Editorial

Back Wind Siting Act

Back Wind Siting Act, Berkshire Eagle Editorial
Friday, June 26

Unless we plan on moving back into caves we will continue to need energy, and unless we are content to continue polluting the atmosphere and fueling the scourge of global warming, we will need alternative sources of energy. One of those sources is wind power, which the Berkshires have the potential to supply in considerable quantity. Wind energy developers, however, are hindered by the absence of statewide siting standards. Local communities should have input into these wind turbine siting decisions, and anti-wind zealots should not be allowed to gum up every project regardless of its merits. To address all of these concerns, the Legislature has produced the Wind Energy Siting Reform Act of 2009.

The state produces 7 milliwatts (MW) of energy through wind power, and Governor Patrick wants the state to produce 2,000 MW by 2020. Among the goals of the Green Communities Act passed last year is to clarify rules and regulations pertaining to renewable energy projects and to assure that there is local input and that needless red tape doesn't hinder good proposals. Hence, the reform act.

Wind turbine opponents bristle at being called NIMBYs, but their opposition to the 30 MW Hoosac Wind project in Florida and Monroe leaves them wide open to this charge. The success they have enjoyed in hamstringing the project since 2001 through a variety of appeals is a major reason why the Reform Act must be passed. This project will not violate any gorgeous vistas. Although opponents pay lip service to local input into these projects, town officials in Florida and Monroe support the project that the self-appointed defenders of the mountaintops oppose. The Department of Environmental Protection and Berkshire Superior Court have determined that the project meets wetland standards, yet foes continue to make cynical use of a well-meaning appeals process to stop a project they are against simply because it involves wind power.

The Reform Act requires that statewide wind siting standards be drawn up that will "protect residential neighborhoods, significant scenic and recreational resources, and environmentally sensitive areas." Local conditions can be imposed, but not if they are imposed without merit simply to restrict or stop the project. As such, the Act is not designed to restrict local control of wind projects, as foes claim, but to restrict the ability of opponents to tie these projects in knots for years. It was the unreasonably rabid opposition of foes of Hoosac Wind, and more infamously, the Cape Cod wind project, that led to the Reform Act.

No true environmentalist should be content with America's addiction to fossil fuels as an energy source, which not only pollutes the atmosphere but leaves the United States at the mercy of Middle Eastern potentates and greedy domestic oil producers. We must develop more alternative energy sources, and happily we have a governor and a president who support this effort. That means wind energy. That means solar energy. That means nuclear power and biomass. Every bit of energy produced by these alternatives, no matter how small, reduces our reliance on foreign oil. Every energy source has drawbacks, but none more severe than those of gas, oil and coal.

There are several wind turbine projects proposed for the Berkshires, and not every one of them should pass muster. With approval of the Reform Act, criteria will be established for developers to meet and local residents and officials will have a role in the development process. The Act threatens only the anti-wind ideologues who don't want to be deprived of monkey wrenches to toss into the works. We urge the Berkshire legislative delegation to advocate passage of the Wind Siting Reform Act.

The Berkshire Eagle, June 27, 2009.http://www.berkshireeagle.com/ci_12693449?source=most_emailed

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Enough already with the Michael Jackson distortions

Jackson is the last example for America's media to extoll and eulogize

   The Apollo theater in Harlem yesterday was swarming with idol-worshipers. Photo by Pat Brooks.

By Walter Brooks

    The infamous interview

Michael Jackson had all but disappeared from America's media since he escaped conviction as a pedophile, and for good reason.

Anyone who watched the disturbing three day interview with a British journalist who spent eight months with Jackson almost a decade ago where he explained his love for sleeping with little boys, must feel disgusted at the non-stop coverage today of this disturbed fifty-year old ex-star.

During that 2003 BBC interview by Martin Bashir, it emerged that children still slept overnight at Jackson's house, despite allegations of abuse, which the singer has always denied, which were made a decade earlier in 1993.

If that isn't enough, the baby dangling incident later with one of the babies he bought, should and did remove him from any rational fan's attention.

He's been secluded in Arab hideaways ever since.

Love his music, but distain the man.

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The Boston Globe's Business Realities Should be Totten's Focus

The Newspaper Guild president is not serving his members well
What anyone should know before commenting on this issue

by Lou Phelps

Dan Totten, Boston Newspaper Guild president at The Boston Globe, is not serving his members well. His letter to New York Times Co. chairman Arthur Sulzberger Jr. this week should serve to demonstrate to the newspaper's readers that this particular union's leadership is unwilling to publicly acknowledge the core issues of the business model of The Boston Globe, and the changing newspaper industry that The New York Times company must face.

New York Times Co. is publicly traded. Anyone can read the company's financial data.

The New York Times Co. is publicly traded. Anyone can read the company's financial data at www.sec.gov. Large companies operate with certain levels of borrowing. The New York Times Company is carrying $760 million in long-term debt, which is frankly not high compared to the debt of many other news companies.

Those loans require maintaining cash-to-debt ratios, and those ratios are getting tougher to adhere to. If you have $760 million in long-term debt, the banks want ratios today of 8 to 1, or even better. That would mean that The New York Times Co. must make $95 million in profit. Instead, it lost money in the first quarter of 2009.

In better times, banks were allowing newspaper companies to operate with 10 to 1 or even 11 to 1 cash-to-debt ratios, but those days are gone. And, running at low cash-to-debt ratios causes banks to increase interest rates on those loans...chewing up cash that could be used to pay for reporters.

Totten's Guild needs to stop its knee-jerk rhetoric about jobs and acknowledge that technology has provided a change in the required number of reporters needed.

More importantly, Totten's Guild needs to stop its knee-jerk rhetoric about jobs and acknowledge that technology has provided a change in the required number of reporters needed, and embrace the opportunities of "e-Journalism."

I define "e-Journalism" as the facilitation of access to our news sources we now have - the opportunities afforded us in the newsroom of hyper-connectivity through e-mail, cell phones and Blackberrys - to reach our news sources in record time.

No longer are we wandering through City Hall hoping to find a city councilor for a quote, or trying to catch a news source in the parking lot. Congressmen and their staffs are texting us their thoughts after a controversial vote from their Blackberrys, still sitting in the session. All good journalists have the cell phone numbers of all their sources. We're gathering news at record speeds. A reporter can produce more stories per week than in the past.

Additionally, news is pushed out to us 24 hours a day by local police departments, school administrations, municipalities and the public, all of whom are feeding us news tips in unprecedented fashion. We're overwhelmed by incoming news, and the online news sources are literally endless.

The Web allows a journalist to do background research on a topic or individual before they even talk to the interviewee, dramatically cutting down the news-gathering process and actually enhancing our ability to write better stories.

These are facts. And those facts mean that a daily newspaper can do a great job with less reporters.

For the Guild to ignore these realities and suggest that its members should not alter their pay scales as part of the new landscape of our industry, serves no one.

Newspaper editors who are embracing these opportunities through training of seasoned journalists and positive attitudes in the newsroom will help their companies survive. Those seasoned journalists, such as in the newsroom of The Boston Globe, are critical; they bring context about their communities and critical news sources to the reporting process. Hand-wringing about how management doesn't understand or care about quality journalism, achieves nothing.

Advertising and revenue models for our industry are changing. The New York Times Company's total revenues were down 28.9% in the first quarter 2009 versus in the same period of 2008. The NYT's or Boston Globe's advertising staffs are not failing to do their jobs; rather, technology is allowing national, regional and local businesses to have their own web sites and use various outbound e-marketing techniques to reach customers - and they have less need for print advertising. There is less advertising revenue coming in.

For the Guild to ignore these realities and suggest that its members should not alter their pay scales as part of the new landscape of our industry, serves no one.

Never has there been a more heightened level of news readership by the public, even by the youngest readers. Our industry has only to evolve our staffs to embrace and get excited about providing combined print, online and mobile delivery systems of the news.

And if a staff member won't evolve... they need to get out of the boat... so it can continue to float.

Editor's Note: Lou Phelps is the president of Phelps, Cutler & Associates, Savannah, GA., the former co-owner and co-publisher of The Mariner Newspapers on Boston's South Shore, the historic community newspaper group now owned by Gatehouse. In the 1990's Phelps, Cutler & Associates were media consultants to The Boston Globe, and she was on-site at The Globe the day the sale to The New York Times was announced.
   Ms. Phelps is Chair of the Finance Committee of the Board of Directors of KPC Media Group, Ft. Wayne, Indiana, and is also currently the publisher of Savannah Daily News and a group of niche, print publications in the Savannah, GA. metro area.

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Selectmen, spare that Spruce

                                  "We had to destroy the village in order to save it..." - Viet Nam, 1968.
                                  "We had to destroy the Herring Run in order to save it..." - Brewster, 2009.

In the latest move to screw up paradise, a bunch of "public servants" and small town pols want to cut down the magnificent old Christmas Tree at the Brewster Herring Run to pave the area over for a few more parking places for tourists. As insane as that sounds, there have been several meeting on the issue, generally ignoring the will of the voters. The brouhaha inspired this rewrite of a famous poem. wb.

Ode to a Brewster Spruce
(with apologies to Joyce Kilmer)

I think that I may never see,
A pavement lovely as a tree.

A tree whose sprucy peak is blest
With Christmas stars upon its crest.

A tree that looks "Cape Cod" all day,
And lifts its leafy arms to say;

"You'll pay a price to cut this tree,
This Herring Run belongs to me."

Parking lots are made by fools like thee,
Only Cape Cod could make this tree.

If you want to read the latest newspaper accord of the Brewster Selectmen's waffling on this issue, see this current article in The Cape Codder.

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We have met the enemy, and they are us

American auto industry suicide plan
Destroying two companies in order to "save them"

By Walter Brooks

U.S. President Barack Obama with members of his auto task force; Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, National Economic Council Chair Lawrence Summers, Office of Management and Budget Director Peter Orszag, Energy Secretary Steven Chu, Commerce Secretary Gary Locke, Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lisa Jackson and and special adviser to the Treasury Department Ron Bloom, Counselor to the Secretary of Treasury Gene Sperling, Department of Labor Senior Adviser Edward Montgomery,task force leader Steve Rattner and two fleas whose presence is explained below.

GM is mimicking Chrysler in obeying the Obama administration's auto task force, a majority of whom do not own cars and those who do, own foreign autos.

These savants have decided that imitating the Japanese auto dealership model in America is the way to salvation for GM and Chrysler, and they hold their decision like a sword of Damocles over those seeking further bail-out funds paid by American taxpayers.

Essentially these government wizards have ordained that by GM and Chrysler drastically reducing the number of sales people selling cars,  they will sell more of them, perhaps assisted by the tooth fairy and the Easter Bunny.

Cutting sales people is the last thing the Obama administration should propose doing. Massachusetts' 96 GM dealers operate 200 locations. Our state has a grand total of 460 new-vehicle dealerships for all brands. Collectively they employ 20,000 Bay Staters and account for about 20 percent of the retail economy in Massachusetts, according to the Mass. Auto Dealers group.

When business is down, a company needs more sales people, not less, but this is the typical bean-counter's response to the need to cut a budget, and it has destroyed thousands of businesses for decades. It will not destroy both GM and Chrysler.

No savings to auto makers but a huge losses to thousands of communities

Detroit auto makers charge hundreds of dollars each month for things like the signs in front of auto dealer's lots like these two at Stagg Auto Mall in Harwich which has already lost Chrysler and may lose GM.

A smaller dealer like Stagg Auto Mall in East Harwich routinely sends hundreds of thousands of dollars every year to GM and Chrysler. The Detroit auto makers charge local dealers a large monthly fee for everything from a rental charge for their corporate sign out front to hundreds of dollars each month for charges like being linked on their national website plus charges for every lead the website generates, plus online auditing charges, charges for being connected to the manufacturer for ordering parts, charges for operating the diagnostic equipment to say nothing of interest on every car on the floor plan.

In fact, auto makers like GM start getting money from dealers before each car leaves the factory and even charges dealers $2 to $5 for each brochures.

But auto manufacturers pay nothing to the local dealer, most of whom are major supporters of local charities, Little League, schools etc.

How in the name of common sense and Economics 101 can GM and Chrysler be better off without all this revenue flowing to Detroit every month?

From those wonderful folks who brought you Pearl Harbor

Such decisions can not help but remind us of every other imbecile decision our auto industry have made since the introduction of Japanese autos in America a half century ago.

The end of World War 2 found our car industry king of the hill, and they began their fifty years of shoving mediocre autos down our throats and wondering why more and more Americans bought foreign cars instead of theirs.

First Detroit employed a technique named "Planned Obsolescence" which built cars designed to fall apart in a few years to force you customers to buy another car, and ask your father about Ralph Nader's book "Unsafe at any speed" in the 1960s to get a real chill.

While Detroit was doing everything wrong, the Japanese recovered from a ruined economy after WW2 and began building cars which were better, cheaper and got better gas mileage.

GM and Chrysler's problem is not too many dealers - it's too many cars which no one wants to buy.

More billions in taxpayer bail-outs won't change any of this.

This flea has six legs, but just wait.

The flea report

All this reminds me of the experiment of cutting the legs out a flea to determine it's agility and hearing.

The apocryphal story has it that a scientist placed a flea in front of a miniature  hurdle and made a loud noise by slapping the table behind the flea which promptly leaped over the hurdle.

He repeated the procedure each time pulling off one of the flea's six legs, and each time he slapped the table the fleas continued to jump over the hurdle until there was only one leg left, and the poor flea toppled over on its side.

This time when the scientist loudly slapped the table the flea didn't jump over the hurdle.

The scientist submitted his report which he claimed proved scientifically that if you remove five legs from a flea, the insect becomes deaf.

Almost as deaf as Mr. Obama's auto task force.

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Stop the Industrialization of Nantucket Sound

Start charging "User Fees" for all Commercial uses of local and state waters

This montage shows the major businesses already using Nantucket Sound to make money, you might say they have "industrialized" it. These are also ones which leave spent fuel, exhaust, garbage and sewage behind on these "pristine waters."

U.S. Government will charge Cape Wind - let's charge the others who use public water

By Walter Brooks

The Hookfishermen, Commercial fishermen, Charter boat captains, Hy-Line Ferry,  Steamship Authority and Hyannis Marine are the businesses which still object to the Cape Wind farm being placed in federal waters.

They called it "industrialization."

Since they all make their profit on their same waters, they must also then be willing to pay the local towns and state whose waters they ply in their commercial ventures the same reputed fees which Cape Wind will be paying the U.S. Government for the use of federal waters.

Something around 17% of their gross sales seems about right.

Or maybe they should stop kow-towing to pols who pay homage to Godfather Ted and welcome another commercial venture for Nantucket Sound, but one which will  launch the Renewable Energy Revolution right here on Cape Cod.

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The unSoundkeepers

If it looks like a fish, and swims like a fish, and smells like a fish...
It's probably an award which has not been scrutinized properly and Susan Nickerson will get a new fig leaf from it

Every nude needs a fig leaf.
Susan Nickerson's is a tad different.

By Walter Brooks

The Waterkeeper Alliance worked hard for its reputation. It was held in esteem elsewhere in America and in many countries beyond our own for its grassroots level work to protect the earth's water and environment.

Then along came Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Susan Nickerson to sully its name not once, but twice.

MS. Nickerson left the Association to Protect Cape Cod with a fine personal reputation as an environmentalist to work for a man whose company is one of the largest privately held coal and Petroleum Coke suppliers in America. Petroleum coke is high in sulfur and low in volatile content which poses environmental and technical problems with its combustion.

Oxbow Energy Chairman Bill Koch is the co-chairman of The Alliance to Protect Nantucket Sound where MS. Nickerson worked to stop America's first offshore wind farm, and she received over $100,000 a year to do that. The Alliance was founded by the late Doug Yearley who was chairman of Phelps-Dodge when the EPA named it as the No. 1 polluter in Arizona.

Was she gulled?

Was she duped? Was she "used" by the fossil fuel fat cats and waterfront homeowners who have raised over $20 million dollars to stop the renewable energy project which might interfere with their ocean view for the few weeks a year they spent here among us ordinary folk?

Probably, and maybe for a week or three.

But Susan Nickerson is a very savvy woman, heck her original relative in these parts "bought" Chatham from the Nauset Indians for an old rowboat. She certainly figured out pretty quickly what the Alliance was really about. It is an "environmental group" in the same manner that a fox is a chicken-protector.

The people's Governor stuck with friends like the Alliance's Susan Nickerson on Craigsville Beach to protest Cape Wind.

But she stayed on... at $100,000+ a year. She held rallies at the statehouse protesting the wind farm, she spoke at the many hearing in opposition, she welcomed Mitt Romney here to protest the wind farm on Craigsville Beach, and pretty soon many Cape Codders began to doubt her  sincerity. And this is the person Waterkeepers thought would make an appropriate Soundkeeper?

Vetting for Dummies

But the Waterkeeper Alliance didn't doubt anything about her or her masters. They bestowed their once-honored license as a Soundkeeper on her organization in 2005 by which time everyone else had figured out what the Alliance's mission really was.

Did the Waterkeeper Alliance examine the credentials of the Alliance? Several calls to the Waterkeeper headquarters with that question have gone unanswered.

Because of Robert Kennedy Jr.'s position on its board, and his well publicized opposition to Cape Wind, the less naive among us understand how these things work. RFK, Jr. is a name which helps raise donations for a non-profit like Waterkeepers, and RFK, Jr. wants his board to give a license to his friends at the Alliance.

Do you doubt for a minute that something like that happened in 2005? And when Susan Nickerson decided to jump ship in January, this time to a commercial group to whom over-fishing is probably as crazy a claim as global warming.

The cover-up is always worse than the crime

I spent a large part of today trying to get someone at the Waterkeeper Alliance to answer a few simple questions. I was lectured by a Riverkeeper who is a board member about my responsibility as a journalist to not harm this group's reputation.

I tried to suggest to him that as a board member it should be his concern rather than mine to find out how their license is awarded when it is done in this tawdry a manner.

So doesn't it stretch your credulity that the Waterkeepers examined the Cape Cod Commercial Fishermen's Association any better than they did the Alliance's four years ago before handing over their license, and along with it, their reputation?

There are, after all, several more appropriate candidates for the Waterkeeper license here on Cape Cod, including one in the adjacent water which is already a Waterkeeper - the Coalition for Buzzards Bay whose credentials are impeccable.

See the precious story here.

Want to bet they weren't even asked to extend their Soundkeeper-hood to the other side of the Elisabeth Islands, or does the Waterkeeper board really think that the water in Nantucket Sound isn't the same water in Buzzards Bay? Want to bet they never considered MS. Nickerson's old group the APCC, or the 11,300 member Clean Power Now organization which has fought for years to clean our environment?

MS. Nickerson needs more than a new fig leaf to cover her ravished résumé.

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A ray of recession relief arriving shortly

Thank God for Tourism
A ray of recession relief arriving shortly

By Walter Brooks

Remember when you used to complain about the tourist season on Cape Cod. You remember, all those wealthy New Yorkers flashing their Gold American Express cards and how they crowded you out of your favorite restaurants and shops.

Well, I bet not nearly as many "washashores" will complain this season as suddenly money starts flowing again on Olde Cape Cod.

We were all tourists here once

Most of us forget that "we were all tourists here once", and the minute we moved here year round we began being annoyed at the visitors who came after us.

But there is nothing like a "Great Recession" to cure most of that hypocrisy.

What we KNOW about tourism benefits to Cape Cod

For over two decades our own vacation magazine, Best Read Guide, has researched the spending habits of our summer visitors who read this popular magazine, so popular it has spawned dozens more across America.

Tourism is responsible for a large majority of all the money spent on Cape Cod each year, and think about these dozen points too:

1. The average tourist spends in one day what the average Cape resident spends in a week. Our research indicates the median spent per day is well over $200 vs. the $11 each day spent by Cape residents.
   
2. Tourists eat out every meal while residents eat out once a week. If you are a restaurant owner, that a twenty-one meals bought vs. one.
3. Tourism employs thousands of Cape Codders. Probably you have relatives either working in the hospitality industry or in a business affected by tourism. After Labor Day they go home having left piles of money, and the don't affect of school and other municipal budgets negatively.
   
4. The money tourists spend in our businesses enable the local owners and employees to have money to spend in the Off Season for home improvements, college education for their kids, etc.
   
5. One out of four American leisure travelers believe a vacation is a birthright.  That's way they will come here during a recession as they always have before. The median income of our visitors is over $55,000 while the median income of a resident is $25,318 according to the U.S. Census.
   
6. Recessions always help domestic destinations like Cape Cod. Many vacationers decide to save by not flying overseas, and luckily the Cape is within a day's drive of over a quarter of the U.S. population.
   
7. Tourism brings in outside dollars to support community facilities and services that otherwise might not be developed.
   
8. Tourism encourages civic involvement and pride and provides cultural exchange between hosts and guests.  Without tourism here there would be less than half of the restaurants choices you now have.
   
9. Tourism encourages the preservation and celebration of local festivals and cultural events. It's not a coincidence that all our festivals are scheduled during the tourist season - that's when the money crowd is here.
   
10. Facilities and infrastructure developed for tourism can also benefit residents. Think back when you were last on a vacation off Cape. You probably were looking for some entertainment to visit every night while here at home you go out at best once a week. When was the last time YOU visited a Cape Cod museum or theater?
    
11. Tourism helps diversify and stabilize the local economy with extra tax revenues each year through accommodation and restaurant taxes, airport taxes, sales taxes, beach and park entrance fees, employee income tax etc.
    
12. Tourism creates local jobs and business opportunities. These include those jobs directly related to tourism (hotel and tour services) and those that indirectly support tourism (such as food production and housing construction).

The multiplier effect:

Tourism not only creates jobs in the hospitality sector, it also encourages growth in the primary and secondary sectors of the Cape Cod economy. This is known as the multiplier effect which in its simplest form is how many times money spent by a tourist circulates through a country's economy.

Money spent in a hotel helps to create jobs directly in the hotel, but it also creates jobs indirectly elsewhere in the economy. The hotel, for example, has to buy food from local farmers, who may spend some of this money on fertilizer or clothes. The demand for local products increases as tourists often buy souvenirs, which increases secondary employment. Here are a few specific ways:

• Tourism brings new money into the economy.
  
• Tourist money is returned to the local economy as it is spent over and over again.
  
• Most financial experts claim each new tourist dollar is spend locally seven times before leaving Cape Cod.
  
• Tourism helps attract additional businesses and services to support the tourist industry.
  
• Tourism is labor-intensive.

So the next time you are inconvenienced by a visitors this summer, think about the jobs they help create and the direct benefits to you and every other taxpayer on Cape Cod.

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Incongruity lost on editors but not on readers

Commission fritters as world burns
Astonishing juxtaposition turns newspaper into an ironic board

By Walter Brooks

Apparently our local daily didn't notice a base contradiction in its two, top headlines on Monday.

If you appreciate irony, I suggest you plunk down 75 cents at the corner store and buy today's Cape Cod Times. If you're frugal, just look at the stack of newspapers at the store or the reproduction on the right.

On the left side of the front page is an article, actually the third article in four days, about new lengths the Cape Cod Commission is going through to mount legal challenges against Cape Wind and the State Agencies who had the audacity to approve Cape Wind permits. Today's headline is, "Wind farm key permit challenged, Commission says state siting board lacks authority to overturn denial".

OK, here's the ironic part.

The entire top of the same front page of today's Cape Cod Times, directly above the Cape Cod Commission story, is a picture of Boston Harbor with the headline in big bold black letters, "Warming could swamp Northeast, Study concludes sea level rise will be greatest and most dangerous here."

Will you, the Cape Cod taxpayer, allow the Cape Cod Commission to continue to spend your money, and their time and attention, fighting what would be the greatest local initiative to try to prevent the worst ravages of global warming? This happens to be the greatest threat to our natural environment here on Cape Cod, and our outdated and unnecessary CC Commission is being the problem, rather than the solution.

How much does Mr. Wodlinger bill the Commission, and ultimately us, for his services in this crusade?

Tilting at windmills is being paid for by taxpayers

The Cape Cod Commission seems to be sparing no expense to tilt at these windmills, and they are represented by Eric Wodlinger, a top shelf, top dollar, leading Boston law firm lawyer to devise creative legal strategies to put the Cape Cod Commission in the vanguard of the anti-Cape Wind fight. You have to devise creative legal strategies when your case is weak, which is what the Commission's case is.

But at what cost? How much does Mr. Wodlinger bill the Commission, and ultimately us, for his services in this crusade?

Global Warming May Spawn Floods of Beaches and Cities
Especially the coast of Cape Cod

Global warming may spawn more flooding at northeastern U.S. beaches and cities and disrupt the ski industry unless heat-trapping emissions are curbed, scientists said in a report.
   Boston and Atlantic City, New Jersey could experience the equivalent of a once-in-100-years flood as frequently as every year or two, according to the report by the Union of Concerned Scientists and a team of more than 50 researchers and economists. Only western Maine would retain a reliable ski season by the end of the century if emissions are at the higher end of the scientists' projections, the report said...
   Rising sea levels will probably lead to beach erosion and wetland loss, particularly along the coasts of Cape Cod... Bloomberg.

The Sound's two greatest threats: Global Warming and Cape Cod Commission

Getting back to the article on top of the Cape Cod Times front page today, I've heard scientists from Woods Hole to Provincetown say the greatest threat to Nantucket Sound is global warming and I believe them.

But I would put it another way. From the perspective of the citizen-taxpayers who live on this 70-mile sand spit the greatest threat is the rising waters of Nantucket Sound itself (and the bays) as they are poised to get a whole lot higher. The now dry lands the rising saltwater will cover represents the best beaches we have as well as the toniest oceanfront real estate.

The gist of today's article is that because of the effects of our pumping greenhouse gas emissions into the sky from our smokestacks and tailpipes, global warming will make our sea level rise 8 or so inches above the global average rise of 2 to 3 feet during this century.

Try this simple experiment yourself

Stand on your favorite Cape beach on the next nice day at high tide so that the furthest reach of the incoming waves are reaching your toes.

Now imagine you are also are holding a yardstick in your hand.

When scientists talk about sea level rising 2-3 feet they don't mean that water is reaching 3 feet behind where you are standing, they mean you should stand that yardstick straight up and that water is now at the top of it.

So look behind you and see how far back you have to go before the land is as high as the top of your yardstick; that will be the new high tide mark, on a calm day.

The beaches we save will be our own

"Building Cape Wind is like taking 175,000 cars off the road each year." - Ian Bowles

As our planet warms the ice in places like Greenland and Antarctica melt and the water molecules of the ocean also get a little bigger and take up more space, and here on the Cape the land is also gradually sinking so the true estimates are even higher for the "relative" sea level rise we will experience.

Many will be quick to say and I will agree with them, that this wind farm out in Nantucket Sound won't "solve" global warming. The answer is there is no one thing that will solve this problem.

The scientists around the world working on this problem, including those right here on Woods Hole, say that we need a planetary response, and that all regions of the world must change the way they use energy and rapidly reduce the amount of carbon we're putting into the air.

Let me put it another way, it isn't like you're sitting in a restaurant with a menu to pick the thing you can live with to confront this problem, rather, it's like maybe you can pick one thing you most don't want, but you then have to order everything else on the menu: conserve, be more efficient, and use as much clean renewable energy and as little coal and oil as possible.

Oh, and get moving on this in a big way, like yesterday.

Count ourselves lucky to see the wind turbines from some of our beaches. That sight will remind us that we are not powerless.

Massachusetts Energy and Environment Secretary Ian Bowles, who grew up on Cape Cod, says that building Cape Wind is like taking 175,000 cars off the road each year in reduced greenhouse gas emissions for our area.

I'd say that's a pretty good start. I think we're lucky that on a clear day we'll be able to see the wind turbines from some of our beaches. That sight will remind us that we are not powerless, that we can do things to help protect the beaches we're standing on from our ever expanding oceans, we can build clean energy and we can use that energy more efficiently and wisely.

Cape Wind is emerging strong from eight years of federal and state review and the project makes more sense now than ever. We can sure use the good paying jobs it and other clean energy projects will provide.

Instead of throwing good money after bad on expensive lawyers to fight against clean energy it's time for the Commission to help the Cape face up to its biggest challenge, getting washed away along with our beaches.

Do something today to stop the waste

Call or email the Cape Cod Commission and tell them to stop wasting your money and their time in a futile fight to stop what America needs to free us from dependence on imported oil. The number is (508) 362-3828, and the Executive Director's email is Paul Niedzwiecki, (pniedzwiecki@capecodcommission.org)

90 comments »

Get out of Afghanistan and Iraq right now

The headline on page 6 of today's New York times reads:
Afghan Supreme Court Backs (20 year) Prison Term for Blasphemy

By Walter Brooks

And that's the GOOD NEWS. The 24 year-old student was originally sentenced to death for downloading an article from the web. The article about the role of women in Islam.

Why in God's name are we sending American young men and women to die for these uncivilized beasts?

After seven years of American lives and money, Afghanistan is still the same primitive quagmire which defeated the might of the entire Soviet Russian Army a generation ago - and Russian is a neighboring country. Russian's entanglement there is credited with bringing down the Soviet Union, a fact which faces America today.

Have we learned nothing in 7 years of two failed wars & $3 trillion?

America's present economic collapse is a direct result of the THREE TRILLION spent on our two unnecessary foreign entanglements, and America will never recover until these trillions wasted in these two wars are brought home to solve our domestic problems.

George Santayana reminds us that “Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it,” as we are repeating Russian's failure today in Afghanistan.

A new book by Stiglitz and co-author Linda Bilmes, "The Three Trillion Dollar War" reinforces the cold hard facts that Americans face because of Bush's Iraq war. They estimate the true cost of the war to be at least $3 trillion, and this does not take into account interest paid on the debt to finance the war, costs for caring for veterans when they return home, or replacing the destroyed and degraded equipment caused by the war. Not to mention the cost of the promised reconstruction of Iraq which cannot begin until this war has ended!

The Times story continues,

The Supreme Court in Afghanistan has upheld a 20-year prison sentence for an Afghan university student journalist accused of blasphemy. The case has alarmed news media and rights organizations in the country and abroad.

The student's family and lawyers said Wednesday that they had learned only recently about the court decision, which was made in secret on Feb. 12, and they called the procedure illegal.

The student, Parwiz Kambakhsh, 24, from northern Afghanistan, was arrested in 2007 and sentenced to death for blasphemy after accusations that he had written and distributed an article about the role of women in Islam. Mr. Kambakhsh has denied having written the article and said he had downloaded it from the Internet. His family and lawyers say he has been denied a fair trial.

In 2008, an appeals court in Kabul commuted the death sentence to 20 years' imprisonment, a decision that was upheld by a tribunal of the Supreme Court last month...

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