Hiding in plain sight

Re: "Don't blame the sun" (PostBag, Jan 12).

My heart skipped a beat when I read Michael Setter's letter blaming the sun for global warming. Of course! This brilliant man has figured out what legions of scientists have failed to tell us: that it is the dastardly sun, not we puny humans, that is causing global warming. The sun is the sole provider of all light and heat in our tiny corner of the cosmos, so naturally it is the villain.

How can we bring to heel this rogue star, which is far bigger and more powerful than anything we can devise? Here we have to tread carefully; for if we offend it, it might stalk off in a snit to sulk in some other part of the universe, thus depriving us of all light and heat. Then we'd all be dead. So we have to be diplomatic in our dealings with it.

But now we are told the sun is not the villain after all. A website, www.skepticalscience.com, informs us that global temperatures are increasing despite a cooling trend in the sun. If the sun is cooling, how can it be the cause of global warming?

This puzzle is easily solved.

We are all familiar with the concept of dark matter, also called antimatter, although as far as I know nobody has been able to provide conclusive empirical evidence that it actually exists.

I suspect that in the realm of dark matter there may be a dark sun, the antithesis of our bright sun, that is responsible for global warming.

How to control it is the problem. We cannot control even the bright sun, let alone a dark one. This gives our scientists plenty to work on -- our diplomats, too. We must recruit a skilled and subtle diplomat, such as US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, to enter into negotiations with both suns in the hope of crafting a better future for our planet.

If diplomacy fails, the scientists are our only hope.

The Problem Solver

Pampered protesters

One of my Thai, English-speaking neighbours, a rice farmer dropped by for coffee and to "chew the fat". We talked about things of mutual interest and things that do not concern us. He laughed at the Bangkok anti-Prayut protesters.

"The idiots", he exclaimed, "should be concerned with the drought. If we cannot feed them, or if their supermarkets do not sell produce, what will they have left to protest about?"

Funny, we live only one-hundred and sixty clicks from Bangkok, but it is as if we live in two different worlds, one of wealth and protest, the other of economic survival, and, how to feed the protesters.

Buttercup

Troops mobilised?

I was sorry to see so many old people supporting this reactionary government on Sunday (BP, Jan 13). I read somewhere that there was an estimated 10,000 people in Lumpini Park supporting it.

But when you think about it, with roughly 1,750 flag officers in the military each year, it wouldn't take that many old retired generals and their relatives to make up most of the crowd. And, I would guess, for most of them, this was more action than many of them saw in their military career.

Observer
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