July 16, 2009
Dear Mary Kay,
I have been intensively involved with other matters recently and am just getting caught up on e-mail, so I apologize for the delayed response to your message of July 1 regarding further questions and references as follow up on the NYSERDA wind energy forum of June 16.
With all due respect to the views of yourself and your colleagues and the selectively chosen references you have provided as examples of "sound scientific solutions", they should not be put on a par with those of a committee report of the National Academy of Sciences, the premier scientific organization in the U.S., or with those of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), sponsored by the World Health Organization and the UN Environment Program, which has involved over two thousand of the world's leading scientists for more than 20 years in an extensive research and peer review process to understand the global climate change phenomenon, its impacts, and options to reduce the world's dependence on fossil fuels.
I did find the reference you made to the American Physical Society Report on Energy Future. You are quite correct that it does not address wind power, as the report states at the outset that its focus is entirely on energy efficiency in transportation and buildings and that it does not address any other aspects of energy generation and use. Rest assured that NYSERDA is very much engaged with support for energy efficiency r & d as it relates to electric energy.
I tracked some of the other references you sent and they are blogs or reports from organizations like the Competitive Enterprise Institute, Reason magazine and other sources that have consistently been climate change skeptics. For example, Vincent Gray is a coal chemist from New Zealand who has written a lot in opposition to the IPCC. In the same article you referenced that quotes Jack Steinberger, the Nobel laureate who is enthusiastic about solar energy and down on wind, there is reference to Burton Richter of Stanford, another Nobel laureate, who also supported the solar technology, but stated that there was still a place for wind.
Mary Kay, I cannot speak for the enormously well-qualifed and competent NYSERDA staff, but I can tell you that in my own 30 years of volunteer public service on NYS boards and councils, I have never seen a group of staff over the past two years spend more time on one issue, responding to questions of you and your colleagues, organizing a special forum on the topic, preparing a revised website section, etc. I understand that you are unalterably opposed to wind energy, as your e-mails indicate. I am sorry that most of our responses remain unsatisfactory to you.
To repeat what I wrote to Mr. Bowers last month after the forum: As we continue to develop wind resources in NYS, part of a comprehensive portfolio to address our compelling need to reduce dependence on fossil fuels, we should do a better job of defining the natural and scenic resources of significant value where wind turbines are not appropriate, as well as where they are suitable; and we should address siting issues related to major residential densities. Our goal should be to examine the best ways to do that, where possible, through greater state oversight about what is actually being proposed, given the state's responsibility for its natural resources. At the same time we need to balance the state's role with the significant roles of local governments in local decision-making. A tall order, but not insurmountable, and absolutely essential. I hope we can count on concerned citizens like you to be part of the solution.
Sincerely,
Liz Thorndike
(Click to read original letter from Mary Kay Barton)
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