UPDATE: Mr. Adams provided us with his extended remarks, which is now published as a letter to the editor in the Mineral Daily News-Tribune. For your convenience, we have replaced the earlier version with the extended letter in the post below. – AT
Dallas Adams is more than a little frustrated. Seems our local paper, like many across the country, continues to publish the wind lobby boilerplate in spite of facts to the contrary and Mr. Adams, a stickler for accuracy, feels compelled to take them to task. Take a look at his most recent recent submission.
Letter begins:
To the Editor:
If you repeat a half truth often enough, people will often accept it as the whole truth. That seems to be the strategy of the promoters of the Pinnacle wind turbine project. This is what Pinnacle is saying and the paper keeps reporting. “When completed, the Pinnacle Wind Farm will generate approximately 55 megawatts of electricity, enough power for over 14,000 households, according to Edison. (“Turbines turn at Pinnacle”, recent first page article in the News-Tribune)
This is a false statement and every time it is repeated I feel like our community is being scammed. While their turbines may have 55 megawatts of capacity, the PJM grid rates turbines in our region at only 13% efficiency based on summertime wind studies.
This means that the Pinnacle generators will function at their capacity only a small fraction of the time. That being the case, there is no way for them to come close to this claimed output. I think we in Mineral County are smart enough to understand that. Who does Pinnacle think they are kidding??
Hopefully our elected leadership, both County and State, are aware of this repeated MISREPRESENTATION.
I am wondering if the stated benefits to our county are inflated in a likewise manner.
Dallas O. Adams Sr.
Keyser
Letter ends!
Now, you should know that Mr. Adams is a pretty sharp fellow. Here is how one of our community leaders describes him: “a very respected, partially retired business man and local philanthropist/champion of good causes.” I can personally assure you the description fits him well.
So, like many others in the community, I take what he says very seriously. I also happen to think the local paper would be wise to consider his argument the next time it simply reprints information provided to it by the wind lobby. Maybe, just maybe … they could think beyond the ink.
It would be great, for example, if the local paper would actually challenge the wind folks on this and other outlandish claims. Mr. Adams’s frustration speaks for a growing number of local citizens for, you see, this is not the first time our newspaper has been challenged on its favorable presentation of the wind industry. Unfortunately, the folks at the newspaper tell us that they don’t have time to go out and check every story and they pretty much publish what they’re given. What that means, effectively, is that the readers see the information provided by the heavily funded marketing arm of the multi-million dollar wind lobby published as articles while the folks stating a contrary position are relegated to the “letter to the editor” section.
That’s sad! I happen to think readers deserve better.
After all, it only takes a few seconds to find very credible folks who agree with Mr. Adams position on industrial wind. Take, for example, Kelvin Kemm’s recent article, Wind power truly in the realm of mysticism. Mr. Kemm, a nuclear physicist, notes that “the most common error committed unknowingly by the media, and knowingly by the wind proponents, is that a quoted figure for installed capacity for wind power is not the amount you get.” He states that “wind power systems are fundamentally designed to produce about 25% of their installed capacity, but “frequently, the operating wind systems do not even deliver the designed 25% – at times half of this or less.”
Noting that industrial wind requires back-up “consisting of some really reliable source like coal or nuclear,” Mr. Kemm confirms the statement made here some two years ago by Mr. Jon Boone, “With nearly 100,000 huge wind turbines now in operation throughout the world—35,000 in the USA—no coal plants been closed anywhere because of wind technology. And there is no empirical evidence that there is less coal burned per unit of electricity produced as a specific consequence of wind.”
Allegheny Treasures readers will happily point to many experts to confirm Mr. Kemm’s closing statement, “It is time that the fantasy of producing large-scale economic wind energy reliably was put aside and a sensible realism emerged.”
One place AT readers won’t direct you to for a view of the negatives of industrial wind is the local paper. And that is what has Mr. Dallas Adams and a lot of other local folks fired up!
We welcome you to review our posts and the many fine links we provide for your convenience. If all you’ve read till now about industrial wind is what you’ve found in newspaper articles, you might be very surprised.
Be sure to read Mr. Kemm’s fine article in full at Creamer Media’s Engineering News.
Allegheny Treasures 