Let's make the most of this stimulus funding

On March 13, the Post-Gazette highlighted two recipient projects of federal stimulus funding dollars: bicycle and pedestrian trails and runways at Pittsburgh International Airport ("Pedal Put to Metal for Bike-Pedestrian Projects" and "FAA Allocating $10 Million for Airport Runway Renovation"). I agree that both are necessary and worthy, and I commend the Southwestern Pennsylvania Commission and airport authority for successfully securing this funding. However, I challenge our region to go the extra mile by including elements that appear to have been overlooked. As the cliche goes ... the devil is in the details.

For the trails: water fountains and connectivity! It is a constant frustration for me, like many runners and bikers in this region, to travel on a trail system that is missing these essential pieces. Connect the missing links and install water fountains that will make the trails convenient to athletes and families. As a board member of the Pittsburgh Marathon, I'm ecstatic to be able to welcome so many runners and visitors back to our region, but I assure you, any runner would tell you the same.

For the airport, streamline the arduous baggage check-in process! Our counterparts in Philadelphia are pursuing stimulus funding for a state-of-the-art baggage transport system that would allow for security screening at check-in. Airport travel will never be as user-friendly as it once was because of necessary security measures, but we need to take whatever steps possible to reduce complications for visitors.

The opportunities provided by the stimulus funding cannot be allowed to fall short of their potential. Pittsburgh must take a few more steps to be seen as a world-class region, and the time to take them is now.

STATE REP. CHELSA WAGNER
Brookline

The writer is a Democrat representing the 22nd Legislative District.

Lighting efficiency

On a night flight from Atlanta to Pittsburgh I enjoyed looking down at all the lights below. It was an extraordinarily beautiful sight, especially the scene on approach to Pittsburgh with its unique river contours.

But all that light was doing nobody on the ground a bit of good.

Instead, it was costing people on the ground a lot of money to amuse airline passengers. Recent stories and letters in the Post-Gazette concern energy-efficient lighting for reducing costs and improving our environment. Fluorescent and LED lights use less energy, but an additional savings for taxpayers, businesses and homeowners will come from shielding the light source so that all the energy is directed where it is needed. Shielded fixtures are available and cost no more than other light fixtures.

We can light our streets, parking lots, doorways and porches with the same level of light we now enjoy here on earth without sending any up into the airways or our neighbors' windows.

DAVID KOREN
Sarver

Different messages

During the recent Pittsburgh Presbytery meeting in McCandless, ("Presbytery Rejects Gay Clergy Proposal," March 15), two fathers of gay men were given an opportunity to speak concerning the "chastity and fidelity" amendment. I was struck by the profoundly different messages that these two men delivered. They were summed up in a few sentences reported by Ann Rodgers.

Mike Fazzini, an elder from Fox Chapel, spoke courageous words of support for his son, whom he seems to love unconditionally. His words were important and powerful for both young and older gay people. Mr. Fazzini's statement that "the current ordination standard cuts like a knife into the heart of what many presbytery members believe about their friends and family members who are gay" was very moving.

Thomas Fox, an elder from West Mifflin, had a drastically different message. While he acknowledges that his gay son who tragically died of AIDS was a loving person whom he greatly misses, he goes on to judge him as a sinful person, unworthy of leadership in the church.

My father died nine years ago, encouraging me until the very end of his life to be a compassionate, nonjudgmental, loving and inclusive man. He encouraged my leadership with mentally challenged children and as a facilitator with HIV and family groups affected by AIDS. He also encouraged me to stay active in my church. My father loved me unconditionally as his gay son as he loved my brother as his straight son. He would have hoped (and prayed) that Mr. Fox would one day feel similarly about his own beloved son, and I imagine that he would have wanted to quietly and firmly shake Mr. Fazzini's hand.

DICK MARSHALL
Crafton

The clueless factor

Fact? What facts? The headline for a graphic in the March 1 Forum section was "Enough Said" and right below that was the statement, "Facts That Speak for Themselves: The Methane Time Bomb." I looked for these "facts," and I found: "may," "estimates" and "could."

My guess is these estimates about the permafrost in 2100 could have been made by computer weather models. I remember a hurricane in the Gulf of Mexico last summer had a chance to go in 12 different directions, all based on data fed into 12 different weather models. The hurricane went due west, not one of the expected directions.

If computers could, they would often say: "Don't have a clue" when asked to predict the future, but they are forced to give their best estimate. That is why in the early 1970s they predicted an early ice age or "global cooling" after being fed data that showed the world temperatures in the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s were lower than average. Now, that's a fact. You can look it up.

"May," estimates" and "could"? With those facts, Thomas Dewey was elected president in 1948.

FRED BREWER
Hermitage

Seniors shorted

I note that seniors are getting shafted again. The stimulus package gives seniors a one-time payment of $250. On the other hand, those who are working get an extra $l0 to $20 each week in tax savings or $520 to $1,040 per year.

On health care the same inequity exists. If you are working, your contribution to your health-care plan is tax-free. If you are retired, the amount you pay into your health-care plan is taxable. In other words, workers pay with pre-tax dollars and retirees with after-tax dollars.

When the law was written, seniors were ignored.

HAROLD D. McFEELY
Peters

Living within your means: Try it -- you might like it

Kudos to Larry Jones of Banksville for his letter "Living Within Your Means Must Be the Message" (Feb. 26). His opening sentence about common sense speaks volumes. Allow me to offer my opinion of what has happened to common sense and living within one's means.

Those life-guiding values have been replaced with an overinflated sense of entitlement and instant gratification on the part of many in today's society who feel they should enjoy all the luxuries that life has to offer but don't accept the fact that those things come with a price. If you can't afford the six-figure house or the high-priced vehicles you would like to drive or the expensive vacations you enjoy bragging about, what gives you the right to expect these things to be available to you just because you want them?

When you max out your credit cards, knowing you probably will never be able to pay for what you've charged, or purchase a house or vehicle by committing to payments that you know far exceed your income, only you are to blame when your world falls apart and you are asked to pay what you owe.

How about giving common sense and living within your means a chance? It may not be as bad as you think!

MARY BETH PARRIS
Green Tree City

Climate hysteria

On March 1, you published a graph of alleged methane concentrations in the atmosphere titled "Facts That Speak for Themselves: The Methane Time Bomb." Rarely has a more misleading didactic appeared in your paper. First, the graph, said to represent methane concentrations in the global atmosphere, was disproportioned to falsely overemphasize the more recent end of the curve, suggesting a global crisis.

Second, your graph alleges data from A.D. 1010 to the present. I am wondering what type of instruments were used to measure methane in the Dark Ages and prior since neither carbon nor hydrogen had been discovered until the 18th century? Additionally, nowhere is it specified the critical atmospheric concentration of methane.

Third, even this poorly constructed and questionable graph clearly shows (despite the aforementioned distortion) that methane levels are plateauing, which would suggest the problem is self-limiting and not the "time bomb" as alleged.

Finally, a few months ago tens of thousands of scientists affixed their signatures to a document declaring the hysteria of man-made global warming as junk science, not to mention that recently major news wires carried a story about scientists who claim that Arctic ice cap measurements had been grossly underestimated due to faulty measuring practices. The ice caps are not rapidly melting and the globe will not flood.

In fact, the earth has been cooling the past few years and even the hysterics now chant "climate change" instead of global warming in order to hedge their bets. The scientific method has never proved any of this man-made nonsense, yet politicians and radical extremists treat this issue as a pseudo-religion.

MARK TROMBETTA
Upper St. Clair

We can tune out this voice of the GOP

So. Rush Limbaugh. This bloated, self-indulgent, self-important blowhard who spews the politics of division and destruction, not for principle, but for personal profit.

This parody of a man who cannot tolerate failure and who would see the president and the country fail solely for his own gloating vindication.

This Rush Limbaugh is the new head of the Republican Party? Yes, that sounds just about right.

America: We can't take away his knife and fork and we may not be able to take away his mike, but we can certainly turn our backs and tune him out.

EILEEN PARKER
Valencia

What we're all learning

At the very least, President Barack Obama can declare a victory in one of his programs: education.

Every day, more and more Americans are learning that every dollar that the government spends is our money. As more programs are announced and more people learn that the government has no regard for spending our money, hopefully -- when they graduate from this learning process -- they can help stop the wasteful, stupid, ignorant spending that is going on now.

We are now learning that the president expects veterans who are wounded to use their own insurance for their injuries. Thank you, Mr. President, for confirming how you value this country's greatest heroes.

Along with Sens. Dodd, Specter and Schumer and Reps. Pelosi, Murtha and Frank, we thank you for redefining the words "transparency," "change" and especially "truth." It amazes me we've managed to survive more than 200 years without you and your friends. It will amaze me even more if we manage to survive the next six months with you.

FRANK ESSEK
Cranberry

Nuclear rhetoric

The article "Nuclear Empowered" by Westinghouse CEO Aris S. Candris (Feb. 22 Forum) reads more like an infomercial than an op-ed piece and is just as rife with empty rhetoric and misdirection as the efforts of the late-night TV shills.

For starters, Mr. Candris states that "nuclear energy is the only source of electricity that produces no greenhouse gases," which would be true if the uranium that fires the reactors materialized out of thin air. As it is, uranium must be mined and mining entails cutting down trees, building access roads and digging the ore from the ground, all of which utilizes equipment that runs on fossil fuels. So, the process of generating nuclear energy does, indeed, produce greenhouse gases.

But more significantly, Mr. Candris sloughs off the most crucial issue surrounding nuclear energy, the disposal of nuclear waste, with a throwaway phrase that nuclear energy "manages 100 percent of its waste stream," which begs the question as to whether the "managing" is done well or poorly. A typical nuclear reactor produces 20 to 30 metric tons of nuclear waste per year, mostly in the form of plutonium-239, a very deadly, radioactive substance with a half-life of 24,000 years and a toxicity that lasts 240,000 years. That is a very long time indeed, especially when viewed from the perspective that the earliest human civilizations trace back only some 6,000 years, and we consider all the changes that have occurred from the time of ancient Babylon to the present day. If Mr. Candris has figured a way to manage 100 percent of the nuclear "waste stream" a quarter of a million years into the future, 20 and one-half millennia after all of us alive today have shuffled off this mortal coil, I wish he would share that secret with the rest of us.

Mr. Candris says that "three-fourths of Americans now favor expanded use of nuclear power for electricity generation." This may be true, but that is only because most Americans expect that the resulting nuclear waste will be buried in somebody else's back yard, and not theirs. If they ever dreamed that they and their descendents would be the ones sitting atop the glowing spent fuel rods and such, I suspect that their support would melt down faster than the reactor core at Chernobyl.

MICHAEL PASTORKOVICH
Oakland

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