At first blush, this story from the Washington Post is pretty funny: a “green energy” firm’s wind farm project in West Virginia is being challenged under the Endangered Species Act by some local tree bat huggers.

Tiny bat pits green against green

It is the first court challenge to wind power under the Endangered Species Act, lawyers on both sides say. … At the heart of the Beech Ridge case is the Indiana bat, a brownish-gray creature that weighs about as much as three pennies and, wings outstretched, measures about eight inches. A 2005 estimate concluded that there were 457,000 of them, half the number in 1967, when they were first listed as endangered.

Go ahead. Enjoy a moment of schadenfreude.

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A soon-to-be released study of the health effects of living near wind turbines challenges the popular image of the graceful, benign windmill gently coaxing free megawatts from the passing zephyrs.

Dr. Nina Pierpont, a New York pediatrician, has studied subjects who live near windmills in the U.S., the U.K., Italy, Ireland and Canada for the last five years. She concludes that some, but not all, of the near-windmill dwellers show signs of a newly-identified health risk which she calls Wind Turbine Syndrome, or WTS.

Are wind farms a health risk? US scientist identifies ‘wind turbine syndrome’

[WTS] is the disruption or abnormal stimulation of the inner ear’s vestibular system by turbine infrasound and low-frequency noise, the most distinctive feature of which is a group of symptoms which she calls visceral vibratory vestibular disturbance, or VVVD*. They cause problems ranging from internal pulsation, quivering, nervousness, fear, a compulsion to flee, chest tightness and tachycardia – increased heart rate.** Turbine noise can also trigger nightmares and other disorders in children as well as harm cognitive development in the young, she claims.

*[A girl I dated once told me she had VVVD. She stuttered, too.]

**[I experienced symptoms of WTS during Obama's last televised press conference. Memo to self: Search for nearby wind turbine.]

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