Rolland: Jim,
I know that you don't really care about the environment, but for those who do,
JK: Why do you keep making assumptions about me? I am mainly guilty of being realistic and not too fast to jump on doom and gloom panics. Please quit the unwarranted accusations.

As to your baseless accusation of my not caring about the environment, I plead guilty to believing that man has a place in the environment, in fact a major place. A balance, if you will - consider it like your belief in a balanced transportation system. I also, almost alone in Oregon, believe that trees re-grow! I also believe that our rivers should not be polluted. Apparently the main source of pollution now are the farms that were are allegedly protecting with Metros’ Portland Wall and runoff from the high density cities like Portland. As far as I know there is little runoff from most one acre home sites.

I definitely consider the CO2 scare greatly exaggerated, if CO2 even matters at all. Remember that H2O causes much more warming than CO2. So, can we postpone the global warming routine until the ice uncovers all of those Viking farms on Greenland.

BTW, did you see that little bookmark passed out at the city club’s global warming session Friday? See: www.paleolands.org/pdf/CLIMATECHANGEBOOKMRK-1.pdf It shows historical temperatures well over 10 degree C higher than today and CO2 over TEN times today. We are in a time of LOW CO2 and LOW temperatures by that chart. Why are you suggesting policies that will hurt people to cure what is probably a natural cycle of nature?

Rolland: I would like to point out that the oil sand deposits you speak about are really more of a tar-water-and-clay deposit and actually taking the oil out of the clay, tar, and sand is extremely energy intensive, polluting, and requires incredibly invasive mining procedures.

JK: As to the " incredibly invasive mining procedures” of the past. That is why we passed laws making mine owners leave a nice landscape behind after they are done. Yeah it looks bad while mining, but there is no reason leave anything less than pristine land after an area is mined.

Rolland: A lot of people find the preservation of our natural world an important goal and would be willing to invest in environmentally friendly energy sources
JK: Me too. Have you found any environmentally friendly energy sources that are practical for more than a few percent of our needs? Or do you think we should live on little energy line we did in 1920, with the accompanying poverty. The two DO go together - energy usage and a high standard of living. Again Portland’s liberals are dreaming of a life of poverty for many people, instead of trying to improve people’s lives.

When you hear those press releases touting how many megawatts a new wind farm makes, just remember that a modern steam or nuke plant is around a MILLION megawatts (that is a thousand times a thousand for the math impaired)

Rolland: to prevent the need to strip-mine ecologically sensitive areas.
JK: Have you seen pictures of a properly restored strip mine? If some have left anything other than a pristine landscape, then that is a reason to attack the legal system, not the mining technique.

Thanks
JK