Thanks, Jay
I will pass those topics on and/or you are welcome to attend the Science Cafe informal meeting a week from Friday.
I think the Science Cafe can do much better than Rep. Gooch in a Frankfort hearing.
(I don't know why the interim joint Agriculture and Natural Resources Committee held a hearing last week when the legislature is not in session)
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Excerpts from a Lexington-Herald story.
Legislators hear global warming disputed
By John Cheves - Lexington Herald-Leader
Posted on Thu, Nov. 15, 2007
http://www.kentucky.com/news/state/story/231346.html
FRANKFORT --Global warming is a myth concocted by former Vice President Al Gore, the United Nations, Hollywood and the news media, Kentucky lawmakers were told yesterday.
The interim joint Agriculture and Natural Resources Committee held a hearing to dispute the idea that the Earth is warming, at least in part because of carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping gases in the atmosphere produced by industrial activity.
Chairman Jim Gooch, D-Providence, a longtime ally of the coal industry, said he purposefully did not invite anyone who believes in global warming to testify.
"You can only hear that the sky is falling so many times," said Gooch, whose post makes him the House Democrats' chief environmental strategist. "We hear it every day from the news media, from the colleges, from
Hollywood." (?)
Neither of Gooch's invited panelists was a scientist.
.........
Several committee members protested that it was unfair to hear only one side of the argument, so Gooch let two environmentalists in the audience talk about global warming -- and the need to address it -- for about five minutes each.
One of them, Andy McDonald, solar energy co-coordinator for Appalachia-Science in the Public Interest, complained that hastily plucking two people for brief rebuttals of a two-hour presentation wasn't fair or balanced.
"It really wasn't my intention to get into so much science today," Gooch replied.
Before the hearing, Gooch said he called the Heartland Institute once he decided to address global warming and asked for any skeptical experts it might send. Scientists weren't necessary, he said.
"Well, I mean, where are we going to get scientists?" Gooch asked. "We're limited here in Kentucky to what we can do. I don't know how we'd necessarily get scientists to come here."
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More of this article
http://www.kentucky.com/news/state/story/231346.html