Wind Pushers in “Panic Mode”. Aussies Planning to Make them Liable for Damages!

March 29, 2015March 29, 2015 / 1957chev / Leave a comment

Top Acoustics Professor Calls for Full Compensation for Wind Farm Victims, as Council Calls for “National Noise Cops”

March 29, 2015 by stopthesethings

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The Australian Senate Inquiry into the great wind power fraud hits the road tomorrow, 30 March – starting at Portland, Victoria (in the TAFE campus on Hurd Street from 8.30am) – the town next door to Pacific Hydro’s Cape Bridgewater disaster.

The hearing gives long-suffering residents there – and from elsewhere – a chance to hear Steven Cooper give an exposition on the findings of his groundbreaking study (see our posts here and here and here); it’s also the first opportunity for wind farm victims to lay out in tragic detail their misery and suffering before the Inquiry: a public forum, where sharks like Pac Hydro can’t – despite its best efforts to date – cover up its shameful conduct any longer.

Note that the opportunity to make submissions to the Inquiry has been extended to 4 May (as we’ll detail further below).

The Inquiry also provides the first and best opportunity to address the criminal manner in which the wind industry, and those that aid and abet it have trashed the ability of people to sleep in their own homes.

The wind industry and its institutional accomplices – particularly, the Clean Energy Regulator (see our post here), state and local government authorities, EPAs, etc – continue to ride roughshod over peoples’ common law rights to live in, use and otherwise enjoy their homes and properties: homes that, in far too many cases, have become worthless and un-liveable, due to “planning rules” that are so lax as to be risible.

Faced with the very real threat of fronting up to litigation – where liability in favour of the victims is – thanks to Cooper’s work – a virtual ‘slam dunk’, the local Glenelg Shire Council has gone into damage control.

The Council now wants a “publicly-accessible register established for all complaints against wind farms and an independent authority to enforce compliance of standards” (as detailed in the story from The Standard below).

Now that little suggestion – clearly aimed at legal tail-covering, and, no doubt, the result of a prod from the Council’s insurer – leads to the very sensible idea of having a “National Industrial Noise Authority” (for the purposes of this post, let’s call them, the “National Noise Cops”).

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The National Noise Cops should be given the power, resources and authority to do for wind farm victims precisely what Councils, State and Federal governments have manifestly failed to do: namely, monitor and control industrial noise sources – including industrial wind turbines – shutting down those sources when they interfere with peoples’ common law rights to live in and enjoy their own homes; and to penalise the offenders when they refuse to follow the Noise Cops’ orders and directions.

Here’s The Standard setting out the Glenelg Shire Council’s response to its little legal-liability-epiphany.

Glenelg Shire Council seeks complaints register for wind farms
The Standard
Peter Collins
27 March 2015

GLENELG Shire Council wants a publicly-accessible register established for all complaints against wind farms and an independent authority to enforce compliance of standards.

In its submission to next Monday’s hearing in Portland of a Senate committee, the shire says there is considerable community fatigue and frustration around regulation of the industry.

“Council perceives this and the lack of community confidence in the regulation as a major concern,” shire planning and economic development manager Stephen Kerrigan wrote.

Seventeen of the 140 submissions lodged with the select committee on wind turbines will be heard at the Portland hearing in the TAFE campus on Hurd Street from 8.30am.

Another five local business and community members have also been listed to give evidence.

The committee, chaired by Senator John Madigan of Ballarat, is due to hand down its report by June 24.

Acoustics expert Steven Cooper will be first off the blocks with a summary of his report which found trends linked to sensations reported by residents living near the Cape Bridgewater wind farm.

He will be followed by Pacific Hydro which commissioned him for the landmark study in response to ongoing complaints from residents.

The shire council said it was also concerned about lack of credible information on health impacts of wind farms and suggested the National Health and Medical Research Council undertake an “expedited authoritative study” into the issue.

Mr Kerrigan noted recent work by the Municipal Association of Victoria in brokering an agreement with the Environment Protection Authority for auditors to provide monitoring and compliance services to councils and the wind power industry.

The council highlighted “significant” economic and social benefits from construction and operation of wind farms plus the detrimental effect on jobs caused by uncertainty on the renewable energy target.

About 100 jobs were cut from the workforce at Portland’s Keppel Prince, which was a major manufacturer of wind farm components.

Concern about the state government’s handing back responsibility to councils for issuing, enforcement and compliance of wind farm planning permits will also be aired.

“In closing, Glenelg Shire Council supports policies and processes which promote deployment of renewable energy projects, the attraction of clean energy investment and creation of jobs within the shire without posing undue risk to the health and wellbeing of its residents and ratepayers,” Mr Kerrigan said.
The Standard

Before we pick up again on the theme of noise standards and the National Noise Cops, STT can’t help but notice the drivel pitched up about “clean energy investment and creation of jobs”.

Germany, the world “leader”, when it comes to throwing billions in subsidies at wind power, has shown the wind industry’s argument about creating thousands of groovy, “green” jobs to be nothing more than a complete fiction (see our post here).

In Portland, Keppel Prince moans about the “loss” of 100 jobs due to uncertainty over the LRET. These boys clearly want to have their cake and eat it too. Its continued operation critically depends upon the life and longevity of the local aluminium smelter: if the smelter goes, Keppel Prince is finished.

And despite Keppel Prince bleating about “uncertainty” over the Renewable Energy Target, the continuation of the LRET guarantees (as a legislated fact) that the cost of electricity will go through the roof in the next four years, as an absolute “certainty”.

The LRET will add $50 billion in REC Tax/Subsidy to all Australian power bills: a whopping subsidy, designed to be directed to wind power outfits (see our post here). As a consequence of that $50 billion Federal Tax on electricity, mineral processors, like aluminium smelters will go the way of the Tasmanian Tiger – and with them, something like 4,500 REAL jobs (those directly employed by smelters) – and a further 12-13,000 REAL jobs in the wider aluminium industry (see our posts here and here andhere).

And, when the LRET inevitably smashes Australia’s mineral processors across the Country, its “collateral damage” will include every metal basher that builds and engineers the machinery and equipment they use: eg, engineers and metal fabricators that serve aluminium smelters, just like Keppel Prince. What’s that they say about being destroyed by greed and stupidity?

Now, back to Glenelg Shire Council’s talk about noise “standards” and an independent body to enforce them. The first, and most obvious point, is that the current “standards” were written by the wind industry; and deliberately designed to bury the real problem – incessant low-frequency noise and infrasound – a problem the wind industry has known about for over 30 years (see our post here).

It’s a problem which Steven Cooper’s Cape Bridgewater study has simply confirmed – according to America’s top acoustic experts, Dr Paul Schomer and George Hessler – the data gathered by Cooper itself proves the relationship between adverse health effects and turbine generated noise and vibration (see our post here).

And that work is backed up by top quality field research done last year by Professor Colin Hansen – and his team from Adelaide University at Waterloo – showing high-levels of turbine generated low-frequency noise and infrasound inside homes up to 8.7km from turbines (see our post here).

That work simply highlights the need for standards that actually take into account incessant low-frequency noise and infrasound; unlike the South Australian EPA’s farcical claim that “modern wind farms” don’t produce infrasound at all (see our post here).

Colin Hansen – easily the best-qualified and most respected Australian academic when it comes to noise and vibration – has pitched in with an offer to bring his immense skills to the task of elaborating on the precise cause of the sensations and symptoms suffered by victims (ie, the particular levels and frequencies generated). But it’s his utterly sensible call for full compensation for those victims – that appears in this piece from The Australian’s Graham Lloyd – that we’ll pick up on in a moment.

Call to subject others to wind farm noise
The Australian
Graham Lloyd
26 March 2015

Recordings of infrasound and low-frequency noise from wind turbines should be played into the bedrooms of random rural residents to investigate health concerns, a senior acoustics academic says.

Emeritus professor Colin Hansen from the University of Adelaide says testing should be conducted on people who do not live near wind farms.

In a submission to a Senate inquiry next week, he says if a health concern from infrasound and low-frequency noise is proven authorities should state what level of impact or “collateral damage” is acceptable and set up a compensation fund to buy out affected residents.

Professor Hansen was a peer reviewer of the National Health and Medical Research Council’s review of the health impacts of wind farms.

Some residents living near wind turbines across the world have complained of sleep disturbance and other seasickness-type symptoms.

The council said it would support research that addressed the relationship between wind-farm noise and health effects.

It would also fund research into the broader social and environmental circumstances that influence annoyance, sleep disturbance, quality of life and health effects that are reported by residents living in proximity to wind farms.

The call for research follows the recent council statement concluding the body of direct evidence on wind farms and health was small and of poor quality.

“Internationally, there is little research evidence regarding the health effects of wind farms,” the council said.

“Over 4000 papers were identified in the reviews and, of these papers, only 13 studies were found that considered possible relationships between wind-farm emissions and health outcomes.

“Only one of these studies was conducted in Australia.”

The council expert group that oversaw the review identified areas for further research.

The review did not include results from what has been called a breakthrough study by acoustics expert Steven Cooper at the Cape Bridgewater wind farm.

Mr Cooper will be the first witness to address the Senate inquiry when it meets in Portland next week.

US acoustics expert Paul Schomer told the inquiry in a submission that the Cooper study “shows that wind turbine emissions affect some people independently of them seeing turbines, hearing turbines, or feeling vibrations from turbines”.

“We, the entire world, desperately need proper, valid research to determine what effects wind turbine emissions have on people,” Dr Schomer said.

Pacific Hydro, which funded the Cooper study, has said it did not accept that a “cause and effect” relationship between wind farms and health impacts on nearby residents had been established by the Cooper research.

But Mr Cooper said his study had provided a methodology for full-scale medical trials.

Professor Hansen said recordings played to residents living a long way from wind farms could help determine what parts of the noise spectrum cause the most annoyance and adverse effects on people.

They could help determine what physical mechanisms were responsible for the undesirable noise components by theoretical analysis, laboratory experiments and on-site measurements, he said.

And they could help determine what changes to turbine design and wind farm layout could be made to minimise the generation of the undesirable noise components.
The Australian

While victims could bring those responsible to account in private litigation, STT begs the poser: why should the victims of a government sponsored subsidy scheme have to pay upfront to be compensated for their inevitable suffering and losses?

The wind industry exists (and only exists) by reason of the Large-Scale RET and the REC Tax/Subsidy directed to wind power generators under it – and paid for by ALL Australian electricity consumers, including those with homes and properties adjacent to wind farms (see our posts hereand here).

As the beneficiaries of what Liberal MP – Angus “the Enforcer” Taylor properly describes as “corporate welfare on steroids”, mandating that the wind industry fully compensate wind farm neighbours for all of their losses seems only fair.

At the Federal level, Australia is all about compensation: whether it’s Centrelink, a National Disability Insurance Scheme or a national healthcare scheme (ie Medicare), the Federal government has no trouble at all forcing taxpayers to cough up and ensure that those without, or who have suffered some of the bad luck dished up by daily life, get compensated.

In the same vein, the wind industry has already pocketed something like $9 billion worth of REC Tax/Subsidies – and is lining up for a further $50 billion of the same under the LRET: “compensation” for producing “renewable” energy that they hope to gleefully pocket at power consumers’ expense.

The wind industry’s victims have, therefore, been belted twice: once through their power bills, paying for the subsidies that resulted in the giant fans speared into their backyards; and again, through their personal loss and suffering, and the economic loss of the value of their (often unliveable and/or worthless) homes and properties.

The wind industry and its parasites were pretty quick to set the ‘rules’ in a way that means wind power outfits can operate around the clock, without any regard for the harm caused (eg, sleep deprivation) – ‘rules’ maliciously designed to discriminate against wind farm neighbours.

These are the boys who have sought to evade and avoid any kind of reasonable controls on their operations.

From the outset, they’ve made every effort to ensure that irrelevant and, therefore, woefully inadequate noise standards were adopted and are maintained – for a chronology of wind industry deception on this score, see our post: Three Decades of Wind Industry Deception: A Chronology of a Global Conspiracy of Silence and Subterfuge.

And these boys have doggedly refused to cooperate whenever victims are trying to impose even those woeful standards; and who now – like the Clean Energy Council and the Australian Wind Alliance – are quick to pooh-pooh Steven Cooper’s study on obviously spurious grounds; and who will fight tooth-and-nail to prevent any possibility of the same thing ever happening again.

So, it seems only fair that wind power outfits – who benefit from the largest single industry subsidy scheme in the history of the Commonwealth – see some of the value of the REC Tax/Subsidy (that they would otherwise keep for themselves) get siphoned off to compensate those whose lives and interests they’ve bent over backwards to destroy.

It also seems more than fair and reasonable to have the Federal Government establish, and properly fund, a body (the National Industrial Noise Authority, discussed above) that will enforce a uniform industrial noise standard – carefully designed by people like Colin Hansen and Steven Cooper – at wind farms; and ALL other industrial operations.

This body, and its rules, should not be allowed to distinguish between noise sources; so that a Coal-Seam-Gas Plant or Gas Turbine Power Generator will be subject to the same standard, rules of operation and penalties as wind farm operators, which – unlike many other noise sources, like airports and live music venues – currently operate around the clock, with complete impunity. And, worse, with the complete endorsement of State “regulators”, like the South Australian EPA that runs in lockstep with the wind industry’s pet acoustic consultants, who, rather helpfully, wrote the “standards”, which the EPA happily fails to enforce (see our post here).

This is not just about setting up another regulator; it’s about overcoming institutional corruption and systemic regulatory failure, in order to ensure that the long-standing, common law rights of Australian citizens’ to live in, use and enjoy their homes and properties are protected and preserved. The people of this Country of ours deserve nothing less; wherever they live; and whatever the noise source (see our post here).

Remember, governments set this mess up in the first place; and, therefore, it is well within their power to clean it up and put things right.

And now is the hour.

Fortunately, all these matters and more are on the radar and squarely in the sights of the Senate Select Committee, its terms of reference including the following:

(1) That a select committee, to be known as the Select Committee on Wind Turbines be established to inquire into and report on the application of regulatory governance and economic impact of wind turbines by 24 June 2015, with particular reference to:

…

(b) how effective the Clean Energy Regulator is in performing its legislative responsibilities and whether there is a need to broaden those responsibilities;

(c) the role and capacity of the National Health and Medical Research Council in providing guidance to state and territory authorities;

(d) the implementation of planning processes in relation to wind farms, including the level of information available to prospective wind farm hosts;

(e) the adequacy of monitoring and compliance governance of wind farms;

(f) the application and integrity of national wind farm guidelines;

(i) any related matter.

If, like those unfortunates at Cape Bridgewater, you are suffering from, or are threatened by, turbine generated low-frequency noise and infrasound – then you’ve got chance to have your say on:

the ‘standards’ and planning ‘controls’ that are so lax as to be risible;
the callous conduct of wind power outfits, like Pac Hydro & Co;
the institutional corruption that not only permits, but which actively defends that conduct;
the losses you have suffered, or are likely to suffer, as a result of the above;
why there should be mandatory compensation payable to wind farm neighbours for all such losses (incurred or anticipated) caused by wind power generators; and
that the compensation payable should come from a fund set-up through a mandatory levy placed on the RECs received by all wind power generators;
the need for, and merits of, establishing a properly funded National Industrial Noise Authority to protect common law property rights; and
the need for a proper standard for that body to enforce – a standard that actually protects peoples’ common law rights to sleep in, and otherwise enjoy, their homes.

So why not get in there and hammer them, by dropping a detailed submission to the Senate Inquiry along those lines?

Note that the opportunity to make submissions to the Committee ends on 4 May 2015. See the link here.

Proponents of Wind Turbines, Beware! Reality Bites…..HARD!

March 23, 2015 / 1957chev / Leave a comment

Conscience Bites Commissioner for Approving Wind Farm & Causing Hatred & Division

March 23, 2015 by stopthesethings

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As the world wakes up to the scale and scope of the great wind power fraud – its inordinate cost to power consumers and taxpayers – the state-sponsored, malfeasance of the wind power outfits that ride the subsidy gravy train, and roughshod over hard-working rural people – and the bitter community division and hatred its roll-out brings – those who have aided and abetted it, have a choice: either pop their consciences into a lead-lined box (so as to avoid any pangs of personal guilt); or front-up to the better Angels of their natures; and seek redemption, and forgiveness, for the unnecessary damage that they’ve caused.

Jane Harper has, to her credit, plumped for the latter. Here’s her story.

Tipton County Indiana Commissioner voted for “wind farms”, now lives with regrets
Jane Harper
Huntington County Concerned Citizens
19 March 2015

Dear Howard County Commissioners and Council Members,

I am writing to you all as a former commissioner colleague who aided in the negotiations and agreements with E.ON Climate Renewables with Tipton County in 2011.

From the onset, I was open to windfarm development in a small section of Tipton County because the commissioners had received no opposition and I felt that the landowners wanted it.

My own family was offered an opportunity to lease land to E.ON and we declined because my husband did not care to farm around the towers, and I just didn’t want to look at them. I set my own personal views aside and made decisions based on what I felt the majority of the public wanted. I was outspoken enough, however, to say that I would never support a plan to cover a large portion of the county with wind turbines.

As it turned out, the problem was that when the decisions were being made to build “Wildcat I”, the commissioners were not hearing from the “majority”. People really did not know this was happening, or if they did, they did not perceive it to be as “invasive” as it was. As you know, public notices are small and often overlooked in the newspaper, so not much resistance was present … until the towers went up, and people saw how enormous and intrusive they were. The red blinking lights even disturb my own summer evenings and my home is 6 miles from the closest tower!!!

You don’t have the time to read all that I could tell you, so in a nutshell, I just want to say that I wish I had the knowledge then that I have now.

However, what I can do, is to try to pass some of what I know, onto the elected officials in the neighboring county, so that perhaps you can gain some wisdom from what I learned in the school of hard knocks.

In Tipton County … my 83 year old mother is mad at me (since I signed the agreements) because she no longer has colorful birds coming to her feeders … my brother’s view from his family dining room table used to be a vast expanse of crops and natural habitat … now that pristine ‘vista’ is forever marred by giant metal structures … neighbors hate each other … back and forth letters to the editor have been selling papers for over a year now … families are torn apart, and because the physical presence of the towers will be there for 30 years, these relationships will never be repaired. In short … this has become an issue that has divided our community like no other.

It has torn our county apart. The May, 2014 primary election is evidence that the majority of the voters supported candidates openly opposed to wind farm development and an incumbent commissioner was voted out of office due to his unwillingness to listen to the majority on any issue, including wind.

If I had this to do over, I would NEVER enter into an agreement with any wind company now that I know what it has done to my home community.

I am not proud that my name is on those documents.

The wind company has breached many parts of the agreement, but insist that their failures are “minor”. Their field representative is arrogant and cavalier in his attitude toward the people who are suffering with the effects of the noise and flicker.

You can’t lose something you never had … so you are not “losing” the supposed ‘windfall’ of money that the project purportedly brings in.

What you WILL lose however, cannot be measured in dollars.

You will lose the rural landscape as you know it and you will lose the closeness of “community spirit” because people will hate each other over this and the presence of the towers will always be a constant reminder of the rift … thus the wounds will never heal.

Please consider this: What do you think of a company that KNOWS it has fierce opposition from a segment of the Howard County citizenry, but would STILL want to build in your county?

It is akin to forcing themselves onto you when they KNOW they are not wanted by those in the project area who would be affected by their presence and are receiving no compensation for the change in their environment. How much of a “community partner” would they be when they really don’t care about the wishes of the people?

I don’t know anything about which “facts” are true and which “facts” are false with regard to property values and personal health issues.

But what I DO know as fact is this: Any issue that has become so contentious that it has caused large groups of people to assemble and vehemently oppose it … and which has caused so much heartache and angst among the citizenry … just cannot be good for the whole. I do not feel that Tipton County will ever wholly heal from the deep personal wounds incurred by many from the placement of wind turbines in our county.

I will leave you with this last piece of wisdom from someone who has “been there, done that”.

As an elected official/public servant … if you must go forward with approvals that allow wind farm development … and thus you become the reason a wind farm was built in Howard County … it will be a decision you will regret the rest of your life.

You will join me.

Jane Harper
Tipton County Commissioner 2009-2012.
Illinois Leaks

Wind Turbines, and Their Proponents, Ruin Lives With Impunity!

March 21, 2015 / 1957chev / 2 Comments

Eric Jelinski posted in Hydro One – Enough is Enough

Eric Jelinski

1:43pm Mar 21

Hydro One takes whatever hydro is generated and distributes the hydro plus adding their own costs. However, a major part of the high costs of Hydro is the wind turbines and the line upgrades for the wind turbines that are added to the cost of hydro.

The costs of hydro is not just in dollars but in human lives ruined becuase people have to abandon their homes due to the noise or stray voltage that impacts them and cattle on the farms. The government is ignoring the impacts even though there are many testimonials by affected people including testimonials from medical doctors and noise experts.

One of our friends who was forced to move out of her house due to wind turbine noise has composed this e-mail to the MPP’s. It is intended to share this and everybody to please also forward this to their provincial MP. Maybe the Wynne liberals can be shamed into a moratorium on wind turbines.
http://ogra.sclivelearningcenter.com/index.aspx?PID=11355&SID=206932

Date: Thu, Mar 19, 2015 at 12:36 PM
Subject: Wind turbines, Ontario and Health Canada

Ontario Good Roads Association, Rural Ontario Municipal Association

http://ogra.sclivelearningcenter.com/index.aspx?PID=11355&SID=206932

I request that you to listen to the audio on the Green Energy in Ontario portion of the OGRA/ROMA Conference. February 24, 2015

Listen as Mayor Randy Hope, the first presenter, trivializes the health complaints from residents living in wind projects to a single item; growing obesity.
For your information, when Mayor Hope states he presented at the Standing Committee on Bill 150, so did multiple families who were being impacted at that time, in fact 6 of those families had to leave their homes permanently. That was in 2009 and nothing has changed.

19:30 “…I’ve dealt with the people complaining that the wind turbine has created obesity……
Even the Health Canada study….done, completed, no issue.”

Listen also to the third presenter, Ted Cowan, President of the Ontario Federation of Agriculture, as he shamefully and openly mocks the families in rural Ontario who have been experiencing adverse health impacts, many who are trapped and many who have been displaced.

46:52 “….so every time you hear somebody complain about the health effects of a wind tower, cough at em ”

47:50 “ Health effects…the federal government completed their health study the middle of this past year, they found no health problems from wind, no dead people, no people in hospital, no people sick, no evidence of days off of work from wind related health problems.
They did find that it contributes to some sleep problems and irritation and there is a fix. I believe that where there are homes where there are significant problems they should either be bought or they should be substantially insulated so that the problem goes away or is greatly reduced, but, the evidence on this is in, further debate on it is a waste of time and hiring 30 or 40 incredibly good medical researchers to look at ‘this kind of problem’ is a waste of talent that we cannot afford.”

1:04:09 “ The studies, the evidence is in on health, no health impacts but some? and no general property value harm, but irritation, sleep problems no question.

This disgusting and offensive display is a direct result of the federal and provincial government’s alliance with the wind industry to systematically ignore the adverse health impacts being experienced in industrial wind turbine developments.
The damage that the Health Canada preliminary release alone has done to the citizens of this province is a disgrace.

There has been no opportunity for victims to talk with authorities or speak at these types of meetings and conferences to give evidence of and question some of these statements that audiences are receiving.
It is incredible that in Canada, in 2015, the victims continue to be blamed, ridiculed and their complaints rejected.

My comment:
To the comment on sleep problems and irritation, I don’t believe Mr. Cowan understands the health impacts of sleep disturbance and deprivation, or “irritation” for that matter. The frustration and stress alone at not being able to shut off the noise and vibration when trying to sleep is tremendous.
Trying to get by on 4 out of 7 night’s sleep is not OK. In fact, it is dangerous.
Furthermore, loud audible noise and low frequency noise and vibration penetrates walls and glass, regardless of insulation level. Mr. Cowan’s knowledge of the cause of and remedy for the impacts is minimal.

Attached is some testimony from impacted residents that needs to be reviewed and not deleted.
It represents the tip of the iceberg. Every single wind project started has resulted in more people sick.

The following 2 links have videos of impacted residents who want you to listen to them.
Please be respectful and give them your time as they gave theirs under some very trying situations and at the expense of being mocked by the likes of those above, to educate us.
Some of them are from the Chatham area.
http://windvictimsontario.com/videos—recent-videos.html
http://windvictimsontario.com/videos—page-2.html

Wind Power….A way to Make the Rich Richer, and the Rest of Us, Dirt Poor!

March 21, 2015 / 1957chev / Leave a comment

How Wind Power Subsidies Destroy Both Electricity Markets & Economies

March 21, 2015 by stopthesethings

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Around the globe, the wind industry behaves like an enormous, bloodsucking leech – latching onto power consumers and taxpayers; and ever ready to drain its hosts dry and leave nothing but empty shells behind.

In Australia, those soon to be empty shells will include what’s left of ourmanufacturing industries; mineral processors and the tens of thousands of families that cannot afford power now – and the thousands more who will soon join them sitting freezing (or boiling) in the dark (see our postshere and here).

Australian businesses and families are all set to be pounded by the entirely unsustainable Large-Scale Renewable Energy Target (LRET), which is designed to see more than $50 billion filched from power consumers (as a Federal Tax) and transferred to wind power generators (as a mandated subsidy) over the remaining life of the LRET (see our post here).

Under the LRET, from here on – as a simple arithmetical and legislated FACT – power retailers are meant to purchase and surrender 587 million RECs in order to avoid the shortfall charge: described recently by Environment Minister, Greg Hunt as a “massive penalty carbon tax of $93 per tonne which nobody wants to see.” (see our post here).

As the shortfall begins to bite (within the next few months) RECs will – due to the tax treatment of RECs – soon exceed the cost of the shortfall charge ($65 per MWh) and end up trading around $94 – at that price the cost to power punters would top $55 billion.

The fact the Australian electricity retailers have jacked up and are refusing to enter Power Purchase Agreements with wind power generators (the method by which retailers purchase RECs) means that the LRET is all set to implode, but that’s another story (see our posts here andhere).

One of the topics before the Senate Inquiry is whether the insane costs drawn in the form of the REC Tax/Subsidy can be justified on any level, the Inquiries terms of reference including:

(a) the effect on household power prices, particularly households which receive no benefit from rooftop solar panels, and the merits of consumer subsidies for operators;

(b) how effective the Clean Energy Regulator is in performing its legislative responsibilities and whether there is a need to broaden those responsibilities;

(h) the energy and emission input and output equations from whole-of-life operation of wind turbines; and

(i) any related matter.

STT thinks these little policy-posers simply highlight the fact that there has NEVER been any cost benefit analysis carried out in relation to Australia’s Renewable Energy Target, since it was thrown into the energy policy arena, over 15 years ago.

That a scheme, which has already added $9 billion to power bills (in the form of RECs) and which would see the transfer of a further $50 billion from the poorest to the richest, has never seen the slightest scrutiny from independent economists is, let’s just say, more than a little surprising.

But this outlandish policy predicament is not unique to Australia. Oh no, the Brits are well and truly in the same boat. The UK has seen power prices rocket out of control with its rush to plant thousands of giant fans all over Ol’ Blighty – its broad sunlit uplands, and as far as the eye can see, out to sea.

The fact that the UK’s political betters haven’t bothered themselves with the usual type of economic inquiry (ie is there any energy, or environmental, bang for the massive subsidy $bucks?) is one of the key points raised in a very recent, and truly brilliant, study by Rupert Darwall.

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Rupert has already shone the spotlight on the insane hidden costs of wind power (see our post here). But, now he has excelled himself, with a very detailed analysis of what is nothing short of an energy market debacle.

His study, “Central Planning with Market Features: How renewables subsidies destroyed the UK electricity market”, should be mandatory reading for any Australian politician purporting to support the unsustainable LRET. The full paper can be accessed here as a PDF. We’ve picked out the parts most relevant to Australia’s wind power debacle below.

Central Planning with Market Features: How renewable subsidies destroyed the UK electricity market
Rupert Darwall
March 2015

The story so far

Energy policy represents the biggest expansion of state power since the nationalisations of the 1940s and 1950s. It is on course to be the most expensive domestic policy disaster in modern British history. By committing the nation to high-cost, unreliable renewable energy, its consequences will be felt for decades.

Yet it wasn’t so long ago that Britain led the world with electricity privatisation and liberalisation – the last big policy achievement of the Thatcher years – cutting bills and driving huge gains in capital and labour productivity, gains which are now being reversed.

What went wrong?
What are the costs?
What can be done?

The re-imposition of state control is not because privatisation failed. As the Government concedes, ‘historically, our electricity market has delivered secure supplies, largely due to competitive markets underpinned by robust regulation.’ Instead, state control is the result of imposing an arbitrary form of decarbonisation involving an extremely costly European target for renewables generation (principally wind and solar energy) which Tony Blair negotiated at his farewell European Council in 2007. The result is that the privatised electricity sector is being transformed into a vast, ramshackle Public Private Partnership, an outcome that promises the worst of all worlds – state control of investment funded by high-cost private sector finance, with energy companies being set up as the fall guys to take the rap for higherelectricity bills.

The Government justifies the return of state control on the presumption that the price of fossil fuels will rise continuously, a view now rapidly overtaken by falling coal prices and the halving of oil prices in the space of five months.

What went wrong: Key errors in the decision-making process

….

Foundational Error. The turning point which led to the demise of the market was not proceeded by extensive policy appraisals or analysis of alternatives to the market, but from the adoption of the renewables target at a European Council meeting. Target-driven policy objectives are inflexible. They prevent exploration of trade-offs. The more compressed the deadline, the higher the costs. The overriding focus on meeting the target narrows the field of vision, so that emerging difficulties from other countries, notably Spain and Germany, were ignored as evidence for reappraising the target.

Policy Lesson #4

Setting a target before analysing the costs, operational implications and likely unintended consequences, without considering alternatives constitutes the foundational error in the entire process from which, in one way or another, subsequent errors flowed.

Target-driven policy-making. Cost, efficiency and affordability were subordinated to the goal of meeting an arbitrary target. Instead of seeing the market as a price discovery mechanism to reveal the lowest-cost producer, policy sought to disguise (socialise) the true costs and implications of renewables to minimise the apparent cost of the policy.

Policy Lesson #5

A policy framework to encourage renewables that systematically conceals their true costs will result in higher costs and higher electricity bills for the same quantum of renewable capacity.

Form over function. Having decided to adopt a renewables target, there has been no comprehensive analysis of its costs, benefits and implications for the market. In particular, decision-makers did not ask what exactly electricity consumers get in return for the use of high cost private sector capital and whether it represented value for money for them.

Policy Lesson #6

Before adopting EMR [Energy Market Reforms], policymakers should have evaluated it against a public sector comparator so that the net cost/benefit of using private sector capital is identified and quantified, rather than being implicitly assumed.

What are the costs: Renewables’ hidden costs

The costs of intermittent renewables are massively understated. In addition to their higher plant-level costs, renewables require massive amounts of extra generating capacity to provide cover for intermittent generation when the wind doesn’t blow and the sun doesn’t shine. Massively subsidised wind and solar capacity floods the market with near random amounts of zero marginal cost electricity. It is therefore impossible to integrate large amounts of intermittent renewables into a private sector system and still expect it to function as such.

To keep the lights on, everything ends up requiring subsidies, turning what was once a profitable sector into the energy equivalent of the Common Agricultural Policy. Worse still in a highly capital intensive sector, because prices and therefore revenues are dependent on government interventions, private investors end up having to price and manage political risk, imparting a further upwards twist to costs and prices.

Without renewables, the UK market would require 22GW of new capacity to replace old coal and nuclear. With renewables, 50GW is required, i.e. 28GW more to deal with the intermittency problem. Then there are extra grid costs to connect both remote onshore wind farms (£8 billion) and even more costly offshore capacity (£15 billion) – a near trebling of grid costs.

Including capacity to cover for intermittency and extra grid infrastructure, the annualised capital cost of renewables is approximately £9 billion. Against this needs to be set the saved fuel costs of generating electricity from conventional power stations. For gas, this would be around £3 billion a year at current wholesale prices, implying an annual net cost of renewables of around £6 billion a year. The cost of renewables is even higher compared to coal (which is being progressively outlawed).

What can be done: The worst of both worlds

Intermittent renewables destroy markets. You can have renewables. Or you can have the market. You cannot have both. The hybrid of state control and private ownership is far from optimal and inherently unstable. At no stage has there been any published analysis demonstrating that the use of private capital delivers better value for money than a public sector comparator.

There are two options to align ownership and control:

If renewables are a must-have – although no government has made a reasoned policy case for them – then nationalisation is the answer; or
the state cedes control, ditches the renewables target and returns the sector to the market.

THE PROBLEM WITH INTERMITTENT RENEWABLES

It is hard to understate the implications of the UK’s growing exposure to wind for its electricity. According to the Royal Academy of Engineering, which is sympathetic to renewables, it requires ‘a fundamental shift in society’s attitude to and use of energy.’ Success, the Academy says, depends on the ability to manage demand to reflect the output from wind, going on to note that despite increasing efforts to research demand management techniques (to match consumption to the variability of the weather), ‘there is still much uncertainty on how effective it will be and at what cost.’ So called ‘smart grids’ will be vital, the Academy says, but their potential and effectiveness at scale ‘are yet to be proven.’

Electricity has a set of uniquely demanding characteristics:

It cannot be stored, except to a limited extent, with batteries and pumped hydro, and that storage is limited and incurs a cost;
Supply must respond almost instantaneously to demand;
If too little is produced, there is a danger of degraded quality and, eventually, of power cuts, which are costly to users;
Too much production can damage the transmission system, leading to wires becoming deformed or even melting;
Failing to equalise demand and supply can also lead to changes in the frequency of the power supply – too high, and it can damage appliances; too low, equipment can underperform.

Wind and solar technologies pose huge integration challenges. They are difficult to predict, particularly wind, which is highly variable – on gusty days, wind speeds can vary enormously over a few minutes or even seconds. According to Malcolm Grimston of Imperial College, London, low wind speed tends to be weakly correlated with high power demand (cold, windless winter evenings and hot, windless summer days). Depending on how wind-generated electricity is connected to the grid, large amounts of wind power can reduce system inertia and make it less stable.

When renewables account for a significant proportion of generating capacity, the whole electricity system becomes exposed to weather risk as it has to cope with what an OECD/ Nuclear Energy Agency (NEA) report calls ‘random amounts of intermittent electricity.’ The uncertainty inherent in farming is one reason why governments end up heavily subsidising farmers.

The logic of exposing all electricity generators to weather risk implies that the Government subsidises all forms of electricity generation, something wholly unanticipated by policymakers. MIT professors John Deutsch and Ernest Moniz remarked in a 2011 report that policies to encourage renewables have been successful in promoting large-scale deployment, before observing:

‘It is becoming clear that the total costs and consequences of these policies were not fully understood.’

In other words, politicians adopted pro-renewables policies with their eyes wide shut. Britain’s target of deriving 15 per cent of its total energy consumption from renewables was agreed before the system-wide consequences had been analysed. Energy policy has been trying to play catch-up ever since. Renewables policy is truly a leap into the dark.

…

According to Project Discovery, the capital cost of onshore wind is double that of CCGT. For offshore wind, the capital cost per kW is nearly five times higher – before accounting for the thermal (gas and coal) capacity needed to cover wind intermittency. For Project Discovery, Ofgem applied de-rating factors to adjust the nameplate capacity of different generation types to reflect better the probable contribution each is likely to make to meet peak demand. Therefore, wind assets have a significant de-rating to reflect the lower average availability and risks of correlated periods of low output.

Table 2 below applies these to illustrate the capital cost for onshore and offshore wind compared to CCGT to meeting peak demand on the basis that CCGT is used as dispatchable capacity (i.e. which can be turned on and off when required). To derive the overall capital cost for each plant type, it applies Ofgem’s de-rating factors, assuming the balance is met with additional CCGTs.

Table 2: Capital Cost per kW adjusted for Ofgem 2009 De-rating Factors
Plant type	Cost per kW (£)	De-rating factor (%)	Cost per kW of additional (dispatchable) capacity (£)	Total cost per kW (£)	Capital cost per kW as multiple of CCGT
CCGT	600	95	32	632	n/a
Onshore wind	1,200	15	510	1,710	2.7
Offshore wind	2,800	15	510	3,310	5.2
Source: Ofgem (2009), Project Discovery Energy Market Scenarios, p.90.

Cost and capacity implications

Since 2009, the relative cost of CCGTs to wind has fallen. DECC’s 2013 estimate of the ‘overnight’ capital costs of onshore wind (i.e. excluding capitalised interest) at £1,600 per kW compares to £610 per kW for CCGT. Thus the capital cost of onshore wind has risen from being twice as expensive as CCGT to 2.6 times in just five years. The costs of offshore wind have also worsened. Based on analysis of actual build costs in the US and adjusting for higher UK offshore construction costs, Edinburgh University’s Professor Gordon Hughes estimates 2013 prices would be at least £3,300 per kW compared to Ofgem’s 2009 assumption of £2,800 per kW – a rise of 17.9 per cent.

The need for intermittent renewable capacity to be twinned with dispatchable capacity drives a colossal investment requirement.

For the same peak electricity demand of 60GW as today, which was met by 85GW of capacity in 2011, the Government estimates the UK will need 113GW of capacity in 2025 – an increase of 28GW. Because the Government did not seek a derogation from the EU Large Combustion Plant Directive, 12GW of coal-fired capacity will also need to be replaced plus 10GW of time-expired nuclear capacity, implying a total requirement of 50GW of new capacity, of which two thirds (33GW) is planned to be renewables.

Thus meeting the UK’s renewable target requires 28GW more capacity than if peak demand was met conventionally. Assuming a 50:50 split between onshore and offshore wind, on the basis of Project Discovery’s numbers, this implies an additional capital cost of £56 billion. The additional cost of deploying the extra 5GW of renewables (33GW less 28GW) instead of CCGTs is £7 billion, implying a £63 billion extra cost of renewables to provide the same peak capacity as from conventional power stations.

Wind and solar also require heavy extra investment in transmission infrastructure. For onshore wind, proposed reinforcements of the transmission grid are of the order of £8 billion, which represents a doubling of the Regulatory Asset Value of National Grid’s existing transmission network. This extra capital cost has a material impact on the underlying (and disguised) economics of wind, particularly in remote, windy locations. According to electricity industry expert Alex Henney, the implication is the cost of transmission of Scottish wind power is of the order of £500 per kW – making the capital cost of onshore wind 3.7 times higher than that of CCGT.

THE CHOICE

Appearing before the House of Lords Select Committee on Economic Affairs in November 2013, Lord Lawson asked Dieter Helm: ‘So if you were Secretary of State for Energy, what would you do now?’ Helm replied,

‘I would probably emigrate as quickly as possible; I would hate to perform such a task. The obvious answer is that when you are in a hole, the first thing you do is stop digging. Many things are currently being pursued that would make things significantly worse.’

This dead-end has come about because policymakers ignored the likely effects of subsidising high fixed cost/near-zero variable cost intermittent energy on the functioning of the energy market before adopting the policy. Attempting to mitigate the damage by subsidising the provision of capacity, the Government is taking control of electricity generation, but not taking ownership of it.

The bottom line is if the state wants renewables, it should do it properly and get out its cheque book.

In reality, there are two choices:

(1) If meeting the UK’s renewables target is the over-riding policy goal, then the most efficient solution is using the Government’s balance sheet to directly finance investment in generating assets and buy out existing assets, i.e. full or partial renationalisation; or

(2) Abandoning the renewables target, isolating the market from the price-destructive effects of embedded renewable capacity and setting a clear path to return the sector to the market.

Either would result in substantially lower electricity bills than where they are heading under EMR and 2) would enhance the UK’s economic performance.

A DESCENT INTO POLICY INCOHERENCE

….

What of energy policy being ‘evidence-based, fair and just’? Assessed against the Government’s three objectives for energy policy, renewables policy is not remotely rational, fair of affordable:

Keeping the lights on. Weather-dependent renewables are inherently poor at reliably generating electricity to meet demand. Indeed, the Government has acknowledged the ‘significant challenge’ represented by ‘operational security (i.e. enough responsiveness to ensure real-time balancing of supply and demand)’, though DECC couldn’t bring itself to name the culprit.

Keeping energy bills affordable. Self-evidently, setting strike prices for renewables (and nuclear) that are double the current wholesale price of electricity puts upward pressure on energy bills – and that’s before taking account of the higher system grid level costs of renewables which the Government tends to ignore (Figure 3). If affordability really were a driver, nationalisation would provide a lower cost renewables route.

Decarbonising energy generation. A 2014 Brookings analysis quantified the avoided carbon emissions per MW from wind displacing baseload coal generation at $106,697 a year and $69,502 a year for solar, based on a value of at $50 per tonne of carbon. By contrast, CCGT-generated electricity saves $416,534 of carbon per MW a year – nearly four times that for wind and six times that of solar in the US, where solar capacity factors are nearly double those in the UK.

Overall, the Brookings analysis, which does not explicitly incorporate the extra grid infrastructure costs of renewables, found that wind and solar generated respectively annual net disbenefits of $25,333 and $188,820 per MW at a carbon price of $50 a tonne whereas CCGTs generated an annual net benefit of $535,382 per MW. The conclusion is inescapable: ditching renewables and encouraging shale fracking is better economics and more effective at reducing carbon dioxide emissions.

Despite all the energy white papers, official analyses and the Government conceding that renewables are on course to cost £48.3 billion (before extra grid and dispatchable capacity costs), the Government has yet to produce a document analysing the costs and benefits of intermittent renewables to justify its leap into the dark. Delay in changing course merely adds to wasteful spending on renewables capacity for which the Government has no objective policy case. Deciding to opt out of the EU’s renewables target would take Britain off the escalator of higher energy bills and enable electricity supply and demand to be determined by the market, not central planners in Whitehall.

A LESSON FROM THOMAS EDISON

At 3pm on 3 September 1882, Thomas Edison switched on the first incandescent bulbs powered by his Pearl Street generator several blocks away. It was a huge technical accomplishment. In Edison’s words:

‘It was not only necessary that the lamps should give light and the dynamos generate current, but the lamps must be adapted to the current of the dynamos, and the dynamos must be constructed to give the character of the current required by the lamps, and likewise all parts of the system must be constructed with reference to all other parts, since, in one sense, all the parts form one machine, and the connections between the parts being electrical instead of mechanical.’

Edison’s brilliance was not solely that of an inventor. He was an entrepreneur who changed the world. According to the economic historian Thomas Hughes, from the start, Edison realised his system would have to be economically competitive. Thus he conceived of the problem to be solved by invention as inseparably technical and economic. Every technical step was informed by the need to beat the economics of gaslight. An example of Edison’s understanding of the integrated nature of electrical production, transmission and consumption is opting for high resistance filament light bulbs, otherwise the current required such large copper wires for mains distribution as to make it uncommercial.

When politicians decided to impose renewables on the electricity system, they took the opposite approach to Edison. Renewables didn’t have to be cost competitive. They didn’t have to be reliable. The extra costs they impose on the system were ignored. Politicians did not want to think about the wholly predictable destruction of the electricity market from their policies. The world would have to fit around their preferred generating technology.

Edison’s approach ushered in the age of electricity. If central planning worked, the Berlin Wall would still be standing.

Rupert Darwall
March 2015

Always Great to see a Politician With Integrity!

March 20, 2015 / 1957chev / 2 Comments

Brit Councillor – Barry Goldbart – Quits Tory Party to Fight the Great Wind Power Fraud

March 20, 2015 by stopthesethings

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Councillor Barry Goldbart announces resignation in protest over Navitus Bay wind farm
Daily Echo
Melanie Vass
13 March 2015

A BOURNEMOUTH Conservative councillor has announced his resignation over the planned Navitus Bay wind farm.

Cllr Barry Goldbart, a former cabinet member and ex-Mayor of Bournemouth, has sent an open letter to Prime Minister David Cameronsaying he is leaving the party he has supported all his adult life.

Instead, he intends to stand as an Independent councillor in May, campaigning on an anti-wind farm ticket.

And he has urged other wind farm opponents, including Bournemouth MPs Tobias Ellwood and Conor Burns and other Conservative councillors, to do the same.

His letter to the Prime Minister states: “The… proposed huge industrial site of hundreds of giant sized wind turbines off our beautiful Bournemouth coast, in full view of the millions of tourists that flock to this premier British holiday resort, is totally unacceptable to me and the vast majority of the town’s residents.

“The defence of the Green Belt has always been a Conservative priority but down here in Dorset we also have to defend our Blue Belt, the sea, with equal vigour.”

“It is now time to act decisively before any disastrous decisions are taken by your Ministers that could lead to the construction of this industrial-sized wind farm complex across our beautiful seascape.”

Cllr Goldbart, who represents Westbourne and West Cliff, told the Echo: “I felt that a grand gesture was needed to bring home to the PM the lack of respect being shown to our residents in not giving them the same support as he has given to the rest of the UK when he stopped wind farms being sited on land.”

Cllr Goldbart has been a Bournemouth councillor for the past 12 years, but was not selected to stand as a Conservative candidate for Westbourne and West Cliff in May.
Daily Echo

Steven cooper Discusses the Results of His Wind Turbine Study!

March 19, 2015 / 1957chev / Leave a comment

Today Tonight Report on Steven Cooper’s Cape Bridgewater Acoustic Study

March 19, 2015 by stopthesethings

Cape Bridgewater Report
Rodney Lohse
Channel 7’s Today Tonight
16 March 2015

[Click on the image above and click through for the Today Tonight video. Transcript appears below.]

Transcript

Rosanna Mangiarelli: But we will start tonight with a wind farm war. Those who claim that turbines are having an impact on surrounding communities, versus those who say it’s all in the mind. Now the latest debate centres around a recent Australian study, whose author has found there is a link. While it’s being played down by the industry, those living near the wind farm tell a very different story. Rodney Lohse reports.

Lane Crocket, Pacific Hydro: … can’t identify any causal link between wind farms and health.

Steven Cooper: It depends upon what you define by causal. If you take it as patterns that relate to the hypothesis of different wind speeds orpower outputs, there was definitely a link.

Rodney Lohse: It’s the report that has the wind energy industry in aspin. Same report, two very different interpretations, all depending on what you have at stake.

Lane Crocket: There is nothing in this report to justify any form of compensation.

Steven Cooper: We’ve found certain wind speeds that related to the high levels of disturbance.

Rodney Lohse: According to medical authorities, wind farms are perfectly safe and cause no adverse health impacts. Yet here and overseas, people who live near them say they’re getting sick.

Norma Schmidt from Ontario: You’re not able to do anything. You’re not able to cook. You’re not able to clean. You’re not able to live. You’re not able to work.

Melissa Ware, Cape Bridgewater, Victoria: We’ve actually vacated the house and we’ve been away for about 3 months.

Wind farm victim: Ever since they started turning my ears have been hurting.

Rodney Lohse: But despite this, no one could prove what it was about wind farms that made those living nearby feel unwell. And so they have continued to be constructed in their thousands. Enter Steven Cooper and Pacific Hydro. Stephen Cooper is a acoustic engineer, recognised in this country as an expert in his field, involved in writing Australian standards on noise, especially for the aircraft industry.

Steven Cooper: When I started this study, I was utilising the results of testing in South Australia at the Waterloo wind farm, where residents could perceive the operation of the wind farm without seeing it or without hearing it. And I was linking that perception to what’s called infrasound, which is below the normal level of frequency of hearing.

Rodney Lohse: Pacific Hydro is an energy company owned by Australian superannuation funds and the operator of wind farms in Australia and overseas. Lane Crockett is executive general manager of Pacific Hydro.

Lane Crockett: If you go to the peak medical body they will tell you that there is no causal link between wind farms and health.

Rodney Lohse: It is a concept supported by Sydney University’s School ofPublic Health’s Professor Simon Chapman. Not a medical specialist, but an avowed enemy of wind farm critics.

Simon Chapman: You can see, I’ve put some examples of quotes there, conclusions, there’s no evidence that the audible or sub-audible sounds emitted by wind turbines have any direct adverse physiological effects.

Rodney Lohse: And so Pacific Hydro decided to stump up the money for another study.

Steven Cooper: There are sensations that are recorded … .. I was required to conduct noise and vibration measurements to determine certain wind speeds and certain sound levels that related to disturbances by six specific local residences.

Rodney Lohse: Steven Cooper was looking for a link between something happening at the wind farm and complaints by residents in three houses nearby, each with two residents. His theory, infrasound, low frequency noise below what can be heard, was impacting residents.

Steven Cooper: What you’re able to do when carrying out tests is that you can demonstrate people can feel infrasound at a level below when it becomes audible.

Rodney Lohse: Pacific Hydro has so far played down Cooper’s study.

Lane Crockett: In our view, the results do not demonstrate a strong enough correlation to support the conclusion of a causal link between the infrasound frequencies in existence, and residents’ observations.

Steven Cooper: We don’t have a correlation with the results because we don’t have enough data. There is definitely a trend. There is definitely a connection between the operation of the wind farm and what the residents were identifying as disturbances. And so it’s open to debate as to what a causal link is in terms of that data.

Rodney Lohse: But the people who were in the study, like Melissa Ware, say it’s sufficient proof to show this isn’t all just in their head.

Melissa Ware: We been talking about the noise and the vibration in our home for a long time, and to have Steven Cooper come and do such an intensive study means a lot to me and to the other residents.

Rodney Lohse: Although hearing impaired, Melissa says she can sense the turbines. Often the sensation drives her from her home.

Melissa Ware: The noise and the vibration come up through the pillow, worse than what, the impact’s worse than when you’re standing, just listening.

Rodney Lohse: For 2 months, the test subjects had to fill out diaries of what they felt, in particular, if they sensed anything, especially a sensation many said made them unwell. This was called “Sensation 5″. And Cooper then tried to correlate that to something possibly happening at the wind farm.

Steven Cooper: The sensation criteria came from a UK wind farm study, which was based on noise and then the word in the severity ranking changed from noise to vibration or sensation.

Rodney Lohse: As this was never a medical study, he can’t say the wind farm was making people sick. But at the exact time people were reporting “Sensation 5″, something was happening at the wind farm.

Steven Cooper: Severity 5 was classified as being a level that was harmful to a person’s health, or was causing them severe discomfort. The residents, in looking at the data, also added that “Sensation 5″ was a level at which they wanted to leave, or did actually leave their property.

Rodney Lohse: The study has already attracted a lot of attention, support and criticism.

Paul Barry: … and Sydney University’s Professor of Public Health, Simon Chapman, was even more damning, telling Media Watch …

Simon Chapman: Scientifically, it’s absolutely an atrocious piece of research, and it is entirely unpublishable other than on the front page of The Australian.

Rodney Lohse: Mr Cooper responded in this way to his main critic, Professor Chapman; and has commenced legal action against him.

Steven Cooper: As far as I understand, Professor Chapman is not a scientist. He is not an engineer. I’ve had eminent acousticians around the world who have can congratulated me on the work, have issued reviews to say that the work is of significance, is of benefit and is a step forward in trying to understand what wind farms are generating.

Rodney Lohse: Doctor Paul Schomer, the Standards Director for the Acoustical Society of America, is one of those acousticians.

Paul Schomer: I think it’s a very good study. It’s the only study in the world, that we know of that’s been done with the cooperation of a wind farm, and so was able to get data that no one else has been able to get.

Rodney Lohse: And its integral in showing a connection between infrasound and human impact.

Paul Schomer: It doesn’t quite form the link between medical issues, it forms the link that people are affected, not by hearing sounds, that there is a pathway to the peoples’ brain, other than hearing.

Rodney Lohse: Doctor Schomer was involved in a similar study in a community called Shirley, in Wisconsin in the United States.

Paul Schomer: Three families in Shirley that had moved out of their houses because of the sound, the problems with the, or I should say the infrasound.

Rodney Lohse: He hopes wind power has an important future in terms of meeting our energy needs, but he also says more needs to be done to understand how it impacts humans.

Paul Schomer: They don’t want to acknowledge problems, it really doesn’t matter what the problem was, it just happens to be infrasound.

Rodney Lohse: For Steven Cooper he says, now it’s time for a well funded medical study.

Steven Cooper: To do medical studies you need to have a character or a signature that you can apply to a wind farm to identify that the wind farm is operating, before you can do the medical studies. What has come out of this work, is that by use of the signature and a level and characteristic that I have determined, allows the medical researchers to now start that work.
Today Tonight

Doctors in Ireland Expose Inadequate Noise Regulations!

March 17, 2015March 17, 2015 / 1957chev / Leave a comment

“Wind farm noise makes people sick,“

say Irish doctors:

“change noise regulations“

by ottawawindconcerns

Here is a story from the Irish Examiner, fitting on St Patrick’s Day.

By Conall Ó Fátharta
Irish Examiner Reporter

Leading doctors have called on the Government to reduce the noise levels of wind turbines — which they claim are four times that recommended by World Health Organisation (WHO) guidelines.

The Irish Doctors’ Environmental Association also said the set-back distance of 500m is not enough, that it should be increased to at least 1,500m.

Visiting Research Professor at Queen’s University, Alun Evans and lead clinical consultant at Waterford Regional Hospital Prof Graham Roberts have both expressed concerns over the current noise levels and distance of turbines from homes.

Environment Minister Alan Kelly is currently reviewing the wind energy planning guidelines and the group is calling for both issues to be examined closely in the interest of public health.

The association has called for the introduction of a maximum noise level of 30 decibels as recommended by the WHO and for the set-back distance from inhabited houses to at least 1,500m from the current 500m.

Prof Evans said the construction of wind turbines in Ireland “is being sanctioned too close to human habitation”.

“Because of its impulsive, intrusive, and sometimes incessant nature, the noise generated by wind turbines is particularly likely to disturb sleep,” he said.

“The young and the elderly are particularly at risk. Children who are sleep-deprived are more likely to become obese, predisposing them to diabetes and heart disease in adulthood. As memory is reinforced during sleep, they also exhibit impaired learning.”

Prof Evans said adults who are sleep-deprived are at risk of a ranges of diseases, particularly “heart attacks, heart failure, and stroke, and to cognitive dysfunction and mental problems”.

Prof Evans, attached to the Centre for Public Health at Queen’s, said the Government should exercise a duty of care towards its citizens and exercise the ‘precautionary principle’ which is enshrined in the Lisbon Treaty.

“It can achieve this by raising turbine set-back to at least 1500m, in accordance with a growing international consensus,” said Prof Evans.

In a statement, the Department of the Environment said that in December 2013 it published draft revisions to the noise, set-back distance, and shadow-flicker aspects of the 2006 Wind Energy Development Guidelines.

These draft revisions proposed: 1. The setting of a more stringent day and night noise limit of 40 decibels for future wind energy developments; 2. A mandatory minimum setback of 500m* between a wind turbine and the nearest dwelling for amenity considerations; 3. The complete elimination of shadow flicker between wind turbines and neighbouring dwellings.

A public consultation process was initiated on these proposed revisions to the guidelines, which ran until February 21, 2014.

“The department received submissions from 7,500 organisations and members of the public during this period. In this regard, account has to be taken of the extensive response to the public consultation in framing the final guidelines,” the department said in the statement.

“However, it is the department’s intention that the revisions to the 2006 Wind Energy Development Guidelines will be finalised in the near future and will address many of the issues raised in that bill.”

*Editor’s note: Ontario’s wind turbine noise regulations, which are based on geography and wind power lobby group instruction, not science, work out to 550 meter setbacks. Health Canada’s Wind Turbine Noise and Health study revealed that problems exist at 55 meters, with 25% of people exposed to the turbine noise and low frequency noise being distressed; 16.5% were distressed at 1 km. The Health Canada research results suggest that a setback should be a minimum of 1300 meters, which means Ontario’s existing noise regulations are completely inadequate to protect health.

Wind Weasels Having a Hard Time Trying to Deny Negative Health Effects From Wind Turbines!

March 16, 2015 / 1957chev / Leave a comment

Simon Chapman, Will Grant & Jacqui Hoepner: the Wind Industry’s Health “Expert” Great Pretenders

March 16, 2015 by stopthesethings

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It’s been nearly 2 months since Steven Cooper’s ground breaking Cape Bridgewater acoustic study exploded like a small, but rather effective nuclear device – putting him on the international stage – and Scotching, once and for all, the nonsense that wind farm victims’ complaints about sleep deprivation, and other adverse health effects, caused by incessant turbine generated low-frequency and infrasound are simply fictions of their “climate change denying imaginations” (ie the so called, “nocebo” effect) (see our post here).

At the direction of Pacific Hydro and the Clean Energy Council (with Miles George as its head, now the political front for Infigen) the attack dogs over at the ABC’s “Ministry of Truth”, Media Watch (see our post here) launched a vicious, unwarranted attack: not only on Cooper, but on Pac Hydro’s long-suffering victims at Cape Bridgewater – asserting that Cooper’s study was “atrocious” and that the subjects of the study had conspired and colluded to fabricate the data that – according to America’s top acoustic experts, Dr Paul Schomer and George Hessler – proves the relationship between adverse health effects and turbine generated noise and vibration (see our post here).

Media Watch’s hatchet job depended on the “expertise” of several well-known wind industry shills, including a former tobacco advertising guru, and self-proclaimed wind farm health expert, who calls wind farm victims “wind farm wing-nuts” (see our posts here and here) – and a couple of journalist/academics from the Australian National University – Will Grant and Jacqui Hoepner. We’ll return to the “qualifications” of the ABC’s so-called “experts” in a moment, but first a little dissection from The Australian.

Sound advice on acoustics for Media Watch
The Australian
Simon King
2 March 2015

IN its stinging criticism of the research of acoustic expert Steven Cooper on the effect of the Pacific Hydro wind turbines on local residents and the reporting of it by The Australian and Today Tonight, the ABC’s Media Watch program failed to mention that its key expert was a paid advocate for the industry.

Such was the misrepresentation of the February 16 report that Mr Cooper is now considering legal action against the program and is pursuing action against the show’s expert, Sydney University’s professor of public health, Simon Chapman.

In making its case, as well as choosing not to use the opinion of qualified acoustic experts who supported the Cooper research, Media Watch championed the opinion of Professor Chapman, but in doing so failed to mention his conflict of interests.

A paper published in December 2014 by Professor Chapman, Ketan Joshi and Luke Fry titled “Fomenting sickness: nocebo priming of residents about expected wind turbine health harms” included the following conflict of interest statement: “Simon Chapman provided and was remunerated for expert advice on psychogenic aspects of wind farm health complaints by lawyers acting for Infigen Energy in the Cherry Tree VCAT case described in this paper. Ketan Joshi is employed by Infigen Energy. Luke Fry has no conflicts of interest to declare.”

The Cherry Tree VCAT case concluded in 2013.

Referring to the statement, Professor Chapman said on Twitter: “Expert witnesses have a duty to courts, not to those ‘hiring’ them.”

Professor Chapman also has no formal qualification as an acoustician or medical practitioner — his PhD is on the topic of “Cigarette Advertising As Myth: A Re-Evaluation Of The Relationship Of Advertising To Smoking”.

But Media Watch turned to his opinion to say: “Scientifically, it’s an absolutely atrocious piece of research and is entirely unpublishable other than on the front page of The Australian”.

Professor Chapman is so far ensconced in the pro-wind turbine camp that he has very publicly referred to those affected by wind turbines and those involved in the growing amount of evidence from the US and Canada that the vibrations caused by the giant blades can cause a range of conditions ranging from nausea, headaches to sleep deprivation, as “anti wind farm wing nuts”.

In a statement to the federal Senate on June 17 last year, Democratic Labor Party senator John Madigan said: “It is fair and reasonable to encourage people to look behind the blatant campaigning done by people like Professor Chapman of the University of Sydney.

“Professor Chapman has been an outspoken critic of those who have dared to question the wind farm orthodoxy.”

When asked about Professor’s Chapman’s background, Media Watch host Paul Barry said: “We didn’t say that Professor Simon Chapman has given evidence on behalf of wind farm operators, for the same reason that we didn’t say Steven Cooper has given evidence on several occasions for wind farm opponents.

“It’s perfectly clear which side of the debate they line up on and why.”

Barry also pointed to the fact The Australian story published on January 23 said the Cooper study had been independently peer reviewed by Bob Thorne without making it clear Dr Thorne had done paid work for wind farm opponents.

Media Watch has not been the only one that failed to mention Professor Chapman’s past paid work for Infigen Energy. In a February 25, 2014 article published by The Conversation titled “Study finds no evidence wind turbines make you sick — again”, the disclosure statement reads: “Simon Chapman AO receives no financial or other material support from any company or person in the wind energy industry or agents acting on their behalf.”

This is not the first time Professor Chapman contacted Media Watch to push a view.

In 2006 he approached the program indignant over an article in the British Journal of Criminology — which was reported in the Sydney Morning Herald — which showed that the gun laws introduced in 1996 by the Howard government in the wake of the Port Arthur massacre failed to reduce gun homicide or suicides in Australia.

In the 1990s, Professor Chapman was a member of the Coalition for Gun Control.
The Australian

The two sets of reasons in the Cherry Tree decision (referred to above) are available here and here.

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But – despite the tobacco advertising guru’s claims about being hired as “an expert witness” in the case – you won’t find any mention of him as a “witness”: Infigen never called him as a witness – “expert”, or otherwise. The guru would have never qualified as an “expert” on any issue in the case, even if it had called him: the effect of tobacco advertising on rates of smoking was, funnily enough, not a matter in dispute. Nor, in either of the sets of reasons given by VCAT, will you find any mention of the guru, in any capacity; or any mention of his “expert advice” – VCAT simply had no regard to his, so-called, “expert advice”.

In fact, the guru has never given evidence in any wind farm case – slipping into the witness box to go a few rounds with a skilled cross-examiner just isn’t the guru’s “style” – so much safer for the ego to pontificate from the coward’s castle of a sandstone Uni; or to spin the wind industry’s line, with the eager help of the ABC’s useful idiots, on The Drum, ABC Radio and the ABC’s other propaganda platforms (see our post here).

Then there’s the line from near-bankrupt wind power outfit, Infigen’s head propaganda parrot, Ketan Joshi that the guru: “was remunerated for expert advice on psychogenic aspects of wind farm health complaints by lawyers acting for Infigen Energy”.

That would be the first time in litigation history when “lawyers”, acting for corporate litigants, personally “remunerated” an “expert” witness – or anyone for “expert” advice – in relation to their client’s case.

Joshi – not the sharpest tool in the shed – might not understand the manner in which law firms operate, but we doubt it. There is no way on earth that a hard-hitting firm, like Herbert Smith Freehills, paid so much as a shekel towards the guru’s fees – Joshi’s boss, Infigen stumped up every last cent paid to obtain the guru’s waffle about the obvious health effects of incessant turbine-generated low-frequency noise and infrasound being all in the victims’ heads; and a “communicated disease”, exclusive to the English speaking world.

The guru’s “expert” study – that Infigen paid handsomely for, and that VCAT had no regard to in the Cherry Tree case – was a mighty “fine” piece of work; that made spurious claims – based entirely on what wind power outfits told him – that there were NO recorded complaints from neighbours at numerous wind farm operations around Australia – including Cullerin in NSW, where neighbours had previously lodged 322 complaints, including 93 with the wind farm operator itself (see our post here).

The guru’s late “admission” to have been paid as a wind industry advocate stands in contrast to every other “disclosure” statement he’s made on the topic, including this one (if it looks fuzzy, click on it, it’ll pop up in a new window, use your magnifier and it’ll look crystal clear – as to the “clarity” of the “disclosure”, well, that’s another matter):

****

The guru raves on about the PhD in Medicine he picked up for his thesis: “Cigarette Advertising As Myth: A Re-Evaluation Of The Relationship Of Advertising To Smoking” – and, on the basis of that “qualification”, purports to give remote, long-distance medical diagnoses – which he says applies to all health effects recorded and reported by wind farm neighbours all around the world. It’s like he’s using some kind of magic stethoscope, mounted in an orbiting satellite.

But the guru is not alone in pushing the envelope, when it comes to claims about being qualified as a “health professional”.

Two of the “experts” relied upon by Media Watch to justify its efforts to slam Steven Cooper’s brilliant study, are journalism and politics student, Jacqui Hoepner; and her PhD supervisor, Will Grant.

Relying on these highly qualified “experts”, Media Watch had this to say:

Paul Barry: Writing in The Conversation, the Australian National University’s Jacqui Hoepner and Will Grant also condemned The Australian’s front page story and the study it was based on, branding it:

“… an exemplary case of what we consider to be bad science and bad science reporting.”

— The Conversation, 22nd January, 2015

The Australian’s response (as covered in this post) was that:

And these two have no relevant qualifications. Grant has a PhD in politics, and Hoepner is a journalist. Neither has either medical or acoustical training or experience.

The Australian

In the middle of the furore that erupted among the wind industry, its parasites and spruikers, as The Australian attacked Media Watch’s woefully inaccurate and patently biased reporting, Jacqui decided to throw some “light” on her “qualifications” as an “expert” on the adverse health effects caused by turbine generated noise and vibration, in this curious little letter to the Oz.

Wind-farm qualifications

Last Monday, The Australian questioned my qualifications (“Legal threat on Media Watch report”, 23/2). I am not a journalist, pro-turbine or an advocate for the wind industry.

I have never received financial support from the wind industry. Where appropriate, I’ve challenged counterproductive actions by individuals or groups in this debate, including wind companies.

My only agenda is to investigate what factors contribute to the symptoms experienced by people living near wind farms in a way that are appropriate to my qualifications.

Jacqui Hoepner, Australian National University, Canberra, ACT.

Hmmm, where to start? …

It’s great to see that Jacqui is ready to challenge “counterproductive actions”. However, that leaves the question begging: “counterproductive” to what?

Perhaps a clue was given by the fact that she’s prepared to admit that she has an “agenda”. Although, if she’s not “pro-turbine or an advocate for the wind industry”, as she asserts, just what is she in favour of?

STT thinks a little clue as to what that “agenda” might be, is given by her fellow traveller, and PhD supervisor, Will Grant.

****

Will turned up to the great wind power fraud rally, held in Canberra back in June 2013, wearing a giant foam hat – apparently in some kind of nod to Australian political maverick, and 10-gallon hat fan, Bob Katter.

Will was clearly hoping that the rally would turn into a media circus, like the “anti-carbon-tax protests” – where protesters waved banners and placards screaming “Ditch the Witch”, in a pointed message to then PM, Julia Gillard.

Will – you’ll find his manifesto here – was somewhat disappointed to find that the 380 or so who turned up in Canberra from South Australia, Victoria, New South Wales and as far away as Western Australia and Far North Queensland (see our posts here and here) were, as he put it, “disciplined and on message” – and, much to his chagrin, there wasn’t a “Ditch the Witch” placard in sight (see Will’s lament on The Conversation blog here).

The giveaway as to Will’s true motives pops up in this line from his article that:

“But these academic motivations mask the fact that I also like to quietly troll my political opponents, and this looked like an occasion for a little mischievous fun.”

That glimpse into Will’s true motives doesn’t turn up in his disclosure statement on “The Conversation”, funnily enough.

But the fact that he’s prepared to view wind farm victims as “political” opposition; and to “troll” them “for a little mischievous fun”, gives a pretty fair insight into his agenda, as well as the “unspoken agenda” of his PhD student, Jacqui Hoepner.

But, what of their qualifications?

Will Grant’s “PhD in politics” – awarded for a thesis titled “A Certain India An enquiry into a claim to national territory” – is hardly the strongest starting point for someone looking to investigate the health symptoms associated with, and caused by, incessant low-frequency noise and infrasound.

STT loves the tagline of the ANU unit Jacqui and Will hail from: the “Australian National Centre for the Public Awareness of Science”; how very “Ministry of Truth” – and a fair clue as what this pair are really up to. From her online “bio”, Jacqui points to her undergraduate degree in politics and journalism:

Again, not the most solid foundation, you’d think, for someone setting out to investigate – as she tells us in her letter – “the symptomsexperienced by people living near wind farms”.

“The symptoms experienced” are either physiological, psychological, or a mixture of both (see our posts here and here).

Now, that narrows down the kind of “qualifications” necessary to investigate those symptoms: either the investigator holds a “medical” qualification and/or a qualification in “psychology”.

Although, to be fair to Jacqui, Will and the guru – qualifications in acoustics, vibration, or mechanical engineering would also hold relevance to the type of “investigation” that Jacqui’s engaged in. But that’s not what Jacqui’s been up to.

Oh no, Jacqui has been doing her darndest to infiltrate communities affected by wind turbine generated noise and vibration – in an effort to expand upon the nonsense “nocebo” story; and advance the “agenda” shared with her supervisor, Will Grant – and all the other wind industry spruikers and shills – that aims to maintain the great wind power fraud, at the expense and misery of hundreds of hard-working country people.

So, as a word of warning, if Jacqui Hoepner contacts you to find out what you think about the turbines thumping and grinding away next to your house, keeping you awake all night and otherwise making your life a misery on earth – STT suggests you delete her emails, hang-up the phone and generally refuse to “play ball” – remember her boss is hoping to “troll” you, and people like you, all “for a little mischievous fun”.

But there’s another element to this little game; and that’s where people like Jacqui hold themselves out to be qualified to investigate health symptoms suffered by people; whether those symptoms are physiological or psychological, or a mixture of both.

Most civilised countries have rules about people claiming to be qualified to deal with or investigate other people’s health problems. Some of those rules take the “game” of people claiming to be “health professionals” fairly seriously.

In Australia, that “game” is governed pretty strictly by the Australian Health Practitioner Regulation Authority (AHPRA) – under what’s called the “Health Practitioner National Regulation Law” (see the link here) – which is set out as uniform legislation that operates in all States and Territories, including NSW (for the NSW’s Act click here), which deals with people claiming to hold qualifications as “health professionals” in section 116:

Claims by persons as to registration as health practitioner

(1) A person who is not a registered health practitioner must not knowingly or recklessly –

(a) take or use the title of “registered health practitioner”, whether with or without any other words; or

(b) take or use a title, name, initial, symbol, word or description that, having regard to the circumstances in which it is taken or used, indicates or could be reasonably understood to indicate –

(i) the person is a health practitioner; or

(ii) the person is authorised or qualified to practise in a health profession; or

(d) claim to be qualified to practise as a health practitioner.

Maximum penalty –

(a) in the case of an individual – $30,000; or

(b) in the case of a body corporate-$60,000.

(2) A person must not knowingly or recklessly –

(a) take or use the title of “registered health practitioner”, whether with or without any other words, in relation to another person who is not a registered health practitioner; or

(b) take or use a title, name, initial, symbol, word or description that, having regard to the circumstances in which it is taken or used, indicates or could be reasonably understood to indicate –

(i) another person is a health practitioner if the other person is not a health practitioner; or

(ii) another person is authorised or qualified to practise in a health profession if the other person is not a registered health practitioner in that health profession; or

(c) claim another person is registered under this Law, or hold the other person out as being registered under this Law, if the other person is not registered under this Law; or

(d) claim another person is qualified to practise as a health practitioner if the other person is not a registered health practitioner.

Maximum penalty –

(a) in the case of an individual – $30,000; or

(b) in the case of a body corporate – $60,000.

For the purposes of section 116, “health profession” is defined by section 5 to mean: “the following professions, and includes a recognised specialty in any of the following professions – … “(e) medical” and … “(n) psychology”. And “health practitioner” is defined to mean “an individual who practises a health profession”.

So, with Jacqui Hoepner’s wind farm health investigation limited to one about “symptoms”, which can only involve the physiological and/or psychological aspects of human health, if she contacts you to quiz you about your symptoms, you might like to contact AHPRA about what she tells you about her qualifications.

AHPRA is in the business of protecting the integrity of Australia’s health system, by preventing unqualified people holding themselves out as being qualified to investigate, diagnose or otherwise make public statements about the causes and effects of reported and recorded health symptoms: that’s the kind of stuff properly reserved for legally qualified medical practitioners.

So, if you get anybody suggesting to you that they’re qualified to investigate your symptoms, why not give AHPRA a call – or drop them a line? You’ll get the number, the email and postal address right here:AHPRA Contact.

Oh, nearly forgot, there’s a pretty solid case that what the ABC’s Media Watch has done – in holding out Grant, Hoepner and the guru as “experts” qualified to pass judgment on the adverse health effects caused by wind farm noise and vibration – falls smack-bang within section 116(2), by Media Watch using a “title, name, initial, symbol, word or description that, having regard to the circumstances in which it is taken or used, indicates or could be reasonably understood to indicate that:

another person is a health practitioner;
another person is authorised or qualified to practise in a health profession;
or to claim another person is qualified to practise as a health practitioner.

– when none of them hold any qualifications to practise in a “health profession”; or as a “health practitioner”, at all.

As well as being informed about Jacqui’s lack of health qualifications, AHPRA might also like to hear from the guru’s so-called, “wind farm wing-nuts” about Media Watch’s little “holding out” effort too? Why not drop AHPRA a line on both counts?

Curt Devlin’s…. “WIND TURBINE TORTURE!” A MUST READ!

March 12, 2015 / 1957chev / 2 Comments

Wind Turbine Torture

By Curt Devlin

It is easy to forget just how essential sleep is to health and happiness; until of course, you yourself have been deprived of it for a night or two. Firsthand experience of sleep deprivation, even for a few days, is a powerful reminder of how mentally and physically debilitating it is. Even the ongoing disruption or restriction of sleep for a relatively short period of time can have devastating health consequences. Medicalresearch has clearly shown that sleep is essential to human health and wellbeing. Prolonged sleep deprivation has been linked to memory loss, hallucination, weakened resistance to pain, obesity, hypertension, diabetes, impaired immune response, extreme anxiety, stress, clinical depression, and suicide. In the most extreme cases, animal experimentation suggests that lack of sleep can kill you.

Sleep deprivation has long been recognized as torture by the Geneva Conventions of 1949, the United Nations Convention against Torture (CAT), and the United States War Crimes Act. Depriving someone of proper sleep is torture, regardless of whether it is perpetrated by the CIA against suspected terrorists, OR by reckless planning authorities who permit the wind industry to site industrial-scale wind turbines in residential neighborhoods, or by noise pollution regulatory authorities and health authorities who ignore consistent reports of sleep deprivation from neighboring residents. When authorities deem developments “compliant” with regulations, or wind developers effect specious mitigations; they are inflicting torture. They are violating fundamental human rights.

Recently, the U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee released what has come to be known as the Torture Report. It reveals that sleep deprivation was one of the frequently used CIA “enhanced interrogation” tactics. The use of prolonged sleep deprivation led Committee Chairman, Diane Feinstein to conclude “…that, under any common meaning of the term, CIA detainees were tortured.” She goes on to say “…that the conditions of confinement and the use of authorized and unauthorized interrogation and conditioning techniques were cruel, inhuman, and degrading.” The same can be said of the practice of siting industrial turbines too close to homes. Failure to take action to stop excessive noise pollution, or to enforce existing legal limits on “noise nuisance” whenever noise-induced sleep disturbance or deprivation is reported by wind turbine neighbors, hosts, or their families is full complicity with torture.

It is grimly ironic that the US Senate Committee condemns sleep deprivation as cruel and inhuman when used by the CIA interrogators on terror suspects, but blithely ignores it when imposed by wind developers and local authorities on ordinary, law-abiding citizens who pose no threat to anyone. The only threat they pose is to the income generated by taxpayer subsidies to unscrupulous wind developers.

Is it really fair to compare the torture of detainees to that of turbine neighbors? Consider that the detainees were forced to endure sleeplessness for a few days at a time on many occasions, but never more than a week. Wind turbine victims must endure this same deprivation for arbitrary periods of time whenever the wind is blowing, sometimes intermittently for decades. Often, their only hope of escape or reprieve from this torment is to flee their homes which no one will buy—despite the fact that they are not suspected of any crimes whatsoever. At least detainees were not forced to lie awake and watch their families suffer the same deprivation.

When the turbines were shut down during a winter storm with near hurricane-force winds, one young mother of infant twins living in Fairhaven, Massachusetts USA wrote “Isn’t it crazy that in a weird twist it takes a blizzard to give us peace. According to the power dash the beasts stopped at around 9PM.” Later on, she wrote, “I sleep ok in the basement but the babies still wake up randomly almost every night.” Most who are tortured by turbines will tell you that “the beast” can usually finds them even when they are hiding in the cellar. Not only are people kept awake by the turbines, but they must endure headaches, nausea, dizziness, breathing difficulties, and in some cases uncontrollable anxiety and severe acute depression.

In one incident described in the Torture Report, an Afghani named Arsala Khan “…suffered disturbing hallucinations after 56 hours of standing sleep deprivation….” Afterwards, the CIA determined that he actually was not involved in any plans or activities to harm the U.S! The innocent victims tortured by the wind industry are in a position to know just how it feels to be tortured indiscriminately.

Publicly, the Bush administration and the CIA chose to describe their treatment of detainees as “enhanced interrogation.” The wind industry chooses to call its noise impact mere “annoyance” and refer to residents’ “concerns”. These euphemisms are carefully selected to conceal the ugly reality that sleep deprivation is torture, plain and simple. Such terms attempt to hide what is known to be—by any standard of human decency—utterly wrong and depraved. The Senate Intelligence Committee and others have begun to shine a spotlight on the CIA torture program; but the wind industry program of cruelty continues to operate with impunity, largely beyond the glare of public scrutiny.

When the US Senate Committee report placed the issue of torture front and center in the media, it prompted outrage among some journalists, who have used terms like ‘depravity,’ ‘harrowing,’ and ‘gruesome’ to describe the techniques used by the CIA. Yet the media has no outrage when prolonged sleep deprivation and cruelties are routinely visited on local neighborhoods throughout America and across the world. When the subject turns to wind turbines, all talk of human rights violationsimmediately goes silent.

Remarkably, and despite the condemnation of the Intelligence Committee and the outraged media reaction to it, public opinion polls consistently show that a majority of Americans still consider the CIA’s use of torture justified. Even those who disagree with this view, may be able to understand it. The rationale for torture is that it was necessary to prevent another 911; but what, then, is the rationale for torturing ordinary men, women, and children in their own homes on a nightly basis? What accounts for the almost universal apathy of government officials, mainstream media, and the general public, toward the victims of wind energy? It seems America is one nation, with liberty, and justice for all—except for those unlucky few, who can be tortured without any good cause at all. Our silence gives consent to continue.

Perhaps this silence about turbine victims can be partially explained by a monumental form of social denial. Psychologists have noted that when confronted with tacit complicity with torture, most people tend to diminish in their own minds the actual harm being inflicted. Terms like ‘enhanced interrogation’ and ‘annoyance’ encourage such forms of self-deception. However, this pervasive complicity with torture cannot be fully explained by denial alone. There is a far more ominous and compelling explanation supplied long ago by the experiments of Stanley Milgram.

In 1962, Milgram, a Harvard-trained psychologist, devised a set of experiments designed to explain why people are willing to accept and even participate in torture. Initially, Milgram thought it was a lack of moral fiber. Prior to conducting his experiments, Milgram believed that most Americans were morally superior to those who were responsible for the torture and atrocities of the Holocaust. He predicted that most of his (American) subjects would reject the use of torture out of hand. Milgram also polled many of his fellow psychologists, who made similar predictions. Contrary to all expectations, however, Milgram’s experiment actually proved that about two thirds of Americans were willing to administer torture by electroshock to innocent victims, even to the point of possible lethality, simply because they were told by someone in a position of perceived authority that it was necessary to do so. Contrary to the much beloved American mythology of rugged individualism and personal independence, Milgram has shown that most Americans are just as blindly obedient to authority as everyone else.

Since that time, Milgram’s experiment has been repeated dozens of times by him and other scientists, with subjects from different counties and cultures, but the results are always the same. About 65% of all subjects are willing to administer torture—even to the point of lethality—as long as someone in authority tells them it is necessary. Even when controls are added to identify potentially confounding factors, this result is highly repeatable. This shows that obedience to authority, even to the point of partaking in torture of innocent victims, is so deeply ingrained in human nature that it transcends language, culture, and moral outlook—it is a truly global phenomenon. The evidence for this is sadly pervasive.

People are willing to ignore, condone, and even participate in torturing detainees simply because they are told that it was necessary to protect America from new terrorist attacks. Similarly, people are willing to tolerate, approve, and contribute to the torture of their neighbors with the ill effects of wind turbines simply because they have been told by public officials, the media, or green zealots that it is necessary to “save the planet” from global climate change. There is ample evidence to show that torture is not an effective means of interrogation and that industrial wind turbines cannot stem climate change. No matter. Like subjects in Milgram’s experiment, the public is being told by authority that “the experiment requires that you continue.”

In a position paper entitled Leave No Marks: Enhanced Interrogation Techniques and the Risk of Criminality, Physicians for Human Rights (PHR) and Human Rights First (HRF) have collaborated to publish a detailed condemnation of the CIA torture program, as well as the participation of physicians in these practices. Section 6 specifically details the physical harm and health consequences of forced sleep deprivation and interruption. It also delineates the criminal consequences for anyone who knowingly engages in it. Here it is pointed out that “the U.S. State Department has condemned Indonesia, Iran, Jordan, Libya, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey for using sleep deprivation as a form of torture or cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment.”

In case anyone is inclined to minimize sleep deprivation as mere annoyance, as the wind industry and its advocates would have you believe; Leave No Marks goes on to note that:

Even sleep restriction of four hours per night for less than a week can result in physical harm, including hypertension, cardiovascular disease, altered glucose tolerance and insulin resistance. Sleep deprivation can impair immune function and result in increased risk of infectious diseases. Further, chronic pain syndromes are associated with alterations in sleep continuity and sleep patterns.

Many of those who are routinely awakened by nearby industrial turbines would consider themselves lucky to get even four consecutive hours of uninterrupted sleep on a regular basis. This paper notes that U.S. federal courts have found that sleep deprivation is also a violation of the Eight Amendment prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment.

Perhaps it is time for groups like Physicians for Human Rights and Human Rights First and indeed the medical profession generally, to turn their intention toward the ongoing torture and cruelty perpetrated by the wind industry. Surely, such acts are criminal whether they are committed by governments or private industry.

Dr. William Hallstein, treating psychiatrist from Falmouth USA, made it abundantly clear that the impacts of the turbines are indeed tantamount to torture in his letter to the Falmouth Town Board of Health. It is telling that Justice Muse from the Falmouth Superior Court issued an injunction in December 2013 to prevent “irreparable harm to physical and psychological health” by turning the turbines off at night. The turbines at Falmouth (USA) remain turned off, over a year later.

Perhaps it’s time to face our own complicity and involvement in these fundamental violations of both civil and human rights, as well.

The wind industry cannot hide behind a claim of ignorance about the devastating impact of wind turbine noise on human health. N.D. Kelley and other NASA scientists from the Solar Energy Research Institute (SERI) have published papers that ascribe the direct causation of human disturbance to wind turbine noise. This group published numerous papers on this subject between 1982 and 1985 based on sound research and clear evidence. Then, in 1987, this research was presented directly to the wind industry at the American Wind Energy Association (AWEA) Conference in San Francisco. In short, the wind industry has continued to site its industrial scale power and noise generators near residential neighborhoods for more than thirty years, knowing full well that it was inflicting cruelty and suffering on those living near them. The silence of public officials, the media, and the public indicates wind turbine torture may be allowed to continue for decades to come.

There can be no doubt that wind turbines cause chronic sleep deprivation, and no doubt that sleep deprivation is torture. The scientific evidence that turbines do cause sleeplessness is already prolific and continues to grow. Moreover, the most comprehensive literature reviews on this question reveal that there is virtually no independent evidence to controvert this conclusion. Perhaps the most damning evidence of all comes from the public record of heath complaints from people around the world. According to the noted epidemiologist Carl V. Phillips, “There is overwhelming evidence that large electricity-generating wind turbines (hereafter: turbines) cause serious health problems in a nontrivial fraction of residents living near them.” Among these public health reports from turbine neighbors, sleep deprivation and disruption are by far the most common.

Taken together, the science and the public record of adverse health reports offer clear and compelling evidence that wind turbines are instruments of torture. Therefore, anyone who advocates for, or participates in, the siting of wind turbines near people is inflicting torture on them. Anyone who contributes to, or endorses, unsafe government noise pollution regulations, or who allows them to continue unabated when turbines are clearly causing sleep deprivation and other forms of human misery, or who ignores community complaints, or obstructs the accurate measurement of infrasound and low frequency noise inside homes is complicit with torture. And, anyone who knowingly conducts spurious turbine noise mitigations, or who permits or helps to perpetuate levels of infrasound and low frequency noise emissions above the thresholds established by Dr. Neil Kelley, and confirmed most recently by Steven Cooper’s research at Cape Bridgewater in Australia, must be held accountable for inflicting, or helping to perpetuate torture by prolonged sleep deprivation. Those who do so are guilty of criminal violation of both civil and human rights on an industrial scale.

This is why the global wind industry has strategically and systematically sought to silence wind turbine hosts and neighbors with property buy-outs and non-disclosure agreements. Undoubtedly, this is also why they and those who support them have publicly targeted acoustic engineers, health practitioners, and public health experts who have attempted to expose this truth in accordance with their canons of professional ethics. This industry subjects legitimate science to ridicule, its authors to character assassination, and its sleepless victims to blame and aspersions of mental defect. All of this is done to cloak conscious criminal cruelty in the name of unbridled greed.

In its determination to hide the ugly reality of industrial wind turbines, this industry uses money and the false promise of cheap energy to exert undue influence over public officials. It substitutes pseudo-science for legitimate science, spends untold millions on PR campaigns to drown out honest journalism, and sponsors fear-mongering in place of reasoned public discourse on renewable energy.

There may be no better evidence for this campaign of pubic deception than the so-called “Wind Turbine Health Impact Study: Report of Independent Expert Panel” produced in January, 2012 by an unholy alliance between the wind industry and Massachusetts governor’s office. This document epitomizes the fraudulence, distortion, and misinformation that flourish when wind industry influence over government goes unchecked by public scrutiny and legal safeguards. The title notwithstanding, none of the authors of this so-called health study had any recognized expertise related to the health effects of wind turbines. None had ever given a physical examination to a turbine sufferer, and no turbine-related health complaints were investigated during the course of this study—despite the vocal and repeated pleas by effected residents to be examined as part of it. Although insufficient peer-review was one of the most salient criticism leveled against the legitimate studies reviewed; the Massachusetts study itself was not submitted to peer-review before its publication. For these and other reasons, it was deemed junk science by Dr. Raymond Hartmann, who is widely recognized for his expertise in analyzing scientific evidence, and exposing the junk science used by the Tobacco industry to defend its products.

The “Expert Panel” study was published by the Massachusetts Departments of Environmental Protection and Public Health. When such junk science such as this is published by the very agencies responsible for protecting the environment and public health, it gives them the ring of authority. It is as though the state has mandated to an unsuspecting public that the torture must continue. In Milgram’s experiment, when a subject refused to continue administering shocks, the authority figure would reassure them by saying something to the effect that no permanent tissue damage will be caused. In that context, the statement was quite true because no real shock was actually being given. But in the case of wind turbines, government sanctioned torture is very real and does real damage to health and safety—and that damage may indeed be permanent. As the epigraph from Leave No Marks reminds us, “The absence of physical evidence should not be construed to suggest that torture did not occur, since such acts of violence against persons frequently leave no marks or permanent scars.”

For those who are willing to face their own conscience, there may be a glimmer of hope in Stanley Milgram’s otherwise bleak findings. In some of his later experiments, Milgram tried to determine how conformity would affect the obedience of the experimental subjects. He found that when at least two others in the room refused to comply with authority, only about 10% of the experimental subjects were willing to continue torturing. For those who have the courage to defy authority, it seems that disobedience can be contagious, and raising your voice loudly, publicly, and repeatedly against indiscriminant torture and injustice can truly make a difference.

About the author: Curt Devlin currently lives in Fairhaven, Massachusetts U.S.A. He was formerly a Teaching Fellow in the Philosophy Department at Tulane University. His opposition to the irresponsible use of wind energy began in 2007, when a wind project was proposed for the undisturbed and ecologically sensitive salt marshes surrounding a quite estuary in the Little Bay area of Fairhaven—an area which is bordered by densely populated neighborhoods. Although this project was defeated, construction began clandestinely on Veteran’s Day in November of 2011. Since then, Devlin been an outspoken critic of the wind industry and its proponents. He has written numerous articles and editorials on this and related topics. He has been a guest speaker at the Fairhaven Wind Forum in 2012, where he criticized the irresponsible siting of turbines in residential neighborhoods across Massachusetts and around the world. In 2013, he spoke on the fundamental human right to be free of unwarranted experimentation at the Falmouth Human Rights Conference in Falmouth, Massachusetts. Professionally, Devlin works as a software architect focused on the development of health science solutions for the detection and treatment of cancer and the improvement of human health.

Our Special Needs Children are Being Abused by Noise from Wind Turbines

March 12, 2015 / 1957chev / Leave a comment

WindAwareIreland

Autism and Wind Turbines

Autism is a neuro-developmental disorder that affects the development of the brain in the area of social interaction. It has been well documented that individuals on the Autistic Spectrum experience a degree of sensory impairment which renders them extremely sensitive to specific sounds, light and reflection and in many cases touch. To this end, it is reasonable to assume that individuals on the Autistic Spectrum will be even more susceptible to infrasound, mechanical noise and shadow flicker from wind turbines than the general population.

A 2003 study by Stansfeld and Matheson found that children in general represent a group who are particularly vulnerable to the non-auditory (infrasound) effects of noise. The report stated “In view of the fact that children are still developing both physically and cognitively, there is a possible risk that exposure to an environmental stressor such as noise may have an irreversible negative consequence for this group”. In 2010 a study by Steigler and Davis found that noise sensitivity is a particular problem with those with Autism Spectrum Disorders.

In fact, in the UK, Planning Inspectors and Planning Authorities have been sufficiently convinced of the effects of infrasound on those with Autistic Spectrum Disorders that they have refused planning permission for several wind energy facilities on the grounds that there were individuals living nearby with the condition. For example, a wind farm planned for North Lincolnshire was rejected in 2010 because of the serious effect it would have on twin autistic boys living nearby. A report from a Clinical Psychologist in this case pointed out the “extreme distress” that turbines could cause to people with autism. In this particular case, the twin boys had a fixation with spinning objects and the report asserted that “the time they spend engaged in spinning and observing objects had to be limited in order to allow them to engage in other more meaningful activities.” In another case in Aberdeenshire, Scotland in 2011, the parents of a severely autistic boy forced a wind energy company to backtrack on plans to site wind turbines near their home on the basis of evidence from Consultant Clinical Psychologist Dr. Susan Stebbings. Closer to home, Dan Danaher reported in the Clare Champion newspaper on the 26^th Jan 2012 how a Co. Clare mother claimed that her life “had been turned upside down” following the erection of a 19.6m agricultural turbine in a neighbouring property.

The turbines planned for Ireland are 185m high, almost ten times the height of the 19.6 m high turbine in Co. Clare.

The prevalence of autism in the general population in Ireland is now 1 in 100 according to a recent study by Prof. Staines of D.C.U.. Many Irish families with autistic members are very worried whether they will be able to stay in their homes if the planned wind farms proceed. There seems to be wilful negligence on the part of the Irish State in its failure to consider the increasing body of peer-reviewed evidence on the link between wind farms and adverse health effects and in particular its failure to consider the impacts these developments would have on the most vulnerable in our community, including those with Autistic Spectrum Disorders.

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References

Data collated, presented and prepared by WindAwareIreland

Cristina Becchio, Morena Mori, Umberto Castiello (2010) Perception of shadows in children with ASD. View

Catherine Purple Cherry & Lauren Underwood. The ideal home for the Autistic child. Autism Science Digest; The Journal of Autismone, Issue 03. View

Flavia Cortesi et al (2010). Sleep in children with Autistic Spectrum Disorders, Sleep Medicine 11 (2010) 659-664. View

Stansfeld & Matheson (2003) Health Impact Assessment Ch 7. B.A.C. View

Lillian N Steigler & Rebecca Davis (2010) Understanding Sound Sensitivity in Individuals with Autistic Spectrum Disorders, Online First. View

BBC website 27 April 2010. View

The Press and Journal, David Mc Kay 23 April 2011. View

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References