Wind Turbine - A blight on the landscape or graceful beauty?

[Mike Szewczyk]

I realize this question may be skewed on this particular web site, but half of the people are here for cooking and gardening, so I would think that not everyone is a hemp wearing tree hugger :).

Recently a study was published and reported on by Scientific American which found that, excluding "cities, forests, and ice-covered areas, which would all be hard to harvest", we could generate 40 times more power than we currently use with wind.

We have some wind farms in the remote farming areas west of Chicago and I find them to be beautiful. They are large, graceful, and silent.

There are opponents to the wind farms. They say that they are ugly and mar the landscape.

I'm wondering what others here think. I wish I could set up a Poll.

So, what say you? Would you be upset by wind turbines in your view? Be it off the chicago skyline in Lake Michigan, off the coast of Pensacola beach, or in the farm fields of the midwest. Is it a nlight or beauty? Or are you indifferent?

[Chad]

I've seen some of the windfarms west of Chicago, and actually find them quite elegant and graceful. I particularly like the little detail they added in synchronizing the aircraft warning blinkers so they blink together. However, as impressive as large-scale windfarms are, I'd much rather see smaller-scale wind turbines in many yards. I'd like to have one myself, if I but had the budget. The more diversified our sources of power, the less likelihood a given problem/disaster is to impact vast numbers of people negatively.

Also, as with anything, there's a good place and a bad place. I'd hate to see a large windfarm pop up in the middle of a wilderness area, for example. But as an additional step in diversifying a farm, for example, they make perfect sense.

[tom higgins]

Years ago so many cried for wind power to get us off of fossil fuels. Now I am seeing the same people saying wind power is evil . What changed in those years between Wind Powa and Evil Winds?

As with so many solutions, Scale is the real issue. If enough people thought about personal or local scale power alternatives we would not be having these All Or Nothing ideological changes every couple of years.

[Wesley Trenholm]

I would love to be able to look out my window and see a field of wind turbines, so long as they were set a proper distance from our house. With the potential benefit of producing more energy then is needed, wind power is essential in my mind. Fossil fuels are destroying our planet at an alarming rate, it is time to make a change, and try to save our home.

[eric rochow]

There is a wind turbine going up in our town, and it shows a few things

1. most towns don't have zoning regs to deal with wind turbines

2. people are for wind power, until one is going to be installed on the property next door.

Here in CT, towns have little control over Wind Turbines or cell phone towers. A state agency, whose decisions are not subject to appeal, decides if a tower gets built.

I am for wind power. I find it ironic that people who are fairly 'green' start to oppose them when they get near their house. Look at Cape Cod, a powerful senator who has a house there has used his position and family money to restrict wind power off the coast of cape cod
News Link here

I think if you're going to use electricity, you might have to have a wind turbine nearby.

[Stuccolow]

NPR did a story a while ago about a Nebraskan farmer who didn't like the hum that the turbines made. I don't know. I think that the hum the turbines make would be much less obtrusive than the sound of strip mining.

But that's just my humble opinion.

I'm for it.

[Mike Szewczyk]

That's interesting. I've only been to one wind farm myself, (pictured in the first post) and it was pretty quiet. You had to be right under one to hear any hum, and even then, it wasn't all that noisy. At any significant distance, the noise of the wind is louder than that of the turbine.

[tom higgins]

I have kids, noise is not an issue.

[Elizabeth]

When I was a kid I lived in northwest Michigan in the Traverse City area. There were a couple of wind farms up there and I loved passing by them. I would love to see more turbines around here, even if on a smaller scale (I live in the more populated Detroit area now). One idea for those like me that can't afford their own turbine — check with your electric company to see if they offer a "green" or renewable energy option. We signed up for DTE's Green Currents about a year ago. You pay a few dollars more each month, but they are supposed to be matching us for 100% of our energy consumption by sourcing from wind and biomass. Sorry I rambled off more than just my opinion on wind turbines there. To make a long story short, I'm for them!

[david elliott jr]

Anyone who has ever lived near a power plant knows that a windfarm is a welcome change. I live about 10 miles from a power plant and it sucks!!