Bangkok, the 2011 floods, and premonitions of a watery Armageddon

    
 This recent photo is a sadly humorous hint of the looming threat to Bangkok's very existence. Bangkok's Watery Doom may well creep up silently in the next 10 years, perhaps 15 (if luck holds). The city is only one metre above sea level (on average), and has been sinking by about 10cm per year. Oh bittersweet Arithmetic! thy name spells Truth.
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If you click on this link, you will get an interactive flood map (flood.firetree.net) which will look something like this:

(You can biggen any photo by clicking on it)

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Your family can have hours of fun mercilessly flooding the entire city of Bangkok with whatever depth of water you choose. Whee! It's just as if you're playing some silly computer game, except that, like, this is for real, dude...  The map represents average Sea Level under normal conditions at present. But with a mere click of your mouse, you can raise Sea Level by any depth you dictate - simply click the drop-down menu at the top left of your screen. Watch what happens to the entire Bangkok river delta. Ouch.
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Note, though, that some areas on the coast near Bangkok, notably Samut Sakhon and Samut Prakan, are already regularly under seawater at high tides. They're an omen of things to come.
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 Or you can zoom in to visit whichever specific part of Bangkok you want to inundate. To zoom in to the glitzy shopping tourist area around Pathumwan, Silom and Siam Square, for instance, click the + (the slider at the top left corner of the map) about 4 or 5 times.  You'll arrive at a screen which looks like this:

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 You may notice, however, that the deeper you click your desired flood-depths, the more the central area of Bangkok (around Pathumwan, Silom, Siam Square, etc) appears to remain stubbornly and reassuringly dry. But no, it's not perched on a hill, nor protected by dyke walls à la Holland. Even if you increase flooding to, say, as much as TWENTY metres deep, there are still apparently some spots which remain dry! 
So... can the technology be so wrong??
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 Simple explanation: the central city area is extremely highly built-up, with large trees frequently filling gaps between buildings. The mapping satellite necessarily understands the tops of these buildings and treetops as representing ground-level, thereby considerably under-estimating realistic flood depths. Only in larger open flat areas - such as Benjakiti Park (just to the east of Lumphini Park) - is the terrible and soggy truth more accurately revealed. Some twenty million environmental refugees may need to re-locate - quite soon. That's a monumentally more massive evacuation than George Dubya Bush's tiny dress rehearsal at New Orleans.
George? Remember George?

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 Many people - initially those with means - are already choosing to abandon Bangkok in search of drier areas. Prices for nearby elevated land - what there is of it - are truly skyrocketing out of reach of all but the One-Percenters. One of the logical and eligible new places to colonize, at first glance, might appear to be Kanchanaburi, to Bangkok's north-west. But that may well be a case of "out-of-the-frying-pan-into-the-fire". Kanchanaburi is on a known earthquake fault-line, yet boasts a huge dam whose wall is already visibly damaged. A major breach could wipe out no fewer than 13 provinces, including Bangkok. The wall is rated as "safe" only for quakes up to 7.5 on the Richter Scale.  Er, now what were those principles we were supposed to have learned from Fukushima?

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But do I note (with some surprise, I must confess) that the Thai parliament has (as I suggested back in 2007) cautiously raised the sensitive possibility of re-locating Bangkok in its entirety - wow. At last, someone's waking up! A move like this, as it happens, would actually be a continuation of an ancient Thai tradition. The Thai capital has been shifted several times over its history (eg Sukhothai, Ayuthaya, etc), but that was well before the era before concrete skyscrapers, Skytrains and other recent idiosyncracies such as "permanency". Traditional Thai teak houses were once designed without nails to be dimantle-able and easily relocated. I suspect this latest timid hint about shifting Bangkok will promptly get shunted sideways - these are fragile political/economic times. Sure, the proposal seems to have submerged into political oblivion already - it's all too hard - but there can be no doubt that the 2011 Big Flood will change the Thai national conversation forever.
Besides, there will soon be precious little choice.

 Ironically, a traditional symbol threading itself through the silken fabric of Thai

society is that of the Boat. Bangkok in particular used to be very much a water-

based culture ('Venice of the East'), with food-vendors paddling canoes from house

to house along endless networks of canals. These days, antique "noodle-vendor

canoes" are frequently featured in restaurants, even way up on dry land, as

prestigious historical evidence of the establishment's 'food pedigree'.

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OK... let's talk Causes.  Why does Bangkok flood?
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Firstly, filling in Bangkok's networks of canals to create roads was a bad call - FAIL - and has contributed in no small part to the city's current flood woes.  These days, floodwater now has nowhere to spread out when a monsoon flood does come down the river delta - as it always has - from the north. Bangkok was built on a huge swampy drain, let's face it (another bad call: FAIL). Suvarnaphumi Airport, for example, was built on an area formerly known as 'Cobra Swamp' (nŏng nguu hao). It is still one of the lowest areas in all Bangkok, but now has a 3.5 metre dyke wall all round to keep floods out (and the cobras in??).
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Secondly, unregulated massive pumping up of groundwater (for both commercial and domestic use) is contributing to the entire cityscape sagging loosely downwards under its hugely heavy load of concrete and steel... FAIL. (Get a load of this pic of the Skytrain near Siam Square, or here at Ratchaprasong intersection. Imagine the foundations). Bangkok literally floats on a giant waterbed - Thai people are quite blasé about fresh cracks appearing in walls or floors... mâi bpen rai.
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And thirdly (but hardly least), do I need to mention those pesky rising sea-levels due to Global Warming?  Note also that Bangkok's Chao Phrya river is tidal for quite some distance inland, therefore can virtually stop flowing at times of very high tides, thereby severely increasing the back-flow into the few remaining canals. Even back in 1992, while I was staying at a friend's house in Bangkok, he warned me that the downstairs toilet only flushed properly at low tide... and yep, you bet, that failed too :-(
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So - how much longer can Thai people continue to look away, citing Severe Chronic Cognitive Dissonance Syndrome? Bangkok, which is slowly succumbing under this gigantic environmental pincer effect, is even now being unwillingly forced to revert to its traditional boating habits:

What will this Bangkok street look like by 2020?
Hey, but at least canoes don't emit CO₂   ;-)

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After you're done flooding Bangkok, why not navigate the map

to check the flood status of your own country/town/street?

Good luck (in Thai: chok-dee).

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BANK BAILOUT BINGO: "Socialize the losses, but quietly Privatize any gains".

When wealthy people and CEOs stuff up, they can expect cushy government (tax-funded) handouts. When poor people stuff up, it spells stress and poverty, plus offers lucrative new opportunities for lawyers, Real Estate tycoons, trauma and marriage counsellors. It appears that taxation revenue flows mainly uphill, towards the big end of town.

Now that the Big Bailout Bucks have topped up the coffers of the financial giants again, I note with cynical sideways glance that corporate fat-cats are (once again) slyly receiving their millions in bonuses and perks, just like before. This is symptomatic of the underlying purpose of Capitalism (a.k.a. Compassionate Conservatism's Poignant Concern for the Extremely Wealthy). Hey city hall, bail me out too! All I want is less to do, more time to do it, and higher pay for not getting it done. My point here is this - I'm not personally ready yet to dive back into the stockmarket big-time. It's not over till the fat CEO sinks. The other elephant in the room is the Yuan/Dollar stand-off... something's gotta give, and when it does, whoa, stand back!

Some facts:

* in the West, about 1% of the population of wealthy countries control 95% of the wealth; and
* in those wealthy countries recovering fastest from the 2009 economic meltdown, there is now a significantly increasing proportion of people falling below the poverty line...

Conclusions:

Capitalism is not only achieving its goal of making the Very Rich even richer, but now it's even causing increased poverty within wealthy countries themselves! Wealth and power are concentrating in the hands of fewer and fewer people, to no-one's advantage but their own:

According to the present Rules Of Capitalism, disadvantaged people are expected to lose in order to make those profits possible. Observe, for instance, how rich folks are quickly moving in to buy up thousands of cheap "bank-owned" homes which have sadly flooded the real-estate market (do I sufficiently conjure up the image of tears?)

...and how the corporate sector expressed such unbounded glee (behind closed boardroom doors) that Copenhagen was such a successful failure... Their anti-Climate lobbying cost them millions, but hey short-term corporate profits should be maintained at all costs...
...um... shouldn't they?

...and now, HOURS of fun for all the family ...even better than The Simpsons!!

Presenting Fat-cat FunkyPix2's

Dictionary of Right-wing/Conservative Terminology

is sure to assist you to win your next game of Bailout Bingo:

* alternative energy sources /n./ New locations to drill for gas and oil.


* bankruptcy /n./ A means of escaping debt available to corporations but not to poor people.


* class warfare /n./ Any attempt to raise the minimum wage.


* God  /n./ Senior Pentagon adviser (war is Her way of teaching geography to Americans)

* growth /n./ 1. The justification for tax cuts for the rich. 2. What happens to the national debt when policy is made according to Definition 1.


* healthy forest /n./ No tree left behind.


* honesty /n./ Lies told in simple declarative sentences (e.g., "Freedom is on the march.").


* House of Representatives /n./ Exclusive club; entry fee: $1 million to $5 million (See: Senate.)


* insanity /n./ See: staying the course. May also apply to otherwise sane liberal presidents.


* laziness /n./ When the poor are not working.


* leisure time /n./ When the wealthy are not working.


* liberal(s) /n./ Followers of the Antichrist. (Note that in Australia, the major conservative right-wing party named itself the "Liberal Party". For starters, how's that for a Big Fatcat Lie? The party's now led from behind by that God-bothering Catholic fanatic, Mr Rabbit (See: 1. pro-life, and 2. woman.)


* No Child Left Behind /riff./  There are always jobs in the military.


* pro-life /adj./ Valuing human life up until birth.


* Senate /n./ Exclusive club; entry fee: $10 million to $30 million.


* staying the course /interj./slang./ Continuing to perform the same actions and expecting different results (See: insanity.)


* shit happens /interj./slang./ I don't have to live in Baghdad.


* voter fraud /n./ A significant minority turnout.


* woman /n./ 1. Person who can be trusted to raise a child but can't be trusted to decide whether or not she wishes to have a child. 2. Person who must have all decisions regarding her reproductive functions made by men she wouldn't want to have sex with in the first place.

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FunkyPix2's Thought of the Day

And those who were seen dancing were thought
to be insane by those who could not hear the music.

(Friedrich Nietzsche)

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Here's Michael Moore's entertaining trailer to his film Capitalism: A Love Story. Often, I find Moore's jargonistic style annoyingly American, but gee the guy's heart is in the right place when it comes to supporting the underdog against exploitation by the Super Well-Heeled. He keenly laments that whatever hits the fan will probably not automatically be distributed evenly (eg health care) so he's taking active steps to improve things... I can only respect that.

PS: note the dramatically gloating manner in which George Dumbya Bush announces the words "global meltdown", as if he were somehow pleased about the crash... Um, was he? Could it all have been manipulated deliberately? The principal beneficiaries of a financial spring clean are always going to be the already-wealthy classes.

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...and lastly, here's FunkyPix2's footnote to the foolishly fatal financial fuzziness of federal fiscal fantasy. Apart from stuff like "the cheque's in the mail", here's ALL you need to know about Stimulus payments, Bailouts, Tax rebates etc:

Q: What is an Economic Stimulus Payment?

A: It's money that the federal government will send to taxpayers.

Q: Where will the government get this money?

A: From taxpayers.

Q: So the government is giving me back my own money?

A: Only a little of it. Just the part you overpaid to start with.

Q: What's the purpose of this payment?

A: The plan is that you'll use that money to buy a high-definition flat screen TV set, thus stimulating the economy.

Q: But isn't that stimulating the economy of China?

A: Shut up.

Train humans, not elephants. A review of Galen Garwood's film "PANOM: Cousin to the Clouds"

Galen Garwood's film PANOM premiered here in Chiangmai last evening to rapturous applause and admiration. It deals with the nature and issues surrounding the interaction between people and elephants. And it does so in a coolly non-anthropomorphic way, nevertheless seething with depth of feeling that cannot fail to move.

The DVD will be available soon. The trailer may be viewed at

http://www.galengarwood.com/

REVIEW: The Chiangmai University Art Center Theatre was packed nearly full, and the film was applauded very generously, as well it deserved. Galen's heartfelt pachydermal passions were clear to all.

The film tackled head-on the serious bottleneck facing the very survival of the Asian elephant, necessarily provoking more Questions than Answers. Now that the status of the elephant has descended to that of forestry labourer and, more recently, to that of mere tourist entertainer, where to now? In PANOM, Galen prods and suggests in his powerfully gentle way that a change in human attitude is the first step to restoring the dignity and future of these ancient and highly intelligent creatures. His film palpably affected those who watched it at its premiere last night. Many, including myself, were teary.

The DVD will be available soon at www.galengarwood.com ...you genuinely won't know whether to laugh or cry as you watch elephants literally singing along with obvious delight as Jamie Seiber performs for them so hauntingly on her electric cello. All profits will go to the Friends of the Asian Elephant hospital (FAE).

A case in point... a broken-spirited young elephant, complete with a humiliating blinking red tail-light, is taught how to beg tourists for 50-cent bananas along Huaykeaw Road, Chiangmai, not far from our apartment. Not cute:

...and a bored elephant swings its trunk for something to do
as it waits for tourists near a Mae Rim resort:

 

 Re-train humans, not elephants.

2066 And All That:Dear Copenhagen, there is no Planet B.

"Uh-oh!"

     

I'm cross at the folks who brought you Copenhagen. It's never a good thing to get FunkyPix2 cross. World leaders like Brown, Obama and Rudd risk their necks if I get cross. FunkyPix2 got very cross at Australia's John Ducklips Howard... and just look what happened to him.

     

Iran's Ahmedinejad has a genuine point, unfortunately, when he suggests that the major polluters such as Australia*, Canada, the UK and the USA (what I call the Un-Developing countries) need to seriously reconsider the assumed merits of Capitalism/Democracy. It's obvious enough that "Pro-profit = Anti-Climate": watch Obama lying about the great success of Copenhagen.

*Australia has the highest carbon emissions per head in the entire world... Shame Straya Shame.

     

But it's also obvious that no country which is constrained by a 3- or 4-year election horizon can effectively plan for the Longer Run. China, with its Socialist one-party system, is actually achieving far more than the West in terms of Green reforms, forest-planting, economic safety-nets etc. Admittedly, it's sometimes at a cost to sections of its citizens, but certainly far more benevolent than the military junta in Burma.

    

By contrast, Western Capitalism (formerly known as Colonialism) is designed to maximize profit and to concentrate it in the hands of a hugely wealthy elite - and to hell with the rest. Therefore the Global Common Good is almost inevitably a casualty, as the 2009 financial train-wreck amply demonstrates.

    

The Elephants in the Room, therefore, are the very institutions we're all expected to take for granted as immutable, beyond question, sacrosanct... they are
    

Capitalism & Democracy

    

If we refuse to question them or consider changes, we in the West are as guilty of Fundamentalism as the very people we so often accuse. If we unilaterally deny that our system is imperfect, we are complicit in its failures and must accept the consequences. By saying that, I will of course be smeared as a ranting member of some knot of sandalled left-wing zealots - but no, I'm just another local lad who is bold enough to point out that the emperor is, in fact, at least partly naked.
    
The most dire consequence of all is Rapid Climate Change.

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In the following Short and Pugnaciously Cynical Photo Essay designed to assist World Citizens to cope with the coming Underwater Age (the real Age of Aquarius?), I pose more Questions than Answers:

I begin with the necessary Rapid Darwinian Adaptions which will clearly be necessary for future life underwater: Gill & Fin Surgery may soon bump facelifts as the number one elective procedure:

A Hollywood heart-throb of the future?

...or just a failed Prototype?

So, more realistically speaking, perhaps this
merman tailfin will be recorded by Historians as the
equivalent of the Wright Brothers' biplane flight:

When streets go under water - as parts of Bangkok already have -

you may have to adapt to overhead walkways to get around:

a dead thing...

Welcome to New Paris, in the year 2066...

...and Manhattan

 

...and here's a quicker solution for Climate Change Deniers such as Australia's stand-up comedian Opposition leader Mr Rabbit (member of Gravity Deniers and Flat Earth Society):

FUKITOL ...thoughtfully brought to you by

PS: Even the very name of Mr Rabbit's party - the "Liberal" Party (HO-HO) is a bare-faced lie. It ain't liberal, it's ultra conservative. It's Australia's equivalent of the Republican Right-wing Pro-lifers.

Eeeeew.

   
Do you want a really honest no-holds-barred summary of why Copenhagen was always destined to bellyflop? Click here.
A camel is a horse designed by a committee.
Hold that thought.
   
NEWSFLUSH !! ...and in Breaking Wind, here's an interesting interview with a Copenhagen insider who reveals who was really in control of negotiations. I've copied an extract:

EMMA ALBERICI: There certainly was an impression by the end of it that the West, led by the European Union and the US, was bullying the poor and developing world into submission, into signing up for some kind of binding emission cuts.
   
MARK LYNAS: Yeah well I think that's rubbish. I mean that's certainly not what I saw. If anything it was the West being bullied by the developing countries. Only the big ones, of course, because the smaller countries don't really have much of a voice.
   
EMMA ALBERICI: Who was it from China involved in this obfuscation? Was it the Premier, Wen Jiabao?
   
MARK LYNAS: No it wasn't Wen Jiabao and that's also significant that the Chinese forced Obama to sit opposite a sort of mid-level official in the Foreign Ministry. I don't know what the man's name was but he was obviously a very experience negotiator and he played a very inscrutable poker face approach really.
   
And he had to keep on leaving the room to make phone calls to his superiors as he put it because he was only a civil servant, leaving President Obama and all of the other leaders and Kevin Rudd included sitting there tapping their fingers waiting for him to come back with some news.
   
I think it was meant to cause offence and probably some offence was taken.
   
TONY EASTLEY: Mark Lynas, environmental adviser to the Maldives at the talks in Copenhagen, speaking there with Emma Alberici. 

Thailand is jealous of Burma's nuclear power: Let them eat Yellowcake

Disposing of nuclear waste? No problem, the monk-on-duty
with the 'glow-in-the-dark' orange jump-suit will take care of it.

A nuclear-powered Thailand? Yep, it's back in the news. But it's sure to be safe if the Reactor is built next to a Buddhist Temple or, even better still, near a 'good luck' Amulet factory.

I expect bamboo scaffolding during the building process. And a fleet of barefoot cops on scooters as a Tsunami-like warning system in the event of a nuclear accident.

I do really love Thailand - honest - but hardly because of Thais' rigorous attention to workplace standards. Thai expertise in matters electrical, for instance, is at best dubious. Most "electricians" have zero idea of how to ground [earth] a circuit, a safety standard universally assumed in the west. I think that before attempting to build a nuclear power station, Thailand might first consider working out how to build a half-decent footpath.

Good cop, bad cop, sharing a scooter. The officer driving should fine his passenger
200 baht for not wearing a helmet. Also note the excuse for a 'footpath' (outside a Wat).

Then there's the issue of corruption and kickbacks. Sub-standard concrete, thin or missing reinforcement [etc] is the norm here as the brother-in-law's suppliers pocket their tea-money. To save cost and make up for having to pay bribes, walls made of bricks only 2" wide are frequently built without any internal reinforcement [see pic at left]. This is the happy-go-lucky land of mai-bpen-rai, and even though foreign nuclear contractors themselves may be rigorous in their own internal quality control, would they be able deal with the deep rooted systemic graft and concealment that exists here at all levels? Even renovating our apartment revealed to us the cut-throat commissions demanded for contracts ...and all with the blessing of the condo management. Outcome? It was us who ended up paying - grrrr - up to 20% extra on occasion... to people who did none of the work!

Getting nuclear power is also about keeping up with the Jonses. Thailand doesn't want to be caught in a position where it might be seen to lose face in the event that its arch rival Burma announces its own Nuclear Reactor. Am I kidding? No, unfortunately. Burma has been promised a smallish reactor by Russia, and has also reputedly had contact with North Korean technologists. Burma has been told by ASEAN that it would be kicked out if it got nuclear power, but the Burmese generals, generously bankrolled as they are by China, really couldn't give a toss. In fact, it would conveniently reduce pressure on them to tow the line with all that pesky Democracy stuff. And with fugitive Thaksin now an employee of Cambodia, I'm expecting a competitive tender from Phnom Penh at any minute.

There is a protest movement against the nuclear push here, but it is routinely belittled by the Puuyai ('big guys'] who control the media. The immediate assumption is that these silly protesters are getting in the way of Thailand's progress. My immediate comment - moving forwards is not necessarily a good idea when you're standing on the edge of a cliff. But what intrigues me is the relative low media profile of the nuclear issue in the eyes of the Thai public. Truth is that few Thais read newspapers, and many are painfully slow at reading at all. Reading isn't big in Thailand - except maybe comics. And Thai radio tends to be populist and lightweight, especially up here in the rural north. For many folks, it is more important to score the next 20 baht for a meal than waste time on remote issues involving rich people:

But to put things in perspective, here's an interesting time-line which aligns the recurring nuclear issue with the history of coups in Thai politics:

Gotta love the tsunami image.

NEWSFLUSH !!  in Breaking Wind from the Nation Newspaper:
Dramatic Thai nuclear update (Dec 24 2009).

And, of course, the expected rush on Nuclear Merchandise starts TODAY!! All available from FunkyPix2. All environmentally fairly safe and posted discreetly to you gift-wrapped in a comforting shade of green: