Everybody wants to love wind power. The idea that a few slowly spinning windmills on the horizon can generate clean, cheap electrical power and free us all from the chaos in the oil-soaked Middle East is an appealing prospect. What’s not to love?

But so far, wind power hasn’t lived up to its many promises. And the growing legion of wind power opponents has not only been successful in pointing out some of wind power’s downside, they now control the debate. I’m willing to bet that more people are familiar with wind power’s negatives – the noise, the shadow flicker, the alleged mountaintop destruction – than its positives. Support is clearly declining. If there’s a strong case to be made for wind power, the proponents haven’t made it yet.

This became crystal clear to me this week when I took my son to the Boston Museum of Science. The museum has a bunch of wind turbines on its roof to demonstrate the efficiency and effectiveness of wind power. As we walked inside on a cold, blustery day, we could see one of the turbines spinning against the Boston skyline. The future beckoned.

Once inside, we walked through the museum’s “Catching the Wind” display, a thorough explanation of the science and mechanics of wind power. To say it was an overly positive presentation is an understatement. No other power source measured up to wind – not nuclear, coal, natural gas, solar, nothing. If there was anything bad about wind power, I didn’t see it.

But the most telling part of the exhibit was a small set of meters and dials on the wall showing precisely how much electricity those rooftop turbines were generating. Zero. Zip. Nada. And remember, it was a blustery day. The turbines were spinning. But they weren’t lighting a single bulb in the place.

This is all too typical – there seems to be more spin in the claims and projections by wind power advocates than there is in their turbines. When the Museum turbines were installed with much fanfare in 2009, studies showed that they would produce enough electricity to power two average American homes for a year. They haven’t come close. Combined, the five turbines (four of which experienced mechanical problems) have produced about 4,514 Kilowats of energy in their first year of operation, not even enough to power a single home let alone two. In other words, the wind turbines only produced about 30% of the electricity its promoters had boldly predicted.

When the project was launched , Museum officials boasted that it would “generate valuable experience to help government officials and renewable energy professionals make informed decisions about projects and policy.”

So has it? Well, yes, but not exactly what the fans of wind power had in mind.

If the wind power proponents can’t rig a demonstration project to prove all their claims about wind power, how do you think their turbines will perform in the real world? I guess we can take the power claims by the wind proponents and reduce them by about two-thirds, and you might get the real story.

At least that’s one interpretation.

There’s no doubt that a place exists for wind power in our overall energy mix. But if the companies that are aggressively pushing wind power are going to be successful (especially now that we’ve got a wind skeptic in the Blaine House), they’ve got to get real.

First, stop making pie-in-the-sky forecasts and projections about wind power. No one believes that Maine is ever going to be “the Saudi Arabia of wind,” at least not in my lifetime, and why would we want to be? This is the same “too cheap to meter” claptrap the nuclear industry gave us in the 60s. Instead, figure out a realistic, positive and immediate contribution that wind power can provide, and talk about that. Only that.

Second, stop hiding the truth. Wind power proponents love to attack all the subsidies that those dirty fossil-fuel energy sources receive in order to show that wind power, without those subsidies, would be cost competitive. Uh-huh. But they never talk about all the power lines that are going to have to be built, at ratepayers’ expense, to deliver that wind power from remote, rural areas. And what about those subsidies from the federal government that are funding all that research at the University of Maine for deep-water wind power? Just admit it: wind power will never compete with the price of oil, coal and gas. There have to be other reasons to want it, like energy independence.

Third, stop demonizing wind opponents as a bunch of loonies. They’re not. They’ve raised some legitimate issues. Ignoring them will only make your situation worse. Have you seen some of the YouTube videos by the opponents? Just Google “shadow flicker and wind turbines.” Why would anyone want to live anywhere near these things? Most likely this flicker issue is a bunch of baloney, affecting only a few of the thousands of turbines erected in this country. But the point is that these videos are persuasive and effective, and I haven't seen much in the way of rebuttal from the pro-wind side. (The proponents are getting killed on the social media sites. They haven’t seemed to have grasped its importance or understand how to monitor and respond to the online discussions. They should give up on traditional media, which will never let them get their message out without giving ample and equal time to the opponent’s message, and instead work to dominate social media.)

Fourth, put a face on the industry, and not the corporate suits who stand to make millions if the landscape is dotted with hundreds of their turbines. I’m talking about average working stiffs. If wind power really is creating jobs, lowering electric rates and bringing economic development to areas of Maine, where are the people that are benefiting? Who are they, and why aren’t they front and center talking about wind power’s benefits to average folks? All the fear and emotion is on the anti-wind side, which is why they're winning. The pro-side needs to drop the idea that simple facts can make their case. Facts tell, stories sell. They can rattle off their facts until their gums are bleeding, but all of it gets washed away by one old lady on the TV news saying she can't sleep at night because of all the noise and shadow flicker from nearby turbines. Until the pro-wind side has some good, relevant stories to tell with human faces and real emotion, the anti-wind zealots will continue to control the narrative.

Finally, try and explain why we seem to be investing heavily in a new power source that is predicated on rising energy costs. A recent study by the University of Maine showed that offshore wind could be competitive with current energy sources in 2020 – provided that the price of oil and gas goes up. Shouldn’t we be investing in energy sources and regulatory reform that will help lower energy costs? And until we’ve completed a massive conservation program to super-insulate every home and building in Maine, why create a new energy source that is just going to send more heat up the chimney?

Yes, everyone wants to love wind power. But there are still a lot of questions that the proponents need to address – clearly and truthfully. The proponents have adopted this haughty attitude that they are above debate, that what they are doing is so obviously positive that it shouldn’t be questioned. But it is being questioned and the debate is going on without them. It’s time they joined it.

A Cancer Epidemic?: Forget for a minute all the stories about the possible harmful effects of BPA and consider this: in just the last few months, three high-profile people in Maine – Dan Paradee , Jolly John Pulsiver and Stan Bennett – have all died prematurely from pancreatic cancer. I’m no statistician, but is there something going on here we need to know about?

A Flaw in The Daily: I recently finished my two-week free trial of The Daily, the Murdoch-Apple iPad only news app, and kept getting messages that said if I wanted to continue, I’d have to subscribe at 99-cents a week. Instead, I deleted the app and then downloaded it again. It now says I’m getting another two-week free trial. Either this is a big bug in the system or The Daily has given up on charging for content, at least for now.