Letters in the Editor's Mailbag.

Byline: The Register-Guard

Bush right on Kyoto

Several letters, plus an editorial on June 6, criticized President Bush for not doing enough to counter the threat of global warming - as stated in an Environmental Protection Agency study, which concluded that human actions were responsible for rising temperatures and that government actions are necessary to prevent disaster.

However, there is a problem: The report was based on a computer model that was proven to be incompatible with factual data. Patrick Michaels, a professor of environmental sciences at the University of Virginia, exposed the inability of the computer model to account for existing temperature changes. Last year the National Academy of Sciences issued a report that was widely hailed as proving the dangers of global warming. However, the numerous eminent scientists listed in the report as supporting the conclusion had not written the report or even seen it before it was released.

Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor Richard S. Lindzen, a meteorologist, pointed out that the climate is always changing, getting hotter or cooler, and repudiated the conclusions of the report. (His name was one of those listed in the report.) In the 1970s, there was a big scare that the earth was entering a new ice age. Michaels estimates that most recent global warming has been caused by the sun getting hotter.

If the United States were to do everything that the Kyoto treaty calls for, it would wreck some economies and cost hundreds of billions of dollars in higher product costs and lost wages that would curtail energy use through rationing and taxation. In addition, it would lower the average temperature in the world by only a half a degree over the next 50 years. President Bush took the correct action to not do anything rash and certainly not sign the Kyoto Treaty.

FRANK WILLIAMS Florence

Kids the top priority

As I write, once again our state Legislature is meeting to hammer out a budget. As a registered voter, a member of Stand for Children, a parent and former child, my No. 1 concern is Oregon's children - especially their education, health and safety. We, the voters, said no to robbing our children's future to balance today's state budget.

Now is the time for our legislators to step up, make the hard choices and raise revenue during this special session. They can choose the cigarette tax, restructuring the income tax, a sales tax or another revenue source of their choice. Just stabilize school funding!

Our children are the responsibility and future of the whole state; they must be a top priority. No more cuts! Encourage your legislators to do the right thing for Oregon's children.

WENDY BUTLER-BOYESEN Eugene

Crossing the Rubicon 

In the Roman Republic, the legions were forbidden to enter the city so that a general could not overpower the citizens and take control by force. This was one of the most ancient and hallowed traditions of the republic, and few generals would risk violating this sacred trust. The Rubicon River was the dividing line, and thus Julius Caesar's crossing the Rubicon represented an attempt to seize power by military means and marked the end of the Roman Republic.

By capturing a U.S. citizen on U.S. soil and throwing him into military custody without trial or formal presentation of evidence, where he can be held indefinitely, without access to a lawyer, without any of our sacred constitutional guarantees of legal rights, George Bush has crossed the Rubicon. Neither he nor his representatives has provided any convincing reasons why the legal system is not sufficient to try and convict alleged militant Jose Padilla. If there is evidence against Padilla, the legal system provides a powerful mechanism to hold and punish him. Indefinite military detention represents dictatorship, not democracy.

The American way of life is founded on certain guarantees, among them the right to a speedy trial by one's peers. This action by the Bush administration undermines the foundations of our republic and represents a serious threat to the values Bush claims to be defending. When citizens can be declared "enemy combatants" and denied their rights, then none of us is safe from a government run amok. Hail, Caesar.

KEN ZIMMERMAN Creswell

Breathing easier

Scott Forrest and Forrest Paint Company have made significant contributions to our community. Specifically, I am referring to the decision of the company to reduce paintmaking-caused air pollution by 90 to 95 per cent over year 2000 levels.

In that year, more than 100,000 pounds of chemicals were released into our air, one of the largest releases by a company in our community. As a result of this decision, releases of chemicals linked to kidney, liver, blood and eye damage will be significantly reduced. Now, the company will be using a biofilter, rather than burning the chemicals.

I appreciate both Forrest Paint Company and its CEO, Scott Forrest, for setting a great example. We'll all breathe a lot easier.

PETER SORENSON

Lane County Commissioner Eugene

Volunteers find a way

Regarding the June 13 letter from Tom Bruton, "VA services lacking": Replace all paid employees of the Veterans Administration with volunteers, and I'll bet the public will receive action. Volunteers have a way of getting things done in a timely manner.

PEGGY L. FRY Coos Bay 

Sales tax scenario

As parents and citizens, should we entrust our children's education to the people sitting on bar stools, smoking cigarettes and playing the lottery, as proposed by the state Legislature? I think not.

Let me see if I have this straight: No one wants to propose a sales tax to provide funding for education because Oregon voters will vote it down again. Do these same voters pay sales tax when they go to Disneyland or visit relatives in other states? Do they object to tourists visiting Oregon paying a comparable tax? Is being a state that does not have a sales tax a point of pride?

Suppose we had a 5 percent sales tax to fund schools. Omit food and pharmaceuticals and other necessities of life. Suppose, when Oregon taxpayers fill out their state income tax forms, they receive a sales tax deduction. Then Californians and others who don't pay Oregon income tax wouldn't benefit.

And suppose the sales tax was included in the price of purchases, like the gas tax, and not an annoying add-on at the cash register. Just suppose.

I suppose it would pass and provide a stable foundation for funding schools for our children.

JUSTIN FIELD Eugene

One of God's elite

Jesus told us that we would know the false prophets by their fruit (Matthew 7:15-20). Martin Burnham's life and year-long captivity by Muslim rebels in the Philippines ended with his death on June 7. Burnham poured out his life for others as a missionary pilot and a third-generation missionary. He had no SUVs, mortgages, IRAs, stock portfolios, etc. His life served God and his fellow man. He was a faithful husband, father and servant to others. He led and encouraged fellow captives with Scripture, song and prayer to the point that those released would break down in tears describing Burnham. He forgave his relentlessly cruel Muslim captors, as did his family in the United States.

Jesus also said that you will serve one master or the other (Matthew 6:24). Which master or tree bears the fruit of love, sacrifice for others and forgiveness of even one's enemies? Which master sent his own child to die for others and rescue unworthy sinners from depraved lives in order to adopt them into his own family? Which master instead asks his followers to send their children on suicide missions to murder as many innocent people as possible? Which master compelled the Islamic rebels in the Philippines to kidnap innocent people and cut the heads off of 10 of them? How hard - or possessed - does your heart have to be to cut the head off of someone?

I am confident that Martin Burnham was in God's service and is among God's elite who bore their crosses through persecution unto death.

BARRY DEAN WILLIAMS Eugene

Computers as descendants

Regarding conscious computers (Register-Guard, June 10), it used to be said also that a computer would never be able to beat a chess champion, and now that has happened.

Comparing computer consciousness to computer digestion is a mistake. Digestion is mainly a relatively simple chemical process, much easier to observe and analyze. What specific part of digestion can we not today build a computer, in control of peripheral systems, to duplicate?

Consciousness and common sense are very subjective phenomena. We don't really know what purpose consciousness serves in the big picture. "I think, therefore I am," but I have to assume that the rest of you are more than advanced biological computers. It's ever more difficult to tell the difference.

Why would we want to spend a lot of effort building a computer to duplicate consciousness functions when we already have brains to take care of that? But I think eventually we will be able to build them to do any physical activity you can name that consciousness allows us to perform, including those you may say computers can't do.

And if we do build them, would it be so bad? We expect our children to replace us, maybe even surpass us. Computers may be the descendants of humanity, but will take much longer to reach maturity. For quite a while - perhaps until we kill ourselves by other means - we'll be more like symbiotes.

DAN ROBINSON Eugene

He wasn't alone

I want to express my deep appreciation to the nurses, doctors and volunteers at Sacred Heart Medical Center who took such good care of my husband, James, while he was so sick. It was good knowing that when I couldn't be there he wasn't alone, because some caring person was there beside him. He didn't die alone.

JUNE McBRIDE Eugene

CAPTION(S):

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