Paula Stahl, April 4, 2004
[This is a letter written by Paula Stahl of St. George, West Virginia, about her experiences living in the neighborhood of the 66 MW Mountaineer Wind Energy Center. Formerly known as the Backbone Mountain Wind Farm, the 4,400-acre site has 44 turbines, 1.5 MW each, stretched along miles of ridgeline in Tucker and Preston counties. Ms. Stahl submitted the letter to the Berkshire Eagle and North Adams Transcript, neither of which has printed it.]
"...I did not know much about wind turbines, and so, I reserved my judgment. At first I learned that the community and the county were all for them, and excited about the arrival, for they said that there would be financial gains, and jobs created in the area from the project.
I walked on my normal walk in the woods one day, and looked up to the top of the mountain. Just several months before it had been a picturesque view of wilderness beauty...the kind that attracts tourists, and creates much of the state's income. Now, it was lined with these tall mechanical monsters, towering over the trees of an old forest. I am not talking about the quaint and charming windmills of Holland here, we are talking about metal, and flashing lights, and a size that miniaturizes the grand forest beneath it.
...The noise was incredible. It surprised me. It sounded like airplanes or helicopters. And it traveled. Sometimes you could not hear the sound standing right under one, but you heard it 3,000 yards down the hill, where the wind carried the sound. My good friend, who lives right near them, says she can hear them with the doors to her house closed sometimes.
I looked around me, to a place where months before had been prime country for deer, wild turkey, and yes, black bear, to see positively no sign of any of the animals about at all. This alarmed me, so I scouted in the woods that afternoon. I am accustomed to these woods, and know them and the signs of animals well. All afternoon, I found no sign, sight, or peek of any animal about.
I did notice, in the next few months, that the animals were more abundant down here in the valley, in the farmers' fields and such. Places that they had steered away from before, they now were in, and causing trouble for man, and, in turn, getting shot. I saw more bear and bob cats in the populated areas than I had ever seen. I went up to the windmills several times to check, and it seemed that the animals had moved away from that area. There were no sight of them, no prints, no sign..."
Windmill project destroying Tug Hill's beauty
Watertown Daily Times Editorial
October 06, 2005
On a recent visit to my parents' home on Tug Hill, I was shocked, saddened and disgusted with the windmill project.
The roads are gouged and rutted from tons of heavy equipment and machinery. Small automobiles beware. You could easily wipe out the bottom of your vehicle. Perhaps the residents can charge a toll to all of the curious weekend tourists who venture into this hazardous zone, so the roads may be repaired.
Trees with their lush foliage have been slashed down, chipped, burned and pillaged, only to be replaced by massive clusters of unattractive fiberglass. These structures look like giant preying mantises or something out of an H.G. Wells science fiction novel.
These trees were at least 60 years old. My 8-year-old niece commented that these windmills look scary. It's scary to think how many of the inhabitants (both wildlife and local residents) have been impacted by this invasion.
I remember picking apples and berries in these woods. I remember skiing and snowmobiling across these crusty fields of snow. Now, outdoor enthusiasts will have to navigate through a barren, dangerous and ugly obstacle course of windmills that reach up and pierce the sky. But, only if they dare.
This will undoubtedly impact Lewis County's precious economy as local and future generations move away to escape this disgraceful sight. I'm sure property values have already started to plummet because of these monstrosities that obstruct the breathtaking views of the fields, valleys and distant Adirondacks.
I feel sorry for the retired residents and local natives who watch each day, as yet another piece of the old homestead and history are destroyed before the sun sets.
I was livid to find out that the energy produced on Tug Hill will benefit other areas of the state, but not the north country. Also, when the winds are too strong, the windmills shut down. The irony of this is ridiculous and unacceptable. How could Lewis County allow this to happen?
Tug Hill is forever scarred, memories slashed up, and nature's peaceful tongue has been torn out by greed. I will remember how tranquil and beautiful Tug Hill was before this invasion. I hope the proud and loyal residents will find some solace in these memories, too.
Cindy Leviker McEachern
Watertown
Letter to the Melbourne, Australia Herald Sun
September 2003
(Reposted here, minus the author's name)
HOW ugly, how utterly loathsome, are the wind farms being built on our coast. They're ugly and loathsome, not just because they're grunting monstrosities 40 storeys high. Nor are they ugly and loathsome just because they're squatting and waving in precisely the loveliest bits of Victoria - the Great Ocean Road, Wilson's Prom and the Grampians. They are also ugly and loathsome because they symbolise modern idiocy - our frantic desire to prove our goodness to Mother Earth by wasting heaps of money to "fix" a problem that doesn't actually exist, and wouldn't be fixed by this even if it did. Professor Christopher Essex, a Canadian mathematician and co-author of Taken by Storm: The Troubled Science, Policy and Politics of Global Warming, well understands why we want so badly to believe in the greenhouse warming religion he heartily condemns. "People . . . just want to believe they are doing something virtuous and truthful for the world," he said. But "I think we will look back at these things (like wind farms) and laugh". Or cry, when we see what they're doing to our coast.
We already have 61 of these things, and about 1000 more planned for Victoria in the next three years. To erect them, we've paid manufacturers and bureaucrats millions in subsidies and grants, and you will be forced to pay many millions more in higher power bills, thanks to crazy federal laws insisting we use more of this vastly more expensive "green" power. The Institute of Public Affairs estimates Australia's wind farms by 2010 will cost consumers at least an extra $420 million a year. Not a surprise, given wind farms work only when it's blowing, and need backup. That's why Denmark, home of wind power, has electricity that costs three times ours. As in: get your last power bill, and triple it for that green feeling.
And forget the Bracks Government's promise that these things will bring us many jobs.
Take the wind farm planned for Portland, which we were told would create more than 2000 jobs. Now we know it will struggle to provide just 50. Never mind, because, as Premier Steve Bracks says, the real reason for the wind farms is they'll help us to save the planet. To which I say, "Oh, really?"
LET'S assume you actually believe in man-made global warming - and in every holy word of the United Nation's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. As that green goose, you therefore believe temperatures will rise by 2.5C over 100 years, just as the IPCC says. Oh, Armageddon! There will be floods, droughts - all kinds of hell. Ice caps will melt and islands will drown. That's what the "experts" say, anyway. And if you believe them, you'll know only the Kyoto Accord can save us - that deal under which rich nations must cut the carbon dioxide belching from their power stations, their cars and even their windy cows, no matter what the cost in jobs or cash. No matter what the cost to our coast, either, because our wind farms are meant to be our little bit to stop the planet from heating up.
But here's the fact which exposes those wind farms as frauds: If the whole world did everything demanded by the Kyoto Accord - everything, no buts - guess how much of the 2.5C of warming we'd prevent. I'll tell you. According to a leading IPCC researcher and confirmed by other scientists, the Kyoto Accord will avert just 0.14C of that warming by 2100. Yes, just 0.14C in 100 years. And what micro-fraction of that micro-skerrick would be thanks to our wind farms? Why must we pay so high and destroy so much to achieve so little?
But even that's not all that damns our wind farms. There's no evidence, for a start, that higher temperatures would be so bad. Global surface temperatures are now 0.6C higher than a century ago, and I can't see what harm it's caused. Instead, we're living longer and growing more crops than ever. Better still, pumping out more carbon dioxide could green the planet, since that's the gas plants live on.
Second, despite what you read, many scientists doubt man has much to do with any global warming at all. The world 1000 years ago was warmer than it is today, before plunging into a mini ice age from which we're only now recovering, which shows there are great natural forces which make the planet hotter or colder. DR Sallie Baliunas, of the Harvard-Smithsonian Centre for Astroyphysics, says the latest warming of the globe -- like periods of warming over centuries -- actually coincide with the sun being more active. She concludes: "Recent trends on surface warming may not be primarily attributable to human action at all."
The Geological Society of America in July published a paper by two top Canadian scientists, Professor Jan Veizer and Professor Nir Shajiv, who agree that the sun, not man, causes most of our global warming. And they've found that changes in the sun's output affect the Earth particularly when our galaxy passes through the arms of the Milky Way. Mind you, more people should have twigged earlier there was something wrong with the theory that we were gassing ourselves to death. Facts weren't fitting the theory.
Why, for instance, had the Earth warmed in the first half of last century, before we put all that carbon dioxide in the air? Why did temperatures from the 1940s to the 1970s then fall, not rise? Why is the Antarctic colder, not warmer? And although surface temperatures have risen, why hasn't the temperature of the air above done the same, when the greenhouse theory says that's the first place we'd see warming? That theory is now collapsing so fast that a prominent environmental scientist, Professor Patrick Michaels, speaks for many when he says the "climate change issue is an overblown bunch of hooey". In fact, it's religious hooey, and so silly it's funny. Or it would be, if ghastly wind farms weren't now wrecking our beautiful coast, chop-chopping our cash with their flailing arms.
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