As a result of the series of meetings held with the Wind and Noise Turbine Advisory Group (WNTAG), new regulations, guidelines, or policies may be in the cards. And while the deck has been largely stacked against wind neighbors, this is an opportunity to throw down the aces: include infrasound, set L-90 low, use fast meter settings, recognize amplitude modulation. Play the wild card, too: anticipate wind shear.
Public comments are due April 8, 2016. Send them to the MassDEP’s Deputy Regional Director Laurel Carlson (Laurel.Carlson@state.ma.us) and to the Consensus Building Institute’s Senior Mediator Stacie Smith (stacie@cbuilding.org).
This table shows the relevant slides on potential regulation and guidelines. Click on a slide to view it or access the whole draft at Scope of Possible Noise Regulation and Policy.
Al Gore has a problem. He seems to want people to believe that only climate skeptics oppose renewables. The truth is, a small but growing number of prominent greens, openly acknowledge that renewables in their current form are not a scalable replacement for fossil fuels.
I really believe that years from now, this convening by attorney general Eric Schneiderman and his colleagues today, may well be looked back upon as a real turning point, in the effort to hold to account those commercial interests that have been, according to the best available evidence, deceiving the American people, communicating in a fraudulent way, both about the reality of the climate crisis and the dangers it poses to all of us, and committing fraud in their communications about the viability of renewable energy and efficiency, and energy storage, that together are posing this great competitive challenge to the long reliance on carbon based fuels.
To solve the climate problem, policy must be based on facts and not on prejudice. The climate system cares about greenhouse gas emissions – not about whether energy comes from renewable power or abundant nuclear power. Some have argued that it is feasible to meet all of our energy needs with renewables. The 100% renewable scenarios downplay or ignore the intermittency issue by making unrealistic technical assumptions, and can contain high levels of biomass and hydroelectric power at the expense of true sustainability. Large amounts of nuclear power would make it much easier for solar and wind to close the energy gap.
Will the green believers at Google Corporation join James Hansen in the dock, when Al Gore prosecutes people who think renewables are not up to the job?
At the start of RE<C, we had shared the attitude of many stalwart environmentalists: We felt that with steady improvements to today’s renewable energy technologies, our society could stave off catastrophic climate change. We now know that to be a false hope … Renewable energy technologies simply won’t work; we need a fundamentally different approach.
Will Al Gore prosecute Rob Parker, president of the Australian Nuclear Association, for claiming renewables aren’t up to the job?
“My concern is that renewables won’t get us across the line in terms of emissions reduction,” said Rob Parker, the president of the ANA. “Nuclear is more reliable and it has a smaller resources footprint than renewables.
If Al Gore succeeds in using government bullying, to silence critics of renewables, the same disaster could easily occur in the United States.
Perhaps Al Gore’s real target are the practitioners of the “strange new form of denial”, the growing green schism which opposes the push for 100% renewables, as vigorously as any climate skeptic.
There is no evidence that renewables in their current form are a viable replacement for fossil fuels. But there is plenty of evidence that nuclear power delivers results. Nuclear power, the zero emission alternative to renewables, has been economically supplying 75% of France’s power since the 1970s. Nuclear power works, and works well. France demonstrated by doing, that mass production and economies of scale makes nuclear power affordable.
If the whole world copied what France did in the 1970s, by 2030 the world could cut billions of tons of CO2 emissions, without destroying the global economy.
If you are someone who cares about CO2 reductions, you should listen to scientists like James Hansen, who plausibly claim that nuclear power is the route to decarbonisation, not to scientific illiterates like Al Gore.
FILE – In this Wednesday, Feb. 15, 2012, file photo, migratory birds fly over Mad Island, Texas. Energy companies blamed for the deaths of migratory birds may be harder to prosecute under a century-old law that a federal court in September 2015 ruled applies only to intentional killings. (AP Photo/Pat Sullivan, File)
SOMERSET, N.Y. (WIVB) — A project by Apex Clean Energy to erect wind turbines in Niagara County has fallen under the radar of the American Bird Conservancy.
Australia’s National Health and Medical Research Council long ago disqualified itself as a body fit, willing, or even able to investigate and report on the known and obvious consequences to human health and well-being caused by incessant turbine generated low-frequency noise and infrasound.
From the get go, it’s been infiltrated by wind industry consultants, such as Norm Broner and Renzo Tonin; and wind industry advocates like Liz Hanna, who continue to direct traffic at, what is supposed to be, an independent medical research body, designed to protect public health at enormous taxpayer expense (see our post here).
In early 2015, the NHMRC pumped out yet another politically inspired piece of propaganda, asserting that there was “no consistent evidence” of wind farms causing adverse health effects.
The inclusion of the weasel word “consistent” in the NHMRC’s puffy press piece was telling; and it’s a theme we’ve visited a few times…
I never thought the day would come that I’d be reposting something from David Appell. Yet, here I am, in agreement with him. I keep looking over my shoulder for a lurking quantum singularity or some other such rift in the fabric of spacetime. Appell writes on Quark Soup (bold mine, h/t to Dr. Ryan Maue):
No single paper, by Hansen or anyone else, becomes part of the “canon” a day after it is published. (Nor does it based on the version published in July of last year.)
I haven’t even read the new version of Hansen et al in detail yet. But it is certainly not part of the canon, for the same reason that a play of Shakespeare’s wasn’t part of the literary canon less than…
The wind-cult are all for it – just as long it’s speared into someone else’s backyard & somebody else is forced to pay for their smugness.
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In their sillier moments, the wind industry, its parasites and spruikers pitch the line that their pointless product is not only getting cheaper all the time, but go so far as to claim that wind power is already cheaper than gas and coal-fired power. Risible PR antics aside, the wind industry has always had a troubled relationship with the facts.
In 2016 – with disastrous results of attempting to rely on a Medieval technology unfolding daily (like Germany, South Australia and Ontario) – it takes real audacity to run the line about the wind being ‘free’: requiring the reality of hundreds of $billions in seemingly endless subsidies to be ignored, as with the fact that, at an economic level, power…
An ex-health director of Brown County in Wisconsin is among the latest who have reported health problems related to wind power.
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According to a USA Today report, Chua Xiong claimed in an email that she gets migraine headaches when she visits Duke Energy’s Shirley Wind Farm. Her revelation came just as developers are eyeing more high-profile wind farm projects in Wisconsin. Xiong has since retired.
Brown County Citizens for Responsible Wind Energy (BCCRWE) claims that the email, sent by Xiong to an intern on Nov. 21, is further proof that the low-frequency sound from wind turbines caused some residents to suffer from health problems.
However, Xiong later stated the following month that there isn’t sufficient evidence to link the turbines to the migraine. That caused the BCCRWE to claim that Xiong made the statement in order to avoid litigation with Duke Energy, and that her inaction will result in the prolonged daily suffering of Brown County residents.
There are a long line of reports that wind turbines are causing health problems to those who live nearby.
In an article published by National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) entitled “Adverse health effects of industrial wind turbines”, it was reported that people who live or work near industrial wind turbines have experienced decreased quality of life, annoyance, stress, sleep disturbance, headache, anxiety, depression, and cognitive dysfunction. Suggested causes of symptoms include a combination of wind turbine noise, infrasound, dirty electricity, ground current, and shadow flicker.
In a 2009 article by The Telegraph, a New York paediatrician, Dr Nina Pierpont, identified about 12 different health problems associated with WTS that range from tachycardia [abnormal heart beat], sleep disturbance, headaches, tinnitus, nausea, visual blurring, panic attacks with sensations of internal quivering to more general irritability.
She said that the vibration and noise emitted by wind turbines can produce a range of symptoms which she has named “Wind Turbine Syndrome” or WTS.
Pierpont observed that the illnesses associated with WTS would disappear when the person moves away from the wind turbines.
She said she expected that the wind industry would try to discredit and disparage her for the statements.
This study was conducted to assess the effect of rearing pigs at three different distances from a wind turbine (50, 500 and 1000 m) on the physicochemical properties and fatty acid composition of loin and neck muscles. The experiment was carried out on 30 growing-finishing pigs, derived from Polish Landrace × Polish Large White sows mated to a Duroc × Pietrain boar. The results obtained during the noise measurement showed that the highest level of noise in the audible and infrasound range was recorded 50 m from the wind turbine. Rearing pigs in close proximity to the wind turbine (50 m) resulted in decreased muscle pH, total heme pigments and heme iron as well as reduced content of C18:3n-3 fatty acid in the loin muscle. Loins of pigs reared 50 m from the wind turbine were characterized by significantly lower iron content (6.7 ppm g–1) compared to the loins of pigs reared 500 and 1000 m from the wind turbine (10.0–10.5 ppm g–1). The concentration of α-linolenic acid (C18:3n-3) in loin and neck muscles decreased as the distance from the wind turbine increased. Avoiding noise-induced stress is important not only for maintaining meat quality but also for improving animal welfare.
[…]
Summary
In summary, a significant negative influence of noise generated by the wind turbine with a capacity of 2 MW on the quality of growing-finishing pig loin muscles was determined. Rearing growing-finishing pigs in close proximity to the wind turbine resulted in lower pH, total heme pigments and heme iron as well as lower content of C18:3n-3 fatty acid of loin muscles. In this sense, it is crucial to reduce the exposure of animals to noise generated by wind turbines in order to avoid negative effects on meat quality.
The Germans went into wind power harder and faster than anyone else – and the cost of doing so is catching up with a vengeance.
The subsidies have been colossal and the impacts on the electricity market chaotic.
Some 800,000 German homes have been disconnected from the grid – victims of what is euphemistically called “fuel poverty”. Power starved Germans, instead of freezing, grabbed their axes and tramped into their forests to improve their sense of energy security – although foresters apparently take the view that this self-help measure is nothing more than blatant timber theft (see our post here).
German manufacturers – and other energy intensive industries – faced with escalating power bills are packing up and heading to the USA – where power prices are 1/3 of Germany’s (see our posts here and here and here). And the “green” dream of…
1Planners have refused permission for the country’s biggest wind farm
Campaigners have welcomed a decision by planners to refuse permission for the country’s biggest wind farm.
Cork-based Planree Ltd had proposed spending €200m erecting 49 turbines on a route from the Bluestack Mountains to Castlefin in Co Donegal.
However, An Bord Pleanála (ABP) spent a year and €115,000 in costs examining the proposal for the turbines, some 150 metres high. The board voted four to one against the plans.
ABP said the wind farm was in close proximity to especially high scenic areas and a number of protected areas.
It criticised Planree’s environmental impact statement saying it was “inadequate” and had failed to assess the potential impact on a number of bird species, including whooper swans and Greenland white-fronted geese.
ABP said it was not satisfied the proposals “would not have a significant adverse effect on the ecological environment” and “would not adversely affect the integrity of certain European sites in view of those sites’ conservation objectives”.
Finn Valley Wind Action Group welcome the decision as “a victory for common sense”.
Spokeswoman Marie Scanlon said the wind farm would have covered 40 square kilometres.
“Among the experts involved in preparing our group’s response were internationally renowned experts in the field of acoustics, hydrogeology, ornithology and landscape assessment,” she said.
“Donegal County Council has deemed that 95pc of our county is suitable for wind farm development and this decision shows once again that this policy needs to be changed.
“We will oppose any attempt to re-submit the application in any other guise,” Ms Scanlon added.
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