For this assignment, my job was to write a position paper. It’s different from a informative paper because the purpose is moreso to change the reader’s mind and take the same stance on the topic rather than simply inform. My purpose for writing this paper was to persuade readers that wind energy is the most ideal renewable energy source.  An position paper required me to write about the topic of renewable, in specific, wind energy for a secondary and primary audience . The primary audience were the readers that are either educated in energy courses or work in that industry because they are aware of the issues and understand the aspects of energy sources. The motivation for the paper was to make readers see that a renewable energy source that does not serve as an environmental threat is important and wind energy portrays that because  non renewable sources such as fossil fuels for example are not sustainable and contribute to environmental issues. I responded to specially my primary audiences misconceptions with statistical evidence to prove their points invalid.

The strategy I used was with every point against wind energy, I attempted to revert it in order to make a better argument for wind energy. For example, I would take a misconception like wind turbines killing birds and provide evidence that fossil fuels actually kill more birds. I chose to use the article, “5 Myths about Wind Energy” by Rainer Stenzenberger because I felt that the article supplied a lot of evidence/ quotes that proved a lot of misconceptions about wind energy wrong. And I chose the article, “The Drawbacks of Wind Power Far Outweigh the Benefits” by Eric Rosenbloom because it address more drawbacks then the other sources provided. The collaborative and social aspects of this writing assignment helped by breaking down wind energy to its pro and cons, as well as developing a strong and narrowed thesis. The peer review helped me clean up my idea, make my points clear and make sure it was easy to understand. I used a lot of the pros and cons from the group activity in my paper. In order to make my science based paper easier for my audience to understand I used adaptive measures like including images/ diagrams and definitions.  

Evidence from my paper:

Another concern that that opposers have is the idea that wind turbines will be deadly to birds that may fly near wind farms. Due to this concern “some people oppose the construction of large wind farms because they believe such farms are dangerous to flying birds and mar scenic views. (Renewable Energy 2015) As a result to concern, there has been pause on the construction of many wind turbine farms. The counter argument for this concern is that  “According to a Danish study, the number of birds that are killed per gigawatt hour of electricity generation is: 5.18 for fossil power plants and 0.27 for wind turbines.” (Stenzenberger 2014) Although birds can indeed can fly into the blades of turbines and die, the emission caused by fossil fuels has actually proved to be more of a fatal threat to birds than wind turbines, making the argument against wind turbines weak.