That old drought/water shortage confusion (again)
Dear long suffering reader!
I was in two minds whether to bring this article to your attention for a couple of reasons...
1, I really don't know what I am talking about - always a good reason to keep your mouth shut, I've found.
2, The article states that the technology involved was the brainchild of His Majesty the King, himself a great scientist; I am sure that his intention in pioneering the technology would be for it to be used in tandem with his sufficiency economy principles and ideas for the good of the country and the people. To help alleviate real drought.
3, I think you might be just plain bored with me sitting on my rain cooled balcony every morning with too many Espressos and ranting in an ill-informed manner about any issue that comes into my head, I can almost hear the screams of "John, just talk about your eles & leave the big stuff to the experts" from here. I'm not really in a bad mood but it seems that everything that comes off the Newswire nowadays has my bile rising - perhaps I need a holiday!
So here we go, sheepishly and with apologies, the main reason I decided to bring this to your attention was this photo and an article in Bangkok Post complaining about too much rain in the very province that was complaining about drought not one week ago that had me banging my head upon my long suffering computer...
In the below article the pineapple farmer mentions that he couldn't wait for the seasonal rains to fall on his crop in order for them to survive, that 10 minutes of artificial rain helps them alive. So he is aware of the seasons and of the limitations of the natural weather and yet he is still trying to grow pineapples in the dry season and because his irrigation supply has dried (my guess that rather than climate change this is due to more land being irrigated every year without a corresponding increased water catchment system - blogs passim) up he considers it a drought.
So far, so good, a Government operation helping local farmers to produce fruit on an industrial or export scale year round - technology and progress doing what it is supposed to do, I have no beef with that.
My question is whether anyone has looked into the potential side effects?
The weather is a finite micro-system, there is only a certain amount of moisture in the air; my worry is that in producing this ten minutes of rain we may take moisture out of the air that may, over the course of a few days, have built into a useful storm that would fall in the mountains and perhaps re-fill a catchment system. Ten minutes of light rain falling on hot dry earth (particularly on bare earth between, say, pineapples as opposed falling onto and through a forest canopy) will evaporate on landing or soon after so it may do nothing but cool us down a bit and make us feel better for the afternoon.
Perhaps more harm is done than good?
I believe it is too late to suggest to people that we stop growing fruits outside their season and content ourselves with growing for the local market, a business is a business and everyone has a right to make money and pay off the bank. But I wonder whether instead of clearing more and more land to produce more and more - and then scream drought when the irrigation water dries - we might not be better off allowing some areas to reforest and follow the King's great sufficiency idea of building check-dams within this forest so, even though it may only rain during the wet season, the water catchment is upgraded and the irrigation water lasts longer.
A vested interest for me, too, is that we would also provide some habitat for wild creatures to survive and some more jungle for me to get lost in.
If the seasonal rains really do fail one year (as a consequence of global warming or el nino) and we really do have a drought and not merely a dry season then the increased catchment may well just save the situation for the people, if not for the industrial farmers - for one year they may need to go back to a sufficiency economy as the King has requested.
Also, while I am ranting, perhaps I have missed the obvious in this world of carbon footprints (and John's famous 3 litre turbo inter-cooled blue sugar cane shifting machine) I wonder how many kilo's of carbon four old planes create when they take off day after day to try to solve a dry season, could His Majesty's check dam idea help keep them on the ground until we have a genuine drought?
OK - I'll be quiet now, over to the Environmental News Network and the article that got my pulse racing.
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Rainmakers Give Light Relief in Warm, Dry World
May 01, 2007 -- By Apornrath Phoonphongphiphat, Reuters
PRACHUAP KHIRI KHAN, Thailand -- Every day during the scorching heat of Thailand's dry season, four ageing planes take off from an airstrip southwest of Bangkok carrying cargoes of salt.
The pilots seek out whatever clouds might be floating around, and then, at 6,000 feet (1,800 metres), tell their crew to start shovelling the crystalline powder out the door to seed them in the hope of provoking rain.
Welcome to the work of the Bureau of Royal Rainmaking, a small front line in Thailand's fight against drought -- a struggle likely to become increasingly desperate if scientists and governments meeting in Bangkok this week fail to agree a masterplan to tackle global warming.
After two gloomy U.N. reports on climate change, the delegates are looking at ways to combat greenhouse gas emissions, which environmental groups say the world has the means to cut at little cost.
Should they fail to produce a plan, Thailand's Royal Rainmakers are going to find themselves in strong demand.
Several hours after one recent flight, around 10 minutes of rain fell on a small part of the fruit-growing province of Prachuap Khiri Khan, near the Myanmar border.
"It may not be heavy rain, but it helps," said 40-year-old pineapple farmer Pikul Sinsert. "If we waited for the seasonal rains to come in late May, all our pineapples would die. But five or ten minutes of artificial rain helps them survive."
EL NINO
Climate change and drought are major economic issues for Thailand, the world's largest exporter of rice and natural rubber. It produces 20 million tonnes of unmilled rice a year, and 3 million tonnes of rubber.
The Pacific El Nino weather phenomenon, an abnormal warming of sea surface temperatures off the west coast of South America that tends to produce drought in Southeast Asia and Australia, offers a glimpse of what could be in store in a warmer world.
The latest El Nino event coincided with Thailand's dry season this year, prompting Bangkok to encourage farmers to switch to alternative crops that require less water.
Officials fear a slightly delayed onset of seasonal rains because of the lingering effects of the latest El Nino, which has recently fizzled out.
Eight royal rainmaking units -- so-called in honour of revered King Bhumibol Adulyadej, who is credited with inventing a rainmaking process 30 years ago -- have been hard at work boosting reservoirs in the event of a worst-case scenario drought.
"This year we started making artificial rain in February, preparing ourselves for an El Nino-related drought that has already hit our neighbours," Royal Rainmaking Bureau chief Wattana Sukarnjanaset said.
The rainmakers, whose work has attracted attention from as far afield as Tanzania, have also been called up in the face of other emergencies.
When choking forest fire haze engulfed the northern province and city of Chiang Mai in March, numerous rainmaking flights went up to try to create a downpour that would clear away smoke said to be affecting the health of 5 million people.
Unfortunately, their lack of success demonstrated the limits of the technology.
"It all depends on how much humidity there is," said Tanthai Polharn, a Ministry of Agriculture scientist. "How can we make rain if there's not a single cloud in the sky?"
For the moment, though, the rainmakers are taking it a little easier as daily storms dump bucket-loads of the real stuff on the capital and across other parts of the country.
Source: Reuters
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