Category Archives: Opinion

By Don Corrigan (Webster-Kirkwood Times)

The Popular Culture Association slotted me for a talk on “Squirrels: Icons of the Midwest” a couple of weeks ago. On the way to give my talk in Ohio, I stopped at the Ark, the full-size model boat of old Noah, built by the Creation Museum and its founder Ken Ham.

Bill Nye the “Science Guy” says Ken Ham is all about fake science. Nye says dinos lived 65 million years ago and couldn’t have been on the Ark. Ham’s take on Genesis is that the Earth is only a few thousand years old and dinosaurs were human contemporaries. Ham has a few Scutosauruses on his big boat.

I didn’t go to the Ark for my science. And Ham’s lecture on Adam and Eve’s sin causing all the imperfections in the creation – he included gays and kids with Down syndrome – struck me as some kind of warped sci-fi nonsense.

I traveled to Ham’s theme park to get specs on building an Ark. We may need to build a few Arks as our seas rise. I know climate warming skeptics scoff about rising seas. As Noah told his wife, Naamah, while herding Scutosauruses onto his Ark, “scoffers will scoff.”

Continue reading →

Don Corrigan has an opinion on “The Wall.” No, not the wall proposed along the Mexico border, but a wall proposed in Illinois.

By Don Corrigan (Webster-Kirkwood Times)

It’s time to seize the day and build the wall. Not the wall that Mexico was supposed to pay for at our southern border, but a wall to stop invading Asian Carp from traveling up our Mississippi and Illinois rivers into the Great Lakes.

The multi-million dollar wall would be built underwater near Joliet, Illinois, to keep the Asian carp from swimming into Lake Michigan near Chicago. There are fears the invading carp would make a home in the Great Lakes, including that big lake they call Gitche Gumee.

Around these parts, I have seen Asian carp establish themselves in the lakes we call Simpson, Unger, Creve Coeur, as well as in the Meramec River. During our annual 500-year floods, I have seen hordes of Asian carp kissing the surface scum in the Meramec River tributaries at lovely Emmenegger Park.

Asian carp take over wherever they invade. It’s estimated that they now make up more than 60 percent of the fish bio-mass in the Illinois River. Scientists say if these voracious fish enter our Great Lakes, they could ruin prized fresh water angling and wipe out the region’s $7 billion fishing industry.

Continue reading →

By Don Corrigan

Gavin Schmidt of REAL CLIMATE continues to follow a disturbing warming trend in 2017.  He predicts 2017, which is now drawing to close, will be either the second or third warmest on record, behind the leader 2016.  Also, it will be the warmest ever for a year not under the influence of El Nino.  Schmidt has a very informative site
that provides a commentary on climate science by working scientists for the concerned public and working journalists.  REAL CLIMATE aims to provide a quick response to developing stories and provide the context sometimes missing in mainstream commentary. I like to go to Schmidt’s archives, such as July, when RealClimate posts this: 

Continue reading →

Don Corrigan serves up his weekly opinion about who deserves a dagger for being a foe to the environment and who deserves a daisy for being a friend of the environment.

This week: Daisies To Arlene Sandler: This Woman Has A Better Idea for Creve Coeur Lake Memorial Park – Daggers to Legacy Ice Foundation’s Indoor Hockey Facility’s Bad Idea for Creve Coeur Lake Nature Area

Continue reading →