* Petroleum is the fuel of the past; wind is energy for the future.

* Petroleum contributes to global warming; wind doesn't.

* Burning petroleum pollutes; wind won't.

* Drilling for oil and gas leaves toxic chemicals in the water; wind can't.

* Oil and gas spill; spilled wind is called "air."

* Petroleum requires intrusive on-shore facilities; wind requires a connection to the electric grid.

* There isn't enough petroleum off Virginia to make a difference in prices; the state is considered the best location for a wind farm on the East Coast.

* Using petroleum perpetuates political, environmental and economic problems; wind solves them.

According to Pilot writer Scott Harper, a team from Old Dominion, Virginia Tech, James Madison University and Norfolk State have been studying possibilities for offshore wind farms, concentrating on a proposal for "100 wind turbines installed at least 12 miles off Virginia Beach, costing more than $250 million."

They have determined that a combination of available wind, shallow water, relatively few hurricanes and proximity to electric lines makes Virginia Beach a better choice - for example - than the Eastern Shore, where a proposal for a wind farm foundered a few years ago.

So far, environmentalists seem to like the offshore project, a stark change from their inexplicable opposition to on-shore proposals in Virginia's mountains.

Still to be explored, according to the researchers, is whether a wind farm is compatible with the Navy's training - a potential deal- breaker, as it is for oil and gas development - and the economic benefits of those 300-foot whirling turbines a dozen miles from the beach.

The 100-turbine farm, even if it were built, won't do much to satisfy Virginia's energy needs, although it can satisfy some in one of the greenest possible ways.

The Virginia proposal is modeled on a Danish wind farm that produces 160 megawatts of power; to put that in perspective, that's only a third of the power that would be produced by the much- reviled coal plant Dominion Virginia Power is building in Wise County. Wind turbines, however, don't foul the air with particulate matter, or add toxic mercury to Hampton Roads' fisheries.

Offshore drilling advocates accuse opponents of wasting a resource by leaving it in the ground, and promise all kinds of unknowable benefits if they are permitted to drill. The study on wind energy - only in its early stages - has already provided more real information, and more compelling arguments, than any oil advocate has.

"If wind energy development in the eastern U.S. is going to make a real rather than symbolic contribution to solving our energy and air pollution problems," Rick Webb, a University of Virginia scientist, told Harper, "it will certainly be offshore development."

Let's get started.

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