Isaac Laquedem

And a little more hot air about global warming

On August 11 I wrote that the link between greenhouse gas emissions (specifically the burning of coal and oil) and global warming was accepted science as far back as 1967, when the Encyclopaedia Britannica published an article to that effect.  What brought that to mind, though I didn't write about it, was a July 15 decision by the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, holding that the Environmental Protection Agency acted within its authority when in 2003 it rejected a petition asking that the EPA regulate carbon exhaust from new cars and trucks.  (I'm swiping my summary of the decision from a Los Angeles Times dispatch.)  The two judges who voted to uphold the EPA said that (in the Times's words) "EPA officials had correctly decided not to regulate carbon dioxide based on their interpretation of the evidence at the time, asserting that the link between industrial emissions of greenhouse gases and global warming had not been unequivocally proven."

The Times also noted that the EPA rejected the petition after its attorneys concluded that Congress had not intended to give the EPA the power to deal with climate change.  I don't know whether Congress intended to give the EPA the power to deal with global warming, but if anyone in the federal government has that power it's more likely the agency that has "Environmental Protection" in its name than it is anyone else.

Professor Young, who wrote the Encyclopaedia article, is likely long dead.  (It would be ironic if he's been cremated.)  But it's not likely that the article is the only thing he wrote on the subject; maybe the EPA would think differently if someone pointed out that the theory was already accepted science nearly 40 years ago.

Isaac's Niketown idea gets some attention

I was surprised and pleased that my thought about Nike and Cedar Hills picked up some attention.  First, a local radio program sent me an e-mail yesterday, inviting me to be on the air tomorrow to talk about my theory regarding Nike and Cedar Hills.  Though I declined, I'm flattered by the offer.  Second, I noticed a few hits coming from Nike itself, so maybe Mr. Knight's team is working on its legislative action plan for 2005.  And third, the Knower of All Things says he's thought of two or three other ways to incorporate Nike's campus into a city without Nike's consent.  (If I were Nike, that's the one that would worry me most.)

The lesson for Nike from all this?  It's one thing to ask the legislature to grant you a loophole or a little extra protection, but it's another and more dangerous thing to call a lot of attention to yourself when you do it, because you set yourself up as a target.  That motivates people to look for ways to get around your legislative protection, and makes it a lot harder for the legislature to grant you a favor the second time around.

Nike hasn't quite saved itself from incorporation

What is Niketown, U.S.A.?  It isn't Portland; the shoemaker hasn't been based there.  And it isn't Beaverton, despite appearances; Nike's campus is outside the city limits, and Nike lobbied the legislature heavily, and successfully, to prohibit Beaverton from annexing Nike's campus.  The measure, Senate Bill 887, prohibits Beaverton from annexing any unincorporated islands that its city limits surround.  It also prohibits any city, for the next 40 years or so, from annexing property that meets certain qualifications. 

What kind of qualifications?  Here's an example: industrial property of at least 150 acres, under single ownership, with no electors living there, and assessed at more than $12 million with private, on-site security services.  Here's another example: land within the Portland urban growth boundary of at least 14 acres on which an Oregon-based business has been operating for at least 40 years and which has at least 300 employees on the property.  The bill has two other similar exemptions.  It doesn't take much work to figure out that one is Nike, one is Tektronix, and one is Columbia Sportswear. 

Beaverton had talked about annexing Nike's campus, which would have increased Nike's property taxes by several hundred thousand dollars, and Nike went to the legislature for help.  And Nike won.

The problem, however, if you're Nike, is that Nike didn't think of everything.  Just to the east and north of Nike's campus is the neighborhood of Cedar Hills, with its fiercely active neighborhood association that has kept it out of Beaverton, and proudly unincorporated, since it was developed 50 years ago.  Beaverton would like to annex Cedar Hills, but Cedar Hills doesn't want in.  (And it hasn't had to run to the legislature for help, either.)

But suppose Cedar Hills wanted to incorporate as a separate city?  Senate Bill 887 doesn't protect Nike from becoming part of a new city -- and because no one lives on the Nike campus (otherwise Beaverton could annex it; see Senate Bill 887) Nike wouldn't get to vote on it.  The Cedar Hills homeowners could petition to hold an incorporation election, include Nike in the city's boundaries, and get (by my figuring) about 70% of the new city's tax revenues from Nike.  Wanna build a park?  Hold a bond election; if it passes, Nike pays 70%.  Wanna build a gym?  Hold a bond election; Nike pays 70%.  Wanna give economic incentives to Reebok?  Hold a bond election; Nike pays 70%.

Ordinarily big cities in the area don't like new small cities to incorporate near their borders.  Beaverton would have a right (if I recall correctly) to veto the incorporation of Cedar Hills, as it did the incorporation of Aloha some years ago.  But I'm guessing that the councilors of Beaverton just might be irritated enough with Nike to forget to object to the formation of the City of Cedar Hills -- or, as they might name it if they have the Laquedem sense of humor, Niketown.

Even 40 years ago, they knew that global warming was not just a lot of hot air

From secondhand reports I had long thought that President Bush does not believe that global warming is occurring.  I turned out to be wrong; apparently in 2001 he agreed that the earth is getting warmer and called for more research on the causes, saying that to limit emissions from American automobiles and factory smokestacks would devastate the economy.

That got me to wondering: when did the idea that greenhouse gases contribute to global warming move from theory to accepted fact?  After a little research I came across the following definitive statement, from Thomas F. Young, a professor of chemistry emeritus at the University of Chicago:

Carbon dioxide in the air reduces the loss of heat by infrared radiation from the earth.  The widespread burning of fossil fuels (e.g., coal and oil) increased the carbon dioxide content of the air by about 12% during the first half of the 20th century.  This, in turn, caused an increase in the average temperature of the earth of 1.1° C. during the same period.  It is estimated that all of the fossil fuels will be consumed in about 1,000 years, if the present rate of consumption is maintained.  It has been further estimated that this will cause the temperature of the earth to rise 7° to 14° C. (13° to 25° F.), giving most of the earth a tropical and semitropical climate by the end of the period.

Strong stuff, the more so since Professor Young wrote these words, not for use in the hurly-burly over global warming in the Reagan, Bush 41, and Bush 43 administrations, but for publication in the Encyclopaedia Britannica.  I found them in the Encyclopaedia's magisterial bicentennial edition -- which was published 38 years ago, in 1967.  I don't know how long before 1967 Professor Young (and his sources) came to that conclusion, but I'm willing to believe that global warming from the burning of fossil fuels has been accepted science since before President Bush entered college.

Dalton, Georgia de-Islamicizes

Many places claim to be the capital of some product.  For example, Fairview, Montana (which is also partly Fairview, North Dakota) claims to be the sugar beet capital of Montana and North Dakota.  Enshi, a city in central China, has been called the "selenium capital" though it's not clear whether that's of the province, the nation, or the world (page 4 of this pdf from the Selenium-Tellurium Development Association, a Belgian enterprise).

A business problem recalled to me that Dalton, Georgia, in Whitfield County near the northwest corner of the state, claims to be the carpet capital of the world, and rightly so. Whitfield County has more than 150 carpet factories and more than 1000 carpet outlet stores.  More than 30,000 people are employed in Whitfield County in making and selling carpets.  This is an astounding figure: the county has only 90,000 residents.  To put it on scale, it's as if more than 200,000 people in Multnomah County were employed in the same industry.

But as I read about Whitfield County, my eye was caught by a typo in the civic boosters' description of the carpet industry.  "Dalton," the site says, "is truly a mica for for the technology that keeps the carpet world moving ahead." 

Mica?  Not "Mecca"?  I can't decide if this is an inadvertent substitution of words -- maybe "mica" and "Mecca" sound the same in a deep Southern accent -- or if someone, intent on avoiding any reference to Arabic culture, substituted "mica" to avoid using "Mecca," along the lines of those who showed their displeasure with France by renaming their snack potatoes "freedom fries."  Portlanders haven't been immune from that sort of xenophobia; for example, during one of our two disagreements with Germany in the last century, NW Germantown Road was renamed "Liberty Road," but we haven't as a rule deliberately mangled the name of any place except California.

The neighborhood got more desirable once the Laquedems moved out

I learned that the house that I think of as my childhood home is on the market, and the owners are asking close to $3 million for it.  It wasn't a multi-million dollar home when the Laquedems lived there -- for one thing, the present owners have remodeled it to the point where I don't recognize it from the photographs on the agent's website -- and in fact the price the elder Laquedems paid for it is less than five months of house payments for the future buyer.

I'm not in the market to buy the house.  For one thing, it's far too big for the modest needs of the Laquedem family.  For another, the asking price is far beyond the Laquedem budget, and I dislike buying in the midst of speculative froth, which is where I think real estate is today.   But if rates go up and prices tumble, I wouldn't mind owning the house next door.

Can the City of Portland condemn PGE's power plants or not?

I've read for so many months that the City of Portland doesn't have the authority to condemn those facilities of Portland General Electric that are outside the city boundaries that I thought I should check the law out for myself.  The state has upgraded its website over the last year, www.oregon.gov, and has pushed the agencies to link to it in a standard format.  State laws are on line here.

A little searching brought me to some relevant laws, but along the way I passed through Oregon Revised Statutes (ORS) Chapter 221, and found ORS 221.420.  To my reading, ORS 221.420 gives cities, including the City of Portland, the power to regulate PGE's rates charged within the City.  If the City does not regulate rates then the state Public Utility Commission has the power to regulate the rates.

Has the City exercised this power recently, or has it abandoned the field to the PUC?  I haven't so far found out, but am looking into it.

I made it to ORS Chapter 223, and found ORS 223.005, which gives cities the general right to "appropriate [condemn] any real property, water, watercourse and water and riparian rights, including power sites, to any public or municipal use or for the general benefit and use of the people within or without the city, and to build dams, reservoirs and conduits for the purpose of storing and using water to aid in developing the necessary power to generate electricity for the use and benefit of the people within or without the city."  From the context I think the legislature had in mind cities building their own hydroelectric facilities, but this section isn't specifically limited to hydro plants.

I continued to Chapter 225, which at ORS 225.010 gives cities the right to "build, own, operate and maintain waterworks, water systems, railways and railroads, electric light and power plants, within and without its boundaries for the benefit and use of its inhabitants and for profit."  Section 2 authorizes cities to "bring actions for the condemnation or taking of private property for public use in the same manner as private corporations are now authorized or permitted by law to do."  And ORS 225.470 authorizes a city to cooperate with other cities, municipal corporations, and public utility districts to acquire power plants and other facilities.  The ringer is that ORS 225.480 prohibits a city that is exercising its powers under ORS 225.470 from condemning "any then existing thermal power plant or any part thereof."

A fair reading of ORS 225.480 is that it prohibits a city from condemning thermal power plants (but not hydroelectric or wind plants) if the city is cooperating with other governments or PUDs.  It doesn't prevent the city from condemning a thermal plant if it's acting alone.

Now, it's quite possible that I'm missing something, but if the City of Portland is believing that it doesn't have the power to condemn PGE's power plants then it might want to cruise through Oregon law one more time before giving up.

Owning a record player makes me cool

The Laquedemitasse loves gadgets, just as most young boys do.  A few days ago he noticed for the first time one of the gadgets in my lair.  This one has a hinged dust cover, a small chrome peg in the center, a handsome circular rubber mat around the peg, an orange stroboscopic light, and an assortment of switches with a certain high-tech appearance.

"What is this?"  he asked me.

"It's a record player," I replied.

"Is it new?" he said?

"Um, not exactly," I said.  (It's 30 years old, actually.)

"What does it do?"

"It plays music," I told him, and I picked a record and played it for him.  It was the 1954 recording of The Threepenny Opera, in English, with Lotte Lenya (widow of the composer, Kurt Weill) singing the female lead.  Bea Arthur and John Astin had smaller parts.  He watched transfixed as the needle touched the disc and music came from the speakers.  He could also hear the still, small sound coming from the needle itself as the groove of the record squeezed it.

Tonight he insisted that I play it again.  I'm not worried about whether the Laquedemitasse thinks that I am cool (or whatever today's slang equivalent may be), but I'm surprised that I've gained some degrees of coolness in his mind from playing a German musical on an obsolete piece of equipment.

If 40 is the new 30, then Jack Benny was right

Mrs. Laquedem noted yet another appearance in print of the statement "Forty is the new thirty," meaning perhaps that today at age 40 people take stock of themselves in much the way that in times past they did at age 30.  It also may mean that the 40-year-olds of today are about the same physical age as the 30-year-olds of times past. 

I don't buy the theory.  (Cf. the forthcoming book, Why Johnny and his Therapist Can't Count.)  Rather, it seem to me that most of us would like to think that we're really no older than we were 10 years ago: therefore 40 is the new 30, 50 is the new 40, 60 is the new 50 -- I suppose 100 is the new 90.

But what about on the other end?  If 40 is the new 30 then 20 should be the new 10.  But there, according to the popular press, it works backwards: children grow up faster than ever and are as knowledgeable at 10 as their grandparents were at 20.  So if children are growing up faster, and adults are aging slower, then somewhere in the middle must be an age at which adults go into a holding pattern.  I think it's in the late 30s, which means when Jack Benny claimed to be 39 for several decades, he was not just making a joke but was 30 years ahead of his time.

Why work for the CIA?

When I'm not "outing" CIA agents, I'm surfing the Company's website.  I enjoyed this page from the website of the Central Intelligence Agency.  It's directed at law students and points out the differences between life as a corporate attorney at a large law firm and life as an attorney for the CIA.  Two examples:

Them                                               Us

Paralegal support                              Paramilitary support
Work unappreciated by clients           Work unappreciated by targets