The answer, my friend, is blowin’ in the wind

For thousands of years, men plied the seas for a living with the aid of wind power.

Recently, I continued that proud tradition … by typing on my Mac. It wasn’t quite the same as feeling the wind at my back with a star to steer by, but my computer was sailing along with the aid of wind power.

The occasion was a Delaware Sea Grant Program seminar on “Mitigating Climate Change at the Local Level.” It was held at University of Delaware Virden Center, nearly in the shadow of the great wind turbine that serves as a campus landmark.

Actually, at 404 feet - which the tip of the blade reaches at its zenith - the turbine serves as a landmark for the whole Cape Region coastline, visible on clear days from New Jersey.

And since the wind was blowing at greater than 7 mph that morning - the turbine doesn’t operate below that level - the giant windmill-like structure was supplying all the power needs for that morning’s conference.

In fact, said Jeremy Firestone, professor at the UD School of Marine Policy and Science, the turbine was generating enough power on campus for “six large buildings that use a lot of energy,” plus additional electricity that was sold to the City of Lewes.

There’s no need to turn down the lights, he said, “We’re being powered by the turbine.”

The benefits don’t end there. By generating power by wind instead of fossil fuels, Firestone said, the turbine displaces between 4,000 and 5,000 tons of carbon dioxide per year.

Not that the turbine came without controversy. Neighbors complained about the noise. Some even compared the turbine’s noise to that of a jet airplane preparing for a takeoff. (I’ve driven by the turbine many times and never heard anything like a jet engine.) There was talk of a lawsuit.

But a recent survey indicated that despite concerns, the wind turbine enjoys wide support.

In 2013, UD mailed surveys to 1,250 coastal residents. About 47 percent responded. That’s not a scientific survey - the respondents are self-selected, not random - but it’s probably accurate.

The survey showed that 78 percent of the people viewed the turbine positively or very positively. Only 10 percent viewed it negatively or very negatively. That’s about as positive a response as you can reasonably expect. Even an idea as popular as oyster farming has detractors.

The survey asked specifically about noise. Sixty percent said they had never heard the wind turbine, Firestone said.

Some said they heard it, but that it wasn’t bothersome, and others heard it but weren’t sure whether it was bothersome. “I’m not sure what that means,” Firestone said.

Also of note were the respondents who said they heard it from their homes, even though they lived outside the one-half-mile range of the turbine’s noise. Perhaps they have dog ears.

But for me the most interesting responses were those concerning the turbine’s aesthetic value. A full 82 percent liked the look of the turbine, and 14 percent considered it a “work of art.”

A giant piece of art that provides clean, cheap electricity! Hard to beat that.

It’s possible the turbine will prove to be like the World War II-era towers that dot the coastline. Objectively ugly, they’ve become beloved symbols of the Cape Region, subjects of countless pictures and paintings.

I grew up with them and always liked them myself. But I sometimes wonder whether those who remember Cape Henlopen before Fort Miles consider them eyesores. If they were to be torn down now, however, people would likely storm the beaches, figuratively anyway.

Even wind power has downsides. Among the biggest concerns about turbines is the carnage they wreak among birds and bats. Estimates range in the hundreds of thousands of winged wildlife killed each year in what even Smithsonian.com called spinning “death traps” for birds.

Those numbers are horrifying, but we should bear in mind other threats to our high-flying friends. (Also, UD is trying a device that would lower deaths among bats.)

According to an April 2014 National Geographic article, “American homes and office buildings are responsible for hundreds of millions of dead birds per year, many times more than windmills.”

I don’t expect people to start living and working in tents to save our birds and bats.

Buildings aren’t even the biggest threat to bird life. That distinction belongs to those cuddly stars of countless viral videos - house cats.

As the National Geographic continued, “Researchers recently estimated that house cats kill well over a billion birds in the United States annually.”

A billion.

If we really want to protect birds, we’ll keep our cats inside, where they can work on their next video.

We also need to recall that old American saying, which Firestone repeated that day: “There are no free lunches,” he said. “We all use electricity. We’re all going to continue to use electricity. We have to get if from somewhere.”