Better salaries are key to keeping people in Pittsburgh
As a former Pittsburgher, I read with great interest Gary Rotstein's "Scattered Abroad" series (Dec. 26-28). Don Smith said it best: "It's hard to enjoy the amenities of any region if you don't have any money" ("Pittsburgh Is Most Livable and Most Leavable," Dec. 28).

After graduating high school in the '90s, completing undergrad and graduate school, I would have loved to come back to the Pittsburgh region. Unfortunately, positions in the urban planning field are scarce in Pittsburgh and the ones that do exist pay significantly less than in other areas of the country.

When reading classified advertisements I would laugh at employers who thought that a master's-prepared professional would work for $25,000 to $28,000 when most of us have double that in student loans.

I and many of my peers are your target population, young educated professionals. Unfortunately Pittsburgh does not offer what we need at this time in our lives: salaries that are commensurate with the level of education we have received and can cover the amount of debt we carry!

Pittsburgh is a wonderful town in which to raise a family, and I hope to return one day. Until then I will go where I have the most opportunity.

AMY YEARSLEY
Fort Myers, Fla.

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Sad state of affairs
My wife and I left the South Side in '97 for jobs in the northern Virginia area. Back then the Post-Gazette was running a series on "why are the 20- to 30-year-old professionals leaving the area?" I could have told you then and I will tell you now.

Western Pennsylvania for decades now has been voting for people who promise the world and raise taxes; consequently they never deliver on their promises, and slowly but surely companies leave for friendlier tax environments. Look at the last 10 years for northern Virginia. This area made a commitment to be business friendly and it has paid off more than the area could have dreamed. My wife and I have both been trying for years to come back, but we can't get a bite. You reap what you sow.

I am truly saddened by what I see as the slow death of my beloved home. I beg the people of Western Pennsylvania to vote in business-friendly politicians and to stop falling for the promises of Mayor Tom Murphy and his kind.

MICHAEL MORRIS
Manassas, Va.

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Steelers in Hoboken
As a Pittsburgh native who has lived and worked in the metro New York City area for more than five years, I applaud your front-page article "A Yearn to Return" (Dec. 26).

Please permit me to bring to your attention one very active and important group, the Hoboken Black & Gold Brigade. Our organization is led by an active and dedicated steering committee of young professionals that operates two Web sites (steelersinhoboken.com and steelersnyc.com) and which recently raised and donated more than $1,000 to the volunteer fire department in flood-ravaged Carnegie.

The Hoboken Black & Gold Brigade packs Texas-Arizona, a local bar and restaurant, beyond capacity each and every Sunday. Realizing the driving force we represent, the management at Texas-Arizona has been gracious enough to hang a large "Steelers Legends" piece of artwork on the wall and provided us with "The Steeler," a sandwich that is the Garden State version of the Primanti Brothers original. Other activities include a holiday party with a special visit from Steelers Santa, tailgates at Giants and Jets games and road trips to Heinz Field.

Regardless of what brought us to the New York City area, what we share is a love for Steelers football and memories of pierogies and "O" fries; we are all friends. I owe a lot to this group and to the friends I have made during the last four seasons of Steelers football. And I think that I speak for every one of the Steelers in Hoboken when I say, "Here we go, Steelers, here we go!"

REBECCA M. ZEITLER
Public Relations Chair
Steelers in Hoboken
New York, N.Y.

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A unique place
Thanks so much for your series on ex-Pittsburghers far afield ("Scattered Abroad," Dec. 26-28). As you may know, members of the Pittsburgh diaspora are a huge percentage of your online readers. I know: I check in with the PG every day to see what's new.

I left Pittsburgh in 1976 at the urging of my then-husband. While I have lived in some wonderful places since then, none is more compelling than Pittsburgh. When my parents died there a few years ago, I made nearly a dozen trips to Pittsburgh over a period of a year to settle their affairs. Homesickness stunned me with its force; there wasn't a single visit when I wasn't trying to think of a way to move back.

Although I wasn't able to arrange a way to make a permanent return practical at the time, I still visit yearly, because there's no doubt about how much I miss it, after nearly 30 years. It's terribly sad that the people now running it (or trying to) just can't see the huge advantages that are so plain to us expatriates, but Pittsburgh remains a unique and irreplaceable place in many of our hearts.

PAULA KIMBROUGH
Mississippi State, Miss.

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The warming is real
The PG's "national security writer" Jack Kelly apparently views societal concerns about the impact of human activity on Earth resources (and hence people) as a security threat, as he periodically feels compelled to write about the dark, conspiratorial motives of folks expressing or promoting such concerns.

Such was the case with his Dec. 26 column ("An Educational Good Read"), in which he buys into the notion, put forward in a novel, that concern about global warming is a scare tactic disseminated by "environmentalists" to boost fund raising. He advises his readers to buy and read the novel, which "is a valuable education in the guise of entertainment."

The book may have entertainment value for those who enjoy science fiction, but it has zero credibility as a reliable summary of the science on climate change. For authoritative summaries of the current scientific understanding of climate change, interested citizens can readily access reports by committees of the world's top climate scientists, such as recent reports by the U.S. National Academy of Sciences (books.nap.edu/catalog/10139.html) and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (www.ipcc.ch). These reports make clear that the consensus in the climate science community is that Earth is warming, that human emissions of heat-trapping gases are a primary cause and that the risk of severe impacts is high unless these emissions are reduced.

Further, as the recent international Arctic Climate Impact Assessment graphically documents (www.acia.uaf.edu/) climate change and its impacts are already with us in polar regions.

DAVID A. DZOMBAK
Point Breeze

Editor's note: The writer is a professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Carnegie Mellon University.

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Fiction, not fact
Jack Kelly's glowing column about the Michael Crichton novel "State of Fear" ("An Educational Good Read," Dec. 26) should not pass without comment. While Crichton is undoubtedly an "awfully smart guy," he is a science fiction writer, not a scientist, and his books have always been much more fiction than science. In this book, he criticizes environmental groups for presenting misleading and one-sided information on global warming ... by presenting misleading and one-sided information on global warming.

Crichton dumbs down the science for the average reader, but his analogy of the proportion of carbon dioxide in the Earth's atmosphere (one inch in the length of a football field) is naive in the extreme. Small changes in atmospheric composition can certainly have large effects. For example, the proportion of chlorofluorocarbons in the atmosphere is microscopic compared to that of carbon dioxide, but it has had global effects on the ozone layer.

The other information (temperatures at certain locations have not increased, or have decreased) presented again shows how little Crichton and Kelly understand climate science. Local variations in weather are perfectly normal; what scientists are looking at is the global average temperature, which is undeniably increasing.

I fully agree with Kelly that people should not get their information from the "crackpots and con men" in environmental groups. Instead, look at the information presented by real scientists at NASA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration or at the Web site www.realclimate.org.

RON LALONDE
Cranberry

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'Big Money' has succeeded in disenfranchising 'Little Money' fans

The Dec. 28 editorial "Big Bootleg: Ben's Lawyers Take Care of Business Off the Field" says it all. If you don't have the money you can't be a Steelers fan.

We all agree that the greed of businessmen to make "big bucks" from bootleg "Big Ben" shirts is wrong. However, "Big Money" has already eliminated lifetime Steelers fans from attending Steelers games because their "Little Money" must pay the bills and feed their families, but the "Little Money" fans are satisfied by watching the games at home and reading every article about their team that they can get their hands on.

Perhaps "Big Money" could sell their paraphernalia as such: "Big Money" fans could buy shirts by Ralph Lauren and "Little Money" could buy their shirts made by "unknown" at a reasonable price and they could wear them with great pride in their living rooms for the Sunday game.

ELIZABETH DAVIS
Brentwood