One of the world’s leading global warming scientists, James Hansen of NASA, will give the keynote address in September at the 2008 Kansas Wind and Renewable Energy Conference in Topeka, sponsored by the Kansas Corporation Commission.
Hansen’s visit is especially timely: The Holcomb coal-plant debate revealed a broad swath of climate change denial among some of Kansas’ top lawmakers. Hansen’s speech will be a good chance for Kansans to hear the latest science on climate change from a top expert and learn why it requires urgent action, including the development of wind and renewables.
Meanwhile, NASA’s own internal watchdog group last week charged that Bush appointees in the agency’s press office used “inappropriate political interference†from 2004 to 2006 to suppress negative findings on global warming and restrict media access to top climate change sources, including Hansen.
A fascinating Huffington Post item on some of John McCain’s past statements on gun rights includes this from 2004, on Rep. Todd Tiahrt’s now-famous amendment to prohibit the public release of trace data on guns used in crimes: “This information is not top secret data that jeopardizes our national security, or hinders law enforcement,†McCain said. “We cannot have a government that operates in secret and refuses to release information that shows where criminals have obtained a gun. . . . This language is an embarrassment to law-abiding gun owners and is a slap in the face to law enforcement.â€
Meeting with Eagle editorial board members last week, Democratic challenger Jim Slattery signaled he won’t be going easy on Sen. Pat Roberts, R-Kan. The former 2nd District congressman sharply criticized most of Roberts’ record, suggesting that as chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Roberts “helped lead this country into a war†based on “flawed data.†Slattery, whose last campaign was his landslide loss to Bill Graves in the 1994 gubernatorial race, also takes issue with the Roberts campaign’s portrait of him in radio ads as “a Washington lobbyist . . . Gucci loafers and all.†The lobbyist part is true, though he’s lobbied mostly for Kansas companies, Slattery said. And he said he’s “never seen a pair of Gucci loafers,†though he wears cowboy boots sometimes. “Roberts was as confused in his intel on me as he was on the war,†Slattery said.
It was a fair guess that Gov. Kathleen Sebelius’ fight against a coal-fired plant expansion near Holcomb would not play well in western Kansans. A recent SurveyUSA poll left no doubt. In the poll, taken in mid-May just as she’d vetoed a third bill to allow the plants, her approval rating out west was 41 percent — a stunning 22 points lower than the month before, and similarly off her statewide approval rating last month of 62 percent. Maybe she should send flowers. Or jobs.
One of the world’s leading global warming scientists, James Hansen of NASA, will give the keynote address in September at the 2008 Kansas Wind and Renewable Energy Conference in Topeka, sponsored by the Kansas Corporation Commission.
