The unequal contest about the implementation of utility-scale wind plants between a number of ordinary citizens, on one hand, and the system of government intransigence, environmentalist narrowness, strong industry lobby groups, and uninformed public opinion, on the other, is a difficult but necessary one.

In Europe alone, which has the most experience with the wind plants, the number of such groups is approaching 450 in 21 countries. In Ontario Canada, one of the North American extremist jurisdictions in support of wind, the number is 35.

Unfortunately, compared to the wind proponent side, the relatively small number of people fighting wind plants comes from those who are faced with the reality of the prospect of wind plants in close proximity to their communities. However, others who for various reasons have done the necessary research to see past the misconceptions to the reality of the total folly of pursuing such policies have also joined them.…

“The people who build wind farms are not environmentalists. . . . Business is a delicate balancing act, and chief executives are always walking a tightrope between the needs of the community, their employees, and the marketplace.”

– Paul Gipe, Wind Energy Comes of Age (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1995), p. 454.

The front page exposé in the New York Times of another problem of industrial wind—coming on top of Robert Bryce’s eye-opening Wall Street Journal piece on air emissions relating to firming wind energy—presents another problem for Big Wind and Big Environmentalism.

Windpower’s noise problem is nothing new–it has just been swept under the rug by the industrial wind complex. The oft photoshoped pictures of wind turbines skip the sound–that would ruin the idyllic facade of the energy source that is radically uneconomic and an inferior energy source compared to conventional electricity generation.…

In yesterday’s post, Scientists versus Lobbyists: Looking for a Winning Strategy Against Big Wind, I promised to share with readers a citizens’ letter I received from Eric Bibler. Consider his piece, which has been condensed to meet format and space requirements, as Part II of my post. Mr. Bibler is focused on Massachusetts, but his experience and advice apply across the Northeast and across the nation where grassroots opposition to industrial wind turbines is growing apace.

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This post summarizes a group discussion about how to counter Massachusetts’s Wind Energy Siting Bill.

Would it be more politically pragmatic (and therefore advisable) to avoid any argument against the fundamental viability of wind energy (which continues to be an article of faith held by many legislators), and instead to focus exclusively on the flaws specific to the bill?…

[Editor note: Some analyses are worth revisiting, including this book review in the  Energy Journal of Cutler Cleveland, ed., Encyclopedia of Energy (6 volumes, Elsevier). Bradley shared his review with Professor Cleveland, who stated his surprise that it passed peer review. The reader can the judge the quality of the review in six years’ hindsight.]

This is the Hummer of energy books. The Elsevier Encyclopedia of Energy is almost twice as large as two predecessor energy encyclopedias combined. The price tag is commensurate. This set is only for the wealthy, the addicted, large libraries, and paid-in-kind reviewers.

Encyclopedia editor Cutler Cleveland, an ecological economist, introduces the compilation (p. xxxi) as “the first comprehensive, organized body of [energy] knowledge for what is certain to continue as a major area of scientific study in the 21^st century.”…