Noise & Infrasound

Windweasels Trying to Force Themselves on Another Unwilling Community

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Battle for Mount Emerald Reaches Boiling Point

July 20, 2014 by 

The battle to prevent RATCH from getting planning approval for the disaster it proposes for Mount Emerald has reached fever pitch. With 90% of locals bitterly opposed to the project, common sense would suggest a polite withdrawal by the developer. Instead, however, RATCH has dipped into the standard book of wind industry lies and half-truths (we covered a few of them in this post). Here’s the Cairns Post on a few more of them.

Storm brewing over wind farm in Tableland
Daniel Batemen
The Cairns Post
13 July 2014

bruce

THERE’S an ill wind blowing across the Tablelands, with rural landholders considering abandoning their multi-million dollar properties if the Mt Emerald Wind Farm gets the go-ahead.

They have accused the developers behind the renewable energy project of deceiving the community by downplaying the scale and impact of the wind farm, which involves the construction of up to 75 turbines – each about three times taller than Cairns Hospital.

Power producer Ratch Australia and property developer Port Bajool’s $380 million dollar project involves up to 75 wind turbines generating up to 225 megawatts of power from a 2400 hectare property aloft Mt Emerald, which is located about halfway between Atherton and Mareeba.

Jenny

Each tower is to stand about 80-90m tall, with approximately 50m long blades.

The proponents claim the project will potentially generate enough electricity to power 75,000 homes each year. The two-year construction phase of the project will also create an estimated 158 jobs, with up to 45 people to be employed locally once it is complete.

Since the development application for the wind farm was brought to the Tablelands Regional Council in 2010, a storm of protest about the project has been stirred up within the close-knit Walkamin and Tolga farming community.

When the Tablelands Wind Turbine Action Group conducted a recent survey of those living within 5km of the proposed project site, it found about 90 per cent of residents opposed the development.

The group says locals are terrified of health and noise impacts from the turbines; they are concerned about the impact the construction phase could have upon native habitat; they fear their property values will be driven right down; and they have even questioned the spacing and efficiency of the turbines.

Jenny Disley and her partner Jack Krikorian live 1800m away from the project site, where they will have a clear view of the giant bladed towers from their back porch.

The couple have struggled to sell their sprawling 42.9ha property, which has been on the market for three years through multiple real estate agents, with a current price tag of about $5 million.

“We’ve had a bit of interest but no one will buy,’’ Ms Disley told the Cairns Post. “They keep telling us the reason for that is because of the Mt Emerald wind farm uncertainty.”

The pair operate rural workers accommodation business Walkamin Enterprises, providing labour to the thriving local agricultural industry.

Mr Krikorian is most concerned about the impact noise generated by the turbines may have on up to 40 workers staying in various cabins and homes on their property.

“If the noise impacts on those 40 people, that’s the end of our business,’’ he said.

poster

“We are in the middle of an extremely active horticultural area, particularly for bananas, and all of those people need our service continuously.

“How do we get compensated, if everything that we work for is impacted?”

Ms Disley said if they were unable to be compensated for any land devaluation, and unable to sell, they would be left with no other choice but to abandon their land, becoming “wind farm refugees”.

“You can’t sell,’’ she said.

“You’ve sunk your whole life savings back into the property. If you can’t access your superannuation through a sale, you can’t live there because of the noise and infra (low frequency) sound.”

Ratch Australia thoroughly refutes any accusations the farm will generate noise pollution. It says any sound generated by the turbines will be less than that heard on a typical quiet suburban street (a level of 40 decibels).

The company and Port Bajool picked Mt Emerald for its “excellent” wind source, its proximity to the electricity grid, and potential for only “minimal” environmental and social impact.

At 4.5km away from Mt Emerald, one of the oldest families of the area, the Watkins family, believes that while the project may be a good idea, but it is being planned for the wrong spot.

Mt Uncle farmer and distillery owner Bruce Watkins says wind farms should be neither seen nor heard.

“If you see these things, you’re too close to them,’’ he said. “That’s the fact.”

“I’m not against green energy. None of us in (the action) group are – we’re all after sustainable, healthy, green energy. I’m putting solar panels up (on the distillery roof) now.”

“But where these so-called environmentalists go wrong, is they say we must have green energy, but they forget the (real) cost.”

The family has a berry farm within 1.5km of the wind farm site, employing more than 200 people. Mr Watkins said the construction phase of the development could create widespread problems for transport, and therefore businesses, across the region.

“There is a massive migration of the equipment to come up (to the Tablelands),’’ he said.

“You’ve got to appreciate they’ve got the right to commandeer main roads, traffic, everything. The delays in the traffic will be staggering.

“I’m not going to overemphasise it, but the fact is they’re going to get these things on the road, which are 80-tonne things, and they’re going to have to resurface the roads.

“At whose expense? We don’t know.”

When Bruce’s daughter Krista and her husband got married five years ago, they had been planning on building a dream house on the family’s land 2km from Mt Emerald.

The mountain even provided a backdrop in the couple’s wedding photos.

“We would have liked to have started to build a home there this year,’’ Krista said.

“But there is no way I’m going to spend $500,000 building an average home when the fact is I could be looking at a depreciated value of more than 50 per cent because of the wind turbines.”

About four years ago, the couple convinced friends to purchase property at the nearby Rangeview Estate.

Krista said it was a mistake that cost them a good relationship with their friends.

“It was the day they signed their contract, they bumped into some locals who were displaying Ratch’s own documents about the wind farm at the Tolga markets,’’ she said.

“The friends, furious, came back to us and said ‘you didn’t tell us about this’, and we saw (the development application) for the first time. We had no idea. (The developers) told us – many of us – it was just a few wind turbines. Way over the back. That was just a blatant lie, because they’re going to be all over that mountain.”

Last month, the development application was called in by the Deputy Premier and Minister for State Development, Infrastructure and Planning Jeff Seeney.

The minister, at the time, said given the complexity of the proposed development, independent assessments would be carried out to evaluate the true economic, environmental and community impacts and benefits of the project.

The development could be approved later this year, with construction to commence in early 2015.

Ratch Australia executive general manager, business development, Geoff Dutton, said the company had been as open and transparent as possible with the community, maintaining solid communication lines about the project since it was first tabled with the Tablelands Regional Council.

He assured locals would not be disturbed by the turbines, once they were operational.

“We have tried to analyse every aspect of noise and where it will go,’’ he said.

“We look at the individual wind turbine manufacturers and their offerings to us, and go through, with them, very detailed specifications.

“Wind towers aren’t just built, they’re built with a view to being within regulations.”

He conceded there would be “some queues” for traffic during the construction phase, as the turbines and their blades were being transported up to the mountain.

“We won’t be going up from Cairns through Mareeba – the more direct route – that is not practical because there are a few sharp bends that no blade will ever go around,’’ he said.

“The better way is to go the long way round further south and then come back around from the Ravenshoe direction up towards the site.”
The Cairns Post

One of the crackers tossed up by RATCH is that the noise generated by its turbines will be the same as a ‘typical quiet suburban street’. Depending on the suburb, most traffic noise dies down well before midnight and rarely resumes much before 6am. Leaving suburbanites a fair opportunity to catch a few zzzs during the hours of darkness.

Giant fans, on the other hand, operate whenever the wind blows – which usually means late evening/early morning and for some strange reason their noise has a habit of annoying neighbours, preventing them from sleeping and otherwise impacting on their good health. For the uninitiated, the sound tracks to these 2 videos might yield a clue.

****
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rOU39ws1gHo

****
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iYpgVPAK5To

Leave Mount Emerald to the eagles.

Wind is free? Not on your life! The Price we Pay is OUTRAGOUS!

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“The Wind is Free” and other

          pork pies (lies)

In May of this year the Department of Communications, Energy and Natural

Resources launched the “Green Paper on Energy Policy in Ireland”. Many

of my readers probably have not read the Paper, and who could blame you? Some

of you might have battled though parts of it, some of you might have read the

executive summary. I dragged myself through the whole thing and the recurring

thought that flashed through my mind was “hot air, lots of it”. This thought was quite

appropriate as the document, although pretending to be a comprehensive renewable

energy policy, was little more than an homage to the wind farm.

Rather than go through the entire sordid document, I thought that over two days I

would look at two recurring themes in this Green paper about wind energy and show

them for what they are: calculated, but nevertheless blatant, lies.

.
Lie #:1 Wind energy is a “free and plentiful” form of energy

Let’s just get one thing straight from the outset: Any form of renewable energy

is not cheap, andmost certainly not free.

Renewable energy is far more expensive than energy from coal, for example,

which is very cheap but also very dirty. Coal is so cheap at the moment that the

ESB are actually buying more and more (American) coal for MoneyPoint, which

seems a bit daft when the poor consumer is payingmore and more for the electricity

coming from the wind farms. Somebody’s getting rich but it ain’t you or me.  This is not

something we are doing to save money. It is something we are doing to save the planet;

and because the EU (ruled by the wind industry) has a gun to our head. So when the

Minister talks about how the wind is free and doesn’t Ireland have a lot of it, that is a

blatant lie. If we accept that we need renewable energy, and that we are going to pay

though our noses for that renewable energy, does it not make sense to try and produce

more of the cheaper forms of renewable energy?

Wind is the most expensive form of renewable energy. It is also unreliable,

because the wind does not blow all the time, and sometimes it blows too hard and so

the turbine is shut down (before it catches fire), but you pay for it 24/7. Two other far

more reliable forms of energy also happen to be a lot cheaper: biomass and solar.

The cost of energy has become a life or death issue as more and more Irish families

experience fuel poverty –

many citizens simply cannot afford to light or heat their homes. That’s a huge problem,

especially in winter.  Here’s the price comparison:

Wind costs €135 per ton of carbon saved. There are very few jobs in the Irish wind

industry as the turbines and accessories are all built in other countries, and so the

technicians and maintenance crews come from other countries.  The only Irish jobs

would be short-term installation jobs – low skills, poorly paid.

Domestic Solar PV costs €100 per ton of carbon saved, and it would create loads

of  jobs as people would need solar panels fitted on their houses. I know you are going to say

that the sun and Ireland don’t really belong in the same sentence, but these things run on

daylight as opposed to sun, and they really do make a difference.The conversion of

MoneyPoint power station to biomass would cost €60 per ton of carbon saved. That

means it costs less than half the cost of wind! It also means that the huge carbon footprint

of MoneyPoint would rapidly diminish as it stops burning that dirty American coal. Finally,

there would be loads of good long-term jobs as the biomass industry in this country becomes

profitable and so can flourish.

To recap: Any renewable energy is expensive and we must pay for it. There is no such

thing as free green energy. There are three proven sources of renewable energy: wind, sun,

and biomass. Both sun and biomass are cheaper than wind and will create far more Irish

jobs. Finally, the sun and biomass do not need huge pylons

and wind farms, so no loss of tourism, local industries, agriculture and food production, and no

adverse effects on our health.

Now, is that a no-brainer or what?

 

 

Could This Be the Dawning of Better Days for the UK? End the Greenscam~!

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UK’s new energy and environment ministers opposed green energy

Matthew Hancock called for cuts to wind power subsidies while Liz Truss claimed renewable power was damaging the economy…

Britain's new minister for energy, nusiness and enterprise, Matthew Hancock at 10 Downing Street on July 15, 2014.
Britain’s new minister for energy, business and enterprise, Matthew Hancock, at 10 Downing Street. Photograph: Suzanne Plunkett/Reuters

The new set of Conservative environment and energy ministers announced on Tuesday bring a track record of opposing renewable energy, having fought against wind and solar farms, enthusiastically backed fracking and argued that green subsidies damage the economy.

New energy minister, Matthew Hancock, signed a letter to David Cameron in 2012 demanding that subsidies for onshore windfarms were slashed. “I support renewable energy but we need to do it in a way that gives the most value for money and that does not destroy our natural environment,” he said at the time.

Hancock, who takes over from Michael Fallon, also opposed new turbines in his Suffolk constituency, arguing: “The visual and other impact of the proposed turbines is completely unacceptable in this attractive rural corner of Suffolk.”

New environment secretary and former Shell employee, Liz Truss, dismissed clean renewable energy as “extremely expensive” and said it was damaging the economy during an appearance on BBC Question Time last October.

“We do need to look at the green taxes because at the moment they are incentivising particular forms of energy that are extremely expensive,” she said. “I would like to see the rolling back of green taxes because it is wrong that we are implementing green taxes faster than other countries. We may be potentially exporting jobs out of the country as our energy is so expensive.”

In 2009, as deputy director of the free-market thinktank Reform, Truss said energy infrastructure in Britain was being damaged by politicians’ obsession with green technology: “Vast amounts of taxpayers’ money are being spent subsidising uneconomic activity,” she said. Research from the London School of Economics recently concluded that green policies were not harming economic growth.

Truss will have a key role in regulating the environmental safety of shale gas exploration and has said fracking would benefit people living nearby. “We need to make sure shale gas is being exploited in this country, which will benefit local communities,” she said on BBC Question Time. As well as fracking, Truss backed “renewable” nuclear power as a way to “hit green targets”.

In her first statement since being appointed as environment secretary, Truss said: “I look forward to tackling the important issues facing our rural communities including championing British food, protecting people from flooding and improving the environment.” She did not mention fracking or the controversial badger cull, which she has supported in parliamentary votes.

Truss, Hancock and another new appointee to the Department of Energy and Climate Change, Amber Rudd, all face conflicts between their new ministerial responsibilities and their previous constituency work.

Truss has spoken out about insufficient flood protection for farmland in her Norfolk South West constituency. But she is now responsible for flood defences and faces a £500m hole in the budget needed to keep pace with the rising flood risk being driven by climate change.

Truss has also been a vocal opponent of an energy-from-waste project – an incinerator – at Kings Lynn. She has opposed solar farms being built and also complained the energy secretary Ed Davey that subsidies helping crops to used to generate energy was making straw difficult to get for pig farmers.

One of the most contentious issues Truss faces will be over the badger
cull. Her East Anglian constituency is far from the bovine TB hotspots in
the west of the UK, but she has been keenly involved in rural issues – for
instance, she is pro-hunting.

Lord Krebs, chair of the sub-group of the Committee on Climate Change that
looks at adaptation to the effects of global warming, said at a meeting of
the all-party environment group in Westminster on Tuesday that he would
wait for a private conversation with Truss before advising her on that.

But he did say that he would offer his advice on badgers and bovine TB – a
subject which the prominent zoologist examined in detail for the previous
Labour government, finding that a cull was not likely to solve the
problem.

He told the Guardian: “I would say don’t be so focused on killing badgers
(as a way of controlling the disease) but go back and look at all the
policy options.”

Hancock has opposed both windfarms and new housing developments, while Rudd has raised her constituents safety fears about the Dungeness nuclear power plant in her constituency. Rudd, whose represents the coastal constituency of Hastings and Rye, has been praised by campaigners for supporting sustainable fishing and has raised questions about how government energy efficiency programmes would help social housing.

The Renewable Energy Association said it looked forward to working with Truss, Hancock and Rudd. The trade body’s chief executive, Dr Nina Skorupska, said of the outgoing Greg Barker, who Rudd replaces: “Not only did he bring stability to the department, he also brought passion and enthusiasm.”

Truss, Hancock and Rudd appear not to have made any public statements about climate change.

The Only Dangerous Climate Change….is the Political Climate! Liberalism is Killing Us!

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Cuomo says ‘we don’t get tornadoes’ in NY, but we’ve had at least 417

 
Glenn Coin | gcoin@syracuse.comBy Glenn Coin | gcoin@syracuse.com 
 
on July 15, 2014 at 11:01 AM, updated July 15, 2014 at 12:08 PM
 

Syracuse, N.Y. — Gov. Andrew Cuomo told reporters last week that the rare deadly tornado that struck Madison County on July 8 was part of a “new normal” of extreme weather.

“We don’t get tornadoes in New York, right? Anyone will tell you that,” Cuomo said at a news conference July 8 in Smithfield, where the tornado struck. “Well, we do now.”

In fact, we always have.

Since the federal government started keeping a tally in 1950, New York has had at least 417 tornadoes. That’s an average of seven per year.

“For him to say we don’t get tornadoes in New York was incorrect,” said Scott Steiger, a SUNY Oswego meteorology professor. “He didn’t do his homework. Severe weather has happened in New York for a long time.”

 

 

Tornado in Madison CountyBarbara Watson of the National Weather Service says a tornado hit Madison County town of Smithfield on July 8, 2014. Four people were killed.

New York has averaged seven tornadoes a year since 1950. The number was about five a year before 1990, and has been about 10 per year since then.

The increase could be because more tornadoes are happening or simply that more are being reported.

“Are we seeing more events or are we just knowing more about the events that we didn’t know about before?” asked Bill Bunting, operations chief at the Storm Prediction Center in Oklahoma. “I would say probably we don’t know, but a lot of it’s the reporting.”

Bunting said that smart phones and social media have made it easier for people to send evidence of tornadoes to researchers. The National Weather Service, for example,confirmed a tornado on Sunday after being sent pictures and video over Facebook.

“In my 29 years with the National Weather Service, it’s become a lot easier for us to become aware of events,” Bunting said.

The weather service has confirmed eight tornadoes in New York so far this year.

Even if more tornadoes are hitting New York, it’s not clear that’s because of climate change. Tornadoes are caused by a complicated set of factors, including thunderstorms loaded with moisture, and wind shear in the upper atmosphere.

While climate change would be expected to increase the instability of those storms, Bunting said, it might also be expected to reduce wind shear.

“The evidence that looks into whether or not severe thunderstorms or tornadoes will increase in a warming world is inconclusive,” he said.

Because the numbers of tornadoes is relatively low in New York, and because so many can pop up at the same time, the statistics fluctuate widely from year to year.
There were just four tornadoes in 2012, but 23 the year before.

Tornadoes are spawned from heavy thunderstorms that sweep across the region, so they tend to come in batches. The Smithfield tornado was the strongest of five that struck New York on July 8. On May 31, 1998, New York had 13 tornadoes.

New York’s tornadoes tend to be less intense and long-lasting than those on the plains. Tornadoes are rated on the Enhanced Fujita scale from zero to 5. New York tends to get storms from EF-0 to EF-2. The Smithfield tornado was at the top end of an EF-2, with wind speeds of 135 mph. The biggest one in New York this year was an EF-3, which hit May 23 in Warren County.

The last death from a tornado in New York before last week was September 2010, when one person was killed in Queens.

You can search our database for all New York tornadoes since 1950:

Search tips:
– Want to see all the tornadoes? Hit search without entering any search terms.
– If second search turns up nothing, make sure you cleared search terms in earlier search.
– You can search for the county or community two ways: Either enter the county or the community name. Or you can use the dropdowns.

Open Letter to Danish Government….a must-read!

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Open letter to the Danish government

by WCFN

 

LOGO WCFN 8

World Council for Nature

15 July 2014



To the government of Denmark,

Allow me to bring your attention to several press releases by our organisation, the World Council for Nature. Press releases that have been picked up by numerous news media around the world, and which cast an unfavourable light on the Kingdom of Denmark.”

http://wcfn.org/2014/06/07/windfarms-1600-miscarriages/

http://wcfn.org/2014/06/23/another-horror-story-from-denmark/

http://wcfn.org/2014/07/10/denmark-wind-turbines-disrupt-menstruation/

The first release draws attention to the 1,600 stillbirths of mink puppies, many exhibiting deformities, which occurred this year at a long-established mink farm which has wind turbines as new neighbours. The second quotes the mink farmer complaining that, “when the wind blows from the South West (where the wind turbines are), mother minks attack their own puppies.” And the third relates the closing of a plant nursery because its female employees complain of irregularities in their menstrual cycles, including unusual bleeding, since the installation of wind turbines nearby. The Danish media had already reported these tragic news, in the following articles:

https://worldcouncilfornature.files.wordpress.com/2014/07/2014-07-03-danish-article-on-plant-nursery-paper-edition.pdf

http://www.tv2east.dk/artikler/kaempevindmoeller-lukker-planteskole

http://jyllands-posten.dk/opinion/breve/ECE6846968/mink-som-forsoegsdyr/

http://www.maskinbladet.dk/artikel/tidligere-miljominister-vil-aendre-vindmollebekendtgorelse

http://www.tvmidtvest.dk/indhold/mink-amok-over-vindmoellestoej

http://aoh.dk/artikel/vindmller-giver-vanskabte-hvalpe

As far as we were able to find out, the response of your government to these health warnings has been to ignore them. When they were brought to the attention of your Minister of Health, Nick Hækkerup, by Member of Parliament Karina Adsbøl at a hearing on the health effects of wind turbines, Mr. Hækkerup turned a deaf ear to the matter: VIDEO Karina Adsbøl

Is ignoring the issue part of your policy for handling well-documented harm done by wind turbines, especially by those of the new, bigger variety? (See the work of Professor Henrik Møller, recently fired from Aalborg University at what appears to be the instigation of the wind energy lobby. Profs. Møller and Christian Pedersen demonstrated conclusively, in a peer-reviewed article a year or so ago, “the bigger they are, the more infrasound they produce.” Inconvenient truths on wind turbines are unwelcomed in your country, it would appear.)

One can’t ignore the facts that infrasound travels as far as 40 km, and that peer-reviewed studies have shown that chronic exposure at shorter distances can cause Vibro-Acoustic Disease. (VAD encompasses a long list of ailments, ranging from tinnitus to cardiac dysfunctions, cancer, and birth defects.) In their research on low frequency noise (including infrasound), Dr. Mariana Alves-Pereira and her colleague Dr. Castelo-Branco found that young horses can develop limb deformities when raised in the vicinity of wind turbines (1). Their study also found that the members of the family breeding these horses suffered themselves from VAD.

But the above are just small samples. Globally, cases abound of farm animals gravely affected by wind turbines (1). As for people, thousands of windfarm neighbours suffer from sleep deprivation, headaches, nausea, vertigo, tinnitus, etc. (Sleep deprivation, alone, triggers a host of ailments, ranging from stress and difficulty working and concentrating, to car accidents and a weakened immune system.)

With respect to deformities and stillbirths, it stands to reason that humans can be affected just as are minks and cattle, especially when economic and employment constraints prevent them from moving away from the wind turbines. (The story of the women employed by the garden center, mentioned above, is eloquent and tragic in this regard) (3).

The evidence of adverse health effects from wind turbines has been mounting for years. Let’s note the independent research of Nina Pierpont, M.D. (Johns Hopkins), Ph.D. (Princeton University), who described in detail the symptoms she uncovered through interviewing windfarm victims. (Dr. Pierpont published her 300-page report as, “Wind Turbine Syndrome: A Report on a Natural Experiment,” 2009) (4).

We must add to this the widely available, published work of Dr. Alec Salt and colleagues at the Cochlear Fluids Research Lab, Washington University School of Medicine (St. Louis, Missouri). Professor Salt has demonstrated that infrasound produced by wind turbines can indeed dys-regulate inner ear function, triggering the cascade of symptoms documented by Dr. Pierpont. Infrasound can readily do this, despite the fact it cannot be heard audibly. For decades the wind industry has clung to the fallacy that, “If you can’t hear it, it can’t hurt you.” Salt, a professor of Otolaryngology, has demolished that myth.

There is also the widely reported clinical experience of Dr. Steven Rauch, physician, Medical Director of Harvard Medical School’s renowned Clinical Balance and Vestibular Center. Dr. Rauch was recently interviewed by The New Republic:
“Dr. Steven Rauch, an otologist at the Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary and a professor at Harvard Medical School, believes WTS [Wind Turbine Syndrome] is real. Patients who have come to him to discuss WTS suffer from a “very consistent” collection of symptoms, he says. Rauch compares WTS to migraines, adding that people who suffer from migraines are among the most susceptible to turbines. There’s no existing test for either condition but “Nobody questions whether or not migraine is real.”

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

The list of studies and other research on the health effects of wind turbines is too long for including in this letter. Instead, we direct you to the list published by Dr Sarah Laurie, Australian physician and CEO of the Waubra Foundation:
LIST of Dr. LAURIE

We applaud the fact that, under prodding from windfarm victims, your government has begun investigating the health effects of wind turbines. Unfortunately (or is this intentional?), the scope and methodology of the investigation appear to overlook the following, commonsensical, measures:

First, there must be a rigorous epidemiological study, if necessary using case-crossover data, as Dr. Pierpont, a population biologist besides being a physician, demonstrated.

Secondly, wind turbine ILFN (infrasound and low-frequency noise), must be measured down to 0.1 Hz within the homes of windfarm victims complaining of illness. That is, noise measurements should be taken within their homes at night, windows closed, when the wind is blowing from the direction they perceive as problematic.

Thirdly, there must be a moratorium on the installation of new wind turbines until these studies are completed, published, and commented upon by the scientific and clinical community.

The World Council for Nature’s primary goal is the conservation of biodiversity. We believe a mentally healthy human population and governments acting responsibly, according to transparent and honest science, are the necessary means for achieving this.

We look forward to your response to our concerns.

Sincerely,

Mark Duchamp, Chairman

References

(1) http://wcfn.org/2014/03/31/windfarms-vertebrates-and-reproduction/

(2) http://wcfn.org/2014/06/07/windfarms-1600-miscarriages/

(3) http://wcfn.org/2014/07/10/denmark-wind-turbines-disrupt-menstruation/

(4) http://www.windturbinesyndrome.com/wind-turbine-syndrome/what-is-wind-turbine-syndrome/

The Truth About Infrasound….Not as Harmless As You Might Think!

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Below 20 Hertz: The Rumbling Realm Of Infrasound

Artwork by Andy Gilmore
Sound Inspired Artwork by Andy Gilmore
Infrasound is the realm of sounds in the frequency range of 20 Hz down to 0.001 Hz.

According to Harry F. Olson in his book Maths, Physics and Engineering:

20 Hz is considered the normal low frequency limit of human hearing.

The lower the frequency of sound, the more difficult it us for human to hear it. So, in order for us to hear a sound under 20 Hz, it must be powerful.

We mostly hear infrasound through our ears, but at higher levels it is possible to feel infrasound vibrations in various parts of the body.

Examples of natural events that produce ultrasound include: lightning, earthquakes, volcanoes, bolides (exceptionally bright fireballs), aurorae and surf.

Human can produce ultrasound too, examples include: sonic booms, mechanical sounds from engines, subwoofers and transducers.

Perceiving Sound Under 20 Hz

We all perceive infrasound differently — an infrasound wave might be perceived as loud to one individual, but another might not perceive it at all. Wikipedia says:

When pure sine waves are reproduced under ideal conditions and at very high volume, a human listener will be able to identify tones as low as 12 Hz.

Below 10 Hz it is possible to perceive the single cycles of the sound, along with a sensation of pressure at the eardrums.

Better quality test tones can be found on this page. You can also find tone generators available.

Paranormal Investigations

Infrasound can also cause feelings of awe or fear in humans, because it is not consciously perceived. It can be described as “shivers down your spine” or other weird sensations. An experiment in England was set up to study the effect of infrasound, Participants reported feeling uneasy and fearful when infrasound was introduced. After conducting the experiment, Professor Richard Wiseman said:

These results suggest that low frequency sound can cause people to have unusual experiences even though they cannot consciously detect infrasound. Some scientists have suggested that this level of sound may be present at some allegedly haunted sites and so cause people to have odd sensations that they attribute to a ghost—our findings support these ideas.

Some film soundtracks make use of infrasound to produce unease or disorientation in the audience. Irréversible is one such movie, as is Paranormal Activity.

Here is another infrasound investigation story from Wikipedia:

Research by Vic Tandy, a lecturer at Coventry University, suggested that an infrasonic signal of 19 Hz might be responsible for some ghost sightings.  Tandy was working late one night alone in a supposedly haunted laboratory at Warwick, when he felt very anxious and could detect a grey blob out of the corner of his eye.  When Tandy turned to face the grey blob, there was nothing.

The following day, Tandy was working on his fencing foil, with the handle held in a vise. Although there was nothing touching it, the blade started to vibrate wildly.

Further investigation led Tandy to discover that the extractor fan in the lab was emitting a frequency of 18.98 Hz, very close to the resonant frequency of the eye given as 18 Hz by NASA. This was why Tandy had seen a ghostly figure—it was an optical illusion caused by his eyeballs resonating.  The room was exactly half a wavelength in length, and the desk was in the center, thus causing a standing wave which was detected by the foil.

Tandy investigated this phenomenon further and wrote a paper entitled The Ghost in the Machine.  Tandy carried out a number of investigations at various sites believed to be haunted, including the basement of the Tourist Information Bureau next to Coventry Cathedral and Edinburgh Castle.

So, to sum up:

Most infrasounds are caused by powerful forces.They cause things to shake, without visual cause. They are often associated with the uncanny, because they inspire fear and dread. We often only perceive them subconsciously, and it is usually in the pits of stomachs, or in our bones.