Letters to the Editor
Dear Editor:
Martita Noon has attempted to defend ideology against empirical facts (“The Conservative Corner,” November, 2014). She could have also defended the night against the rising sun. She based her article on the claim that global warming caused by the use of fossil fuels is a “discredited theory.”
The Scientific American reported that of 4,014 abstracts published by scientists in professional journals, 97.2% of the papers say that humans play a role in global warming. Ms. Noon can only be engaging in what might be called “fact speak.” If she speaks it, then it must be fact.
No matter how odious truth may be to ideology, facts are facts, and we must not allow conservatives to invent their own fantasy world and force the rational among us into their whacky creation.
Global warming is not a discredited theory. The big polluters, such as coal and oil, pay a tiny number of corrupt scientists to cast doubt on man-made climate change. Shamefully, some of them have good credentials, which makes their corruption even more valuable to the polluters. The big polluters give contributions to conservative politicians, who then trumpet the findings of the unprincipled scientists, who have sold their academic souls.
The tobacco companies did the same thing several years ago. They paid a few scientists to claim there was no health danger from smoking cigarettes. That was the “fact speak” in those days.
Ms. Noon’s premise is false; therefore, her entire article is without foundation. She exploits fear when she says, “The proposed EPA plan will seriously threaten America’s electric reliability and this could result in “freezing deaths.” Sounds like the Republican “death panels” scare. There have always been blackouts in the northeast, years before anybody was talking about green energy. And there was no shortage of coal. The problem was in the grid, not in a shortage of fossil fuels.
Ms. Noon needs to do a little investigation into the Smart Grid European Technology Platform. President Obama has been a champion of developing a smart grid in America, so that power can be sent where it is needed, with no break in service to customers. We don’t need more fossil fuels; we need modernization.
The remaining points of the Noon article are equally fallacious and devoid of science.
What seems incomprehensible in human terms is that conservatives have families, too. They have grandchildren, and other generations of descendants will follow. Even the Koch brothers have grandchildren.
How can it be that conservatives talk about family values, but care not one iota about the calamitous environment they will leave for their posterity? This ideology does not seem much different from faith-healing parents whose children die for lack of scientific medical care. Conservative ideology is no different from faith-healing, except it’s more genocidal.
Fred Mittag
San Pablo
