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To the editor:

Not to be outdone by big-city newspapers telling tall tales, The Coastland Times publishes editorials, undoubtedly thought to be accurate and meaningful but occasionally erroneous or of little value.  For example, the July 1 edition mentions “carbon, the most prevalent greenhouse gas” when in fact, carbon is a solid substance not a greenhouse gas.  The writer confuses a completely different substance, carbon dioxide, a trace gas that exists in the atmosphere at a level of less than 4 %, with water vapor the most prevalent greenhouse gas, measuring approximately 95%.

Another recent edition advises that “8,000 different components” are used to build a windmill. However, more significant to learn would be the fact that millions of tons of cobalt, lithium, rare earth elements, aluminum, steel, copper, concrete and other materials are required to build these monstrosities. Clearly the tonnage involved to foolishly replace existing electric power plants with windmills would require vastly more mining and manufacturing than the world has ever before seen and require burning hydrocarbons (coal, oil, natural gas) at every step of the process.

Similarly, another editorial calls attention to fictitious houses being served by wind-generated electricity with no mention made of the trail of devastation created to serve these imaginary houses. For example, the public would be far better served learning: “that for cobalt alone, over 40,000 Congolese children, as young as four years old, slave away alongside their parents in mines, for a dollar a day risking cave-in and being exposed to filthy, toxic, radioactive mud, water, and air” to serve today’s solar panel and windmill needs. (findings of senior policy analyst Paul Driessen at CFACT, Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow).

As readily observed, environmental predators continue to prey on a generally uninformed or misinformed populace concerning what is erroneously termed ”clean energy”. Often leading a cadre of pie-in-the-sky purveyors of “clean and green” are state-regulated power companies milking guaranteed profits from unreliable breezes and sunshine, profits generated at exorbitant cost to taxpayers and ratepayers much like those enabling folly currently underway in an adjacent state’s offshore waters.

M.S. Medeiros, Jr.

Kitty Hawk

Editor’s Note: The pieces Mr. Medeiros references were published as guest opinion pieces, which are submitted pieces from others, rather than editorials, which are staff researched and written positions of this newspaper. We welcome and value Mr. Medeiros’ feedback, but felt the need to clarify since they are referred to in this letter as editorials.

FOR MORE COLUMNS AND LETTERS TO THE EDITOR, CHECK OUT OUR OPINION SECTION HERE.