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Instead of restarting San Onofre, let’s apply our energies to turning the Salton Sea into a solar farm — using money from the farm to rehabilitate the sea.

Ken Rollins


Human brain no accidental mutation

The human brain is one of the most astonishingly complex objects in the universe. Its average weight is about three pounds. It contains about 9 billion neurons (nerves) with 9 billion synapses (junctions between neurons).

“The cell is the basic structural and functional unit of all known living organisms. It is the smallest unit of life that is classified as a living thing” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cell_(biology)).

“Humans contain about 100 trillion (10 to the 14th power) cells.” Each cell and each organ works together in specifically complex ways to form what we are. I wonder if every cell can rejoice over what it was created to do.

Cellular function involves the formation of new protein molecules from amino acid building blocks based on information encoded in DNA/RNA, and the DNA in turn is formed from proteins (oxymoron?).

Different tissues in the body replace cells at different rates by self-replication from one to 10 years, and some tissues never replace cells (cerebral cortex). The skin is the largest organ in the body and is replaced constantly (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cell_(biology)#Self-replication).

Where does the information come from for this integrated, complex, functional structure? Evolution? Not in trillions of trillions of years of accidental mutations in that many universes.

Irvin Forbing



Those aren’t lies we keep hearing from President Obama and the Democrats, we’re just living in George Orwell’s world of doublespeak, where language is distorted for political purposes, where “slavery is freedom and ignorance is strength,” where people are brainwashed into believing that Obama is tirelessly working to create jobs and his Marxist policies won’t cost a “single dime” or that “we don’t have a spending problem.”

For example, Obama claims he’s created 6 million jobs, yet the unemployment rate is higher now than it was four years ago. ... To Obama, a job means anyone receiving food stamps, welfare or unemployment benefits. This pathetic double-think was reinforced by Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), who claims the best way to create jobs and reduce the deficit is achieved by expanding government welfare programs such as food stamps and unemployment benefits.

Obama excels at doublespeak by distorting and obfuscating reality. He’s good at building straw man arguments where he argues both sides of the debate, but never makes a decision, thereby avoiding accountability. He doesn’t govern, but constantly campaigns against his own failed collectivist programs by blaming everyone but himself for his blunders — all because the obedient “media” gives him a pass.

Darrell Beck


Well-intentioned, but misguided letter

Douglas Hansen (“Fight and defeat climate change,” Feb. 22) calls for a carbon tax as part of a solution that would “defeat” climate change.

While I applaud his intentions, he’s wrong about that — the battle against carbon emissions is lost. On the same day as Mr. Hansen’s letter, the U-T published an article with the grim news: “The International Energy Agency’s latest report forecasts that coal will become the world’s dominant fuel, with global burning of the fossil fuel rising by 1.2 billion tons over the next four years. That’s the equivalent of adding the existing coal consumption of the U.S. and Russia combined” (“U.S. coal use down, thriving elsewhere,” Feb. 22).

Other countries, especially China, have simply increased their use of fossil fuels as our emissions have gone down. U.S. exports to Europe went up 26 percent in 2012. A carbon tax won’t do anything to solve that problem. The only (possible) solution to the climate problem is geoengineering, whose details are too technical to discuss. ...

Jack Davis


It is our land

I agree with Thomas Calabrese’s letter, “The price of gas,” Feb. 27. I would like to add the following point: The government leases federal land to oil companies. That land and the oil in it belongs to the American people, not to the government or the oil companies. Why is oil that is drilled on this federally owned land shipped overseas while Americans bear the brunt of high gasoline prices?

I know that oil companies spend their money for the drilling and they pay for the leases. Now it all comes back to the stupidity and corruption of the government. Sell the leases at a lower price with the stipulation that the oil stays in this country. If the oil companies want to ship gasoline overseas, then they need to buy their own land. The resources of the county belong to the American people. ...

It is not the responsibility of the American people to make sure that the oil companies get the highest price for their products. Why we don’t fully utilize natural gas is a subject that merits its own letter.

Maury Carpenter