It’s not the +28c that gets you on arrival in Thailand, it’s the return trip to Canada with the -28c drop that gets you! Brrrrr…
Posted by pwl on March 15, 2009
Rescued from abusive treatment in Burma, these elephants now paint amazing works of art. You’ll be amazed at how these “Elephant Artisans” talents unfold. Touched by their horrific backgrounds and loving personalities these “Starving Elephant Artisans” sell their paintings so they can continue to have a new life in Thailand.
“It’s not the +28c that gets you on arrival in Thailand, it’s the return trip to Canada with the -28c drop that gets you! Brrrrr… I’ll take global warming over an equal amount of global cooling any day! (Unless it can be proven with hard science that that is bad). I hereby dub returning to Canada from the tropics to be Sudden Bodily Cooling Shock Syndrome or Sudden Return to Iglu Shock Syndrome or Severe Sudden Climate Change Syndrome or Why the Hell Did I Return to Canada Syndrome!”- pwl
Since the comments on Sudden Climate Change Syndrome are closed I’m posting here.
Steve McIntyre,
I hope you enjoy your Thai vacation. I went last spring time for a month and just as I was finding the heat completely indispensable for my existence I had to return to a drop of -35c to -30c compared with Vancouver (where it was about 0 to 5c). It didn’t help having the time zone change and the, ahem, runs for six weeks after returning (thank you pro-biotic yogurts for fixing that when the doctors couldn’t). I stayed mostly on Koh Samui which is a very awesome island.
[Brrr… Extreme Weather/Climate in Vancouver, Dec 2008 – March 2009]
Anyway, I had similar thoughts … most Canadians would love an extra +10c without any problems year round (except for the already hottest days), +20c or better in the winter! … ok, a bit of flooding in Vancouver and elsewhere would be acceptable to this canuck who lived in Edmonton for eight of the coldest years when -45c is what it took to close schools because -40 was common and if they closed the schools at any warmer temp we’d be out of school for months at a time! Not like DC or other warmer American cities I’ve wintered in of late. There they freak at an inch of snow and any below freezing temps.
Let’s start a Canadian petition to have the government support a +10c to +20c increase in temperatures in Canada (a year round 20c to peaks of 35c suit me fine) to support the move to utilize land further north away from the USA broader – it’s getting cramped down here! That way most big cities in Canada might be more like DC or Vancouver… much warmer all winter… 😉
Bangkok and Thailand and other tropical places sure give a wonderful shift in perspective. If all that happens is that the coasts get flooded we humans will adapt. It’s spooky how much the AWG alarmists attempt to scare. Gore said it himself, ~”it’s necessary to exaggerate to get people’s attention”.
I’m just learning about climate science and so far I’m not impressed with the arguments for it that I’ve seen. As an uber computer geek and systems scientist I can understand very complex systems yet somehow I’ve not been able to grasp climate science. Partly it’s vast but mostly it’s because there are so many claims and counter claims and counter-counter claims that seemingly contradict each other this way and that way. It’s very confusing.
One confusion that is apparent is the ~800 year time lag in the temperature preceding the rise in C02. Has this stopped or is it still happening? It seems that the pro-awg people assert that it’s stopped but I’ve not seen any say that directly; it’s their claims that C02 drives temperature that seem to be their way of saying that it’s “reversed or stopped”. Maybe I just misunderstand, which is why I write this and other postings. I don’t know if you or others have covered this before in a way that clarifies the underlying science. If it is still happening where is the data to support it? If it’s stopped where is the data to support it?
Maybe the logic is not so cut and dry as I pointed out in this posting: We Are In The Test Tube. Everyone seems to want simplistic answers and simplistic solutions (or tons of money for their solutions) when it’s not the way of the objective reality of Nature. While there are simple systems in Nature they have complex behaviors (as Stephen Wolfram has proven).
We’ll, I hope you enjoy/enjoyed your vacation in Thailand, Steve. Hope you get to see the elephants that can paint pictures, that’s what I want to see next time. Surely it’s just a learned trick? Or is it? Intelligence in many forms…?
All the best,
pwl
ps. In some of these videos it looks like the elephant handler is guiding the elephant with a hand on the tusk on the other side of the elephant (as is clearly seen in the following video). Slight of hand magic trick or still intelligence? Maybe some elephants are better than others? Maybe not? Hmm….
ps. Oh, The Amazing Randi would likely wonder if the painting elephants were like “dowsers” or something similar.
Paths To Knowledge (dot Science) 
Jim P said
Charles and Camilla on their trip to Brazil>>>> YOU’VE LESS THAN 100 MONTHS LEFT….
Prince Charles said, however, that conservation moves such as Brazil’s would buy only a “little more time for alternative sources of energy production to be developed — for that, after all, is the main problem.”
He emphasized: “We have less than 100 months to alter our behaviour before we risk catastrophic climate change, and the unimaginable horrors that this would bring.”
But hey, there’s advantages tae a warm climate:
“He paused briefly with Camilla at his side to view a trio of scantily clad Carnival queens put on a samba dance show in front of him.”
Jim P said
Here’s the report:
http://uk.news.yahoo.com/18/20090312/tuk-crisis-nothing-compared-to-climate-c-b5b5cc4_1.html
This comedy continues from: the Glasgow Herald:
“THE Prince of Wales and the Duchess of Cornwall began their ten-day tour of South America yesterday with the issue of climate change at the top of their agenda.
Prince Charles and Camilla arrived in Chile, but they will also visit Brazil, Ecuador and the Galapagos Islands. Highlighting the issue of global warming is a major theme, and this week the prince will give a dire warning on climate change to the world.
Their chartered Airbus arrived at Comodoro Arturo Merino Benitez airport close to Santiago. They were driven away in a limousine, followed by a motorcade of six cars.”
Ye couldnae mak it up!
Pierre Gosselin said
There you go again, Steve.
No, it was neither the 11-hour time difference nor the jacklag of a 24-hour flight that drove your fatigue. This is yet another flat-earther, head-stuck-in-the-sand explanation. There are models that show travel fatigue is indeed caused by Sudden Climate Change Syndrome.
And unless we all stop these CO2-producing global flights, we should all expect this phenomena to increasingly dog travelers in the future. Pilots and attendants will be hit hardest, and thus will adversely impact air travel safety and put millions of travelers at risk.
The correlation between physiological fatigue and Sudden Climate Change is 0.99. Really.
This has been revealed in a recent ground-breaking peer-rviewed study conducted by real scientists. They studied 1347 long distance fliers who flew between points with great climate differences. Shockingly, all fliers studied showed fatigue, ranging from modest to extreme. The authors say the fatigue was attributable solely to climate difference, and nothing else. The fingerprint could not have been clearer.
pwl said
Hey you’re exhaling 4% C02 in your breath, that’s way too high – cut back to 1%. No heavy breathing of any kind for any purpose. Can’t feed the plants now can we.
It’s easy to see the politics of AWG. What’s difficult is to see the science due to inclement cloudy conditions caused by alarmists crying wolf. All those tears produces too much water vapor which is the real cause of the warming of those supporting AWG to the boiling point! Don’t cry wolf too much for your tears creating water vapor will bring on Armageddon.
Heck, I gather I’m in a Saturday late night cynical mood. ;–)
pwl said
I should add that while it took me just a few days to adapt to the +30c temperature increase in Thailand and a month to get really used to it, it took many months upon returning to Canada to re-adapt. The cold was really vicious and it was April of last year in Vancouver which is usually one of the warmest places in Canada all year round. I had to have the house set at 25c and still wear sweaters for about two months till summer arrived! This has happened before to me after returning from a hot spot.
I used to live in Edmonton and easily handle -20c to -40c for three or more months of the year. I’d much rather have a warmer climate than a colder one any day. This was another cold winter for Edmonton with common -30c weather.
Vancouver has also been colder and snowier than usual. Now it’s wet and cold with a few sunny days thrown in to trick us into thinking spring is here.
What I really want to know is who took the two side blocks of ice from my iglu? I need those back please. Thanks.
pwl said
Bangkok Weather is often 30c or more warmer than Vancouver Weather at this time of year and is almost always warmer. Ah the tropics.
pwl said
I should add that although it took differing amounts of time to adapt to +28c and -28c changes in the temperature I did adapt. So freaking out about +2c over some long time frame seems like a cake walk at least for humans. It’s clear that the record shows that we’ve done so for 10s of thousands of years.
pwl said
I hereby dub returning to Canada from the tropics to be Sudden Bodily Cooling Shock Syndrome or Sudden Return to Iglu Shock Syndrome or Severe Sudden Climate Change Syndrome or Why the Hell Did I Return to Canada Syndrome!
lurusamui said
wow! amazing I love elephant painting. 🙂
pwl said
Lurusamui, are there any painting elephants on Koh Samui, Thailand?
Maybe when I’m in Thailand I’ll check out the elephants and post my own videos of them painting or being guided in their painting… which ever it is it’s still cool either as an illusion of intelligence or as a reality of it.
Nathan Socha said
This article has made myself find that many of us need to take even more care of ourself and each other.