Trash It Some More

Here's some pathetic posturing via the Boston Globe:

The Alliance to Protect Nantucket Sound has waged a massive publicity campaign to kill the [windpower] project, which members say would industrialize a body of water they describe as an unspoiled natural resource.

But that characterization belies the sound's long history of commercial activity, says Dick Elrick of Mashpee, president of Clean Power Now, a group formed to champion the wind farm project.

"It's a body of water that has been used for over 200 years," he said. "Commercial fishermen have dragged the bottom until it's a desert. We've got fuel barges going back and forth. It isn't the body of water that has been described."

Elrick previously worked as a ferry boat captain and long heeded orders to send waste over the side as soon as the boat reached federal water.

"It's being diluted. But I never felt particularly good about it," he said. "I certainly wouldn't have wanted to go swimming [there]."

So, according to Mr. Elrick, because someone trashed a place 50 or 100 years ago, it makes sense to trash it all over again. What astounding logic. And I'm sure when his car gets dirty he just throws it away.

And about windpower in general. When windpower sites are built and put on-line there is no 1:1 shut down of dirty power plants. The windpower goes on line in addition to the dirty power plants.

As such, windpower does nothing to reduce actual, existing air pollution and greenhouse gas emission levels. As long as energy consumption keeps going up (which it does), you simply have windpower + dirty power sources.

Building more and more power sources -- even wind power -- tends to encourage more wasteful power consumption, which then creates more demand for more new power sources. Windpower developers are trying to make a buck -- not save the planet. They have no problem selling their electricity to the most wasteful uses and users, so long as the check clears.

Basically, power companies and power producers are liars.