Sietch lies over CSI poll

The blogoshpere has its share of Cape Wind supporters too - but their posts filled with lies and deceit.

Today, I sent The Naib and his Sietch a letter regarding lies surrounding a Civil Society Institute poll regarding Cape Wind:

Please read below: (It comes from the CSI website too)

METHODOLOGY

Survey results are based on telephone interviews conducted among a sample of 600 adults aged 18 and over living in private households in the Massachusetts. Interviewing was completed by Opinion Research Corporation during the period of July 25-August 2, 2007. Completed interviews of the survey adults were weighted by two variables: age and gender, to ensure reliable and accurate representation of the total adult population, including a subset of residents of the Cape/Islands. About nine out of 10 respondents (89 percent) said that they live in Massachusetts somewhere other than the Cape and on the Islands versus 10 percent who said that they do live on the Cape/Islands. The margin of error is plus or minus 4 percentage points for the complete sample of 600 adults. Smaller sub-groups will have larger error margins."

So 1 in 10 people surveyed in live on Cape Cod...out of the 600 sampled...this means that CSI based results for the entire Cape and Islands on feedback from 60 people...

I'm sorry to tell you that a poll of 600 people does not carry much statistical significance, much less 60!

I cannot take any of the things you say seriously - all of your assumptions are based on poor statistical analysis.

"Economics" the backbone of CLEAN POWER NOW

In a recent letter to the editor that appeared in the Cape Cod Times, Clean Power Now executive director Barbara Hill stated the following:

Audra Parker's Aug. 1 letter, "Wind farm boosters careless of facts," is disingenuous at best.

Her pet is the Talisman project consisting of two wind turbines in 150 feet of water off Scotland. The facts: Each 5-megawatt turbine is perched atop a four-legged undersea foundation structure, similar to an oil rig platform. Each platform weighs 1,250 tons, compared with a monopole in shallow water at 180 tons. Talisman powers a nearby oil platform. There is no cable connection to land, because that would have been too expensive.

The total project cost was $61 million, of which $27 million was in government construction subsidies. That works out to $6.1 million per megawatt installed — two to three times the cost of shallow-water projects.

This is not a utility-scale project. In a cautious statement Talisman Energy has said: "Current forecasts for electricity prices will never render this Demonstrator Project economic. It is an R&D project, not a commercial one, and as such requires public sector funding in order to proceed."

We certainly look forward to the development of additional sites such as South of Tuckernuck and other deeper sites as they become viable in the coming decades. Economics is the deciding factor.

Barbara J. Hill

Executive director, Clean Power Now

Hill would have the public believe that the South of Tuckernuck Island alternative site proposed by Cape Wind and Mineral Management Service is not viable because it is in deeper water. The fact of the matter is that this site is perfectly viable. In fact, the wind rating at South of Tuckernuck is a step above Horseshoe Shoal! Projects in Europe are being permitted in depths greater than any at South of Tuckernuck.

Which brings us to the her final statement:

Economics is the deciding factor.

I didn’t realize that environmental not-for-profits were concerned about the market...

Shouldn’t Hill and her friends at CPN focus on proper ocean management and the realization of deep-water technology instead of watching the checkbooks of private developers?

Don’t just take it from me, go to their website:

Ah, yes. “Supporting a clean, healthy environment.”

All this from “A grassroots organization.”

Barbara - I am happy you care more about economics than the environment.

Klaus responds to Marathonpundit.blogspot.com

Read the initial post on Marathonpundit...

See the response:

I'm curious about your use of the word "NIMBY" because the Cape Wind project that you uphold so ardently is sited in unprotected Federal waters in the heart of Nantucket Sound. I would hardly call that area Ted's or RFK's backyard, that is public trust land that is being taken by a private developer in his for-profit venture. That's everybody's backyard being destroyed by the installation of 130 turbines and a 10-story transformer sub-station.

Few people realize Nantucket Sound is the only place in the continental United States where protected state waters surround unprotected federal waters. This is significant because our inner coastal water way (Nantucket Sound, which is traversed by 3 million people annually) is managed like the outer continental shelf. Opposition to Cape Wind does not mean that people are anti-environmental - it means that some of us believe that there are better ways to manage our ocean and wind resources by siting turbines in areas the will not need to be dredged to allow installation, in areas that are not heavily used by our commercial fishing fleet, in areas away from the ferry routes and shipping lanes...the list goes on.

As I mentioned before, Massachusetts residents have inherited a donut hole of unprotected waters. Most people don't know that all of Nantucket Sound was once protected from industrial development as Cape and Islands State Ocean Sanctuary. This was undone in the 80's when the federal government took back waters outside of the 3-mile state limit as part of Supreme Court case that involved a number of states in the Northeast - Maine, Massachusetts, Maryland and others. This legislation cannot be undone, and has left our coastal waters unprotected and susceptible to utility scale projects such as Cape Wind.

Lest we forget Nantucket Sound has twice been nominated as a National Marine Ocean Sanctuary.