Despite pooh-poohers like President Trump, global warming proponents keep piling up evidence to support their case that mankind is polluting the environment.
Recent evidence. First, Sparks and Reno temperatures have soared to 100 degrees, or nearly so, for five straight weeks—an unprecedented hot spell.
Far more convincing is a three-trillion-ton iceberg in the Antarctic—the largest ever. Never before has it been warm enough for that huge an iceberg to calf off the ice sheet of the Antarctic.
The New York Times reported that a 120-mile crack led to the floating ice shelf called Larsen C.
Some comparisons help visualize its size. The iceberg at 2,240 square miles is larger than Delaware (1,954 square miles). The berg is four times the size of London, the largest city in Europe (population 14 million).
Scientists are divided about global warming. But even doubters should be convinced that the peril is real.
Seas are rising. Seacoast communities should be warned of possible flooding and crumbling of coastal land.
The late Dr. John Mercer of Ohio State University, writing a paper in 1978, presciently called “human-induced climate-warming a threat of disaster from rising seas.”
A U.S. senator, Democrat Brian Schatz of Hawaii, says “climate change is real and human activity contributes significantly to it.”
Whether Senator Schatz is night or wrong, it is an important argument. A worldwide warning is essential.
LAND OF THE FREE—FOR WHITES
America boasts of being a free nation.
But African Americans are not free. Blacks from Africa and Asia are not free. Hispanics are not free. American Asiatics are not free. Cuban Americans are not free. Immigrants in America are not free. Ex-prisoners in Americaare not free.
And women are certainly not free.
The fact that women earn less money than men do in comparable jobs and with comparable experience is well known.
Less well known is that women face constant harassment on the job, in college and in high school. So-called advisers sometimes do the harassing in high school.
Speaking of “advisers,” just the other day a sports doctor for the gymnastics team was charged in federal court with sexually assaulting dozens of women and the little girls prominent in gymnastics.
A story out of Silicon Valley in the New York Times tells how a woman entrepreneur was propositioned by a venture capitalist while seeking a job with him. She didn’t get the job after fiercely reprimanding him.
“Another woman told of increasingly suggestive comments from start-up investors,” the Times reported. “A woman chief executive described how she faced numerous sexist comments from an investor while raising money for her online community website.
“Dozens of women in the technology start-up industry spoke about being sexually harassed. Ten of them provided corroborating messages and emails.”
In a story in the Reno Gazette-Journal, Paige Spiranac talked about Internet cyber bullying: harassment, insults, hatred and death threats.
As a child of 10, Ms. Spiranac had a medical condition that prevented her from growing hair. Other children heaped abuse and scorn on her. Cyber bullying includes malicious acts and using emails and text messages.
Sen. Tammy Baldwin of Wisconsin is the first lesbian elected to the U.S. Senate. At one of her listening sessions a man held aloft a sign: “Terminate unwanted lesbians.”
Two days later she received this hate letter: “Based on your homosexual lifestyle and your recent votes, my opinion is confirmed: you are a sick pervert.” Senator Baldwin sadly concluded that the hate she has experienced in public life “is exploding nationally.”
Here’s still another indictment of misogynist President Trump: Amy Conkey, Reno Planned Parenthood client, declared in a RGJ column that Trumpcare would be “a disaster for Nevada women.”
“It makes it harder to prevent unintended pregnancies, harder to have a healthy pregnancy and harder to raise a family,” Ms. Conkey said. “And it would prevent women from going to Planned Parenthood for preventive care. It would be horrible if 36,000 Nevada women could not turn to PP for care.”
President Trump proposes Trumpcare as a substitute for Obamacare. Congress, the Senate in particular, will have the last word on that subject. But the situation looks bleak.
Whatever the outcome, universal health care–which civilized nations long have had—doesn’t exist in the richest country in the world.
TRUMP UNDOES CUBAN DÉTENTE
President Trump has eased sanctions on Cuba but sharply cut back on the enlightened policies of President Obama who allowed travel and expanded business to Cuba.
An editorial in the Times denounced the Trump reversal, saying that “Americans who want to vacation in Cuba or start doing business there will find it harder as a result of Trump’s misguided decision. It’s the latest chapter in a crusade to overturn crucial elements in his predecessor’s legacy while Trump genuflectx to Cuban-Americans in Miami’s exile community who helped put him in office.”
Jake Highton is an emeritus journalism professor from the University of Nevada, Reno. (jake@unr.edu)
