Letters to the editor for Dec. 2
‘Airport of the Future’ will displace, destroy
My home is near the center of the Thurston County “greenfield,” which is one of three sites selected by the Commercial Aviation Coordinating Commission (CACC) for potential recommendation as the location for Washington’s next commercial mega-airport.
Pro-airport legislators Sen. Karen Keiser, D-Des Moines, and Rep. Tom D, R-Moses Lake, have begun selling it as an environmentally friendly “Airport of the Future” to justify building it in an undeveloped rural area. Seattle news media have also portrayed our area as undeveloped by mainly showing images of it as a place of rustic farms with cute animals grazing in breezy fields.
Reality though is that the Thurston site is very much a developed area with interspersed, shrinking pockets of small farms and disappearing greenbelts. There may be an enduring rural identity here among some residents, but the U.S. Census Bureau estimates we have 26,216 people living in 10,195 housing units in neighborhoods entirely within or intersected by the site’s boundary. As part of this area, my neighborhood of Sunwood Lakes alone has nearly 400 homes and 1,000 residents of diverse backgrounds.
Building an airport here would displace thousands of homeowners and renters and continue the destruction of natural environments. Can the pro-airport boosters explain how this erasure of people, homes, and nature fit their happy narrative of the so-called airport of the future? Stop the airport.
Paul Karolczyk, Olympia
Sea level rise estimates are unrealistic
The sea level rise numbers of 32 to 68 inches in the next 80 years, according to the city’s Sea Level Rise Response Collaborative executive committee’s data, is wildly unrealistic.
No doubt this data comes from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) computer model SSP5-8.5 worst case scenario which virtually every climate scientist on both sides of the issue — including the climate modelers themselves — view as implausible. Even the mathematics behind the computer models are highly suspect as the formulas cannot be proven to contain the best estimators.
For that amount of sea rise to occur, the sea will have to rise 10mm every year during the next 80 years for 32 inches, or 21mm every year for 68 inches. That is three or seven times the current satellite measured 3mm per year and five or 10 times the historical 2mm tide gauge measurements going back to the 1700s.
A more realistic assessment would be combining the 8 inches of theoretical projected subsidence with a more plausible 9 inches of theoretical projected sea rise rendering 17-20 inches at most with constant monitoring to see if these numbers continue to remain plausible. Then design a modularly built system that can be installed incrementally for whatever the circumstances dictate.
Another way to look at this is to find out how high the resulting tsunami from the impending subduction earthquake off the Washington coast will be when it reaches Olympia and plan for that height, possibly mitigating both adverse scenarios.
Paul Fundingsland, Olympia
Truth is necessary
All sides can agree with Jay Ambrose that “there is more to life than fighting over politics.” Even so, it baffles me that he can call for “both sides” to moderate their election rigging attacks when only one side has spread lies about our election systems and the other side has defended the true fairness of our election systems.
For things to go back to normal, the election deniers need to apologize for their deceit, make amends, and quit lying about our elections. If that happens, then maybe we can all go back to normal political fighting, and live in a world where the truth in life is again embraced by both sides.
Rick Brandt-Kreutz, Olympia