Power stations cannot be minutely adjusted to suit wind variations and this results in back-up so that there is no fossil generation displacement and consequently no emissions saving. Wind farm operators who claim X thousand tonnes of CO2 savings are being conjectural, and there is no evidence of any saving.

Even if we trusted Florida Power & Light, and we would be fools to, how do you think FPL's industrial wind turbines could possibly be "exactly what the doctor ordered"? What exactly are they supposed to do for this county? ...Why are we considering endangering eagles, osprey, other wildlife and our beaches for a net gain of 1/1,000th the current generating capacity in a county that exports 500 percent more than we use? Believing FPL's bought-and-paid-for polls and studies is just begging to be lied to again.

But here in Gloucester, it seems that government is "by the developer, for the developer." The City Council has cast a unanimous vote to grant a special permit for a private-use wind turbine that Mac Bell plans to install on the banks of the Annisquam River, rising 240 feet into the air and only 315 feet from a playground. Sixty neighbors who live in the immediate vicinity of the proposed turbine site signed a petition opposing it. Ward 3 Councilor Steven Curcuru dismissed this number as "insignificant."

I have read many articles, columns and letters lately with regard to wind energy in general and the Wolfe Island proposed wind farm in specific. I have read these items with dread, as I know that it is inevitable that wind power will be coming to this area in spite of its unsightliness, inefficiency and expense. ...Climate change isn't going to stop tomorrow; weather patterns are changing. Who knows where the wind is going to blow tomorrow? You can't move a wind turbine once it's built; its placement is dictated by access to the resource.

On June 26, two of our county commissioners fired the shot heard round the world. I assure you that within 24 hours every large wind farm conglomerate in the world got the news that the biased, hand-picked zoning committee had accomplished their mission. ...Now, we will all be forced to live with wind farm rules that are so vague and minute, they will do little to protect the citizens of our county. Now that the fox is in the chicken coup, we will see dozens of applications to bring in wind farms. Because these huge conglomerates are worried they may lose the monster tax breaks if Congress votes them out, they will be in a mad rush to get things going in our county. Within five years we may not have one scenic location left in Ellis County. When they have destroyed all the high hills, they will just make the towers a 100 feet higher and continue to march across our county.

Since Gordon Brown on Thursday launched what he called "the greatest revolution in our energy policy since the advent of nuclear power", centred on building thousands of new wind turbines, let us start with a simple fact. Nothing conveys the futility of wind power more vividly than this: that all the electricity generated by the 2,000 wind turbines already built in Britain is still less than that produced by a single medium-sized conventional power station. ...herein lies the central misconception which bedevils the entire debate. Because of the wind's intermittency, turbines generate on average at less than a third of their capacity. Thus to contribute 10GW would need 30GW of capacity, which would require up to twice as many turbines as ministers are talking about - needing to be erected at a rate of more than four every working day between now and 2020.

Trust us, they said. Trust us, because we're the largest developer of alternative sources of energy in the world. We really know what we're doing. Trust us to build wind turbines near your coastline. Yes, they'd be very tall, but don't worry. After all, we live here, too. Trust us, we wouldn't do anything to harm the environment, to hurt birds and wildlife. This is our home, too you know. The "we" here is Florida Power & Light Co. I'm sorry, but recent revelations about FPL's "green energy" practices make me trust them even less than I did before.

Gilead Power, a privately owned renewable energy company, is proposing a wind farm of up to 13, 90-metre high turbines in Ostrander Point Crown Land block, directly west of the National Wildlife Area and in the heart of the Prince Edward County South Shore Important Bird Area. ...now is the time to ask politicians and the candidates the hard questions about this important part of Canada's natural heritage. Is the provincial government willing to protect the integrity of migratory bird habitat and say no to the wind farm at Ostrander Point? Are our leaders in Ottawa ready to ante-up the required resources to get our national wildlife areas off life-support? Demand answers!

The Boone County Board is considering a zoning ordinance that would permit wind turbines as close as 1,000 feet of adjacent property. That is a far cry from the current setback of 2,000 feet, which after numerous meetings of the Zoning Board of Appeals, three Boone County Board meetings and two years of litigation in the 17th Judicial Circuit Court, was deemed reasonable given the limitations to aviation, crop dusting and quality of life of adjacent property owners. ...An enterprise can be a good neighbor when it listens to its neighbors and makes adjustments accordingly. That is what a zoning ordinance should encourage, and no doubt does encourage for other industry. But why are wind projects any different?

Decisions on the appropriateness of building industrial wind installations should be based on the scientific facts of the issue, not just about who stands to profit from these projects. Since wind can never provide RELIABLE power on demand, it is simply the electricity version of the ethanol scam. It mattered not that it cost more energy to make a gallon of ethanol than it provided, nor that there were many who foretold of the problems associated with ethanol. Alas, since there was money to be made, politicians pushed it through in their "politically correct" rush to appear "green". Now, we are left dealing with the consequences of the rising costs of food and anything else associated with corn, the havoc it is wreaking on the environment, while it certainly isn't alleviating our oil dependence. It is very sad indeed, that energy and public policy decisions are being based on greed, ignorance, and misinformation being put forth by corporate wind profiteers, pandering politicians, and agenda-driven, corporate-owned media (e.g. - GE owns NBC), rather than according to what's actually right and wrong.

When politicians call for a "national debate", it is a sure sign that the most dubious policy is about to be railroaded through, whether we debate it or not. That is what lies at the heart of the Prime Minister Gordon Brown's portentous declaration yesterday of a "green revolution". Thousands of new wind turbines are set to be built across the UK over the coming decade as part of a GBP 100 billion plan for renewable energy. What a dissembling cheek the Prime Minister has in suggesting we hold a "national debate" on the wind-farm "revolution". The die is cast and the EU-imposed target of 15 per cent of renewable energy has long been set. Where was the "national debate" about that?

Enfield is not the only town dealing with the many details related to wind turbines. Recently the Town of Ithaca temporarily shelved a law that would allow residential-scale wind energy facilities. That delay was caused after residents requested that the board reduce the noise threshold for a wind turbine to 5 decibels. The town was originally considering a threshold of a 10-decibel limit. As Harvey told The Journal's Tim Ashmore: "Our planning board can coordinate with other planning boards as well. The Town of Ithaca is our neighbor. The Town of Newfield is our neighbor ... I would think that our planning board and all these other planning boards ought to get together and come up with one law."

I was at the Garrett County commissioners' June 24 public hearing on performance zoning, which can be used to prohibit industrial wind turbines on county ridgelines. Over two dozen residents spoke, many with raw emotion and obvious frustration over the lack of safeguards against this industry. Coming up with a way of regulating this now effectively unregulated industry should be a high priority with our elected officials. However, I am concerned that no one seems to be looking out for the property rights, health, and safety of those having to live or work next to such developments. ...Performance zoning would safeguard our basic human rights, our property, and our county's natural heritage from these intrusive, landscape-altering wind developments.

The Hatch case focuses on the inconsistency between Hatch's repeated claims that he did not have an agreement with Everpower, and the following documents filed between April 2006 and February 2007 by Everpower (with either the Town of Howard or Steuben County IDA) in which Bill Hatch is identified as a "participating landowner", either directly, by the listing of his name, or indirectly, by showing his property on Hughes Road in the Town of Howard as a site where a wind turbine will be installed.

Some business leaders and politicians are upset that a state agency is putting roadblocks in the way of a merger between a Spanish power company and RG&E's parent company. ...The PSC staff and the judge are just doing their jobs - to independently review whether the transaction is in the public interest - and politicians shouldn't criticize their recommendations, says Fairport resident Charles Straka. He's not involved with the merger case, but he is an unpaid representative of the average customer - an intervener in technical terms - in an ongoing RG&E rate case. And much of his interest in the merger deals with competition and its effect on rates. "If the Public Service Commission process is overruled, who's going to control rates at all?" he says.

The unreality of our energy policy is now such that the Government talks about building 10,000 giant turbines offshore - at a rate of more than two a day - when it knows that neither the technical nor practical resources exist to achieve more than a tiny fraction of that figure. Furthermore, as was recently admitted by Paul Golby, the chief executive of E.ON, one of our leading energy companies, even if we could build all those turbines, we would have to build dozens of conventional power stations to provide 90 per cent back-up for when the wind is not blowing.

The U.S. Supreme Court is about to make its first decision on the worst energy crisis in American history: The California energy crisis of 2000-01. The legal repercussions of this decision could change the way energy is bought and sold in America for generations. For good or bad. As a former member of the California Legislature when this disaster of a law was passed unanimously (yes, I voted for it), I saw first-hand how bad regulators turned this consensus law into such an epic disaster. ...As a state legislator in California when this law was passed, I've seen first-hand how much damage this law - and even more importantly, its implementation - has done, and could continue to do if the Supreme Court does not reverse the Ninth Circuit.

Your recent Word on the Street comments probably reflect the general opinion that wind power is the way forward - because that is what we are told, repeatedly. This mantra has seeped into the public psyche over the last 10 years, often along with the threat that if we don't have wind turbines everywhere we will have to have nuclear power stations. The bad news (that ‘they' don't want us to know) is that we will have to have nuclear power stations anyway.

Visually these huge structures have a colossal visual effect on the environment. They may be sleek and have good lines but so many of them pollute the landscape. Unfortunately, these eyesores are located in some of the most picturesque country in Australia because of the availability of suitable wind.

Creating electricity from wind that just happens to be blowing might seem like a cheap source of power, but it's not. As we've already seen in Denmark, its high cost requires taxpayer handouts to develop and survive. Subsidies in Denmark created a lot of wind power, but when the flow from the taxpayer subsidy tap ebbed, so did the industry. In B.C., wind power will also be subsidized. Creating a welfare-dependent industry in the province may benefit the backers of these projects, but the potential cost to taxpayers is huge and the outlook for an unsubsidized industry is grim.