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Thursday, January 25,
2007

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Enfield wind farm project is a fraud at fundamental
level
Paul Sheridan / Guest
Column

There is an adage, “The road to hell is paved with good
intentions.” Indeed, when the subject is complex and esoteric, the
common person needs to be on guard. Self-proclaimed proponents of
energy and the environment have a notorious history of taking
advantage of our good intentions. A contemporary example for the
Ithaca community is the ludicrous proposal of John Rancich to deface
the Finger Lakes landscape with windmills under the guise of
“sustainable energy.”

Rancich has offered to do you a favor you don't recall asking
for. The esoteric reality is that the proposal is a fraud at
fundamental levels, and so fundamentals are what he will publicly
avoid like the plague! Let's take a look at just a few.

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Fundamental: All of the
components Rancich will use to build his personal memento will come
from factories powered by everything but wind. Indeed, the only
reason these wind farm components are manufactured at all is because
the profit margins are supported by non-wind powered factories and
high prices that abjectly ignorant politicians are cajoled into
paying, but from the taxpayer treasury!
Fundamental: Study after
study also proves that if wind farms were the energy source for
their own manufacture, the return-on-investment (ROI) would be so
out of whack that no objective person would even consider it. In
other words, even with the alleged savings in energy, a wind farm is
such a dead end, it cannot even pay for itself! So how can it be
justified, except by fraud or politics? Indeed, the ROI's are
supportable only when the taxpayer is being taken for a ride by
elected officials. Ask yourself this: Why are there no examples of a
private company putting up a wind farm to power their factory or
store? If a decent ROI stood on its own merit (i.e. no help from the
taxpayer), don't you think those greedy, capitalists would have
already done it!? The only examples of these eyesores are the
politically mandated, taxpayer-funded charades lobbied for by the
likes of Rancich.

Fundamental: If a project is not financially viable, how can it
be “sustainable”?

Fundamental: You can also assure yourself that trendy politicians
will be prioritizing their career mementos but only covertly.
Publicly the politicians will proclaim energy independence as their
motivation.

Let's step back and think about the ‘big picture' that got us
here in the first place. Here we have George Bush in the White House
chasing the priorities of his military contractor and oil baron
suitors. Having driven the price of energy to the highest levels in
human history, the Bush/Cheney crowd has ostensibly forced
well-meaning people to take a second look at silliness like wind
mills. Now that the proverbial price is right, and whether he admits
it or not, Rancich is essentially declaring that the viability of
his wind farm is based on the shenanigans of Bush/Cheney. Rather
than taxpayer-funded wealth promoting schemes like wind farms,
shouldn't Rancich help us revolt against an “administration” in
Washington that has repeatedly failed to enact even a grammar-school
level national energy policy? The Bush energy policy amounts to ‘no
windfall profits left unexploited.' Alternatively, has anyone looked
at the national energy policy of, say, France? How is it France has
decoupled itself from a dangerous dependence on imported
hydrocarbons? How is it France was able to shut down and stop all
power plant usage of coal in 2004? Do you think that the nation of
France powers its modern society and economy with Rancich-style wind
farms? Spare me!

Trust me, I love the wind and I love the sun. I will do
everything I can to protect the wildlife and the environment. I have
always revolted against the abject incompetence of not having a
national energy plan for the United States. Indeed, it is in these
contexts that the Rancich wind farm is not viable.

On a personal note, I must admit my displeasure with an intrinsic
part of the Rancich PR: The process of labels and labeling. In this
case he has made the claim that the primary rejection he has heard
from the Ithaca community is “not in my backyard” (NIMBY). I doubt
that claim. Since I am writing this from Dearborn, Mich., this
Rancich stunt only served to put me on guard. He states that the
majority of the people “he's asked” have been in favor of the
project. But when they're not in favor he resorts to slanders with
the NIMBY label. His wind farm highway is full of fundamental
potholes and should be dropped from consideration.

For those that need an esoteric primer on the physical and
political fundamentals of wind farms, see Professor Howard Hogan's
“The Solar Fraud: Why Solar Energy Won't Run the World.”

Paul Sheridan lives in Dearborn,
Mich.

Originally published
January 25, 2007

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Paul Sheridan,

I
can't figure out why you are so opposed to John
Rancich's wind farm. Based upon a quick web search, you
seem like a cool guy, not one of these psuedoscientists
that RFK jr. refers to as "biostitutes". Wether or not
wind energy is practical today, is a complex question
involving comparative external costs. The internet is
loaded with sites that have much more optimistic
assessments of wind power than yours. Denmark gets 23%
of it's electricity from wind power. The cost of wind
power per kilowatt has fallen by a factor of four in the
last five years. It seems clear to me, that society must
continue to invest in a search for alternatives to coal
and oil for obvious reasons having to do with global
warming and war. The purpose of writing an op ed is to
influence public opinion and public policy. Aren't you
working against our best interests by attacking wind
energy?

Posted: Sun Jan 28, 2007 12:39 pm

Mr. Sheridan, I'm not sure
you read my last post in it's entirety before you last
responded, since I feel that I did address what you
perceived as my hypocrisy. But regardless, I'm going to
pull back and ask a few questions that I'm simply
curious about. I hope you don't take these as meaning I
have some hidden agenda, because I assure you that I
don't. And my apologies if you feel that you have
already answered any or all of these questions. I'm just
trying to make things a little more clear for myself and
maybe for others.

1. Before your OpEd piece,
it had been my impression that though setting up a wind
turbine is an expensive operation, it eventually pays
for itself (even if it takes 10 or 20 years to do so) if
it is planned carefully. And you might need to set up
several to lower the per-turbine cost to make it more
cost effective. Is this impression wrong?

2.
Likewise, although it takes a considerable amount of
energy produced by other means to construct the wind
turbines, the energy produced by the turbines over time
eventually exceeds that amount. Again, this is assuming
they are planned carefully and are in the right
environment. Is this impression also wrong?

3.
In your piece and your responses thus far, I get the
feeling that you are focusing on the overall energy plan
for the country. While it is impossible for wind farms
and solar energy to meet a significant percentage of the
country's energy needs, does that mean that they can't
be beneficial to individual communities? I guess this
depends on your answers to 1 and 2, if you answer those
questions on a local level.

Thanks for taking
the time to address these questions.

Posted: Fri
Jan 26, 2007 10:31 am

. . . all that stuff about a
wind farm not being able to pay for itself does not have
the ring of truth to it. Compared to what? Perhaps the
amount of energy expended in the TIME it takes to
manufacture one wind mill, but the wind mill can remain
active long enough to produce far more energy than it
took to create it.
Anyone care how much energy it
takes to create a hamburger or an automobile?
We
could end the war tomorrow and subsidise all of this in
perpetuity. Lordy, what we couldn't do with $1.2
trillion!

Go here.

www.energy.ca.gov/wind/overview.html

Posted:
Fri Jan 26, 2007 7:10 am

Thank you for your post.
Regarding the "oil argument," please take a look at my
response to gtiness of Thu Jan 25, 2007 9:52 pm.

The issue is not "technology uses technology
that is currently in use." The point is the viability,
financailly and otherwise, of a new or resurgent
technology. In the instance of wind farms, truly at-best
a resurgent technology, it fails to make PROGRESS in
several parameters. Your example of hybrid technology
promises broad progress, and yet it too is constantly
being challenged by maturation of existing technologies
such as advanced diesels. The wind farm cannot come
close to fending off existing energy generation
technology, on several fronts, and is in-fact not
progress at all. It's a loser.

Now, regarding
real energy progress, please see this link:

http://www.cslforum.org/france.htm

If we
go to the nation of France (as one example) we find that
those countries that have a plan, as opposed to a bunch
of hodge-podge shoot-from-the-hip Rancich nonsense,
de-qualify wind power. Indeed, looking at this link you
see that France has to LUMP four distinct energy
generation forms into one pile to just BARELY hit 0.9
megawatts TOTAL!! The four lumped are, 'Solar,
Geothermal, Wind and Biomass.' Looking at Table 6, you
can see that the winner is nuclear power. You can see
that when a nation's energy choices are based on the
scholarship and discipline of a PLAN, wind farms are
relegated to history.

In truth, anyone that has
studied energy as long as I have recognizes that the
power brokers of the US (the oil barons, the
Rothschilds, et al.) want NOTHING to do with nuclear
power. In this same vein, wind farms pose no threat
whatsoever! Hence they are tolerated. You can
rest-assured, that if wind farms amounted to anything,
there would be an all-out PR assault by "Big Oil" to
deep six the wind farm "debate."

Posted: Thu Jan
25, 2007 11:28 pm

You, and several others
here, apparently believe that this subject is to be
relegated to the level of some New Age Encounter Group
session, especially when you protest what you perceive
to be "rude." Keep your opinion to yourself on that
note.

In case your subjective, emotional
psychology missed it, the nation is at risk, and in no
uncertain terms, because of the irresolute approach, at
all levels of American society, to the issue of energy.
Given what I have seen so far from you, you fit that
descriptor as well. While you protest your pathetic
bruised ego, US GI's are being killed and maimed in
Bush's treasonius war in Iraq. In this context and many
others, I have neither the time nor the inclination to
indulge your fantasies of self-esteem or
selfrighteousness. Grow up.

And your ploy of
avoiding the details/issue of your demonstrated
duplicity and hypocrisy might work on those that were
born yesterday . . .

Posted: Thu Jan 25, 2007
11:00 pm

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