I was forwarded an email putting down the entire wind farm industry, criticizing first its supposed excessive use of lubricating oil, but then all other alleged excesses of the industry. I then came across the National Geographic article on recycling lubricating oil, that was useful in contradicting the oil part. I also defended the industry against the other accusations. I did not copy the propaganda email here, but you can get the aspects of it as you read my replies to it.
This article in National Geographic puts oil saving back on the fossil fuel industry. It also says that PAO synthetic oil does not come from crude oil. For regular refined motor oil, it gives about a 100 to one ratio of crude to refined motor oil, not the 12,000 to one claimed by the wind deniers for PAO.
In my Huntington Beach oil-spill background on my blog I point out that California uses 1.8 million barrels of oil (gasoline) a day, which is for 40 million people. New York City has 8.4 million, so uses about a fifth of that or about 0.4 million barrels x 42 gallons / barrel = 16 million gallons a day.
The email claims for a wind farm powering NY City 300,000 gallons of lube oil a year, which is about 1,000 gallons a day. If it takes 100 gallons of crude to make a gallon of lube oil, that is 100,000 gallons of crude a day. A lot lot less than 16 million gallons of gas a day used in transportation, by a factor of 160.
So the article dooms itself.
There is also the issue of the claim of putting wind farms in old growth forests. Most wind power comes from West Texas, put over farms and cattle grazing areas, not forests. A lot of California wind comes in the desert by Palm Springs. New York will get its wind power from powerful and steady off-shore winds. I have spent many hours staring at oceans, and have never once seen a redwood forest float by.
Wind farms are taking appropriate actions to avoid bird deaths. They are not situated in flyways. They are developing detection systems to stop the turbines when birds are nearby. They have also been painting the blades so that birds can be aware of them.
Here is the National Geographic article on recycling motor oil.
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/article/110601-green-motor-oil-recycling
