We’ve all been hearing a lot about solar energy lately, but there really is much left unsaid. I offer here a three-part article which should clarify reality for the confused and or indifferent on this subject. The rest of the world is ahead of America regarding alternative energy as the fossil fuel industry distorts the world economy/planet.

The opposition to solar power has taken arguments against fossil fuel and nuclear energy only to put a spin on those angles for redirection at solar. While doing so, the opposition to solar is actually promoting fossil fuel/nuclear energy as the solution to the problems created by nuclear energy/fossil fuel. They offer pretzel logic as if conjuring magic. If they can avert your attention over there, they can fool you over here.

The antisolar crowd rally around a local zoning planner named Kevon Martis, who lives in Riga. He’s the Johnny Appleseed of deception spreading doubt within the ranks of township officials in Monroe County. He has been holding private meetings with countywide township representatives in public buildings. They are informed not to bring their whole board so as to avoid a quorum. The public is not invited. He apparently thinks sunshine laws are not applicable to solar, and I think that violates the Open Meetings Act. I have contacted state Attorney General Dana Nessel and maybe we’ll get some clarification.

A prime argument the antisolar people employ is they have to save the farms to grow food. The problem is, 40% of all farmland is used for corn-based ethanol. They call corn’s conversion to vehicle fuel biorefining, I call it industrial agriculture. Truth is, ethanol-infused gas is an inferior fuel which generates about 20% less miles per gallon compared to straight gas. I and a number of people I know avoid stations that sell ethanol fuel and I suspect this social frame of mind has led to shrinking demand for ethanol. This may explain why the Riga refinery has been shut down for a couple of years. Or maybe the loss of their 10-year tax break ended their profitability.

We also need to look at the AltEn ethanol refinery in Mead, Nebraska, which ceased operations last year because the residual wet cake of corn mash left over from the refining process is extremely toxic. That particular plant refines left over seed corn rather than corn grown in fields. That seed corn is heavily coated with herbicides, pesticides and fungicides which do not break down during refinement.

The antisolar people prefer not to talk about that but they do argue solar panels are toxic and poison the soil. Truth is, you don’t need pesticides, herbicides, fungicides or fertilizer to harvest sunshine. Solar panels don’t seep chemicals into the soil that runs off into waterways that contribute to the Lake Erie algal bloom.

They say a field of solar panels can emit a solar glare. Yeah, I guess about as much as a parking lot full of cars at the local shopping center on any given day. I suppose if you lived on a mountainside across from a solar field you may have to deal with an exceptional burst of sunshine now and then.

The opposition believes solar fields are noisy. I suppose the transfer station from a solar field possibly makes about as much noise as the electric transformer on the pole out on your street corner. I’ve never heard one and neither have the antisolar folks.

There’s a solar field in operation on the corner of Dixie Highway and Sterns Road south of Erie. If you pull up on the side of the road there, turn off your engine, roll down the window, stick your head out and listen intently, all you’ll hear is traffic going by. In the summer the crickets are deafening.

For more information, I suggest you consider attending the prosolar lecture by Peter Sinclair at 7 p.m. Friday, April 8, in the Monroe Community College cafeteria.

I will expand my dis-assembly of deception in parts two and three here.

Mark Farris lives in Monroe. He can be reached at rpddog@sbcglobal.net.