February 21, 2013
Letters, Ontario

Wind poll story rebuttals

Orangeville Citizen | 2013-02-21 | www.citizen.on.ca

Poll shows 69% of Canadians favour wind energy – Sure. Absolutely. Maybe not…

Considering 99% of Canadians don’t live near a wind generator, what an objective poll that must have been! Commissioned by the non-partisan Canadian Wind Energy Association, no less. Sounds like the, “Do you like plastic bags?” survey recently done in Toronto by the Canadian Plastic Bag Manufacturing Association. Anybody in business knows you can commission a poll to produce any result you want. That’s why interindustry poll results are the least trustworthy.

I’d like to see the way that wind energy questionnaire was written. Question number one: “Do you think wind energy is great, next to say, having a nuclear power facility next to your child’s school? Question number two: “Which do you think is better for the environment, wind power or steam power generated from burning rubber tires?”

I bet they didn’t ask, “What do you think of your Hydro bill subsidizing wind energy to thrice the actual cost?” or “Does it worry you your mother may lose her home in ten years when her hydro bill reaches $1000 per month due to subsidizing expensive green power projects?”

Chris Holdroyd

Mono

The February 14th column in the Citizen newspaper concerning the poll taken by Oracle Research indicating that 69% of the people interviewed favoured wind energy to most other forms of power generation My bet is that not one of those people interviewed lived anywhere near a wind turbine

This costly and dangerous venture into lowcost, environmentally friendly power generation is a fraud, profiting only the foreign company installing the wind turbines. The $3 billion new investment will eventually backfire on the taxpayer when all is done and the profiteers have long disappeared.

Let’s look at some of the realities of this program: Firstly, the source of energy required to rotate these wind turbines is the wind and to my knowledge no one yet has found a way to ensure that it blows when required, it is intermittent and unreliable..

At times when the wind does blow and the turbines produce excess electricity, that excess cannot be stored for later use because we do not have the technology to do so Once existing transformers are at capacity the excess we PAY nearby U.S. states and Quebec to take. Now that is clearly the type of program our Liberal government would support. Its record elsewhere testifies to it wisdom!

An important issue is that of the health effects on the people who are obliged to live in close proximity to the power lines. Sleeplessness and sickness appear to result from line- loss effects and EMF.

Clearly, more study is required before this $3 billion boondoggle continues and health consequences should over-ride profit and convenience. Margaret Thatcher was correct when she said “A nation of sheep breeds a government of wolves”

Ken Hayward

Mono


URL to article:  https://www.wind-watch.org/news/2013/02/21/wind-poll-story-rebuttals/