I recently sent a letter of complaint to Mohawk Paper explaining what it was like to live with 24 Industrial wind turbines surrounding my home and farm. This is the response I got back from the VP George Milner.
Perhaps you don’t know that per capita electric energy consumption in developed countries is increasing every year, as no doubt yours is, unless you are living off the grid. I suspect that your dissatisfaction with wind power stems from the fact that those 24 “behemoths” are located in your backyard and not in someone else’s. Would you be happier if you gazed out across your back yard and saw a nuclear power plant, a coal fired generating plant, or worse yet a tar-sands to energy facility?
We have many wind farms in New York. Small independent farmers welcome them because the additional revenue they acquire from wind energy leases allow them to keep a lifestyle that is being eliminated by mega-scale agri-business industrial farming.
In my opinion David Suzuki is the preeminent Canadian environmentalist. Below is a link to his web site in regard to wind energy.
http://www.davidsuzuki.org/issues/climate-change/science/energy/wind-energy/
http://futureenergy.org/infowindblmy.html
You offer no solutions, just a long list of negatives. The below link addresses all of the issues you raised. It leads open minded individuals to objective expert sources on the net impacts of wind energy production. You need to separate your anger about having wind turbines in close proximity to your house from the fact that renewable energy such as wind is environmentally, economically, and socially desirable.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_effects_of_wind_power
This is my response
Dear Mr. Milner
Your response is of course the classical one from someone who will never have to “gaze” upon 400 ft Industrial structure at 350 to 640 meters from their backdoor. Please note that I do in fact “gaze” upon a nuclear power plant in my backyard and many who support renewables forget that things like wind and solar cannot substitute the need for nuclear or any other conventional source of generation including fossil fuels since, these are needed in order to compensate for wind and solar’s intermittent, inefficient non dispatchable sources of electrical generation.
Because so many are not applying traditional due diligence or standard scientific methodology needed to discern if the claims that the wind industry make are actually true and sharing such with the public, we end up with people superficially (and in your case with lots of money through windpower certificates, which representing an added cost) supporting these kinds of “green”projects without determining if they are environmentally (which includes health and social well being), technically or economically sound. Consequently and unfortunately the larger percentage of the population have been mislead and therefore in turn they continue to support the construction of hundreds of turbines up around rural residents.
I”m sure you understand as a VP of a business that Mohawks success and progress is almost entirely due to reliable and affordable power. You website claims that “Today,100% of the electricity used by Mohawk is matched with certified windpower certificates” These certificates are a known scam.
Today where everything “green” is sacrosanct, residents like myself are not allowed to question the value of things like wind energy.
I am very interested in protecting the environment for me and my family, but this green evangelism has gone WAY overboard.
For instance, are we saying “throw out these conventional sources of power that have enabled our modern society and replace them with unproven, unreliable, uneconomical, unenvironmental ‘renewable’ sources.” That is insane!
And where power sources WERE tested for reliability, technical feasibility and economics in the past, this is now completely skipped because they have the “renewable” imprimatur. That is absurd!
I would suggest that you review this presentation EnergyPresentation.Info
Signed RuralGrubby
Here is another response to Mohawk
To Mohawk paper
I have just read your claim about David Suzuki being the preeminant Canadian environmentalist. I should tell you that up to the deployment of Industrial Wind Turbines and their nasty little hidden secrets. David Susuzki was indeed our preeminant environmentalist, unfortunately for David he only looked at one side of things, when it came down to IWT’s, and made no attempt to speak with any of the global experts that attended the first Global Wind Symposium in Picton, Ontario, Canada. This was held in late October of 2010 and was intended to convey up to date “independent” scientific information to those that are responsible for making decissions concerning safe deployment near to human habitat.
Had Mr Suzuki chosen to attend this symposium, along with “any” of our Ministry of Enviroment Officials from the provincial government of Ontario, he and others would have found that every single scientist that attended, found it scientiffically reprehensible that any governmentt would allow Industrial Wind Turbines within 2 kilometers of a family home or school. Not only was this unamimous by all attendees, but is also the same “absolute minimum standard” as that recommended by the World Health Organizations governing body.
I think its safe to say, that those of us who live with, or near future sites of IWT’s are not too pleased that Mr Suzuki has seemingly giving tacit approval of them, when he has not to our knowledge, spent some weeks living next to them, at the less than 550 meters, now approved by Ontario’s provincial government.
Many other European countries are also now taking a second look at their sustainabiltiy, and serious health claims made by thousands across Europe. This must be seriously looked at, as you cannot simply try to solve one problem, by replacing it with another, and for those that attempt to do so, there wiil be, unfortunately, some quite serious repercussiouns.
regards
GH
Ontario
Ruralgrubby's Wind Watch 