LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

[September 28th, 2005] GORGE FRIENDS NOT SO LONELY

Nigel Jaquiss spent enough time at the Len Bergstein Laundromat that he apparently got caught in Len's spin cycle ["Your Guide to the Gorge Casino War," WW, Sept. 21, 2005]. While Bergstein characterized Friends of the Columbia Gorge as going it alone in the conservation community, the coalition of groups opposed to the casino actually includes notable enviros such as OSPIRG, with a membership of 33,000 Oregonians, Oregon Center for Environmental Health, Trout Unlimited and OnwardOregon, one of Oregon's largest progressive groups with 14,500 activists.

Bergstein also referred to the coalition opposed to Oregon's first off-reservation casino as "a coalition based on greed." How confusing when greed is exemplified by a Gorge casino proposal that has grown from a 75,000-square-foot facility with parking for 1,200 cars in 1999 to a 500,000-square-foot facility with parking for 3,700 today.

Polling shows that 63 percent of Oregonians oppose any casino in the Gorge, as did candidate Kulongoski when he was running for governor in 2002. The governor may say casino support will help education, but that leads to one more fun fact missing in the article: Most of that casino money going to education will disappear if Kulongoski or a future Oregon governor allows another off-reservation casino.

Katy Daily, Friends of the Columbia Gorge
Southwest 5th Avenue

PORTLAND'S PALLOR NO ACCIDENT

I usually enjoy reading WW's "Rogue of the Week." However, I'm more than a little disappointed with last week's Katrina complaint [Sept. 14, 2005]. Although, I do agree that FEMA (along with every level of government that dealt pathetically with this situation) is a fitting rogue, I don't agree with much else. I'm from Alabama and have been in Portland about three years now. And as much as this city has grown on me, I completely disagree that Portland is a good place to bring displaced Katrina victims.

First of all-the South is way cheaper than the West. If people are living below the poverty line there, they would be downright desperate here. Housing, food, clothing and most everything else is three times more expensive here than in the deep South.

Secondly-and most importantly-the majority of people in need are black, and there are hardly any black people here. Think that's a coincidence? Think again. Historically, Portland's so-called "lily-white liberals" don't bat an eye when it comes to breaking up a thriving black community with a convention center, a freeway (I-5) or a five-star restuarant (putting black-owned businesses out of commission in their own neighborhood).

If you really want to test your liberalism, do it right here in this city. Try helping your own black communities survive rather than gentrifying them and you'll be well on your way to a more diverse Portland. Maybe then you'll be in a position to help others.

Holly Roose
Southwest Park Avenue

ERIK! RANDY! DAN! TOM! SAM!

Thank you for running the article about PGE ["The New Deal," WW, Sept. 14, 2005]. It should be clear to anyone reading the article that the best deal for the future of our region is to gain public ownership of PGE. Without public ownership we will continue to be used as pawns by huge investment firms like Enron for their profits. The repeal of the Public Utility Holding Company Act makes our situation even more tenuous.

I encourage everyone who pays an electric bill to PGE to call the Portland City Council and encourage them to move forward with condemnation action to purchase PGE soon.

Jim Robison
Candidate for Oregon House, District 44
North Princeton Street

THROWING A BOOK AT HIM

Andrew Wilson's letter about climate change [Mailbox, WW, Sept. 7, 2005] will provide a useful educational service, although not necessarily the one he intended. I teach a sophomore course each winter at Portland State called Global Environmental Change. In that class, we use data from ice cores, sea floor sediment cores, and other sources to examine the long (100,000-year) cold "glacial" to warm "interglacial" cycles that have governed Earth's climate for the last million years. Together with modern-day observations, those analyses allow us to understand the geophysical, chemical and biological processes involved in climate change. They also prepare us to not fall into the logical traps set by Mr. Wilson's letter.

Students who have had a basic introductory course like the one I teach would know that at the time humans were walking across the Bering Strait, a large ice sheet covered most of Canada, diverting Pacific moisture to the Clovis sites in New Mexico. They would know that the ice sheet grew in response to cyclic variations in the distance between the Earth and Sun, modulated by changes in the oceans and atmosphere. Those students would be able to recognize that anthropogenic changes in atmospheric greenhouse-gas content and associated warming are distinctly different than what we see in the "natural," pre-industrial record. They would be able to place the random facts in Mr. Wilson's letter, as well as those in Oregon state climatologist George Taylor's writings, in a broader, scientific context. I would recommend a textbook like Ruddiman's Earth's Climate, Past and Future to both of them.

I think I'll clip Mr. Wilson's letter and give it to my students next winter for a critical-thinking assignment.

Christina Hulbe
Southeast 48th Avenue

HEY, TRY GOOGLING "FLAT EARTH"

Mr. Wilson responds to the WW article about climate change "Hot or Not" [Aug. 24, 2005] by offering two misleading arguments: (1) The world has been getting warmer naturally, and (2) Nature has repeatedly recovered from catastrophes on a scale beyond anything humans can produce.

He's right that climate varies naturally and had been doing so long before humans came around. This is certainly not news to scientists that warn us about climate change. The distinction is that human-induced climate change is occurring as we release greenhouse gases into the atmosphere over a very short period that were previously accumulated over millions of years.

Second, "nature" is indeed resilient, but that doesn't mean that we needn't worry about climate change. Large changes to climate in the past have easily wiped out species. Just because some species survive doesn't mean that we can't hurt ourselves by changing our climate. A similar argument could be made about nuclear war: If a global armageddon occurred tomorrow, some forms of life would probably survive but it certainly wouldn't be a good thing for us.

Mr. Wilson also asserts that there is a robust scientific argument over climate change because his Google search for "skeptical environmentalist" returned 52,100 hits. I can find multiple hits for the "benefits of smoking," but that doesn't mean that there is scientific uncertainty about this issue. Scientific arguments are not resolved over Internet blogs and Google searches-they are conducted in peer-reviewed academic journals by people who study these topics for a living.

David Graves
Southeast Woodstock Boulevard

COULD 52,000 BLOGGERS BE WRONG?

Whether our society can summon the will to reverse the climatological impacts of our fossil-carbon culture may be up for debate, but one thing is certain: We can always count on the "global warming doesn't exist, and if it does exist, we didn't do it" crowd to underscore the paucity of science in support of their position. Andrew Wilson's argument is a prime example. He purports to debunk Philip Mote's claim that "There is no debate in the scientific community over whether human-caused global warming is possible or observed," by referring to Bjorn Borg's [sic] The Skeptical Environmentalist, noting that Googling Borg's [sic] book will yield 52,100 hits for pro and con websites. Wilson concludes, "This sounds like a debate to me."

While I'm sure that some blogger-or 52,100 bloggers-may be "debating" the issue, that doesn't quite make it a "debate in the scientific community," does it? And what about Borg [sic] himself? Surely his book must rise to the level of "debate in the scientific community"? Well, actually, no. He's an associate professor of statistics in the Department of Political Science at [Denmark's] University of Aarhus. Not quite credentialed in climatology, which brings us back to my point: Andrew Wilson's reliance on Borg's [sic] book and the websites "debating" his book underscore the paucity of science in support of the "global warming doesn't exist, and if it does exist, we didn't do it" position.

Rick Bernardi
Southwest Saint Clair Avenue

CORRECTIONS: Last week's "Take the Chinatown Challenge" was incorrect in a reference to the Classical Chinese Garden. Though its construction was funded in part by city-controlled urban-renewal money, the garden does not receive public funds for its operation.

Also, last week's "Widows' Lament" had two mistakes. The correct info: Rose-Marie Barbeau Quinn is 66. And her husband Mike's death was of an infection.

WW regrets the errors.