, the idea is that you use them once - or maybe twice - and the dogs get scared and fuc_k off. You don't use them every night. I though that was clear.

The key to get dogs to stop barking is to remove the source of what's causing them to bark. You do the math mate.

A lot of the time, that's just the world. How does the maths work out for that?

Geronition,

Any tips for the noisy Dogs?

new nieghbour thinks barking at all hours is acceptable.. I'm thinking euthanasia for dogs is looking acceptable...

We had a problem about a year ago with strays fighting outside our house. I wasted a lot of money on a shitty airsoft gun - it was probably less effective than throwing damp tissue at them. I ended up chasing the bastards up and down the street with a pick axe handle. I only ever managed to catch one - and then only a glancing blow - but they went. Someone told me that firecrackers worked well but if it's dogs in your neighbour's house, that might all be a bit provocative.

I am unconvinced either way but tend to be a little skepical about the severity of human activity on climate change.

During the seventies and eighties the hole in the ozone layer was the hot topic, if you'll pardon the pun.

That turned out to be a load of poppycock.

The problem with discussion on forums about climate change - and quite a number of other topics too - is that for some reason everyone thinks their opinion counts, which is why you get people producing rubbish like this. There's not necessarily anything wrong with not being that informed on these matters but there's definitely something wrong with talking about serious topics when you clearly don't know what the hel_l you're on about. The ozone hole was real. And it still is. It's greatest extent was recorded in 2006. The reason you don't hear anything about it is partly because it's old news...and hence not news and also because the Montreal Protocol was very successful in phasing out CFCs and HCFCs. You can find details and nice colourful pictures at http://ozonewatch.gsfc.nasa.gov/

Of course the world is warming, of course humans are causing it, and of course, left unchecked, this will have disastrous results. If you don't believe this then - in light of the Oreskes or STATS studies, amongst others - you have to believe either (i) 1000s of scientists have independently made millions of mistakes all of which tend to confirm each other and which despite being subjected to probably greater scrutiny than any other scientific theory is history, pretty much nobody other than a handful of blogs - and the giants intellects of Fox News - has noticed or (ii) there is a global conspiracy which has run for decades, involved coordinating the falsification of millions of data points, and - despite their wildly competing interests - thousands of scientists, hundreds of journals, corporations, NGOs, media organisations and pretty much every government of the world. And every - yes, every - scientific body or organisation of international standing. Dan Brown would be embarrassed by something like that but it is logically possible. However, to believe either of these you would need some pretty astonishing evidence. So where is it? It's just not there. The CRU emails? Don't be ridiculous. Go ahead and believe it's all a mistake or it's all a con but if you do, you're making a wildly unreasonable choice and you rule yourself out of all further adult conversation.

Once you set aside Thais' inexplicable habit of listening to <deleted> music at top volume and their unwillingness to shut up their dogs, I find the country pretty quiet; people are much quieter in public than they are in Britain.

No one who subscribes to the kinds of ideas the right-wing likes to dismiss as 'politically correct' calls themselves 'politically correct' and nor do they dismiss ideas with which they disagree as being 'not politically correct'. The whole thing is a construct of the right. And they've done this because if I say, for example, 'racism is wrong', some right-wing <deleted> can attempt to dismiss that by saying 'you're just being PC' whereas it's much more difficult to dismiss it by saying 'racism isn't wrong', although the effect of throwing the PC epithet around is often precisely to re-legitimize views such as that. It's lazy stupid language, though as it's the favoured term of conservatives, that's hardly surprising.

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And why would anyone say 'sorry' before insulting someone? If you're sorry, don't insult me; if you're not, do insult me.

Are they so stupid to be duped by marketeers or are they just not very free thinking people? They also seem very racist.

Do you mean racist as in making completely groundless negative judgements which apply to an entire ethnic group? Something like, I don't know, Thai people are all stupid and can't think for themselves. Is that what you mean?

My girl is 26 years younger than I, but that age difference goes by each day without either one of us taking notice.

Sure. I'm not cynical. I absolutely believe that. And I'm sure that if you were forced every day to have a five minute fumble with some wizened old hag 26 years older than you, you wouldn't notice either.

Gawd...PC means nothing. It's a spectre conjured up by the right wing press to capture opinions which they don't like but which against which they can't formulate an argument. It's nothing other than a sign of disapproval so when someone says "Why are people PC?" they're saying nothing more interesting than "Why doesn't everyone agree with me?" That said, given the set of beliefs which usually fall foul of the Daily Mail PC Inquisitor General, anyone who thinks Thai expat boards are PC must find Nick Griffin's personal opinions stomach-churningly liberal. What would make you happy? Advocating the public burning of poofs, niggers, pakis and any bitches caught reading Germaine Greer, perhaps?

But somehow I doubt Abhisit will be baring his medallion collection for other world leaders to stare at in admiration.

Oh, I don't know. Berlusconi might be interested if he's got some of those huge wooden cocks the monks carry around.

But yes, it's shameless opportunism, isn't it. Much like the way most Western politicians can't say "Believe in God? What am I? Some kind of retard?" and instead all dutifully tramp off to church at the appointed times.

You're not very good with these similes, are you. The poor don't decide to be poor. You'd have to be a moron to think that. Are you a moron? They're kept that way by the state. A better (though not desperately good) simile for you: it's like running a 100-metre sprint but cutting the hamstrings of the poor and allowing the rich to bring their sports cars. And successfully driving your Ferrari in a straight line for a hundred metres doesn't justify packing your posts with the nauseating smugness which oozes from every one of them.

Huh? The post directly above yours shows that they don't significantly increase yields. And a large part of the GMO project is producing crops ('roundup-ready') which can tolerate huge doses of toxins; the point of GMO crops is precisely to increase use (and hence profits) of agro-business profits, particularly herbicides, and insecticides. As for "cutting the cost of growing", that's pure fantasy. Monsanto aren't in this to get less money - for the reasons I've just stated, they're going to extract more money from farmers. And as for food security in lesser developed nations, this is caused by a variety of factors. Population growth is one but so is climate change (induced in large part by the US and Europe) as is the pressure to produce cash crops for export and as is the existence of grossly unfair international trading arrangements. Poverty and food insecurity are to a very large measure the exports of the (misnamed) developed world. If you want to end hunger in poor nations, you won't get very far by protecting the interests of trans-national corporations.

No need for hysterics, my boy.

1. The article is not the report. It's an article about the report so don't confuse the two.

2. The report deals with soya and corn because they are "the two primary genetically engineered food and feed crops grown in the United States".

3. Do you know of important research which they didn't cover? Please post it if you do.

4. "Meanwhile, the report found that Bt corn likely provides a marginal operational yield advantage of 3% to 4% over typical conventional practices. Since Bt corn became commercially available in 1996, its yield advantage averages out to a 0.2% to 0.3% yield increase per year. To put that figure in context, overall U.S. corn yields over the last several decades have annually averaged an increase of approximately 1%, which is considerably more than what Bt traits have provided. " That's one example of marginal.

5. You want to know how to feed the world? Stop eating meat. You'll make more available than all the GMO crops are going to do in the next century.

That's an excuse from the 'why don't they serve it to me on a platter' crowd, the kind of thinking that results in hordes of people travelling en masse trying to get the gov't to fix their personal problems by begging for fuel price handicaps and market price mulligans.

No. It's. Not.

It's a request - perhaps a foolishly utopian one - for the state to serve the people, rather than the current arrangement which has things the other way around.

11. The ability not to turn every thread on Pantip into a tedious, bleating. whinging, whining, moaning torrent of <deleted>.

^ I see the witch-burners are out again.

Its a sad fact that with the unchecked population growth occuring in developing countries they have no other option than to make use of gmo's to feed their exploding growth rates. Too bad all the enviromentalists do is say no to gmo's, nuclear energy and other essential needs of the world while ignoring the IMMEDIATE problems facing it.

"A new report released by the Union of Concerned Scentists (UCS) finds that despite 20 years of research and 13 years of commercialization, genetic engineering has failed to significantly increase U.S. crop yields." Read more at http://www.sustainablebusiness.com/index.c...isplay/id/18022

^ Good post. In the league table of 'Most Evil Corporations in the World", Monsanto is definitely in a Champions League spot and not a company to which you want to be snuggling up.

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You can see a couple of those films at http://www.filmsforaction.org/films/default.aspx?Subject=16