The Kansas City Star’s Prime Buzz reported Friday on a poll done on 500 Registered “Likely” Voters regarding their attitudes toward building more coal fired power plants in southwest Kansas. The conclusion of the article…Kansans overwhelmingly oppose the expansion of coal power plants by more than 15%. Over 15%!!! Amazing!!! I had no idea that Kansans were so green! So I decided to follow the link at the bottom of the blog for a look at the actual poll results (pdf form or Powerpoint form.)
The first piece of data given by the poll (commissioned by Chesapeake Energy and conducted by The Tarrance Group), shows an overall preference for natural gas or wind energy to coal, 87% to 8%. Even with a margin of error of 4.5%, the fact can not be denied…coal is NOT what citizens want…unless your like me and immediately wondered why wind and natural gas were combined into one option rather than being two separate choices. Hummm, more on that later…
The next question…
“Have you recently seen, read or heard anything about Sunflower Electric’s proposal to construct two coal-fired power plants near Holcomb that will total 1,400 mega watts of power and will cost ratepayers 3.5 billion dollars?”
Oh my! $3.5 billion! What an astronomical cost!
But I didn’t see anything about this question’s results in the Star’s blog? Maybe it’s because a full 51% had heard NOTHING AT ALL about the proposal and another 6% were UNSURE. (Now, how you can be unsure if you’ve read or heard something is beyond me…but let it suffice to say that if you can’t remember, it’s as good as saying you know nothing.)
At this point, I hope you, like myself, are curious as to why the cost to ratepayers is included in the question. It seems the cost would have no effect as to whether or not you’re an informed voter.
In any case, on to the next question…
“How much would you say you have heard about Sunflower Electric’s proposal to construct two coal-fired power plants near Holcomb that will total 1,400 mega watts of power and will cost ratepayers 3.5 billion dollars?”
Ahhhh, now we’ll see just how informed the other 43% are that heard ‘something’ about the proposal in the first place.
Unfortunately, the numbers don’t look good. Only 17% or the original 43% have heard a ‘great deal’ about the new plants and only an additional 42% of the 43% have heard ‘some.’ That accounts for only 25% of the total 500 people surveyed that have heard ‘something’ about the new plants. I think I’m beginning to see a trend here…
Onward we go…
“Based on what you know about plans to construct additional coal-fired power plants in Kansas, would you say you favor or oppose building two new coal-fired power plants near Holcomb?”
Let’s review…
…Only 25% of the original 500 respondents knew ‘some’ or ‘a great deal’ about the proposal. Only an additional 16% of the original 500 knew ‘a little.’ The other 59% knew nothing or hadn’t even heard of the proposal to begin with.
…The phrase “will cost ratepayers 3.5 billion dollars” had been included in two previous questions. This is the first information that 59% of the voters answering questions heard.
Is it any wonder a majority of voters answering these questions prefer anything BUT coal???
Next question…
“Still thinking about the proposal to build two new coal-fired power plants near Holcomb – I’d like to read you two viewpoints.”
“Some people say that consumers deserve access to affordable electricity and coal is the most affordable energy source. It is less than half the price of natural gas. Therefore, to keep power prices low for consumers, we should build additional coal-fired power plants in Kansas.”
“Other people say that the best energy alternative is a combination of wind and natural gas, both of which are readily available in Kansas. The mixture of wind and natural gas ultimately saves money in the form of economic benefits to the state, cleaner air, healthier children, and fewer public health risks. We should not build additional coal-fired power plants in Kansas.”
“Which viewpoint comes closest to your own?”
65% said they opposed building additional coal plants based on the opinions above.
Well, duhhhhhhhhhh!
“Ultimately saves money”
How many choose this option over the other because, even though coal is half the price of natural gas, the wind/gas mixture ultimately saves money? Would the responses have been different if the word ‘ultimately’ been left out? Well George, it’s Kansas and I can gamble now, so I’m going to put $50 on a different response.
Don’t worry, it gets better.
“Now I am going to read you a few statements that have been made about new coal-fired power plants here in Kansas. Please tell me for each one, whether knowing this information would make you more likely or less likely to support building new coal-fired power plants near Holcomb.”
1. “Over 300,000 children live in Kansas within a 30 mile radius of a coal-fired power plant. Soot particles…could harm children’s lungs as much as actively smoking according to a recent survey.”
83% were less likely to support a coal power plant based on this information. Again, duh! 300,000 children! Weren’t you listening!
I have to admit, the first time I read this in the Star’s blog, I freaked. But then I stopped myself. 300,000 children? In southwestern Kansas? I didn’t think there were 300,000 people period in southwest Kansas, little lone children.
Ah…read the question carefully…300,000 children live within A coal-fired power plant…not THE power plants being proposed. In fact, the proposed site already has a coal-fired plant, so children within a 30-mile radius of this plant are already included in the statistic above. This, of course, is not mentioned to voters taking the survey.
In fact, there are currently 2 coal-fired power plants in Wyandotte County, another in Lawrence, and yet another east of Topeka! The cities of Olathe, Overland Park, Topeka, Lawrence and Kansas City, Kansas all are well within a 30 mile radius of these plants. Johnson County alone accounts for more than 20% of the state’s total population.
2. “Eighty-five percent of the power generated at the new coal-fired plants near Holcomb would be sold to out of state customers but Kansas would get one-hundred percent of the pollution”
82% were less likely to support the plants based on this statement. After all, if we’re going to get the pollution, we should get the energy benefits too, right?
But wait! I thought these plants would cost ratepayers $3.5 billion? So if the energy is sold out-of-state, doesn’t that mean that they would be footing the bill and NOT KANSANS? (Specifically, not those being surveyed!)
By George, I’ll put another $50 down that says not a one of those being surveyed went back and changed some of their answers after putting two and two together. And another $50 says everyone that hadn’t even heard of the proposal mistook ‘ratepayers’ for ‘taxpayers.’
Now, you remember how wind and natural gas were combined into one response and not separate responses. I thought that was fishy, and if you’ve already clicked the link above to Chesapeake Energy’s website, you’ll already know why this was done.
“Chesapeake Energy Corporation is the largest independent producer and third-largest overall producer of natural gas in the United States.”
Ah, the final piece of the puzzle.
This survey is clearly nothing more than a ploy to get natural gas use up in the state. What’s really unfortunate is that it will be used by anti-coal groups to claim Kansans don’t want additional coal plants, when really nothing could be further from the truth. Nothing more can be taken from this survey other than a majority of ‘likely voters’ are just as apt to give you their opinion about coal-fired power plants as they are about whether Hannah Montana tickets are too expensive.
So sad…so very true.
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I must admit, I do not want coal either. Why would we use coal, which you can make many great things out of and takes long trains to haul, when we have nuclear power? My bias, however, has little to do with the use of CO2 emissions to stop the construction of a coal plant.
An interesting web search can be done to prove that most of the planets in the solar system are inhabited by life forms. Al Gore and the ‘world of science’ have declared that global warming is due to CO2 caused by humans. Searching the web will allow one to determine that ‘scientists’, but probably not the real expert, Al Gore, have determined that the temperature on the planets in the solar system is rising. One can only conclude that the increase in temperature must be due to a rise in CO2 caused by living things. The alternative is that the temperature rise is due to something other than CO2, like the increased energy output of the sun which is also occurring.
This of course could not be true. If it were, then perhaps the temperature increase on the Earth would not be due to man’s CO2 production, but due to the increased energy output of the sun and Al Gore would be full of hot CO2. I mean hot air and there are a lot of people being had. It is a good web search. Go ahead and try it. Just type in ‘warming of the planets.’
Nuclearnow