Letters to the editor

Editor,

Global warming hysteria fuels the fears of all the Chicken Littles while attacking a sizeable number of reputable climate scientists who fail to fall in line with to what amounts to a modern-day inquisition that denies nonconforming climate scientists tenure, research funds and employment; a fear driven by ideology, not science. Global warming, with many small warming and cooling cycles, has been around for about 18,000 years or since the last ice age with sea levels rising 400 feet from that time to present. As little as 9,000 years ago, one could walk from what is now England to France with trifling concern for wet feet.

Some math, 400-foot sea level rise translates to 4,800 inches total in 180 centuries for an average 26.7 inches of sea level rise per century ... a rise commiserate with many estimates of the global warming hysteria crowd.

Consider Michael Crichton’s analogy in his book "State of Fear”: (Paraphrased) Imagine the composition of the Earth’s atmosphere as a football field. Nitrogen, most of the atmosphere, takes you to the 78 yard line, adding oxygen advances you to the 99 yard line. Most of what remains is the inert gas argon that brings you within 3.5 inches of the goal line. The remaining amount that is carbon dioxide is one inch with man’s contribution to carbon dioxide in 50 years adding up to three-eighths of that inch. Yet you are asked to believe that this tiny change has driven the entire planet into a dangerous warming pattern?

Tony Favero

Half Moon Bay

Politicians should live responsibly

Editor,

The recent March 18 article describing former California Senate leader Don Perata’s testimony in a carjacking case he was involved in on Dec. 29, 2007. Mr. Perata was driving a "state issued Dodge Charger.” The article went on to state that the carjacker, "targeted his Charger because of it 22-inch rims.”

Why was Don Perata, or any elected official, driving an expensive car like this at taxpayer expense? Where is his financial as well as moral obligation to use taxpayer funds responsibly?

Our elected officials, at both the state and federal level, need to make the same sacrifices that we all are making nowadays if we are to get our fiscal house in order. For example, our state legislators get two houses and a car (hot rods included, apparently) all paid at taxpayer expense. Just the tires and rims on that car probably cost about $1,000. What reason could a government official possibly have to justify an expense like that?

This kind of celebrity attitude out of our representatives is completely out of hand. It’s time for our officials to learn how their constituents live and the first way to do that is to have them pay for their own cars and their own houses out of their salaries just like we do.

Rob Gibson

San Mateo

Wastes of taxpayer money

Editor,

Are the taxpayers of San Mateo County and its cities fundamentally capable of selling bonds for unwarranted settlements of lawsuits to bail out our politicians for bad decisions over more than a decade? Should the county and its cities create an unnecessary "new” garbage can so we can look more green friendly when a recycled "garbage can” could be a state-of-the-art facility?

Half Moon Bay owes Chop Keenan $18 million this year. The city is looking to the Legislature to bail them out after approving a housing developing site in the 1990s and then reneged on the deal after creating an artificial wetlands through poor engineering. The city decide to sidestep state courts thinking they would get a more favorable ruling in federal court; however, it returned a $41 million judgement against the city. With an unfavorable judgement, HMB politicians decided that they should have the judgement set aside and go to state court, but in the words of Judge Walker, "the city having invoked federal jurisdiction ... by a remand to state court smacks of bad faith.We decline to let [defendant] take its chips off the table because it didn't like the dealer’s hand ... [and] retrying the case would waste millions of dollars in past and future legal expenses.”

Half Moon Bay is now paying lobbyists over $15,000 to find options. Bonding is an act of desperation to avoid bankruptcy and will cost the taxpayer over $30 million to retire the debt! The second bonding fiasco the taxpayer will likely be asked to pay is for the new Shoreline Environmental Recycling Center. The existing facility can be retrofitted at about $26 million, but the county and a majority of its eight cities of South Bay Waste Management Authority have voted for a brand new single stream facility at $66 million that will cost the taxpayer nearly double to retire the bond.

I would think that investors may very well want to look elsewhere for their risk taking. I doubt that these bonds will be tax free municipal bonds and by all accounts, the county and its cities are close to insolvency, if our politicians are to be believed. After all, in better times, the Youth Services Center failed at their bonding auction and San Mateo County had to "shell out $11.8 million in one-time money to refinance the bonds.”

Jack Kirkpatrick

Redwood City