Page 14 THE VILLADOM TIMES II • November 14, 2012 Global warming opponents cite what is called the Oregon Petition in which 31,000 scientists signed a statement questioning global warming. Hockenberry cited information that many of the Oregon Petition signers had a mere bachelor’s degree. (A Ph.D. is generally considered entry-level for serious science.) Some of the sciences these petition signers had trained in included psychology and the social sciences, which have no direct application to climatology or meteorology. It must be added that those “sciences” that do not depend on statistics and peer review are heavily dependent on opinionated experts. The South is full of experts in the social sciences who refuse to believe the desire to abolish or retain slavery had anything to do with the Civil War. Some northern historians refuse to acknowledge that tariffs that made some northern industries rich and kept southern planters in debt were also a factor, though not to the degree that slavery was. The Confederate capture of Fort Pillow is still described as a massacre of black soldiers and their women and children, while testimony in federal courts shows that most casualties were black federal soldiers shot fighting against long odds or trying to escape and that women and children played little or no part in the casualties. The strong possibility of a war with Japan had been in the newspapers for five days before bombs fell on Pearl Harbor, and Honolulu had been fitted out with slit trenches and civilian air raid wardens, yet interviews constantly quote people who talk about how surprised they were. Sadly enough, the white civilians from Hawaii who told reporters they had seen six-foot “Prussian” pilots being marched through the streets of Honolulu with their hands up have vanished. We can have a great time chuckling and shaking our heads about how memory plays tricks where history is concerned, because history is about the past. Science is about what may happen in the future and we cannot afford to indulge in massacres of women and children that never took place or the capture of Prussian pilots who never existed. People who wanted to make things rough on the South after the war, against the advice of Abraham Lincoln, George McClellan, and Carl Schurz, needed those murdered women and children, and people who wanted to justify FDR’s flirtations with war in the Atlantic may have needed those six-foot Prussian pilots, but they never existed. Global warming exists, but some people need it not to. Hockenberry found that some of the “experts” he interviewed had worked to promote the idea that second-hand smoke was not dangerous. Take a moment to remember those days and who benefited. I lost my father, a favorite uncle, and a couple of good friends to cigarette smoke, and I remember. Some of the anti-global-warming money that followed the anti-second-hand smoke money can be traced back to the owners of coal mines and commercial logging companies. The gasoline companies that operate service stations have also been cited, but some of them pulled their funding of the anti-global warming campaign, either out of guilty consciences or because enough intelligent people drive cars to single out those petroleum companies that donate large amounts of money to morally reprehensible propaganda campaigns. The propagandists will have their own consciences to answer for, but apparently being able to fly to Paris on random weekends means more to them than the fact that Venice may soon be under water. The idea that they might have to answer to the electorate is a dream. No candidate of either party ever took on Big Tobacco, and no candidate of either party is likely to take on Big Coal, Big Lumber, or Big Petroleum. Hockenberry cited the sad case of Bob Inglis of North Carolina, a church-going Christian and a Republican who let it slip that he believed carbon emissions had something to do with global warming. Inglis lost the next primary 79-21 and is no longer in Congress. We could have used him there. Among real experts, the vote on the reality of carbon emissions as a factor in global warming is not 50-50, but 97-3 in favor of reality. However, you can fool some of the people all of the time and all of the people some of them time. If you want to become a multi-millionaire without inventing a computer language, those are not bad odds. My next SUV may be a gondola. This year marks only the second time in my life that Halloween had to be rescheduled -- and I had a really scary costume ready on Oct. 31! This is also the second time we have wasted half a paycheck on food that spoiled because we had no power to run the refrigerator and freezer. Way back in 2007, Newt Gingrich stated in public and on camera that global warming, once known as the greenhouse effect, was a serious problem and that carbon emissions had to be deal with by concerted government action. Yes, Virginia, Newt Gingrich said it, too! Nobody could have convinced me of it, but I saw the film clip on TV a couple of weeks ago. Cut to 2012. Global warming was scarcely mentioned by either the Republicans or the Democrats. During the intervening years, a group of talking heads, including a handful of maverick scientists and a far greater number of people posing as scientists, reportedly convinced almost half of the American public that global warming, if it exists at all, has nothing do to do with carbon emissions and that the whole thing is probably due to the same sort of natural climate changes that produced the Ice Ages. Since neither party can afford to throw away that many votes, global warning was not only pushed to the back burner, but somehow fell off the stove without making any noise when it hit the floor, as far as electable officials were concerned. Consider the last few weeks. Remember how New York City had to close down bridges and subways. People fought to get into the last train out of town, as if the Beast from 20,000 Fathoms had crawled up out of the Atlantic and was on his way to the Hudson for a drink of fresh water before lunch -- and the commuters knew they were that lunch. Remember how you worried if you would have enough gasoline to keep driving to work -- if your workplace even had power. We can do this every autumn if the climate changes brought on by excessive carbon emissions keep up. We did it last autumn. We may do it next autumn. We may do it every autumn. Halloween at any fixed date may be a thing of the past, but the horror remains. The fact that heavy snow fell while the trees were in heavy leaf on Oct. 29, 2011 accounted for last year’s week of power outages and outrages. This year, unseasonably warm air contributed to Hurricane Sandy - what has been called Frankenstorm – a great Halloween name if ever there was one. People who encounter comments about global warming or its alleged non-existence often hear that just as many scientists disagree with carbon emissions as a cause of global warming as those who agree with it. John Hockenberry, a responsible reporter working for the PBS show “Frontline,” ran these numbers past a few genuine scientists and found out that, according to a survey of the National Academy of Scientists, 97 percent of those who responded accept global warming due to carbon emissions as a reality, while three percent did not. People do not need to work for NASA to understand that 97 percent versus three percent is not exactly the same as half who agree and half who disagree. Has global warming throttled Halloween? Area With 72 percent of registered voters casting ballots, Midland Park residents overwhelmingly approved the continuation of the Open Space Trust Fund for another five years. In all 1523 voters cast yes votes, while 759 voted no. “The entire council and I are delighted with the positive vote to continue the Open Space Fund for our community. It will allow us to provide recreational and park facilities at better than reasonable cost savings through matching grants. We thank the citizens for taking the time and effort to vote,” commented Mayor Patrick “Bud” O’Hagan, pointing out that the approval will not result in an increase of taxes but rather is a continuation of the prior year at the same rate. The average borough home contributes $39.20 per year to the open space trust. Since 2002, the municipality has received more than $800,000 in grants from the Bergen County Open Space, Recreation, Conservation and Historic Preservation Trust Fund, matched with funds from the municipal trust fund. From the 2012 funds, the council has applied for a $75,000 Voters approve open space trust fund for another five-year period grant to refurbish the Dairy Street playground and make it handicapped accessible and ADA compliant. It will also be entirely fenced in for the children’s safety. The 2011 grant in the amount of $32,750 will be used this spring to provide lighting at Wortendyke Park so community groups can use the pavilion for picnics and other activities after dusk. Republicans outpolled Democrats in all the positions on the ballot, and both public questions were approved locally, as they were statewide. Councilmen Bernard Holst and Scott Pruiksma, who were unopposed, received 2021and 2005, respectively, to return for another three-year term. Holst, president of Horizon Pest Control in Midland Park, has been on the council for 15 years; Pruiksma, a landscape contractor, is a 10-year veteran. Considine, who ran for the final year of Mayor O’Hagan’s term, garnered 2034 votes. He is a retired IBM executive. Pride in village urged (continued from page 5) One man asked why children from unheated houses were sent back to school -- only to have some of the schools close due to PSE&G operations that shut one school and a number of houses off “for one hour” and left them without power for the remainder of the day. The council did not go into an explanation that the board of education and the municipal administration are separate entities, and the resident seemed to understand this, but said that the two administrations should cooperate better in emergencies. “PSE&G does not have one central accurate point of reference, neither have they made themselves available to us,” said Kleiman. The residents had no qualms about good work by Ridgewood employees, but said that living conditions inflicted by the utility company were unacceptable and some residents felt that the council needed to do more than simply provide communication. “There seem to be a lot of areas that go out all the time,” said resident Louis Lembo. “I think that PSE&G should identify those areas and eliminate the problem.”