Politics, not climate
On Jan. 17, the BDN ran a Reuters article entitled “2014 Earth’s hottest year on record, scientists say.” The article cites NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration bureaucracies and their purported “scientific studies” (and many other government representatives) in the article.
“Man-made global warming” is no longer a politically correct term. The term is “climate change.” Both “scientific studies” are easily found on the Internet in summary form only and use the banned phrase. Neither looks or feels or reads like a scientific study. Peer review? None. Might these “study” conclusions have been written before the “studies” were even started?
The whole article and its citations read like an OpEd founded in left wing politics. If “scientists” can use the same data and come up with diametrically opposite conclusions, you know that you have entered the world of politics — not science — a world where facts do not matter and are ignored according to political bent. The political left has a very dangerous power in the Environmental Protection Agency, and no party cares anything about scientific facts. They just want to assert political power.
Consider electric windmills, fracking, pipelines and countless other “scientific studies.”
David P. Poula
Brooklin
What if?
Perhaps someone could explain the confusing Republican concepts regarding work. First, Republican theory says people should get jobs and quit welfare. So wages minus taxes, car expenses and child care must exceed welfare. But those mostly low-level jobs would pay minimum wage, which doesn’t pay enough to live on.
Second, Republicans say raising the minimum wage will reduce the number of jobs that already don’t pay enough to live on.
Third, the GOP doesn’t want national health insurance (except Medicare and veterans’ care) and certainly not Obamacare, even though it was modeled on a Republican plan. Cut Medicaid and make people purchase insurance through their minimum-wage pay that already doesn’t pay enough to live on.
Fourth, Republicans are anti-union even though, imperfectly, unions increase wages so that people can buy or receive health care and earn enough to live on.
Fifth, after decades of yatter about family values, Republicans perpetuate minimum-wage jobs that already don’t pay enough to live on. Many minimum-wage jobs keep workers from home and destroy family values.
Wouldn’t it be wonderful if the GOP, the “party of no” tried out “what if?” What if people earned a living wage, spent money so other people got jobs that paid enough that they didn’t need unions? What if people had health insurance so their children got vaccinated and problems were found early enough to keep medical costs lower? What if people only needed to work one job per person so they could attend church, classes and their children’s games?
Leslie Woods
Montville
Food sovereignty dangers
I read with interest the BDN’s Jan. 17-18 article on food safety and the food sovereignty activists’ battle for control. We have a small farm, and I come from generations of small dairy farmers and attended agricultural school 50 years ago. Back then, we as a society were not expected to absorb the costs of caring for each and every person’s crazy decisions. There was much more personal responsibility.
We’ve been asked to sell our milk from our cows. We decline because minimally we do not have a separate milking parlor with hot water/sanitation, concrete floors that can be scrubbed or the necessary rapid coolers. Raw milk is very fragile and can be “turned” quickly into a rapid bacterial medium the second it leaves the cow. The wooden floor in the photo that cows are standing on trap urine/manure, and the men in the photo cannot possibly sanitize their primitive parlor enough to assure public safety from potential transmission of disease.
Once we place our produce — our milk, our beef — into the marketplace, we are rising to a high level of responsibility for the safety for all unknown people and their innocent children. One farmer that makes a lazy mistake can produce deadly consequences and bring down the hammers of hell on us all.
Further, I expect when I buy from the local grocery store that products will be safe and handled safely. I expect the grocery stores to only buy from state-inspected sources. The horrible diseases that we eradicated in the 1920s should not make a comeback in the misguided name of sovereignty.
Mary E. Thompson
Addison