OPINION
4A
THE DAILY ASTORIAN • WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 23, 2017
Founded in 1873
DAVID F. PERO, Publisher & Editor
JIM VAN NOSTRAND, Managing Editor
JEREMY FELDMAN, Circulation Manager
DEBRA BLOOM, Business Manager
JOHN D. BRUIJN, Production Manager
CARL EARL, Systems Manager
Water
under
the bridge
Compiled by Bob Duke
From the pages of Astoria’s daily newspapers
10 years ago this week — 2007
WARRENTON – Repairing the Columbia River’s South Jetty — and
bracing it against the destructive force of ocean waves — is like piecing
together a jigsaw puzzle.
With 20-to 30-ton rocks.
Miles out from the jetty’s base, Steve Osberg mans the puzzle pieces
from the cab of a crane at a repair site Wednesday, grasping a 29-ton meta-
morphic mass with 40-ton tongs and nestling it into a complementary hole
as best he can.
He drops the rock with a splash into a wedge of water, attempting to fill
a gap in the jetty structure, but then decides the pieces don’t fit. Using the
crane’s claw, he picks the rock back up to reposition it.
“There’s no uniform or perfect rock out here,” said project foreman
Andy Bushnell. “You have to keep trying and trying and trying.”
This fall, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is wrapping up two years
of interim repairs to the South Jetty, placing the last of 171,000 tons of new
rock into holes that had weakened about a mile of the 7-mile structure.
The work is designed to bolster the protective barrier between the Pacific
Ocean and the mouth of the river for eight to 10 years, maintaining safe pas-
sage for ships and preserving an estimated $14 billion pillar of the regional
economy.
An expert review of NorthernStar Natural Gas Co.’s draft
emergency response plan found the company hasn’t covered all
the bases to ensure public safety if a liquefied natural gas termi-
nal is built at Bradwood Landing.
In fact, consultants hired by Clatsop County to review pub-
lic safety issues connected with the proposed LNG project found
more than two dozen holes in the company’s plan’s — many of
which, they concluded, could directly impact county residents,
taxpayers and first responders.
50 years ago — - 1967
The Daily Astorian/File
A U.S. Navy minesweeper built at Astoria Marine Construction Co.
in Lewis and Clark.
Pierre, the tomcat, is in the dog house. But good.
The feline holds forth at the Clatsop County Courthouse, preferring
mainly the basement quarters and the bailiwick of District Judge Harold
T. Johnson.
Sheriff Carl Bondietti is also a friend of Pierre. Or was.
Gossip at the courthouse is that Pierre ran true to form — or almost —
regarding that old saying about the cat that swallowed the canary.
This time, however, Pierre gulped the evidence, a salmon head that is.
The piece of evidence the other day concerned an “undersized salmon,”
and it was about 2 inches less when hungry Pierre got through. It was the
tastiest meal in along time for this sleek fellow.
The Astoria City Council authorized purchase of a radar
unit for use of the police department and indicated they favor
raising overtime parking violation fines from 50 cents to $1 at
a meeting Monday evening in council chambers in City Hall.
Police Chief Paul Bettiol had requested that his depart-
ment be permitted to purchase without bid a Stephenson
radar Speedalyzer for $1,295. In communication, he noted
that his unit was most popular from standpoint of service and
reliability.
A survey by opinion-sampler Louis Harris finds that Americans, by a
slim 46 percent to 43 percent margin, are now opposed to the program to
land a man on the moon. More than 60 percent said they would oppose it
if the Russians were not in competition with us.
75 years ago — 1942
A keeper of the dazzling Tillamook Rock light, which slashes
the darkness that things afloat may see, early this morning
became the first injury victim of Astoria’s dim-out.
Ed Laschinger, 60-year-old lighthouse keeper, was taken to
St. Mary’s Hospital after having been struck by Joe Melvin’s
car on 14th and Duane streets at 11:45 p.m. Monday. He was
not critically hurt, although suffering injuries to his shoulder
and hip. Details of the accident were not known, except that it
appeared to have been the result of the dim-out.
City and civilian defense authorities here decided today that the entire
city of Astoria would be indefinitely dimmed out, owing to impossible
difficulties which would plague law enforcement should zoning of the
city’s corporate areas be attempted.
City Manager G.T. McClean said that survey of city streets, completed
by Engineer Harold Olavik, proved the area west of 18th and east of Sec-
ond streets would be in complete dim-out, with some streets among the
intervening blocks likewise dimmed to normal vehicular traffic.
This being the case, McClean agreed with Chief of Police John Acton
and David J. Lewis, defense administrator, that total dim-out would be
required, since the task of posting all intersections then expecting motor-
ists to observe the hundreds of signs would create an untenable situation.
Watching the eclipse in Oregon
AP Photo/Ted S. Warren
This eight picture combo shows the path of the sun during a total eclipse by the moon Monday near Redmond.
By NICHOLAS KRISTOF
New York Times News Service
S
ALEM — It was a lovely
August morning here in Salem,
with a warm sun blazing from a
blue sky, when the
world began to end.
Or that’s
what it felt like.
Imperceptibly the
sky darkened, and
instead of growing
hotter, the air grew
cool. It was as if dusk began at 9:30
a.m.
Then, abruptly, in just a few
minutes, a bit after 10 a.m., night
spread across Salem, where I was
watching the eclipse with my family.
(I’m originally from Oregon.) Cars
were obliged to use their headlights,
and I had to pull out my headlamp.
The throngs of eclipse-watchers on
the state Capitol grounds cheered and
roared with approval.
Eclipse-mania has shadowed
Oregon for many days. Flights have
been jammed full, and some cars are
said to be renting for many hundreds
of dollars a day. Shops ran out of
eclipse sunglasses, and customers
began lining up before 4:30 a.m. in
front of a coffee shop that gave away
eclipse glasses with coffee (later it
recalled the glasses as ineffective!).
With many hotels full, farmers
rented their fields to campers. As
we drove to Salem on back roads,
we saw people setting up lawn
chairs hours early to get prime
eclipse-watching sites on farmers’
fields.
The “totality” of the eclipse
lasted almost two minutes. Venus
and Jupiter appeared in the “night”
sky, and confused birds reportedly
began to sing their evening songs. I
understood why the ancient Chinese
thought that an eclipse reflected
dragons eating the sun. Or why the
Arapaho Indians thought that dark-
ness came because the sun and the
moon were having sex in the sky.
“It was incredible!” said Zoey
Castillo, a 9-year-old who was part
of a group of Girl Scouts invited to
watch the eclipse from the balcony
of Gov. Kate Brown’s office. “I’m
so glad I got to watch it one time in
my life!”
Miranda Trentzsch, also 9, said the
Girl Scouts had been told that the next
total solar eclipse in Salem would
come in 2108 and added: “If I live to
be 100, then my kids can watch the
next solar eclipse with me!”
The greatest drama only lasted
about five minutes — the sudden
darkening, the disappearance of the
sun behind the moon, and then its
reappearance and what seemed the
breaking of a new day — but the
crowds of watchers oohed and aahed
and roared their approval.
After viewing my first total solar
eclipse, a couple of reflections:
First, the appeal of the solar
eclipse is not just its rarity, but the
way it puts us in our place. It disrupts
the routines we rely on and reminds
us of the vastness, beauty and rigor
of the solar system.
One moment we are the masters
of the universe. The next, the moon
occludes the sun and we have to wait
for light to reappear. Yet there’s also
a majesty in the way scientists pre-
dict eclipses with such precision. We
may not be masters of the universe,
but our astronomers are masterful at
taking apart the celestial clocks.
Scientists know to the minute
when eclipses will happen many
years from now. This scientific
precision diminishes the sense of
superstitious fear and awe that
accompanied such past events.
In Shakespeare’s “Macbeth,” the
murder of King Duncan seems to
lead to a solar eclipse that turns the
day dark and reflects the horror and
evil of human misconduct; today, the
punctual arrival of an eclipse seems
a tribute less to superstition than to
mathematical exactitude.
Second, there was no controversy
about the arrival of this eclipse; we
all accepted the scientific consensus
about its timing and swarmed to the
best viewpoints. So why is there such
resistance to the similar scientific
consensus about other foretold events
— such as climate change?
My Times colleague Justin Gillis
made this point in a notable article:
We as a society clearly trust scientists
in their predictions about eclipses
but ignore the scientific warnings
about the far more dire consequences
of our cooking the planet. As Gillis
notes, it’s not as if such cautions are
new, for scientists have been dis-
cussing global warming since 1897.
Nor is the problem that the climate
warnings have not been verified,
for global average temperatures
have indeed risen almost 2 degrees
Fahrenheit since then
“The scientists told us that the
Arctic would warm especially fast,”
Gillis noted. “They told us to expect
heavier rainstorms. They told us heat
waves would soar. They told us that
the oceans would rise. All of those
things have come to pass.”
I chatted with Brown during
the eclipse, and she dryly made the
point: “In Oregon, we actually make
public policy based on science and
data.” It would be nice if Congress
did the same.
Obviously, there remains a range
of climate possibilities ahead, partly
because feedback loops are difficult
to predict and uncertainty is inevita-
ble. There’s also a legitimate debate
about the best policy responses to
climate change — but our national
response so far has been little more
than a shrug, and that’s difficult to
reconcile with the scientific consen-
sus about the risks ahead.
It’s a new day in Salem again.
We now understand that a solar
eclipse isn’t an apocalypse, and our
confidence that the world isn’t end-
ing is a reminder of our increasing
understanding of the vast universe
around us.
As the light returns and the sky
warms, I’ll be celebrating not just the
majesty of the heavens but also the
wisdom of the scientists. I wish I had
similar confidence in the rest of us
to recognize other atmospheric risks
that will be far more consequential
for our planet.
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