Petitioned language involving Ira's future approach to renewable energy was amended on the floor to add "in accordance with the town plan." ...In the end, people knew exactly what they came for, and exactly on what they were voting. There were no further questions or discussion. The vote was a resounding 89-20 in support of an Ira renewable energy policy that leaves industrial wind turbines off Ira ridgelines.

Research director Gabriel Calzada Alvarez didn't object to wind power itself, but found that when a government artificially props up this industry with subsidies, higher electrical costs (31%), tax hikes (5%) and government debt follow. Fact is, these subsidies have the same "Cuisinart" effect on jobs as wind-generating propeller blades have on birds. Every green job costs $800,000 to create and 90% of them are temporary, he found. Alvarez made no bones about the lessons of Spain for the Obama administration.

Nevertheless, many states have adopted a Jeopardy!-like approach in their energy policies. They are imposing detailed renewable energy mandates that prescribe how much of which renewable energy types must be installed by specific dates. But as in the game show, these renewable energy policies are the correct answers only in response to the right questions. California is the leading contestant in this perilous renewable energy game.

That eerie hissing you hear may well be the air beginning to seep out of the green energy bubble. The sound is similar to the pfffffft and sshhhhsssssp noises we heard in the early days of the dot.com bubble collapse or the subprime mortgage meltdown. If you can't hear it, you are not alone. While investment analysts are telling their clients to get out of solar power firms and warning about the continuing risks in wind and bioenergy schemes, Ottawa and the provinces are on a mad populist stampede to throw billions of dollars at the green energy monster.

Thank you to the Agency of Natural Resources for standing up for 23,600 acres of unspoiled wilderness. The ANR came out with something we have known for a long time. Herrick Mountain, Spruce Knob, Ames Hollow, Train Brook Ridgeline to the south and Bird Mountain to the north combine to form a very special piece of habitat that they call a "rare and irreplaceable natural area."

What is clear is that the Department of Energy then worked with Center for American Progress and the industry lobby AWEA to produce an attack that would serve all their interests. That may not be all because we have appealed energy's decision to withhold numerous documents. Incredibly, it refuses to release documents exchanged between it and the pressure group CAP and lobbyist AWEA.

A key finding revealed that in addition to the infrastructure and operating costs for wind turbines and equipment and transmission facilities, there is an extra 10 percent cost for wind energy to Nebraska utilities - or $5.41 a megawatt-hour - to integrate wind generation into the generation mix. This cost was evaluated at the 10 percent wind generation level and takes into consideration the cost of using other generation facilities to help balance wind power's variability.

Yet public officials from the president and vice president to Cabinet and congressional leaders insult our intelligence by delivering scripted messages that the future of the new energy system in this country is clean renewable energy that will be delivered by countless so-called green jobs. The fake chimes of energy independence echo up and down Pennsylvania Avenue. Do headlines make truth, regardless of content? What is it about organizations like Repower America and the Center for American Progress, which provide ideology, not substance, to the administration and congressional leadership on the so-called new energy system? Why are their conclusions unchallenged?

The Ontario government's rush into renewable energy, and industrial wind turbine-generated electricity in particular, is likely to reveal the law of unintended consequences. The government needs to rigorously re-evaluate this precipitous policy before committing billions more in subsidies to it. First, as to the cost of wind-generated electricity, the feed-in tariff for on-shore wind turbines in Ontario provided for under the Green Energy Act is 13.5¢ per kWh (and higher for smaller projects).

You know the saying: Ignorance is bliss. Unfortunately for the American taxpayer, when it comes to the wind turbine industry, ignorance is not as blissful as it is infuriating. According to a new report by the Investigative Reporting Workshop (in coordination with ABC's World News with Diane Sawyer and the Watchdog Institute), Obama can now add wind turbines to his growing list of failures within the stimulus package.

The $400 million Musselroe wind farm would be built under a Hodgman Liberal government - as long as Kevin Rudd comes to the party. The project has been in doubt due to a significant drop in the price of Renewable Energy Certificates, which the business case relied on.

We were promised activity and updates on the important but open aspects of a decommissioning plan and a transmission line alternate route through the town of Hounsfield. When eight Jefferson County legislators voted yes to allow tax breaks, we all feared that our leverage was lost and a bad deal was just made worse.

Wind Energy Ordinance has opened up for 22 of these to be built inside the city limits. This means that not just one neighborhood will be affected, but neighborhoods from Quail Run to homes near Low Street could be impacted. Apparently, the city is poised to repeat the same mistake it did with the landfill. And with the adoption of the conditions of the GCA, it will be nearly powerless to protect the citizens from the negative effects of these huge towers.

It is really hard to vote yes when you have no idea what you are voting on? A No vote will give us the time to REALLY see what the elected local officials and GMP have planned. Once the ridge line has thousands of tons of steel and concrete it will be destroyed forever. There is no state legislation in place to protect the citizens' rights. Wildlife studies paid for by GMP.

The opponents to wind power are concerned with the pace at which its development is occurring in the state of Maine. Skepticism and caution are necessary anytime new industries and possibly lucrative business opportunities develop. There are big bucks and big questions now associated with wind power.

A proposed excise tax on wind energy in Wyoming was improved by the House Revenue Committee, which trimmed it by two-thirds and delayed the tax's implementation by a year. Both moves should help allay critics' fears that such a tax will make the fledgling industry choose other states to build wind turbine projects.

Questions should be asked about the National Renewable Energy Laboratory relationship to the American Wind Energy Association's propaganda machine. The DoE report 20% Wind Energy by 2030: Increasing Wind Energy's Contribution to U.S. Electricity Supply acknowledges the reports dependency on data supplied by the wind industry.

Some say that Ka Le is haunted -- and it is. But it's haunted not by Hawaii's legendary night marchers. The mysterious sounds are "Na leo o Kamaoa"-- the disembodied voices of 37 skeletal wind turbines abandoned to rust on the hundred-acre site of the former Kamaoa Wind Farm. The voices of Kamaoa cry out their warning as a new batch of colonists.

The law still weighs heavily in favor of industry and against landowners. The fact is, in Wyoming it's still not just the government that can take private land -- private companies can as well. And it's not just for major power lines, roads and other things that can be construed as benefiting the general public. Improving a company's bottom line can be reason enough. In the past couple of years, a new wrinkle has been added to the eminent domain debate: wind energy.