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About The nugget. (Sisters, Or.) 1994-current | View Entire Issue (Oct. 9, 2019)
2 Wednesday, October 9, 2019 The Nugget Newspaper, Sisters, Oregon O P I N I O N Climate science is not a liberal conspiracy By David Winter Guest Columnist Letters to the Editor… The Nugget welcomes contributions from its readers, which must include the writer9s name, address and phone number. Let- ters to the Editor is an open forum for the community and contains unsolicited opinions not necessarily shared by the Editor. The Nugget reserves the right to edit, omit, respond or ask for a response to letters submitted to the Editor. Letters should be no longer than 300 words. Unpublished items are not acknowledged or returned. The deadline for all letters is noon Monday. To the Editor, In the September 25th edition of the Sisters Nugget, my Letter to the Editor was published. At the conclusion of my letter about Sisters needing better police protection, I stated that <It9s time for the Sisters City Council to act on re-establishing a Sisters city police depart- ment, sooner rather than later.= In the most recent edition of The Nugget, there was a Commentary on page 20 titled <Sisters can9t afford it9s [sic] own police department,= written by Laurie Kimmell, Deputy Multnomah County Sheriff9s Office. (retired). In her excellent article she points out the expense of establishing a police depart- ment. She certainly has more experience in this than I have, and I respect her opinion. However, she points out that in order to have an effective police force in Sisters, it would require <at least six to eight police officers working eight-hour shifts, 40 hours per week, with full coverage.= She goes on to state it would also require <a supervisor (Sgt. or Lt.) assigned to oversee them,= and would require <a six-car minimum, bicycles, and other pertinent equipment.= Is this what the Deschutes County Sheriff Office is currently providing? I certainly have no objection to having Deschutes County pro- vide this kind of service if it saves money over having our own police department and if, in fact, the Deschutes County Sheriff will guar- antee this type of two-man police force will be stationed inside the Sisters city limit 24/7. Right now, anyone can observe that this is not what we are getting under the current contract with Deschutes County Sheriff9s Office. And as I stated before, no citizen or See LETTERS on page 30 Sisters Weather Forecast Courtesy of the National Weather Service, Pendleton, Oregon Wednesday Thursday Friday Saturday Sunday Monday Mostly Sunny Sunny Sunny Mostly Cloudy Partly Cloudy Partly Cloudy 48/22 53/24 62/33 62/38 57/33 61/37 The Nugget Newspaper, LLC Website: www.nuggetnews.com 442 E. Main Ave., P.O. Box 698, Sisters, Oregon 97759 Tel: 541-549-9941 | Fax: 541-549-9940 | editor@nuggetnews.com Postmaster: Send address changes to The Nugget Newspaper, P.O. Box 698, Sisters, OR 97759. Third Class Postage Paid at Sisters, Oregon. Editor in Chief: Jim Cornelius Production Manager: Leith Easterling Graphic Design: Jess Draper Community Marketing Partners: Vicki Curlett & Patti Jo Beal Classifieds & Circulation: Lisa May Proofreader: Pete Rathbun Owner: J. Louis Mullen The Nugget is mailed to residents within the Sisters School District; subscriptions are available outside delivery area. 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A recent column about climate change in The Nugget demands a rebut- tal. The column expressed a number of <facts= and opin- ions, only one of which do I fully agree with, and that is that climate science has been politicized. As proof of how our politics are impacting sci- ence, consider that 27% of Republicans express concern about climate change while 83% of Democrats express that same concern (Pew Research Center Poll). This is not the same in the rest of the world. The GOP climate- change platform is the oppo- site of conservative plat- forms in the UK, Norway, Sweden, Spain, Canada, New Zealand, Australia, and Germany (Platform and Manifesto Study, University of Bergen, Norway). Consider the following. Is climate change settled science? Yes. 97.2 percent of climate scientists agree that mankind is respon- sible for the current, soon- to-be-catastrophic, climate change. (NASA, Berkeley, U.S. National Academy of Sciences). The past five years are the warmest years in recorded history (NOAA). The rate of warming in the second half of the 20th century was higher than dur- ing any similar period of the past 2,000 years (Columbia University Study). A one-degree tempera- ture drop caused the <Little Ice Age.= A five-degree drop buried a large part of North America under a towering mass of ice 20,000 years ago (NASA). A four-degree rise will cause unprece- dented flooding, heat waves, droughts, storms and rising global sea levels. Are we giving our youth all of the facts in lower edu- cation? Yes. Sadly, under the Trump administration, many federal agencies have deleted information about climate science from their websites. On the plus side, 642 insti- tutions now offer degrees in environmental sustainability (Princeton Review). The position of the GOP rejects the need to tackle cli- mate change as evidenced by the recent withdrawal from the Paris Agreement. One hundred and ninety-five countries signed and support the Paris Agreement includ- ing all of the top-GDP coun- tries, except for the U.S., who have now withdrawn courtesy of Donald Trump. The five countries that get the lowest possible score according to climateaction tracker.org; United States, Russia, Ukraine, Turkey and Saudi Arabia. That list should concern us for so many reasons. Since the U.S. departed from the Paris Agreement, China has doubled down. They are making huge investments in new technol- ogy and are moving away from fossil fuels. They are the world9s largest investor in solar and wind technol- ogy and now have more jobs in solar energy than in coal- mining. China9s strategy is to dominate climate science technologies. The Trump administra- tion believes that reducing the use of fossil fuels will harm our economy. As is typical of this administration this is unsupported by facts and widely disputed. China is setting out to prove this wrong. When I was a kid there were three TV stations; NBC, CBS and ABC. Journalists from these stations, for the most part, reported the same facts through trusted anchors like Walter Cronkite. We all subscribed to these same or very similar set of facts thus enabling meaningful debate. Contrast that to today where most of us subscribe to the <news= outlets that align with at least one of our beliefs, and because of politicization we most often inherit the whole platform of beliefs. It would be very unusual for MSNBC fans to watch Fox News and vice-versa. If one is a <climate-denier,= there is a likelihood that they would also be anti- immigration, have a low tolerance for LGBTQ rights, etc. Algorithms of social media companies force-feed us content that reinforces our perceived political preferences. We live in echo-chambers. The politicization of climate science is one of many issues dividing us as Americans. Of all the global and domestic issues being debated today, this is the one that we can9t get wrong. Climate science is not a liberal conspiracy. Opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the writer and are not necessarily shared by the Editor or The Nugget Newspaper.