Health

What the Liberals are Doing To This Once-Proud Province….Disgusting!

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Sovereign Debt Crisis Alive & Well In Canada – Ontario is one of the largest debts in the world among sub-sovereign governments

Posted on July 4, 2014 by 

Ontario

Those that have been yelling about hyperinflation complete ignore the fact that there are 3 major levels of government Federal-State/Province-Municipal/City and the latter two cannot print money. All three levels simply consume and debt has been the major crisis for centuries. Back in 1514, in the Stutgart/Tubingen area, the lord owed about a million gold coins. He could not pay the debt and the lower classes were revolting over taxes. He was forced to create a parliament among the nobles who then assumed the debt in return for power.

This story of a debt crisis has been replayed countless times throughout history. It is unfolding on a worldwide basis from Austria and Germany, throughout Europe, into North America, Japan, and Asia right into China. Why governments borrow with no intention of ever paying anything back and always go into collapse is just mind-blowing. We never even once learn from the past constantly repeating this boom bust cycle that leads to war and civil unrest.

Even in quiet Ontario, Moody’s has warned about a debt downgrade. The Thursday’s Throne Speech unfolded against the backdrop of a stern warning where the newly re-elected government is not showing enough progress tackling the province’s $12.5-billion deficit and stabilizing its massive debt load, which is one of the largest in the world among sub-sovereign governments. This is the price of socialism and it is being pushed off the cliff with great force. Do not confuse this with denying people a helping hand. The extreme left and the extreme right agree on one thing – more power to government. Both extremes are equally dangerous.

Moody’s Investors Service changed its outlook on Ontario to “negative,” a possible prelude to a downgrading of the province’s credit rating.Thursday’s Throne Speech unfolded against this very serious outlook in Canada.

 

3 MW Wind Turbines a Threat to Rural Village of Cesme

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Nina Pierpont Warns Against An Entirely Avoidable Turkish Wind Farm Disaster

July 5, 2014 by  

Calvin-Nina001

NINA PIERPONT, M.D., Ph.D.

June 30, 2014
Ms. Esen Fatma Cesme Belediyesi (Municipality)
İnönü Mah. 2001 Sk. No: 2 Çeşme / İZMİR
Turkey

Dear Ms. Kabadayi-Whiting,

I write to you at the request of Madeleine Kura, who tells me the charming, historical town of Cesme is about to have half a dozen 3 MW industrial wind turbines built on the edge of town, a mere 500 m from people’s homes. (I’m told that at least one of the turbines will be 300 m from a school.) Furthermore, all this construction will be in hilly terrain.

Let me explain, clinically, why this is a bad idea. In 2009 I published what was then the definitive study of health effects caused by wind turbine infrasound on people living within 2 km of industrial turbines. The book, “Wind Turbine Syndrome: A Report on a Natural Experiment” (K-Selected Books), included 60 pages of raw data in the form of case histories (using case cross-over studies), demonstrating that living in proximity to wind turbines dys-regulates the inner ear vestibular organs controlling balance, position, and spatial awareness. Effectively, sufferers experience symptoms of sea-sickness, along with several related pathologies.

It turns out all this has been well known since the 1980s, when the US Department of Energy commissioned a report on wind turbine health effects — the report subsequently published by physicist Dr. N D Kelley and his colleagues at the Solar Research Institute in Golden, Colorado, bearing the title, “A Methodology for Assessment of Wind Turbine Noise Generation,” Transactions of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers, v. 104 (May 1982), pp. 112-120.

In this paper we have presented evidence to support the hypothesis that one of the major causal agents responsible for the annoyance of nearby residents by wind turbine noise is the excitation of highly resonant structural and air volume modes by the coherent, low-frequency sound radiated by large wind turbines.

Further, there is evidence that the strong resonances found in the acoustic pressure field within rooms [in people’s homes] . . . indicates a coupling of sub-audible energy [infrasound] to human body resonances at 5, 12, and 17-25 Hz, resulting in a sensation of whole-body vibration (p. 120).

I discovered the same thing in my research. What Kelly et al. refer to as a “sensation of whole-body vibration,” I refer to as Visceral Vibratory Vestibular Disturbance (VVVD): “The internal quivering, vibration, or pulsation and the associated complex of agitation, anxiety, alarm, irritability, tachycardia, nausea, and sleep disturbance together make up what I refer to as Visceral Vibratory Vestibular Disturbance (VVVD)” (“Wind Turbine Syndrome,” p. 59).

Five years later, Dr. Kelley gave a follow-up paper at the Windpower ‘87 Conference & Exposition in San Francisco, titled “A Proposed Metric for Assessing the Potential of Community Annoyance from Wind Turbine Low-Frequency Noise Emissions.” Just so you understand the terminology, “emissions” means “noise & vibration.” And the term “low frequency” includes infrasound. And the antiseptic phrase “community annoyance” is code for Wind Turbine Syndrome — except the name had not been coined in1987. (I created it decades later.) Kelley’s research once again had been funded by the US Department of Energy, Contract No. DE-AC02-83CH10093.

We electronically simulated three interior environments resulting from low-frequency acoustical loads radiated from both individual turbines and groups of upwind and downwind turbines. . . .

Experience with wind turbines has shown that it is possible . . . for low-frequency acoustic noise radiated from the turbine rotor to interact with residential structures of nearby communities and annoy the occupants. . . .

The modern wind turbine radiates its peak sound power (energy) in the very low frequency range, typically between 1 and 10 Hz [i.e., infrasound]. . . .

Our experience with the low-frequency noise emissions from a single, 2 MW MOD-1 wind turbine demonstrated that . . . it was possible to cause annoyance within homes in the surrounding community with relatively low levels of LF-range [low frequency range] acoustic noise. An extensive investigation of the MOD-1 situation revealed that this annoyance was the result of a coupling of the turbine’s impulsive low-frequency acoustic energy into the structures of some of the surrounding homes. This often created an annoyance environment that was frequently confined to within the home itself (p. 1, emphasis in original).

I am attaching a copy of Kelley’s 1987 paper.

Besides my research, which pretty much duplicates Kelley’s, there is the work of Dr. Alec Salt, Professor of Otolaryngology in the School of Medicine at Washington University (St. Louis, Missouri), where he is director of the Cochlear Fluids Research Laboratory. Professor Salt is a highly respected neuro-physiologist specializing in inner ear disorders and in particular the mysteries of the cochlea.

Prof. Salt’s research dovetails with mine and with Dr. Kelley’s. For many years, acousticians and noise engineers have vigorously maintained that “if you can’t hear it, it can’t hurt you.” That is to say in the case of wind turbines, “If you can’t hear the low-frequency noise in the infrasound range, it can’t hurt you.” (lnfrasound, by definition, is noise below the hearing threshold, typically pegged at 20 Hz and lower. People feel infrasound in various parts of the body, though typically they cannot hear it.) In any case, Professor Salt and his colleagues have demonstrated conclusively, definitively, that infrasound does in fact disturb the very fine hair cells of the cochlea.

With this discovery, one of the main arguments advanced by the wind energy industry — namely, that wind turbine infrasound was too low to be harmful to people, since they could not hear it — was demolished. Prof. Salt has proven that, “If you can’t hear it, it can still harm you.”

This past winter, Professor Salt and his colleague, Professor Lichtenhan, published “How Does Wind Turbine Noise Affect People?” Acoustics Today, v. 10 (Winter 2014), pp. 20-28. The following is a lengthy excerpt:

The essence of the current debate is that on one hand you have the well-funded wind industry (1) advocating that infrasound be ignored because the measured levels are below the threshold of human hearing, allowing noise levels to be adequately documented through A-weighted sound measurements; (2) dismissing the possibility that any variants of wind turbine syndrome exist (Pierpont 2009) even when physicians (e.g., Steven D. Rauch, M.D. at Harvard Medical School) cannot otherwise explain some patients’ symptoms; and (3) arguing that it is unnecessary to separate wind turbines and homes based on prevailing sound levels.

On the other hand, you have many people who claim to be so distressed by the effects of wind turbine noise that they cannot tolerate living in their homes. Some move away, either at financial loss or bought-out by the turbine operators. Others live with the discomfort, often requiring medical therapies to deal with their symptoms. Some, even members of the same family, may be unaffected. Below is a description of the disturbance experienced by a woman in Europe we received a few weeks ago as part of an unsolicited e-mail.

From the moment that the turbines began working, I experienced vertigo-like symptoms on an ongoing basis. In many respects, what I am experiencing now is actually worse than the ‘dizziness’ I have previously experienced, as the associated nausea is much more intense. For me the pulsating, humming, noise that the turbines emit is the predominant sound that I hear and that really seems to affect me.

While the Chief Scientist [the person who came to take sound measurements in her house] undertaking the measurement informed me that he was aware of the low frequency hum the turbines produced (he lives close to a wind farm himself, and had recorded the humming noise levels indoors in his own home) he advised that I could tune this noise out and that any adverse symptoms I was experiencing were simply psychosomatic. . . .

Given the knowledge that the ear responds to low frequency sounds and infrasound, we knew that comparisons with benign sources were invalid and the logic to A-weight sound measurements was deeply flawed scientifically. . .

From this understanding we conclude that very low frequency sounds and infrasound, at levels well below those that are heard, readily stimulate the cochlea. Low frequency sounds and infrasound from wind turbines can therefore stimulate the ear at levels well below those that are heard. . . .

No one has ever evaluated whether tympanostomy tubes alleviate the symptoms of those living near wind turbines. From the patient’s perspective, this may be preferable to moving out of their homes or using medical treatments for vertigo, nausea, and/or sleep disturbance. The results of such treatment, whether positive, negative, would likely have considerable scientific influence on the wind turbine noise debate. . . .

Another concern that must be dealt with is the development of wind turbine noise measurements that have clinical relevance. The use of A-weighting must be reassessed as it is based on insensitive, Inner Hair Cell (IHC)-mediated hearing and grossly misrepresents inner ear stimulation generated by the noise. In the scientific domain, A-weighting sound measurements would be unacceptable when many elements of the ear exhibit a higher sensitivity than hearing. The wind industry should be held to the same high standards. Full-spectrum monitoring, which has been adopted in some reports, is essential. . . .

Given the present evidence, it seems risky at best to continue the current gamble that infrasound stimulation of the ear stays confined to the ear and has no other effects on the body. For this to be true, all the mechanisms we have outlined (low frequency-induced amplitude modulation, low frequency sound-induced endolymph volume changes, infrasound stimulation of type II afferent nerves, infrasound exacerbation of noise-induced damage and direct infrasound stimulation of vestibular organs) would have to be insignificant. We know this is highly unlikely and we anticipate novel findings in the coming years that will influence the debate.

I suspect you are beginning to get a clear picture of the problem — and why I’m writing to you.

The typical symptoms of what is now known worldwide as Wind Turbine Syndrome are: sleep disturbance, headache, tinnitus (ringing or buzzing in the ears), ear pressure, dizziness (a general term that includes vertigo, light-headedness, sensation of almost fainting, etc.). nausea, visual blurring, tachycardia (rapid heart rate), irritability, problems with concentration and memory, and panic episodes associated with sensations of internal pulsation or quivering which arise when awake or asleep.

Does everybody living near wind turbines experience Wind Turbine Syndrome? By no means! What I discovered is that people with (a) motion sensitivity, (b) migraine disorder, (c) the elderly (50 years and older), (d) inner ear damage, and (e) autistic children and adults — all these are at statistically significant high risk.

The solution is simple: industrial wind turbines must be set back, well away from people’s homes, schools, places of work, and anywhere else people regularly congregate. In my 2009 report, I recommended a minimum setback of 2 km in level terrain. Studies done around the world since then have persuaded me that 2 km is not sufficient, especially in hilly or mountainous terrain — as with Cesme. In Cesme’s case, setbacks should be more in the order of 5 km or greater.

Hence my alarm when notified by Ms. Kura that Cesme is considering 500 m (or less) setbacks. This is wholly inadequate. I guarantee that, unless the setbacks are increased substantially, there will be numerous victims of Wind Turbine Syndrome.

There’s more. Dr. Salt referred to Dr. Steven Rauch, above. Dr. Rauch, a physician, is the Medical Director of Harvard Medical School’s renowned Clinical Balance and Vestibular Center, part of the Massachusetts Eye & Ear Infirmary. Dr. Rauch was recently interviewed by The New Republic:

Dr. Steven Rauch, an otologist at the Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary and a professor at Harvard Medical School, believes WTS [Wind Turbine Syndrome] is real. Patients who have come to him to discuss WTS suffer from a “very consistent” collection of symptoms, he says. Rauch compares WTS to migraines, adding that people who suffer from migraines are among the most susceptible to turbines. There’s no existing test for either condition but “Nobody questions whether or not migraine is real.”

“The patients deserve the benefit of the doubt,” Rauch says. “It’s clear from the documents that come out of the industry that they’re trying very hard to suppress the notion of WTS and they’ve done it in a way that [involves] a lot of blaming the victim” (“Big Wind Is Better Than Big Oil, But Just as Bad at P.R.,” by Alex Halperin in The New Republic, June 16, 2014).

Dr. Rauch made a similar statement to ABC News last fall.

I met with Dr. Rauch in Cambridge, Mass., several years ago. He has read my “Wind Turbine Syndrome” book. You’re welcome to contact him for his clinical opinion. Notice, he actually treats WTS victims, and furthermore his specialty is neuro-otology — precisely the clinical specialty appropriate to WTS, since WTS is mainly a vestibular disorder. (You might consider Dr. Rauch the “pope” of vestibular disease.)

Shifting gears, a group of mechanical engineers at the University of Minnesota recently mapped the airflow turbulence patterns of a 2.5 MW wind turbine. Their technique was ingenious: “A large searchlight with custom reflecting optics generated a two-dimensional light sheet next to the 130-m-tall wind turbine for illuminating the snow particles in a 36-m-wide by 36-m-high area.” They literally mapped the vortices being hurled off the turbine blades, using a blizzard (!) as a kind of background screen. Visit this website to see and savor the dramatic results. http://discover.umn.edu/news/science-technology/new-study-uses-blizzard-measure-wind-turbine-airflow  Click open the video and notice the pulsed pressure waves from the blades — punching holes, as it were, in the swirling snow. You can watch the video on YouTube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OHl_0s4qqUY.

Think of volleys of acoustic artillery, much of it in the low frequency and infrasound range. Imagine the residents of Cesme being bombarded by this day and night.

You are looking at the huge, pulsed, sound pressure waves responsible for Wind Turbine Syndrome.

Ms. Kura tells me the turbines destined for Cesme are 3 MW. Several years ago, the noted Danish noise engineer, Professor Henrik Moller at Aalborg University, published a paper titled “Low-Frequency Noise from Large Wind Turbines,” Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, vol. 129, no. 6 (June 2011), pp. 3727-3744. Moller and his colleague, Christian Sejer Pedersen, demonstrated that “the larger the turbine, the ongreater the ILFN (infrasound and low frequency noise) produced.” The following is the abstract of their paper:

As wind turbines get larger, worries have emerged that the turbine noise would move down in frequency and that the low-frequency noise would cause annoyance for the neighbors. The noise emission from 48 wind turbines with nominal electric power up to 3.6 MW is analyzed and discussed.

The relative amount of low-frequency noise is higher for large turbines (2.3–3.6 MW) than for small turbines (2 MW), and the difference is statistically significant. The difference can also be expressed as a downward shift of the spectrum of approximately one-third of an octave.

A further shift of similar size is suggested for future turbines in the 10 MW range.

Due to the air absorption, the higher low-frequency content becomes even more pronounced when sound pressure levels in relevant neighbor distances are considered.

Even when A-weighted levels are considered, a substantial part of the noise is at low frequencies and, for several of the investigated large turbines, the one-third octave band with the highest level is at or below 250 Hz.

It is thus beyond any doubt that the low-frequency part of the spectrum plays an important role in the noise at the neighbors.

Given all of the above, you can see why I am concerned for the residents of Cesme.

A final word. The clinical literature, including publications by the World Health Organization on health effects from infrasound exposure, typically use the word that Dr. Kelley used in his reports to the US Department of Energy — “annoyance.” It’s really not an appropriate word. It vastly understates the sickness caused by infrasound exposure. (A mosquito bite is an annoyance. Wind turbine infrasound, on the other hand, triggers a debilitating cascade of illnesses whose features I enumerated, above.)

In medicine, we clinicians are morally bound to exercise what’s called the “precautionary principle.” That is, if we don’t know for certain that a procedure is harmless, we are obliged to exercise extreme caution in performing the procedure, in this instance building industrial wind turbines — which are well-known to produce impulsive (i.e., amplitude-modulated) infrasound — near people’s homes. This is, after all, common sense.

For decades, the wind industry flatly denied their turbines produced infrasound. It took monumental efforts by people like me to debunk this fallacy. Wind industry advocates likewise argued that only downwind turbines created noise, that is, low-frequency noise. Dr. Kelley and his research team effectively debunked that falsehood, in the articles referred to above. Finally, the wind industry clung to the fiction that, “If you can’t hear it, it can’t hurt you.” Professor Salt deflated that one.

It’s time to recognize that the global wind industry has hidden behind a series of (what turned out to be) falsehoods. Their untruths have been exposed and corrected in the published clinical and scientific literature, as shown above.

There is no excuse for building wind turbines in proximity to people’s homes.

Sincerely,

Nina Pierpont, M.D.*, Ph.D.**
*M.D. from The Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine
**Ph.D. from Princeton University in Population Biology/Evolutionary Biology/Ecology
***B.A. (Biology, with honors), Yale University

For a pdf version of the letter click here.

To find out what Neil Kelley’s research was all about see our posts hereand here and here.

For an insight into Prof Alec Salt’s work see this video.

And, for a taste of what the good people of Çeşme will get to suffer if this disaster is realised, see our post here.

Cesme Turkey

Obama Doesn’t Care About Reducing CO2….he Wants to Reduce the American’s Standard of Living….Dramatically!

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Message to the President: data shows ‘CO2 Reduction is Futile’

Posted on July 4, 2014 by 

The record of recent Man-made CO2 emissions: 1965 -2013 shows that China and the developing world is laughing at your position, Mr. President.

Guest essay by Ed Hoskins

The following calculations and graphics are based on information on national CO2 emission levels worldwide published by BP[1]in June 2014 for the period from 1965 up until 2013. The data is well corroborated by previous similar datasets published by the CDIAC, Guardian [2] and Google up until 2009 [3]. These notes and figures provide a short commentary on that CO2 emissions history.

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The contrast between the developed and developing worlds is stark in terms of their history of CO2 emissions and the likely prognosis for their future CO2 output.

Since 1980 CO2 emissions from the developed world have shown virtually no increase, whereas the developing world has had a fourfold increase since 1980: that increase is accelerating.

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Similarly the CO2 output per head is declining in the developed world whereas it is accelerating the developing world.

In October 2010 Professor Richard Muller made the dilemma for all those who hope to control global warming by reducing CO2 emissions clear: in essence he said[4]:

“the Developing World is not joining-in with CO2 emission reductions nor does it have any intention of doing so.

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The failure of worldwide action negates the unilateral action of any individual western Nation”.

This presentation divides the world nations into seven logical groups with distinct attitudes to CO2 control:

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These graphs of total CO2 emission history show that up until 2013:

§ There is stabilisation or reduction of emissions from developed economies since 1980.

§ The USA, simply by exploiting shale gas for electricity generation, has already reduced its CO2 emissions by some 9.5% since 2005[5]. That alone has already had more CO2 emission reduction effect than the entire Kyoto protocol[6] [7].

§ CO2 emissions from the developed economies rejecting action on CO2 have hardly grown since 2005.

§ The European Union (27) has reduced its CO2 emissions by ~14% since 2005.

However:

§ CO2 emissions from the developing world as a whole overtook the developed world in 2007 and are now a third larger than the developed world’s CO2 emissions.

§ there has been a very rapid escalation of Chinese CO2 emissions since the year 2000[8].

§ China overtook the USA CO2 emissions in 2006, and Chinese emissions are now ~62% greater than the USA, the escalation in Chinese CO2 emissions continues. Chinese emissions have grown by +75% since 2005 and China continues to build coal fired powerstations to supply the bulk of its electricity as demand grows.

§ India has accelerating emissions[9], growing from a low base by +63% since 2005. India too is building coal fired powerstations to increase the supply of electricity as 25% of its population still has no access to electric power.

§ there is inexorable emissions growth from the Rest of the World economies, from a low base, they have grown by +30% since 2005.

So any CO2 emissions reduction achieved by the Developed Nations will be entirely negated by the increases in CO2 emissions from Developing Nations.

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However probably more significant than the total CO2 emissions output is the comparison of the emissions/head for the various nation groups.

§ The EU(27) even with active legal measures have maintained a fairly level CO2 emission rate but have managed to reduce their CO2 emissions/head by ~16% since 2005. Much of the recent downward trend is largely attributed to their declining economies.

§ The USA has already reduced its CO2 emissions/head by ~22% since in 2005, mainly arising from the use of shale gas for electricity generation.

§ Russia, Japan, Canada and Australia have only grown their emissions/head by ~1% since 2005.

§ China’s CO2 emissions/head have increased ~11 fold since 1965. China overtook the world-wide average in 2003 and surpassed the rapidly developing nations in 2006. China’s emissions / head at 7.0 tonnes / head are now approaching the level of the EU(27) nations.

§ India’s CO2 emissions have grown by 4.7 times over the period and are now showing recent modest acceleration. That increasing rate is likely to grow substantially with increased use of coal for electricity generation[10].

§ The eight rapidly developing nations have shown consistent growth from a low base in 1965 at 5.6 times. They exceeded the world average CO2 emissions level in 1997.

§ The Rest of the World (~160 Nations), 36% of world population, have grown CO2 emissions consistently but only by 2.6 times since 1965, this group will be the likely origin of major future emissions growth as they strive for better standards of living.

§ Overall average world-wide emissions/head have remained relatively steady but with early growth in the decade from 1965. It amounts to 1.6 times since 1965.

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When the participating nations particularly EU(27) are compared with Chinese CO2 emissions/head, an interesting picture arises:

§ Chinese CO2 emissions at 7.01mt/head for its 1.3 billion population are already ~43% greater than the worldwide average. Those emissions are still growing fast.

§ At 5.5mt/head, France, with ~80% nuclear electricity generation, has the lowest CO2 emission rates in the developed world and is at only ~12% above the world-wide average.

§ China’s CO2 emissions/head exceeded France’s CO2 emissions/head in 2009 and are now 22% higher.

§ The UK at 7.2mt/head is now only ~48% higher than the world-wide average and only about ~3% higher than China. So China is likely to overtake the UK in the near future.

§ Germany, one of the largest CO2 emitters in Europe, has emissions/head ~100% higher than the worldwide average and is still ~49% higher than China. Germany’s emissions/head have increased recently because they are now burning much larger quantities of brown coal to compensate them for the “possibly irrational” closure of their nuclear generating capacity.

This must question the logic of Green attitudes in opposing Nuclear power. Following the Fukushima disaster, the German government position of rapidly eliminating nuclear power in a country with no earthquake risk and no chance of tsunamis should not be tenable.

If CO2 emissions really were a concern to arrest Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming / Man-made Climate Change, these results particularly from France show starkly the very real advantage of using Nuclear power for electricity generation.

Professor Fritz Vahrenholt was CEO of RWE Innogy, the major German windpower supplier, he had pioneered Germany’s significant advances in renewable energy, especially in the development of wind power.

Previously Professor Vahrenholt had fully accepted the IPCC as the foundation of his understanding of mankind’s effect on climate change. However, with his scientific background as chemist, he re-examined IPCC reports in detail. He found many errors, inconsistencies and unsupported assertions. Accordingly he has now entirely revised his position.

Professor Vahrenholt’s diagram below is from his July 2012 lecture at the Royal Society[11] [12], it shows the miniscule impact of the enormously costly efforts at decarbonisation in Germany, (die Energiewende), in comparison with the inevitable escalation of CO2 emissions from the rest of the world.

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The underdeveloped nations are bound to become progressively more industrialised and more intensive users of fossil fuels to power their development and widen their distribution of electricity.

The futility of the expenditure of vast resources on Green activities in Germany becomes clear. German actions with increasing risks to its energy security and the growing risk to the German economy as its manufacturing industries seek more congenial energy / business environments, could only ever reduce Germany’s CO2 emissions by ~150,000,000 tonnes between 2006 and 2030.

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That would only amount to ~1/100 of the concomitant growth in other CO2 emissions from the developing world. According to Bjorn Lomborg the $100billion German investment in solar power alone, not including other renewable investments, can only reduce the onset of Global Warming by a matter of about 37 hours by the year 2100[13].

This point is re-emphasised above, by cross comparing the annual growth in emissions from China and India with the full annual emissions from key European countries. Chinese CO2 emissions growth in some years can exceed the total UK and French emissions level and even approach the German level on occasions.

Professor Varhenholt is now convinced that it is nature and in particular the behaviour of the sun that is responsible for our continually changing climate, and as he said as the final point of his Royal society lecture:

“This change can only develop first with a revolution of our minds.”

“It’s not mankind creating climate. It’s the sun: stupid.”

Professor Varhenholt and his colleague Sebastian Luening have now published a best seller in Germany “Die Kalte Sonne”, the book now released in English as

“The Neglected Sun: Why the Sun Precludes Climate Catastrophe”[14].

[1] http://www.bp.com/en/global/corporate/about-bp/energy-economics/statistical-review-of-world-energy.html

[2] http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog/2011/jan/31/world-carbon-dioxide-emissions-country-data-co2#data

[3] https://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=0AonYZs4MzlZbdFF1QW00ckYzOG0yWkZqcUhnNDVlSWc&hl=en#gid=1

[4] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U5m6KzDnv7k

[5] http://www.c3headlines.com/2013/07/a-fracking-revolution-us-now-leads-world-in-co2-emission-reductions-.html

[6]http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/project_syndicate/2012/09/thanks_to_fracking_u_s_carbon_emissions_are_at_the_lowest_levels_in_20_years_.html

[7] http://www.oilandgasonline.com/doc/u-s-fracking-has-carbon-more-whole-world-s-wind-solar-0001

[8] http://www.pbl.nl/en/news/pressreleases/2011/steep-increase-in-global-co2-emissions-despite-reductions-by-industrialised-countries

[9] http://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2011-06-10/global-warming/29642669_1_kyoto-protocol-second-commitment-period-

[10] http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/home/environment/global-warming/India-invokes-right-to-grow-to-tell-rich-nations-of-its-stand-on-future-climate-change-negotiations/articleshow/36724848.cms

[11] http://www.thegwpf.org/vahrenholt-lecture/

[12] http://kaltesonne.de/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/vahrenholt-2012-annual-gwpf-lecture.pdf

[13] http://www.lomborg.com/content/2013-03-germany-pays-billions-delay-global-warming-37-hours

[14] http://notrickszone.com

Dr. Nina Pierpont is Providing A Compilation of Evidence that the Wind Industry is Harming People!

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“Imagine being bombarded day & night by volleys of acoustic artillery, much of it low frequency and infrasonic” (Dr. Pierpont)

Jul 2, 2014

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Editor’s note:  The following is a letter Dr. Pierpont wrote to a group in Turkey that’s trying to keep wind turbines out of its community.  (Click here for a PDF.)  We are told the wind developer has been ordered by a court to stop building the turbines because of, among other matters, health issues.  Being Turkey, the developer has brazenly ignored the court order — and is proceeding full steam ahead.  (So much for the “rule of law.”)

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To:  Ms. Kabadayi-Whiting, Cesme, Turkey
From:  Nina Pierpont, MD, PhD
Regarding:  The proper siting of wind turbines
Date:  June 30, 2014

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I write to you at the request of Madeleine Kura, who tells me the lovely, seaside town ofCesme is about to get half a dozen 3 MW industrial wind turbines built on the edge of town, a mere 500 m from people’s homes. (I’m told that at least one of the turbines will be 300 m from a school.)  Furthermore, all this construction will be in hilly terrain.

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Let me explain, clinically, why this is a bad idea. In 2009 I published what was then the definitive study of health effects caused by wind turbine infrasound on people living within 2 km of industrial turbines. The book, “Wind Turbine Syndrome: A Report on a Natural Experiment” (K-Selected Books), included 60 pages of raw data in the form of case histories (using case cross-over studies), demonstrating that living in proximity to wind turbines dys-regulates the inner ear vestibular organs controlling balance, position, and spatial awareness. Effectively, sufferers experience symptoms of sea-sickness, along with several related pathologies.

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It turns out all this has been well known since the 1980s, when the US Department of Energy commissioned a report on wind turbine health effects — the report subsequently published by physicist Dr. N D Kelley and his colleagues at the Solar Research Institute in Golden, Colorado, bearing the title, “A Methodology for Assessment of Wind Turbine Noise Generation,” Transactions of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers, v. 104 (May 1982), pp. 112-120.

In this paper we have presented evidence to support the hypothesis that one of the major causal agents responsible for the annoyance of nearby residents by wind turbine noise is the excitation of highly resonant structural and air volume modes by the coherent, low-frequency sound radiated by large wind turbines.

Further, there is evidence that the strong resonances found in the acoustic pressure field within rooms [in people’s homes] . . . indicates a coupling of sub-audible energy [infrasound] to human body resonances at 5, 12, and 17-25 Hz, resulting in a sensation of whole-body vibration (p. 120).

I discovered the same thing in my research. What Kelly et al. refer to as a “sensation of whole-body vibration,” I refer to as Visceral Vibratory Vestibular Disturbance (VVVD): “The internal quivering, vibration, or pulsation and the associated complex of agitation, anxiety, alarm, irritability, tachycardia, nausea, and sleep disturbance together make up what I refer to as Visceral Vibratory Vestibular Disturbance (VVVD)” (“Wind Turbine Syndrome,” p. 59).

Nina Pierpont, MD, PhD

Five years later, Dr. Kelley gave a follow-up paper at the Windpower ’87 Conference & Exposition in San Francisco, titled “A Proposed Metric for Assessing the Potential of Community Annoyance from Wind Turbine Low-Frequency Noise Emissions.”  Just so you understand the terminology, “emissions” means “noise & vibration.”  And the term “low frequency” includes infrasound.  And the antiseptic phrase “community annoyance” is code for Wind Turbine Syndrome — except the name had not been coined in1987.  (I  created it decades later.)  Kelley’s research once again had been funded by the US Department of Energy, Contract No. DE-AC02-83CH10093.

We electronically simulated three interior environments resulting from low-frequency acoustical loads radiated from both individual turbines and groups of upwind and downwind turbines. . . .

Experience with wind turbines has shown that it is possible . . . for low-frequency acoustic noise radiated from the turbine rotor to interact with residential structures of nearby communities and annoy the occupants. . . .

The modern wind turbine radiates its peak sound power (energy) in the very low frequency range, typically between 1 and 10 Hz [i.e., infrasound]. . . .

Our experience with the low-frequency noise emissions from a single, 2 MW MOD-1 wind turbine demonstrated that . . . it was possible to cause annoyance within homes in the surrounding community with relatively low levels of LF-range [low frequency range] acoustic noise.  An extensive investigation of the MOD-1 situation revealed that this annoyance was the result of a coupling of the turbine’s impulsive low-frequency acoustic energy into the structures of some of the surrounding homes. This often created an annoyance environment that was frequently confined to within the home itself (p. 1, emphasis in original).

I am attaching a copy of Kelley’s 1987 paper.

Besides my research, which pretty much duplicates Kelley’s, there is the work of Dr. Alec Salt, Professor of Otolaryngology in the School of Medicine at Washington University (St. Louis, Missouri), where he is director of the Cochlear Fluids Research Laboratory. Professor Salt is a highly respected neuro-physiologist specializing in inner ear disorders and in particular the mysteries of the cochlea.

Salt200

Prof. Salt’s research dovetails with mine and with Dr. Kelley’s. For many years,acousticians and noise engineers have vigorously maintained that “if you can’t hear it, it can’t hurt you.”  That is to say in the case of wind turbines, “If you can’t hear the low-frequency noise in the infrasound range, it can’t hurt you.” (lnfrasound, by definition, is noise below the hearing threshold, typically pegged at 20 Hz and lower. People feel infrasound in various parts of the body, though typically they cannot hear it.) In any case, Professor Salt and his colleagues have demonstrated conclusively, definitively, that infrasound does in fact disturb the very fine hair cells of the cochlea.

With this discovery, one of the main arguments advanced by the wind energy industry — namely, that wind turbine infrasound was too low to be harmful to people, since they could not hear it — was demolished. Prof. Salt has proven that, “If you can’t hear it, it can still harm you.”

This past winter, Professor Salt and his colleague, Professor Lichtenhan, published “How Does Wind Turbine Noise Affect People?” Acoustics Today, v. 10 (Winter 2014), pp. 20-28. The following is a lengthy excerpt:

The essence of the current debate is that on one hand you have the well-funded wind industry (1) advocating that infrasound be ignored because the measured levels are below the threshold of human hearing, allowing noise levels to be adequately documented through A-weighted sound measurements; (2) dismissing the possibility that any variants of wind turbine syndrome exist (Pierpont 2009) even when physicians (e.g., Steven D. Rauch, M.D. at Harvard Medical School) cannot otherwise explain some patients’ symptoms; and (3) arguing that it is unnecessary to separate wind turbines and homes based on prevailing sound levels.

On the other hand, you have many people who claim to be so distressed by the effects of wind turbine noise that they cannot tolerate living in their homes. Some move away, either at financial loss or bought-out by the turbine operators. Others live with the discomfort, often requiring medical therapies to deal with their symptoms. Some, even members of the same family, may be unaffected. Below is a description of the disturbance experienced by a woman in Europe we received a few weeks ago as part of an unsolicited e-mail.

From the moment that the turbines began working, I experienced vertigo-like symptoms on an ongoing basis. In many respects, what I am experiencing now is actually worse than the ‘dizziness’ I have previously experienced, as the associated nausea is much more intense. For me the pulsating, humming, noise that the turbines emit is the predominant sound that I hear and that really seems to affect me.

While the Chief Scientist [the person who came to take sound measurements in her house] undertaking the measurement informed me that he was aware of the low frequency hum the turbines produced (he lives close to a wind farm himself, and had recorded the humming noise levels indoors in his own home) he advised that I could tune this noise out and that any adverse symptoms I was experiencing were simply psychosomatic. . . .

Given the knowledge that the ear responds to low frequency sounds and infrasound, we knew that comparisons with benign sources were invalid and the logic to A-weight sound measurements was deeply flawed scientifically. . . .

From this understanding we conclude that very low frequency sounds and infrasound, at levels well below those that are heard, readily stimulate the cochlea. Low frequency sounds and infrasound from wind turbines can therefore stimulate the ear at levels well below those that are heard. . . .

No one has ever evaluated whether tympanostomy tubes alleviate the symptoms of those living near wind turbines. From the patient’s perspective, this may be preferable to moving out of their homes or using medical treatments for vertigo, nausea, and/or sleep disturbance. The results of such treatment, whether positive, negative, would likely have considerable scientific influence on the wind turbine noise debate….

Another concern that must be dealt with is the development of wind turbine noise measurements that have clinical relevance. The use of A-weighting must be reassessed as it is based on insensitive, Inner Hair Cell (IHC)-mediated hearing and grossly misrepresents inner ear stimulation generated by the noise. In the scientific domain, A-weighting sound measurements would be unacceptable when many elements of the ear exhibit a higher sensitivity than hearing. The wind industry should be held to the same high standards. Full-spectrum monitoring, which has been adopted in some reports, is essential. . . .

Given the present evidence, it seems risky at best to continue the current gamble that infrasound stimulation of the ear stays confined to the ear and has no other effects on the body. For this to be true, all the mechanisms we have outlined (low frequency-induced amplitude modulation, low frequency sound-induced endolymph volume changes, infrasound stimulation of type II afferent nerves, infrasound exacerbation of noise-induced damage and direct infrasound stimulation of vestibular organs) would have to be insignificant. We know this is highly unlikely and we anticipate novel findings in the coming years that will influence the debate.

I suspect you are beginning to get a clear picture of the problem — and why I’m writing to you.

The typical symptoms of what is now known worldwide as Wind Turbine Syndrome are: sleep disturbance, headache, tinnitus (ringing or buzzing in the ears), ear pressure, dizziness (a general term that includes vertigo, light-headedness, sensation of almost fainting, etc.). nausea, visual blurring, tachycardia (rapid heart rate), irritability, problems with concentration and memory, and panic episodes associated with sensations of internal pulsation or quivering which arise when awake or asleep.

sick-sign-thumb3

Does everybody living near wind turbines experience Wind Turbine Syndrome? By no means! What I discovered is that people with (a) motion sensitivity, (b) migraine disorder, (c) the elderly (50 years and older), (d) inner ear damage, and (e) autistic children and adults — all these are at statistically significant high risk.

The solution is simple: industrial wind turbines must be set back, well away from people’s homes, schools, places of work, and anywhere else people regularly congregate. In my 2009 report, I recommended a minimum setback of 2 km in level terrain. Studies done around the world since then have persuaded me that 2 km is not sufficient, especially in hilly or mountainous terrain — as with Cesme. In Cesme’s case, setbacks should be more on the order of 5 km or greater.

Hence my alarm when notified by Ms. Kura that Cesme is considering 500 m (or less) setbacks. This is wholly inadequate. I guarantee that, unless the setbacks are increased  substantially, there will be numerous victims of Wind Turbine Syndrome.

Stephana Johnston2

There’s more.  Dr. Salt referred to Dr. Steven Rauch, above.  Dr. Rauch, a physician, is the Medical Director of Harvard Medical School’s renowned Clinical Balance and Vestibular Center, part of the Massachusetts Eye & Ear Infirmary.  Dr. Rauch was recently interviewedby The New Republic:

Dr. Steven Rauch, an otologist at the Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary and a professor at Harvard Medical School, believes WTS [Wind Turbine Syndrome] is real. Patients who have come to him to discuss WTS suffer from a “very consistent” collection of symptoms, he says. Rauch compares WTS to migraines, adding that people who suffer from migraines are among the most susceptible to turbines. There’s no existing test for either condition but “Nobody questions whether or not migraine is real.”

“The patients deserve the benefit of the doubt,” Rauch says. “It’s clear from the documents that come out of the industry that they’re trying very hard to suppress the notion of WTS and they’ve done it in a way that [involves] a lot of blaming the victim” (“Big Wind Is Better Than Big Oil, But Just as Bad at P.R.,” by Alex Halperin in The New Republic, June 16, 2014).

Dr. Rauch made a similar statement to ABC News last fall.

Rauch

I met with Dr. Rauch in Cambridge, Mass., several years ago.  He has read my “Wind Turbine Syndrome” book.  You’re welcome to contact him for his clinical opinion.  Notice, he actually treats WTS victims, and furthermore his specialty is neuro-otology — precisely the clinical specialty appropriate to WTS, since WTS is mainly a vestibular disorder.  (You might consider Dr. Rauch the “pope” of vestibular disease.)

turbine

Shifting gears, a group of mechanical engineers at the University of Minnesota recently mapped the airflow turbulence patterns of a 2.5 MW wind turbine.  Their technique was ingenious:  “A large searchlight with custom reflecting optics generated a two-dimensional light sheet next to the 130-m-tall wind turbine for illuminating the snow particles in a 36-m-wide by 36-m-high area.”  They literally mapped the vortices  being hurled off the turbine blades, using a  blizzard (!) as a kind of background screen.

Visit this website to see and savor the dramatic results.

Click open the video and notice the pulsed pressure waves from the blades — punching holes, as it were, in the swirling snow.  (You can also watch the video on YouTube.  That is, until the wind energy lobby manages to get it taken down.)

Think of volleys of acoustic artillery, much of it in the low frequency and infrasound range. Imagine the residents of Cesme being bombarded by this day and night.

turbine in ear

You are looking at the huge, pulsed, sound pressure waves responsible for Wind Turbine Syndrome.  (The Minnesota group published their article:  Jiarong Hong et al., “Natural Snowfall Reveals Large-Scale Flow Structures in the Wake of a 2.5-MW Wind Turbine,”Nature Communications, vol. 5, no. 4216 (June 2014).

Moller

Ms. Kura tells me the turbines destined for Cesme are 3 MW.  Several years ago, the noted Danish noise engineer, Professor Henrik Moller at Aalborg University, published a paper titled “Low-Frequency Noise from Large Wind Turbines,” Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, vol. 129, no. 6 (June 2011), pp. 3727-3744.  Moller and his colleague, Christian Sejer Pedersen, demonstrated that “the larger the turbine, the  ongreater the ILFN (infrasound and low frequency noise) produced.”  The following is the abstract of their paper.  (Professor Moller was summarily fired this spring.  Click here for the story, which has the wind industry’s fingerprints all over it.)

As wind turbines get larger, worries have emerged that the turbine noise would move down in frequency and that the low-frequency noise would cause annoyance for the neighbors. The noise emission from 48 wind turbines with nominal electric power up to 3.6 MW is analyzed and discussed.

The relative amount of low-frequency noise is higher for large turbines (2.3–3.6 MW) than for small turbines (2 MW), and the difference is statistically significant. The difference can also be expressed as a downward shift of the spectrum of approximately one-third of an octave.

A further shift of similar size is suggested for future turbines in the 10 MW range.

Due to the air absorption, the higher low-frequency content becomes even more pronounced when sound pressure levels in relevant neighbor distances are considered.

Even when A-weighted levels are considered, a substantial part of the noise is at low frequencies and, for several of the investigated large turbines, the one-third octave band with the highest level is at or below 250 Hz.

It is thus beyond any doubt that the low-frequency part of the spectrum plays an important role in the noise at the neighbors.

Given all of the above, you can see why I am concerned for the residents of Cesme.

A final word. The clinical literature, including publications by the World Health Organization on health effects from infrasound exposure, typically use the word that Dr. Kelley used in his reports to the US Department of Energy — “annoyance.” It’s really not an appropriate word. It vastly understates the sickness caused by infrasound exposure. (A mosquito bite is an annoyance. Wind turbine infrasound, on the other hand, triggers a debilitating cascade of illnesses whose features I enumerated, above.)

annoyance v. WTS

In medicine, we clinicians are morally bound to exercise what’s called the “precautionary principle.” That is, if we don’t know for certain that a procedure is harmless, we are obliged to exercise extreme caution in performing the procedure, in this instance building industrial wind turbines — which are well-known to produce impulsive (i.e., amplitude-modulated) infrasound — near people’s homes. This is, after all, common sense.

For decades, the wind industry flatly denied their turbines produced infrasound. It took monumental efforts by people like me to debunk this fallacy. Wind industry advocates likewise argued that only downwind turbines created noise, that is, low-frequency noise. Dr. Kelley and his research team effectively debunked that falsehood, in the articles referred to above. Finally, the wind industry clung to the fiction that, “If you can’t hear it, it can’t hurt you.” Professor Salt deflated that one.

liar

It’s time to recognize that the global wind industry has hidden behind a series of (what turned out to be) falsehoods. Their untruths have been exposed and corrected in the published clinical and scientific literature, as shown above.

There is no excuse for building wind turbines in proximity to people’s homes.

Nina-Pierpont-447x600-f

 

Effects of Infrasound can be Seen in Snow Patterns….

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Now you can see infrasound!

‘A group of mechanical engineers at the University of Minnesota recently managed to record infrasound visually. By placing a search light next to a wind turbine, with falling snow acting as a screen, it is possible to SEE the footprints of infrasound generated by each turbine blade as it passes in front of the tower. The pulsations are recorded, like footsteps in the snow.

Particle Image Velocimetry is a technique to measure turbulence long used in wind tunnels for small scale testing. Using this technique to measure turbulence in the field on full-scale structures has proved to be very difficult and has been thought by some to be impossible. In February 2013, Eolos researchers demonstrated the ability to visualize large scale turbulent structures using natural snowfall. This allows you to see what for years the industry has denied.’

Super-Large-Scale Flow Visualization with Snow

Particle Image Velocimetry is a technique to measure turbulence long used in wind tunnels for small …

Wind Energy – The Novelty has Worn Off, and the Truth has Come out!

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Tuesday, June 17, 2014

Why Not Wind: an open letter

 
To whom it may concern:

This is a brief representation of the reasons industrial-scale wind is a destructive boondoggle that only fools – or worse – would approve.

Unlike “conventional” power sources, wind does not follow demand. As the Bonneville Power Authority in the Pacific Northwest of the USA has shown, the relationship between load and wind generation is essentially random (www.wind-watch.org/pix/493). That means that wind can never replace dispatchable sources that are needed to meet actual demand.

The contribution of wind generation is therefore an illusion, because the grid has to supply steady power in response to demand, and as the wind rises and falls, the grid maintains supply by relying on its already built-in excess capacity.

That is also why meaningful reductions in carbon emissions are not seen: because fuel continues to be burned in “spinning reserve” plants which are kept active to kick in when needed for meeting surges in demand or, now, drops in the wind. Denmark’s famously high wind penetration is possible only because it is connected to the large Nordic and the German grids – so that Denmark’s wind power actually constitutes a very small fraction of that total system capacity. To make further wind capacity possible (despite a public backlash that has essentially stopped onshore wind development since 2003), Denmark is now building a connection to the Dutch grid.

Another reason that meaningful reductions in carbon emissions are not seen is that the first source to be modulated to balance wind is usually hydro. This is seen quite clearly in Spain, another country with high wind penetration: The changes in electricity from hydro are an almost exact inverse of those from wind (https://demanda.ree.es/generacion_acumulada.html). This is also seen in the USA’s Pacific Northwest (http://transmission.bpa.gov/business/operations/Wind/baltwg.aspx).

Finally, on systems with sufficient natural gas–powered generators, which can ramp on and off quickly enough to balance wind’s highly variable infeed, wind forces those generators to operate far less efficiently than they would otherwise. It is like city versus highway driving. According to several analyses (e.g., www.wind-watch.org/doc/?p=1568), the carbon emissions from gas + wind are not significantly different from gas alone and in some cases may be more.

And again, whatever the effect, wind is always an add-on. The grid must be able to operate reliably without it, because very often, and often for very long stretches of time, wind is indeed in the doldrums: It is not there.

And beware the illusion of “average” output. The fact is that any wind turbine or group of turbines generates at or above its average rate (which is typically 20%–30% of the nameplate capacity, depending on the site) only about 40% of the time. Because of the physics of extracting energy from wind, the rest of the time production approaches zero. About one-third of the time, wind production is absolutely zero.

As an add-on, therefore, its costs are completely unnecessary and wasteful. And even if, by some miracle, it were a reliable, dispatchable, reasonably continuous source, its costs would still be enormous – not only economically, but also environmentally. Wind is a very diffuse resource and therefore requires a massive mechanical system to catch any useful amount. That means ever larger blades on ever taller towers in ever larger arrays. And the only places where that is feasible are the very places we need to preserve as useful agricultural land, scenic landscapes that are so important to our soul (and to tourism), and wild land where the natural world can thrive.

Besides the obvious damage to the land of heavy-duty roads for construction and continued maintenance, huge concrete platforms, new powerlines, and substations (while making no meaningful contribution to the actual operation of the grid) and the visual intrusion of 150-metre (500-ft) structures with strobe lights and rotating blades, there are serious adverse impacts from the giant airplane-like blades cutting through 6,000–8,000 square metres (1.5–2 acres) of vertical airspace both day and night: pulsating noise (including infrasound which is felt more than heard) that carries great distances and disturbs neighbors (especially at night, when there is a greater expectation of – and need for – quiet), even threatening their physical health, pressure vortices that kill bats by destroying their lungs, blade tip speeds of 300 km/h that also kill bats as well as birds, particularly raptors, many of which are already endangered, and vibration that carries through the tower into the ground with effects on soil integrity and flora and fauna that have yet to be studied.

In short, the benefits of industrial-scale wind are minuscule, while its adverse impacts and costs are great. Its only effect is to provide greenwashing (and tax avoidance) for business-as-usual energy producers and lip-service politicians, while opening up to vast industrial development land that has been otherwise fiercely protected – most disturbingly by many of the same groups now clamoring for wind.

Industrial-scale wind is all the more outrageous for the massive flow of public money into the private bank accounts of developers. It is not surprising to learn that Enron established the package of subsidies and regulatory “innovations” that made the modern wind industry possible. Or that in Italy, the Mafia was an early backer of developers. It is indeed a criminal enterprise: crony capitalism, anti-environment rapaciousness, and hucksterism at its most duplicitous.

After decades of recorded experience, there is no longer any excuse to fall for it.

 ~~
Eric Rosenbloom
President, National Wind Watch, Inc. (www.wind-watch.org)

Mr Rosenbloom lives in Vermont, USA, where he works as a science editor, writer, and typographer. He has studied and written about wind energy since 2003. He was invited to join the board, and then elected President (a wholly volunteer position), of National Wind Watch in 2006, a year after it was founded by citizens from 10 states who met to share their concerns about the risks and impacts of wind energy development. National Wind Watch is a 501(c)(3) educational charity registered in Massachusetts.

Communities Forced to Fight in Court, but the Court is Heavily Biased!

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WIND TURBINES

Lambton County council backs request to participate in second environmental review tribunal hearing 

By Barbara Simpson, Sarnia Observer

Wednesday, July 2, 2014 

 

Lambton County may join a second legal battle brewing over the development of another industrial wind farm in its boundaries.

County council voted Wednesday in favour of joining a potential environmental review tribunal hearing in the event the Ministry of the Environment approves Suncor’s 46-turbine Cedar Point Wind project set for Plympton-Wyoming, Lambton Shores and Warwick Township.

This move would mark the county’s second time participating as a party before the environmental review tribunal.

The county is currently participating in a tribunal hearing over NextEra Energy’s 92-turbine Jericho Wind Energy project. The tribunal must find serious harm could be caused to human or environmental health before it can overturn the project’s MOE approval.

Deputy Warden Bev MacDougall lauded county solicitor David Cribbs’ efforts representing council and county ratepayers at the Jericho hearing.

Despite the costs and risks associated with the county’s participation, she said its voice needs to be heard and its approach needs to be consistent in dealing with industrial wind farms.

“I believe if you go to the first (hearing) with all the work and all the preparation, it will prepare you for the second one,” she said.

Over the course of 18 wind turbine tribunal hearings, none of the parties have received cost awards, according to a letter from Keith Watson, president of We’re Against Industrial Turbines – Plympton-Wyoming (WAIT-PW).

In the letter, Watson called for county council to decide on becoming a party in a potential Cedar Point appeal at this time because the MOE approval could come when county council isn’t regularly meeting over the summer.

WAIT-PW member Audrey Broer applauded council’s backing of the possible appeal.

“They are the first county in Ontario that said, ‘We are an unwilling host and we stand by that.’”

barbara.simpson@sunmedia.ca

Even a Small Amount of Noise Can Cause Serious Illness

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Home 02/07/2014 6:38 PM | Updated 07/02/2014 7:55 PM

Even a small amount of noise cause serious illness

Noise is a link to cardiovascular disease and weight gain. In noise-sensitive people also raise the risk of noise retire on a disability pension.

Hearing protection.
Photo: Mika Moksu / Yle

Even a small constant noise more noise sensitive people significantly increases the risk to remain for early disability pension. This is evident from a recent Finnish twin studies, says the noise researcher, specialist in occupational health Marja Heinonen-Guzejev.

– Meluherkkys increases the risk of disability pension for more than 40 per cent. It is therefore advisable to pay more attention to the noise in the workplace, as well as the fight against meluherkkyyteen työteveyshuollossa, says Heinonen-Guzejev.

Subdued in the workplace, such as open-plan office noise, noise-sensitive works, and various cognitive functions such as remembering and learning, are worse than others.

The noise sensitivity is common: the Finnish studies have shown that noise-sensitive people is more than a third of foreign studies show that as much as half. Men are more sensitive to noise than women.

It is known that the loud noise damage your ears and hearing organs, but even a small recurring noise can cause other serious diseases. The noise intensity explains only part of the noise-sensitive drawbacks.

– The intensity of the noise, the noise level explains only about one-fifth of noise annoyance, says Marja Heinonen-Guzejev.

Noise makes you fat

The new Swedish-Norwegian research shows that the noise also increases with obesity.Each ten-decibel increase in noise increases your waist measure cents. The noise associated with human hormone cocktail in even this self-unconsciously.

 – Exposure to noise will affect the way that your weight goes up. In another study, whereas if the mother is exposed to noise, it may have a fetal weight-reducing effect, says Marja Heinonen-Guzejev.

Low birth weight, in turn, is connected to the future long-term health effects such as blood pressure and diabetes. The World Health Organization’s list of general noise impacts are not only nervousness and stress, including sleep problems and insomnia, as well as cardiovascular diseases. Contrary to what is often said, a person does not get used to the noise.

– It has been a long-term noise, a clear link to hypertension and sepelvaltiomotautiin infarction, as well as in many of the study. It is also associated with stroke risk in elderly individuals, says the noise Marja Heinonen-Guzejev.

Matalakin noise damage

Serious diseases has also been called long-term exposure to noise.

– Blood pressure, this means more than 50 dB to 60 dB in coronary artery disease and exposure to noise. The longer the exposure and louder the noise level, the higher the illnesses during the says Marja Heinonen-Guzejev.

As well as blood pressure and coronary heart disease risk will increase the noise limits are fairly quiet, for example, normal office noise is about 50 dB and the standard level of 60 decibels discussion. Learning and memory is affected by even a smaller noise, already at 40 dB and sleep even more, to a lesser noise.

Noise and diseases, and the connection is produced mainly in two ways: stressihormoneista, such as adrenalin and cortisol, on the other hand, as well as difficulty sleeping through.

– When you sleep poorly, it has a bad effect on the heart and blood circulation in the body.And because of the noise is a stress factor, it quickens the pulse, raises blood pressure and increases the secretion of stress hormones. When the condition persists longer, it can develop high blood pressure, says a medical doctor, noise Marja Heinonen-Guzejev.

If the small particles and the noise has been shown similar effects on the heart and blood circulation in the body. According to WHO, one third of the EU, the people who live exposed to greater than 55 decibels of noise. In Finland, environmental noise is expected to be exposed to 900, 000 people.

http://yle.fi/uutiset/vahainenkin_melu_aiheuttaa_vakavia_sairauksia/7330956

Wind Turbines are NOT Green, they are Bad for People, Wildlife, and the Environment

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Special Investigation: Toxic wind turbines

BY DEREK LAMBIE,
  • Evidence has revealed environmental cost of wind farms.Getty Images

Part Two of The Sunday Post’s hard-hitting probe into the true impact of wind farms.

Damning evidence of wind farms polluting the Scottish countryside can today be revealed by The Sunday Post.

Scotland’s environmental watchdog has probed more than 100 incidents involving turbines in just six years, including diesel spills, dirty rivers, blocked drains and excessive noise.

Alarmingly, they also include the contamination of drinking water and the indiscriminate dumping of waste, with warning notices issued to a handful of energy giants.

The revelations come just a week after our investigation showed

£1.8 billion in Government subsidies have been awarded to operators to build turbines since Alex Salmond took office in 2007.

Anti-wind farm campaigners yesterday insisted Scotland’s communities are now “under siege” and demanded an independent inquiry into the environmental damage.

Murdo Fraser MSP, convener of Holyrood’s Economy, Energy and Tourism Committee, said: “I am both surprised and concerned by the scale of these incidents.

“The fact there were more than 100 complaints is a dismal record.

“This should serve as a wake-up call that wind energy is not as clean and green as is being suggested.”

He added: “What’s worse is that the current Scottish Government seems to have an obsession about wind power and the expansion in the number of turbines shows no signs of relenting any time soon.”

Promotion of green energy, particularly the growth of onshore and off-shore wind farms, has been one of the SNP’s key policies since 2007.

The Scottish Government’s target is to generate the equivalent of 100% of the country’s electricity consumption, and 11% of heat demand, from renewables by 2020.

In recent years, ministers have invested heavily in the sector, insisting Scotland has a quarter of all of Europe’s wind energy potential.

But wind power is becoming increasingly unpopular, with giant turbines now scattered across much of the Scottish countryside.

There are now 219 operational wind farms in Scotland, with at least 2,400 turbines between them.

Moray has the most sites, with 20 in operation, while Orkney has the most turbines, with 600 across the archipelago, although the majority are owned by farmers and other individuals.

Now, we can reveal the Scottish Environment Protection Agency has investigated 130 ‘pollution reports’ connected to wind farms or turbines over the past six years. In June 2012, elevated levels of the banned insecticide Dieldrin were found in samples from a private drinking water supply in Aberdeenshire.

A redacted SEPA report, obtained under Freedom of Information, states: “It was noted a wind turbine had recently been erected by the nearby farmer.”

Run-off from the construction of a wind farm near Loch Fyne in February 2012 caused concern that fish had stopped feeding, with SEPA officers discovering a burn was “running brown” and that “a noticeable slick on Loch Fyne was visible”.

In another incident in November 2011, 1,000 litres of oil leaked from a turbine at the Clyde wind farm in Abington, Lanarkshire, resulting in an emergency clean-up operation.

Warning letters have been sent by the environment agency to a number of operators, including Siemens, after another fuel spill at the same 152-turbine site four months later.

A report on that incident states: “Siemens…maintained it was under control. However…operators who then visited the area did not see any action being taken and fuel ponding at the base of the generator”.

A warning was issued to Scottish and Southern Energy in February 2011 after the Tombane burn, near the Griffin wind farm in Perthshire, turned yellow as a result of poor drainage.

The same firm was sent another letter in June that year after SEPA found high levels of silt in a burn near a wind farm in Elvanfoot, Lanarkshire.

Officers also then discovered “significant damage” to 50 metres of land and found “the entire area had been stripped of vegetation” as a result of unauthorised work to divert water.

Other incidents investigated since 2007 include odours, excessive noise from turbines and heavy goods vehicles and the indiscriminate dumping of waste and soil.

Dr John Constable, director of the Renewable Energy Foundation, a charity that publishes data on the energy sector, said: “The new information from SEPA deepens concerns about the corrupting effect of overly generous subsidies to wind power.

“Many will wonder whether wind companies are just too busy counting their money to take proper care of the environment.”

Linda Holt, spokeswoman for action group Scotland Against Spin, said: “A lot of environmentalists actually oppose wind farms for reasons like this. If you go to wind farms they are odd, eerie, places that drive away wildlife, never mind people.

“The idea they are environmentally-friendly is not true — they can be hostile. We have always suspected they can do great harm to the landscape and now we have proof.”

Officials at SEPA stressed not all 130 complaints were found to be a direct result of wind farms, with some caused by “agricultural and human activities” near sites and others still unsubstantiated.

A spokesman added: “While a number of these complaints have been in connection with individual wind farms these are generally during the construction phase of the development and relate to instances of increased silt in watercourses as a result of run-off from the site.

“SEPA, alongside partner organisations, continues to actively engage with the renewable energy industry to ensure best practice is followed and measures put in place to mitigate against any impact on the local water environment.”

Joss Blamire, senior policy manager at Scottish Renewables, insisted the “biggest threat” to the countryside is climate change and not wind farms.

He added: “Onshore wind projects are subject to rigorous environmental assessments. We work closely with groups, including SEPA, the RSPB and Scottish Natural Heritage to ensure the highest conservation and biodiversity standards are met.”

• The revelations come just months after evidence emerged of contamination in the water supply to homes in the shadow of Europe’s largest wind farm.

People living near Whitelee, which has 215 turbines, complained of severe vomiting and diarrhoea with water samples showing high readings of

E. Coli and other coliform bacteria.

Tests carried out between May 2010 and April last year by local resident Dr Rachel Connor, a retired clinical radiologist, showed only three out of 36 samples met acceptable standards.

Operators ScottishPower denied causing the pollution, but admitted not warning anyone that drinking water from 10 homes in Ayrshire was, at times, grossly contaminated.

Dr Connor said: “I would expect this likely contamination of drinking water must be happening all over Scotland.

“If there is not an actual cover-up, then there is probably complacency to the point of negligence by developers and statutory authorities.”

 

Industrial Wind Turbines….Far Too Close to Human habitation!

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Wind Setbacks: Safety First (unless you’re a wind developer)

Lisa Linowes – July 1, 2014

Safety

After years of debate there is still disagreement and uncertainty regarding appropriate safety setback distances. This uncertainty has benefited the wind industry. Thousands of turbines are erected that are dangerously close to where people live.

Last month, Ohio infuriated wind proponents by passing Senate bill 310, a bill that delays the state’s renewable electricity standard for two years and eliminates the requirement that half of the renewables mandate be met with in-state resources.

Within days of SB310 passing, Ohio Governor John Kasich approved a change to the safety setback distances for wind turbines. Under the new law, setbacks will now be measured at the property line of the nearest adjacent property as opposed to the wall of a nearby home. In practice, this will require minimum distances of at least 1,300 feet from property lines to each turbine base.

Wind developers and Ohio’s media cried foul over due process claiming the legislature gave no warning of the setback rule change or opportunity for testimony. They insisted the provision was ‘anti-wind’ driven by coal and oil interests intent on destroying the economics of large-scale wind andcalled on the governor to veto the change.

Industry Setback Recommendations

For decades, the wind industry has advanced the notion that these massive spinning structures can safely be erected a few hundred feet from where people live and gather.

The industry’s preferred setback has been 1.1x to 1.5x the height of the tower (including the blade) which was derived from the fall-zone of the tower. We saw variations on this over the years beginning in California, that measured as much as 3-4x the total tower height. In general, there was no consideration in the setback distances for noise nor did the 1.1 to 1.5x setback adequately address ice/blade throw.

In 2006, the California Energy Commission examined setback standards in the state. The conclusion of the study called for a setback distance just shy of 1000 feet to protect against turbine failure [1]. This distance was less conservative than what Vestas had recommended (although Vestas has since eliminated this standard from its documentation and claims it is not involved in siting decisions.)

Simple math describing motion shows that ice or debris from a 100-foot long blade can be thrown nearly 1700 feet from the base of the turbine [2]. Turbine manufacture, Vestas, has reported debris from its V90 turbine being thrown 1,600 feet.

Assessing Risk from Turbine Failure

In assessing risk to the public, the wind industry typically assumes a probabilistic perspective where they examine the probability of failure and the chances of an individual being present at the time of the event. If the probabilistic assessment assumes that people are infrequently present when a blade might be thrown, for example, then it’s not surprising that the industry reports a low risk of harm even at close range.

According to William Palmer, a utility reliability engineer responsible for analyzing the impact on public safety at a nuclear facility in Ontario Canada, deterministic risk assessments provide a more accurate understanding of risk and necessary mitigation measures. Deterministic risk assessments require analysts to assume that a person is permanently standing at the limit of risk (edge of the safety zone), and are considered to be there during the accident. If people are nearby all the time, their risk of being hurt is high.

Safety cannot take a back seat to statistical probabilities but that’s exactly what communities have accepted from the wind industry for years.

What About Ice Throw?

Project developers often represent that ice throw is unlikely to occur because ice generally melts gradually and slips off the blade and down to the ground below. Iberdrola Renewables made this claim in 2010 prior to receiving approval to construct its Groton Wind facility in New Hampshire. However, according to Iberdrola’s Emergency Plan written for Groton Wind employees and released this year, “shedding ice may be thrown a significant distance as a result of the rotor spinning or wind blowing the ice fragments.”

GE Wind states that rotating turbine blades may propel ice fragments up to several hundred meters if conditions are right depending on turbine dimensions, rotational speed and many other potential factors.

As more turbines are sited in cold climates, the wind industry has considered safety distances based on the level of allowable risk [3]. The figure on the right maps distances from the turbines based on the estimated annual icing events at the project site and degree of risk. In colder climates, icing can occur during non-winter months.

Very little public information is available that documents the frequency of ice throw and the distances flung from the turbines. Surveys have been conducted of large project operators in an effort to track the size and distance of ice fragments being thrown but the results are inconclusive as there is no way to assess how well the area around the turbines was searched, especially at great distances from the towers. One operator of a wind installation admitted large turbines will throw a four hundred pound chunk of ice one thousand feet.

Conclusion

After years of debate there is still disagreement and uncertainty regarding appropriate safety setback distances. This uncertainty has benefited the wind industry. Thousands of turbines are erected throughout the U.S. that are dangerously close to where people live.

In the last 5-6 years, communities have adopted setbacks at or greater than the distance codified under Ohio law. More modern ordinances include two setback protections. The first protects property owners from ice/debris flying off the turbines. This ranges from 1300 feet to 1 mile or more away. The second setback distance is implied based on noise limits that cannot be exceeded either at the property line or the wall of an occupied building. If the noise standards are correctly applied, turbines may be erected 1.25-1.5 (or more) miles from the property line/building.

According to Mr. Palmer, the goal of public safety risk assessment is to ensure that we do not impose risks on unsuspecting members of the public. We agree!

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[1] Noise and ice were not considered.

[2] Distance is dependent on the length of the blade, its angle at the time of the incident, the speed of rotation and the vertical distance from the ground.

[3] The distances in the graph are based on turbines with a 50-meter rotor diameter. Newer turbines have rotor diameters well over 100-meters.

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