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LETTERS for February 12 issue

By Staff | Feb 12, 2015

Maui environmental groups must unite

The battle to save our environment, our children and ourselves from the toxic chemicals of Monsanto is not over! Powerful corporations and organizations that can contributed millions of dollars, in combined resources, to expensive attorneys, and lobbies are trying to legally invalidate the genetically modified organism (GMO) initiative.

You all need to likewise UNITE and combine your resources, with each other and also the leaders of all of Maui’s environmental organizations! Many of those leaders and founders do not even know each other, or never get together to plan strategies.

The founders and directors of Maui Tomorrow, Surfrider Foundation, Save Our Surf, The Green Party, Maui Peace Action, Save Honolua Coalition, Maui Surfing Association, whale and dolphin societies, organic farmer associations and the rest need to UNITE.

I have founded the Maui Alternative Council, and already Courtney Bruch, Nikhilananda, some of the SHAKA leaders, a Maui Tomorrow leader and others have joined it. We invite one of the rare environmental County Council members, Elle Cochran, to join too.

We need to have a meeting at least once a month and stay in close laptop and cell phone contact. Get ahold of me at sweglessteve@yahoo.com.

This message is not about whether the scientific studies will prove GMOs safe or not. It is about the right to know what’s in our food, just like the government demands that high fructose corn syrup, dairy or nondairy, gluten and other items people may be allergic to are in our food. It is also about PROVEN toxic chemicals used on foods by Monsanto.

We wish to end the verbal war among the people and politicians of Maui. Everyone has a right to know what they eat. If people want to eat GMOs and toxic chemicals, they have that right – just like I have the right to not eat these items.

STEVE OMAR

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Steward will be missed

To my close friend, Michael “Uncle Mikey” Steward.

It was only a few weeks prior to your passing that you fixed a leaky faucet at my house. Now, as foolish as this may seem, each time I go to turn on the faucet, heartfelt tears and memories fill my thoughts.

Memories of our surfing days at Mala; memories of your plantation home at Mala, where the welcome mat was always out, cold beers in the patio fridge, traditional Hawaiian music filled the atmosphere – a place where the meaning of true aloha was a way of life throughout the Steward ‘Ohana.

This morning, as we gave our final aloha beyond the reef at Mala, a rainbow crossed the skies. Tonight, as I write this note (again with tears), the full moon fills our Hawaiian skies. I look out over the Pailolo Channel, and I know Michael, you are now at peace, drifting with the currents into the North Pacific, a place where silence is complimented with the songs of whales.

Fair winds, my dear friend. Enjoy the ride.

I once read: “One does not need many friends. Just a few good ones.” You were the best.

RICHARD ROSHON, Lahaina

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Past global warming predictions hot air?

The Northeast could use some of that “hot air” from global warming predictions of the past to mitigate recent storms.

Here are a few of those predictions as cited in The New American, “Embarrassing Predictions,” Aug. 25, 2014. On June 30, 1989, the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) warned, “entire nations could be wiped off the face of the earth by rising sea levels if global warming is not reversed by the year 2000.” Crop failures and flooding “would create an exodus of (starving) ‘eco-refugees.’ ” The year 2000 came and went with no nations disappearing or with fleeing starving “eco-refugees.”

In 2005, the UNEP predicted some 50 million “climate refugees” fleeing the Caribbean and low-lying Pacific islands, along with coastal areas within five years; 2010 came and went without producing a single “climate refugee.”

The United States and China both have significant populations within these danger zones. Most of the identified areas, rather than decreasing in population because of the melting ice, actually increased in population.

Not to be outdone, a Pentagon Commission Report in 2003 envisioned “a post-apocalyptic world caused by global warming within a decade,” only to be proven wrong about everything.

By 2013, California was to be flooded with inland seas, parts of the Netherlands unlivable, polar ice all but gone in the summers, and surging temperatures. The environmentalist U.K. Observer followed with the prediction that: “Britain will be ‘Siberian’ in less than 20 years.”

Perhaps the most outlandish global warming alarmists’ prediction was that of the end of snow. Close behind the end of snow prediction was the end of ice for the Artic prediction made by former Vice President Al Gore and others in 2007-09.

Gore maintained that “the entire North Polarized cap will disappear in five years.” It didn’t! When that time came in 2013, ice coverage was actually 50 percent higher than the year before. In fact, dozens of global warmists, anxious to witness the prophecy fulfilled, boarded the flagship MV Akedemik Shokalskiy for the North Pole… and in route, were frozen in place by sea-ice. They had to be rescued by a helicopter, because ice cutters were unable to free the ship for two weeks. Actually, Europe’s Cryosat spacecraft measured ice volume in the summer of 2013 at 9,000 cubic kilometers – twice the thickness as reported in 2007 when Gore made his prediction. Obviously the North Pole was still deep in ice.

A similar case can be made for the South Pole: “Sea ice area in the south is now at the highest point since records began.”

The embarrassing predictions of the global warming crowd of the past do not give us confidence in their predictions of the future. In the last three months, new predictions have surfaced. The latest include: a prediction of a 50 percent increase in lightning strikes this century over the last… Global warming will threaten the survival of more than half of all species of birds in the United States and Canada by the turn of the century… and, the United Nations reported a historic rise in CO2 gases in 2013, which will inevitably force a warming of the climate. If such a rise has occurred, why is the Artic ice twice its 2007 thickness?

Global warmists simply move on to the next frightening prediction without explaining why those of the past did not pan out.

DR. HAROLD PEASE

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Soccer club thanks community supporters

Na Koa West Maui Soccer Club would like to send out a big mahalo to all those who supported our two recent fundraisers. With your support, you are helping our players travel to Oahu for the HYSA President’s Day Cup. For most of our players, this is their first off-island tournament experience.

I would also like to send a special mahalo to Lahaina Crossfit for hosting our movie night; to Arturo Diaz, Andy Diaz and the entire Diaz family for providing the food and support for the movie night; and to Deejay Ron, who donated his movie equipment.

Our club is blessed to have West Maui supporting us.

COACH DEIDRE RUIZ-ROCKETT, Na Koa West Maui Soccer Club