Lots of people offer help, and I'll take it

As a person dealing with the aftereffects of having polio years ago, I have lived in several different states and I want to compliment your citizens upon such kind help towards a person struggling with crutches.

People rush over to me to offer to open doors, carry my packages to the Philomath Post Office and help me load my scooter into my car.

I was walking into Fred Meyer in the rain the other day and a Comcast worker grabbed my elbow to steer me into the store.

I will take any help offered and compliment you all.

I am proud to live in Corvallis.

Laura Hulburd, Corvallis

Urban renewal: Pay attention to its problems

Hasso Hering's editorial on urban renewal problems is especially relevant as Corvallis residents face an urban renewal vote in May. Although intended to eliminate blight, urban renewal programs always gets hijacked by downtown property owners. They instead use it as a means of enhancing their property values at taxpayer expense. I am all in favor of downtown property owners improving their properties, but not at taxpayer expense.

As pointed out, urban renewal funds come out of the property tax proceeds that otherwise go to schools, the community college district, our library district, and the city's general fund. Each dollar that goes to urban renewal reduces services from one of these other local districts.

The city of Corvallis already has power to do all the same projects that urban renewal districts do. Why doesn't it just do them now? Urban renewal projects are typically low priority items which the city would never do on its own. But when urban renewal siphons funds from other local government agencies, suddenly unnecessary low-priority projects become doable.

The stark reality of urban renewal is this: Local government services at all levels are reduced in order to enhance the value of downtown properties. It's a great deal for downtown property owners, but a bad one for taxpayers and anyone else who relies upon local government services.

David Grappo, Corvallis

Global warming: Arctic Ocean is most affected

Jean Nelson ("Start worrying about cooling", letters Dec. 7) repeats errors circulated through the blogosphere as evidence that the global warming is not happening. But the ranking of October 2008 as the "70th warmest October in 114 years" does not apply to the entire globe, just to the 48 contiguous United States.

This area accounts for less than 2 percent of the globe's surface. Averaged over the entire globe, temperature in October 2008 was in the top ten years on record. And we are just talking about the single month of October. "Global climate" refers to conditions averaged over the entire Earth for long periods of time (decades), not short-term changes over specific areas.

It is well documented by scientists that the greatest climate warming is occurring in the Arctic (see Figure SPM.6 in the IPCC 2007 summary at http://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/assessment-report/ar4/wg1/ar4-wg1-spm.pdf). The contiguous U.S. is presently much less affected than states and nations bordering the Arctic Ocean.

However, if even the moderate climate change projections for the U.S. are true, we will still feel significant negative effects of climate change by the late 21st century.

Finally, contrary to the suggestion of George Taylor, Jean Nelson and their online sources, mistakes in compilation of global temperature statistics are not deliberate. One purpose of rapidly reporting this data set is to allow error checking by others.

When errors are found, they are quickly acknowledged and corrected. The maps, analyses and data sets are freely available. Anyone can get them from http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/ and do their own science on it.

Laurence Padman, Corvallis

War on drugs: Billions of dollars wasted

It was inevitable that Froma Harrop's informed wisdom about our stupid War on Drugs would cause Mr. Crompton's automatic response. It always amazes me when these critics of liberal tax and spend policies in education, health care or child protective services are all in favor of wasting billions on wars and Prohibition.

Advocates of small government seem to love having government in my bedroom or den harassing me for personal freedoms. They don't want us controlling corporations or protecting the environment, but they will build prisons and employ lots of people to keep other people there at public expense.

Prohibition of alcohol produced the same negative results we see in the War on Drugs. Mr. Crompton's thinking is no advertisement for sobriety.

And, George Will's idiotic concern about the fairness doctrine got that Gordon Shadle "tingle" going again. Diversified ownership is what we want. I want the Savage Wiener out there saying things so ugly all I have to do is point to them. I just want the spectrum of opinion. Pretty scary for you on the Right.

Don Caughey, Corvallis