It's really quite easy to dismiss opponents of wind farms as suffering more from the "not-in-my-backyard" (NIMBY) syndrome than any particular health problem. Wind farms are the cleanest form of energy we have, consuming no fuel and emitting no pollution. They are one part of the solution to wean the world off fossil fuels. And they are being built as quickly as the turbines can roll off the assembly lines ...But for the Ontario government to dismiss what appears to be growing concern about potential health problems generated by wind farms is folly.

‘Wind Power Monthly' (The Editor, September 1998), the magazine for the wind industry and its supporters, actually recognized almost 11 years ago that the reason for the growing unpopularity of wind power is that a de facto heavy industry has tricked its way into unspoiled countryside in "green" disguise. The editor stated that: "Too often the public has felt duped into envisioning fairy tale wind parks in the countryside. The reality has been an abrupt awakening. Wind power stations are no parks."

Let's hope the provincial government will move quickly to have a comprehensive epidemiological study on the impacts of industrial wind turbines conducted prior to having any other industrial wind turbines installed anywhere in Ontario.

An article in the Nikkei recently may well spell trouble for the fledgling alternative energy industry-and particularly for the wind power generation sector, where most energy investment has taken place in Japan. Apparently residents in the town of Toyohashi, Aichi Prefecture, have petitioned a wind turbine farm operator (Nikkei doesn't mention who) to close down their plant in the evening hours-on the basis that low frequency noise emanating from the wind farm is causing residents in the area serious health problems.

As tourists arrive to appreciate this landscape for the first time, it is here that many also have their first encounter with modern, large-scale wind power production. Upon seeing that these facilities are not, as they are portrayed in numerous cartoon images on electrical bills, mere sets of three or four towers nestled into rolling glens, travelers' first impressions are often negative. Such encounters do not just hurt tourism in Texas but also renewable energy causes in tourists' own parts of the world.

One need not state a falsehood to tell a lie. Misleading presentation of facts and rhetorical sleight of hand have become modern art forms. One of the most insulting practices is the framing of arguments in terms of false choices. I’m particularly disappointed to see two local environmental organizations with whom I share much common ground distilling the debate over industrial scale wind farms down to: We can let the coal industry flatten the mountains and pollute the air and water, or we can let the wind industry turn the mountains into Gary, Ind.,with slopes. Which shall we do? I’ll take C), neither of the above.

The placement of wind turbines near homes is an international problem that can in no way be likened to living near a train or an airport. It is not just what you hear but what you don't hear (low frequency vibration) that causes well-documented health problems. It's insidious that way. Also insidious is the quiet creation of the Ontario Green Energy Act -- a piece of legislation that removes all rights of local municipalities to take part in critical planning decisions for their own communities.

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.

Why do our town officials value the wind companies more than the citizens they represent? Furthermore, it's hard to understand why so many people are indifferent about the issue. Many people say, "I don't care one way or another because I won't see them from my house or from the village. They won't affect me." To me this translated to I don't care what happens to my neighbors or my community.

Cap-and-trade schemes could hurt families and send jobs overseas The recently passed U.S. House bill to create a cap-and-trade system to tackle greenhouse-gas emissions threatens to hurt families and send jobs out of the country, argues Washington state Rep. Shelly Short, R-Addy. In Washington state, the definition of 'green jobs' is ill defined.

This year, things have changed utterly. The future has arrived on Wolfe Island with a wind-turbine vengeance. And many ferry passengers will surely lament this summer that one of Ontario's more tranquil refuges has been turned into a wind-turbine theme park. ...Whatever the technical merits of the project, there's no question about the aesthetic impact on the island. The turbines have tilted its ambience from the pastoral to the industrial.

At what point does it become a matter of personal responsibility to stand up and speak out to preserve the priceless beauty and health of a God-given resource that once irreversibly damaged by corporate and political greed can never be replaced? ...Now after the introduction of industrial-scale wind turbines and high voltage switchyards and transformers to Sheldon, and the dumping of thousands of tons of industrial waste from the 100 year-old industrial steel site into the agricultural fields where food is grown or cattle graze ... we choose to exercise our rights as a democratic society and therefore stand up and speak out as necessary to preserve this land that is the Orangeville that we love.

The wind filling the sails of alternative energy might slacken if regulators fail to address the concerns of wind farm neighbors. The new industry, which is supposed to be one of the jewels in the renewable energy crown, will lose its appeal rapidly if the rush to build wind farms blows out traditional rural living values. The signs should concern the industry and regulatory agencies.

A doctor says she's conducted research that suggests that people living close to wind turbines are susceptible to what she calls Wind Turbine Syndrome (WTS), an illness with symptoms including sleep disorders, heart disease, panic attacks and headaches ...if the research is reproduced and backed up by further studies, it could actually have a big effect on the siting and zoning of wind farms - a 2-kilometer buffer between wind farms and buildings is substantial. It's not like we needed more reasons to slow down the installation of clean power, but if there's merit to the findings, they should be taken seriously.

All new technologies carry risk. That is true of benign new technologies as well as the old industrial sort. This paper's report on the potential health hazards of wind turbines, generators of eco-friendly wind power, will be unwelcome for many environmentalists and indeed for the Government, which for entirely creditable reasons is committed to a great increase in their number. But a new book by a New York pediatrician, Dr Nina Pierpont, on which our report is based and which draws on international studies, ought not to be ignored.

Whether or not you agree with wind farms is not the argument surrounding the opening ceremonies of the West Cape Wind farm. ...The wind farm is here and it's not going anywhere. Those landowners that were never notified of the plan will never be given a voice. The turbines do make noise, they do generate flicker and they represent the biggest change to lifestyles that ever came to the west end of P.E.I.

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.

Let's be perfectly clear. The only way to "mitigate" problems associated with industrial wind turbines is to make sure the projects do not go up within residential areas in the first place. As reported in a recent Daily News letter ("Think big on wind energy" by David Bassett, May 20, 2009) , the U.S. Department of Energy admitted when these immense machines were being developed that they were intended for placement in the remote, unpopulated areas of the Midwest, and offshore -- not amongst rural/residential areas like that of WNY.

Imagine that all gas pumps were wind "powered." How sure would you be that the amount of gas you wanted would be there? How long might it take to fill your tank? How long would the lines be awaiting service? As you parse this situation, think of the loss in productivity that would result. Because it produces no capacity value, is inimical to demand cycles, provides only early 19th century power productivity, in the process making everything and everyone around it work harder.

"Governor, I spent the first 35 years of my life in and around Fond du Lac County. "Returning after several years away, I find vast swaths of rural Wisconsin being heedlessly vandalized by industrial wind turbines, monstrosities that produce no useful output except tax breaks and carbon offsets for fat cats in Chicago and New York.