Listening to them is problematic if they are too close to where you live. They're pretty loud, and it's a rhythmic low frequency drone sound. There are distance limits, but in places like Denmark where there is not a lot of room left to build them away from residences, there have been efforts to reduce these limits.
If I had to hear that pulsing all day, every day, during my sleep, for the rest of my life...I could see it being a problem.
"They're pretty loud, and it's a rhythmic low frequency drone sound."
I've seen some studies that indicated that the infra-sound levels from city traffic are significantly stronger than the noise coming from wind turbines conforming to established noise regulations. Do people have problems with the wind turbine noise? Some perhaps do, but why isn't the even stronger car noise a reason for a radical change in car noise hygienic limits within cities? It would be a hypocrisy to tackle one due to public pressure and ignore the other.
EDIT: Oh, and I also vaguely recall that the low-frequency sound caused by the wind interacting with buildings around you is also supposed to be stronger than the same frequency sound coming from distant wind turbines. (The stronger the wind, the stronger the noise from both sources, so it's always comparable.) It makes sense, if you think about it. The law of inverse squares and all that jazz.
"If I had to hear that pulsing all day, every day, during my sleep, for the rest of my life...I could see it being a problem."
I live next to a major city exit road. Before that, I lived in a house that had a freight railway station across the street. I've never noticed any problems.
There are some in depth documentaries and reports on it. I think the main issue is windmill hating people live in extremely quiet places and when you add any noise to them it's more distracting than already living in a louder area. Plus they occasionally make loud noises.
That said, the question of why those people are living in the middle of nowhere doesn't come up at all. I think that's the more important issue. If you want to reduce the environmental footprint, reducing the size of sprawl and suburban/rural population size would save a lot of energy.
"I live next to a major city exit road. Before that, I lived in a house that had a freight railway station across the street. I've never noticed any problems."
For you, no problems. For others, there might be.
And if you do have a problem for example falling asleep when there is sound, the sound from the turbines is nasty as with such low sound you can't block it with earplugs.
I'm not saying you should care, just a fyi that some people do have to care about this for their own sanity.
If I had to hear that pulsing all day, every day, during my sleep, for the rest of my life...I could see it being a problem.