RonR, asked that I comment on last nights meeting at the Lewes Library on Wind Power, so here it is.

The meeting was very well attended, including Representatives Gerald Hocker and Joe Booth. It was standing room only. A Representative from the MD legislature was also in attendance, as well as representatives from other interested citizen groups, plus the general public.
The film Kilowatt Ours speaks for itself, a documentary that highlights all the negatives of using coal to generate electricity, from strip mining off mountain tops in WV and KY and the resultant waste, floods and mud slides that destroy towns and negatively impact people’s lives, to the emission of greenhouse gas carbon dioxide, and worst of all to the emission of mercury. We here who are down wind of the Indian River Power Plant get sprinkled with the mercury, as do the fish.
UD Professor Willett Klempton’s excellent presentation covered the advantages to Delaware if we sign on to off shore wind farms to generate electricity. Obviously it is clean, would not contribute to global warming, can generate more electricity than DE needs thus can be sold at a profit to the state, will withstand a Cat 3 hurricane, and can be easily positioned not very far out as to be invisible from the beaches. The downside is that the cost to the user would be about 3 cents more per kwh than coal, but much cheaper if the environmental costs are added to the cost of coal.
He also included an update on global warming, which is increased by the burning of fossil fuels like coal. The most striking and dramatic and worrisome part were the maps indicating the impact of the melting of Greenland’s ice on our Delaware and the Delmarva Peninsula with the rise in sea levels. (By the way, the melting of the arctic ice caps does not raise ocean levels, because the ice is already part of the ocean. Greenland ice is over land, therefore not part of the ocean.) Even by 2040, there will be significant inundation of our coast, and by 2100 Delmarva will become an archipelago! Lewes, Rehoboth, Dewey, Bethany and Fenwick will be submerged, and the Chesapeake will inundate portions of western Delaware.
People have to begin to accept this and act upon it, with the rest of the globe, right now. The longer we wait inactive, the closer we get to the point of no return in this rather sudden global crisis that we people have wrought upon ourselves.

Now we understand what to do: Minimize the emission of CO2 from the burning of fossil fuels. Wind, solar and geothermal energy, and CO2 recyclable fuels like ethanol from trees and plants, all then become no-brainers, except to the brainless!!!

I love this report about smokers and littering.  When you listen to it, please remember WGMD reporter Joe Ciccanti actually sat in the parking lot at Midway and counted how often smokers tossed their butts on the ground!  Are smokers this self centered and self absorbed in other areas of their life, or only when it comes to littering?

Hear the report here, and others here.

I agree with the manager of Prime Hook; a five cent deposit on butts to help clean up.

As NRG Energy attempts to get approval for constructing a second coal fired electricity generating plant at Indian River, Delawareans are being presented with an opportunity to construct wind powered generators just off of our coast. We are fortunate to have near ideal conditions for wind power, and can supply all our electrical needs and then some from the wind.

Coal burning not only increases the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide into our air, but also produces deadly mercury compounds plus an array of toxic gases like oxides of sulfur and nitrogen and finally, emphysema and lung cancer producing fly ash. Moreover, the strip mining of coal lays waste our mountains and streams of the likes of West Virginia and Kentucky. NRG’s proposal claims they can do carbon sequestration, “putting the stuff away somewhere”, but the technology is not yet economically feasible, according to Leonard Schwartz, Professor of Mechanical Engineering at UD.

A documentary film called “Kilowatt Ours” demonstrates these negative aspects of coal mining and burning, yet our national government has been promoting the coal industry, exactly the opposite of what we should be doing. This film will be shown again in Sussex County in early January, along with a presentation by Dr. Willett Kempton from UD. When the date is set, I will announce it here.

Since the decision on the future of power generation in Delaware is now being considered by the Legislature, it is imperative that citizens contact their Representatives and Senators to express concern about another coal fired plant at Indian River.

For additional information on this topic:

http://abettersussex.blogspot.com/
http://www.cleartheair.org/regional/factsheets/factsheetDEfinal.pdf