Bring Back Bob Beaver!

Back on December 10, 2009, the editorial board of the Newport Daily News decided to commemorate the 2009 Climate Change Summit in Copenhagen by inviting Robert A. Beaver, an amusingly-named right-wing conspiracy theorist, to pen a guest editorial explaining to their readers that there was no such thing as global warming, and that the whole thing was a hoax cooked up by a bunch of greedy climate scientists.

Well, you can imagine my astonishment when I opened up today's copy of the Daily Snooze to find an AP article titled "Coast Guard pushes to guard U.S. claims in remote Arctic sea" with the following opening graf:

The ice-choked reaches of the northern Arctic Ocean aren't widely perceived as an international shipping route. But global warming is bringing vast change, and Russia, for one, is making an aggressive push to establish top of the world sea lanes.

The gist of the article is that the Russians are taking advantage of receding Arctic sea ice to send cargo ships straight across the Arctic Ocean, and that the U.S. Coast Guard is gearing up to "secure U.S. claims and prepare for increased human activity." But what I want to know is, where is Bob Beaver?

I think that, in their quest for fairness and balance, and their desire to present all points of view, it is incumbent on the editors of the NDN to invite Bob Beaver back to their editorial page to explain to the paper's readers that, no, the Russians aren't really sending shipping across the Arctic Ocean, the Coast Guard isn't asking for more resources to deal with the increased activity, and that this is all just part of the hoax being perpetrated by those greedy scientists.

Bring back Bob Beaver!

Bees Aren't Just for Honey

Further update: "Rhode Island beekeepers have lost as many as 80 percent of their honeybees this season..." Most of our beekeepers have only a few hives. Larger keepers use theirs to pollinate orchards & farms (veggies & berries). Our two largest crops (ornamentals & sods) do not use pollination. The price of new bees for hives has gone up. "At Trail’s End Farm, in Richmond, Robar is about to build a bee barn where he can work through the winter to develop a new strain of honeybee that will thrive in New England’s climate and resist many of the illnesses and pests threatening bees." Honeybees are not native to America!

Update: some researchers are now linking the collapsing hives with cellphone use.
We need more research into cell phone usage & linkage with cancer. Some European nations prohibit use of these to children & teens. I see now that Disney is promoting the use of phones for young children. Many say that using your cell phone should always be done keeping it as far as possible from you (like using a headset or the speaker setting). It's also been linked in studies to lower sperm counts in males.

If bees were to disappear, man would only have a few years to live. — Albert Einstein

Honeybees are dying around the world and no one is exactly sure why. Beekeepers on the East Coast have seen 70% of their hives die while it's 60% on the West Coast. Some believe that it is a result of genetically engineered crops. Others that it's the result of a pesticide used to treat seeds.

Honeybees represent billions of dollars to the farm industry who use them for pollination.

I am wondering if any of the keepers locally have suffered any of these losses.