March 17: Letters to the editor

  • Published: 3/23/2010 3:01:54 PM
Open laws keep communities 'fair and vibrant'
Almost 200 years ago, James Madison wrote, “A popular government, without popular information, or the means of acquiring it, is but a prologue to a farce or a tragedy; or, perhaps, both.”  His words remain a call to action today.
Given the gravity of the issues facing our nation, the need for public access to governmental decision and policies that affect all Americans is greater than ever. 
Access to this information allows citizens to hold their government accountable at the local, state, and national level.  Whether it is to track how federal stimulus dollars are being spent or to attend a local government meeting where land use or school funding decisions are being made, “sunshine laws” afford us access and create government transparency.
March 14-20 is Sunshine week (held around Madison’s birthday), a national initiative to promote the importance of open government and freedom of information. The League of Women Voters of Clackamas County encourages everyone to attend a local government meeting or visit your community’s website to learn more about what our government is doing.
As members of the League of Women Voters, we are continuously answering Madison’s call to action: We are working to keep our communities fair, vibrant and strong - starting with having an open and transparent government.
Lyn Gordon
First vice president, League of Women Voters of Clackamas County

Reader suggests simple look at complex issue
Simon Springall, we have seen the complete video of the polar bears playing on the ice. The money making game is over now.
Go try and scare the young generation on something new, like global cooling. Yes you scared the hell out of us with that when I was in school.
Scott Warrell
Wilsonville

Evidence of climate change all around us
Rep. Wingard, after his stolen speech on global warming was first reported (“Wingard accused of plagiarism,” Feb 15), said “I guess, if you’re afraid of the substance of the debate, you attempt to distract from it as much as possible… I stand by the substance of the statement.” I don’t see him standing by the substance.
Instead he has professional global warming debunker Gordon Fulks write on his behalf. Naturally we can’t expect anything original from Wingard himself. Gordon Fulks proudly states he’s one of the 31,000 signers of the “Oregon Petition” (that’s around 0.005 percent of scientists worldwide), the vast majority of these people, like Fulks, have no qualification in climate sciences or related fields.
There’s some question of the validity of this list, since there are duplicates, dead people and false names such as pop stars on the list. See Wikipedia, or Google. Fulks’ intent to mislead is no clearer than when he states the “Arctic Ice reached a low in 2007 at about the same time Antarctic sea ice reached a high.” Of course we should expect that; summer in the northern hemisphere is winter in the southern.
Similarly the idea that Pacific Decadal Oscillation causes a global (that means world-wide, Dr. Fulks) increase in surface temperature is patently flawed. Fulks also ignores evidence I gave (Rep. Wingard misses global warming target, March 2), that Wingard was wrong in all his talking points: about global mean temperatures, polar sea ice, polar bear populations, and “climategate.” I don’t need to repeat this, it is collected with all references here http://tinyurl.com/wingard-letter.
Fulks and Wingard are all repeating tired and disproven arguments, which is following the global warming denier’s playbook. Rep. Wingard would prefer that we go down the rat-hole of arguing the validity of global warming with his proxy. But this of course has already been established by well-qualified and peer-reviewed climate scientists.
This is recorded not only in the U.N.’s IPCC reports, but by 13 US federal agencies including USDA, DOD, DOE, DOT, EPA, The Department of the Interior, U.S. Geological Survey, NASA, NOAA and NIST — see www.globalchange.gov. This is no unverifiable list of signatories to a dubious petition.
Wingard is burying his head in the sand, demonstrating a fear of change when in fact it is already upon us; we cannot just claim the climate is not changing when the evidence is all around us. Wilsonville and Oregon need informed and rational leadership to encourage sustainable practices, and to reinvigorate our economy around alternative energy, rather than support the oil and coal industries and destroy our environment while they do it.
Simon Springall
Wilsonville

Wingard’s focus on global warming disappointing
I was very dismayed to learn of Rep. Matt Wingard’s position on the issue of climate change. Plagiarism by someone with his journalism background is serious enough. But the fact that he denies that climate change even exists in the face of overwhelming scientific evidence and expert opinion from thousands of scientists and virtually every legitimate scientific organization worldwide, shows how out of touch he is with mainstream thought.
Unfortunately, what we have in Mr. Wingard and his “scientific” supporters are ideologues. Mr. Wingard is so bereft in his ability for intellectual analysis that all he can do is spout the radical gibberish provided him by the neo-conservative think tanks and talking heads. I had hoped that Mr. Wingard would represent a common sense approach to solving the problems facing Oregon and his constituents. But alas, I’m afraid we have elected a plastic partisan wind-up doll who waddles around muttering the clichés, talking points and opinions provided him by his political handlers and doctrinaires.
Mr. Wingard’s entourage will no doubt defend his every utterance. But let’s face it, in this day and age even buffoons have their followers. Betcha Mr. Wingard can even see Russia from his front porch.
Lynn Todd
Wilsonville

Global warming is scientific, not political
Recognizing that newspapers usually pick the headline, The Spokesman’s selection for Gordon Fulks’ article on global warming—“Setting the Record Straight on Global Warming”—suggests a bias I hope was not intended.
Mr. Fulks’ academic credentials are impressive, but his article hardly sets the record straight.  Global warming is a highly complex subject studied by climate scientists using sophisticated math models, ice core sampling, infrared measurements, etc. As Mr. Fulks well knows, scientific consensus is reached through a rigorous process involving the peer reviewed scientific literature and based on verifiable data. Consensus is not reached through straw polls done by mass mailings using questionable literature as was done in the Oregon Petition Project he refers to. In fact, the latter approach is anathema to the scientific community.
The results of the peer reviewed scientific process on global warming are clear and overwhelming: The planet is warming at an alarming rate; humans are causing it; and it’s going to get worse if we don’t change our behavior.
The short-term, anecdotal evidence Mr. Fulks presents is not convincing either. The earth’s surface temperature is hard to measure, the data very noisy, particularly when you throw in an El Nino year (’98) which put a spike in the data. Using a running average reduces the variation. The running averages show a clear warming trend over the last decade. And his assertion that water vapor is “by far the primary green house gas” is little like saying beer is primarily water and hops, so disregard the alcohol.
Maintaining the integrity and independence of science is vital to our survival as a species. It is dangerous, in my view, to attack a scientific theory by going outside the established scientific process, making it vulnerable to the shifting political winds. This is, in effect, an attack on all science.
Warren Easley
PhD in physical chemistry, UC, Berkeley.
Wilsonville 
 
 

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