Posted by mythoughts (anonymous) on February 21, 2008 at 3:59 p.m. (Suggest removal)

Aaaaaaaaaamen! Amen, amen, amen! How can a physican Charged with Protecting our Health be so blind. Wait, if more people start getting sick from the pollution, his practice will grow. Ah! It's a money-making scheme! How did Don Hill vote? I believe he supported it too--he'll be rolling in the prescription co-pay dough! Follow the money...

Posted by jayhawker (anonymous) on February 21, 2008 at 4:35 p.m. (Suggest removal)

Senator Barnett is correct. If we as a State practice policies that are more restrictive than any other, then we will lose the economic benefit that could have been ours but will go to another state. When that happens, that same electrical generating plant will still be built somewhere, where that (more enlightened) state will reap the taxes to pay for its schools and highways, the jobs for its workers and cheaper energy for its citizens. Lets all be honest with one another - the governor's administration made its decision to block this plant based purely upon politics and nothing else. Kansas is hurting badly for economic growth and to believe that our governor's actions were not politically motivated requires the willing suspension of disbelief. I don't think that Kansas should suffer because Kathleen sold her soul to Eastern liberals in order to be Vice President.

Posted by CAFEmporia (anonymous) on February 21, 2008 at 4:54 p.m. (Suggest removal)

At some point, someone must take the high ground and do the right thing. That is not being done and our future is a bit more dim than it might otherwise have been.

This is not a political issue. This is a scientific issue and the evidence is already in.

Global warming is real. We now it is being fed by the very pollutants which will be emitted by these plants in such large quantities. Those who voted for it have voted against the future of life on this planet and they have lost credibility and honor in doing so.

Posted by shoehorn (anonymous) on February 21, 2008 at 5:15 p.m. (Suggest removal)

The earth heats up, the earth cools down. It's been doing that for thousands of years. The co2 levels go up, the co2 levels go down. It's been doing that for thousands of years. The ocean levels go up, the ocean levels go down. It's been doing that for thousands of years. Yes, the earth is warming. Is it caused by mankinds activities? More and more scientific research is saying that it is not. Some of our attempts to "fix" the problem,such as biodiesel and ethanol, are putting worse pollutants into the air than coal and oil.

Posted by food4thought (anonymous) on February 21, 2008 at 5:17 p.m. (Suggest removal)

I would like to ask Senator Barnett what is happening with his medical practice? Lots of new faces and many of the staff that have been there several years are being laid off or fired. Is there a problem at IMA? This is being talked about quite often in the public and us patients are wondering like tyson and other businesses is this practice going down????

Posted by jayhawker (anonymous) on February 21, 2008 at 6:53 p.m. (Suggest removal)

Although I do not want to engage a back and forth, CAFEmporia, I wonder if you believe that, if the Governor prevails on this, the coal that would have been burned at Holcomb will not be burned? Do you believe that the same electrical generation plant will not be built in another state? Do you believe that another state's citizens will not receive the benefit of the economic benefit that could have been ours? That another state's citizens will not get cheaper energy that we could have had? In other words, as my dear departed Mother used to ask me when I would try to make a point for the point's sake, are you willing to cut off your nose to spite your face?

I do understand your points, which are valid if one is willing to overlook the natural order of the constantly evolving planet, going through its never ending cycle of heating and cooling. I admit, however, that if I felt as you do on the matter that I would not want this plant. My point remains, though, that it will be built somewhere, and we might as well get the benefit instead of someone else. Cutting off our nose may spite our face, but it will not, ultimately, stop this plant from construction in a nearby state. When that happens, we will have made a point, a point lost on all except ourselves and those among us who will have suffered because of it.

Posted by CAFEmporia (anonymous) on February 21, 2008 at 7:33 p.m. (Suggest removal)

jayhawker, you are right that, yes, I do sincerely believe that global warming is a danger to us and that our human input is making this instance of change different than the natural ones we know happened in the past. Change is happening faster than world wide changes happened before. I believe the evidence for it is there and human contribution is a proven. How it will turn out, we don't know, of course, but I do think that this has the potential to severely damage quality and quantity of life for all species and that we should take strong steps to back away from continuing in the same errant manner.

At some point there will be no more coal fired plants built. They are, truly, polluting. The best hope we've had to have clean coal burners is to pump the co2 deep into the earth where we hope it could be stored for eons, but the research on that hope has not been hopeful, if I may say it that way. It will be decades, it appears, before we find a fix.

On the other hand, there are some fairly promising methods of generating energy in other forms. Certainly, wind energy is one and western Kansas has plenty of "fuel" for it. There are newer methods of solar energy which are showing promise. One installation in Spain stores heated water underground so that electricity generation will continue 24 / 7. So far, it is a success. Hydrogen is yet another potential, though that probably would not be appropriate for the area.

So, yeah, you are probably right that someone is going to build another coal fired plant somewhere. As my mother said, just because someone else does wrong and seems to benefit from it, you should know better than that.

CAF

Posted by watcher (anonymous) on February 22, 2008 at 9:55 a.m. (Suggest removal)

What part of food4thought's comment has to do with this subject.What business is it of theirs, patient or not, how the physicians or managers of any business or practic run their businesses or manage their employees. Please lets stick to the subject and not use this as a forum to air grievances. This sounds like a disgruntled employee of family member that is trying to slander Senator Barnett's Medical Practice, which has nothing to do with his political views. I suggest removal of this type of trash.

Posted by wanderer (anonymous) on February 22, 2008 at 10:42 a.m. (Suggest removal)

"The earth heats up, the earth cools down. It has for thousands of years."

True as a starting point -- entire civilizations have risen or fallen because of cyclic climate shifts. But it doesn't mean we have no effect at all. If you leave a metal toy in the backyard, it naturally gets hotter on a warm day and colder on a chilly night. If you throw that same toy in the microwave, it will get a lot hotter than it naturally would have, and probably damage your microwave to boot.

Whether we're causing global warming or just accelerating it, I do think we're having an impact. The question now is, what can or should we do about it?

Posted by mythoughts (anonymous) on February 22, 2008 at 11:04 a.m. (Suggest removal)

Coal is non-renewable. Coal pollutes. Coal causes illness in animals and humans. Why is a doctor supporting coal? Feel free to provide proof to set me straight, but I have had the impression ever since he ran for Governonr that Sen. Barnett consistently puts politics ahead of his medical calling. I'm glad he's not my doctor.

Kansas has the opportunity and the renewable resources to be at the forefront of wind and solar energy. Why can't we be known for something good, for a change? I applaud Gov. Sebelius's stand on this.

Posted by sexingthecherry (anonymous) on February 22, 2008 at 12:06 p.m. (Suggest removal)

"...It's been doing that for thousands of years."

I would say it's been closer to 4.5 billion years, not so much "thousands." Also, while the climate is cyclical, human activity has increased the OVERALL temperature of those cycles. So yes, temp goes up and down, but overall, it's going up, and that's new.

"Yes, the earth is warming. Is it caused by mankinds activities?"

Well, no. I would say that it's caused by HUMANkind's activities.

"More and more scientific research is saying that it is not."

That's a myth. Show me one truly SCIENTIFIC study that refutes global warming, and I'll show you a pseudo-scientist with his/her pockets lined with oil money. No real scientist would say that global warming is not happening as the result of human activity.

"Some of our attempts to "fix" the problem,such as biodiesel and ethanol, are putting worse pollutants into the air than coal and oil."

Like what? This statement sounds fabricated. Biodiesel and ethanol are comparatively advantageous to any fossil fuel-based power supply we are using right now. Period.

Posted by CAFEmporia (anonymous) on February 22, 2008 at 12:33 p.m. (Suggest removal)

sexingthecherry: The statement about biodiesel and ethanol is true - it is contributing to global warming. All else you said so well, I agree with completely and thank you for speaking it.

The problem with biodiesel and ethanol is that it takes from the carbon cycle (plants and food waste) and converts it through heat, thus producing co2 along with other pollutants. Admittedly, many companies have made great strides in improving the process. Mercedes started making a diesel engine and emissions system which is surprisingly clean. I wish I could afford one. But that is not the whole problem. That part of the process is certainly better than using oil and related products.

Both biodiesel and ethanol also require agricultural input. The best pollutant cleansers are trees and the forests in which they live. Growing corn or switch grass or any of the other crops good for conversion is not nearly so good if only because the fields lie fallow part of the year. The result is enough to make ethanol possibly as bad or worse than oil.

What biodiesel and ethanol do very well, though, is to break us away from the actual oil cycle and strengthen our country by making us less dependent upon foreign sources of energy. Ultimately, though, and soon, we must find a replacement for those forms of energy, too.

We must break the carbon dependency.

Posted by shoehorn (anonymous) on February 22, 2008 at 5:26 p.m. (Suggest removal)

Dear sexingthecherry, if you are truly interested in information contrary to whatever your source of information promotes, here are a few links. The last link is also supported by the signatures of 19,000 plus scientists. Again, only if you are truly interested. Thank-you, shoehorn

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,2910... http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,2203... http://www.john-daly.com/sun-enso/sun-en... http://www.stsci.edu/stsci/meetings/lisa... http://www.oism.org/pproject/

Posted by sexingthecherry (anonymous) on February 22, 2008 at 9:49 p.m. (Suggest removal)

Yeah, that petition? It's a fraud.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oregon_Peti...

All real actual scientists agree that global warming is human-caused.

Also, you can check out this site:

http://environment.newscientist.com/chan...

...which extensively debunks the global warming myths you're endorsing.

Posted by CAFEmporia (anonymous) on February 22, 2008 at 10:32 p.m. (Suggest removal)

I agree with cherry on this. Global warming is for sure happening and human activity is driving it.

The scientific community is in agreement - though there are dissenters, as there will be for any assertion. Now, it becomes a political problem because curing it must involve the governments of the world.

As we can see here in Kansas, that is not an encouraging development.

Posted by shoehorn (anonymous) on February 22, 2008 at 11:45 p.m. (Suggest removal)

"The scientific community is in agreement - though there are dissenters" can anyone say oxymoron?

Posted by sexingthecherry (anonymous) on February 23, 2008 at 10:08 a.m. (Suggest removal)

No, it's not an oxymoron.

Again, you need to understand how the scientific community works. As a whole, science agrees that global warming is human-caused. However, you will never ever get an unanimous opinion on just about anything, really. Yes, some people dissent, but in almost every instance, they are funded by Exxon or Halliburton or censored by the current administration, or they're of the crazy evangelical stripe (read: pseudo-scientists with an agenda).

Why would any scientific professional want to stay in Kansas when there's such obvious public disdain for the sciences?

Posted by CAFEmporia (anonymous) on February 23, 2008 at 12:36 p.m. (Suggest removal)

As cherry implies, the scientific community works by consensus, and dissension is part of that process. One problem is, anyone can be a scientist by simply saying, "Whoa, dude! I'm a scientist!" Getting an opinion accepted requires actual work, peer review, more work, more peer review, and finally acceptance if the work is good. However, in the non-scientist lay community (all of us, for instance), such credentials are unnecessary for many people because they do not understand that process of review, experiment, and proof. If the pseudo-scientist says what the listener wants to hear, they are often given credibility.

I don't think my statement was an oxymoron. Dissension at the small scale it exists on this question does not decrease the validity of the consensus reached within the world scientific community. My statement only acknowledged that there are some people with other opinions. And, yes, most of those people benefit financially by taking the positions they do - which is not true for the big majority of other scientists who support the global warming explanations of human causation.

If the data for 2007 is part of a trend and not a blip on the chart, global warming is much more progressed and serious than we believed even a year ago. At some point in this process, we hit a tipping point where the trend cannot be easily reversed and warming could potentially progress for an epoch.

We fail to comprehend how fragile is this Earth upon which we live.

I used to have a large fish tank which served the purpose of making me acutely aware of the dangers of a closed environment. The healthier and larger my fish got, the more often they approached extinction by messing up their world. I had to empty their tank and clean it more and more often until I needed to move and gave the tank away.

It works that way on planets, too, except nobody pulls us out and puts us in a nice water pitcher while they clean up our planet for us. On this world, we have to do that for ourselves and many of us just don't seem to comprehend the necessity.

Posted by shoehorn (anonymous) on February 23, 2008 at 1 p.m. (Suggest removal)

Real science is not concensus, it is the pursuit of the truth, and I really don't think that people with doctorates are going to be the ones running around saying "Whoa, dude! I'm a scientist!", as you put it.

Posted by sexingthecherry (anonymous) on February 23, 2008 at 1:27 p.m. (Suggest removal)

In science, the way we find the closet thing to truth that humans will ever know is by research-based consensus. It's NOT just scientists sitting around all agreeing on some arbitrary conclusion. Experiments are performed a hundred times over, all over the globe, to reach this consensus. These experiments, when scientific in nature, confirm evolution over and over again.

Posted by shoehorn (anonymous) on February 23, 2008 at 3:04 p.m. (Suggest removal)

You ARE kidding, right?! What experiments would those be? Another question, how is evolution relevant when the discussion is global warming? The point about experiments is my point, also. Imperical science is observable, measurable, and duplicatable. None of the computer models used for prediction work correctly until some fudge factor is introduced in order to "prove" the results. The same thing occured with the NASA data for the warmest years on record. The error was reported, the results were corrected, but did not recieve much media attention. The NASA fudge factor is used because many of the monitoring sites that were once in the middle of pasture land are now in the middle of asphalt and structures that absorb heat during the day, and release it at night. Surely you can understand how this would give totally inaccurate data. Another problem is the shuttering of 1000's of other reporting sights because of budget constraints. This will cause your data base to be flawed. What I find interesting is that when inaccurate, incomplete, unproven theory promotes your position, your trot it out as "fact". When something under the same circumstances contradicts your position, it is shouted down as "quack" science. Sounds more like opinion to me

Posted by CAFEmporia (anonymous) on February 23, 2008 at 4:03 p.m. (Suggest removal)

I feel a little shouted at right now, myself, shoehorn. It's ok. This is a conversation which can become emotive.

The problem with global warming and experimentation is, as you say, huge. Information is gathered in many, many different ways and, as you noted so correctly, some of it turns out to require a "fudge factor" to get any conclusion at all. That's not very good science, I agree., and I think most researchers try to avoid it. When it becomes known, news of the error is usually shouted to high heaven. That Time Magazine doesn't pick it up is unsurprising, but it is sure picked up in Nature and other professional publications.

Another way an "experiment" can be run is to create software programs which simulate the environment. That has huge problems, too, because the environment, itself, is huge. Worse, we don't know all of the contributing factors. Even so, such simulations are worth running and testing. Basically, a historical simulation is run with what data is known. The results are compared with what we know of that later time. This helps refine the software. Eventually, it gets run with modern data with future results provided.

When this kind of simulation was first done - years ago - nobody accepted the conclusions as correct. There was universal consensus that it was interesting bull. After thirty odd years of refining these simulations, adding factors, adding better and better data, the conclusions become more and more credible.

At this time, those conclusions are all in the red zone, as it were. Plus, the real data we measure daily around the world is exceeding the worst expectations of the simulations run even a year ago. Therefore, the scientific community arrived at a consensus - an agreement - that the data being used is sufficiently valid and the projections programs sufficiently sophisticated and correct to provide a decent enough concept of what the future holds to be confident of some guarded conclusions. See the UN reports delivered last year which included thousands of scientists around the world, all of them agreeing with the reports completely.

In addition to these scientists, almost all nations excepting the USA, China, and Russia, plus a few countries like Zimabwe, accept what all these scientists say is true.

There is so much emotional content in all this it is difficult to have a decent conversation about it, so I thank you for allowing it to happen so easily and in such a friendly manner. Speaking for myself, I hope that some of you will look into it more deeply, reflect upon the fragility of our home world, and think of the future we will leave to the young and unborn who will one day judge us.

Oh, yeah . . . I know a PhD at KU who says, "Whoa, dude," all the time. It drives me crazy when I'm around him except that, in his incredibly weird way, he is exceptionally intelligent.

Posted by shoehorn (anonymous) on February 23, 2008 at 4:44 p.m. (Suggest removal)

Fair enough, let us agree to disagree :) By the way, I don't read Time magazine, nor would I trust it to be a credible source of information on any topic. Not to be antagonistic, but the IPCC paper had to go through many phases of compromise to reach a "general consensus". In my view, it seems to me that something is either true, or not true. How do you negotiate truth?

Posted by olddog (anonymous) on February 23, 2008 at 4:45 p.m. (Suggest removal)

A couple of interesting links ----

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/natur...

Doomsday seed bank gears up for business
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21825614/

Posted by CAFEmporia (anonymous) on February 23, 2008 at 5:44 p.m. (Suggest removal)

shoehorn; boy, I wish I had an answer I liked to your last question. I like to believe there is an objective truth out there. But then someone wonders, about almost anything, "What is best for us?" Woo hoo. There is obviously no objective answer to what is best for everyone. We're all different. We all have different "bests". That's even true for more concrete, less individualized truths, I've found.

The thing about the IPCC reports that makes them so credible to me is the process used to come to agreement. Think about it. All these different people, all scientists, to be sure, but from different cultures, different national interests, different social backgrounds, different religions . . . and they reduced the things they agreed upon to that level and then published it in complete agreement.

We talk about how climate change can raise sea level. There is disagreement if that means half an inch or three feet. They ended up at the low end which was (what?) three or four inches? I don't recall, actually, because I know it is not a factual number. Most of those scientists think it is more rather than less but they recognized the importance of publishing something that told as much truth as possible. And then you have the people in, say, Portugal who say, "Three feet? No problem," while the people in Venice say, "Half an inch? The world is doomed!"

As Einstein tried to tell us, everything is relative.

Thanks for the links, olddog. I've been following that seed bank. It is one of the very cool things going on in this world. It is like an ultimate expression of hope. If everything goes down in the handbasket, when it comes back, the Norwegians will be ready to help make it whole again.

Posted by jayhawker (anonymous) on February 23, 2008 at 9:15 p.m. (Suggest removal)

May I have the final word? I somehow doubt that a little ole electrical generation plant in southwest Kansas will cause the world to end. On the other hand, I will state with absolute certainty that: 1) the plant will be built somewhere; 2) the coal that would have been burned in that plant will still be burned, and 3) some state other than ours will have better schools, highways, lower taxes, more employment and cheaper energy. I am afraid that in our great debate over unsettled science that we have accomplished nothing more than to hide our heads in the sand. That, my friends, is sad, even to the point of irresponsibility.

Posted by create (anonymous) on February 24, 2008 at 9:05 a.m. (Suggest removal)

Good words, Jayhawker. I can't help but remember all the opposition to Emporia getting a nuclear power plant. Now the tax base belongs to Burlington.

Posted by CAFEmporia (anonymous) on February 24, 2008 at 10:57 a.m. (Suggest removal)

I'm in favor of nuclear power. I'd like to see Burlington's expanded as was originally planned. Certainly, there are disposal and storage problems, but it buys us time, at least, and in terms of jobs, tax base, and up front pollution, it beats the heck out of coal.

And I don't think that having a lengthy discussion is the same as hiding in the sand or being irresponsible. Regardless which side you come down on, trying to understand the issue better is a good thing. I'm glad jayhawker has an opinion and can express it well even though I disagree completely. Compromise is the stuff of governance and we find what is tolerable by discussing the options. This one may have accomplished little to look at, but combined with all the hundreds of similar discussions going on across Kansas about the same thing, the decision about what to do and how to compromise is being made.

CAF