Global Warming in Thailand
Thailand Moves to Curb Global Warming - 6/5/07
Thailand is implementing measures to help curb the problem of global warming. The Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment says the move, recommended by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), includes continued public campaigns for greater use of alternative bio-energy and energy saving.
The UN panel held a meeting in Bangkok from 30 April - 4 May 2007, in which more than 400 world experts from over 130 countries and environmental agencies took part.
The meeting resolved that a reduction of greenhouse gas emissions by 85 per cent a year in coming decades would be needed to ease global warming.
The meeting also noted that developed nations accounted for 46 per cent of the greenhouse gas emissions.
Thai Scientists Fear Global Warming Could Empty World Rice Bowl - 5/2/07
Environmentalists and scientists say that as the world gets hotter, floods, droughts and rising sea levels could push Thailand's rice yields down significantly with a huge impact on rural communities.
"Farmers would get poorer and poorer," says Tara Buakamsri, climate campaigner with environmental group Greenpeace.
Rice farmers are fearful of the changes they see in the weather, but shake their heads when asked what they think is causing it. News about global warming has not yet reached these people whose livelihoods could be jeopardised by the world's growing demand for consumer goods and cars.
Anan Polvatana, assistant director of research at the Thai Rice Institute, says researchers are trying to develop rice varieties that are resistant to heat and to the new diseases and insects it might bring.
Gulf of Thailand Won't Rise with Global Warming, Expert Claims - 4/23/07
Global warming is not likely to cause the sea level in the Gulf of Thailand to rise because the body of water is too far from melting glaciers, a leading Thai hydrologist claimed on Monday.
Recent forecasts by the United Nations' Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which predict a 40 centimetre rise in sea levels by the end of the century will cause flooding for up to 94 million Asians living in coastal areas, may not apply to the Gulf of Thailand, according to Suphat Vongvisessomjai, a former professor in water resources engineering at Bangkok's Asia Institute of Technology.
'The climate change panel's projection was wrongly accepted to apply to the Gulf of Thailand,' Suphat told The Nation newspaper. 'We are too far from melting glaciers or ice sheets.'
Suphat added that, in fact, recent research shows that the average sea levels along some coastal provinces on the gulf have declined 0.3 to 0.6 centrimetres over the past eight years.
'The climate change panel did not deceive us or exaggerate. Its scientific findings are just based on the environment of their scientists, most of whom live in Europe,' he told the English-language daily.
