LETTERS: Support university proposal for Memorial; Global warming is real; and more

Finest care available

I am writing to the citizens of Colorado Springs as well as the citizens of El Paso County and surrounding areas in support of University of Colorado Health’s proposal to lease operation of Memorial Health System. It is essential that the voting public approve this proposal and I entreat our mayor and City Council to move to a vote at the earliest opportunity.

I was employed at MHS for 24 years prior to moving north to the Fort Collins area and becoming an employee at Poudre Valley Hospital.  A number of press releases and news articles have detailed PVHS joint operating agreement signed this week with University of Colorado Hospital creating one of the largest health care organizations in the state University of Colorado Health — locally owned and operated.

I have found PVHS leadership outstanding. My last few years at Memorial, I and my staff as well as many of the employees were in limbo as the city debated Memorial’s future.  PVH leadership along with UCH leadership is exactly what MHS needs to move forward.  Strategic plan and visionary leadership are only part of the story — employee culture at PVH is outstanding. We are an organization that values patients and people first and foremost — something that is very much akin to my years at MHS. 

Make no mistake, I do not write this tome as an advocate for PVH-UCH or University of Colorado Health, but as a concerned former employee of MHS and citizen of Colorado Springs. I do not have the authority to speak for the organization which employs my services, and only speak as an individual citizen.

When MHS completes the lease agreement with University of Colorado Health, Colorado Springs citizens as well as the population of El Paso County and the surrounding areas will have access to the finest care available.  Opportunities abound to provide care to underserved communities in southern Colorado as a well.  Adding UCH’s proposal to develop a Medical School campus at UCCS, and the related research and educational opportunities that go along with it, great things are on the doorstep.

I encourage the City of Colorado Springs to move forward with the vote quickly, and encourage the citizens of the community to vote “yes” and get the ball rolling.

Timothy C. Ferguson

Windsor

Scientific work not junk science

Your recent editorial about climate change (“Warming hypothesis dies on the vine” Feb. 3) betrayed a stunning disregard for scientific evidence. The view that the earth is not warming is contradicted by almost every available scientific study. You correctly pointed out that the warming trend over the last 15 years has not been statistically significant, but neglected to mention that every one of those 15 years was among the hottest 16 years in the entire record of yearly temperatures (going back to 1880). According to the best scientific understanding, the decade that just ended was the hottest of the last thousand years, the preceding decade the second hottest. A recent study at the University of California, conducted by previously skeptical scientists and funded in part by the (politically conservative) Charles G. Koch Charitable Foundation, was undertaken with the expressed aim of assessing the concerns raised by climate skeptics about previous studies of global warming. The California investigators confirmed both the warming reported in the earlier studies and the quality of the earlier work.

Your editorial suggests that climate models have not accurately depicted recent climate trends. That is simply not true. Climate models that incorporate only natural forcing (solar output changes and volcanism) and not human forcing (greenhouse gas increases and anthropogenic aerosols) do not show the warming patterns that have occurred over the last century. When the human forcing is included, the models depict what has actually happened quite accurately.

The editorial cited a statement from “sixteen noteworthy scientists” questioning the need for reducing carbon emissions. It failed to mention that few of them are actually climate scientists. It is good that there are skeptics in the scientific and nonscientific communities. However, a few vocal skeptics should not cause us to ignore the overwhelming views of the community of scientists actually involved in climate research, or to brand a huge body of rigorously reviewed scientific work as questionable, even as “junk” science. Citizens and editorial writers may have strongly differing philosophical or political views concerning what should be done about climate change. However, to ignore, misrepresent, and denigrate a vast body of scientific research is both intellectually dishonest and a disservice to your readers.

Eric Leonard, Professor of Geology

Colorado College

Picking winners and losers

Out west here in Colorado, we value our independence. We don’t like the government excessively interfering in our lives or our businesses, and we believe in free enterprise. We want to let free-market forces determine business success, and not have the government picking winners and losers. We believe that the natural forces of supply and demand naturally control prices, and that’s good for us consumers.

Yet surprisingly, our state government is actively picking winners and losers in a key retail segment of our state’s economy. And even more surprisingly, many of our conservative El Paso county lawmakers have supported this intrusive government intervention. Our government is protecting liquor stores by restricting liquor sales to only such stores. And we consumers are being held captive by this liquor-store-lobby protection racket. As a consumer, I would like to have the convenience of buying my liquor at a grocery or convenience store, for example, but I’m told in Colorado I can’t do that.

Many other states protect consumer interests and allow free enterprise to work. In Michigan, Arizona, and in California, for example, you can simply buy your liquor while shopping for groceries. And the prices are usually attractive. In addition, I read in the newspapers that many of us would love to have Trader Joe’s expand into to Colorado. But Trader Joe’s sells liquor, and even has their own labels. So Colorado’s restrictions on liquor sales present a huge disincentive for Trader Joe’s to expand here.

Past legislative moves to eliminate this governmental restriction on consumers have been repeatedly beaten back by the liquor-store lobby. One of their arguments is based on the so-called need to protect small mom-and-pop liquor stores. But why do mom-and-pop liquor stores need to be subsidized and protected, at a cost to consumers, in the first place?

Furthermore, who is protecting us consumers who far outnumber mom-and-pop liquor-store owners? Let’s let free-market forces sort this out, not the government.

David Schmidt

Monument