BURNING WOOD VS WIND ENERGY?

Surprisingly it's Saturday morning and I still can't get this week's edition of the Elmira Independent on-line. Well if you're interested you'll have to go out and buy yourself a copy which I do every week by the way. On the Opinion page (pg.4) Chuck Kuepfer has an interesting story titled "Entering the wind-energy debate". He mentions the Ontario Federation of Agriculture recently coming out against wind energy expansion for rural Ontario. Chuck then goes on to desribe a talk given recently at an agricultural conference in Ridgetown Ontario by Dr. Patrick Moore. Patrick Moore as you may recall was one of the original founders of Greenpeace although like many others is no longer with them. Mr. Moore seriously believes that both solar and wind power projects are a waste of tax dollars and in fact are in the long run are counterproductive. For him it's about the costs and the diverting of money into overall higher energy costs that does more harm than good. Well that is certainly a different take on things and at least is worthy of discussion. Of even more interest is his suggestion that as far as renewable energy goes "...wood is the most favourable renewable energy resource on the planet." Wow! I heated our house in West Montrose for ten years with wood and often wondered environmentally, as in air emissions, how good of an idea that was. It certainly was far less expensive than oil, gas or electricity although it did require considerable labour overall.