THOMAS, W.Va. — Towering up to 228 feet above the Appalachian Mountain ridge — far above the treeline — are windmills lined up like marching aliens from War of the Worlds.

Up close, they emit a high-pitched hum. From a few hundred yards away, their blades — extending 115 feet from center — cause a steady whooshing sound as they cut through the air at up to 140 mph at the tips.

As Chicago-based Invenergy plans a wind generation factory across the scenic mountains of northwestern Greenbrier County, numerous voices have been raised in protest.

Deep in the Allegheny Mountains of West Virginia sits a giant coal-fired power plant aptly named Mount Storm - a 1,600-megawatt goliath that just a few years ago ranked second in the nation in toxic mercury emissions.

The 2003 study, aimed as much at birds as bats, unexpectedly found that the Mountaineer wind turbines on Backbone Mountain killed an estimated 2,092 bats. Tuttle, not involved in that study, called the 2003 bat kill “by far the largest bat mortality event I know of worldwide and, as far as I know, the biggest mortality event of any animal.” The 2004 bat kill could be even worse.

Must West Virginia play host to thousands of clean, green, scenery-despoiling machines to make urban environmentalists feel better? At the cost of how many birds and bats?