Wind's Way: Unscientific Thoughts Shared with Dinner Friends about Wind Turbines

I have my doubts about wind turbines, based not on technological know-how but on my very limited, but always eager examination of history.

The well-intentioned few who try to "improve" nature in order to provide better living human conditions (or, in some sorry cases, to extend their own power and influence; take Stalin's irrigation projects) are often unaware (or unwilling to be aware, as it could stand in the way of their dreams or master-plans) of the ecological dangers of their projects -- mostly because what they hope to "replace" is what they perceive (often, granted, rightly) as unacceptable deficiencies or catastrophic failures (e.g., gasoline-produced power).

Thank God, I don't own a car, perhaps reflecting the views of "quirky" people:

Soil, too, he [George Kennan] forecasts direly, is in short supply. The automobile is the “enemy of community.”

In the case of wind turbines: A major corporation, GE, is gung-ho about them, and I would say not simply for PR reasons.

Let me present my doubts about the turbines (acknowledging, however, that the wind turbines are -- conceivably -- far "better" than gasoline emissions, just as gasoline emissions are arguably "better" than smelly dung all over city streets produced by animals carrying humans. Needless to say, such "emissions" do not improve human health).

(1) What will be the effect (produced by the wind turbines) on wind patterns -- and on weather as a whole? Surely you cannot interfere with delicate zephyr in a major way without some consequences in nature -- consequences, granted, which have to be scientifically determined (if that is possible). Worse-case scenario, let's say: more hurricanes and/or droughts.

(2) What about, to be more specific, human-indispensable insects (e.g., bees): what will be the effect of changing wind patterns produced by the wind turbines on them? Of course, birds are already an issue.

(3) Noise (as I understand it the turbines do make considerable noise; but I could be wrong about this), and the de-beautification of the environment produced by these dreadful-looking wind turbines (they look like creatures from the "War of the Worlds") -- here are, perhaps, issues to keep in mind as we try to "improve the way we live" without ruining the planet.

Is not wind, in its "natural" flow, as "delicate" a cocoon of human/animal/insect life as water or soil, which too have a life of their own? How "safe" is it to interfere with wind's way?

When the Hoover Dam (not to speak of the TVA) was built, how many people were concerned about its ecological consequences, as it was "only about water"?