Farmers' Concerns

This link takes you to a very brief but well-worth watching video about
a proposed NextEra wind development in Adelaide-Metcalf, Ontario, Canada.
Farmers there have the same concerns that farmers in the U.S. do.
The proposed footprint of the development is 6,500 hectares = 16,060 acres.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jKQ7RIMXjKY&sns=em

PETITION OPPOSING MARSHALL COUNTY WIND DEVELOPMENTS: Just highlight, copy & paste the entire petition below to a blank document, print & fill it out, mail it. YOUR VOICE COUNTS!

 PETITION OPPOSING ANY COMMERCIAL WIND FARMS IN MARSHALL COUNTY

My name is _______________________________  and I hereby petition       

                                (please print your name)

the Marshall County government bodies and the courts of Indiana to deny any commercial wind farms from locating in Marshall County. I reside in Marshall County at

_____________________________________________________________

                                           (street address) (city) (state) (zip)

We are concerned about the health effects from the commercial turbines affecting our family and other members of our community.

We are concerned about the destruction of the visual environment of our region.

We are concerned about the detrimental effects on birds, bats, livestock, and our environment as a whole.

Please do not take the chance of damaging our health, our environment, our property values, or our right to common enjoyment of our community, farms, and homes.

Signature____________________________________________

Address____________________________________________

            _____________________________________________

Phone  _____________________________________________

E-mail  _____________________________________________

Please copy this petition and have one person sign each individual petition. Send petitions to CPOSMC, P.O. Box 46, Culver, IN 46511. You must be 18 years of age to sign.

Wind farms are "absolutely useless", says Duke

 The Duke of Edinburgh has made a fierce attack on wind farms, describing them as “absolutely useless”.

By Jonathan Wynne-Jones

9:30PM GMT 19 Nov 2011

In a withering assault on the onshore wind turbine industry, the Duke said the farms were “a disgrace”.

He also criticised the industry’s reliance on subsidies from electricity customers, claimed wind farms would “never work” and accused people who support them of believing in a “fairy tale”.

The Duke’s comments will be seized upon by the burgeoning lobby who say wind farms are ruining the countryside and forcing up energy bills.

Criticism of their effect on the environment has mounted, with The Sunday Telegraph disclosing today that turbines are being switched off during strong winds following complaints about their noise.

The Duke’s views are politically charged, as they put him at odds with the Government’s policy significantly to increase the amount of electricity generated by wind turbines.

The country has 3,421 turbines — 2,941 of them onshore — with another 4,500 expected to be built under plans for wind power to play a more important role in providing Britain’s energy.

Chris Huhne, the Energy Secretary, last month called opponents of the plans “curmudgeons and fault-finders” and described turbines as “elegant” and “beautiful”.

The Duke’s attack on the turbines, believed to be the first public insight into his views on the matter, came in a conversation with the managing director of a leading wind farm company.

When Esbjorn Wilmar, of Infinergy, which builds and operates turbines, introduced himself to the Duke at a reception in London, he found himself on the end of an outspoken attack on his industry.

“He said they were absolutely useless, completely reliant on subsidies and an absolute disgrace,” said Mr Wilmar. “I was surprised by his very frank views.”

Mr Wilmar said his attempts to argue that onshore wind farms were one of the most cost-effective forms of renewable energy received a fierce response from the Duke.

“He said, 'You don’t believe in fairy tales do you?’” said Mr Wilmar. “He said that they would never work as they need back-up capacity.”

One of the main arguments of the anti-wind farm lobby is that because turbines do not produce electricity without wind, there is still a need for other ways to generate power.

It emerged last year that electricity customers are paying an average of £90 a year to subsidise wind farms and other forms of renewable energy as part of a government scheme to meet carbon-reduction targets.

Mr Wilmar said one of the main reasons the Duke thought onshore wind farms to be “a very bad idea” was their reliance on such subsidies.

Prince Philip, however, said he would never consider allowing his land to be used for turbines, which can be up to 410ft tall, and he bemoaned their impact on the countryside.
Mr Wilmar said: “I suggested to him to put them on his estate, and he said, 'You stay away from my estate young man’.
“He said he thought that they’re not nice at all for the landscape.”

The Duke’s comments echo complaints made by his son, the Prince of Wales, who has refused to have any built on Duchy of Cornwall land.

Yet a turbine will be erected opposite the Castle of Mey in Caithness, where he stays for a week every August, if a farmer succeeds in gaining planning permission from Highland Council.

While they are opposed to onshore wind farms, the Royal family stands to earn millions of pounds from those placed offshore. The Crown Estate owns almost all of the seabed off Britain’s 7,700-mile coastline.....the Queen, the Duke, the Prince of Wales and other members of the family do not have any say over how the estate makes its money.

The Dutch businessman’s company describes itself as committed to preserving the planet. Infinergy, which is a subsidiary of the Dutch firm KDE Energy, is planning to build on a number of sites across the country, from the north of Scotland to Totnes in Devon.

Two-thirds of the country’s wind turbines are owned by foreign companies, which are estimated to reap £500million a year in subsidies.
A spokesman for the Duke said that Buckingham Palace would not comment about a private conversation.

Entire article and links to other related articles can be found at
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/prince-philip/8901985/Wind-farms-are-useless-says-Duke.html

Radar Disruption - Public Safety is an issue and the (partial) fix requires even more tax payer dollars

How Green

Wind Farms Disrupting Radar, Scientists Say

By Maxim Lott

Published November 05, 2011

| FoxNews.com

• 
  National Weather Service
  Rainstorm or wind farm? The circled area contains a wind farm, making it unclear whether it is also raining there.

This one's really off the radar.

Wind farms, along with solar power and other alternative energy souces, are supposed to produce the energy of tomorrow. Evidence indicates that their countless whirring fan blades produce something else: "blank spots" that distort radar readings. 

Now government agencies that depend on radar -- such as the Department of Defense and the National Weather Service -- are spending millions in a scramble to preserve their detection capabilities. A four-star Air Force general recently spelled out the problem to Dave Beloite, the director of the Department of Defense’s Energy Siting Clearinghouse. 

 

"Look there’s a radar here -- one of our network of Homeland surveillance radars -- and [if you build this wind farm] you essentially are going to put my eyes out in the Northwestern corner of the United States,” Beloite related during a web conference in April.

Spinning wind turbines make it hard to detect incoming planes. To avoid that problem, military officials have blocked wind farm construction near their radars -- and in some cases later allowed them after politicians protested.

Shepherd’s Flat, a wind farm under construction in Oregon, was initially held up by a government notice that the farm would “seriously impair the ability of the (DoD) to detect, monitor and safely conduct air operations."

Then Oregon’s senators got involved.

The fix MIT scientists came up with tells the radar not to pay attention to signals in a very small area.

“You just tell the radar processor, ‘you're going to have clutter here. Don't display it.’ You create a tiny blank spot [in the radar map] directly above the turbine,” Beloite told FoxNews.com.

In addition to the  cost o the radar development, taxpayers are on the hook for more than $1 billion in subsidies for the construction of the Shepherd’s Flat wind farm, according to a 2010 memo from Larry Summers and two other White House economic advisors.

The fix for military radar doesn't work so well for weather forecasters, however. 

“It's a lot easier to filter out interference for aviation,” Ed Ciardi, a meteorologist at the National Weather Service Radar Operations Center in Norman, Okla., told FoxNews.com. “The real problem is when rain and the wind turbines are mixed together [on the radar map.] And it's all confusing… sometimes [forecasters] throw up their hands and say, ‘who knows?’”

When the situation is unclear, Ciardi said, “they'll play it safe and maybe extend a warning.”

Ciardi said there have been occasional false alarms due to wind farm interference, but the Weather Service hasn't failed to issue any storm warnings yet.

“We're more worried about the future ... we've seen quite a few proposals for wind farms around our radars. And we have been ... trying to convince them to stay a good distance away,” he said.

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2011/11/05/wind-farms-disrupting-radar-scientists-say/#ixzz1d2VqBwmj