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So there was yet another idiot wittering on about aviation and global warming on this morning's "Today" programme on Radio 4.

It's typical. They go for a visible non-problem that can be fixed fairly easily politically, but will virtually make no difference. If you simply banned commercial aviation in Britain tomorrow, it would hardly make a measurable impact on CO2 output (aviation in its entirety counts for 5% - and then would have to be replaced by some other method of transport - people would just drive instead because the railways are full - and the politicians who want to put the squeeze on the airlines are the same ones who balk at the cost of putting in more railway tracks). But of course, because people generally don't travel by air that frequently, it's a nice safe target to take shots at. So their holiday gets a little more expensive and it looks like Something Is Being Done. People feel good paying the green tax. Hrmpfh.

Meanwhile, domestic energy use accounts for 30% of CO2 emissions in Britain. But you don't get politicians coming on the radio to tell people to run the heat less and wear a jumper in the house, instead of a t-shirt (which would probably have a bigger impact on CO2 output). It's just so much easier to take shots at these big companies (the airlines) because the public at large doesn't have to make any effort that way.

Then they go on about the expansion in airline travel in the next 30 years and wring their hands on what to do about curbing it. Come on, it's not rocket science - if you want to stop the growth in airline travel DON'T APPROVE ANY NEW RUNWAYS! It'll solve two problems at once - shut the NIMBYs up, and curb airline travel growth through supply restriction. Market pricing will take care of matching capacity to demand.

An anonymous reader writes "Have a client in Thailand who's offline for all practical purposes. Cannot get even simple e-mail messages thru. I thought the Internet was supposed to self correct for issues like this . Maybe it's time to run some more undersea fiber or find some other alternatives.

From http://www.bangkokpost.com/

Internet slowdown to be a pain for at least three weeks
Taiwan quake cripples Thai Internet

BANGKOK: — Telecommunications across Asia have been severely disrupted because
of damage to undersea cables caused by Tuesday's earthquake near Taiwan.

Banks and businesses in Taiwan, South Korea, China and Japan reported telephone
and internet problems.

In Thailand, Internet access slowed to a crawl, with up to 90 per cent of e-mail
and web access impossible. There was no word from CAT Telecom, the government
monopoly which supplies all Internet service to Thailand.

Taiwan's largest telephone company, Chunghwa Telecom Co, said damage to an
undersea cable had disrupted 98% of Taiwan's communications with Malaysia,
Singapore, Thailand and Hong Kong.

Repairs could take three weeks, Vice-General Manager Lin Jen-hung said, but
quality would improve daily.

Telecommunications companies in Hong Kong, Japan and China also reported
problems. China's biggest telecoms provider, China Telecommunications Group, said that
communications cables to the US and to Europe had been damaged.

Repairing the cables harmed by Tuesday's 6.7-magnitude quake could take three
weeks but "quality will improve day by day," said Lin Jen-hung, vice general
manager of Chunghwa Telecom Co., Taiwan's largest phone company.

The company said damage to a cable off Taiwan's southern coast has interrupted
98 percent of Taiwan's communications capacity with Malaysia, Singapore,
Thailand and Hong Kong.

The damaged lines knocked out Internet service for some Hong Kong customers, who
were unable to access Web sites in parts of Asia and the U.S.

Hong Kong telephone company PCCW Ltd., which also provides Internet service,
said several undersea data cables were damaged in the quake.

"Data traffic to Taiwan, Korea, Japan and the United States are affected," PCCW
said in a statement.

The company also warned customers that they may experience congestion for
several days on the Internet because of an upsurge in use as people surf the Web
for more information about the quake.

Financial traders in Hong Kong _ one of Asia's biggest business capitals _
complained they lost their connection to Bloomberg LP, a key provider of news
and data about stock markets. Bloomberg declined to immediately comment on the
outage.

Internet access has been cut or has become extremely slow in Beijing, said an
official from China Netcom, China's No. 2 phone company.

The official, who would not give his name, said the cause was thought to be the
earthquake, but he had not further details.

Businesses in various parts of the city also said they were experiencing
Internet access problems.

CCTV, the state-run television network, said the earthquake had damaged undersea
communications cables from China to the United States and from Asia to Europe.

It said China Telecom Corp., China's biggest phone company, was contacting
counterparts in the United States and Europe about using satellites to make up
for the shortfall.

KDDI Corp., Japan's major carrier for international calls, said Thursday that
its fixed-line telephone service has been intermittently affected following the
quake.

KDDI spokesman Haruhiko Maeda said that the quake damaged several undersea
communication cables in southern Taiwan shared among international communication
companies.

He said that customers are having trouble making calls to India and the Middle
East, which are usually routed through cables near Taiwan. Maeda said the
company is rerouting calls to go through the U.S. and Europe and the company
does not know how long it will take to repair the cables.

Japan's Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications said that international
roaming service provided by Japan's major three telecommunications _ NTT DoCoMO,
KDDI, and Softbank, has been affected. Ministry official Akira Yamanaka said
that some customers were unable to make calls using their mobile phones in
countries including Taiwan.

The quake, which hit offshore from the town of Hengchun near Taiwan's southern
tip, came on the second anniversary of the tsunami that killed more than 200,000
lives in southern Asia.

Tuesday's quake was felt throughout Taiwan. It shook buildings and knocked
objects off the shelves in the capital, Taipei, in the northern part of the
island. Two members of one family were killed Tuesday in Hengchun when their
four-story home collapsed. The quake injured 42 people, three homes collapsed
and 12 fires broke out, the National Fire Agency said.

— Bangkok Post 2006-12-27

ADMIN NOTE:

Thaivisa.com is NOT experiencing any outage, as we have asked the Thai ISP's to
optimize routing connections to our servers. Thaivisa.com servers are hosted
direct on the main high-speed internet backbone in Singapore.

During the current Internet problems, readers in Thailand can access the Bangkok
Post website more quickly and efficiently by using the Thailand-based server at:
http://www.bangkokpost.co.th/ instead of http://www.bangkokpost.com/

The Nation is hosted in Thailand, and is accessable at
http://www.nationmultimedia.com/ as usual."