So there will be posts only when I have the time. Today’s post concerns the rumor (and that is all it is) that is being spread by the coal and oil companies that Wind Turbines are not green and are not healthy. It finally has made it to Indiana:
Blowback: Indiana’s emerging wind farms whip up controversy
More and more critics say windmills aren’t that green, aren’t a great source of energy — and can be harmful to people’s health
Posted: August 9, 2009
The 200- to 300-foot-long blades on industrial windmills look almost whimsical from afar. They appear to turn slowly. People sometimes stop to take pictures. “They look cool,” said Eric Burch, director of policy and outreach for the Indiana Office of Energy Development.
The tips of those giant blades, however, move at speeds approaching 160 mph, creating forces that send low-frequency vibrations through the ground. People three-quarters of a mile away sometimes say they can feel the vibrations in their chests.
Cases of nausea, headaches, insomnia and other ills have become common enough in states with wind farms that they’ve been given a name: “wind turbine syndrome.”
That newfangled illness is just one of a growing list of health effects, inconveniences, risks and cost considerations that have resulted in a backlash against wind farms in other states, even as Indiana is in the midst of a rapid buildout of wind energy.
What’s happening in other states suggests that the warm and fuzzy feeling many Hoosiers have for wind farms could change as the big turbines creep closer to more populated areas near Indianapolis, Lafayette and other cities.
Benton County farmer John Gilbert said several farmland owners he knows refused to lease space for turbines. He can’t quite understand that. He and his family leased ground for four turbines being built by French-owned enXco.
“My thoughts are, they are going to have to look at ’em, so they might as well get paid.”
Wind turbine energy is here. But groups have sprung up nationwide to fight it.
Jon Boone, a retired University of Maryland administrator who helped found the North American Bluebird Society, has become a leading wind-energy critic from his rural Maryland home, where he helped fight a wind farm proposal several years ago. Now he duels with the windmill lobby through his Web site, stopillwind.org.:}
More later..
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