Wind Farmer's Almanac

Enhanced photographic proof of wind turbine motion in Denmark

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The alleged noise from Cape Wind's turbines - according to a state permitting agency

From the Massachusetts Energy Facilities Siting Board, in its decision last May to approve Cape Wind's request to connect its turbines to the regional grid -

"Based on the record, the Siting Board finds that, while the wind farm may be audible onshore when meteorological conditions permit, the noise levels produced by the wind farm would be lower than background noise levels onshore, and would not result in a perceptible increase in the overall noise levels at shore locations.

"The record does not contain information on the potential changes in noise levels at other locations that would result from the less frequent operation of generators displaced by the wind farm. However, the Siting Board notes that many fossil-fueled generators are located in close proximity to residential areas and result in significant increases in overall noise levels when operating.

"Therefore, the Siting Board finds that the noise impacts of the wind farm are likely to be less than those of many of the generators it would displace."

Just prior to this citation, which can be found on page 176 of the board's decision, the board noted that "it also appears likely that turbine noise would be heard by some boaters" - as was the case during the Clean Power Now trip to Denmark last May, although not until the CPN visitors were almost directly beneath one of the turbines before it could be heard.

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DEP to hold public hearings on power plant emissions

In response to Gov. Mitt Romney's proposal to ease emissions standards for power plants in the state, the state Department of Environmental Protection will hold five public hearings in the coming weeks, including one in Sandwich on Feb. 16.

According to a story in yesterday's Boston Globe, "the governor's proposed changes would permit power plants to expand the use of  'offsets' -- measures intended to remove greenhouse gases from the atmosphere -- to compensate for excess pollution at their facilities. The offsets could, in certain cases, be purchased anywhere around the world, meaning a facility owner could pay to plant a forest in Chile, for example, or capture gases seeping from a landfill in India.

"But state officials do not have a blueprint for how to administer the complex program. Neither the existing plan nor Romney's proposal details how state officials would verify that offsets were actually carried out or achieved promised greenhouse gas reductions. It's also not clear how power plants would be penalized if they fail to comply.

"In addition, the governor is advocating language changes that environmental critics say would weaken key criteria to evaluate proposed offsets," states the article, written by Beth Daley. "Instead of requiring projects to be ''enforceable,' for example, Romney wants them to be 'enforceable as a practical matter,' wording that critics say amounts to a loophole because the meaning is not clear.

"The governor announced his proposed changes last month, just days before the state pulled out of a more ambitious regional pact to limit greenhouse gases from all power plants in nine states," Daley wrote.

The first hearing will be held on Friday (Jan. 20) at 9 a.m. at the DEP offices, corner of Winter and Washington streets in Boston, near Downtown Crossing.

Sandwich meeting 6 p.m. February 16

The Feb. 16 hearing in Sandwich will be held at 6 p.m. in the meeting room of the Sandwich Office Building, 16 Jan Sebastian Drive. Sandwich is home to the Canal Electric power plant, one of the so-called "Filthy Five" worst polluting plants in the state.

Hearings are also planned for Feb. 15 at 6 p.m.  in Salem, at the Salem Maritime National Historic Site, 2 New Liberty St.; on Feb. 16 at 6 p.m. in Building C at Holyoke Community College, 303 Holmstead Ave., Holyoke; and Feb. 23 at 6 p.m. in Somerset, at Old Town Hall, 1478 County St.

Public comment on the proposed changes can be submitted until March 6 and should be sent to Sharon Weber at Sharon.Weber@state.ma.us or the Dept. of Environmental Protection, Bureau of Waste Prevention, 1 Winter St., Boston 02018. More information is available here. 

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You need to get this close to hear it

How do I know? First-hand experience. I took this photo last May while on a tour of the offshore wind farm near Nysted, Denmark, during a trip organized by the Clean Power Now group.

The photo shows a maintenance boat approaching the base of one of the 72 turbines in the Baltic Sea off Nysted.

In his Dec. 16 op-ed piece in the New York Times, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. claimed that "the noise of the turbines will be audible onshore," referring to the Cape Wind turbines. But what does Kennedy base this on? He never elaborates, so we are left to guess.

At least in the example I am citing here, no guesswork is involved. And I am hardly the only person who can attest to this.

Several minutes before this photo was taken, the captain of our charter boat came just as close to another turbine. The wind farm off Nysted is six to seven miles from the coastline, the same distance the Cape Wind project would be situated from Hyannis, Craigville Beach and Cotuit.

Here is how I described what we heard in stories I wrote for capecodtoday.com -

"The wind is moving at a good clip across the water, between 10 and 15 knots, but the turbines cannot be heard until Glensdorf  (the captain of the boat) pulls within 100 feet of a tower.  He pulls closer still, until we are just several feet from the base of the turbine, and cuts the engine.

"Even now, the whirring of the blades as they throw shadows across the boat is not loud, but it conveys extraordinary power at work - like immense scythes cutting through the air.

"But they are not loud, and I am amazed it took so long to hear them."

Here is how others on board described it:

To Katharine Beckman of Dennis, it was "a gentle whoosh-whoosh, not unlike waves lapping on a sailboat's hull as it moves through the ocean. Calm and soothing."

The turning blades sounded "just like a swoosh, like a wind gust," Beckman said. "But you had to be right next to it to hear it. You can't hear it from a distance."

Cape Cod Times columnist Solon Economou said the sound was "lower than my normal conversational voice. I didn't hear them."

"When you are under it, with the engine (of the boat) shut off,  you can hear them," said Nantucket resident Laura Wasserman.

"It sounded like something out of a sci-fi movie," Wasserman said. "But we couldn't hear it until we were right next to it."

East Orleans resident Robert Wineman said it sounded like "someone sweeping the floor with a corn broom."

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Cape Wind responds to RFK Jr.

... with a letter to the editor in The Cape Codder, written by Dennis J. Duffy, vice president of Cape Wind Associates.

"In his recent op-ed column opposing the Cape Wind project ('An ill wind off Cape Cod,' Jan. 6), Robert F. Kennedy Jr., relies upon factual assertions that are inconsistent with the record, including both the Draft Environmental Impact Statement released by the Army Corps of Engineers, after three years of careful scientific study, and the recent decision of the Massachusetts Energy Facility Siting Board.

"While Mr. Kennedy alleges impacts upon fishing, the DEIS confirms that, based on the factual record, 'the project is not anticipated to have significant impacts on commercial fishing activities currently occurring in the vicinity.'

"While he asserts that tourism will be harmed, the DEIS concludes that, 'as evidenced by experiences at other wind farms, the project will likely have a negligible effect on the use of recreational resources and a positive effect on tourism in general.'

"While he asserts that the wind turbines would be audible on shore, the extensive acoustical studies of the DEIS indicate that sound would be below the threshold of human hearing, such that 'no noise impacts are anticipated at any onshore locations.'

"While he suggests dire consequences for migrating songbirds and ducks, the DEIS in fact concludes that the project would not result in 'a significant adverse impact affecting population sizes of any bird species.'

"While he raises concerns over cost, the Massachusetts Energy Facility Siting Board has approved Cape Wind's application, after an exhaustive proceeding, based upon the findings that its power is needed and that 'operation of the wind farm would provide average annual savings of $25 million for New England customers.'

"While he also objects to placing renewable energy projects on public lands (the 'commons'), the recent Federal Energy Policy Act indicates otherwise, by expressly stating the 'sense of Congress' that the Secretary of Interior should approve 10,000 megawatts of non-hydro renewable energy projects on federal lands.

"And while he asserts that new technologies could allow the project to be moved to deep water sites far offshore (presumably out of sight from the exclusive waterfront estates), the DEIS determined that such alternatives were not feasible in the conditions in the North Atlantic, and that the Cape Wind proposal is consistent with 'accepted industry guidelines that define the limits of currently available and technically proven' alternatives.'

"It must also be noted that RFK neglects to make any mention of energy policy. The critical fact is that New England faces a serious energy crisis and the threat of rolling blackouts, with the region's electric grid operator (ISO-New England) warning of the 'urgent need' for new generation sources and calling greater fuel diversity and the 'aggressive' development of renewable energy projects like Cape Wind. One is left to wonder how RFK, who also opposes nuclear and fossil options, would address New England's growing energy needs?

"And with respect to global warming, RFK's own employer, the National Resources Defense Council, regards Cape Wind as 'the largest single source of supply-side reductions in C02 currently proposed in the United States, and perhaps the world.'

"The United States Department of Energy has similarly stated that 'projects like Cape Wind are responsive to the administration's policy to increase renewable energy on public lands and to reduce air emissions in collaboration with the private sector.'

" Every major energy project involves the balancing of competing interests, and Cape Wind is no exception. The critical point, however, is that such balancing should be based upon the facts, and not unsupportable and alarmist assertions. We are confident that the factual record will confirm that the public benefits from Cape Wind far outweigh the relatively minor adverse impacts."

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How Cape Wind would improve air quality - according to a state permitting agency

... as in the Massachusetts Energy Facilities Siting Board, when it voted last May in favor Cape Wind's request to connect the wind farm with the regional grid.

From page 169 of the board's final decision -

"Consequently, the Siting Board finds that, in the near term, operation of the wind farm would reduce regional air emissions by approximately 4,480 tons of SO2 (sulfur dioxide), 1,323 tons of NOx (nitrogen oxides), and 1,062,554 tons of CO2 (carbon dioxide) annually, and would reduce Massachusetts air emissions in Massachusetts by approximately 1,792 tons of SO2, 529 tons of NOx, and 425,022 tons of CO2 annually."

To see a copy of the decision, follow this link.

The board's approval came after an adjudicatory process lasting 32 months, including 21 days of evidentiary hearings, testimony from dozens of witnesses, 2,900 pages of transcripts and 932 exhibits.

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How Cape Wind will cut electricity costs - according to a state permitting agency

From the final decision of the Massachusetts Energy Facilities Siting Board, approving Cape Wind's application to allow hook up to the regional grid. The board's decision came last summer, after three years of adjudicatory hearings in which scores of witnesses testified and supporting documentation was provided.

" ... For the purposes of estimating economic benefits, the Siting Board accepts the assumption that the wind farm will be a price taker in the energy markets, and thus will fall at or near the bottom of the regional dispatch queue whenever it is operating. The Siting Board also finds credible the Company's (Cape Wind Associates) assumption that energy price reductions and anticipated price reductions in the spot market will be reflected in longer-term contracts for energy after standard offer service ceases in March 2005.

"Cape Wind argued that its modeling protocol was conservative, and asserts that average annual savings would be at least $25 million, with $10 million per year of this savings to Massachusetts customers. The Siting Board agrees that savings may well be higher than those modeled based on average market conditions, and notes further that because the savings are sensitive to fossil fuel prices, savings would be higher than modeled if future fuel prices are higher than those prevailing in Spring 2001.

"The Alliance (to Protect Nantucket Sound) has not challenged the Company's modeling techniques or assumptions. Rather, it has argued that economic efficiency should be analyzed based on a generator's long-run marginal cost as compared to other of those generators, rather than by its effect on energy prices.

"However, in past decisions,  the Siting Board has evaluated economic need based on the actual costs that electric utilities or customers in Massachusetts and New England pay for the electricity they consume, not the long-run marginal cost of a project. The wind farm may be a project with relatively high capital costs and may receive government support; however, its cost structure is relevant to the Siting Board's need analysis only insofar as it has cost implications for electric customers."

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MTC's Greg Watson: build wind turbines in shallow waters, to eventually build in deeper

... as in Greg Watson, vice president for sustainable development and renewable energy at the Massachusetts Energy Collaborative, in an op-ed in today's Boston Globe.

"Critics of proposed US offshore wind farms have recently lauded efforts to develop deep-water offshore wind energy technologies that would allow wind farms to be built far from shore," Watson writes. "They suggest that advances in research and development are proceeding at such a rapid pace that thousands of wind turbines could soon be operating off the northeast coast without encroaching on anyone's view or posing any threat to the environment. Clarification about the current state and potential of deep-water offshore wind energy appears timely.

"For the past year, the Massachusetts Technology Collaborative has worked with the US Department of Energy and General Electric Co. to assess the feasibility of tapping a significant portion of this vast resource. Our partnership jointly funded a research project that brought together experts to assist with this task. A milestone was reached last year with the publication of   'A Framework for Offshore Wind Energy Development in the United States.'

"The framework notes that the strongest and steadiest offshore winds prevail over waters that are deeper and farther from shore than any existing wind farms. But a number of issues need to be addressed before economically viable electricity-generating wind facilities can be erected in the deep waters off the US coast.

"While the promise is great -- an indigenous source of virtually inexhaustible clean energy -- the challenges are formidable. Our experts are confident they can be addressed, but not overnight, and not without the benefit of experience gained from shallow water projects."

Follow the link above to read the remainder of the column.

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The op-ed RFK Jr. is responding to - in case you are curious about that

A tip of the hat to Against the Wind for posting an excerpt from Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s op-ed in today's San Francisco Chronicle and a link to the full column.

Her post does not, however, include a link to the earlier op-ed cited by Kennedy, which can be found by following this link.

The op-ed to which Kennedy responds, written by Michael Shellenberger and Ted Norhaus, ran in the San Francisco Chronicle on Dec. 16, five days after Kennedy criticized the Cape Wind project with an opinion piece in the New York Times.

What follows is the beginning of the op-ed written by Shellenberger and Norhause -

"The fate of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge has once again grabbed national headlines as supporters of oil development are using an unrelated defense budget bill to authorize oil drilling in the refuge. Yet away from the headlines, a far greater ecological tragedy is unfolding as part of the same budget bill and it is being led by a far more unlikely character, none other than Bobby Kennedy Jr., one of America's most prominent environmentalists. With the help of his uncle, Sen. Edward Kennedy, and the anti-environmental U.S. Rep. Don Young, R-Alaska, Kennedy is trying to push a budget amendment that would prevent construction of a major Cape Cod wind farm even though developing more wind-generated energy is vitally important to the battle against global warming.

"The Cape Wind project would be the second largest wind farm project in the world. It would provide clean renewable energy for Cape Cod and the surrounding region -- meeting roughly 70 percent of Cape Cod's electrical energy needs year-round. The project will prove the viability of wind as a good source of energy to American investors, politicians and the public, and will be crucial to establishing America's leadership in the fast-growing wind energy industry, where Europe threatens to surpass us.

"The catch is this: The project sits off the coast of some of the priciest real estate in the world that is owned by some of the most powerful families in the country -- most prominently the Kennedy clan, whose ancestral estate is located in Hyannis Port. Kennedy's confusion about what is more important -- protecting his view of the ocean or global warming -- is emblematic of the moral and intellectual exhaustion of modern environmentalism.

"This confusion about ecological priorities speaks to the conceptual limitations of a worldview born among the privileged patricians of a generation for whom building mansions by the sea was indistinguishable from advocating for the preservation of national parks or big game hunting in the wilds of Africa. It is from this tradition that environmentalism and the politics of preservation evolved."

The essay titled, "The Death of Environmentalism: Global Environmental Politics in a Post-Environmental World," which was also written by Shellenberger and Nordaus and cited today by Kennedy, can be found by following this link.

(The photo of RFK Jr. shown above was taken by me last August during the Soundkeeper sail in Nantucket Sound organized by the Alliance to Protect Nantucket Sound)

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RFK Jr. op-ed back for a return engagement

In case you missed it the first time around, Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s op-ed against the Cape Wind project that ran Dec. 16 in the New York Times (and for which you'd now have to pay for a copy from the paper's online archives) was published in this week's Harwich Oracle.

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Cutting down on fossil fuels: an analogy

A conversation between Gordon and Biff, neighbors on the mid-Cape. Late on a clear and unseasonably warm winter afternoon, Gordon rides into his driveway on a 10-speed bicycle just after Biff has gotten out of his SUV.

Biff  -  hey there, Gordon, how are you? Say, did you actually ride your bike home from work - in January?

Gordon (with a touch of pride)  -  not bad for an old guy, huh? I feel great - and man, am I hungry!

Biff  -  I noticed you've been doing this for a few weeks now. What made you start?

Gordon  -  well, I don't ride every day, just when it's nice out. I'm hoping to do it more when the weather gets better. But I thought it might help me lose weight, save money on gas and do my part for the environment.

Biff  -  I take it you'll be selling your car.

Gordon (puzzled)  -  why do you say that?

Biff  -  because you won't need it anymore, what with riding your bike to work and all.

Gordon (more puzzled)  -  but like I said, I take my bike only when there's good weather and I definitely won't be doing that when we're hit with snow. And even in the spring and summer, there are sure to be days when the weather is terrible, or I have to work away from the office and I'd need my car for that.

Biff  -  no, you don't seem to understand. Now that you are riding your bike to work, you clearly don't need any other form of transportation. Or is this your way of saying that bike-riding isn't all it's cracked up to be? 

Gordon (after a pause)  -  you're pulling my leg, right? Just because I ride my bike to work a couple days a week doesn't mean I'm going to sell my car. But it does mean I'm driving my car less, spending less money on gas, and last but perhaps not least, contributing less of my share to pollution and global warming.

Biff  -  oh, I get it, so bike-riding isn't quite the panacea you've made it out to be. A minute ago you were ready to take on the world - now you're throwing in the towel! A lot of good all this "exercise" (wiggles fingers to indicate quotation marks) has done.  

Gordon  -  but ...

Biff  -  come on, you have to decide, you can't keep going back and forth. What's it going to be - the bike or the car? You remind me of that character who wants to build a wind farm in Nantucket Sound, what's his name ...?

Gordon  -  but ...

Biff   -  what's the point of building that monstrosity unless it will provide for all of the country's energy needs, now and forever. I mean, if he can't guarantee that ...

Gordon (glancing at his watch)  -  hey, will you look at the time. Sorry, Biff, I gotta run. Let's catch up on this later, OK?

Biff (with a shrug)  -  sure, whatever you say. Maybe by then you will have decided - the car or the bike. I'd go with the car, and a big one at that, but that's just me. Heck, I'm still trying to figure out why you didn't sell your house when you went camping last summer ...

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Curb Your Hypocrisy

Great op-ed in the Providence Journal-Bulletin earlier this week (and one-time login required for access, but well worth it) about "Seinfeld" co-creator Larry David and his wife, Laurie David, who own a summer home on the Vineyard.

Larry David, shown at right, currently appears in HBO's "Curb Your Enthusiasm," the tale of a fabulously rich, petty and self-absorbed Hollywood writer who blunders into various disasters," writes Edward Achorn, the Pro Jo's deputy editorial pages editor.

"It's often hilarious, the best thing on TV. But nothing this season was as deliciously funny as the script that real life has been writing for him.

"Laurie David, the wife of the real Larry David, is a global-warming crusader who rails against SUVs and preaches the virtues of energy-saving light bulbs," Achorn writes. "Meanwhile, she lives in multiple houses and flies around in private jets that burn more fuel than the average person could save in a lifetime of switching off lights.

"The Davids own a summer house on Martha's Vineyard, where they heard from authorities for building a 21-by-16-foot stage and a large stone-and-concrete barbecue pit near protected wetlands, while ripping up native vegetation and planting sodded grass," Achorn continues in his column. "A neighbor reportedly asserted that the Davids went ahead on their construction without the proper permits to be ready for a visit by Robert F. Kennedy Jr., of the Natural Resources Defense Council. He had inspired Mrs. David to become an environmental 'activist.'

"It's human nature: The powerful, from Hollywood to Washington to Paris, love to posture as the moral superiors of others, but often do what they darn well please with their own lives," Achorn concludes.

Speaking of RFK Jr., Achorn takes the wind out of the sails of the op-ed Kennedy wrote against the Cape Wind project last month for the New York Times.

"In his piece," Achorn points out, "Mr. Kennedy advanced the rather novel theory that 'our most important wildernesses are those that are closest to our densest population centers, like Nantucket Sound.' But if pristine areas and populated regions are both off-limits to energy development, someone afflicted with a logical mind might ask, What's left?"

(photo credit, thenewstribute.com)

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The cost never listed on our electric bills, cont.

"Watching coal-miners at work, you realise momentarily what different universes different people inhabit. Down there where coal is dug it is a sort of world apart which one can quite easily go through life without ever hearing about. Probably a majority of people would even prefer not to hear about it. Yet it is the absolutely necessary counterpart of our world above. Practically everything we do, from eating an ice to crossing the Atlantic, and from baking a loaf to writing a novel, involves the use of coal, directly or indirectly.

"For all the arts of peace, coal is needed; if war breaks out it is needed all the more. In time of revolution the mines must go on working or the revolution must stop, for revolution as much as reaction needs coal. Whatever may be happening on the surface, the hacking and shovelling have got to continue without a pause, or at any rate without pausing for more than a few weeks at the most. In order that Hitler may march the goose-step, that the Pope may denounce Bolshevism, that the cricket crowds may assemble at Lord's, that the Nancy poets may scratch one another's backs, coal has got to be forthcoming.

"But on the whole we are not aware of it; we all know that we 'must have coal,' but we seldom or never remember what coal-getting involves. Here I am, sitting writing in front of my comfortable coal fire. It is April but I still need a fire. Once a fortnight the coal cart drives up to the door and men in leather jerkins carry the coal indoors in stout stacks smelling of tar and shoot it clanking into the coal-hole under the stairs.

"It is only very rarely, when I make a definite mental effort, that I connect this coal with that far-off labour in the mines. It is just 'coal' -- something that I have got to have; black stuff that arrives mysteriously from nowhere in particular, like manna except that you have to pay for it. You could quite easily drive a car across the north of England and never once remember that hundreds of feet below the road you are on the miners are hacking at the coal.

"Yet in a sense it is the miners who are driving your car forward. Their lamp-lit world is as necessary to the daylight world above as the root is to the flower."

- George Orwell, "The Road to Wigan Pier"

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The cost never listed on our electric bills

From "The Road to Wigan Pier" by George Orwell, published in 1937 -

"It is not long since conditions in the mines were worse than they are now. There are still living a very few very old women who in their youth have worked underground, with a harness round their waists and a chain that passed between their legs, crawling on all fours and dragging tubs of coal. They used to go on doing this even when they were pregnant. And even now, if coal could not be produced without pregnant women dragging it to and fro, I fancy we should let them do it rather than deprive ourselves of coal.

"But most of the time, of course, we should prefer to forget that they are doing it. It is so with all types of manual work; it keeps us alive, and we are oblivious of its existence. More than anyone else, perhaps, the miner can stand as the type of the manual worker, not only because his work is so exaggeratedly awful, but also because it is so vitally necessary and yet so remote from our experience, so invisible, as it were, that we are capable of forgetting it as we forget the blood in our veins.

"In a way it is even humiliating to watch coal-miners working. It raises in you a momentary doubt about your own status as an 'intellectual' and a superior person generally. For it is brought home to you, at least while you are watching, that it is only because miners sweat their guts out that superior persons can remain superior.

" You and I and the editor of the Times Lit. Supp., and the Nancy poets and the Archbishop of Canterbury and Comrade X, author of Marxism for Infants -- all of us really owe the comparative decency of our lives to poor drudges underground, blackened to the eyes, with their throats full of coal dust, driving their shovels forward with arms and belly muscles of steel."

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The human cost and brutal inefficiency of generating electricity from coal

... as shown today by an explosion in a coal mine in Upshur County, West Virginia, that has left 13 brave men trapped and fighting for their lives. Please pray for them tonight, and for their families.

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Rotten toward Denmark

Drive into Boston on heavily congested Route 3 on any weekday morning - it's as if the commuter rail lines to Plymouth, Kingston and Middleboro had never been built.

Well, not quite. Because just after wondering whether the rail lines have lessened traffic, you might ask another question - what would traffic be like if the lines had not been built?

When it comes to Denmark's efforts at developing wind energy, opponents of the Cape Wind project are like the motorist who asks the first question and never gets around to the second.

The most recent example of this was an op-ed from The Scotsman newspaper cited yesterday in the Against the Wind blog.

"Denmark is often held up as a model of what Scotland could be: rich, environmentally friendly and impeccably politically correct in its international commitments," was how George Kerevan began the piece. "This is a comforting myth that has just been kicked into touch by the Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR) report on how EU countries are measuring up to their Kyoto targets for cutting greenhouse gas emissions."

Yet for a country that generates 20 percent of its electricity from wind power and hopes to hit 50 percent by 2025, there is "just one tiny problem," Kerevan writes - "as the IPPR report reveals, Denmark is set to miss its Kyoto target for cutting emissions by a mile."

"Originally Denmark agreed to cut its greenhouse gases by 21 percent by 2012 (using 1990 as the base year). However, according to the Danish government's statement to the European Commission in June, the country is actually set to increase its gas emissions over 1990 by 4 percent. Which means nuclear-free Denmark will be 25 percentage points behind its stated Kyoto goal, despite all those windmills," Kerevan crows.

Put another way, in a different context - look at all those cars on Route 3.

Nowhere in Kerevan's op-ed will you find him point out that any of the countries signing onto the Kyoto Protocol have met their targets for reducing carbon emissions.

This oversight did not escape the notice of the first person to comment in response to the post, who signed on as "Ratepayer" - "In fact, had Denmark not moved 20 percent of their energy consumption to wind, they would have missed their target even worse."

And we can thank another person posting a comment after an earlier Against the Wind post, titled "Wind 101: Global Warming; Junk Science," for more help in illuminating the matter.

"Caps on CO2 emissions don't work," wrote a person who identified himself as Brad Arnold. "Spain's emissions in 2003 were up nearly 42 percent on 1990 levels; Portugal's by 37 percent; Greece's and Ireland's by 26 percent; and Canada has increased its emissions by more than 24 percent in that period."

Like all those other Kyoto signatories falling short, these percentages were nowhere to be found in Kerevan's op-ed. Including them, however, would have fatally undercut his premise. Why let something as inconvenient and stubborn as facts get in the way of a good premise?

Cape Wind's opponents are like the angry motorist on Route 3  who sees the commuter train in the distance pass him on its way to Boston. 

Curse them, the motorist says of the passengers on the train. Why aren't they doing more to reduce traffic?

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Agreed, wind is intermittent

Much like sunlight ... which does not prevent trees from growing in abundance across New England and elsewhere.

Cape Wind's opponents frequently cite wind's variable nature as if that is reason enough not to build a wind farm on Horseshoe Shoal.

But the winds across Nantucket Sound are apparently reliable enough for the organizers of the annual Figawi sailing competition to plan for their event every year.

The winds that buffet the Cape and islands are apparently reliable enough for all manner of sailors to ply local waters, year after year, like clockwork.

That wind is not to be relied upon on any given day has not kept the Kennedys from enjoying innumerable carefree sailing jaunts with family and friends.

That wind is unreliable has not prevented it from carving sand dunes that are the Cape's defining feature since long before any human presence was found here. 

The wind is reliable enough to have given birth to new architecture, in the form of a house known around the world as the Cape - built low to the ground and sturdy, the better to handle the blustery winds beyond its walls.

Reliable enough that early Cape settlers built hundreds of windmills that freed them from the drudgery of hauling water and grinding corn, thereby allowing them to focus on more important aspects of life such as educating their children and savoring the natural beauty around them. 

Reliable enough that the quintessential sound of the Cape and islands is surf breaking on a beach - which you'd never hear were it not for the wind.

Happy New Year to all, regardless of where you stand on Cape Wind.

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