‘Wood Lot', an anonymous blogger for Vermont Scrap Wood, endeavors to discredit my position on industrial wind technology (Industrial Wind: A Bill of Goods). Wood Lot argues that, since the Audubon Society favors wind technology, my evidence counts for little or nothing. It is just this kind of ex cathedra prejudice that is giving environmentalism its increasingly deserved reputation for pretentious twitter. The wishful thinking of Audubon and the Sierra Club does not make the case for wind energy.

Where is the responsible-or even logical-ethic in dynamiting, clear cutting and fragmenting scores of miles of some of the rarest, most picturesque mountain habitat in Vermont to install 200 sky-scraper sized wind turbines to produce less than 100MW of sporadic energy in a state that generates virtually no CO2 to obtain electricity- with no assurance these wind projects will abate carbon emissions and with certainty they will not supplant any conventional generation, including nuclear?

Since unreliable, highly variable wind energy provides no capacity, it cannot obviate the need for conventional generation. And because its volatility must be continuously balanced by rapidly responding power units, it cannot abate meaningful levels of carbon emissions anywhere-especially in Vermont, where wind will displace temporarily only responsive hydro plants at no savings of carbon emissions. As Wood Lot points out, all other power suppliers are heavily subsidized. But these subsidies result in high capacity, reliable service. The subsidies for industrial wind, which provides virtually no capacity to the system while delivering energy in fits and starts, will be used to make ineffective and uneconomical technology falsely appear to be effective and economical.

The Holy Grail for intermittent, variable technologies like industrial wind resides in some sort of long-term storage system for their energy. Although it has been sought for more than a hundred years, such a system is not now feasible. Wood Lot suggests this Grail is presently available in the form of a new technology called General Compression, unmindful perhaps that the birth announcements of such technology permeate the media while their obituaries rarely come to the public's attention. Until this storage technology is born out through long-term independent substantiation, wind energy will at best be a sideshow enterprise with great potential for mainline environmental harm.

Of all people, environmentalists should embrace the skepticism of science, rather than be seduced by deceits of fashion. They should not confuse the trappings of science-the engineering grandeur of a huge wind turbine, for example-with the real work of science, which would insist upon verifying the machine's performance. I believe we should conserve our land and our oceans, minimizing our footprint on the earth, not intruding on it with bombast and self-serving incivility. Although I understand why well-intentioned people support the wind industry, I'm mindful the road to hell is often paved with good intentions. Environmental history is the chronicle of how adverse consequences flowed from the uninformed decisions of the well intentioned.