287(g) program

To the editor: According to a Times-News article, it seems new Sheriff Lowell Griffin has been considering ending the 287(g) cooperation with the federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement program. 287(g) was put in place when Sheriff Rick Davis was in office and has been successfully maintained under Sheriff Charles McDonald.

Henderson County is one of six 287(g) counties in North Carolina.

287(g) screens foreign-born people once they are arrested and jailed on a local criminal charge. They are then handed over to ICE only if they do not have the legal paperwork to be in this country so ICE can begin the deportation process immediately.

287(g) does not round up or go looking for individuals, as First Congregational's congregation says.

Terminating 287(g) would most likely mean a greater, not lesser, ICE presence. As in jurisdictions that do not cooperate with ICE, the agency has no choice but to target specific people on the streets that it otherwise would’ve taken into custody at the detention center.

Terminating 287(g) puts Henderson County on the road to become another failed sanctuary city that puts all of our residents at risk.


Jane Bilello, Hendersonville


Climate change

To the editor: Through droughts, double-digit heat, violent storms and tsunamis, the writer of a Dec. 3 letter has for years continued to insist there is no climate change, no global warming.

Perhaps the citizens in Austin, Texas, who suffered through 112-degree scorching heat this year, or the residents of Australia who endured 117 degrees, or the citizens of Europe who lost an estimated 20,000 people in the heat wave of 2003, or the town of Lynn Haven, Fla., which is no more, might not agree with him.

His argument that more people died from cold than heat is a false comparison. What difference does it make if more people died from cold than those who succumbed to heat? The people in both groups are still dead as a result of extreme temperatures.

Mankind is now pumping yearly 36 billion metric tons of heat-trapping CO2 into the atmosphere. The reason there are still skeptics to man-made global warming and elected leaders have left us leaderless is because CO2 is transparent and odorless. If CO2 was translucent and the world’s population could see it becoming denser and darker, I am convinced there would be far fewer climate change skeptics.


Eva L. Ritchey, Hendersonville


Junk science

To the editor: The Times-News’ Dec. 2 Point-Counterpoint articles and the climate letter assume “settled science” has proven that a CO2-driven climate catastrophe is a certainty and dialing back CO2 will prevent it.

Science, however, has not even successfully isolated CO2’s climate effect from countless other influences, let alone quantified it. Failed climate model predictions reflect that.

The need to justify ruinous CO2 abatement policies has resulted in using junk science to fill in the knowledge gaps. This includes the infamous hockey stick misrepresentation, alarming claims of ongoing sea level rises (actually 1-3 mm per year for 100-plus years), false claims of unprecedented weather extremes, falsified renewable energy costs and the fallacious 97 percent consensus. Result? A hoodwinked public.

As the letter states, 77 percent of the public believes CO2 is a pollutant. That reflects the effectiveness of alarmist propaganda, not knowledge. Unlike pollution, CO2 is essential to plant life. Additional CO2 not only promotes plant growth but increases drought resistance.

Junk climate science screams for public scrutiny before CO2 abatement policies make energy unaffordable. A balanced Point-Counterpoint on climate science would help. A nationwide climate science debate would help more. Climate truth has been suppressed for too long.


Anthony Jeric, Hendersonville