canopy

This is good news. Every single vegetable field converted to hardwoods / fruit trees is a win in many ways. The government has wanted farmers to do this for a long time, now they have a well thought out plan in place and very high goals.

14 minutes ago, Lungstib said:

They sometimes clear proper forest to do this

You seem to excuse the poor to take from the forest and condemn the rich for having the audacity to do the same thing. This is a surprisingly common bias among expats, Thai's, and even the forestry department itself. The forests are disappearing and we shouldn't wait until it's all gone before waking up. Equal enforcement regardless of the wealth or social status of those encroaching is required to save the forests. Absolutely Premchai's 6000 rai should be taken and they are vigorously going after just his holdings. But they should go after the other million rai that no one, not even the forestry department, wants to take back because it's poor people there. Being poor should not be an excuse to steal and pillage the last remaining forests as it is today. When it's all gone, then what do the poor jobless people do to get by? Alternatives for these people are needed right now, not waiting for them to take everything before we start think about that. It's just a despicable thing to watch.

I have a sad prediction about Premchai's illegal land. They will take it from him and distribute it to the poor. It won't be returned to the forest. Let's see.

19 hours ago, Krataiboy said:

. . . while blithely hacking down half a forest on sacred land in Chiang Mai to build ritzy homes for judges. 

You are a perfect example of a fair weather activist. The small bit of land you refer to belongs to the military and was developed legally. It's not national forest or anything of that sort. But yet you suddenly show the highest concern about saving the forest. This article mentions a million rai of actual forestry land has been stolen and lost forever due to illegal encroachment. More genuine, pristine forest land goes missing before breakfast than the size of that military plot. So where is your concern about this? Suddenly you aren't an activist standing up for the forest anymore. You don't care. So be honest with yourself, you could care less about disappearing forest land, you are just trying to find a way to criticize a certain faction.

I wish more people genuinely cared about the forests in Thailand.

I've seen this before and it is the restaurants fault. They deliberately only put out enough of the good stuff for a few people even though many are waiting. That way the people are forced to eat cheaper things, save those with the sharpest elbows, and the restaurant laughs all the way to the bank.

39 minutes ago, billd766 said:

I have a good Thai friend here in rural Khampaeng Phet who does hydroponic and green farming and she is completely pesticide free. She cannot meet all the orders that she has because she cannot produce enough to meet the demand.

Wow. In my area hydroponic farming has exploded in popularity in the last 5 years. I asked farmers about pesticide use. They say only once a week. I emphasize "only" because that seems more frequent than conventional crops. If you have any references to how to grow hydroponics without pesticides I would be very happy to pass that information along. It sounds too good to be true. I always envisioned needing a completely enclosed environment as a barrier.

4 minutes ago, Srikcir said:

so it can develop the Doi Suthep forest area near Chiang Mai

My understanding is this was always military owned property, not forestry land. The military has the right to use their land however they wish. Let's put this in context. The people love clearing every tree from every property which is plainly obvious. Yet the people harshly condemned the military for doing exactly what they do. Sure I would have loved perfect world stuff where the military to signed over the land to national forests, but I cannot find fault with what the military did. It was a case of condemning the military by scraping up some forest excuses to support this condemnation. Because if they actually cared they would be protesting anyone that encroached on national forest land. Or anyone that hunts and ravages and burns down the national forests. But they do absolutely nothing about this and care less the real protected forests are disappearing. Simply silence from them. Can't help but notice the bias.

1 minute ago, Bkkthebest said:

My question to you is..Do you care?

It doesn't matter what I think. But yes I care absolutely 100%. I love the forests, wildlife, nature, a healthy lifestyle, everything like that. It is depressing the attitude of the people is like a giant wrecking ball destroying all the things I feel are sacred. I have no illusions of changing the world and do not have a holier than thou opinion of myself. I just accept I am different than everyone else.

35 minutes ago, Bkkthebest said:

If all of the Thais unite together to go against this chemical practices

Be realistic. This will never happen because no one cares. Farmers are happy as a clam spraying away.  They absolutely love these poisons, the more the merrier. All over Thailand it's the same. And the people are happily consuming all of these poisoned products vigorously without any objections whatsoever. No one wants organic. No one is asking for healthy products. No one cares about environmental impacts; look at the people happily polluting oceans and waterways from bags to poisons. Not a care in the world. People care only about cheap and that's why we are in this predicament. There are just a few largely ignored activists that care more than that. And notice how this thread garners little interest and is mostly ignored by expats. To them, quibbling about elon and living on 45k baht are far more important topics. This is the reality we live in.

I like what the government is doing which is to encourage tree farming instead of vegetables. Vegetable fields are frequently burnt and heavily poisoned. The benefits of having trees in these fields are countless; less erosion, more oxygen, habitat, etc. The tree idea seems well thought out allowing farmers to get cash during the many years it will take the trees to mature. But is there enough financial incentive for farmers to switch? Maybe. Because it sounds awfully tantalizing--the farmer plants a bunch of trees then the government gives them huge loans based on what they will eventually be worth. They'll see that as free money and once one person does it and gets a pile of cash, others will quickly follow.

no need to go anywhere. can be done online such as notarycam.

q-con has them. Go anywhere that sells q-con blocks like homemart and order them. They come in 3 meter long by 60cm high panels.

He's right and it's good to see him lead by example. But this seems to be a case where his military thinking is a disadvantage. You just can't order people to exercise and expect everyone will fall in line and start doing it. He needs to follow up these orders with people thinking up and implementing practical processes that will achieve good results. Some things have been tried already.

One thing that worked is the bike for dad event had a tremendous turnout and also had a positive impact on people cycling even after the event ended.

One thing that didn't work is several years ago they wanted old people to have access to fitness machines and installed outdoor fitness equipment in the villages. For a short period of time these gyms were a curiosity and a few even used them. But they gradually went into disuse and villages moved them to undesirable locations or removed them completely.

The key is it is illegal to build public structures using wood in Thailand. So it isn't clear they could ever get approval for this design. Shame as it looks so much better. It is surprising they propose genuine wood instead of doing it the Thai way. Usually in Thailand they build using concrete and steel then stick smartboard over it to get the appearance of wood. Doesn't look quite as good but resistant to fire, termites, rot, and easier to care for.

Impossible or not, I'll be rooting for them every step of the way. Only on thaivisa you find cranky, grumpy, old people who complain about even the good stories. Live the dream kids.

16 minutes ago, lamyai3 said:

I actually sat on his mini sub on Monday (it's on display in Siam Paragon this week) and I can confirm that it's definitely too big to do what Vern suggested. 

So in other words you don't know that different subs were made for different areas of the cave. The subs were made to the specifications of the cave diving experts who were there. So it seems rather unlikely anyone could "confirm" a sub would not work simply by seeing it at Siam paragon.

I think it's great they are doing this and hope they succeed, but make no mistake they are only going to all this trouble because he is rich and you can see evidence of this in their very own photo. It can be seen in the photo 100% of the surrounding land is clear cut and developed, yet nothing is done about that because the poor are there. It is extremely likely it was the poor that sold him the land with dodgy papers in the first place as is commonly what happens. Also notice the deeds in that area were revoked 15 years ago but only now they decided to inspect and only his holding. Obviously going after him personally; nothing to do with saving the forest. I just wish the forestry people and the Thai people cared about saving the forests. In order to do that, they are going to have to stop the poor from destroying it, but that is apparently culturally unacceptable and no one wants that to happen.

1 hour ago, webfact said:

Officials who used this device found it worth the price

So a device that cost the country a billion baht and does nothing it claims to do is said to be worth the price results in the statement "difficult for the nation’s anti-graft agency to conclude whether there was any wrongdoing". Yeah that sounds really difficult to figure out. The anti-graft agency should be fired for not doing their job and all their bank accounts investigated.

2 minutes ago, Chopperboy said:

Vern Unsworth showed himself to be of a higher mind and ignored the provocations.

Vern did not ignore Elon's retaliatory tweets. In fact Vern added more insults and promised it wasn't over in the face of them.  And it was Vern that started the spat in the first place. Did you forget about the sticking it where it hurts insult blabbered to a CNN microphone to the world? What a low life would do something like that. I have to think we haven't heard the last from Vern and it's cringeworthy to think what might be coming from him next. Same goes for Elon.

4 hours ago, Cadbury said:

His company Tesla has serious cashflow problems which can rapidly develop into serious debt problems. Orders are being cancelled and production of Model 3 is falling behind. 

https://money.cnn.com/2018/07/23/investing/tesla-elon-musk-cash-debt/index.html

You are such an expert. You quoted an old article with negative speculation that was debunked several days later by the quarterly results for what reason exactly? Blind hatred? Let's set the record straight. Tesla had a great quarter. There was so much progress that the debt situation was way better than the prediction analysts had of doom and gloom. On top of that, Tesla as well as analysts now expect profitability this quarter. All of this had a euphoric welcome when the next day the stock had its best day in 5 years. The truth has a nice series of body blow to the haters.

But if you ask me is Elon becoming unhinged? Yes, I think so. Increasingly erratic behavior.

2018 is not over yet, but the numbers show so far it is in between--better than 2016 but worse than 2017. It's hard to make a perfect comparison though because there are variations in dry season length, how dry it gets, winds, and so forth.

First you have to define "bad". Some define bad meaning the air has reached an uncomfortable level to them. Some base it on visibility; say whether they can see a mountain or not. Yet others define bad as where it is on a scale of an air quality measurement. And a lot of Thai's define bad as when the government tells them to wear face masks and stay indoors.

Northern Thailand has a very pronounced dry season. Burning starts almost immediately after the rains stop and it continues and until the rains start again. Thus, air quality degradation often starts sometime in October and will be noticeable immediately as visibility shrinks and the horizons are no longer blue. There is an accumulation effect where the air gets progressively worse which often peaks in the March/April time frame which is where health problems really kick in. Out of season rains can make a great improvement in air quality, though the effects are temporary and very infrequent.

I wish I had statistical data for CR to share, but I only have CM. But it's relevant as the air in the entire north of Thailand plays out similarly. These are monthly averages; some days are better, some worse. Some times of a day are better, some worse. Being averages also consider you could have an unhealthy day of air in December and a healthy day in March. And it is based on the US EPA air quality index. This is much stricter than the Thai index. I like the US EPA scale because in America people are genuinely concerned about people's health. In Thailand their concern seems to be a face saving system to sweep it under the rug and hence their scale is more lenient and they refuse to include the dangerous PM 2.5 particles. So looking at the last 2 years chart what is surprising is how few months are green zone good air. And notice the characteristic up tick in October that worsens until May rains arrive.

So what do these colors mean?