Noise levels of wind turbines compared to other commonly accepted noise (i.e. traffic, airplanes, etc)
Birds killed – if you’ve ever observed turbines even on the windiest days, they don’t turn that fast. I don’t think birds are that stupid, but I’d liked to be proven wrong.
Any studies on either of these?

As for setbacks, what started some of this debate are the tests for turbines in Lake Ontario. The location would be about 2 kilometres from shore. Is that far enough?

Take the various health claims, a favorite of Ontario NIMBYers. Wind power has been a reality of people’s backyards in Denmark and Germany for several years now, providing large sample populations for scientific studies. However, no one has yet managed to publish peer-reviewed work on the health impacts that are often invoked to deny wind developers permits at the municipal level in this province (and I challenge anyone out there to produce such a study if there is one). The reality of the wind ‘debate’ in Ontario is that groups such as Wind Concerns Ontario (http://windfarms.wordpress.com/wind-concerns-ontario/) often rely on spurious claims to build their cases, and that is unfortunate.

I don’t think anyone is talking about centralizing all decision-making on this issue, and I certainly would not claim that all concerns surrounding wind are worthless. However, given extensive experience in other nations, it is possible to design a permitting framework that is fact-based and relies on international best-practice. Will this remove people’s rights to protest what they view as unacceptable development? Not at all. What it will do is ensure that all the useless noise around this issue is removed so that the debate can finally occur in a rational, informed way.

But the proponent side has its own nutcases. I myself have been accused (in the blogosphere) of being a “climate criminal” for pointing out that there are, in fact, *some* drawbacks to turbines, and that *some* places are unsuitable for them. The fact that skyscapers and family pets kill hundreds of thousands of bird annually does not negate the fact the turbines do too. And the common “footprint” calculations for wind farms doesn’t take into the sometimes large amount of access roads needed for maintenance. And, in my opinion, *sometimes* the scenic value of a location overrides its value as a wind resource.

Of course, I’m a huge proponent of wind power. Acknowledging drawbacks is what is called “nuance”, “objectivity” and “responsibility”. Unfortunately, some people simply can’t see it that way.

One of the problems is that the term NIMBY is a terribly misleading. After all, Lynn, David and Stephen J, need to be reminded that the turbines are actually NOT in your backyard. The sites in question are NOT YOUR PROPERTY. They’re on somebody elses property, or the community’s. To borrow an analogy, it’s the NIMBYs who are in fact acting as little “fascists”, trying to dictate what occurs on other people’s land.

But of course I’m being facetious. The fact that we perform environmental assessments, that we encourage public participation, that we consider third party impacts is a wonderful aspect of our society. Balancing the rights of property owners with the interests of their neighbours and the common good is a very difficult task. It’s called negotiation. It’s frustrating but necessary. The solutions are never perfect, but following well-founded procedure is our best (and only) shot at achieving optimal outcomes. Finding balance is the only way to avoid “dictatorship”, whether its central planners or private individuals who are doing the dictating.

Bringing this full circle, I agree with Tyler 100%. Setting clear, robust guidelines for turbine placement is the way forward. The choice is not between “turbines everywhere” and “turbines nowhere”, but “turbines where appropriate”, and having a neogtiated set of standards is necessary for determining what “appropriate” means. It won’t be the perfect solution; it will the best one.

Wind power bad because:

- health impacts due to low frequency noise
- kill birds
- lower property values
- intermittent generation
- eyesore

While ignoring the very real problems with coal and nuclear plants:

- carbon emissions
- health problems from the pollution, such as mercury emissions
- high level waste which still has no acceptable means of disposal
- non-renewable

It seems that the problems arising from one of the above energy sources can be easily tolerated and managed by proper siting. As for the other source, that seems a lot less likely.

If you can imagine the status-quo being wind power and along comes coal and nuclear power, don’t you think that the naysayers would have a much more solid basis to argue from?

Nothing wrong with having wind turbines near where you live, unless of course you don’t use electricity. In which case feel free to complain.

1) Label everyone who supports wind a “wind lobbyist.”

2) Claim there is well-documented health issues though fail to present peer-reviewed studies demonstrating these concerns.

3) Claim that an entire community is against wind when that’s rarely the case.

4) Use words like “in the shadow of these industrial behemoths” when it’s clear that a machine set back 500 meters wouldn’t cast a shadow on a house.

5) Take someone’s words out of context.

My post was about not accepting NIMBYism for concerns that are beyond health, safety and environment. I encourage the government to create clear setback guidelines, whatever they may be, as long as they’re sensitive to various scenarios.

Would I like having a wind turbine located 200 metres from my property line? I’d welcome it, and I’d certainly welcome it more than having a coal or natural gas plant five kilometres down wind.

Asking for adequate setbacks and safety regulations from family homes is bad. Having a politicians tell the citizens what they are and are not allowed to raise concerns about is good.

I have lost a lot of faith and trust in the green movement as too many times I have seen fascism applauded. Give your heads a shake!

I’m all in favour of shifting to renewable energy as fast as possible, but I have to ask: Am I really the only person who thinks it’s a bad idea to give a central government the power to override a local one by, in effect, deciding for itself whether the affected citizens’ reasons for protesting a particular policy are “good” or “bad”?

Sometimes we forget that the important part of NIMBY is not the word NOT but the word MY. If it really is your back yard, you should have the right to say “no”.

glad mcguinty is trying to shut down all these people against many good projects that seem to be from ‘past generations’….statistically speaking of course