Solar cycle madness
Re: "Poison from above", (PostBag, June 10) & "It's time to go geoengineering on climate issue", (Opinion, June 5).
Michael Setter is at it yet again. He made claims with the air of absolute certainty that we are entering a 30-year solar cycle that will leave us praying for sunlight. Apparently, most living beings face being wiped out.
This conclusion is simply not consistent with mainstream scientific opinion. If there was even the slightest chance of being true, it might have made the popular press by now.
His latest claims regarding solar cycles are on a par with his misrepresentations on carbon levels having no effect on temperature or sea levels because we have experienced much higher carbon levels before.
His "before" was actually three million years ago when sea levels were much higher and humans didn't exist.
Paul Sumner
Greta saga overdone
Re: "Troops divert Gaza-bound aid boat carrying activists", (World, June 10).
The arrest and deportation of Greta Thunberg by the Israeli military will go down as example of what not to do.
The activist was drawing attention to an issue that she was concerned about, an activity she has been doing for years. She has developed quite a large broad base of followers and admirers.
The Israeli military's approach of storming the boat with weaponry against unarmed civilians was a great way to attract bad publicity given the live streaming so readily available now.
They should have let her and the boat dock, charged them with illegal entry and then had them deported.
Such routine and uneventful law enforcement would have been a page 9 news snippet, not the front page item it was for many newspapers.
It was a simple event that could have basically been ignored. Somehow, it ended up again demonstrating the dangers of overreacting.
When will the world show sanity in so many such issues?
Dennis Fitzgerald
Marriage questions
Re: "Marriage questions", (PostBag, June 11).
Sibeymai raises a question deserving a considered response: Why should the social institution of marriage recognised by the state be extended to cover same-sex partnerships?
Sibeymai is simply wrong when he asserts that "marriage was formerly the exclusive domain of religion" and necessarily "sanctified before God".
Note the telling capital G. In Buddhist Thailand, this was never the case, since Buddhism does not invoke gods, let alone God, to bless any marriage.
However, that traditional faith in religions had been declining long before same-sex marriages came along.
Ever since the state began passing laws like England's Marriage Act of 1753, the Christian religion was slowly replaced by the state as the arbiter and witness to what constituted marriage.
And long before Obergefell v Hodges brought same-sex marriage to the US in 2015, the traditional link between marriage and religion had been ended by widespread popular acceptance of purely secular law for couples to marry.
Sibeymai is, however, not alone. On June 10, the Southern Baptist denomination, known as America's largest Christian group, backed a motion to overturn laws and rulings including Obergefell v Hodges that "defy God's design for marriage and family".
They also upheld the idea of marriage as being that between a man and a woman.
They are pushing the idea they have a right to define what marriage is for everyone, with the aim of overturning same-sex marriage.
Felix Qui
More serious, please
Re: "PostBag echoes", (PostBag, June 13).
This writer under the pen name of "SOS" harps that PostBag has been dominated by me and Michael Setter. SOS wishes letters were "stimulating, or funny even, (intentionally funny, that is)".
May I ask a question to this writer? Is it funny to write letter while watching my Thai friends lose their jobs?
Is it possible to write something funny about tourism when this once-golden goose sector is crumbling?
Is it funny to watch an economic depression unfold in Thailand? Is it funny -- a riot of laughs -- as I walk past nothing but empty businesses with no customers?
Was it funny to watch the greatest learning loss in a century hobble today's young people, many of whom cannot even get to their classes without a GPS smartphone application in their hand?
I understand that I can manoeuvre without technology and few people today can, but the cost is upon your own children.
How funny is that?
Jason A Jellison
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