Letter: Energy folly

Avarom, your points here are clearly red herrings. I have never said and am not going to say that we can just walk away from all of the coal plants that are out there and replace them with some solar panels and wind turbines. However, I HAVE said (and will continue to say) that existing older coal fired plants that are dirty need to be retired, newer cleaner plants need to be held accountable to their emissions at an even higher standard, and brand new plants need to have the previously externalized costs calculated back into their construction and operating expenses. When these things are done, it will result in more coal plants being replaced with investments in energy efficiency and true renewables, since you can retire old/avoid new, more expensive plants this way, gradually weaning the power grid from these centralized polluters. The goal of 50% renewable power from renewables by 2050 was proposed by the Dept. of Energy, and I think we can even surpass that goal by then.

June 18, 2013 at 6:39 p.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )

Letter: Energy folly

Fortunately, the tide is turning. Since the Beyond Coal campaign by the Sierra Club started in 2002, plans for 165 new coal plants have been scrapped and over 100 existing coal fired plants have been retired. If anything, the momentum has accelerated over the past 10 years, and hopefully we will be able to add the Holcomb Expansion project to that list of 165 scrapped plants:
http://www.sierraclub.org/designarchi...

June 18, 2013 at 4:26 p.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )

Letter: Energy folly

Coal is finally having its subsidies removed in the form of being responsible for the collateral damage it has always created through its dirty combustion process. It is now being held responsible for the mercury emissions along with the nitrous oxides, sulfur dioxides and other pollutants in much the same way as cigarettes were finally held responsible for their carcinogens. And while carbon dioxide emissions from coal do not have direct deleterious effects like other pollutants, they have overwhelmed the planet's natural rate of reabsorption of carbon from the atmosphere, raising the overall concentration to levels that have led to climate change, ocean acidification and sea level rise that indirectly affect humanity in ways that in the long range will be at least as deleterious as poisonous emissions, and is therefore going to be a regulated emission like other combustion products.

Giving coal a free ride on all of these emissions in the past has been a huge subsidy for coal, rather than an unfair burden now by making it responsible for its combustion products. And it turns out that building new wind turbines makes more economic sense than building a new coal fired plant when the playing field is leveled in this way.

June 18, 2013 at 6:24 a.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )

Letter: Energy folly

You found a 12 year old nitpicky article talking about the cost advantages of coal over wind? gimme a break--I guess you have to go back that far to find an article that shows that new investments in wind might not be cheaper than new investments in coal.

June 17, 2013 at 2:59 p.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )

Letter: Energy folly

Oh, you must be talking about his investments in coal trains, or in oil depletion allowances, or in tobacco, right? Since when did rich folks avoid subsidies, or more specifically, when did rich folks NOT receive subsidies?

June 16, 2013 at 1:22 p.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )

Letter: Energy folly

Oh, you must be talking about that head-in-the-clouds guy to our north, Warren Buffet, who just committed to spending 1.9 billion dollars of his Berkshire Hathaway controlled MidAmerican Energy funds on wind energy in Iowa, the largest investment in history for that state:
http://blogs.desmoinesregister.com/dm...

Or how a study of northeastern states concludes that doubling wind energy investments there will result in significant savings for customers vs. not investing in renewables:
http://cleanenergytransmission.org/up...

You need to stop spouting ideology and instead start looking at the financial advantages of increasing renewables in the portfolios of virtually every power utility in the country. New wind is already cheaper than new coal, and it works well with new gas powered electrical generation plants which can kick in when the winds die down.

Increasing renewables and energy efficiency have not been "goofy exaggerations" for a long while, streetman, so it's time you put your "politically incorrect" assumptions on the shelf and play a little catch-up on how it really does make economic and increasingly political sense to expand renewables and energy efficiency even in this gas and oil rich state of ours.

June 16, 2013 at 8:11 a.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )

Letter: Sacred wetlands

The wetlands have been there since the so-called Kansan ice age some 600,000 years ago, meaning that the "farmland" stage was a 75-100 year blip on the radar screen biologically and geologically speaking. If you can't see that, and the fact that it is home for literally thousands of species and performs a host of ecological services including filtering the water that flows through it for free, then you need to think about how narrow and limited your perspective is on this matter. Ask someone who works in the feedlots outside of Dodge City what that smell is and they'll reply without blinking an eye that that aroma is the fragrance of money. Biologically and ecologically speaking that aroma you catch drift of from the wetlands is the aroma of an increasingly healthy ecosystem that provides essential habitat for many migratory and permanent residents who have lived in this area far longer than you have.

June 16, 2013 at 7:12 a.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )

Letter: Sacred wetlands

Maybe you need to get out of your car, then. Here's a note from a birder who did that this month and found 48 species in the wetlands, and the next day someone else reported 63 species in the restoration wetlands on the west side of Louisiana St. I might add that this is the tip of the biological iceberg; the birds are there for a reason: food and habitat, both of which the wetlands (both of them) have in spades. These wetlands are known far and wide for being some of the richest biologically diverse pieces of landscape in the region. Here are the notes:

Yellow-breasted Chat - 1 doing very fragmented partial songs - on west trail northern end .

Olive-sided Flycatcher 1 - working low on the north side of trail on south or Wakarusa edge of BW - along trail 100 yards east of central canal

Willow Flycatcher - 1 singing in same spot as a week ago - on the east side of BW above the canal & 200 yards or so south of were the trail on the north side of the area turns south. Both times I observed this bird it was calling from

Alder Flycatcher - 2 singing in northwest side of same trail

Least Flycatcher - 1 calling same area as the Olive-sided but south side of trail

Eastern Wood Pewee - 1 calling on the Wakarusa

GC Flycatcher - 1 calling on the Wakarusa

Eastern Phoebe - 1

L1ttle Blue heron - 4- I believe two pair - central trail in Faul Blind area

Great Egret - 3 - could see In Restoration Area from west side trail

Wood Duck - 4

Blue Grosbeak - 1 - west edge-near south end of the trail just where the woods begin - out in the morning sun

Summer Tanager - 1 - call notes

Yellow-billed Cuckoo 3- 2 calling & pair came out into bright light together - above the river along road cuts south to river middle of the south trail

Bell's Vireo - 9 singers - saw one finally in the open

Orchard Oriole 3- saw a pair together on the north-side trail

Baltimore Oriole 1 - calling

Lots of Indigo Bunting and Common Yellowthroat song. Love the harsh, and emphatic sounds of the Bell's Vireos especially when the plentiful Dickcissels and Eastern Meadowlarks are singing nearby. An early summer Kansas symphony it is.

June 15, 2013 at 11:25 p.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )

Letter: Coin, quoin

Completely agree, tomato. This was a teachable moment and Steve educated us all with no ill intent implied and none should be taken.

June 14, 2013 at 10:38 a.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )

Letter: Sacred wetlands

How can you say that 75 years of farming cancels out the fact that those soils have been wetlands for 600,000 years? Why do you think that the new restoration efforts have been so successful to the west of Louisiana street despite it being farmed even longer than the Haskell Baker wetlands? It's because once a hydric soil, always a hydric soil.

June 13, 2013 at 12:27 a.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )