Just to recap: Michigan Congressman Ray Franz is an idiot.
Michigan Congressman Ray Franz is an idiot that wants to ban (BAN!) offshore wind energy in Michigan.
While the rest of the world is diversifying their energy portfolio to include renewable energy sources, Michigan Congressman Ray Franz (an idiot) wants to take us backwards.
Why does Congressman Franz want to ban offshore wind turbines in Michigan? Here’s why:
“It’s not environmentally sound to have machines like these on our lakes. They are our greatest asset, and industrialization on them is a hazard to nature and the economy.”
What’s he worried about? Wind slicks washing up on the shores of Lake Michigan? Greenhouse winds contributing to global climate change? And what other types of machines does Franz think are inappropriate for the Great Lakes? Coal-fired power plants? Chemical plants? Hey, wait! What about nuclear power plants? Because we have all of those and then some in Michigan on the shores of our Great Lakes.
Here’s something inneresting: Franz loves him some nuclear power:
“Nuclear is clean, there are no emissions…The waste “problem” has already been solved…”
In its stunning debunking of much of garp issuing from Franz’s mouth, the Michigan Land Use Institute claims he supports the building of a nuclear power plant in northern Michigan. This would bring to four the number of power plants in Michigan. Oh, and by the way? ALL OF THE CURRENT PLANTS ARE ON THE SHORES OF THE GREAT LAKES!!!
Franz actually claims that these wind turbines would lower property values. Not that what he claims is true.
“In doing some studies and talking to various realtors, I understand that it’s anecdotal, but almost to a person they claim that property values some estimate close to a 40 percent decline.”Fact Check:
[Great Lakes Bulletin News Service] found several large-scale studies contradicting Mr. Franz. The studies indicate wind power has little impact on property values and that any effect is usually positive.
The most recent study, released last year by the U.S. Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, analyzed 7,500 home sales within 10 miles of 24 wind facilities in nine states.
Researchers visited all homes to collect on-site information, including whether turbines were visible from the home. They analyzed home sales between 1996 and 2007, starting before each project announcement and ending well after turbine operation began.
“Neither the view of wind energy facilities nor the distance of the home to those facilities was found to have any consistent, measurable, and significant effect on the selling prices of nearby homes,” the report said. “No matter how we looked at the data, the same result kept coming back—no evidence of widespread impacts.”
Ray Franz is a tea partying climate change denier. He’s pretending to protect his rich friends living on the shore of Lake Michigan from a non-existent threat so that he can force the rest of us Michiganders to be drug along on his anti-science, uneducated, willfully ignorant charade.
If you live in Michigan, you can go to this website and contact your state member of Congress to let them know how you feel about Franz’s moronic House Bill No. 4499. Please, do it today.
I’m just sayin’…
