Full funding of BRAC is congressman's priority
Full funding of BRAC is congressman's priority
EDITOR:
I am writing in response to your editorial of Feb. 20 about funding for the Base Realignment and Closure Commission (BRAC). Three weeks ago, Congress passed a continuing resolution to authorize the money necessary to keep the federal government operating through Sept. 30, 2007. In that resolution, BRAC was funded at a level to keep the process moving. I assure you that over the next few months I will work with members of the Appropriations Committee to see that funding is restored completely this year.
It's important to Ohio that BRAC gets the full appropriations the state needs so that our communities can prepare for the relocation of military personnel and contractors as well as the planning and infrastructure needed to accommodate their families. I'd like to thank Sen. Sherrod Brown for the hard work he has already done to see that this funding is restored, as well as Gov. Strickland for his leadership at the state level.
As a member of the House Committee on Appropriations, I am well positioned to remain a strong advocate for the priorities of the Mahoning Valley, the region and Ohio. I will continue to work with U.S. Rep. David Hobson, who sits on Appropriations with me and whose district is home to Wright Patterson Air Force Base. As The Vindicator correctly pointed out in the editorial, I am no stranger to the BRAC fight. Having served on the Armed Services Committee throughout the BRAC process, I joined with the community to save the Youngstown Air Reserve Station from closure. I want to assure our community that I will bring that same commitment to securing critical federal appropriations, like BRAC funding, which is so very important to the state of Ohio.
U.S. Rep. TIM RYAN, D-17th
Niles
Daily weather reports don't reflect climate change
EDITOR:
The lead letter Feb. 13 about going from one prediction to another was very wide of any conceivable mark. It shows a complete and possibly willful ignorance of what the real researchers have said.
First, the latest series of continental glaciers began when the tectonic drift of the North American continent began to close in the Arctic Ocean and created the Isthmus of Panama 3 million years ago, cutting off the warm currents that kept its shores of the Arctic ice free. The previous series of continental glaciers was 330 to 260 million years ago, at the end of the Paleozoic. The latest advance reached its peak 25,000 years ago. This was when Ohio was covered. The last major surge occurred 11,000 years ago, and it did not reach Ohio.
A surge of fresh water from melting ice sheets can cause ocean current disruptions and cooling. This actually happened during the Younger Dryas, 8,000 years ago. But, since it also resulted in serious drought conditions all over North America, there wasn't enough precipitation to build up any snow packs.
The Milankovitch cycles that could result in the advance and retreat of the continental ice sheets (and how the earth could be cycling toward another such episode), was reported in the 1970s. There was some whoop up on the fringes over it, but not among the serious researchers.
What does it take to form a glacier? The answer is pathetically simple -- more snow in winter than can be melted in summer. Where global warming is concerned, how long has it been since the Great Lakes regularly froze solid from one shore to the other? The news reports have told us that the lake effect of the unfrozen Lake Ontario has dumped 8 feet of snow on Utica. If global warming does melt the ice pack of the Arctic, how much snow would the "ocean effect" dump on the Keewatin Highlands in Canada, the center of the ice sheet that covered Ohio -- 20 feet? 40 feet? 80 feet? The possibility exists.
Do not read into the day to day weather patterns proof or disproof of global warming. The research projects covering several decades are what count.
JEROME K. STEPHENS
Warren