Editorial: Tribune Thumbs

Published 3:15 pm Saturday, January 17, 2015

To Burger King and Jefferson Lines.

It’s important for Albert Lea — more of a crossroads community than most — to have a bus stop for long-distance travel. We were pleased to learn last week that Burger King agreed to be the bus stop for thumb.upJefferson Lines in the wake of Ole’s East Side Shell station no longer existing. Kudos to Burger King for stepping up to the plate and being part of the community. The Shell has become a Casey’s General Store, which doesn’t have bus stops at its stores, and that’s fine. The community is receptive to having a Casey’s, too, and people are eager to try their pizza after the store is remodeled this spring to have baking facilities. What’s important is that a solution was found. Bus tickets can be purchased at Burger King. And, of course, they sell fries with that.

 

To people who steal.

There have been a handful of police reports lately of people stealing things out of other people’s cars and trucks. A pistol was taken from a vehicle Wednesday. An ice auger was taken Thursday. A trailer was thumb.downstolen last week. So was a jacket and tool bags. A stolen vehicle was found Wednesday. And, of course, there are the regular number of break-ins.

Often, people take things when the vehicles are unlocked — so-called crimes of opportunity — but it should be noted that no matter how secure any of us try to be there will be times we forget or push the wrong button on the keychain or the kids left something out or life just comes at us. At some point, we all end up having to trust the basic goodness of others. Albert Lea is a rather safe place, right? So the victims in crimes of theft shouldn’t feel like they are the ones who were in the wrong, even if they left something unlocked. To be sure, the thieves are to blame in every theft crime.

Still, we encourage people to be mindful of crimes of opportunity. Lock it up. Lock it up. Lock it up.

 

To climate-change skeptics.

Let’s stop this silly debate. The globe is warming. The skeptics like to point to 1998, when a strong El Niño produced the warmest year of the 20th century. But now 1998 numbers are being surpassed every thumb.downfour or five years.

Scientists — in multiple reports from various agencies — reported Friday that 2014 was the hottest in the planet’s recorded history, surpassing 2010, according to a story in the Minneapolis Star Tribune. Sure, Minnesota suffered through a bitter winter, but extreme heat blanketed Alaska and much of the western United States last year. Temperature records were broken across Europe, and the ocean surfaces were warmer just about everywhere except close to Antarctica.

Get this. The report said that, among large inhabited land areas in 2014, only the eastern half of the United States had below-average temperatures, largely because it gets stuck in weather patterns as a result of warming in other places.

Too bad the planet wasn’t a bit more political in lobbying for its cause. If it could just heat up Washington, D.C., and much of the East Coast, more might be done to save it from greenhouse gases.