I was disappointed by your editorial of Sept. 9 titled "Wind power deserves the investment." I expected to find the kind of real cost information on wind power I've been looking for. In the end, I was irritated by its total failure to support the contention implicit in its title.

The guidelines included in State Attorney General Andrew Cuomo's Wind Industry Ethics Code provide vital oversight into the wind energy industry. The proposed ethics code establishes public disclosure requirements that will allow residents to know the full extent of any involvement between public officials and wind energy companies. ...Three wind energy companies have already signed on to the Attorney General's Wind Industry Ethics Code. We hope Babcock & Brown, sponsor of the proposed Ripley-Westfield Wind Farm, signs on in the very near future.

We have just seen the collapse of the financial Goliath that was built by fast-buck bankers and encouraged by altruistic but shortsighted government policies that required banks to make more loans to those least able to repay them, and encouraged passing on these loans as quality investments. We are now building a second Goliath in the form of irrational investment in wind and solar-voltaic energy.

In January 2007, Deerfield Wind and Iberdrola Renewables (formerly PPM Energy, a subsidiary of the Spanish energy company Iberdrola) applied for a Certificate of Public Good from the Vermont Public Service Board in order to construct a 34 megawatt (MW) wind turbine project in the Green Mountain National Forest in Readsboro and Searsburg. ...Wilmington voted at a town meeting in December 2007 to oppose the project based on concerns about wildlife habitat, aesthetics and lack of public benefit including the areas of property values and the impact on tourism.

State Attorney General Andrew M. Cuomo has taken the lead at the state level to bring some oversight to the proliferating proposals for wind power developments across the state. Mr. Cuomo has drafted what is now a voluntary set of ethical guidelines for wind power companies and municipal officials in the wake of a corruption investigation in Franklin County, where wind companies are alleged to have improperly influenced local officials to get permission to build wind towers.

Instead of messing with farms, let's put solar and wind energy facilities where they belong. ...This legislation tries to satisfy one societal need - clean energy - by compromising another - preserved farmland. Perhaps it's easier to place clean power generation facilities on open land than retrofit other sites, but this tendency to look to greenfields to satisfy new development needs is precisely the kind of practice that has brought so much sprawl to New Jersey.

The Lone Star State's renewable-energy mandates - combined with the federal government's generous tax credit for wind-energy production - have helped Texas become the nation's leading installer of wind-energy capacity. You won't find much opposition here to wind energy's rapid expansion, because so much money is pouring into the state. It's all fun and games - until Texas consumers pay the long-term price for everyone else's short-term gain. And pay they will. In my just published study, Texas Wind Energy: Past, Present, and Future (PDF here), we estimate that forcing even modest levels of wind-energy generation on Texans will cost ratepayers and taxpayers up to $4 billion a year, and at least $60 billion through 2025.

The Ocean State recently granted a New Jersey-based renewable energy firm the right to build an industrial-size wind farm about 20 miles off the coast of Rhode Island. DeepwaterWind CEO Chris Brown told the Associated Press his firm builds turbines on large platforms originally designed for offshore drilling rigs, which means they can operate in deep waters and out of sight of land. He expects to build around 100 turbines offshore. "What we've really focused on is that we want to be beyond the horizon," Brown said. "We don't think that you have to choose between...the view and the environment."

It's difficult to say wind energy is contagious in our neck of the woods. You get the feeling some northwest Arkansas residents would like to back any proposal for alternative forms of energy, but many others aren't enamored with every plan. ...As much as one sees the sense in developing alternative energy, one must also recognize the potential for clashing interests when someone proposes adding these massive wind turbines to large sections of land.

If you follow current events, it's hard to miss the bandwagon behind solar and wind to solve our global warming and energy problems. But the shortcomings of these renewables deserve a public airing. There is a place in the electric grid for solar and wind, just as there is for hydroelectric and geothermal power. But these alternate power sources alone do not provide the reliability necessary to prevent interruptions in the nation's electric supply.

The likes of wind farms and other similar ventures have always been seen as more of a headline grabber in the UK rather than a real alternative for the future. The authorities have given minimal tax incentives for companies to get involved and there have even been complications with getting them connected to the national grid. All in all the alternative energy market has been launched and re-launched on many occasions but it is just not working.

I'd like to share some thoughts on wind energy with you. My problems with wind energy have been the same for 40 years and little has changed to modify any of this. After 40 years of heavy subsidies, dedicated government research programs (wind mills just aren't that complex), wind energy is still a small marginal source of unreliable energy. Even with government mandated Renewable Portfolio Standards (government edicts, not free markets), which force the utilities to buy this costly energy, the problems are more costly and the engineering problems remain.

Wind energy could supply up to 20 percent of the nation's power supply but the two variables few talk about are reliability and transmission. The places where the wind blows the most -- like western Oklahoma and the Texas Panhandle -- also have few residents or businesses that need the power. To achieve the kind of wind power percentage that some states are mandating will require between 12,000 and 19,000 miles of new power lines criss-crossing the country. That kind of power line construction will cost up to $6.4 billion.

[D]ue to the threats of global warming and skyrocketing oil and gas prices that have caught everyone's attention, all the parties have jumped on the green bandwagon with many promising a future where our dependence on fossil fuels and their harmful consequences to our environment will be a thing of the past. Such Utopian visions are commendable but the devil will be in the details for whoever forms the next government

I find it amazing that the public is so uninformed on the topic of wind turbines. People think wind is the golden egg of green energy; in fact, turbine companies cannot exist as viable companies without government subsidies. ...Green energy is great, I'm all for it, but not at a cost that will put the average Canadian taxpayer in the poor house.

In Swansea we have the threat of possibly a massive, useless wind farm being built on Mynydd y Gwair Mountain which will visually pollute this area of outstanding natural beauty from the Gower to Brecon Beacons, Powys and Cardigan Bay, in other words, about a quarter of Wales. Why? Because the Welsh Assembly Government wants to build wind farms to provide intermittent, stuttering electricity supplies which we do not need. How daft and subservient can we Welsh get!

Everybody knows we need to get off oil, especially foreign oil. Naturally, as oil and gasoline prices climb, there is that feeling of desperation about wind and gas drilling. Of course, what's lacking is an energy police with authoritative government planning _ just as what was missing on Wall Street were government oversight and regulation of loan practices and packaging. We can't just let some companies put a few windmills on that ridge, a few gas wells in that pasture and a couple of huge solar panels on that hillside. It is too haphazard. We need energy leadership before it is too late.

This week, the state of Rhode Island selected a New Jersey-based company, Deepwater Wind, to finance and construct a 100-turbine windfarm between 15 and 20 miles off shore. The project is estimated to cost $1.5 billion. ...Maine's approach to wind power development - land and offshore - is different. Instead of directing the process, this state has allowed firms to develop their own plans. The process is slow and the results, so far, mixed. Site-by-site proposals from companies have resulted in uneven regulatory reviews and divergent opinions on its gains or drains.

One commonly repeated argument for doing something about climate change sounds compelling, but turns out to be almost fraudulent. It is based on comparing the cost of action with the cost of inaction, and almost every major politician in the world uses it. The president of the European commission, José Manuel Barroso, for example, used this argument when he presented the European Union's proposal to tackle climate change earlier this year. ...The EU's argument is similar to advising a man with a gangrenous leg that paying $50,000 for an aspirin is a good deal because the cost compares favorably to the cost of inaction, which is losing the leg. Of course, the aspirin doesn't prevent that outcome. The inaction argument is really terribly negligent, because it causes us to recommend aspirin and lose sight of smarter actions that might actually save the leg.