Global warming could be a good thing

To the editor:

As an engineer, I normally do not wish to embroil myself in religious arguments, and scientific debates about global warming are beginning to look like religious wars. Anyone whose learned thoughts differ from doctrine is treated like a heretic.

However, I could not get past the first sentence of Erin Neff’s Sunday commentary without daring to expose myself as someone who has not yet made up his mind. Ms. Neff writes that “the overwhelming majority of scientists and world leaders realize that something must be done to try to lessen human-caused warming of the Earth.” This statement is so fraught with assumptions stated as facts that it begs to be countered word by word. But space limits me to two major points.

First, unless you are a creationist and believe the Earth to be about 6,000 years old, it is undisputable that the Earth is presently in an intense period of glaciations and retreats known as an “ice age” that began around 3 million years ago. Since then, the world has seen cycles of glaciation with ice sheets advancing and retreating on 40,000- and 100,000-year time scales. The most recent glacial period ended about 10,000 years ago. It is a scientific fact that if we do nothing, the glaciers will come again and cover most of the land mass in the northern hemisphere.

So why is global warming “bad”? Why don’t we rename it the “anti-ice age program”?

Second, take a good look at a globe. Most of the land mass on the Earth is in the northern hemisphere. The equator crosses the narrow northern end of South America, the narrow waist of Africa and some Pacific island chains. If you assume global warming makes a few degrees of latitude at the equator totally uninhabitable, then relatively little land mass for human occupation is lost. But look at what happens to the large land areas of Alaska, northern Canada, Greenland, Scandinavia, northern Russia, and the largest area of all, northern Siberia.

I will not even bring the continent of Antarctica into the equation. Vast tracks of real estate previously too cold for agriculture become more temperate and productive. Enormous tracts of land could become available for a significant net benefit to the human race.

Again the question: Why would that be bad?

John M. McGrail

LAS VEGAS

Las Vegas 500

To the editor:

Monday morning, I used the western Beltway. Positioned as the first car stopped at the light at Cheyenne Avenue, the light turned green. The car to my left roared off only to be stopped by a Metro black and white about a mile later. Wow! What a chilling effect that had on traffic.

Still as the lead car, no one passed me for miles.

Over the past few weeks, Review-Journal Publisher Sherman Frederick has written columns advocating traffic cameras on the Beltway. I’m sure they would help slow traffic to reasonable speeds, but a few people pulled over also works. Maybe Metro brass read his columns.

I use the Beltway infrequently, but on Monday I observed much safer and saner drivers than on the southern parts, often called the Las Vegas 500.

Phillip Mlynek

LAS VEGAS

On trial

To the editor:

In reference to your Monday story, “Taking jury duty seriously”:

I do want to serve on a jury and to do my constitutional duty as a citizen. And when the judge asks whether I will follow his instructions, I will answer, “It depends.”

When pressed to explain, I will answer that if I were on a jury in 1850, and the defendant was charged under the Fugitive Slave Act, I would, regardless of jury instructions, find the person not guilty. And today, if I were instructed to find a person guilty of a law I find unconstitutional, or a law that offends my personal sense of what is right and wrong, I would find the defendant not guilty.

Then I will comment that if I am excused from serving, the court would be guilty of jury stacking. For every person has the right to a randomly selected jury of his peers. That is what I would say.

JON HAMEL

LAS VEGAS

Taxpayer waste

To the editor:

The “Animal welfare” editorial published in Sunday’s Review-Journal called the Lied Animal Shelter a “taxpayer-financed” organization and then proceeded to carry on about the horrors that took place within its walls. The horror part was mostly factual; the taxpayer-financed part was mostly fiction.

Last year, the city of Las Vegas paid the Lied Animal Shelter approximately $1.2 million to care for the 60,000 homeless and unwanted animals that where unfortunate enough to have found themselves at the shelter. At the same time the city paid $15 million to Las Vegas Animal Control to round up those animals and dump them on the shelter. This works out to more than $200 dollars an animal to pick them off the streets and transport them to the shelter, but only $20 dollars per animal to house and care for them for the 72 hours required by the city.

If you are looking for a waste of taxpayer dollars, look no further than the Animal Control Division. If you are looking for the reason the Lied Shelter found itself in such a horrible condition, look no further than the misappropriation of taxpayer dollars.

Bill Edwards

LAS VEGAS