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Subscribe to RSSAs the death toll passed 600 Sunday and the crisis enters its fourth month, the epic floods that have overwhelmed two-thirds of Thailand have become -- by necessity -- everyday life for many Thais.
Gideon Mendel, a freelance photographer affiliated with Corbis, saw this firsthand on his trip to Thailand in mid-November. While many have had to evacuate their homes and livelihoods, in locations where the water is more manageable at knee- and even waist-height, some Thais are living in their homes, running their businesses and even having fun – in the flood water.
After four months of flooding, a few feet of water isn't enough to keep some Thais from going about their daily lives
To explore the flooded areas, Mendel and his translator, Namfon Cutter, traveled in a four-wheel-drive vehicle west toward Myanmar through the water to the outskirts of Bangkok. Eventually water started covering the highway until they could go no farther. At that point, they worked with several boat captains to help them continue on to rural villages and suburbs to document the lives of the flood victims.
As part of his long-term personal project entitled "Drowning World" Mendel has covered floods in six different countries from Pakistan and India to Australia and Haiti. But he has taken on this long-term project because he wants people to ask questions about why this flooding is happening. Is there a link to climate change?
Gideon Mendel / Corbis
Food vendors continue to ply their trade in the middle of rising water on the flooded Meenburi Road in the east of Bangkok. This is one part of Bangkok which has endured rising floodwaters over the past two weeks as the floodwaters which have inundated large parts of the country move through Bangkok towards the sea. Currently the water is knee high and these stallholders said that they will keep their street food carts open until the water is waist high.
The Nobel Prize-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change meeting in Uganda this week says "yes."
AP reports: The panel said the world needs to get ready for more dangerous and "unprecedented extreme weather" caused by global warming. These experts fear that without preparedness, crazy weather extremes may overwhelm some locations, making some places unlivable. ...
For example, the report predicts that heat waves that are now once-in-a-generation events will become hotter and happen once every five years by mid-century and every other year by the end of the century. And in some places, such as most of Latin America, Africa and a good chunk of Asia, they will likely become yearly bakings.
A man reads a newspaper as he sits in his flooded shop in the Wijit Kolnimit Community of Bangkok. Thailand is experiencing the worst flooding in over 50 years which has affected more than nine million people.
The panel also mentioned the $200-billion-a-year economic impact of extreme weather, from personal losses to interruptions in global supply chains. But Mendel is more concerned about the human impact. “The poorer you are, the more vulnerable you are to flooding. The more your life can be destroyed by flooding,” Mendel says.
Despite the hardship he witnessed, Mendel was amazed by how friendly and open people were to being photographed, despite being caught at such a difficult time. Instead of finding people asking for money or help, he encountered a lot of ingenuity and human spirit to persevere.
Gideon Mendel / Corbis
Moo Baan Prapin runs a superstore in the Petronas gas station in the Taweewattana District, Bangkok. "It turns out that our business here after the water reached us is much better than when there was no water. We can sell a lot, my friend and I quite enjoy it. We at first put stuff in a plastic tub and floated it from house to house to sell stuff and that went really well but then I got bitten by a big leech. We both got really scared so we stopped doing that, instead we put stuff out in the front of the house and do our business at home, it works as well."
More coverage:
As the floods recede, Bangkok blame game begins
Death toll from Thailand's floods tops 600
More Photoblogs about Thailand
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Maybe they can get jobs with Dilbert and replace the Elboians in his cartoon and 2012 desk calender!
They better watch out for epidemics like Vibrio Cholera, Salmonella and Rota virus on children!
How do you use the bathroom around there? Hope some fool aint peeing upstream to piss off his neighbors...it's alot of logistics to maneuver around I would imagine...without disturbing the peace...a simple garbage throwing infront of your house could land somebody's kitchen!!! The cats must be having a field day, if they can swim...
Amazing! With all the admiration I can muster, this is creative coping. What a great people!
My thanks for the posting of these pictures. I'm living in this...my home has been neck deep in water for a month. To see it in pictures helps others to realize the situation. While this is the worst flood in 100 years (at least), the upcountry people go through floods every year with little assistance.
The Thais show some amazing perseverance but living in flood water for a day is unhealthy let a month or more.
Maybe it's not as unhealthy as we've been led to believe.
Thank you, UDunnoBro - Every once in a while some one will post something so ridiculous I have to shake me head and laugh - a thumbs for up for that. I hope your other fans were similarly motivated. Have a good night.
AP reports: The panel said the world needs to get ready for more dangerous and "unprecedented extreme weather" caused by global warming. These experts fear that without preparedness, crazy weather extremes may overwhelm some locations, making some places unlivable. ...
Naw, global warming is just a myth created by liberals. Keep burning fossil fuels all, nothing to see here.
Climategate 2.0? More Emails Leaked From Climate Researchers
Published November 22, 2011
University of East Anglia
The Climatic Research Unit, a key climate science facility at the School of Environmental Sciences, a part of the University of East Anglia in the UK.
A new batch of emails purportedly stolen from the servers at the University of East Anglia were posted online Tuesday, echoing the 2009 data breach dubbed "Climategate" that turned the world's attention to the internal debates among scientists hoping to determine whether man's actions are warming the planet.
Excerpts from the emails posted on climate skeptic websites are certainly eye-opening:
<1939> Thorne/MetO: Observations do not show rising temperatures throughout the tropical troposphere unless you accept one single study and approach and discount a wealth of others. This is just downright dangerous. We need to communicate the uncertainty and be honest.
<3066> Thorne: I also think the science is being manipulated to put a political spin on it, which for all our sakes might not be too clever in the long run.
<4755> Overpeck: The trick may be to decide on the main message and use that to guid[e] what’s included and what is left out.
The leak comes less than a week before the latest United Nations meeting intended to control carbon emissions and monitor the world's climate -- a fact underscored in a document that accompanied the leaked emails.
"Today’s decisions should be based on all the information we can get, not on hiding the decline," the anonymous document states, a reference to a comment from the first batch of emails that became a rallying point for climate skeptics.
The University of East Anglia's Climatic Research Unit -- a key center of climate study and the source of the leaked emails -- immediately issued a statement blasting the release and its timing.
"These emails have the appearance of having been held back after the theft of data and emails in 2009 to be released at a time designed to cause maximum disruption to the imminent international climate talks," the school stated.
University of East Anglia spokesman Simon Dunford nonetheless told the Associated Press that a small sample examined by the university "appears to be genuine" -- although the school stated that they did not seem to be recent emails.
"While we have had only a limited opportunity to look at this latest post of 5,000 emails, we have no evidence of a recent breach of our systems," the statement reads.
And the anonymous source of the latest leaked emails -- a 173MB zip file called "FOIA2011" containing more than 5,000 new emails and made briefly available on Russian server Sinwt.ru -- remains unclear. The perpetrator of the original hack has yet to be unmasked, although British police have said their investigation is still active.
Michael Mann, the director of the Earth System Science Center at Penn State University and a central figure in climate studies, described the release to U.K. paper the Guardian as "truly pathetic."
The emails in the leak appeared to be his own, Mann said
Oh please roger, calm down...
Penn State University Prof. Michael Mann — a prominent player in the earlier controversy whose name also appears in the latest leak — described Tuesday's development as "a truly pathetic episode," blaming agents of the fossil fuel industry for "smear, innuendo, criminal hacking of websites, and leaking out-of-context snippets of personal emails."
In an email to the AP, he said that the real story behind the leak was "an attempt to dig out 2-year-old turkey from Thanksgiving '09. That's how desperate climate change deniers have become."
FacTofTheMAtter - if you don't share in the belief that people are able to evolve (Or - actually pray for fins and gills and have god answer their prayers) well, that's fine -I just wish you would show a little politeness and not spread your negativity to others. Thank you.
The e-mails have been blown out of proportion. For example, in regard to temperatures in the tropical troposphere, new measurements more accurate than the old weather balloons have shown that temperatures are indeed rising approximately as predicted by models. You can find an article about this subject on Science Daily.
I just wish you would show a little politeness and not spread your negativity to others
I just wish you would show a little alertness to when I'm being sarcastic. You're welcome.
Amazing! They are really putting Americans to shame. In the aftermath of a disaster like this flood they are cleaning up, working, living and making do. Contrast that with the people of New Orleans after Katrina.
We could learn a thing or two from the Thais.
Like I always been telling Oklahoma' People who don't remember what like to be Poor. They complain if the Electric goes out. Some American' Complain when neighbor backs from driveways for example. All we learned to do in America is complain why Life's so tough, they need to see the poor families who work harder longer hour than us, in Mexico and other thrid World countries which we keep inslaved to our needs that we complain about so much. You go to work in Mexico for $38.98 American dollars for 48 hr week see if you would not try find better places to go too. We Live too, complain, not Work, we just want jobs, third world counties want places to work. Complain about that next time Fellow Americans, people who want too Work!
Here's a question: WHAT is that guy doing sweeping the water?!
That is crazy!
I thought the same thing! I mean, unless he is trying to get his life back to normal and pretend to sweep the floor.
It looks like he is sweeping bugs and stuff off the walls.
Would you be asking if he was drinking it instead. In Juarez Mexico they sweep the Rain down the streets during the rain, for lack even streets and stagant water building up in Pools. He most likely hopeful when the Water drys it will help clean the area he sweep in. Why ask why? Ask him, but he proably have to wade in if you can ZSwim that far, question How long can you tread Water?
Would you be asking if he was drinking it instead. In Juarez Mexico they sweep the Rain down the streets during the rain, for lack even streets and stagant water building up in Pools. He most likely hopeful when the Water drys it will help clean the area he sweep in. Why ask why? Ask him, but he proably have to wade in if you can ZSwim that far, question How long can you tread Water?
amazing that life goes on reguardless of all the flooding
Looks pretty cool until you think about the size of snakes that live in Thailand!
I was happily splashing around on Sukhumvit Road in Bangkok once during monsoon season and the water was about mid-calf deep. Somebody pulled an 8' snake of some kind out of a sewer grate on the curb. Talk about a buzzkill.
Wow, that would suck
Wait, you mean they're not all acting like victims, blaming the 'fat-cats', and demanding that the government take care of them? They're actually taking care of themselves and showing ingenuity and entrepreneurship?
Quick get Michael Moore and some OWS folks over there to talk some sense into these people! Can't build a global socialist utopia without permanent victims!
tjp,
the world could use fewer disingenuous azzholes like you.
Looks like the truth hurt someone.
there is a difference between a monsoon flood coming from a river and a category 5 hurricane.
This reminds me more about the flooding the Mississippi had not too long ago. Remember how much the people out in the rural areas cried foul when the flood water was diverted their way? I do, but it seems the conservative trolls would rather forget about it.
After all, its better to think only one half of America is a bunch of crying babies and you just happen to belong to the better half. AMirite?
Libs always lash out. Sad really.
"After all, its better to think only one half of America is a bunch of crying babies and you just happen to belong to the better half. AMirite?"
Sums up the liberal view of the world fairly well.
After hearing the lies all day everyday from the righty's it's hard not to lash out remember there is no climate change, it's all Obama's fault, if these people would pray to Jesus everything would be O.K.,trust us for we are Leaders not readers,So we don't have to understand anything from warming,wall street meltdowns,take your pick there is plenty to go around.
are you seriously comparing a flood to what is going on with wall street. elephant logic.
More like they've been sh!t on so long they are used to it.
Hey Skep... STFU may be you need to clean your mount with that flood water.
They don't need your sympathy nor your harsh words.
WTF.
I'm not really sure if they are putting other people to shame. Sure, they are living with it and doing the best they can, but, on some level what they are doing is nothing short of insane.
It was a cool video though, and they are strong.
"I'm not really sure if they are putting other people to shame. Sure, they are living with it and doing the best they can, but, on some level what they are doing is nothing short of insane."
No insane is doing nothing and just waiting on someone else to fix it for you. I recall the New Orleans Flood of 1964. People did not sit around and wait for help. They lived with it and as the waters receded they cleaned up rebuilt and in a couple of years the city was back to normal. Fast forward a few decades and they all sat around and left the city in ruin. People still complain that "someone” should do something.
Point being that the Thais are already recovering faster than the Americans in New Orleans did. That is impressive and is putting us lazy, entitled, Americans to shame. Those OWS idiots should look at these folks for a lesson in how to overcome adversity.
Yes, it is insane to wade around in what could easily be disease-infested water, with dangers like snakes, sharp objects, etc, possible everywhere
It clearly states that some areas had to be evacuated, and where people could go on with their lives, they did. Just like New Orleans. If you hate your own country and people so much, may I suggest Thailand.
FactOfTheMatter
AP reports: The panel said the world needs to get ready for more dangerous and "unprecedented extreme weather" caused by global warming. These experts fear that without preparedness, crazy weather extremes may overwhelm some locations, making some places unlivable. ...
Naw, global warming is just a myth created by liberals. Keep burning fossil fuels all, nothing to see here.
I hate it when people say FACT OF THE MATTER. So, FACT OF THE MATTER BACK AT YOU. Before you start screaming climate change is responsible, you had better look at at a few things that are more tangible. Thailand has a monsoon season. Its always had a monsoon season and the Fact OF THE MATTER IS 200 years ago , Thailand STILL flooded so was climage change responsible then? This monsoon season had heavier than average rain and the water had no where to go,pure and simple. If in 2012 the rainfall is back to its average amount and there is no flooding, then how do you account for the reversal?
...But the great flood of 2011 was a largely manmade disaster.
The country has seen years of mindless development, much of it on what has historically been a flood plain to the north of the capital. Paddy fields have been paved over with concrete to make way for vast industrial estates and urban sprawl. Natural drainage routes have been blocked.
In the city, too, a once massive network of klongs (canals), the city's drainage system, has been replaced by roads; housing developments sit where water used to flow.
That so many people and businesses were in harm's way in areas that are historically vulnerable to floods, with the waters left with nowhere to go, is the result of decisions taken over the years by short-sighted and often venal politicians. To blame it all on climate change is an enormous cop-out....
...There has been a lot of discussion about the causes of Thailand’s floods: environmental degradation; forest clearing; filled-in water ways; the inauspiciousness of a female Prime Minister; a hydrological plot to destabilise Yingluck; dam management; the revenge of Mother Nature for the excesses of modernity; etc. etc..
THE FACT OF THE MATTER IS that the bill came due, and like New Orleans, the plans to handle this kind of rainfall just didn't work. Now, if for the next decade the rainfall amounts stay above the 30 year average, then you can scream climate change. Crying wolf for one year of above average rain just doesn't hold water, so to speak. You might want to change your screen name, I don't see where you have presented any facts to this matter.
You are correct that one year is not enough data, and that there are other causes of flooding (such as forest clearing). However, statistical research studies have been published showing significant multi-year changes to patterns of precipitation and drought around the world.
Good post Jan1955
The changers and warmers like to take isolated WEATHER events and ascribe it to climate change. They fail to take into consideration long term and/or large scale events and periodic oscillations like El Nino or La Nina. The current La Nina is responsible for much of the "extreme" weather this year in the U.S., including the large and persistent high pressure dome that set up over the southern part of the country early this past summer, leading to unrelenting heat.
http://www.noaanews.noaa.gov/stories2011/20110908_lanina.html
Scientists do account for El Nino and La Nina in many of their models. In fact, after Spencer published his paper earlier this year claiming disagreement between climate models and NASA satellite data, other researchers quickly showed that models including El Nino/La Nina along with greenhouse gases match the data well. And La Nina by itself doesn't adequately explain why so many heat records were broken last summer.
The amount of comments that compare the situation in Thailand to America emphasizes how so many Americans are both ethnocentric and polarized politically and socially. Seriously, can't we discuss this in terms of the human condition rather than focus on nationalism and local politics.
I agree Nate from Boston.
Roger that!
I look at these pictures and cant help but think about how unsanitary it must be to live in that water... There must be tons of bacteria and disease floating around in there from sewers and lakes. But it is amazing how they perservere and dont let it stop their daily lives.
Where the heck is FEMA when you need them???
FEMA, the repubs say, we dont need no stinking FEMA.
My mom always told me to never cry over a little spilled water....... or was that milk?
Climategate 2.0? More Emails Leaked From Climate Researchers
November 22, 2011
|
University of East Anglia
The Climatic Research Unit, a key climate science facility at the School of Environmental Sciences, a part of the University of East Anglia in the UK.
A new batch of emails purportedly stolen from the servers at the University of East Anglia were posted online Tuesday, echoing the 2009 data breach dubbed "Climategate" that turned the world's attention to the internal debates among scientists hoping to determine whether man's actions are warming the planet.
Excerpts from the emails posted on climate skeptic websites are certainly eye-opening:
<1939> Thorne/MetO: Observations do not show rising temperatures throughout the tropical troposphere unless you accept one single study and approach and discount a wealth of others. This is just downright dangerous. We need to communicate the uncertainty and be honest.
<3066> Thorne: I also think the science is being manipulated to put a political spin on it, which for all our sakes might not be too clever in the long run.
<4755> Overpeck: The trick may be to decide on the main message and use that to guid[e] what's included and what is left out.
The leak comes less than a week before the latest United Nations meeting intended to control carbon emissions and monitor the world's climate -- a fact underscored in a document that accompanied the leaked emails.
"Today's decisions should be based on all the information we can get, not on hiding the decline," the anonymous document states, a reference to a comment from the first batch of emails that became a rallying point for climate skeptics.
The University of East Anglia's Climatic Research Unit -- a key center of climate study and the source of the leaked emails -- immediately issued a statement blasting the release and its timing.
"These emails have the appearance of having been held back after the theft of data and emails in 2009 to be released at a time designed to cause maximum disruption to the imminent international climate talks," the school stated.
University of East Anglia spokesman Simon Dunford nonetheless told the Associated Press that a small sample examined by the university "appears to be genuine" -- although the school stated that they did not seem to be recent emails.
"While we have had only a limited opportunity to look at this latest post of 5,000 emails, we have no evidence of a recent breach of our systems," the statement reads.
And the anonymous source of the latest leaked emails -- a 173MB zip file called "FOIA2011" containing more than 5,000 new emails and made briefly available on Russian server Sinwt.ru -- remains unclear. The perpetrator of the original hack has yet to be unmasked, although British police have said their investigation is still active.
Michael Mann, the director of the Earth System Science Center at Penn State University and a central figure in climate studies, described the release as appearingd to be his own, Mann said
Could you post this a few more times? I didn't really get it the first four. Thanks, Spammy!
Those dummies from East Anglia sure don't know how to secure their data very well. All the top tier of these scientific "experts" seem to be in collective collusion.
This is just a shame and a real danger to these people.. Backed up toilets, raw sewage, dead animals like mice, rats, cats and dogs floating down the alleyways where they linger and begin to putrefy against the walls creating horrid diseases.. Well, you get the picture.. I doubt if it will be long before the first outbreaks of Cholera, Dysentery and worse soon make an appearance.. As always, it will be the children who will be hardest hit..
That's gonna be @!$%#loads of diarrhea. No wonder that water is murky, but the people are going on with life. That's admirable.
I hope they are aware of the dangers of electrocution. I don't think they have the codes we do. The water has covered the recepticle height and every circuit should be GFI protected. Poor kids.
If one of those power poles hits the water, hundreds could die.
So give up
your hydrocarbons. I think not. Trolls like you talk the tal,k but you can't
walk the walk. Giving up a well-earned life-style by the middle class isn't
going to stop global warming. Why don't you use Google Maps and zoom in on the
Bay Area of San Francisco and see how the liberals are living. The houses in
the Bay Area make 5 of my house, but liberals want the middle class to give up
what little they have to "stop global warming."
I may not have a big house like the liberals in the Bay Area, but I'm
not stupid. I will fight any of the idiots trying to make me into a
hunter-gather while they live in big houses and talk in faculty lounges about
"saving the environment." Al Gore lives in a 16,000 sq ft home. He's
not a hunter-gather. He's a salesman.
So give up your hydrocarbons. I think not. Trolls like you talk the tal,k but you can't walk the walk. Giving up a well-earned life-style by the middle class isn't going to stop global warming. Why don't you use Google Maps and zoom in on the Bay Area of San Francisco and see how the liberals are living. The houses in the Bay Area make 5 of my house, but liberals want the middle class to give up what little they have to "stop global warming."
I may not have a big house like the liberals in the Bay Area, but I'm not stupid. I will fight any of the idiots trying to make me into a hunter-gather while they live in big houses and talk in faculty lounges about "saving the environment." Al Gore lives in a 16,000 sq ft home. He's not a hunter-gather. He's a salesman.
As usual politics gets involved. This another of man's failure to try to govern over. To modify or replace everything that was created by our God. We are a part of his creation. We aren't greater or wiser than HE, Are we? When we try to go against the physical and natural laws of the earth, we seethe disastrous results as in Thailand. This isn't the only place. And, they don't know why it's flooding. See! we don't have all the answers. Need I say more, that the Earth is sick, from all our changing it? For example. the deforestation of the Amazon and running the natives & animals out of there. It has negative results. We have not been good tenants of the Earth and now it's dying. There will be a day that will affect humans. We can't continue this way. I am not sure about Global warming. But, I'll say we have trouble with water, food, air and much more. The Earth is in crisis! We continue to ignore our Creator and go on ruining it. It too will have consequences.
Just wait until the monitor lizards escape from the lakes in Lumpini Park in Bangkok. I am not kidding, I have seen them up close and personal, between 2 and 3 feet in length usually. Hopefully the Lumpini area won't flood.
for those who have never been to south east asia. every year they have monsoons, or a rainy season. every year they live in mud and water until the monsoons end. this is nothing new to them. did you see anybody in the photos panicing?
My house in Preuksa B Village, north of BKK was intentionally flooding by the Thai authorities. This was to divert the majority of the water from BKK itself...
It still has 1+Meter of water in the house (a rental), max was 2+meters . The local authorities are expecting the water level to take about two to three more weeks to return to normal. The daughters college (Rangsit) will not reopen until after Chinese New Year (3+moth late)...
Once the water falls another 50cm we are returning to start the clean-up. The biggest problem will be the safe electrical and then obtaining clean water to wash the house out with. Everything is solid concrete and tile floors so the clean-up is relatively easy. Nothing in the house was damaged, we had moved all the stuff to the second floor, prior to our leaving and returning to our farm in Isan last month.
Life CHANGES - you either adapt or become extinct...
A bad day in Thailand is better than the current USA...
Pray for you and your family safety. Wishes: a few more weeks to normal is true.
It is so amazing to see the spirit of Thai people during the hard times.