There are others much closer, which I also rather like seeing (closest is about 2km) but you can't see them from where we live.
Yes directly underneath them there is some gentle swooshing noises but I think beyond 500m it's basically imperceptible. Nothing I'd call offensive, car traffic is easily 10x worse.
The young folks that I've talked to locally, overwhelming share the same perspective.
The opposition has to come from folks who cannot see the bigger picture and just view them as some kind of excessive ugly infrastructure. Not properly recognizing / or caring about the societal benefit of clean abundant energy or the future.
I kind of find it interesting that a lot of historical landscape art from northern Europe featured windmills. Nobody viewed them as a blight back then.
>>Not properly recognizing / or caring about the societal benefit of clean abundant energy or the future.
I think we should devote every single spare inch of land to wind turbines and harness as much of wind energy as possible. But I won't pretend like the bloody things are not keeping me up at night when I can hear them.
I thought I was strange for feeling this when I brought my US-raised kids back to Northern Ireland this spring. Some would have been visible from my childhood home had they been built earlier. It made me think that maybe these people can get something right for the future.
Times are tumultuous but potential exists all around us.
It’s like we can only accomplish anything as a society if if the fact that it is going to piss people off is baked in.
Existential threats always seem to have an interesting way of unlocking progress.
Just look at how quickly Germany was able to build the north sea LNG terminals in the face of the russian gas crisis [1].
Meanwhile the older folks are still freaked out from when they watched "The Tripods" in the 80's and can't abide big mechanical monsters looming nearby.
The old 2-blade ones are a bit visually noisy as they look like they oscillate, but they're basically extinct now.
I am somewhat sympathetic to, in the case of wind, low-frequency noise complaints, but I strongly suspect most of them are just tacked on for good measure.
They're awful.
I live in the country for the peace and quiet and dark at night.
Now with a wind farm, there is a constant background hum that reminds me of living near a highway in the city, and a swishing noise that's louder than the cicadas and other night time bugs. Also, the red blinking safety lights do actually keep me up at night, but I might just be very sensitive to light.
I fully supported and still support the wind farm, even though I knew I wouldn't be able to host a turbine (and therefore benefit at all from these things). But, I really, really, really don't like the side effects at all.
Is that NIMBYism?
No. You recognize the drawbacks and still support the project for the good of others. That's the opposite of NIMBY, it's a high level of emotional maturity.
