Monday, August 12, 2013

Former TILT trustee gave lecture on climate change

Zell Steever, former TILT trustee suggested people could utilize solar power or wind power, although the latter is a contentious issue along the St. Lawrence River.
CLAYTON — The Thousand Islands Land Trust’s free TILTalks program ended for the 2013 season Saturday with a former U.S. delegate to the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janiero talking about climate changes.
Zell Steever, former TILT trustee, gave his lecture, “Dirty Weather,” to a crowd of about two dozen people that sought information on why the area has experienced both long droughts and big storms, and what they can do to change that.
 Continue...[Watertown Times]

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

Advocates for the use of industrial scale wind generation, continue to overlook the shortcomings and impacts of this development. They have zeroed in on the imminent threat to our global climate,and seem oblivious to the unfeasibility of wind power as a solution.

This sort of shortsightedness will result in simply trading one environmental disaster with another, at the expense of consumers and taxpayers.

ConcernedCitizen said...


Ms. Madden wrote, " He suggested people could utilize solar power or wind power..."

What Zell Steever and others never provide when claiming wind power is green is an accurate system analysis of an industrial wind turbine with proof that the actual output is green. A very brief analysis will show that just the amount of diesel used in manufacture, shipping, building and maintaining eats into the tradeoffs sacrificed from the output side of an analysis. Many of the inputs to the WEC system are not green.

Add to that, the actual experience that indicates that wind power has not lead the world to the shutdown of any of the other more reliable methods of producing electricity. It now appears that industrial wind is far from green except, of course, the green subsidies which account for about 65% of the economic input of the system.

One way to protect the Thousand Islands and keep them green and healthy would be to keep industrial wind turbines out.

Anonymous said...

Advocating for industrial scale wind energy is like spoiling a child.

Oh dear,my child is unhappy,let me try giving him some candy. Wow!, that made him quite happy, I'll continue to give him more candy, to keep him happy. What does it matter that it will rot his teeth, make him fat,probably diabetic, and will do little to actually address why he is unhappy. The dentist and the candy producers will make plenty of money, won't we all be happy.

Anonymous said...

Buying environmently dirty wind turbines from China is not the way to keep Grindstone clean. Hey Zell if they are so good why not take advantage of the wasteland of Grindstone and put 30 or 40 there?

Anonymous said...

Didn't Kermit the Frog sing it's not that easy being green? Well, it's not that easy being green if you are a tree-hugger concerned about the fate of the planet. I too am a tree hugger, but I'd like to think a pragmatic hugger. Not only is the production and shipping of industrial wind as dirty as coal, but the backup electric utility is even dirtier since it has to idle inefficiently while the wind blows and be ready to ramp up when the wind dies. We all know the big killer for green wind - you can't count on it when you need it. All this hocus pocus nonsense because it sounds good, but we who have lived and learned know these machines do not belong anywhere near people. Bullshit technology dumped on top of people who don't need it so as to satisfy some demand from people who are unaware of the problems, are far removed from the center of production [Cape Vincent], and they wouldn't give a damn anyway. It's an all around bummer. This tree hugger believes nukes are the interim answer until we can figure out how to produce 24-7 energy without screwing either the environment or people.

Anonymous said...

I can't believe that this guy lives on an island and does not recognize that water power is a renewable that operates at a much higher efficiency than wind...and makes a profit with less subsidy..

RW is right...prove that wind is green with real analysis...

Anonymous said...

Good comments all!

The environmental movement has to find a way to get out of the clutches that cause them to believe that any wind turbine is a good wind turbine.

There is a whole lot of non-linear thinking going on among people who claim they are only being guided by science. Maybe they should also allow a little bit of engineering analysis into their heads.

Pundt said...

12:24 Tree Hugger

I have been at this wind battle in Cape Vincent for 7 years. One thing I have learned is there is no magic energy bullet, no free energy lunch.

Ever electric energy source has baggage attached. Hydro for example. Where I live 8 months of the year in AZ we have Glen Canyon Dam right above Grand Canyon that flooded an incredible canyon and has raise environmental havoc down stream in Grand Canyon because of the huge water releases when electric demand is high.

There is a lot that can be learned about what we are facing right now with wind energy regionally that we once faced with rampant dam building by reading about the lead up and trade offs that allowed Glen Canyon dam.

Now we think it is nuts with time perspective... but at one time dams were proposed for Grand Canyon. What a travesty that would have been!!!

I watched Ken Burns programs on the national parks. I have been to most of those big western parks. What I took away was that virtually every one was at one time under some type of severe environmental development threat before they were recognized for what they were and were saved. Just like the 1000 Islands and Golden Crescent.

This wind thing in the 1000 Islands is huge on the environmental scale and like reliving history. Seems we never learn.

When people narrow the wind issue down to noise zoning and property values they just don't get it and are badly missing a much much larger point!