Much as I like the idea of using these nontraditional methods for power generation, we need a dose of facts when anyone comes forward to propose such changes in power supplies. For example, wind is certainly a non-carbon source, but it's not a non-polluter. ...we also need to keep the "law of unintended consequences" in mind. We need to add these sources to both fossil and nuclear plants and traditional generation systems, which work without wind or sunshine.

You have heard what T. Boone Pickens says, now read what William Tucker says in his new book "Terrestrial Energy." ...Wind power only can be considered a supplement to and not a replacement for conventionally generated electricity. Some coal and gas-fired generators must be kept running continuously to balance supply and demand for electricity. Therefore, the savings of these fuels will be minimal. The power is free, but harvesting and delivering it to consumers will be expensive.

Since the 1970s, Washington has tried to pick winners and losers among emerging alternatives and then throw billions in taxpayer dollars at what it hopes to be the winners. The results, not surprisingly, have been disappointing. The very fact that these chosen alternatives need big government handouts in order to move forward should be a red flag that they don't hold the potential their proponents claim. In the end, federal interference probably won't help in making progress toward diversifying away from petroleum in the transportation sector, and it may actually hurt.

Early in their development, long-bladed wind turbines were seen as threats to birds, especially migrating varieties used to crossing certain mountain passes. Now, in spite of technological improvements and efforts to keep their propellers off at critical times, lawsuits are descending on wind farms - working ones and some on the drawing boards - to turn them off or to stop development in the path of some birds' migration and in bat habitat. But behind some environmentalist arguments against the increasing clusters of wind turbines is a more basic, if less compelling objection: They're ugly. They can be noisy. Besides that, opponents wonder, how do we know they're not sending surges of electricity into the atmosphere, doing who-knows-what damage to animals, two- and four-legged alike?

Wind power seems to promise zero emissions and an endless supply of cheap power. Still, it's hard to ignore the parallels to the recent ethanol boom, which was also fueled by mandates and subsidies, and which is now viewed almost universally as a disaster. Wind power is unlikely to cause a global food crisis. But heedless investment in it may provoke blowback of a different sort.

The former vice president, now in his second career as a climate Cassandra, has spent the past few weeks pushing the notion that the United States can be "repowered" -- that all its electricity needs can be met without producing greenhouse gases. He says it can be done within a decade. ...The problem is that, despite the current boom in green power, renewable sources such as the sun and the wind still provide just a tiny fraction of the U.S. electricity supply. The rest is mainly dirty stuff: coal, gas, oil. To replace one with the other over the course of a decade, energy experts say, would make the Manhattan Project look like a science-fair volcano.

Wind power is often portrayed as a feel-good substitute for big power plants, but it has severe limitations; its performance, obviously, is as fickle as the wind. Because of that, wind farms must still be backed up by conventional power in case the wind fails. "You can predict some changes in the wind broadly but not second-by-second," said Robert Michaels, a professor of economics at California State University, Fullerton, who has studied the issue. ...Wind energy will have a growing place in America's energy portfolio, but its niche probably won't approach the Energy Department's 20 percent prediction.

Whether the reports of health hazards are true or not is almost irrelevant. Just the fact that many people are truly concerned about the potential health effects of living near a wind farm, or the electromagnetic radiation from high voltage electrical wires, is reason enough to try to avoid buying a property that is close to power lines. It's a simple law of economics: As demand for a product goes down, so does its price. When you have a certain number of people avoiding a certain property, for whatever reason, the price of that property will be negatively affected.

But had Bloomberg done the math, he'd know that even if Manhattan were topped by a solid block of windmills, they wouldn't come close to meeting the city's power consumption. Wind power has its place as a power source, but it's not a place at the top. It provides less than one-tenth of 1 percent of U.S. electricity because it costs more to produce. The wind may be free, but the equipment is expensive. The costs are even dearer if you follow Bloomberg's other suggestion, namely floating windmills in the middle of the ocean. How many windmills does it take to meet the power needs of a typical city, much less New York City?

Let's replace all the coal-fired plants with wind turbines. Just don't site them all in West Virginia and have the electricity travel over hundreds of miles of transmission lines. This time, build the turbines in the cities and the suburbs. Those places are already noisy, and they have no beautiful hills to ruin. Let's put the turbines where the electric customers are. Urban wind farms will let the metropolitan elites see where their electricity comes from.

The most workable and affordable energy plan is one that throws in pieces of everything, from increased oil and gas exploration and production to increased conservation and efficiency in heating and transportation to multiple fuels and power sources for vehicles and electricity generation, old and new (wind, solar, tidal, geothermal, biofuels, even new coal technologies and a nuke or two). Such an approach doesn't make for flashy advertising campaigns or snappy slogans.

As chairman of Responsible Citizens for Responsible Energy (RCRE), our stand has never been to ban wind turbines from Carteret County. As our name implies, our main goal is to obtain responsible siting in the pending ordinance. It is our elected and appointed officials responsibility to protect the health, safety and welfare of the residents of Carteret County by adopting an ordinance which mandates a safe and responsible setback of wind turbines from neighboring homes and properties.

The first issue is the high cost of wind power, which is about 2.5 to three times the cost of coal-generated power. Large wind-power projects exist only because of large government subsidies. Otherwise, wind power would be restricted to a few applications where the physical isolation of the electricity demand precludes extending the transmission network to the site. The other major issue is the intermittency of wind power. Even on the best of sites, wind turbines generate usable power less than 30 percent of the time ...T. Boone Pickens' claim that wind power will reduce the need for natural gas in electricity generation is spectacularly wrong.

Pickens' plan is basically a couple of pie charts showing how he'd like to see the U.S. energy economy work. ...He gives no specifics publicly, but he's made it clear that it's up to Congress, not consumers or investors, to make this vision become reality. Because Pickens has announced his gambit in the name of the environment, the media have dropped the skepticism they usually apply to the claims of businessmen trying to make a buck. Because his plan involves government - meaning you and I pay the costs - that skepticism ought to be even greater.

Here's a scenario OPEC would kill for: Your product gets pricier and pricier, and yet demand grows relentlessly. That's the rosy picture facing the world's wind-turbine makers. Denmark's Vestas, the world's biggest turbine maker, reported a big jump in profits today-and a $10 billion order book for more. With a global thirst for clean energy, some companies stand to clean up. Turbine prices have risen 74% in the last three years-and yet countries from the U.S. to China can't get enough of them.

Mr. Pickens and Mrs. Pelosi share the same talking points downplaying the need to drill and open up more access to American oil. Instead, the Pickens pie-in-the-sky plan proposes to replace natural gas with wind power in electricity generation and theoretically free up natural gas for America's transportation needs. All well and good in la-la land, but let's be real about the limitations and costs of wind power.

Accompanying the myth that wind turbine energy will replace fossil fuel energy is denial of the ecological impacts and health effects of wind turbines by governments and promoters. The ugly reality is that wind turbines are a serious addition to the industrialization of quiet rural landscapes, places that people have long valued for quality of life, retirement and recreation. The environmental costs imposed on wildlife and people have been systematically ignored by a political and regulatory system that has corrupted individual and societal freedom and environmental integrity by relegating these values to some distant offshoot of economic growth.

I would simply like simple answers to simple questions, i.e., what happens when the wind doesn't blow?; what happens when the wind blows too hard?; how many dirty power plants will be decommissioned as a result of embracing wind power?; how many projected new plants now on the books will be scrapped?; will the air over the Smoky Mountains become cleaner and clearer as a result of wind turbines?; will ozone alerts become fewer and farther between?; where are we going to put 300,000 wind turbines to meet the proposed goal of generating 20 percent of the nation's electricity by 2025?

In my humble opinion when any organization actively pursuing wind power options, promoting legislation that would support those options and taking it upon themselves to define responsible siting criteria publishes a "model" ordinance, it's going to be an ordinance promoting the interest of wind production and wind producers. And what could have prompted the need for wind proponents to create their own model ordinance? Well, according to Brent Summerville, wind program manager at ASU's Energy Center, "Some wind ordinances have passed that are not favorable to utility scale wind development.

There is one fly in Pickens's ointment, however. Along most of the "wind corridor," the wind blows the strongest and steadiest before the sun rises; its strength diminishes until the hottest point of the day, just as the demand for electricity, particularly in the summer months, peaks. As a result, replacing natural-gas base load capacity with "wind watts" does not work. Peak loads still will have to be met with natural-gas generated electricity. That will diminish by billions of cubic feet the amount of natural gas available to be converted to transportation fuel, defeating the essence of the plan. The wind corridor is essentially in a single time zone, so morning-wind-generated electricity cannot be "wheeled" to afternoon consumers. Unfortunately, there is no economical way to store wind watts for use later in the diurnal cycle.