When reading articles from pro-wind people, you always find that wind energy is the solution to global warming, the energy crisis, job creation and financial problems for farmers that host the turbines.

Blinded by a feel-good solution for a problem that never existed, legislators are being misled into a belief that something like wind turbines will not have a negative effect on those who are left to live around them.

There is proof that the PSC standards are greatly flawed on wind projects already in operation, yet lawmakers had no problem taking away the power of local zoning on projects less than 100 MW of power.

To understand the problem you needed to be at the hearing in Madison on May 12, held by the Senate and Assembly Energy Committee.

If you were not there you were just like the majority of the committee members.

Out of 19 committee members, only four or five were there at any given time and most never showed up at all.

It was obvious that the pro-wind lobby, paid with your tax money from RENEW Wisconsin, had the minds of legislators on their side long before the hearing.

Several people that live near wind turbines gave first-hand testimony — to empty chairs of the committee — of the negative effects and problems they have. Some broke down in tears as they spoke of negative health effects on their families and their farm animals and that abandoning their homes was the only solution in the near future.

Because of financial situations, most are stuck living in a PSC-regulated hell with nowhere to turn and no one to listen.

There are those who think the PSC is not politically motivated.

With the governor appointing the three-member committee and Senate approving the confirmations, can anyone see no political motive?

The Energy Committee consists of mostly legislators that are from city districts and have no possibility of having turbines placed in their back yards.

Anyone want to bet that there will be no turbines located in lakes around the Capitol in Madison?

Who are the NIMBYs now?

Others will tell you that turbines create jobs and provide wealth for all involved. They don't tell you that the cost of production of wind electricity will drive up electrical rates three to four times the current cost. How many businesses will be lost because of these added costs? Can our municipalities and homeowners afford these added costs?

I am tired of the false information given by LTC wind energy instructor Jenny Heinzen and Michael Vickerman of RENEW Wisconsin, and others in the wind industry.

Name-plate capacity is not actual generation.

Wind turbines are only 25 percent or lower in efficiency.

A household also uses four times more electricity than their calculations.

As a dairy farmer, I never claim my production is the gallons of capacity of my bulk tank, and that I can feed the world with that milk inside.

Millions of your tax dollars have been spent on the Farmland Preservation Program to preserve farmland from being developed.

The agricultural industry is the backbone of Wisconsin's economic infrastructure. With the PSC in control of local zoning on wind energy, there will be no way for local governments to protect the land from destruction.

Legislators passed the Working Lands Proposal in the budget to penalize landowners who convert land out of the preservation program, but wind turbine developments are not included. I believe that eminent domain will be used by the PSC to place thousands of turbines.

I also believe funding of these turbines will be cut by lawmakers in future state and federal budgets, leaving those who have turbines on their land penniless and unable to farm.

Jerome Hlinak is a Tisch Mills dairy farmer and a member of Wisconsin Independent Citizens Opposing Windturbine Sites (WINDCOWS).