CNN Piece Negative on Wind Power - I guess the petro ad dollars were in question.

http://www.cnn.com/2008/LIVING/wayoflife/08/17/bitter.wind.ap/index.html

Windmills make area prosper but fuel residents' anger

So, the nutshell of the story is centered around ASSHOLES who are bitching about windpower in their area. So, people annoyed with ANY SORT OF CHANGE are being used to push stories like this that windpower is a negative development. I guess CNN has to pay tribute to their petro industry ad dollars.

J

They're GOP donors but I don't think they have any oil business holdings.
TIME-WARNER TBS - AOL

America Online (AOL) acquired Time Warner–the largest merger in corporate history.
Television Holdings:
* CNN, HBO, Cinemax, TBS Superstation, Turner Network Television, Turner Classic Movies, Warner Brothers Television, Cartoon Network, Sega Channel, TNT, Comedy Central (50%), E! (49%), Court TV (50%).
* Largest owner of cable systems in the US with an estimated 13 million subscribers.
Media Holdings:
* HBO Independent Productions, Warner Home Video, New Line Cinema, Castle Rock, Looney Tunes, Hanna-Barbera.
* Music: Atlantic, Elektra, Rhino, Sire, Warner Bros. Records, EMI, WEA, Sub Pop (distribution) = the world’s largest music company.
* 33 magazines including Time, Sports Illustrated, People, In Style, Fortune, Book of the Month Club, Entertainment Weekly, Life, DC Comics (50%), and MAD Magazine.
Other Holdings:
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??

These stories negative about alternative energy ALWAYS crop up conveniently when petro get's too pricey and people start to conserve.

"I told him if he allowed turbines in that field, he would lose a son." Pretty much the height of assholeness.

J

People bitched about it for 40 years.
I guess I don't get your point.

Sure you hear the windmills, but don't you also hear the trees in the wind?

His Father is getting almost $700k over the 15 years of the contract ($6600 per windmill x 7 windmills x 15 yrs) and what happens then? A new contract probably, those windmills will still be spinning.

The school budget gets $3 million a year? One town's budget triples from $400,000 to $1.2million. This is a chance for the area to make changes in the area that will last generations.

People were surprised that they would not be getting free electricity? Why not take their new found money and buy a windmill for the town? Put PV on the schools and town buildings?

Sometimes we on DU if it's our pet cause sure don't like anyone to criticize it. Maybe people putting up these turbines need to try to work with the local residents so they do not cause problems. Similar to how many of us feel about power companies putting up those big transmission towers and lines on property.

I have slept too many times in motels next to the interstate - I don't have a problem sleeping then, doubt the windmills would bother me.

I tried to point out all the positives the windmills brought to the area and his complaints seem minor to me.

It was reported last week that Exxon will be throwing millions of new dollars at Chicken Noodle Nuze and their "best political coverage" :puke:

sigh

The rhythmic whoosh, whoosh, whoosh of wind turbines echoes through the air. Sleek and white, their long propeller blades rotate in formation, like some otherworldly dance of spindly-armed aliens swaying across the land.

Yancey knows the towers are pumping clean electricity into the grid, knows they have been largely embraced by his community

But Yancey hates them.

He hates the sight and he hates the sound. He can't stand the gigantic flickering shadows the blades cast at certain points in the day.

http://www.cnn.com/2008/LIVING/wayoflife/08/17/bitter.wind.ap/index.html

So CNN dares to report that someone doesn't like the turbines on their land and it's cause they love petrodollars! Geesh. Maybe if some of us had to live under them and listen to them every day 24/7 we'd not be embracing them!

Funny thing is old T. Boone loves them as well - as long as they are not on his land. He won't put them on his own land.

In PA we're having battles over the turbines as well. A lot of residents hate them. They are also proving to be somewhat deadly to raptor birds like eagles and hawks, plus bats.

Personally I want to see wind power explored, but it may be that we have to be careful where we put them.

Here's some more haters:

Just across the Eastern Continental Divide in Blair County, Todd and Jill Stull's farm nestles in the Allegheny Mountains.

A tree-lined drive leads to the century-old white farmhouse and red barn the couple spent nearly two decades restoring. They're raising two boys here, and this is where they hoped to retire -- until six wind turbines were erected a few thousand feet from their home. The turbine heads loom over the Blue Knob ridge that serves as a backdrop.

The spinning blades create a deep whooshing sound with a metallic whine. The noise changes intensity with the wind. Todd Stull, a gastrointestinal doctor, said the noise sends him to the coal cellar for a quiet night's sleep.

"If I'm working the next day and it is so loud that I can't sleep, what am I going to do?" said Todd Stull, ducking to avoid a low ceiling as he descended his basement stairs. "This old, unheated coal cellar is the only place where the turbines won't wake me. In the middle of winter it is 55 degrees in here and I sleep on this cot. How pathetic is that?"

A lawsuit the Stulls filed against Gamesa Energy USA and Allegheny Ridge Wind Farm is pending. The Stulls are seeking more than $50,000 in damages, but the ultimate goal is to still the turbines' spinning blades.

http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/valleyindependent/teenscene/s_580897.html

BOARDMAN, ORE. — Sherry Eaton pulled into the driveway of her rural, high-desert home to see one of several giant wind turbines being assembled a half-mile away.

"I started to cry," Eaton, 57, recalled of her first sight of the Willow Creek Wind Project in late July. "They're going to be hanging over the back of our house, and now there's the medical thing."

"The medical thing" is new research suggesting that living close to wind turbines, as Eaton and her 60-year-old husband, Mike, soon will be doing, can cause sleep disorders, difficulty with equilibrium, headaches, childhood "night terrors" and other health problems.

Dozens of wind turbines are taking shape along Oregon 74, a designated Oregon Scenic Byway, near the home the Eatons have shared for 19 years.

Dr. Nina Pierpont of Malone, N.Y., coined the phrase "wind turbine syndrome" for what she says happens to some people living near wind energy farms. She has made the phrase part of the title of a book she's written called Wind Turbine Syndrome: A Report on the Natural Experiment. It is scheduled for publication next month by K-Selected Press of Santa Fe, N.M.

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/health/5947095.html

Do any of you criticizing these people live under a wind turbine or even near one?

They look cool but unfortunately they can be heard from quite some distance, when I was driving through Eastern Oregon they have tons of wind turbines so we pulled over to get some pictures and you could just here this Whooosh, Whooosh sound going. It would be fine for an area with no people but if you lived next to one it would drive you crazy.

"Now the train wakes me and my children every time it comes through!"

Think CNN would run that story? :shrug:

that the sound of wind turbines might be annoying.... like all things you get used to them. Growing up we were near busy train tracks. To this day I don't even notice them, nor am I bothered by them.