Technology will solve ‘problem’
My compliments to the Daily News for the timing of the editorial cartoon (Dec. 28) showing Santa in his skivvies and the alarmist “expert” screaming “Warmest Christmas on Record” in the middle of a significant cold spell in the Pacific Northwest that has set record cold temperatures in a number of places and produced major snowfalls.
Record cold temperatures have occurred in various places around the world in 2021 but the mainstream media will not report it because it does not fit their propaganda for global warming, now climate change. Whether you look at temperature, snowpack, sea ice, hurricanes, tornadoes, fires, etc.; all are well within normal bounds of historical data. One high or low temperature, high or low hurricane season, a record tornado, etc. does not set a long-term trend that we need to wring our hands over and damage or destroy the economy with very costly questionable solutions.
More people die from cold than from heat. Technology will solve the carbon dioxide “problem” if it really is a problem. We are now able to pull carbon dioxide out of the air and sequester it or use it in a positive way. However, we desperately need fossil fuels to keep the economy operating efficiently and to buy time for new technologies to be implemented.
Carbon dioxide is definitely not a pollutant. It is absolutely necessary for life. We could live with five times the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and plants would love it. Crop production worldwide has continued to increase as levels of carbon dioxide have risen. Climate change happened in the past apart from human industrialization. Developing countries, including China and India, are not going to give up increasing use of fossil fuels. The United States needs to continue wise use of fossil fuels while evaluating alternative solutions to this supposed problem.
Larry Kirkland
Moscow
Alarming ignorance
Christine Flowers’ Her View (Jan. 5) on transexuals reveals an alarming ignorance of biology. I’m not insulting Flowers’ intelligence. I’m using Merriam-Webster’s definition: “lacking knowledge or comprehension of the thing specified.”
If she is going to publicly opine about transgender, she has a responsibility to be knowledgeable.
Flowers said: “A person with a penis might be a trans woman, but he is most assuredly a biological male.”
This clearly shows that she has a typically conservative misconception of gender biology. Doctors classify new-born babies as male or female, but they aren’t always right because that’s only two classifications and Mother Nature sometimes creates “inbetweeners.”
In 1843, eighty years before women gained suffrage, a local election hung on a single vote: that of Levi Suydam. His ballot was challenged on grounds he was a female. It was known to some in the community that Suydam had sexual relations with both men and women.
A doctor was called in to determine Suydam’s sex. Upon examination, the doctor found a phallus and Suydam’s vote was counted, deciding the outcome of the election. However, a few days later Suydam began menstruating. Had the doctor conducted a thorough examination, he would have found a vagina behind the penis.
Most biological deviations from binary classifications are less dramatic than Suydam’s biology, but they are very real. Some don’t manifest until teenage, under the influence of powerful hormonal changes.
A letter doesn’t allow space to expand on the subject. I will, however, agree with Flowers’ concern about social issues transgender athletes pose for society.
Terence L. Day
Pullman
Misinformation rules
No matter how many links Dale Courtney supplies for his opinion (Dec. 22), misinformation rules.
Concerning inalienable rights, Courtney warned of government “scare tactics” with his own scare tactics, 20-year-old vaccine data, military vaccines forced on soldiers, and the Department of Defense Anthrax Vaccination Immunization Program.
Courtney hinted with unwritten assertion that 800,000 dead Americans were inconsequential because the government incorrectly estimated there would be 2 million American COVID-19 deaths? Real scare tactics incude David Brooks’, “The Terrifying Future of the American Right” or “The New Puritans” by Anne Applebaum.
Courtney believes vaccines violate so-called “inalienable” rights, but really, is ironic considering his monthly trivialization of COVID-19 and death.
Consider deeper irony in Texas, where insane Gov. Greg Abbott is suing the federal government over forced mandates. Now, Abbott is begging Joe Biden to help Texas’ 57% unvaccinated during an overwhelming increase in omicron cases.
A golden opportunity for a critical shot at god capitalism went unwritten. The republican god uses misinformation to legislate advantageous perks and huge tax reductions for corporations, banks and elites through benefit cuts to American slaves. (Reality break: Slaves are what said institutions and republican congressmen think of constituents.)
Remember when Republicans stood there bragging about the $4,000 annual benefit to the middle class in Trump’s 2017 “tax reform?” Did this legislation benefit any middle class taxpayer by more than a lousy couple hundred bucks? Many economic publications write this tax measure saved Meta Mark, Warren Buffett, Trump and other elites many billions in taxes.
Thus, Courtney remains a misinformation source. I do not ascribe to such lofty, conservative standards.
Jim Roach
Moscow
We can make it work
I am staying indoors just now, having had major surgery in Spokane last week. Prior to surgery I isolated at home and took a required PCR test a few days before the surgery. With a negative result, I was good to go.
Now I’m four days post-op and no symptoms of COVID-19 — no cough, no loss of smell or taste, no shortness of breath. I am not out of the woods yet, but it looks good. I neither took the virus to the hospital, nor did I take it home from the hospital (or hotel where we spent 2 nights). I used a high quality N95 mask whenever I was exposed to others, and I credit that with some of my success.
My point is, we can continue to function in our new normal by being conscientious about exposures. Schools, churches, government buildings, hospitals can make it work if we all cooperate and recognize we need to protect ourselves and our families.
Zena Hartung
Moscow
