Carbon emissions get around

Coalplantholcomb Rep. Jerry Moran, R-Hays, told a Salina crowd last week that he’s hearing plenty of reaction around the state to the Kansas Department of Health and Environment’s denial of permits for more coal-fired power plants near Holcomb. In western Kansas, he said, there is a “real sense of, ‘Why are people from somewhere else telling us what to do in our own backyard?’” The reason, at least in part, is that the what starts in western Kansas’ backyard won’t say there, including the proposed plants’ estimated 11 million tons of carbon dioxide a year.
Posted by Rhonda Holman

6 Comments

  1. Nathan
    Posted November 18, 2007 at 1:35 am | Permalink

    Rhonda,

    Do you even know what the total CO2 output from coal is in this country?

    It is around 2,000 million tons.

    all of a sudden 11 million isn’t that big of a number any more.

    Typical scare tactics.

  2. JWink
    Posted November 18, 2007 at 4:00 am | Permalink

    SORRY NATHAN … YOU ARE FORGETTING THE MASSIVE GULPING OF OUR RELATIVELY PURE UNDERGROUND OGALLALA AQUIFER WATER THAT IS ALREADY GOING ON.

    The underground aquifer water slowly moves southeastward deep under Kansas and should be retained as much as possible for human use by municipalities as clean drinking and bathing water. According to Kansas law, the water belongs to the PEOPLE … not to the industrialists, many from other states, who are demanding it.

    Our underground water is already being withdrawn at a high rate for non-human uses such as for ethanol production.

    So, which is it going to be, water for the people of Kansas … or water for power plants and ethanol plants?

    If its the latter, then the warning alarm should be sounded so Kansas citizens can escape before its too late. Let us know if Kansas is slated to become an industrial wasteland … a dry, dusty, dead wasteland .

    The only drinking water available will be recycled, regurgitated, surface water which will trickle through our surface riverways.

    Read government health reports describing chemical tests of the Arkansas River and to a lessor extent the Ninnescah rivers, the Chickaskia, the Rattlesnake, the Medicine River, and even the Kansas (Kaw) River and its tributaries in northern Kansas.

    Most of the southern Kansas rivers contain salt (NaCl) leeched up from the underground salt formations for which Hutchinson is known. They contain agricultural chemicals from farming operations. And effluent from thousands of sewage treatment plants across the state into our surface rivers sometimes treated only in a rudimentary way.

    Try bellying up to a Kansas bar and ordering a glass of cold raw untreated sewage effluent because that’s what you might get. Examine the foam on top … it might not be from the beer.

    The best source of water for human use in Kansas is our underground aquifers. Also a better future business use for this water might be for bottled water which is becoming highly profitable as we combat world-wide water shortages.

    ONCE THE POWER PLANT ATTACKS ARE REPELLED … AND THE ETHANOL PLANT ATTACKS ARE REPELLED … AND PUBLIC OPINION IN KANSAS IS TURNED TO FAVOR PROTECTION OF OUR PUBLICLY OWNED AQUIFER WATER … THEN AND ONLY THEN CAN A BETTER USE BE FOUND FOR KANSAS WATER.

    NATHAN, PLEASE THINK ABOUT IT FOR YOUR OWN GOOD.

  3. Doug
    Posted November 18, 2007 at 1:53 pm | Permalink

    You know, if you took the top 12 polluting coal plants in America they would rank #23 among the top polluting countries in the world. Right ahead of Turkey and right below Thailand.

  4. Catherine
    Posted November 18, 2007 at 9:01 pm | Permalink

    How about addressing how GW scientists have purposely minimized in their models all of the CO2 content coming from natural sources? I have worked with them and personally saw how they swiped some critical information away.

  5. cosmos
    Posted November 18, 2007 at 11:55 pm | Permalink

    Catherine,

    Please explain how what scientists do, or don’t do in climate MODELS, has caused Earth’s CO2 level to rise higher than it’s been in over 600,000 years.http://www.cmdl.noaa.gov/ccgg/insitu.html

    Please list the “natural sources” of CO2 (or failures of natural “sinks”) that caused that amazing rise. Repeat for methane. Repeat for HUMAN produced CFC’s, SF6, etc.

  6. swallow my nickel
    Posted November 19, 2007 at 6:49 am | Permalink

    Cosmos,How about proving that the CO2 levels are the highest in 600,000 years with direct measurements, instead of guestimates? You can’t even prove it for the last 100 years…