Restore NZ route
Re: "Thais still keen on Japan outbound jump of 8.2% this year", (Business, Sept 19).
For over 30 years, Thai Airways provided very popular and well-supported non-stop flights linking New Zealand with Thailand. The daily flights ended with Covid. The pandemic is well over, but there is still no sign of a return to this non-stop connection.
As well as providing Thailand with an increased and diversified tourist flow, it would also directly reconnect New Zealand to the Land of Smiles. We encourage Thai Airways to bring us back together.
Kiwi Rob
A deadly folly
Re: "Narcotic nightmare", (PostBag, Oct 10).
Regarding Thaksin Shinawatra's apparently, and disturbingly, popular war on drugs, he should be imprisoned for the killings his drug policy resulted in. It is not obvious how any person of remotely good ethics could possibly applaud the killings that came with that effort to suppress the use of some drugs. The killing spree was unmitigated evil, for which those egging it on should also be called to account. To date, they have not received their just deserts.
As the regularly repeated statistics attest, the billions of baht, along with vast law enforcement resources devoted to suppressing particular drugs over the past five or more decades, rather than creating law that actually reduces drug harms to society, have been a consistent failure.
That useless squandering of scarce resources and manpower could more usefully have been focused on actually reducing harms, such as road deaths from drunk drivers and a father being forced to the appalling act of shooting his own son in self-defence.
As Einstein probably did not say, "The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result." Perhaps it is time for drug policy to try a touch of sanity?
Felix Qui
Beyond CO2 fears
Re: "No CO2 miracle", (PostBag, Oct 8).
Climate believers (and I use that term because "there is a climate crisis" is more a belief than a proven fact -- except for those profiting from the energy transition) often claim that saying CO₂ is plant food is a misleading oversimplification. But this is basic biology, known for generations.
Yes, carbon dioxide is plant food. It is essential for photosynthesis, the process through which plants produce their own food using sunlight, water, and nutrients. Increased CO₂ can boost plant growth in many cases. In commercial greenhouses, CO₂ levels have been elevated for decades to improve vegetable yields.
A peer-reviewed article published in the scientific journal Global Ecology and Conservation confirms that the phenomenon known as "global greening" is an indisputable fact.
The rate of global greening has even increased slightly in recent years. While drought has slowed greening in some regions, it has not caused a global "browning".
Another scientific fact: Earth's temperature is never constant. It has always risen and fallen over time -- whether over centuries or millions of years. Data from Greenland ice cores show 10,000 years of temperature changes since the last ice age, with swings far greater than those seen in the past 150 years.
To believe that recent changes are mainly human-caused, one must assume that natural forces suddenly stopped working in the 20th century (see world temperature graph).
Anna Aarts
