Wis. ‘health hazard’ ruling could shock wind industry
Residents in rural Wisconsin claim noise from a nearby wind farm is making them sick. Their campaign to shut down the turbines could pose a major threat to the national wind industry. Photo by Noelle Straub.
A Wisconsin town of fewer than 1,200 stands on the verge of sending shock waves through the wind energy industry.
Late last year, Glenmore, a rural community just south of Green Bay, persuaded its county’s board of health to declare that the sounds of an eight-turbine wind farm pose a “human health hazard.”
It was the first time a health board has made such a determination. Wind energy opponents from across the country seized on the decision as proof of “wind turbine syndrome,” a supposed illness caused by low-frequency noise and “infrasound” that is typically undetectable to the human ear.
Local activists have continued to press the issue in hopes of shutting down the turbines, pointing to families who complain of sleep deprivation, headaches, nausea and dizziness — symptoms similar to sea sickness. Lawns display signs saying, “Turbines kill: Birds, Bats, Communities” and “Consider How Your Turbine May Harm Your Neighbor.” More than one family has moved out of their home.
Duke Energy Corp., which purchased the Shirley wind farm in 2011, has strongly pushed back against the hazard determination, pointing to a series of studies that have found no connection between infrasound and the symptoms described by the local residents. The case has caught the attention of the national wind industry, which is concerned about the precedent it could set and whether it could embolden local activists around the country. They claim it is part of a politically motivated campaign by anti-wind advocates.
Attention has now turned to the county’s lead health official, who has said she will rule on the issue by the end of the year. It’s unclear whether the official can force the wind farm to shut down, but if she does, Duke will be quick to challenge the decision in court.
By the end of the month, the local campaign, Duke Energy and other parties will submit binders of public comments making their cases. The local advocates appear bullish about their chances.
“Abandoned homes, sick families, continued Duke Energy ordinance violations,” said Steve Deslauriers of the Brown County Citizens for Responsible Wind Energy, the principal group opposing the farm. “If this were any other industry, they would already be shut down. It is high time that wind developers are held accountable for the hell they levy upon families.”
The Shirley wind farm looms large over Glenmore, with its sweeping turbines situated close to farms and family homes. It went online in December 2010 amid local opposition. Local newspapers featured opinion pieces and letters to the editor that expressed various concerns about the project, including health effects.
It produces 20 megawatts of electricity that it supplies to the utility Wisconsin Public Service Corp., enough to power 6,000 homes.
The controversy over the farm ramped up after Duke purchased it at the end of 2011. As the state was preparing to permit a larger wind farm elsewhere, it requested a study on the sound and health issues reported at the Shirley turbines.
In December 2012, the Public Service Commission of Wisconsin, which is an independent regulatory agency, and the environmental group Clean Wisconsin released a study that included the findings of four acousticians. The consultants spanned the ideological spectrum; some worked primarily for opponents of wind farms, while others had worked on both sides of the issue.
Local advocates are posting home-made signs on their lawns in Glenmore. Photo by Noelle Straub.
The report’s top-line conclusion appeared incriminating.
“The four investigating firms are of the opinion that enough evidence and hypotheses have been given herein to classify [low frequency noise] and infrasound as a serious issue, possibly affecting the future of the industry,” it said.
It acknowledged that there is “sparse or non-existent” evidence of sickness in “peer-reviewed literature” but concluded that the four specialists “strongly recommend additional testing” at the Shirley farm.
Local advocates seized on the findings as validation that their symptoms were caused by the turbines. They pressed the seven-member Brown County Board of Health to declare the farm a health hazard. In particular, they highlighted the conclusions of Robert Rand, a Maine-based “acoustics investigator” who has primarily worked for groups opposing wind projects.
Rand said turbine sounds and infrasound cause effects similar to sea sickness and health boards shouldn’t need peer-reviewed scientific papers to accept the health impacts.
“Most people accept — because it’s been occurring for thousands of years — that people get motion sickness,” Rand said in an interview. “And yet, in this particular case, there seems to be a lot of pushback.”
The findings grabbed the attention of the health board. Audrey Murphy, its president, said in an interview that the “symptoms are pretty universal throughout the world.”
Murphy insisted the board doesn’t oppose wind energy, saying the turbines should be located farther from homes. In Wisconsin, they must be at least 1,250 feet away.
There is some precedent for the board’s decision. The issue has long plagued local health boards in Massachusetts. Fairhaven, Mass., for example, in June 2013 shut down the town’s two turbines at night in response to complaints about sleep deprivation.
Falmouth, Mass., found in 2012 that one turbine was violating local ordinances because it was too close to a home and emitting too much audible noise — not infrasound. But the controversy spurred studies by acousticians, including Rand, that concluded the turbines produce sounds capable of disturbing nearby residents and may lead to annoyance, sleep disturbance and other impacts. That led multiple residents to file lawsuits seeking damages for their health problems, claiming the turbines were to blame.
But wind supporters cite other studies showing no such linkages.
Murphy said the Wisconsin board has sought to take all the relevant findings into account.
“This has been done very slowly and very methodically,” she said. “The board has been concerned about the health of these people.”
‘No factual basis’
Wind proponents are quick to try to poke holes in the board’s findings, as well as the local activists’ evidence.
They start in Massachusetts. After the action in Falmouth, the state agency convened a panel of independent scientists and doctors. They found no evidence that wind turbines pose a tangible health risk to those living near them.
Plus, there have been several peer-reviewed scientific studies since then that have reached similar conclusions, including one by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and another by Canada’s health ministry. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention doesn’t recognize “wind turbine syndrome” as an illness. The term was created by a pediatrician, Nina Pierpont, around 2006. Pierpont’s husband is an anti-wind activist.
Health Canada’s 2014 study, for example, found no evidence to suggest a link between exposure to turbine noise and any self-reported illnesses, including dizziness, migraines and chronic conditions.
North Carolina-based Duke Energy claims the complaints are unique to Brown County.
“Duke Energy Renewables operates about 1,200 wind turbines around the United States, and we’ve only had health complaints about the eight turbines we operate in Brown County,” said Tammie McGee, a company spokeswoman. “We don’t see these kinds of complaints, for the most part, anywhere else.”
She added: “We feel confident that we’ve met all the state and the town of Glenmore’s conditions for operations and compliance with all noise ordinances and laws and regulations.”
The American Wind Energy Association has also responded to the local group’s claims and pointed to some research on a “nocebo” effect. The concept is the opposite of the placebo effect, meaning that people who are told to expect certain symptoms may experience them whether or not the supposed cause of the symptom — in this case, turbines — is actually present.
But perhaps most importantly, some who were involved in the 2012 Public Service Commission study dispute the advocates’ interpretation.
Katie Nekola, the general counsel of Clean Wisconsin, which helped fund the study, said it was only an inventory of noise levels and shouldn’t be used to draw conclusions on health effects.
The local groups, she said, “took the equivocal nature of the preamble to mean that things are falling apart and everyone is going to die.”
There is “no factual basis in what they found for the health determination that the county made,” she added. “Nothing in our study provided any kind of basis to say that noise was making them sick.”
Rand, the acoustician who worked on the earlier study, contended that the results show what he’s argued for years: Some people experience the health effects, and they are real and scary. Others simply don’t and refuse to acknowledge they exist.
“Some people are saying this isn’t happening — or people are making it up in their heads,” Rand said. “People who don’t get seasick will never understand what you’re talking about. … It doesn’t require peer-reviewed scientific studies to accept that some people get motion sickness and sea sickness.”
What comes next
Deslauriers, the representative of the local group opposing the farm, declined to comment further, citing the ongoing public comment period on the health board’s finding.
That window closes at the end of September. Then the county’s top health officer, Chua Xiong, will rule on the issue by the end of the year after meeting with stakeholders and doctors.
It is unclear, however, whether she has the authority to shut down the turbines. Murphy, the head of the county’s health board, thinks Xiong does. Duke isn’t sure but will challenge such a determination in court.
The county lawyer, Juliana Ruenzel, refused to answer a question on Xiong’s enforcement authority before abruptly ending an interview with Greenwire. Xiong did not return several messages seeking comment.
Nekola of Clean Wisconsin said a county determination would apply only to local projects and shouldn’t affect other wind farms that have obtained permits from the state.
She said the Brown County effort was indicative only of a localized desire to block wind farms motivated by a not-in-my-backyard sentiment.
“There is just a contingent of people who oppose wind,” she said. “And they will use any mechanism they can think of to stop a project.”
But Rand sought to emphasize that the symptoms are real and he has felt them.
“This isn’t an intellectual exercise,” he said. “People get sick.”
Health
Falmouth Wind Turbine Emissions Ignored….Nearby Residents, Tormented!
Falmouth ZBA Following Dangerous Wind Turbine Script
Neighbors are far better acoustic analyzers for determining the quality of their life
Falmouth ZBA Following Dangerous Wind Turbine Script
Tonight ,September17, 2015 at 6:30 PM the Falmouth Zoning Board of Appeals will hear several appeals regarding lack of zoning enforcement by the Zoning Enforcement Officer to cease and desist operations of Wind 1 and Wind 2 turbines located at 154 Blacksmith Shop Rd, West Falmouth.
The Board of Appeals acts on matters within its jurisdiction under Sections 10 and 11 of Chapter 40A of the Massachusetts Generals Laws, as amended and subject always to the rule that it will give due consideration to promoting the public health, safety, convenience and welfare, encouraging the most appropriate use of land, and conserving property value, that it shall permit no building use, injurious, noxious, offensive or detrimental to a neighborhood, and that it shall prescribe appropriate conditions and safeguards in each case.
The ZBA’s determination should be a belief that there’s nothing more important than good health.
Neighbors are far better acoustic analyzers for determining the quality of their life.
The Massachusetts Clean Energy Center (MassCEC) is a publicly-funded agency dedicated to a renewable energy agenda of 2000 megawatts of renewable energy at the cost of residential home owners health, property and all Massachusetts taxpayers. The agenda calls for an all out war on fossil fuels. They are fighting the war as a real war taking the health, property rights and tax money of anyone who has property in the way of the agenda.
The MassCEC state agency has an agenda likened to a 1943 country in Europe where like Falmouth human dignity has been ignored.
Falmouth has lost sight of the non-negotiable demands of human dignity. Health and saftey is primary in a civilized society.
Falmouth public officials are following a “Dangerous” script paid for by the Massachusetts Clean Energy Center. The MassCEC recently gave Falmouth 1.8 million taxpayer dollars to help pay litigation costs and finance a drawn out protracted legal defense of Falmouth wind turbine # 1. Falmouth officials are being “advised” how to vote.
You can say wind turbine victims and taxpayers are being shot with their own tax dollars paying massive litigation fees making law firms rich at taxpayer expense.
The Friends of Falmouth Wind a group of former and present elected officials have convinced a majority of Falmouth voters its OK to take the health and property rights of their neighbors for the greater good for the past five years with no compensation. They are playing God. They should hang their heads in shame.
The Town of Falmouth has broken two of the Ten Commandments;
Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour.
Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour’s house, thou shalt not covet thy neighbour’s wife, nor his manservant, nor his maidservant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor any thing that is thy neighbour’s.
Falmouth taxpayers are obvious to the tax liabilty they are incuring torturing their neighbors for the past 5 years. The town commercial general liability insurance will not pay one dime towards any court restitution with the wind turbine victims. At some point in time in the future the court is going to order taxpayes to pay restitution to pay back the damage you caused to the victims.
The taxpayes are on the hook because the MassCEC knew the Falmouth Wind 1 turbine had noise problems prior to the installation. The town had been warned prior to the installation by the manufacturer Veatas Wind Company. The MassCEC was the owner and seller of the turbine to the Town of Falmouth. The MassCEC in April of 2013 three years after the installation sent a memo to the Town of Falmouth admitting they knew and extrapolated noise tests to pass Massachusetts noise regulations. As expected the turbine broke state noise guidlines. They always knew they would.
The town hid the noise warning letter for five years, memos, not posted wind studies and in general kept negative information from the public. The town was found guilty of not following its own bylaws in Massachusetts Superior Court. The Falmouth Zoning Board of Appeals found twice in the past the turbines are a nuisance. The Massachusetts courts shut the turbines down 12 hours a night and Sundays.
In the written injunction to shut the turbines down. Judge Muse said the court finds the wind turbine victims claims that they did not experience such symptoms prior to the construction and operation of the turbines, and that that each day of operation produces further injury, to be credible.
The Court rejected the town’s claim that reducing the turbines in hours would cause financial harm, as it was counting on revenue generated by the sale of excess energy back to the grid.
The Falmouth taxpayers had a chance to take down the turbines for 12 or 15 million dollars. Today with all the facts including the hidden letters, documents, videos and studies how much is a jury going to award up to 200 residential home owners for five plus years of torture ?
The Town of Falmouth always knew the turbines were too loud
Massachusetts Judge Robert Rufo did not rule out imposing a cease and desist order at any point it time.
Important Information on the MOECC Proposal for Removal off 550m Setbacks…
Click on to read…
Acoustics Experts Help to Expose the Corrupt Practices of the Wind Industry…
Incessant Wind Turbine Infrasound: An Acoustic Invader
September 16, 2015 by
Among the growing list of what’s getting to the wind industry, its parasites and spruikers is the fact that – despite their relentless efforts to cover up both the work and the results – highly skilled people are working flat out around the world to discover the precise mechanism that causes the adverse health effects from incessant turbine generated low-frequency noise and infrasound, including sleep deprivation, vertigo and the like.
It’s not only the fact of their rather obvious conclusions that has wind-spinners in apoplexy, it’s the fact that they’re looking at all.
You see, the line being run is that there is NO problem – a tobacco advertising guru said so – so why on earth should anyone be looking?
For the wind industry and its parasites, the problem is, that there IS a problem: teams of highly skilled scientific investigators don’t generally devote their every waking hour to chase answers and solutions, when there’s nothing to chase.
Here’s just another example of what properly qualified people can do when looking for answers to real problems.
This time the work is that of Rob Rand – a Maine boy, who’s been hunting down acoustic trespassers for 20 years; and who – unlike the wind industry’s pet acoustic ‘experts’ – regards his ethical responsibility to “hold paramount the safety, health and welfare of the public” as a way of professional life, not some throwaway line.
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Wind farm and health issues
Lindsey Harrison
New Falcon Herald
September 2015
According to an Aug. 26 El Paso County press release, construction at the NextEra Energy Resources wind farm project in Calhan is nearing completion. “All 145 concrete foundations to support the wind turbine towers have now been completed … and 120 of the authorized 145 turbines are now fully erected, with only electrical work remaining to be completed.”
Although the press release states that the turbines will not be functional until the electrical work has been finished, it also states that the turbines could move in the wind, which is already causing health concerns for residents living within the wind farm’s footprint.
One resident, who wished to remain anonymous, said she knew right away that the turbines were moving because she began to feel nauseous, along with a headache. “I have 100 turbines to the north of me, 25 to the west and 20 to the southwest,” she said. “When the wind was coming out of the north, I woke up feeling dizzy and nauseous.”
She also said her animals were acting strangely. “My donkeys and horses keep wanting to go back into their stalls,” she said. “They have not wanted to leave the barn all day.”
Robert Rand, a Boulder, Colorado, resident and an acoustic investigator and member of the Acoustical Society of America, said the reason for the headaches and nausea is directly related to the wind turbines. It has to do with infrasound and low frequency noise, he said.
According to an article written by acoustic engineer Richard James, published at http://wiseenergy.org Feb. 20, “Infrasound is acoustic energy, sound pressure, just like the low to high frequency sounds that we are accustomed to hearing. What makes infrasound different is that it is at the lowest end of the acoustical frequency spectrum even below the deep bass rumble of distant thunder or all but the largest pipe organ tones.
“As the frequency of an infrasonic tone moves to lower frequencies: 5Hz, 2Hz, 1Hz and lower, the sounds are more likely to be perceived as separate pressure pulsations … . Unlike mid and high frequency sound, infrasound is not blocked by common construction materials. As such, it is often more of a problem inside homes, which are otherwise quiet, than it is outside the home.”
Rand said the separate pressure pulsations are like the “whump, whump, whump,” people sometimes experience when they are riding in a car with the windows down. “I have been attempting to acoustically measure phenomena that could present a conflict to human physiology that could then provide a basis to do more research,” Rand said. “My work in acoustics has really been designing and planning. I don’t need more medical research because I know what they (wind turbines) do to people because it happened to me.”
According to an article accepted into The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America Feb. 4, when the body experiences an external force on the inner ear, such as acoustic pressure pulses — but there is no visual input to associate with that pressure — a sensory conflict occurs. That conflict is felt as motion sickness, and it is felt to the same degree as seasickness.
The wind energy industry has claimed for decades that this phenomenon does not exist, in part, because about one-third of the human population is essentially immune to the effects of motion sickness, which is what these pressure pulsations induce, Rand said. Similarly, about one-third of the population appears to be readily prone to motion sickness, he said. “The third that is not affected by this will never understand it and will not know what you are talking about,” Rand said.
According to an article published in the Bulletin of Science, Technology & Society March 2, 2011, written by Dr. Alec Salt: “Infrasound from wind turbines is unlikely to be harmful in the same way as high-level audible sounds.”
However, Salt also states that numerous reports “are highly suggestive that individuals living near wind turbines are made ill, with a plethora of symptoms, which commonly include chronic sleep disturbance. The fact that such reports are being dismissed on the grounds that the level of infrasound produced by wind turbines is at too low a level to be heard appears to totally ignore the known physiology of the ear.”
Dirty electricity concerns
Rebecca Rivas, a Calhan resident with a wind turbine located about 1 mile from her house, said there are other serious health concerns to consider. “My husband had open heart surgery in 2007 and had a mitral valve replaced,” she said. “It is a metal valve now, and he can’t go through metal detectors or any thing.” Rivas said her husband’s cardiologist told him that, with wind turbines that close to their residence, staying there would be like playing Russian roulette with his life.
Rivas said the reason is because the wind turbines emit not only sound waves or pressure waves, but electromagnetic waves as well.
According to an article published online in the Bulletin of Science, Technology & Society Sept. 30, 2011, “The electromagnetic waves are generated by the conversion of wind energy to electricity. This conversion produces high-frequency transients and harmonics that result in poor power quality … . High-frequency transient spikes that contribute to poor power quality, also known as dirty electricity, can flow along wires, damage sensitive electronic equipment, and adversely affect human and animal health.”
Rivas said she was advised that the electromagnetic waves could send her husband into atrial fibrillation. AFib is a quivering or irregular heartbeat that can lead to blood clots, stroke, heart failure and other heart-related complications, according to the American Heart Association. “I’ve watched doctors flatline my husband (stop his heart) five times to try to get his heart back into rhythm,” Rivas said. “Because my husband’s life is at stake, I have to speak up.”
Brown County, Wisconsin
Residents of Brown County, Wisconsin also decided to speak up when the Shirley Wind Farm, owned by Duke Energy, was under construction.
Barbara Vanden Boogart, vice president of the Brown County Citizens for Responsible Wind Energy, worked with other members of the BCCRWE to present a case in front of the Brown County Wisconsin Board of Health about the dangers of the wind turbines.
Vanden Boogart said the presentation contained various pieces of evidence, including the following: 21 peer-reviewed articles on health and industrial wind turbines; analyses of the effects of wind turbines on property values; personal accounts from residents near the wind farm; and studies done in the homes near the Shirley Wind Farm where infrasound and low frequency noise was detected that emanated from the turbines.
According to the minutes from the Brown County Board of Healthmeeting on Oct. 14, the board voted 4-0 to “declare the Industrial Wind Turbines at Shirley Wind Project in the Town of Glenmore, Brown County, WI a human health hazard for all people (residents, workers, visitors, and sensitive passersby) who are exposed to infrasound/low frequency noise and other emissions potentially harmful to human health.”
“They (Duke Energy) were planning to put up 100 turbines within our town and two other adjacent ones, with six on our country block alone,” Vanden Boogart said. “We fought hard, fast and loud in every way we could, and they succeeded in shutting down the wind farm.
“Wind farms are making people ill and the wind energy industry has known about it since 1979. They knew for decades and instead of notifying people, they have been changing the attention to audible noise. This industry is filthy, dirty, corrupt and committing crimes knowingly against people.”
Laura Wilson, a member of the El Paso County Property Rights Coalition, said Vanden Boogart shared all the information that the BCCRWE presented to their board of health with her; and, on Aug. 26, Wilson and 11 other concerned residents attended the El Paso County Public Health board meeting.
“I gave them all the information and told them everything I knew, and they just looked at me with total indifference,” Wilson said. “They were actually eating their lunches while we were all testifying.”
The EPCPRC has a lawsuit pending against the El Paso County Board of County Commissioners and NextEra, citing that the BOCC “exceeded its jurisdiction when it approved the (Golden West Wind Farm) project” at the Feb. 5 meeting, according to the article, “Wind farm goes to roads,” in the May issue of The New Falcon Herald. No hearing date has been set yet. Because of the pending lawsuit, EPC Public Health declined an interview with the NFH.
David Gil, project manager with NextEra, also declined an interview but sent an email to the NFH, with this statement about the Brown County Board of Health declaration: “I am not aware of the declaration.”
Chris Ollson, who testified on behalf of NextEra at the Feb. 5 BOCC meeting also declined an interview, but sent an email stating he was “on holiday.”
Ollson, vice president of strategic development for Intrinsik Inc., is considered an authority in environmental health issues related to the energy sector and has provided risk communication support for wind turbine projects, according to Intrinsik’s website. Ollson has a doctorate in Environmental Sciences from the Royal Military College of Canada.
Wilson said the property rights coalition is hoping to raise more funds to pay the attorney’s fees for the pending litigation; she and the other coalition members intend to keep fighting.
New Falcon Herald
People All Over the World are Fighting Back Against the Wind Scam!
Forces Marshall in International Revolt Against the Great Wind Power Fraud
September 2, 2015 by
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Across the Globe – wherever these things things have been threatened upon rural communities – or the threat has been realised – outrage follows.
One line spun is that the hostility is an entirely English speaking phenomenon. That piffle was firmly skewered by Lilli-Anne Green (an American researcher and documentary film-maker, who has spoken to hundreds of victims around the World) – when she appeared before the Australian Senate:
Lilli-Anne Green – no ‘Green’ Dupe – tells Senate: Wind Farm Health Impacts ‘Universal’
And STT has picked up plenty of examples to the same effect:
Winning Taiwanese Hearts and Minds?
Turkish Court Shuts Down 50 Turbines: Yaylaköy Residents Delighted at 1st Chance to Sleep in Years
Germany’s Wind Power ‘Dream’ Becomes a Living Nightmare
Vestas’ Danish Victims Lay Out the FACTS
Now, that’s not to overlook the fact that the English themselves are just as hostile to the concept of massive streams of government mandated subsidies, being filched from power consumers and taxpayers and used by wind power outfits to literally steal peoples’ homes.
This ripping little website shows just how switched on our British counterparts are – going head-to-head with the most polished band of liars and fraudsters ever assembled in the same tent:http://www.aswar.org.uk/
The site is a cracker; and leaves no room for error about what is – to those gifted with our good friends ‘logic’ and ‘reason’ – patently obvious: THESE THINGS DON’T WORK – on any level.
Here’s a sample of the unassailable from its pages – in relation to an effort by RES to destroy another idyllic part of Ol’ Blighty:
The subsidy farming McAlpine/RES, the same massive group who the BBC’s Panorama accused of setting up the illegal blacklist in the building trade, have put in another application to build four wind turbines in the Warwickshire heritage and wildlife beauty spot of the Upper Swift Valley.
This new application, along with bribes for the NIMBYs, will not only receive the same degree of local rejection on the same grounds as the earlier proposal was unanimously rejected but with the encroachment of an intense windfarm landscape in the last two years, there are even more planning reasons now for rejection.
There is no rational energy or economic reason in favour of these wind turbines that steal some 15% of everybody’s bills and stuff the subsidies into the pockets of speculators and rent-seeking landowners – 10% (33% by 2020) in green taxes plus a proportion of the new infra-structure cost of linking turbines to the grid.
How can it be right for companies to be paid twice to three times the going rate for electricity when they are damaging the environment and communities?
The alarmist propaganda in favour of wind turbines relies on the argument that they reduce the UK’s 2% of the world’s man-made CO2 emissions and thereby infinitesimally reduce global warming.
But actually the intermittency of wind makes it necessary to have fossil-fuel back-up spinning the whole time for the National Grid to maintain an even voltage; (electricity cannot be stored) therefore wind turbines don’t even save CO2 anyway. (also the scientists say that GW has not increased since 1997 – seventeen years of stand-still).
Mr Lorne Smith from ASWAR (Against Subsidised Windfarms Around Rugby) said:
“The community around Churchover/Cotesbach turned out in force to show their dislike at being victims of the windfarm scam for a second time. With each windfarm job in the UK being subsidised by £100,000 from our electricity bills, and 10 McAlpine/RES staff supporting their propaganda exhibition, there was £1 million of our money walking around Churchover today!”
It is surprising that anybody can support this energy policy that is making this nation globally uncompetitive, driving manufacturing jobs overseas and ordinary people into fuel poverty (a record number of people died from cold last winter), while attacking the asset values of innocent property owners and killing birds and bats (scientists say 900,000 bats are killed by wind turbines every year).
“Surprising”, indeed!
In the latter stages of 2015 – with the scale and scope the fraud laid bare for all to see – continuing ‘support’ for wind power can’t be explained by simple, seasoned ignorance. As Ben Franklin put it:
“We are all born ignorant, but one must work hard to remain stupid”.
Those that parade as ‘journalists’ – especially at wind-worship cult-compounds – like The Guardian, the BBC – and here at Fairfax and the ABC – they’re clearly working very hard; with obvious success.
But – despite long, sweaty sessions inside their editorial bunkers, aimed at ensuring the public remain blissfully ignorant, too – the FACTS keep bubbling to the surface.
Facts like the obvious impacts caused to health – like constant sleep deprivation – from incessant turbine generated low-frequency noise and infrasound, that leads to homes being uninhabitable and, therefore, worthless:
Along with every other sensate being on the face of the Earth, the Poles have long-since had enough of being treated as wind industry “road-kill”, too. Hence, this promise made in April this year, by Presidential hopeful, Andrzej Duda:
“… if I am elected to be the President of Poland, I will propose a legislative initiative to introduce safe setbacks of wind parks from people’s dwellings…”
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Andrzej Duda
Candidate in the Polish Presidential Elections
Zabkowice Slaskie, 8 April 2015
Fellow Poles!
The recent weeks have brought many intense encounters with people across Poland in the context of this presidential campaign. There have also been numerous opportunities to discuss the maladies encountered by citizens and their everyday worries. It has become apparent that the siting of wind farm developments gives rise to frequent protests, which are heard in hundreds of municipalities in our country.
Poles complain that their voices are being ignored, and large wind turbines that are placed excessively close to dwellings not only ruin the landscape, but also cause a serious reduction in the value of their properties. Furthermore, they bring attention to numerous procedural irregularities. These were also identified by the Supreme Audit Office (NIK) in its July 2014 report. I am sorry to say that the governing coalition of the Civic Platform and Polish Peasants’ Party have successfully prevented, during the last several years, the adoption of measures intended to properly regulate the matter of where wind farms are located.
I do recognise the importance of the issues addressed here. Therefore, I declare that, if I am elected to be the President of Poland, I will propose a legislative initiative to introduce safe setbacks of wind parks from people’s dwellings, ban such developments in municipalities where no zoning plans are currently in place, and, most importantly, to ensure effective participation of society in ongoing administrative proceedings.
Yours faithfully,
Andrzej Duda
[original in Polish available here]
Setting out with a sensible policy, built on common sense and human compassion, Mr Duda was duly elected. No surprises there.
STT hears that hundreds of Australian rural communities are gearing up, too.
The Coalition’s LRET policy is designed by its instigator and head wind industry spruiker – young Gregory Hunt – to see another 2,500 of these things speared into thousands of backyards across the Country. Labor’s insane 50% RET would up the ante, by carpeting the best, most productive and densely populated regions with more than 10,000:
Labor’s Renewable Target is Pure Insanity: the Coalition’s Target is Simply Madness
Given that our political betters are encumbered with ‘tin ears’ and ‘flat feet’, it’s now down to every man, woman and child to fight for what’s rightfully theirs: the ability to live, sleep in and otherwise comfortably use their very own homes.
Love those Aussies! They are Tearing Down the Windweasel’s Fortress!
Senators Back & Leyonhjelm Keep Hammering the Great Wind Power Fraud
August 31, 2015 by
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Following almost 6 months of solid graft, 8 hearings in 4 States and the ACT, dozens of witnesses and almost 500 submissions, the Senate Inquiry into the great wind power fraud delivered its ‘doorstop’ final report, which runs to some 350 pages – available here: Senate Report
The first 200 pages are filled with facts, clarity, common sense and compassion; the balance, labelled “Labor’s dissenting report”, was written by the wind industry’s parasites and spruikers – including the Clean Energy Council (these days a front for Infigen aka Babcock & Brown); theAustralian Wind Alliance; and Leigh Ewbank from the Enemies of the Earth.
Predictably, Labor’s dissenting report is filled with fantasy, fallacy and fiction – pumping up the ‘wonders’ of wind; completely ignoring the cost of the single greatest subsidy rort in the history of the Commonwealth; and treating the wind industry’s hundreds of unnecessary victims – of incessant turbine generated low-frequency noise and infrasound – with the kind of malice, usually reserved for sworn and bitter foreign enemies.
And the wind industry’s stooge on the Inquiry, Anne Urquhart – is still out their fighting a faltering, rearguard action – long after the battle for wind power supremacy was lost – a bit like the tales of ragged, 80 year old Japanese soldiers that kept fighting the Imperial War, until they were dragged out of the jungle and into the 21st Century. Nevermind the facts, when delusion will do!
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Among those Senators on the Committee – who pulled no punches in getting the truth out – were Liberal Senator from WA, Chris Back and STT Champion, Liberal Democratic Party Senator, David Leyonhjelm from NSW.
While the wind industry and its parasites have been praying to the Wind-Gods that the whole thing might just ‘blow over’, those Senators on the Inquiry – not in thrall of Infigen, Vestas & Co – are still in there fighting for a fair-go for rural communities, across the Country; and power consumers, everywhere.
Always pleased to disappoint the beleaguered and dwindling band of wind worshippers in this country, STT is delighted that Chris Back and David Leyonhjelm show no sign of letting up.
Here they are giving the wind industry another whipping in the Senate (video and Hansard transcript)..
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THE SENATE
PROOF
COMMITTEES
Wind Turbines Select Committee
Report
SPEECH
Thursday, 13 August 2015
Senator BACK (Western Australia) (18:11): History will record that Senator Urquhart’s words will come back home to haunt her in the future, as indeed will many of those who have so derisively commented adversely on the outcomes of this report. Let me put on the record that I am very much in favour of aspects of renewable energy. I proudly ordered and had constructed the largest number of small-scale solar units, hot water systems—some 240—ever in Western Australia. I also had responsibility for the first wind turbine in Western Australia. It failed; in fact, the first four all failed. That is history.
I also want to place on the record my strong support for hydroelectricity in your state, Senator Urquhart, and in the Snowy Mountains. When you can generate in the high peak periods and when you can use off-peak periods to pump water back up to generate again the next time it is needed surely has to be the ultimate value of renewable energy. I do not think wind turbines are a renewable energy source.
I reflected on this driving back from Sydney on Sunday. I happened to be looking at the wind turbines just out of Canberra and thought to myself that I want to look at this in both environmental terms and economic terms. I said to myself, ‘What is the environmental benefit of wind turbines?’ Of course, the benefit would be greenhouse gases forgiven during the generation process. I said, ‘That’s good.’ So that is a positive benefit. What are the negatives? What do you have to take off that greenhouse gas forgiven? Firstly, you have to take off the massive cost of greenhouse gases, the carbon dioxide, used in the construction—the original iron ore, the steel, the transportation and the tens of thousands of tonnes of concrete that go into each of these.
The committee had evidence—and Senator Urquhart did not like it much—from Mr Hamish Cumming, whom I found to be a very credible witness, that about 16 years of the use of a wind turbine would be necessary before you would actually get back to the cost-benefit of the greenhouse gases forgiven as a result of the construction.
Secondly, what do you take off that greenhouse gas benefit?
You take off the cost of the baseload generated electricity, the carbon dioxide, required when you need coal, gas or whatever other form of baseload generation you need in reserve, because when the wind does not blow and the ship does not go you do need another form of baseload power. Then something that will have a profound effect on people who are hosting wind turbines—and local governments around this country—will be the environmental cost of decommissioning these wind turbines at the end. So I suspect there is very little, if any, actual environmental benefit.
I then looked at economic benefits. The benefit from wind turbines would be the value of the power generated, but from that what do you deduct? You have got to deduct the huge costs of the renewable energy certificates that are quaintly absorbed and the burden on consumers. Funnily enough, consumers are also taxpayers—isn’t that amazing? This is not a tax, the renewable energy certificate; it is a ‘cost to the consumer’.
Somehow or other I do not think they are different people. Again, in an equation you must take away the dollar value of the baseload power that is sitting there doing nothing in case the wind blows or does not blow. In the future I hope we see effective, valuable battery storage. Whether we do or not, nevertheless it still comes at a cost. If you want to look at the economic benefits of these wind turbines, then it is one of the costs. And again you have the dollar value of the decommissioning process.
I admire that Senator Urquhart and indeed, in Cairns, Deputy President Senator Marshall attended each one of the hearings. That is to their credit. I have got to say that unfortunately the Greens political party—despite the fact that Senator Siewert chaired the inquiry in 2009—chose not to participate at all in this inquiry. I do not think that is to their credit.
Senator Urquhart mentioned the Canadian study, which has been put out there as a very credible study—until you get some advice from other credible Canadian scientists, who told us that when the data was collated, this mass of Canadian data, they just happened to reject, with no reasons given, the majority of the data that was captured and collated. They decided to ignore it—no reasons given.
The other interesting thing is that they also decided to eliminate all people under the age of 18 and older than 79 years. No reason was given; they just dropped them off. Under 18 and over 79—they do not count. In the days when I was around as a scientist if without explanation somebody were to produce international results and ask for them to be credited I would expect them to give some explanation as to why they would wipe out a significant proportion of the population and indeed a significant amount of the dataset.
Our dear friend Professor Chapman speaks of the nocebo effect. This is the effect that you think you are going to get sick from wind turbines, or you think you are going to get sick going out in a boat, so you do. Initially Professor Chapman would always say, ‘I’ve never ever heard of a host who, if he or she is making money out of these, got sick.’
The first ones, unfortunately for dear old Professor Chapman, were Mr and Mrs Mortimer. Mr Mortimer is a retired naval officer whose sphere of influence happened to be the movement of waves through solids, liquids and gases, so he knew a little bit about this. Mortimer was the first person to stand up and say, ‘Despite the fact that the income we are getting from these couple of turbines is enormously important to our retirement income, we can’t live on our farm.’ Funnily enough, they could not see the turbines but they knew when they were on. When they went away from their home for a week or so, strangely enough the nocebo effect seemed to disappear.
The other interesting case was that of a Mr and Mrs Gare, who appeared before us in Adelaide. Mr and Mrs Gare make $200,000 a year from hosting wind turbines. Mr and Mrs Gare said to us, ‘If we could have our time over again, if we could get rid of these wind turbines and get rid of the $200,000 so that we could go back to living on our farm and working on our farm, we would do it tomorrow.’ I do not know where the nocebo effect came in there, Professor Chapman.
In the time available left to me, all I will do is ask this question. I ask it of Senator Urquhart and I ask it of others who spoke before us. Why do these people carry on the way they do?
The case down at Cape Bridgewater—five generations of the family have lived on their farm, so what is in it for them to walk away from their community? People say that they are not really sick at all, that it is just in their heads. It is in their heads. You are quite right. Nausea, anxiety, annoyance and sleeplessness are sure as hell in your head. The question is: why would that family walk away? Why would their children not be able to go to school? Do they get compensation like in the old RSI days? No, they do not; there is no compensation out there. There is no hope of any reward for carrying on like this. They lose their friends in their communities. We know that in many rural communities it tears communities apart.
I have said before in this place that we have circumstances now in my home state of Western Australia where bushfire brigade members do not turn out if there happens to be a fire on the farm of someone they are opposed to on this. CWA members—and they are the two pillars of rural communities: bushfire brigades and CWAs. People are not going. They are not shopping in the towns. Why is that? Is it that they all of a sudden woke up one day and, as Senator Urquhart said, they are not sick at all?
The value of their properties—we learnt all over Australia that their properties are effectively worthless. They have not just gone down significantly. People who moved into the Barossa Valley for their change of lifestyle, the tree change, are now in a situation where they have had to walk away. So what is in it for them? Generally there has got to be a motivator if you are going to change your whole lifestyle, if you are going to walk away from your friends—you bet your life. Do not worry about Senator Urquhart going on about English speaking—Germany, Finland. Why did the Prime Minister of the UK go into the election saying he is going to stop subsidising on-land turbines and win the election? There is a long way to go in this story. I assure you it is not finished.
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Senator Leyonhjelm (New South Wales) (18:21): Today I take the opportunity to inform the Senate about the final report of the Senate Select Committee on Wind Turbines, as the previous two speakers have done, and why I moved to establish the inquiry. I wish to highlight three critical inquiry findings. First, there is no dispute that wind turbines emit infrasound; second, since 2009 the federal government has known and reported that inappropriate levels of infrasound cause adverse health impacts, whatever the source; and, third, wind farm guidelines and regulations do not require the measurement or restraint of infrasound levels.
As a distant observer of the debate on wind farms, I came to the inquiry with an open mind. I was opposed to the subsidies, but otherwise had no firm views. What prompted me to establish an inquiry was a meeting in my electorate office with half a dozen people from various rural communities. These were ordinary, down-to-earth people, people you would be pleased to have as neighbours. What became apparent was that something was terribly wrong with the planning and regulatory regime governing wind farms. I listened to their concerns with a growing sense of unease as they documented a litany of failures by government and the wind industry to address, or even acknowledge, what seemed like genuine issues.
I read the reports and the recommendations from the 2011 and 2012 Senate inquiries into wind farms and excessive sound, and noted that these all-party inquiries had recommended health and acoustical studies be undertaken as a priority.
At the time of the 2011 inquiry report, the Clean Energy Council welcomed these recommendations for medical research. But these recommendations were never acted upon, either by the Gillard government or the National Health and Medical Research Council, at least not prior to the establishment of the select committee.
The NHMRC only undertook backward looking literature reviews. They failed to commission research into the claimed link between wind turbine sound emissions and adverse health impacts. The NHMRC is the primary oversight body for medical research. Planning and health ministers, local councils, local GPs, the media and the wind industry all look for authoritative guidance from the NHMRC when responding to those complaining of being affected. The fact is that the NHMRC has been sitting on this issue for the best part of a decade. This has led to unnecessary anguish for many affected residents.
During the course of the inquiry, the NHMRC announced the first research grants to study wind farm sound emissions. Their grants are for a total of $2.5 million over five years. This is almost certainly entirely inadequate.
In evidence, acoustician Dr Bob Thorne noted this amount ‘would barely scratch the surface’. In fact, the NHMRC behaviour could be summarised as follows: ignore the problem as long as you can, equivocate when asked for guidance, and then grudgingly allocate a paltry sum stretched over five years to almost guarantee a non-result.
The inquiry report noted that ‘senior public health figures have also recognised that the quality of research of the NHMRC’s systemic review was sub-optimal’. In evidence, prominent New Zealand pyschoacoustician Dr Daniel Shepherd stated how surprised he was at how politicised the conduct of the NHMRC had been, to the point where health and medicine had been sidelined.
The wind industry also relies on the Australian Medical Association, the AMA. The committee found the AMA’s position statement lacked rigour. It described the AMA actions as ‘irresponsible and harmful’, and noted that the AMA ‘received pointed criticism’ for its position. Speaking for myself, I do not understand why the doctors’ union should be taken more seriously than any other union. They are not experts in anything.
One of the stand-out contributions to the inquiry was the evidence by acoustician Steven Cooper about his study of the Cape Bridgewater wind farm, commissioned by developer Pacific Hydro.
This was the first time a wind farm operator had cooperated in this type of study by providing wind speed data and allowing the stop and start of wind turbines. Cooper’s study demonstrated a correlation between certain phases of wind turbine operation and impacts felt by residents—some severe. His work was hailed as ground breaking by prominent acousticians from around the world.
Cooper’s report provides a platform from which health professionals can launch further research to determine definitively whether there is a causal link between turbine operations and adverse health impacts. This is a game-changer in providing researchers with an informed place to start their research. But it requires other wind turbine operators to cooperate, as Pacific Hydro did, and release their operating data. That indeed was the reason for the recommendations in the interim and final reports.
The inquiry heard many truly distressing stories of people driven from their homes by sound emitted from wind turbines. Residents told how, when they could take no more and left their homes for respite, they would recover, but when they returned, if the turbines were operating, they again suffered adverse impacts.
The inquiry heard from turbine hosts who receive $200,000 a year in rent and regret they ever agreed to host turbines. Senator Back has just referred to them. These people were previously enthusiastic supporters of wind power generation, but now would not live within 20 kilometres of a wind farm. It beggars belief that people who were so supportive of wind power and so financially rewarded now oppose the establishment of wind farms too close to residences, unless they suffer real rather than imagined effects on their lives.
Committee senators witnessed firsthand the callous indifference of some wind farm operators and their cheerleaders, who ridiculed and denigrated those who they described as ‘nutty anti-wind activists’. Wind farm operators argued that if they conformed to regulations, shown to be manifestly inadequate in protecting residents, they owed no further duty of care. This is eerily similar to evidence many years ago from tobacco companies, and I suspect the same fate awaits them.
The planning and regulatory governance for wind farms in every state was also shown to be shambolic, incompetent and not fit for purpose. The Victorian government cannot decide who should give approval for wind farms and who should monitor ongoing compliance. In the last few years this has gone from controlling at a state level to devolving it to local councils, and now the state government is taking back the approval stage while leaving compliance with councils.
Councillors and council officers gave evidence of incompetent state regulators providing little technical assistance to poorly resourced local councils which were responsible for assessing and approving billion dollar wind projects. Ongoing compliance monitoring costs tens of thousands of dollars, and this needs to be funded by ratepayers in financially strapped rural shires.
This inquiry report—the third in the last five years—is the most comprehensive in its recommendations and addresses the festering issues arising from the abject failure of the states to provide an appropriate planning and governance regime.
The states are rightly responsible for these matters, but the federal government, through the Renewable Energy Target and the large subsidies available to turbine operators, has driven the growth of the wind industry. If state governments choose not to have a robust governance regime for the wind industry they must expect to forgo the benefits of those subsidies flowing to their state, as per the recommendations of this inquiry.
I commend the inquiry report to the Senate, and urge the government to bring an end to this long, sorry saga by adopting the report’s recommendations. I seek leave to continue my remarks.
Leave granted; debate adjourned.
Hansard, 13 August 2015
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For more background on some of the topics canvassed above tap into the following:
Wind Industry’s CO2 Abatement Claims Smashed by Top Physics Professor – Dr Joe Wheatley
Angry Wind Farm Victims Pull the Trigger: Turbines Shot-Up in Montana and Victoria
David Mortimer, Turbine Host: An “Inconvenient” Wind Industry Fact
The Snowy Scheme: Time to Do it Again
Wind Pushers try to Discredit, Doctor Sarah Laurie, Advocate for Victims of Wind Turbine Emissions!
Wind farm advocate Simon Chapman sorry for false allegations
- The Australian
- August 19, 2015
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Simon Chapman n has been widely criticised for his outspoken advocacy for the wind industry and research.
Public health professor and wind farm advocate Simon Chapman has published a long apology to industrial noise campaigner Sarah Laurie for falsely claiming she had been deregistered as a doctor.
The apology exposes a long-running campaign to discredit Dr Laurie, who has spoken out for residents affected by noise from wind turbines and other industrial sources through the Waubra Foundation.
Dr Laurie welcomed the apology but said Professor Chapman’s personal attacks on her professional integrity were “just one example of a broader strategy employed by the wind industry to denigrate, marginalise and, therefore, exclude from public and political discourse anyone sincerely investigating a worldwide public health issue’’.
Lawyers for Dr Laurie have threatened action against wind industry employees Ken McAlpine, formerly from Vestas, Ketan Joshi from Infigen and Fairfax Media over a tweet first posted by Mr McAlpine in March last year.
Professor Chapman, who is not a medical practitioner, repeated the tweet, which said “NOT DROWNING, RANTING: Deregistered “Dr” Sarah Laurie doesn’t like the medicine dished up by @ama_media Waubrafoundation.org.au/resources/open”.
In his apology, Professor Chapman said the tweet implied that Ms Laurie had given cause to the Medical Board of Australia to deregister her on account of unprofessional conduct, that she was not entitled to use the title “Dr”, and that she did so in contravention of the laws that govern the conduct of medical practitioners.
“These allegations were implied without foundation and are entirely false,” Professor Chapman said.
“Ms Laurie is not deregistered and has never been sanctioned by the Medical Board of Australia.’’
Dr Laurie told a Senate committee into wind turbines and health this year that she graduated from Flinders University with a bachelor of medicine and a bachelor of surgery in 1995 and attained a fellowship of the Royal Australian College of General Practitioners in 1998.
Dr Laurie had been a councillor on the South Australian Medical Association branch but that was prematurely cut short when she was diagnosed with an illness.
Dr Laurie said she was still legally entitled to use the honorific Dr but voluntarily offered not to use it for her work with the Waubra Foundation to prevent members of the public from thinking she was currently registered.
Dr Laurie told a Senate committee she had been “very reluctant to accept that there could be anything wrong (with wind turbines)”.
“I used to take my children to go and watch wind turbines being built locally near our home,” she said. “I had no idea about any adverse health impacts from wind turbines.
“But, when you listen to the stories of people affected by noise when they are trying to sleep in their beds at night, it does not matter what the source of the noise is if they cannot sleep and they are having these other very distressing symptoms and deteriorating health.”
Professor Chapman has been widely criticised for his outspoken advocacy for the wind industry and research, which found complaints about wind turbines were due to a “nocebo” effect.
Senator John Madigan told parliament in June last year that Professor Chapman “obtained his PhD from the Department of Preventive and Social Medicine, a self-proclaimed expert in marketing and public manipulation via media sources”.
“He is a person who is not lawfully permitted to conduct any form of medical research or study in relation to human health,” Senator Madigan said.
He said Professor Chapman’s undergraduate qualifications were in sociology and his PhD looked into the relationship between cigarette smoke and advertising.
Professor Chapman told the recent Senate inquiry he had “a PhD in medicine and I am a fellow of the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia”.
He was awarded an Order of Australia for distinguished service to medical research, particularly in the area of public health policy.
Asked about the offending tweet by the Senate committee, he said: “I would regret having retweeted that one, because obviously ‘deregistered’ is incorrect.”
He did not respond to The Australian yesterday.
Every Country That Has Wind Turbines, Has People Suffering From the Effects!
Lilli-Anne Green – no ‘Green’ Dupe – tells Senate: Wind Farm Health Impacts ‘Universal’
August 16, 2015 by
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Following almost 6 months of solid graft, 8 hearings in 4 States and the ACT, dozens of witnesses and almost 500 submissions, the Senate Inquiry into the great wind power fraud delivered its ‘doorstop’ final report, which runs to some 350 pages – available here: Senate Report
The first 200 pages are filled with facts, clarity, common sense and compassion; the balance, labelled “Labor’s dissenting report”, was written by the wind industry’s parasites and spruikers – including the Clean Energy Council (these days a front for Infigen aka Babcock & Brown); theAustralian Wind Alliance; and Leigh Ewbank from the Enemies of the Earth.
Predictably, Labor’s dissenting report is filled with fantasy, fallacy and fiction – pumping up the ‘wonders’ of wind; completely ignoring the cost of the single greatest subsidy rort in the history of the Commonwealth; and treating the wind industry’s hundreds of unnecessary victims – of incessant turbine generated low-frequency noise and infrasound – with the kind of malice, usually reserved for sworn and bitter foreign enemies.
To get to the truth, the Inquiry had to wade through a fairly pungent cesspit of ‘material’ dropped on it by the wind industry, its parasites and spruikers. No doubt to their great relief (or, in the case of wind industry stooge, Anne Urquhart, infuriation) the Senators heard from a raft of genuine and highly qualified people, who are clearly dedicated to protecting their fellow human beings – rather than ridiculing, denigrating or deriding them as “anti-wind farm wing-nuts” or “Dick Brains”.
One voice of common sense and compassion – to the contrary of the nasty nonsense pitched up by the shills that run interference for their wind industry clients – came from Lilli-Anne Green – an active environmentalist and CEO of a healthcare consultancy that covers the USA. Lilli-Anne was – with her late husband – the creator of ‘Pandora’s Pinwheels: the Reality of Living with Wind Turbines‘ – the first and best account of the hell-on-earth these things create for those who have to suffer incessant low-frequency noise and infrasound on a daily basis. If you haven’t seen it, here it is:
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Backing up the insights in that hard-hitting documentary, here’s what Lilli-Anne told the Australian Senate.
Senate Select Committee on Wind Turbines – 29 June 2015
GREEN, Ms Lilli-Anne, Private capacity
Committee met at 08:35
Evidence was taken via teleconference—
CHAIR ( Senator Madigan ): Welcome. I declare open this final public hearing of the Senate Select Committee on Wind Turbines. We acknowledge the traditional owners of the land on which we meet and pay our respect to elders past and present. This is a public hearing and a Hansard transcript of the proceedings is being made. The audio of this public hearing is also being broadcast via the internet. Before the committee starts taking evidence, I remind all present here today that in giving evidence to the committee witnesses are protected by parliamentary privilege. It is unlawful for anyone to threaten or disadvantage a witness on account of evidence given to the committee and such action may be treated by the Senate as a contempt. It is also a contempt to give false or misleading evidence to the committee.
The committee prefers all evidence to be given in public, but under the Senate’s resolutions witnesses have the right to request to be heard in private session. It is important that witnesses give the committee notice if they intend to ask to give evidence in camera. If you are a witness here today and you intend to request to give evidence in camera, please bring this to the attention of the secretariat staff as soon as possible.
Do you have any comments to make on the capacity in which you appear?
Ms Green: I am CEO of a healthcare consulting firm with a national reach in the United States. My company works in all sectors of the healthcare industry. One of the core competencies of the firm is to develop educational programs to help doctors, nurses and other healthcare workers to better communicate with their patients around the various disease states. Currently, as a volunteer in my town, I am secretary of our energy committee and a delegate to the Cape Cod National Seashore Advisory Commission as an alternate. Cape Cod National Seashore is part of the United States National Park Service. In the late 1970s, I built a passive solar superinsulated home. I directed an environmental education school for several years. I work seasonally as a naturalist interpretive ranger for the National Park Service. I have been interested and active in the environmental movement since the early seventies. Today, I speak as a private citizen.
CHAIR: Thank you. Could you please confirm that information on parliamentary privilege and the protection of witnesses and evidence has been provided to you?
Ms Green: It has.
CHAIR: Thank you. The committee has your submission and we now invite you to make a brief opening statement and at the conclusion of your remarks, I will invite members of the committee to put questions to you.
Ms Green: Thank you. Until the beginning of 2010, I believed wind turbines were good and green. My town was interested in constructing wind turbines and a friend visited my office in early March 2010 to provide my husband and business partner and me with new information. Following the visit, I spent the next 10 hours researching wind turbines. That very day, after concluding my research, I was saddened but I became convinced there was credible evidence that wind turbines cause adverse health impacts for some people who live nearby. In the past, over five years, I have learned it is a global phenomenon that wind turbines make some people who live nearby sick and it is a dose response so these people become more ill over time.
My husband, who is now deceased, and I travelled to Australia and New Zealand in 2010-11 and subsequently created a film called Pandora’s Pinwheels: The Reality of Living with Wind Turbines. We then travelled around the world in 2012 and conducted interviews in 15 different countries. Most of the people we interviewed expressed that they were in favour of wind energy prior to wind turbine construction nearby. There are some common symptoms people the world over report who live and work too close to wind turbines. A good summary is found in the book Wind Turbine Syndrome: A Report on a Natural Experiment by Nina Pierpont, MD, PhD.
It does not matter whether people live in English-speaking countries or in countries where people do not speak English. People reported to us they are made sick when they live too close to wind turbines, no matter what country they live in. We interviewed people in both English-speaking countries and non-English-speaking countries alike who reported to us they were not ill prior to wind turbine construction nearby and after the wind turbines were operational nearby they were made sick.
We interviewed people in five countries — France, Germany, Holland, Denmark and Sweden — who either needed an interpreter to speak with us or who spoke broken English. Some locations were quite rural with little or no internet connection. Still, the people we interviewed through interpreters expressed the same symptoms, others the world over described to us. These people with no or limited internet connection even used similar phrases, analogies and gestures, as others did globally to describe their symptoms. What we actually found is most people are reluctant to speak about their health problems.
In the United States, there are privacy laws regarding medical information. Culturally, people do not openly discuss their health problems with strangers. We found this to be the case in the countries we visited around the world. It was a brave person who opened up to us about their health problems. Usually, the people we interviewed expressed they wanted to help others. If anything, people tended to minimise their symptoms of try to attribute the symptoms to other circumstances. Even when they acknowledged a common symptom such as sleep deprivation, many people who experienced additional common symptoms were reluctant to attribute these other symptoms to the wind turbines nearby. Furthermore, people the world over reported that they and their healthcare providers puzzled over health problems that appeared after wind turbines were constructed near their homes.
Many endured a huge battery of medical tasks to try to determine what the cause of their health problems were. The medical tasks, at a huge cost to the healthcare system, only ruled out various diseases. Typically, the cause of their sickness was not diagnosed by their healthcare professional. Frequently, we heard that the patients would be in a social situation with others in their neighbourhood and eventually people they knew well confided they had similar health problems that recently appeared, or after research online about a different topic these people reported stumbling upon the cause of their health problems, which were the wind turbines constructed nearby.
We even interviewed people who lived for 11 years near wind turbines in a non-English speaking country — and that was in 2012. Several people came to an interview to talk about their property devaluation. It was only during the interviews when they heard others speak about health problems that the people realised they had been suffering because they lived too close to wind turbines. One man in his 80s sobbed during his interview. He had been visiting his doctor for 11 years trying to figure out what was wrong with his health.
The woman who invited us to interview her and her neighbours learned about health problems from wind turbines when she saw the film I produced Pandora’s Pinwheels, with interviews conducted in Australia and New Zealand, that was translated into her language. These people needed an interpreter; they did not speak English. She told me that her husband had passed away in the not too distant past due to heart problems. Before he died, he had complained quite frequently of common health symptoms people living near wind turbines experience. Although they visited their doctor frequently, no-one could figure out why he was so sick. She thanked us because, in seeing our film, it helped her to understand what her husband had been going through and why. It gave her closure that she did not have prior to viewing our film.
Another person at the interview told us she had to hold on to the walls of her house some days in order to walk from room to room and felt nauseous frequently. She knew she was unwell in her home and abandoned it. She did not know why until she saw our film. She came back to the area for the interview because she wanted to tell the world that wind turbines made her so ill that she sold her home at a huge loss.
One of the people I have known for the past five years lives in Falmouth, Massachusetts, which is very close to where I live — it is an hour and a half away. In 2010, he had recently retired to his dream home of many years. He was in great physical health, very fit and has over a 20-year record of normal to low to blood pressure. Since the wind turbines have been constructed in Falmouth, Massachusetts, he has reported that his blood pressure skyrockets to heart attack and stroke levels when the wind is coming in the wrong direction for him.
In Falmouth there are three wind turbines that are 1.65 megawatts near this person’s home. This person’s doctor, whom he has seen over the past 20 years, is in the Boston area and his doctor has been quite blunt. The doctor has told the patient that his life is in danger and he must move. Unfortunately, the Falmouth resident is crushed and cannot bear to leave his dream home at this point in time. He goes to other locations when the wind is predicted to be coming from the wrong direction. Others we interviewed in many different countries told us similar stories. Many reported they have abandoned their homes, sold their homes at a huge loss, purchased other homes to live in when the wind is coming from the wrong direction or in order to sleep in, and others spend time away from their homes at a huge and unexpected expense. People considered their homes as sanctuaries prior to the construction of wind turbines nearby. Now their opinion is not the same.
We have interviewed people on three continents who live more than five miles from the nearest wind turbine and are sick since wind turbine construction. I contend that we need honest research to determine how far wind turbines need to be sited from people in order to do no harm. People report to us that over time their symptoms become more severe. Many report not experiencing ill effects for some time following wind turbine construction, meanwhile their spouse became ill the day the wind turbines nearby became operational. They speak of thinking they were one of the lucky ones at first, but after a number of months or years they become as ill as their spouse. Not one person who stayed near wind turbines reported to us that they got used to it or got better; they all became more ill over time.
Since we are dealing with a dose response, we do not know over the projected lifetime of a wind turbine — say, 20 to 25 years — how far from people it is necessary to site wind turbines. To me, it is just wrong to knowingly harm the health and safety of people. There are responsible solutions to environmental issues that do not impact the health and safety of people nearby. Our humanity is in question when we continue to knowingly harm others. I thank you for your time today. I sincerely hope that you do take active steps to help the people in your country who are suffering due to living and working too close to wind turbines, and I am glad to answer questions you may have.
CHAIR: Thank you.
Senator LEYONHJELM: Good morning, Ms Green — I suppose it is not morning there. Thank you for your submission —
Ms Green: No, it is Sunday evening here.
Senator LEYONHJELM: Sunday evening? I am sorry to being interrupting your evening.
Ms Green: I am glad to speak with you.
Senator LEYONHJELM: You have interviewed people in 15 countries, I think you said, under all different circumstances and so on. I appreciate we are not pretending this is a gold-plated, statistical survey, but I am interested in your impressions because I think you have more experience of this than any other witness we have heard from. What do you think, based on your experience, are the common factors in the people you have interviewed in different communities living near wind turbines? What are the common factors to all of them?
Ms Green: I think we seriously do not have enough research to understand this problem fully. We saw the same symptoms. Slide 17 that I submitted has a listing of the common symptoms that Dr Pierpont lists in her book. I really believe that we just do not have enough information yet. But throughout the interviews, country by country, people described the same symptoms. Many times they used the same phrases to describe them and the same gestures — and they were not speaking English. There is a common thread here.
Senator LEYONHJELM: Do you get the impression that not everybody exposed to wind turbines is affected the same? Have you seen evidence of substantial individual variation?
Ms Green: I have, indeed. Just as some people are more prone to asthma and some people are more prone to lung cancer, let’s say, or any disease, we did see a variation. It appeared that if there were people who were, say, prone to migraine headaches, they were severely affected. But, again, there were people who did not seem to have the symptoms who were living either in the same house or nearby. I do not know whether it is a question of time, if over 20 years people become more sensitised and they will become sick. Very frequently we did hear the same theme running through the stories of the people we interviewed, where, say, the husband thought he was one of the lucky ones and six months later he could not sleep, he was experiencing ear pressure, ear pain and severe headaches or other symptoms.
Senator LEYONHJELM: We are aware of community groups in English-speaking countries who have expressed opposition to wind turbines, but we are not aware of that sort of phenomenon in non-English speaking countries. Have you encountered that?
Ms Green: Yes, indeed. We travelled around the world. It was a 10-year goal. We had it very well planned out and we thought it was for pleasure. But people kept emailing us and asking us to come and interview them. So we met people in a lot of non-English speaking countries, and they were such nice people, I have to say. They had just about any profession you would like to mention. They just wanted to tell their story. Many times these people wanted to talk to us for other reasons such as their house had been devalued because the wind turbines were nearby. As they were listening to other people in the room talking about their health problems, these people realised that they had been struggling with the same illness since the wind turbines were constructed nearby. They had never made that correlation before; in fact, they were quite frustrated. They told us that they would go back and back continually to their healthcare provider and talk about these symptoms, and they could not find a resolution or a reason. As I said, there is one man I recall quite vividly just sobbing — and that was in 2012; he was in his 80s. He had realised that since the wind turbines had been constructed nearby he was experiencing these symptoms that were the common symptoms.
Senator LEYONHJELM: Some witnesses have suggested to us that there is a relationship between not only the distance their residence is from the turbine but also the power of the turbine, the size of the turbine. Have you been able to come to any conclusions on that or is that outside your interest area?
Ms Green: No, it is not outside my interest area. In fact, it is quite alarming to me, because I have interviewed people who live near wind turbines that you in Australia would probably consider to be quite small and solitary — wind turbines that are 100 kilowatts, even — and they are experiencing health problems, even people living near a 10-kilowatt wind turbine. Frankly, it is the nearest wind turbine to where I live, and a number of neighbours are having problems, and not just with the audible noise but with the infrasound and low-frequency noise, based upon the symptoms they are reporting to me. It really is quite alarming. In my state, Massachusetts, there is a woman who has told me she lives more than five miles from the nearest wind turbine and she is quite ill. The onset of her symptoms was when the wind turbine was constructed. When she went on trips she was fine; when she came back she was ill, and it has only become worse over time. That wind turbine is not as powerful as wind turbines in Australia, and it is a solitary wind turbine.
Again, we travelled quite a distance in France — mid-south-eastern France — over a number of days at the invitation of the people in the area and visited several different communities where there were wind turbines. One of the situations is that the wind turbine is 10 kilometres from one of the neighbours who is very ill and 12 kilometres from the other neighbour. The person who lives 12 kilometres away reported to us that she had been very supportive of the wind turbines. She is very well known as an environmentalist in the area, has quite a reputation as an environmentalist and is highly regarded. But she is quite ill, and it was very difficult for her to speak with us.
The other person related a story of trying to detect what the problem was because he could not sleep and was becoming so frustrated that he would go in his car to try to find the source of what was keeping him awake. He talked about going night after night until he went into the wilderness. He could not imagine what was there, and then he found the wind turbines. They were creating a humming noise in his head at that point. He could actually hear this frequency. In our discussions with researchers, medical professionals and scientists, one of the scientists told us that what people hear is mostly a bell curve — that is the way it was described to us. Most people hear audible noise within a certain range, but there are people who are more sensitive to noise, and they hear sounds that most people would consider inaudible.
Senator URQUHART: I have a lot of questions. I am not going to get through them all, so I am wondering whether you are able to take some on notice at the end.
Ms Green: I will try. I am very busy, but I will try.
Senator URQUHART: In your submission you say you run a healthcare consultancy. Do you have any qualifications in health care or medicine?
Ms Green: I have a background in education.
Senator URQUHART: What is the name of your company?
Ms Green: I do not want that on the record.
Senator URQUHART: Can I ask why?
Ms Green: I am speaking today as a private citizen. I would be glad to give you that information if it is held as in-confidence.
Senator URQUHART: Okay. How many employees do you have?
Ms Green: My husband has passed away. He was my business partner, and I have scaled back the business. I am the only employee at this point in time. However, I will tell you that I have created in our company, with teams of people, educational programs that have been implemented throughout the United States. One of the oncology programs that was created by my team, which was quite a large team, interviewed over 100 oncology patients throughout the United States and numerous doctors and nurses and was mandatory for all of the nurses in the Kaiser health system in California.
Senator URQUHART: In your submission you say that 300,000 physicians have undertaken training through your company.
Ms Green: That is correct.
Senator URQUHART: What are the products or services? Is it communication? What is it that you actually sell?
Ms Green: There is a number of different core competencies in our company. One is developing educational programs around different disease states, such as oncology, diabetes, heart disease and various other disease states. Another path we have taken is to develop a service quality initiative. My husband was an extraordinary speaker and was often the keynote speaker for national conferences in all sectors of the healthcare industry.
Senator URQUHART: In your opening statement you talked about how you had interviewed many people from various countries. I could not find any of the transcripts, either in your submission or online. I am sorry if I have missed them.
Ms Green: You have not missed them. In the company we are still in the process of editing the films. It is a huge undertaking of many months, at huge expense. There is a lot of information that is still being edited.
Senator URQUHART: Are you able to provide copies of the transcripts and the full names of the people you interviewed?
Ms Green: No. It is on film; it is videotaped interviews, and the film is being edited.
Senator URQUHART: You talked about how you undertook the research after you had new information from people within your area who were concerned about wind farms. Was that the purpose of the interviews?
Ms Green: No. In my town, one month after we learned that our energy committee wanted to put a 1.65 wind turbine in our town — and we had conducted the research and people in our town were quite concerned — our board of selectmen, which is like your town councils, decided to not move forward with the project. I am on my energy committee, as secretary, and we are devising a plan to become 100 per cent electrical energy efficient without wind energy but using other alternative methods. Are you asking me what propels me to do the interviews?
Senator URQUHART: Yes. I guess my real reasoning was whether the purpose of the interviews was to inform the body of research on international attitudes to wind farms. Is that why —
Ms Green: No. It is not an attitude; it is to understand the realities of living near wind turbines — living, working, attending school, being incarcerated near wind turbines.
What happened was that my stepson was living in Australia and we went to Australia at the end of 2010. I knew there was a location called Waubra and I had seen the Dean report that had been recently published. I put out one little email asking ‘Do you happen to be in the Melbourne area and is it possible to meet some of the people that are living near the wind turbines at Waubra? Is it possible to see the Waubra area?’
It was amazing that I was connected with the people in that area of Australia. My husband and I drove to the area and we interviewed over 17 people in one day. They welcomed us into their homes. We did not know what to expect. We turned the camera on and we asked them questions, and they told us their story. We had no idea what we were going to find. We went to New Zealand and people emailed us after they had heard we had been to Waubra. They asked us if we would come and visit them and interview them. We did that in two different locations in New Zealand. When we came home we put together this film called Pandora’s Pinwheels —
Senator URQUHART: You interviewed people —
Ms Green: We just thought we would go back to Waubra and talk to the people at Waubra because we had been emailing them over the year. People around the world kept on emailing us and asking us to come and interview them.
Senator URQUHART: So you conducted interviews in 15 countries, as I understand it from your submission. Is that how you got the contact information on the people you interviewed?
Ms Green: I do not understand your question. Everywhere we were travelling people kept on emailing us and contacting us and asking if we would come and interview them and talk with them. They wanted to go on camera and tell their story. We had no agenda; we had no plan. We work in the healthcare industry; we talk about various illnesses and disease states, and we educate doctors and nurses about disease states. I am sorry; I want to retract that: we find a cross-section where patients are having issues with the communication around their disease state, and the doctors and nurses are having issues around communicating with their patients. We find those intersections and help doctors and nurses better communicate with the patients. So we are trying to improve patient care. That is what we do as one of the core competencies of our business.
When we found the health problems with the wind turbines and when we saw in every country we visited that people were saying the same thing, we wanted to get that word out to people like you who are hearing from your constituents that they are having health problems. That is all I want to do — to provide you with the truth.
Senator DAY: Ms Green, as you might imagine, we have received submissions from hundreds of people who have reported adverse health impacts and yet we are being accused of trying to destroy the wind industry. We are being accused of rigging this inquiry and of being engaged in a political stitch up. What has been your experience with such hostility towards genuine inquiry?
Ms Green: I really do not have a response for you, Senator. I have heard a lot of stories from people and I have experiences myself, but I really do not have a response on that topic.
Senator DAY: Okay. I will follow up then: you say that a number of governments around the world are realising there is a need for more or better regulation surrounding the wind energy industry. Which governments are doing better in this area, in your opinion?
Ms Green: I know that in my state, I have a new governor and my governor has a background in health care, and I am expecting that my governor understands that people do have health problems when they live and work too close to wind turbines in my state.
Senator BACK: Ms Green, I have just one quick question; I know that we are over time. In Australia, we are proceeding to have independent medical research undertaken for the first time. One of the proposals put to us is that they try and simulate this effect of either noise or infrasound, and do so in a one-off exposure in a clinically sterile circumstance for exposure times of somewhere between 10 to 30 minutes and an hour. From what you have learned and heard — and from interviewing people — do you think there would be anything to be learned in exposing somebody for a very limited period of time, and once only, in a sort of laboratory-type circumstance? Do you believe that is likely to lead to any reasonable outcome or result that we might be able to use?
Ms Green: Senator, I am not a researcher or a doctor. But given what I have heard from people and what people have reported to me, I find it highly unlikely that that would have any results that would have any validity.
Senator BACK: Thank you.
CHAIR: Thank you for evidence today to the committee, Ms Green. You will receive questions on notice and if you are able to come back to us with answers to those, that would be appreciated.
Ms Green: Absolutely. I would like to thank the committee; the chair, Senator Madigan, and the members of the committee, and also to thank you, Graham.
CHAIR: Thank you, Ms Green.
Hansard 29, June 2015
Ms Green’s evidence is available on the Parliament’s website here. And her submission to the Inquiry is available here (sub467_Green).
Ordinarily, STT has let the Senate’s witnesses do the talking, but the Inquisition launched by Labor’s Anne Urquhart is, self-evidently, worthy of a little passing comment.
That her questions were virulently loaded in favour of the wind power fraud, is largely a product of the fact that the vast bulk of them were drawn up by wind industry parasites and spruikers; like Andrew Brayfrom the Australian Wind Alliance and/or Leigh Ewbank from the Enemies of the Earth – who, during the Inquiry’s hearings, fed Urquhart with a constant stream of pointed fact-dodging, ‘Dorothy Dixers’ – directed to her iPad – in an infantile effort to protect their pay-masters’ interests.
Having adopted her usual tactic throughout the hearings – of trying to shoot the messenger because they did not hold highly relevant qualifications, such as journalism or sociology degrees – Urquhart – in a fit of disgust – drills Lilli-Anne about the obviously “insidious” purpose of the interviews that she’s carried out around the world.
And, from her – rabid-dog-with-a-bone – line of questioning, it’s apparent that Urquhart was utterly horrified that Lilli-Anne had the unmitigated temerity to interview ANYONE, ANYWHERE at ALL. This outrage would have never been sanctioned if Urquhart – and the other apparatchiks from the Ministry of Truth – had known about it.
You see, the wind industry, its parasites and spruikers – like Urquhart – cannot abide even the merest possibility that facts and evidence might see the light of day.
Suppression, obfuscation, denial – and, when all that fails – downright lying, characterises the wind industry; and all those that supp from the same subsidy trough.
Thankfully, however, those good Senators – not in the pay or thrall of the wind industry – were able to defeat efforts – by the likes of Urquhart – to suppress the truth; and, to thereby, maintain the stinking status quo.
Aussies Fighting Back Against the Irresponsible Wind Industry!
An extract from the Senate Select Committee on Wind Turbines Final Report
Professor Chapman and his critics
2.19 Professor Simon Chapman AO, Professor of Public Health at the University of Sydney, has been an outspoken critic of those who suffer ill-effects from wind turbines. In both his written and oral submissions, Professor Chapman cited many of his own publications in support for his view that:
…the phenomenon of people claiming to be adversely affected by exposure to wind turbines is best understood as a communicated disease that exhibits many signs of the classic psychosocial and nocebo phenomenon where negative expectations can translate into symptoms of tension and anxiety.
2.20 Several highly qualified and very experienced professionals have challenged this argument. Dr Malcolm Swinbanks, an acoustical engineer based in the United Kingdom, reasoned:
The argument that adverse health reactions are the result of nocebo effects, ie a directly anticipated adverse reaction, completely fails to consider the many cases where communities have initially welcomed the introduction of wind turbines, believing them to represent a clean, benign form of low-cost energy generation. It is only after the wind-turbines are commissioned, that residents start to experience directly the adverse nature of the health problems that they can induce.
2.21 The committee highlights the fact that Professor Chapman is not a qualified, registered nor experienced medical practitioner, psychiatrist, psychologist, acoustician, audiologist, physicist or engineer. Accordingly:
- he has not medically assessed a single person suffering adverse health impacts from wind turbines;
- his research work has been mainly—and perhaps solely—from an academic perspective without field studies;
- his views have been heavily criticised by several independent medical and acoustic experts in the international community; and
- many of his assertions do not withstand fact check analyses.
2.22 Professor Chapman has made several claims which are contrary to the evidence gathered by this committee. First, he argues that the majority of Australia’s wind turbines have never received a single complaint. There are various problems with this statement:
- wind turbines located significant distances from residents will not generate complaints;
- many residents suffering adverse health effects were not aware of any nexus between their health and the impact of wind turbines in order to make a complaint;
- just because residents do not lodge a formal complaint does not mean they are not suffering adverse health effects;
- data obtained by Professor Chapman from wind farm operators of the numbers of complaints lodged cannot be relied upon; and
- the use of non-disclosure clauses and ‘good neighbour agreements’ legally restricts people from making adverse public statements or complaints.
2.23 Second, Professor Chapman has argued that complaints of adverse health effects from wind turbines tend to be limited to Anglophone nations. However, the committee has received written and oral evidence from several sources directly contradicting this view. The German Medical Assembly recently submitted a motion to the executive board of the German Medical Association calling for the German government to provide the necessary funding to research adverse health effects. This would not have happened in the absence of community concern. Moreover, Dr Bruce Rapley has argued that in terms of the limited number—and concentrated nature—of wind farm complaints:
It is the reporting which is largely at fault. The fact is that people are affected by this, and the numbers are in the thousands. I only have to look at the emails that cross my desk from all over the world. I get bombarded from the UK, Ireland, France, Canada, the United States, Australia, Germany. There are tonnes of these things out there but, because the system does not understand the problem, nor does it have a strategy, many of those complaints go unlisted.
2.24 Third, Professor Chapman has queried that if turbines are said to have acute, immediate effects on some people, why were there no such reports until recent years given that wind turbines have operated in different parts of the world for over 25 years. Several submissions to the committee have stated that adverse health effects from wind turbines do not necessarily have an acute immediate effect and can take time to manifest.
2.25 Fourth, Professor Chapman contests that people report symptoms from even micro-turbines. The committee heard evidence that once people are sensitised to low frequency infrasound, they can be affected by a range of noise sources, including large fans used in underground coal mines, coal fired power stations, gas fired power stations and even small wind turbines. As acoustician Dr Bob Thorne told the committee:
Low-frequency noise from large fans is a well-known and well-published issue, and wind turbines are simply large fans on top of a big pole; no more, no less. They have the same sort of physical characteristics; it is just that they have some fairly unique characteristics as well. But annoyance from low-frequency sound especially is very well known.
2.26 Fifth, Professor Chapman contends that there are apparently only two known examples anywhere in the world of wind turbine hosts complaining about the turbines on their land. However, there have been several Australian wind turbine hosts who have made submissions to this inquiry complaining of adverse health effects. Paragraphs 2.11–2.12 (above) noted the example of Mr Clive Gare and his wife from Jamestown. Submitters have also directed attention to the international experience. In Texas in 2014, twenty-three hosts sued two wind farm companies despite the fact that they stood to gain more than $50 million between them in revenue. The committee also makes the point that contractual non-disclosure clauses and ‘good neighbour’ agreements have significantly limited hosts from speaking out. This was a prominent theme of many submissions.
2.27 Sixth, Professor Chapman claims that there has been no case series or even single case studies of so-called wind turbine syndrome published in any reputable medical journal. But Professor Chapman does not define ‘reputable medical journal’ nor does he explain why the category of journals is limited to medical (as distinct, for example, from scientific or acoustic). The committee cannot therefore challenge this assertion. However, the committee does note that a decision to publish—or not to publish—an article in a journal is ultimately a business decision of the publisher: it does not necessarily reflect the quality of the article being submitted, nor an acknowledgment of the existence or otherwise of prevailing circumstances. The committee also notes that there exist considerable published and publicly available reports into adverse health effects from wind turbines.
2.28 The committee also notes that a peer reviewed case series crossover study involving 38 people was published in the form of a book by American paediatrician Dr Nina Pierpont, PhD, MD. Dr Pierpont’s Report for Clinicians and the raw case data was submitted by her to a previous Australian Senate inquiry (2011) to which Dr Pierpont also provided oral testimony. Further, at a workshop conducted by the NHMRC in June 2011, acoustical consultant Dr Geoffrey Leventhall stated that the symptoms of ‘wind turbine syndrome’ (as identified by Dr Pierpont), and what he and other acousticians refer to as ‘noise annoyance’, were the same. Dr Leventhall has also acknowledged Dr Pierpont’s peer reviewed work in identifying susceptibility or risk factors for developing wind turbine syndrome / ‘noise annoyance’. Whilst Dr Leventhall is critical of some aspects of Dr Pierpont’s research, he does state:
Pierpont has made one genuine contribution to the science of environmental noise, by showing that a proportion of those affected have underlying medical conditions, which act to increase their susceptibility.
2.29 Seventh, Professor Chapman claims that no medical practitioner has come forward with a submission to any committee in Australia about having diagnosed disease caused by a wind farm. Again, Professor Chapman fails to define ‘disease’. Nonetheless, both this committee, and inquiries undertaken by two Senate Standing Committees, have received oral and written evidence from medical practitioners contrary to Professor Chapman’s claim.
2.30 Eighth, Professor Chapman claims that there is not a single example of an accredited acoustics, medical or environmental association which has given any credence to direct harmful effects of wind turbines. The committee notes that the semantic distinction between ‘direct’ and ‘indirect’ effects is not helpful. Dr Leventhall and the NHMRC describe stress, anxiety and sleep deprivation as ‘indirect’ effects, but these ailments nonetheless affect residents’ health.
2.31 Finally, Professor Chapman queries why there has never been a complainant that has succeeded in a common-law suit for negligence against a wind farm operator. This statement is simply incorrect. The committee is aware of court judgements against wind farm operators, operators making out of court settlements or withdrawing from proceedings, injunctions or shutdown orders being granted against operators, and properties adjacent to wind turbines being purchased by operators to avoid future conflict. The committee also reiterates its earlier point that contractual non-disclosure clauses have discouraged legal action by victims.
Once Again, Those Amazing Aussies are Fighting Back!
Three Magnificent Women Take On Australia’s Monstrous Wind Power Outfits & their Pathetic Political Backers
August 12, 2015 by
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The wind industry in Australia is in full-scale panic because the recently completed Senate Inquiry into the great wind power fraud turned a (long-overdue) blowtorch on the biggest rort in Australian history, with their thumping report on Australia’s wind power fraud – available here: Senate Report
The first 200 pages involve a detailed and thorough analysis of every aspect of the most ludicrous piece of energy ‘policy’ ever devised; the balance – written by the wind industry – and headed ‘Labor’s dissenting report’ – requires the suspension of our good friends, ‘logic’ and reason’, in order to digest.
Last Tuesday, STT Champion, Alan Jones picked up on the recommendations – first, on his 2GB breakfast radio show and, later, on Sky News – on ‘Richo + Jones’.
Alan’s morning radio show reaches some 2 million listeners through over 77 Stations, Countrywide; Sky New’s ‘Richo + Jones’ is a top rater, amongst politicians and pundits of all persuasions. So, when AJ, talks – those in power tend to listen.
Along with applauding the efforts of the Senators on the Inquiry, Alan interviewed three of the most courageous, magnificent and stoic Australians of modern times – in Sonia Trist, Jan Hetherington and Annie Gardner. Each of them are entirely unnecessary victims of Australia’s great wind power fraud; and all of them are fighting back.
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Sonia Trist had her beautiful seaside home stolen by union super fund backed, Pacific Hydro – aided and abetted by the Federal government’s mandatory Renewable Energy Target:
‘Silly’ Sarah Henderson joins ‘Disappointing’ Dan Tehan, as another ‘Green’ in Conservative Clothing
Jan Hetherington and Annie Gardner have the misfortune of trying to live next door to AGL’s Macarthur wind farm disaster; suffering the daily onslaught of incessant turbine generated low-frequency noise and infrasound from 140 3MW, Vestas V112s.
In modern times, we’re told that the internet is all; when it comes to spreading news and telling peoples’ stories. However, take your time to listen to this little broadcast which demonstrates that – in the hands of a master – radio has lost none of its awesome power to convey human dignity, grace, strength and suffering. STT commends it as one very powerful piece of media.
Alan Jones AO: Well the final report of the latest Senate inquiry into wind farms has been tabled in the Parliament. It’s urged that the Parliament should draw up National rules restricting how wind farms are built and operated and punish States that don’t accept them.
The final report, published yesterday evening by the Senate Committee in wind farms puts forward a range of measures to curb them, including recommendations to reduce support for projects under the National Renewable Energy Target. The report recommended subsidies to new wind farms be limited to 5 years rather than the current period of 20 years.
This is ridiculous isn’t it? Subsidies to wind farms. There are mechanics, and bakers and taxi owners and hire car owners all listening to me this morning-businesses everywhere listening to this program – they don’t get any subsidies at all. Why should foreign-owned wind farms get 2 cents?
But the Clean Energy Council, wind energy’s peak body says ‘limiting wind farm subsidies to 5 years will destroy the future of the industry’. How can an outfit make any sort of claim to commercial viability if its unable to survive without 20 years of subsidies? And a government, which is operating on borrowed money?
Amid the recommendations is a proposal that an independent scientific panel be established which would have the power to block new projects being registered by the government, if it believed human health was at risk. The panel would help draw up “National wind farm guidelines” which the Federal government would introduce and ask State governments to adopt. The guidelines will include – and this by the way is just the Senate Committee’s recommendation- would include National standards on wind farms for infrasound, vibrations, air craft safety, indigenous heritage, birds and bats, shadow flicker, fire risk, electromagnetic interference and blade glint, amongst other things. Remember amazingly wind farms are currently approved and none of these receive any consideration.
The committee recommends that if a State government didn’t accept the new National measure for infrasound and low frequency noise, the Committee recommends that wind projects built in those States should not get Renewable Energy Certificates, that is, money. Yours. Unbelievable. Money – which subsidises these wind farms.
But cop this, this is the ultimate kick in the guts from Canberra. A spokesman for the Environment Minister Greg Hunt said ‘The government had no plans to make further changes to the Renewable Energy Target’. In other words the Senate committee all party committee can get stuffed. In one hit the recommendation seemed to be ruled out. Shouldn’t be available if they’re operated in States which don’t comply with new National noise rules. Remember noise guidelines are a State issue and a number of States refuse to agree to a National noise standard at the last COAG Meeting. Believe me, this renewable energy stuff is money down the drain. The cost of it with subsidies is exorbitant and you’ll pay by your electricity bills or if you’re a business, via your energy costs. And without subsidies this whole industry is not viable.
Yes it’d be nice to have clean quiet cheap energy, a bulk supply of it – everyone would love that, but the reality is that it doesn’t exist. There are wind and solar generators being built all over the world and they only add a small amount to the overall power demand and this is all because of a problem with carbon dioxide. And this is all happening because there’s a Paris conference coming up. And you know the story about carbon dioxide the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere is 0.04% of all gases. 97% of of that 0.04 of a percent, is naturally occurring. You can’t effect it. Only 3% of it, 0.04 of a percent is caused by human activity. And we, Australia, are responsible for 1% of that 3%. What are we doing? Spending billions of dollars and Bill Shorten says well we’ll have 50% renewable energy, 50% by 2030. Utterly unaffordable, impossible to implement.
And Tony Abbott said when he became Prime Minister he wasn’t going to be chasing Holden up the road with a blank cheque. Why are we chasing foreign owned wind turbine companies up the road with a blank cheque?
Now the problem here is we’ve got ground-breaking research from Germany on low frequency infrasound which concludes that ‘exposure to infrasound below the range of hearing stimulates parts of the brain that warn of danger’. German research. Only a couple of months old. That human beings can ‘hear sounds lower than had been assumed and the mechanisms of sound perception are much more complex than previously thought’. Scientists in Japan have measured brain function and reported last year – it showed the brains of Japanese wind turbine workers could not achieve a relaxed state. In Tehran a study of 45 people, found that despite all the ‘good benefits’ of wind turbines, it can be stated, this technology has health risks. The German project leader, Christian Cox said, ‘it’s been agreed that infrasound is perceived by human beings and it represents an unknown hazard to human health’.
Well, the people who complain to me in droves are fools, idiots and ignored. Thank God they’re women because women don’t take no for an answer. I’ve got women here who have suffered. Sonia Trist is on the line – Sonia good morning.
Sonia Trist: Good morning Alan.
Alan Jones AO: So you are 620m wind farms from your kitchen window.
Sonia Trist: From my closest wind turbine, yes.
Alan Jones AO: And your Federal member is this Dan Tehan – who is nowhere to be seen.
Sonia Trist: Dan Tehan, nowhere to be seen.
Alan Jones AO: You’ve written to him, no answers.
Sonia Trist: Repeatedly, yes.
Alan Jones AO: Repeatedly. And this Pacific Hydro mob are at Cape Bridgewater, they’ve got 29 wind generators.
Sonia Trist: They certainly have, yes.
Alan Jones AO: And it impacts on you in disturbing and harmful ways.
Sonia Trist: Most certainly, most certainly, extremely disturbing.
Alan Jones AO: But you’re just a dumb complainant.
Sonia Trist: Well, I think one thing that you learn Alan, when you lived near these things for a while, If you can possibly, possibly keep breathing, you don’t give up. And you were saying, you sort of cast a shadow on the possibility of the Senator’s recommendations getting through, well I’ve learned to look at it a different way, I think they’ve opened the window to – they’ve revealed so much, that worked so hard, they’ve open the window to the next step that we have to take, this is a journey.
Alan Jones AO: Sonia, you said something very significant, she wrote to me Sonia, and she said, ‘subsequent generations won’t march in our memory – surrounded by fields of concrete, cabling, collapsed towers and fragmenting fibreglass blades we’ve created layers of industrial graffiti across rural Australia. What a monument to progress in a young country’.
Just hang on Sonia, I’ve got Jan Hetherington on the line. Jan Good morning.
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Jan Hetherington: Oh hello Alan.
Alan Jones AO: You’ve suffered a range of ailments, haven’t you?
Jan Hetherington: I have yes, I have.
Alan Jones AO: No one wants to listen to you.
Jan Hetherington: No, nobody wants to listen to me.
Alan Jones AO: You paid $10,000 for testing in your own home.
Jan Hetherington: I did, yes, yes.
Alan Jones AO: You wake up 4-5 times a night.
Jan Hetherington: Yes, yes.
Alan Jones AO: You wake up with vibrations in your body and your eyes are wobbly.
Jan Hetherington: Yes, yes.
Alan Jones AO: You said the impact on human physiology from low frequency noise has been known for over 50 years.
Jan Hetherington: That’s right.
Alan Jones AO: And you’ve reported to authorities all these studies.
Jan Hetherington: Yes.
Alan Jones AO: And that they have frequent noise and infrasound creates nausea. You’ve talked about vertigo-like symptoms.
Jan Hetherington: Yes.
Alan Jones AO: No one wants to know.
Jan Hetherington: No, nobody does.
Alan Jones AO: AGL are the people that you have been dealing with – they ignore you.
Jan Hetherington: Yes, they do. I send in many, many complaints and I …
Alan Jones AO: In fact you’ve written to them, you’ve written to all senators and all Federal MPs.
Jan Hetherington: That’s right. and I don’t hear from a lot of them. There’s only the, well only about 4 or 5 that are interested in it – and Senator Madigan and Leyonhjelm and Senator Back and what have you – they are interested. Our local member Dan Tehan, couldn’t ..
Alan Jones AO: Unbelievable this bloke, this bloke Tehan.
Jan Hetherington: He couldn’t care less.
Alan Jones AO: You said to said to me early this morning ‘you woke up at 4.35 with a very sharp ice pick stabbing on the top of my head.
Jan Hetherington: Oh yes.
Alan Jones AO: … behind my right ear.
Jan Hetherington: Yes
Alan Jones AO: ‘This was followed by vibration running through my body, then came the headache in my right temple and right eye. I just had to get out of bed. Unfortunately there’s no running away from this infrasound. Nothing can stop it’.
Jan Hetherington: That’s right, that’s right, it is terrible … oh it’s hard to talk about it because it’s so, it’s so real, it happens.
Alan Jones AO: I know Jan. I know. Jan has written to me and said ‘I am sick of living like this. This is not what I intended for my future. It was to live my life in peace on my farm and enjoy the natural beauty of the landscape, not to live in fear for my health and well-being. It’d be nice to think that just one of you reads this and thinks, yes there is a problem and decides to do the right thing by the residents suffering at the hands of the Macarthur wind factory’.
Jan Hetherington: That’s right, that’s right. I just wish somebody would do something. Sorry Alan.
Alan Jones AO: Jan, you hang on – we’re here. But just hang on there, ‘cos I’ve got Annie Gardner. Who’s, well this women is built of concrete and granite. Annie, good morning. You’ve written to everybody.
Annie Gardner: Good morning Alan, yes I do, and I keep doing it in the hope that one day somebody might do something.
Alan Jones AO: Including the ABC and now they no longer accept your emails.
Annie Gardner: Yes that’s been going on since the start of the year Alan. I have a group of journalists, probably about 20, on my complaint list and every time I send complaints to everybody, it bounces back undeliverable. But in actual fact, it’s not just those journalists. I tried someone in the ABC I’d met years ago, which wasn’t on this list, and it bounced back too. I’ve written to the Chairman of the ABC over five weeks ago I think, and still haven’t had any reply from my request.
Alan Jones AO: No, No answer, no answer from those members. And I have spoken to Annie before because this destroyed your ultra-fine merino wool growing enterprise – the sheep simply couldn’t produce in this environment. You’ve written to me to say ‘we suffer badly from infrasound emitted by the turbines in the form of headaches, severe nose pressure, excruciating ear pain, nausea, chest burning, just to mention a few. As a result from being hammered by infrasound, we’re unable to sleep at night. We’re forced to leave our home and property for at least 2 nights a week just to get some sleep’. I mean, how – you wrote that Annabel Crabb on the ABC described you on the Robyn Williams science show, you people who complain about health impacts are ‘dick brains’.
Annie Gardner: That’s correct, she did and I wrote to her, actually inviting her to come and visit us and realise that we’re not necessarily dick brains, we’re actually, some of us are quite intelligent people, if we weren’t, we would have lost our farms years ago because of, you know, unfortunate financial …
Alan Jones AO: But you can’t get local government, or anybody, politicians. And you’ve said and Jan says, and poor Jan can’t even talk about it. There are people who wake up in the early hours suffering from vibrations and dizziness caused by giant wind energy plants and Macarthur, the one you’re exposed to, is the largest of its kind in the Southern hemisphere.
Annie Gardner: That’s correct Alan.
Alan Jones AO: And a farmer, Ron Gelbart said he regularly had to leave his home to sleep in Hamilton. ‘Something is there and we can’t understand but we can not live with’. I mean everywhere, people are writing and telling these stories and Parliamentarians won’t listen.
Annie Gardner: No. That’s correct Alan, not many of them, except for the good Senators.
Alan Jones AO: Well David Leyonhjelm is but now we’ve got the statement by Greg Hunt’s spokesperson saying we’re not changing anything about the Renewable Energy Target. Just stay there Annie, a quick word, because we are beaten for time. Jan – just come back to Jan,
Jan Hetherington: Yes
Alan Jones AO: I just hope…it makes you just a bit better that we do care.
Jan Hetherington: Thank you, at least somebody does. And I’m sorry – I just get emotional.
Alan Jones AO: Don’t apologise. Don’t apologise. These people should be made to live in the circumstances you are enduring.
Jan Hetherington: Well we’ve invited so many people to come and stay with us but nobody will take the offer up.
Alan Jones AO: Invited them … no one comes, no one comes. Sonia, Just to say goodbye to you and keep in touch.
Sonia Trist: Alan – thank you very much.
Alan Jones AO: Keep in touch.
Sonia Trist: I certainly will.
Alan Jones AO: You let me know when you write letters to these people and they refuse to answer. You let me know.
Sonia Trist: I certainly will, and thanks for your work Alan, bye.
Alan Jones AO: Not at all, and Annie, hang in we talk everyday. This is disgraceful, we’ll get somewhere.
Annie Gardner: Thank you very much Alan for your help, we certainly appreciate it.
Alan Jones AO: Not at all. And we will be looking at this issue again tonight with Riccho and Jones, it’s an absolute national disgrace.
That wonderful women like these are reduced to tears on national radio is nothing short of a complete disgrace; that they are left to plead to our political betters through the media, for an end to the misery that they – and hundreds of others like them – have been forced to endure at the hands of an industry that treats all and sundry with callous disregard, is a moral and political outrage.
Not content with that stand-out piece of radio journalism, Alan followed it up that night on Sky, with an equally brilliant effort. This time interviewing Senator David Leyonhjelm about the Senate’s recommendations; and bringing Annie Gardner into the Sky News studio for a reprise of her morning’s efforts on 2GB – only for Annie to excel as a voice for those set upon by an industry and its political backers – all of whom stand shorn of any trace of human empathy or compassion.
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"Mothers Against Wind Turbines™" Phoenix Rising... 