Rural rejecters of wind power aren't bumptious bumpkins, says Adrian Snook. We are asserting our rights as consumers and voters. ...Opinion polls consistently show strong public support for wind power in the UK with around 80% of people expressing support and only 10% opposed. Yet when this translates into local voter reaction to onshore wind development, particularly in England and Wales, support seems to evaporate. It is often replaced by deep anger and opposition. Why is this? I believe there are two reasons.

We measured industry noise at night under low and medium wind conditions. We found, in front of the boundary fence of an industrial plant we measured, a sound pressure level of 52 dBA. Then, 1500 m away, we measured the same noise at the same value (52 dBA), implying that the noise is hardly attenuated by distance. This is an extraordinary result and it took calculations for us to appreciate that the combination of a temperature inversion (where the ground is colder than the air) and the wind had caused the plant noise to travel significantly further than usual. We further discovered that our findings were actually quite well known - the phenomena is not new.

How would you imagine an environmentalist would react when presented with the following proposition? A power company plans to build a new development on a stretch of wild moorland. It will be nearly seven miles long, and consist of 150 structures, each made of steel and mounted on hundreds of tons of concrete. ...The answer is that if you are like many modern environmentalists you will support this project without question. You will dismiss anyone who opposes it as a nimby ...and campaign for thousands more.

The land affected by this monumentally inappropriate industrial development is set to dominate and face the central heart of Sutherland. ...This is not just a Brora-Helmsdale issue but one that must be for the individual and is now of national and international importance. Our complex peatlands and wildlands are among some of the finest tracts of singular landscape beauty and rare habitat within Europe. All this is meaningless to the developers and their contractors, whose careless handiwork is already in monumental flailing form, demeaning and dominating sites around the Highlands.

It's probably too much to expect, but, following the country's latest landslide or bog overflow, county councils and An Bord Pleanála should have more regard for people living in susceptible areas. Despite the concerns of people in Derrybrien, Co Galway, regarding a wind farm in their area, planning permission was granted for it by An Bord Pleanála. Residents' worst fears came to pass when a landslide caused devastation in 2003. Fast forward to August, 2008, and a similar landslide involving 20 acres of bog in the Kielduff/Lyrecrompane area of Co Kerry. ...The Irish Peatland Conservation Council (IPCC), which aims to save Irish boglands, is calling on the Government to come up with a policy on the location of wind farms in sensitive habitats.

With the publication of the Friends of the Earth document "Wind Power 20 Myths Blown Away", fully endorsed by Minister Jane Davidson, I was highly amused at the very clever way it has been worded - and the way it has neatly avoided giving a full and balanced picture. It is a veritable symphony in spin. ...I am surprised that Davidson's advisers let her be a party to this biased "report". If we take just one of the twenty - No 17: Wind farms harm property prices. The FoE document quotes two reports saying they don't. Well, the planning inspector who turned down the appeal by Renewable Energy Systems against the council refusal for 10 wind turbines at Rhos Garn, Llandysul, thought differently. He referred to a property owner near the site and said: "I can well imagine that if this proposal was allowed, he may well have difficulty selling his property."

As I am Jane Davis, I hope you will allow me the time honoured right to reply to this gentleman's statements. Noise pollution from the Wind Farm 930 metres from our home has indeed caused us to abandon our home and rent a house 5 miles away. Not an easy decision to make when your home is on your farm. ...The Local Government Ombudsman has only yesterday decided that our situation needs proper investigation, with all facts available to all parties and this is to happen in the near future. She is however concerned that the planning condition for noise "put in place to protect local residents" and based on the industry standard ETSU-R-97, is "Vague, open to interpretation, immeasurable and thus unenforceable".

WHOOSH, whoosh, whoosh. Or should that be whump, whump, whump? I'm trying to imagine what life might be like living next door to a wind farm. A few weeks back I put an offer in on a house with splendid views of the Borders countryside. Then I found out a planning application is under consideration for eight 100ft turbines on a hill just a mile away from the dream cottage. Oh, the irony. Having waxed lyrical about renewable energy, there's no way I can object to turbines being put up. So why can't I get the opening sequence of Apocalypse Now out of my head? The slow, repetitive whoosh of helicopters has been translated from Vietnam to rural Roxburghshire. The main cause of the 'Nam flashbacks are the articles I've read about low-frequency noise.

Likewise with these huge turbines we have to take into consideration all the effects they will have on the environment around them. This includes the roads, the foundations of the turbines, the converter station in the Kergord valley, the quarries and the shadows. The flickering shadow from these turbines when the sun is at a low ark of 20 degrees would be in the region of a quarter of a mile long. Up to now the huge destructive visual impact of this oversized proposal has been my main objection, however during the last few weeks my view has changed. ...However what has disturbed me more than anything is the sound of the turbines. This is not so much the actual decibels as the deep vibratory effect of the turning blades that seemed to penetrate my very being. Call me a wimp but I have not been able to spend much longer than an hour up there without feeling distressed, disorientated and nauseous.

You have got to admire the gall of Viking Energy. They say that the total area of peat disturbed by the wind farm will be 371 acres. This equates to about 2.4 acres per turbine. This is probably the correct area that is immediately affected by an individual wind turbine with regards to the concrete base, construction disturbance and access. But like all of Viking Energy's propaganda this is not the full story - and well we know it. For a forest of wind turbines to work effectively they have to be placed at a certain distance apart to avoid taking the wind out of each other's blades. For a 1.5MW turbine this is about 0.13 square km per MW installed. So for this proposed wind farm of 554MW, the land area disturbed will be at least 72 square km or 17,500 acres. Rather more than 371 acres!

"According to ScottishPower, the project will reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 650,000 tonnes per year." Erecting a wind farm per se does not reduce emissions. A reduction in emissions only takes place when fossil generation is displaced by the wind generation. But because the wind is variable, intermittent, sometimes too strong for turbines and is largely unpredictable, back-up power-station generation is required continuously, irrespective of wind conditions, to ensure a reliable electricity supply. If the 180,000 homes mentioned were to rely only on the output of Whitelee wind farm, they would be unable to switch anything electrical on with any confidence that it would work because of the unreliable output from wind farms.

Our beloved county is facing the biggest threat ever to its unique heritage, economy and beautiful landscape. ..."Cumbria is on course for its 100th commercial scale wind turbine. But that number would actually double very quickly if developers did not run into so much opposition across the county (The Cumberland News, November 16)." The situation has deteriorated seriously since then as the full implications of the Government's latest turbine intentions have become apparent. I was recently informed by a member of the West Cumbrian Development Agency that wind turbines currently occupy a total of five square miles of our county and then when the Government's plans are fully implemented this will grow to an area of 250 square miles - a 5000 per cent increase.

Britian's biggest conservation charity, the Royal Society fir the Protection of Birds, announced Wednesday (February 20) that is was about to start issuing maps of important bird-flight routes in the North of England to help planners decide the future sites of wind farms. The first map will cover Cumbria with others on Morecambe Bay and the Lancashire coast to follow. ... We could get these monsters in the Dales because we are ordered to have them by the European Union. Its bureaucrats never listen to what people say because they consider us a mere nuisance. But they do pay attention to the environmentalists. With a bit of luck, the RSPB will say that these plans would cause too much bird kill - and we Dalesfolk could be saved!

We add our support to all who believe that the government should not approve the proposed Lewis wind power development. The impact of such a development on landscape, wildlife and community interests would not be justified. We believe it is time for the Scottish Government to address some fundamental questions over Scotland's energy strategy. ...The government has time to pause before granting any more wind farm approvals, to ask whether it simply wants to carry on the policies of previous governments, or whether it wants to demonstrate a better way forward for wind energy development. New criteria, set by the government, are needed to define the type of landscape within which modern turbines can be accommodated, along with height limits. We cannot depend on simply excluding such large industrial structures from the areas designated for their wildlife and landscape value and their surrounding mountains and moorlands. A new approach is needed in which a world-class energy policy has due regard for a world-class landscape, throughout Scotland.

The Scottish Government has inflicted the biggest injury on the reputation of Scotland as a place renowned for its natural beauty. The approval of the 68-turbine Griffin wind farm in the heart of Highland Perthshire has sounded the death knell to Perthshire's worldwide reputation as a jewel in the crown of Scotland's scenery. The 68 massive turbines would be seen from every hill and mountain top in the area, including Schiehallion, pictured. ...Why did the people living here not stop this?" The answer is that the Scottish Government listened to the power companies, not the people.

Our crofters have had years to consider the "lucrative" income that we could "enjoy" if this wind farm were granted, and we have said no each time we were asked. Sixteen surveys or ballots have all yielded overwhelming opposition to this project, comprehensively backed up by more than 13,000 objections submitted to the government - with only 77 letters in support - hardly the "widespread support at both national and local level" which he claims this project has. We are not for sale, at any price. We are not the "needy" yokels that Mr Maciver claims, nor will we be bought by dangling "lucrative" carrots as bait to encourage us to capitulate. We most certainly do not share his views that building 181 giant turbines, digging miles of roads, drains and ditches, pylons, excavating five huge quarries (each up to a mile long) would be "managing the moorland to the benefit of our environment".

I was one of the community councillors who asked to go on the wind farm trip in September. I went to see if it proved my thoughts that Shetland could not absorb the visual impact of the Viking Energy project. The simple answer is that it can't - the land mass in Shetland is too small. ...We were advised at this site that the carbon footprint during the construction had been 'massive'. ...

If the 2010 target of reducing CO2 emissions was achievable, which the UK government now admits is impossible, it would have been responsible for saving a ridiculously paltry 0.0003 or four 10 thousandths of all world emissions. And the reason for this failure is plain to see - the wrong technology, that of wind power, has been used. It just cannot deliver any significant saving on emissions, not without plastering the whole country with massive turbines - a 400ft turbine is 20 times the height of a 20ft lamp-post. ...The saving of emissions, we are told, is the main reason for having these turbines in the first place. We look forward to any responses from those Welsh politicians who seem obsessed with the pursuit of this near-useless technology.

I would like to draw your attention to an article on P.35 of the "NFU Countryside" magazine (November 2007 issue) that describes the noise from a wind farm near Deeping St Nicholas that is 930 metres from a farm house. It is so bad that the farm tenants (Julian and Jane Davis) have to rent another house in Spalding in which to sleep. The problem is "amplitude modulation" caused by the blades moving in and out of synchronisation and causing noise they describe as "like four helicopters circling above your property or an approaching train". ...I am, in principle, in favour of wind farms but when you visit Holland, Germany and other European countries with a far higher density of wind farms you will very quickly notice that they are sited well away from any habitation.

We've been inundated with letters and emails about the plans to site eight 125 metre high wind turbines near Baumber. Here's some of the letters we couldn't fit in this week's paper.