Still a controversy
I am glad that Paul Deacon agrees with me that electric cars do not necessarily decrease carbon dioxide emissions (Letter, Oct. 3, page 8). In fact, they increase the emissions if electricity is generated from coal.
The belief in global warming should be respected even though Google has cited 1,370,000 references for “global warming controversy 2010” and 545,000 references for “carbon dioxide global warming myth.” Many of these controversies are scientific, while some political in nature, and exist in many countries.
There are also 101,000 references for “hockey stick graph controversy.” A sharp temperature rise is shown for the last century in a graph of the estimated temperatures over a period of 1,000 years — like a hockey stick. A reference mentions “The Hockey Stick graph — the foundation of global warming theory — has shown to be scientifically invalid, perhaps even a fraud.”
Fox News recently reported that a sharp temperature peak before the increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide was shaved off from the hockey stick.
Last winter, many parts of the US experienced record high snowfall and the lowest temperatures in 100 years and this was claimed as part of the global warming phenomena.
Some criticized such a claim as “Heads, I win; tails, you lose.” Global warming is now used interchangeably with climate change.
Achim Steiner, head of the Nairobi-based UN Environment Programme, said that extreme weather this year, such as floods in Pakistan or Russia’s heat wave, was a “stark warning” of the need to act to slow global warming.
I hope he has not “confused local weather events with the global climate,” as Deacon has indicated.
Charles Hong
Columbus, Ohio
The White House’s decision to take a 9.9 percent stake in Intel Corp is looking like very shrewd business indeed. Since the government bought in at US$20.47 a share last August, the US chipmaker’s surging stock price has delivered the US a US$43 billion return. One of the reasons the investment has so far proved so sound is that the White House has made sure of it. According to The Wall Street Journal, Howard personally pushed deals on Intel’s behalf with some of the most lucrative clients imaginable. They include Nvidia Corp, the company at the heart of the AI
The Ministry of the Interior, working with the navy and coast guard, is organizing Taiwan’s first joint exercise simulating escort tankers carrying liquefied natural gas (LNG) and oil through a Chinese blockade. The drills simulate fuel transport along three maritime corridors leading toward Japan, the Philippines and the US. Deputy Minister of the Interior Sawyer Mars (馬士元) said that a blockade of the Taiwan Strait would amount to “almost a 100 percent blockade of the regional energy supply.” Minister of National Defense Wellington Koo said planning to counter a blockade is standard practice in Taipei. While the exercise is limited in
A single photograph can cut through a lot of noise, but it can also be used to misrepresent the truth. At the very least, it can concentrate the mind on something that requires further investigation. On Monday last week, Ma Ying-jeou Foundation CEO Tai Hsia-ling (戴遐齡) and former National Security Council secretary-general King Pu-tsung (金溥聰) held a news conference in which they showed a photograph of former foundation CEO Hsiao Hsu-tsen (蕭旭岑), now Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) deputy chairman. In the image Hsiao is seated next to Xiamen Taiwan Businessmen Association chairman Han Ying-huan (韓螢煥). The two men were holding
I first met Professor Ray Jiing (井迎瑞) as a film and documentary student at Shih Hsin University’s (SHU) Department of Radio Television and Film in 1988. The following year, he went on to become the director of the Chinese Taipei Film Archive — forerunner of the Taiwan Film and Audiovisual Institute (TFAI). Over his eight-year tenure, Jiing rescued and restored over 200 classic Taiwanese films. In 1997, he established the Graduate Institute of Studies in Documentary and Film Archiving at Tainan National University of the Arts (TNNUA), and I joined the program in his third cohort of students. Beyond a
RSS