The Garden City Telegram
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Locals delve into global warming debate
Published 1/19/2008 in News : Area coverage
By GWEN TIETGEN
gtietgen@gctelegram.com
Garden City resident Bob Williams learned the magic of dirt from his dad, who was in the seed business.
His fascination now has evolved to include Earth science, the environment and now, researching hundreds of topics.
His latest obsession -- energy and global warming, in no small part because of the state's denial of Sunflower Electric Power Corp.'s permit request to build two 700-megawatt coal-fired power plants at its Holcomb station.
"I was very upset. I decided I was going to try to understand why. What the reason had been for this permit to be denied," Williams said. "It led me into primary source energy production, and I decided it was something to become impassioned about."
Rod Bremby, secretary for the Kansas Department of Health and Environment, rejected permits for the plants in October, citing an attorney general's opinion. The attorney general's opinion, issued in September, said he could deny the permit if a particular emission constitutes air pollution and presents a substantial endangerment to the health of persons or to the environment.
In a release, Bremby said, "I believe it would be irresponsible to ignore emerging information about the contribution of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases to climate change and the potential harm to our environment and health."
The denial now has given Kansas, especially the southwest corner, a personal stake in a national and international debate on energy, global warming and what the country is doing about both.
Those in Finney County might identify with Williams. The community speculated for about a decade about the Sunflower expansion, and its announcement in 2005 brought hope to an economy reeling since a Christmas 2000 fire put the county's second-largest employer at the time, ConAgra Beef Co., out of business.
Today, the ConAgra plant still sits empty.
Williams, 59, estimates he has spent 500 hours or more in the last six to eight months, or an average of about three to four hours a day, researching climate and energy issues.
Included in his information is the 109-page KDHE report detailing the project, its impact and comments from various organizations. He also has a spreadsheet of the about 640 coal plants in the United States and their emissions, eight of which are in Kansas. Of those Kansas coal plants, Sunflower's 360-megawatt Holcomb plant is the newest and cleanest, he notes.
But it doesn't take sifting through the 60 megabytes worth of Sunflower information on Williams' computer to know the debate on global warming is a controversial one.
Questions abound -- the most basic of which is whether man-made activity is contributing to global warming, or if it's natural. Answers also abound and vary wildly based on the potential bias of who is providing the information.
Some say global warming is the single greatest challenge of this century.
Others say it's the single greatest hoax.
Scientists still disagree.
The U.S. Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works issued a release Dec. 20, 2007, that said "more than 400 scientists from more than two dozen countries recently voiced objections to major aspects of the so-called 'consensus' on global warming. These scientists, many of whom are current and former participants in the UN IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change), criticized the climate claims made by the UN IPCC and former Vice President Al Gore."
The United Nations' IPCC, a scientific intergovernmental body, often is cited as the authority on climate change. The IPCC was established to provide the decision-makers and others interested in climate change with an objective source of information about climate change, according to the IPCC Web site.
But Williams didn't need a scientific intergovernmental body to come to his own conclusion.
"I believe there's a lot of overreaction," Williams said. "People have really stirred this debate up and been successful about promoting a certain point of view.
"The global warming issue is being treated as a catastrophic and eminent threat. You don't have to get very far into researching to find there are scientists out there that take a much more moderate viewpoint about it and the future of our planet."
Bob Kreutzer, who worked to promote the expansion as a part of Kansans for Affordable Energy, said he hasn't researched the issue, but the global warming debate reminds him of Michael Crichton's novel "State of Fear."
The book describes the theory that someone can take a particular piece of information and extend it anyway one wished to get a particular outcome, he said.
Kreutzer said the global warming debate seems to be "a combination of science and politics, and they make kind of strange bedfellows."
"There are large numbers of scientists on both sides of this discussion so it's far from consensus, so it has to be far from scientific fact," Kreutzer said.
He said he questions whether "mankind can reach up there and change the weather. Some say we've always had global warming and global cooling. We've always been in a pattern, and we may or may not understand what that pattern is."
Of the global warming debate and how Al Gore's movie, "An Inconvenient Truth," has played a part, Kreutzer said, "I think it has been the main impetus that moved this from a small voice into an international situation. The fact there can be awareness is good. The fact that you can take bits and pieces of information and create a whole new science and a whole new way is disturbing to me."
Williams said he believes there has to be some middle ground, and it's not going to come in the form of cutting off a reliable, affordable source of electricity in coal-burning power plants. One of his ideas is to create a reasonable regulation for carbon dioxide emissions and give existing coal plants a reasonable amount of time in which to comply.
"Man with ingenuity and an open mind can solve all the problems we've created," he said.
State Rep. Jeff Whitham, R-Garden City, said he has read a book on the issue of climate change, nearly a dozen articles as well as unverified reports on the Internet, trying to understand the various sides.
He said the issue boils down to, "do greenhouse gases cause global warming?"
"I don't think we know," Whitham said.
"To make the significant decision to build no more coal plants with no more proof than we have about the cause of global warming" seems off, he said.
"My concern as I look around and in trying to figure out what's occurring is Sunflower has to have additional power generation to meet the growing demand of businesses and residents in its service area," Whitham said.
He said that most agree that wind power will be part of an energy policy, but it's more expensive than coal-generated power and electric rates should be kept in check.
To reasonably meet the country's energy demands, Kreutzer said, all forms need to be included in the mix, from renewable energy in wind to coal, natural gas and nuclear power.
"I really believe we need to use all of those resources to optimize the impact on generating cost and availability," he said.
Sunflower spokesman Steve Miller said the cooperative is in the business of producing electricity, not debating climate change. He said Sunflower invested millions of dollars into the denied air permit and worked to meet or exceed all of the requirements and is going to implement the most affordable and reliable technology for its customers.
If the United States bans coal-fired plants, but still has 1/3 of all the world's coal, Miller suggests the coal would be mined and sent to countries like China, which has fewer controls on emissions.
"So we'll have all the pollution, and none of the jobs or the investment in the community. It doesn't make sense that that should be our policy choice," he said.
Meanwhile, Sunflower's $3.6 billion expansion project sits in the hands of the Kansas Supreme Court and perhaps, the Kansas Legislature, which is in the process of drafting bill language regarding the state's energy policy.
Spring is the soonest the Kansas Supreme Court is expected to take up Sunflower's case, Miller said.
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