CAIRE (Citizens for Amherst Island Renewable Energy) is the local group of wind power proponents. It was recently formed (August-September 2007), with 9 board members and 40 members. The group primarily consists of landowners who have signed leases with one of the wind developers, or family members. They published their first newsletter in September 2007.

As mentioned in the newsletter, they have a web site at whywind.org. It might be of interest to know that the web site was registered (and presumably created) by Mr. Samit Sharma, who is not a landowner, but rather represents one of the developers. The web site has the normal wind industry marketing fluff, with the two most interesting sections being the FAQ's and the Myths. I've studied each of these sections in some detail, and have prepared my thoughts on the FAQ's and Myths. To sum it up, both sections present many cherry-picked quotes from otherwise reasonable documents. This tendency is especially true for the myths, to the point where this section is fundamentally misleading. Perhaps the dismissals of the myths are true, but the supporting documents do not support this, and I have to wonder why there was little attempt to craft more honest dismissals. Was it laziness, ineptness or are there really no good dismissals? I'd urge everyone to read through my "myths" response and make their own judgments.

As an example of cherry-picking, take a look at the quote at the bottom of the September 2007 newsletter. It was a quote from David Suzuki, who is a fairly well-known science writer who heads a foundation that produces papers on a variety of topics, including wind. His work is pretty impressive. Here's the text of the original New Scientist article and here's his reply to the use of his quote in many wind energy publications - which now includes CAIRE's newsletter.