Tilting At Windmills – A Few Words On Experts, Global Warming And Green Energy

By Mark Taliano

If the best foundation for a strong democracy is an informed electorate, then the worst would be a frightened or uninformed one.  It is with this in mind that I am adding a dose of clarity to some muddied waters.

A recent Letter To The Editor in the West Niagara News argued that wind turbines are not “green”. There’s nothing new about this; I’ve seen the protest signs.  My first reaction was to juxtapose the image of wind turbines to Mountaintop Removal Mining in the Appalachian Mountains, or to compare them to images of exploding Japanese nuclear reactors.  The imagery is fair, and a picture can sometimes be worth a thousand words, but some would argue that it’s alarmist.
There is another way, and it involves hypothetical situations.  If someone were to ask me about the science of Global Warming, I wouldn’t be presumptuous enough to suggest that I’m an expert in the field, or that I’m a qualified scientist.   I would, however, refer to the work of qualified scientists in the field, those with peer-reviewed articles based on the subject, and point to the results of their work.

Likewise with wind turbines: they seem fairly innocuous, even graceful, a lovely symbol of a new era in renewable energy.  But I wouldn’t suggest that I’m an expert in the field.  I would defer to the experts.

The writers of the article are probably of the same mind-set: they referred to an “expert”, and the “expert’s explanation even sounds plausible — something about spinning standby, matching the supply of electricity to the demand, and the unpredictability of the wind.

So I did some research.  The source is a Research Database on DESMOGBLOG.COM , and here is some of the information that I gleaned:

Richard C. is the “expert”, and he is a founding member of the “European Science and Environment Forum”, the European version of the tobacco-funded TASSC which questions the link between second hand smoke and the risk of lung cancer.   I thought we had already cleared that air.

Richard C. also has claimed to be an IPCC “expert reviewer”, and has stated a lack of measured global warming. My guess is that he somehow conducted his own measurements.

Additionally, he was one of the first signers of the 1995 “Leipzig Declaration” which states that “there does not exist today a general scientific consensus about the importance of greenhouse warming from rising levels of carbon dioxide.”  It was later discovered that of the 33 scientists listed on the petition, twelve denied signing it, adding further that they had never heard of the “Leipzig Declaration.”  Amnesia?  Of those who admitted to signing it, one was a doctor, and another an expert on flying insects.

Richard C. was also a signatory of the “Manhattan Declaration On Climate Change”, which recommends “that world leaders reject the views expressed by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel On Climate Change.”  Unfortunately some “leaders” have already rejected the “views”

On such an important matter as this, with an election around the corner, I would suggest that we continue to be vigilant when we use “qualified sources” as foundations for our arguments.  Our economic and environmental health depends on it.

Mark Taliano is a resident of Niagara and regular contributor to Niagara At Large.

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