May 18, 2011
Letters, West Virginia

No matter what he says, wind energy is a scam

times-news.com 18 May 2011

The letter in your May 13 edition from Johnathan Hladik of The Center for Rural Affairs (“Wind energy is continuing to thrive in U.S.) is another example of the old axiom “paper will lie still and let you write anything on it.”

It is unfortunate that our right to free speech does not carry with it an obligation for honesty and truthfulness. Mr. Hladik’s letter extolling the great benefits of wind energy is a misrepresentation of the facts, at best.

He quotes the American Wind Energy Association numbers for capacity installed and placed under construction, but fails to point out that those numbers represent output from turbines running at maximum speed all the time. This condition will never happen. The more realistic figure is 20 to 30 percent of maximum capacity.

He also fails to mention that the taxpayers of this country, the very folks his organization has pledged to protect, are footing the bill for most of this development of a green movement “boondoggle” that is little more than a money laundering scheme using “our” money.

As for the “economic opportunities and jobs” Mr. Hladik mentions, they have proven to be small and few compared to the profits the developers are “fleecing” from the federal coffers through green incentive programs and are hardly worth the destruction of the viewscape of our wonderful area, which we will all soon get a chance to witness regularly.

Times are hard, and county and municipal leaders are in such need of financial resources that they are “ripe for the picking” by the development companies who romance them into submission through carefully crafted marketing schemes promising all sorts of jobs and tax revenue, but who also quickly sell the project to the next organization in line at the trough.

We all hope for a solution to our energy problems in the near future. However, wind turbines in their current form are not that solution, particularly in this area.

It is vitally important that the truths about this scam are known and examined by all of us and that we urge our elected officials to be wise enough not to fall prey to the propaganda that organizations like Mr. Hladik’s and the wind energy groups that contribute money to his non-profit, unbiased, “looking out for the folks” think tank spew forth.

Maybe it’s just a coincidence that a guy working for an organization who looks out for people in rural Nebraskan communities and small farmers, in their dealings with federal programs, would take the time to write a letter to the editor of a paper in sleepy little Cumberland, Md., about the virtues of wind energy. Naw, I didn’t think so.

Tim Long

Keyser, W.Va.


URL to article:  https://www.wind-watch.org/news/2011/05/18/no-matter-what-he-says-wind-energy-is-a-scam/