Return to sanity!

The Truth about “Government-Induced Climaphobia”!

/ 1957chev / 2 Comments

Tens of Thousands Of Scientists Declare Climate Change A Hoax

Submitted by IWB, on September 2nd, 2016

30,000 scientists declare man-made climate change a hoax

A staggering 30,000 scientists have come forward confirming that man-made climate change is a hoax perpetuated by the elite in order to make money. 

One of the experts is weather channel founder, John Coleman, who warns that huge fortunes are being made by man-made climate change proponents such as Al Gore.

Natural News reports:

In a recent interview with Climate Depot, Coleman said:

“Al Gore may emerge from the shadows to declare victory in the ‘global warming’ debate if Hillary Clinton moves into the White House. Yes, if that happens and the new climate regulations become the law of the land, they will be next to impossible to overturn for four to eight years.”

 

Climate change proponents remain undeterred in their mission, ignoring numerous recent scientific findings indicating that there has been no warming trend at all for nearly two decades.

Al Gore’s dire predictions of the melting of polar ice on a massive scale have proved to be completely false. In fact, in 2014 – a year that was touted as being “the hottest ever” in the Earth’s history – there were record amounts of ice reported in Antarctica, an increase in Arctic ice, and record snowfalls across the globe.

Debunking the “97 percent” lie

On top of those “inconvenient truths,” the White House’s assertion that 97 percent of scientists agree that global warming is real has been completely debunked. Several independently-researched examinations of the literature used to support the “97 percent” statement found that the conclusions were cherry-picked and misleading.

More objective surveys have revealed that there is a far greater diversity of opinion among scientists than the global warming crowd would like for you to believe.

From the National Review:

“A 2008 survey by two German scientists, Dennis Bray and Hans von Storch, found that a significant number of scientists were skeptical of the ability of existing global climate models to accurately predict global temperatures, precipitation, sea-level changes, or extreme weather events even over a decade; they were far more skeptical as the time horizon increased.”

Other mainstream news sources besides the National Review have also been courageous enough to speak out against the global warming propaganda – even the Wall Street Journal published an op-ed piece in 2015 challenging the Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW) pseudoscience being promulgated by global warming proponents.

And, of course, there are the more than 31,000 American scientists (to date) who have signed a petition challenging the climate change narrative and 9,029 of them hold PhDs in their respective fields. But hey, Al Gore and his cronies have also ignored that inconvenient truth, as well.

Many of those scientists who signed the petition were likely encouraged to speak out in favor of the truth after retired senior NASA atmospheric scientist John L. Casey revealed that solar cycles are largely responsible for warming periods on Earth – not human activity.

Al Gore and cronies continue getting richer from the global warming hoax

But the global warming crowd continues to push their agenda on the public while lining their pockets in the process. If you’re still inclined to believe what Al Gore has to say about global warming, please consider the fact that since he embarked on his crusade, his wealth has grown from $2 million in 2001 to $100 million in 2016 – largely due to investments in fake “green tech” companies and the effective embezzlement of numerous grants and loans.

(American people:  You might want to take all of this information into serious consideration before casting your vote in the November election.)

More on “Government-Induced Climaphobia”…

/ 1957chev / Leave a comment

Many People Think What Few Dare To Say

Published on August 20, 2016,  Principia Scientific International

Written by Dr Klaus L E Kaiser

From climate doomsters to media politicos, the world is being bombarded with mis-constructs, unfounded claims and outright lies. Some listeners and readers may fall for such deceits but many others are thinking to themselves and quietly walking away. unhappy

Time and again, I have experienced that phenomenon after giving a talk to (mostly) retired professionals from a variety of disciplines. They approach me in private with statements like “fully agree with you but am afraid to speak out.” Too few speak up in public – though they may voice their views indirectly at the ballot box.

However, times are slowly changing. Many people have become dissatisfied with main stream media reports and become more willing to stand up against misleading advertising, destructive policies and rapidly rising costs. In my perception, the recent Brexit vote is a harbinger of more of such “rebellions” to come, some likely to be equally surprising.

Bureaucratic overreach is just one aspect of widespread dissatisfaction; waste and falsehoods are others.

Waste and Lies

The waste of taxpayers’ funds on alternative energy plans pales in relation to the real costs of totally misguided energy policies that one can find in a variety of jurisdictions, both here and abroad. Most of these wasteful projects center around one (and WRONG !) idea, namely of atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) being a driver of the climate on earth.

That CO2-climate idea came about nearly two-hundred years ago (a hypothesis at the time) and was shown to be incorrect one hundred years ago. However, it is still “making the rounds” for three simple reasons:

  • For many scientists applying to agencies to obtain any research funds is rather futile if the grant proposal does not pretend to show how “bad” CO2 is.
  • Many “politicians” (real or wanna-be’s alike) simply go “with the flow,” following the path of least resistance and, consequently, blow the same CO2-climate horn.
  • There is next to no accountability for bureaucrats or politicians that do so.

Waste – who cares; independent thought – who needs that anyway and, in any event, the voters are expected to have forgotten all bad deeds by the time the next election rolls around.

But it is not just money and resources that have been lost to the futile pursuit of CO2 and air conditioners as the proclaimed global evils extraordinaire. There are even greater costs to mankind; one is the time lost to really advance mankind’s wellbeing.

Lost Time

Time lost is gone for good. No space age technology or pokemons found can bring back time. The estimated trillion dollars spent over the last few decades, on “alternative” energy sources like wind, solar, and biofuels have had next to no impact on global fossil fuel (coal, oil, and natural gas) consumption in the world. At the same time and despite the (entirely avoidable) disasters at Chernobyl and Fukushima, new nuclear power plants are now being built in many countries around the world, for example even in hydro (water) power-rich Switzerland.

Even in Japan many of the nuclear power plants that were all shut down following the Fukushima tsunami-caused disaster have been or are being restarted as well. China, India and Russia are all in the process of massive expansions of their nuclear power generation capabilities as well. While these countries may pay lip service to the Paris 2015 Climate Agreement, these projects having absolutely nothing to do with any perceived climate threats from CO2 that have been proclaimed by the United Nations IPCC or U.S. President Obama. They are simply wise diversification among energy resources.

In contrast, Germany is on the way to becoming a “green” energy pauper, all because of the CO2-climate hoax.

“Green” Germany

One of the most blatant examples of wasting time and resources must be Germany. That country had many great developments to its credit in the period of roughly 1960 to 1990. That was the time of the German “Wirtschaftswunder” when science, engineering and technology grew by leaps and bounds, energy was affordable for consumers and industry alike. Coal and nuclear power plants provided ample electricity and government regulations were fostering competition and efficiency throughout the land.

However, instead of building on its developed expertise and teaching new generations of scientists and engineers to learn the trade, “green power” activists and politicians persuaded people that biofuels, sun and wind were all that was needed. By now, the generation of people capable of designing, building and operating the complex nuclear facilities have mostly retired, emigrated or died. It would likely take another generation just to get to the state of expertise available there in 1975.

For example, the newest nuclear power plant that’s still in operation in Germany was built around 1985. Since then not a single new plant has even been considered. In fact, the opposite is going to take place in a few years. All remaining operating nuclear plants are going to be shut down by government decree, the last ones in 2022. Similar actions are planned for the remaining coal and natural gas fired power plants. From then on, German households and industries are largely expected to live by the whims of sunshine, wind and imports from nearby countries like Czechia and France — if available then. That ideology has been decreed as “energy-change” (“Energiewende”).

Availability of Power

Availability of electric power when needed is rapidly becoming less guaranteed as well. That’s why the latest German government schemes are encouraging local, i.e. community level power generation cooperatives that push the responsibility down the line towards the end consumer. And oh, it’s all going to work with “smart” systems that, presumably, work along the principle of the biblical supply of wine at the wedding at Canaan.

Actually, when I read news items on the touted “smart” electricity grid and kitchen technology (e.g. in new fridges), it seems the “smart” part is less to guarantee that they run with less power but to turn them off when the sun doesn’t shine, the wind doesn’t blow, or someone wants to cut your power off altogether. It could foster politically correct thinking too and you will be happy to know that you will still be charged for “delivery” during such times of brownouts or blackouts to come.

In this context, an interesting email (copy) I recently received from overseas, written to a well-known proponent of solar power there reads (paraphrased) as follows:

“As energy expert you made the interesting discovery that the sun does not send a bill. I did not entirely understand why, despite that, several hundred thousand households are unable to pay their electricity bills and entire types of industries are emigrating due to the high electricity costs. Why are electricity costs much lower in countries that use less sun energy?”

Benefits – What Benefits?

Indeed, where or what are the benefits and who is benefiting from this alternative energy development? It couldn’t be the consumers whose hydro bills are rising much faster than governments’ inflation numbers. It probably is not even the operators of wind and solar power farms – despite their high feed-in tariffs and other prescribed “goodies.” That only leaves the producers of such equipment and, who could have guessed, the governments themselves. That’s also evident from recent moves by some jurisdictions to tax people on their own solar photovoltaic panel-produced electricity for their own consumption.

With the world swamped by cheap natural gas, crude oil, and coal (with the mines in western countries are being relegated to heritage status), who, really needs expensive and intermittent electricity from the wind and sun?

If you have the answer, drop me a line.

Heartbreaking Facts that Wind Turbine Neighbours Live With…

/ 1957chev / 3 Comments

MELODIE MCLANE: YOU KNOW YOU LIVE TOO CLOSE TO A WIND PROJECT IN VERMONT WHEN …

MAR. 12, 2014,  VTDigger.Com

Editor’s note: This commentary is by Melodie McLane, who is a neighbor of the Georgia Mountain Community Wind project.

• You dread checking the mail because you probably have another filing from the Department of Public Service that supports the wind developer in every way possible, even though they supposedly work for you.

• You do a slow burn because someone has written that you will participate in the Public Service Board’s noise investigation only because you lost. Lost what? The right to sleep at night?

• You spend every Sunday afternoon meeting with the neighbors that are still speaking to you to write discovery questions, answers, briefs, comments and to do research.

• You have stupid looking equipment set up near your house to monitor sound from the turbines.

• You laugh at the look of shock on people’s faces when you tell them to be aware that everything they say is being recorded outside when that stupid looking equipment is there.

• You have to sign a release saying that you give yourself permission to listen to your own conversations before the wind company will release the raw data from the monitoring to you.

• You plan your barbecues and neighborhood parties around whether that stupid looking equipment is there.

• You go ahead and have that barbecue or party regardless and get perverse pleasure out of blasting loud music all night at that stupid looking equipment in order to drown out all conversations.

• You realize the noise from the turbines gets louder when they take that stupid looking equipment away.

• You think you are going to stroke out if one more person says “I drove over to New York and listened to the ones there and couldn’t hear anything.” Were they running at full capacity?

• You understand why your father used to sit and swear at the television when a politician was talking.

• You know the true meaning of “campaign donations” and “follow the money.”

• You have “wind friends” who you can talk freely with about the stupidity of wind and then you have “regular friends” with whom you never discuss wind.

• You go to work ticked off and exhausted because you could hear the turbines rumbling all night, even with your windows shut.

• You are dreading summer, even after one of the most miserable winters on record, because the noise is worse when you open your windows.

• You used to love a good snowstorm but now it just means more noise with all the moisture in the air and southwesterly winds.

• You used to love going to bed at night in the summer with your windows wide open, listening to the rain. Now you shut your windows and turn the fans on to drown out the turbine noise, because it’s always louder when it rains.

•You look out at your garden and remember how peaceful it used to be to work in it. Now it’s just an annoying place to be.

• You used to love having your morning coffee on your south porch, but now you are driven away from it by noise.
You try sitting on your back porch, but the noise is worse back there because the noise bounces off from the ledges behind your house.

• You open your door in the morning and think you hear a jet flying over really low, but then realize it’s just the turbines.

You have pet names for noises that come from the mountain. There is the airplane noise, train rumbling noise, whale noise and semi-truck noise.

 

• You open your door in the morning and think the turbines are really loud, but it’s just a jet flying over really low.

• You have pet names for noises that come from the mountain. There is the airplane noise, train rumbling noise, whale noise and semi-truck noise.

• You are angry because the turbines are running and you can’t sleep.

• You are angry because the turbines aren’t running and someone ruined a perfectly good mountain for no reason.

• You want to stroke out every time you hear a wind developer say that you only complain about the noise because you didn’t want the project there in the first place. You didn’t want the wind project so close to your house because you knew it would be noisy.

• You want to stroke out every time you hear a wind developer say that only “two or three” neighbors complain about the noise. Those neighbors are the only ones who are ridiculously close to the project.

• You are shocked when the project owner starts using the Facebook group, Victims of Industrial Wind, to tout the merits of wind when most of the people in this group are suffering from sleep loss every day from wind.

• You are shocked when that owner says on his Facebook page that he has a Trunk Monkey by each turbine on Georgia Mountain to keep the anti-wind people away. Trunk Monkeys shoot people with guns and beat people up with tire irons.

• You are up checking the victims group at 4 a.m. on a regular basis to see if someone else is being kept awake by the noise.

• You are in constant disbelief at how loud 45 dBA is.

• You know that some people will make nasty NIMBY comments about this when they read it, but you have been bullied and called names so much that it doesn’t even hurt anymore.

Donald Trump….Too Smart to Fall for the Wind/Climate Scam!

/ 1957chev / Leave a comment

Donald Trump Would Unleash Energy Sector

Say what you want about Donald Trump, but he has said two things recently that more profoundly diagnose America’s true problems than anything Hillary Clinton has even come close to thinking about in her entire lifetime.

Donald Trump Would Unleash Energy Sector
By Steve Milloy
Breitbart.com, August 9, 2016

Say what you want about Donald Trump, but he has said two things recently that more profoundly diagnose America’s true problems than anything Hillary Clinton has even come close to thinking about in her entire lifetime
The first thing he said — that political correctness “cripples our ability to talk and think and act clearly” — is not the subject of this column. The second — that “It is time to remove the anchor that is dragging us down” — is.

The “anchor” he was talking about is the government and, especially the Obama administration and any extension thereof through Hillary Clinton.

We have a government that is choking us to death with regulations and economy killing policies. As Trump pointed out:

The Federal Register is now over 80,000 pages long. As the Wall Street Journal noted, President Obama has issued close to four hundred new major regulations since taking office, each with a cost to the American economy of $100 million or more.

In 2015 alone, the Obama Administration unilaterally issued more than 2,000 new regulations – each a hidden tax on American consumers, and a massive lead weight on the American economy.

Nowhere is this truer than in the energy sector Trump spotlighted in his speech in Detroit. But to appreciate Trump’s prescription for the energy sector and the rest of the economy, it’s first necessary to understand how the Obama administration has sabotaged both.

Probably the least talked about effect of Obama’s anti-economic policies has been the destruction of the economic model for the electric power industry. Electric utilities used to make money the old fashioned way — by selling more electricity. For a variety of reasons, that has not been possible in the moribund Obama economy.

Instead utilities have been forced to engage in various government-mandated energy efficiency and green power schemes where utilities can only make more money by selling less electricity at higher prices. Flattened electricity production by utilities has then had downstream effects on fuel production industries.

Lower fuel needs has forced down coal prices and caused overproduction in a coal industry that has become increasingly efficient over the years at producing coal.

The Obama administration then compounded this problem for the coal industry by commencing its infamous war on coal. This has had the effect of forcing utilities to choose either to endure high regulatory compliance costs and political disfavor by sticking with coal or to switch to alternatives like natural gas, wind and solar. While the Obama administration favored the later two energy sources, the markets tossed a monkey wrench in these plans.

A glut of cheap natural gas produced by hydrofracturing technology (fracking) eased the coal-switching problem for utilities. Making progressive lemonade out of lemons, at this point the Obama administration then decided to finish off the coal industry by making the permanent the glut of cheap natural gas. It did this by slow-walking if not just simply preventing natural gas from being exported to a global market hungry for it.

The effect was two-fold. First, it forced most of the coal industry into bankruptcy. Second, it kept gas prices depressed. If an oil and gas firm is not struggling today, it’s probably only because it has gone into bankruptcy, too. And it you’re thinking that cheap fuel prices must have been good for electric utilities, think again. Midwestern utilities were hoping that the cheap fuel glut would lead to a renaissance of manufacturing in the Rust Belt, facilities to which they could sell more electricity. But regulatory uncertainty brought about overzealous and arbitrary Obama administration agencies and actions has prevented any such renaissance.

A President Trump would remove the government boot from the energy industry. Natural gas could be exported to a gas-hungry world. This would relieve pressure on what’s left of the coal industry. Then, unburdening utilities of regulatory and political pressure to use politically correct fuels and allowing utilities to sell more electricity to a growing economy would restore health to the ailing energy sector and help create millions of good-paying, wealth producing jobs.

All this is complex and difficult to explain in a brief column, let alone a policy speech by a candidate who is more of a business-doer than a political-talker. But Trump gets the big picture. Overregulation is killing our economy. The energy sector is living (on life support) proof.

Steve Milloy publishes JunkScience.com and is a former coal executive.

Esther Wrightman Obtains Wind Company Info on Bird Mortality!

/ 1957chev / 1 Comment

The Right to Know: Releasing Wind Turbine Bird & Bat Death Data

Posted on 08/04/2016

dead-bird-1024x560Yesterday I expected to hear of an “Appeal” (we all detest that word now, don’t we) of the Freedom of Information (FOI) request I filed for the Bird and Bat Mortality Reports for three of NextEra Energy’s wind projects several months ago. NextEra had asked the FOI office for extra time to file this appeal, and it had been granted, the deadline being yesterday. But instead, and to my great surprise, a letter came from the FOI office and I could distinctly feel a CD case in it – Oh ya! If it was a “mid-summer-everyones-on-vacation” mistake to send these to me, I don’t want to know about it.

Google Drive Bird Bat Mortality ReportsHere they are: Bird Bat Mortality Reports for NextEra’s Bornish, Adelaide andSummerhaven (more on what they contain in upcoming posts).

I’ve uploaded these documents (and 45 more!) to a public Google Drive folder that anyone can access, view and download. This was the whole point – to make these documents public because our government and the wind companies won’t! Bring some transparency to the bird and bat deaths in Canada! Hold these bloody wind companies accountable for the wildlife slaughter they getting away with! [Keep in mind that this is only partial transparency because the collections and reports are NOT conducted by a third party and are designed to miss a very large portion of the actual deaths. It’s a start, but it’s not the full story by a long shot]

Bird Bat Mortality Monitoring

Google Drive Bird Bat Mortality Reports icons

Recently we filed FOI’s for the rest of the wind turbine Bird/Bat Mortality Reports in Ontario, and Nova Scotia. Some companies in Nova Scotia actually post their reports on their company websites, but those tend to be the smaller co-ops, never the Big Wind companies. New Brunswick, by the way, just sent them to us without us needing to do an FOI. I like that process much better.

Get your reading glasses out and start ripping through these reports. If you are a lawyer, or a reporter, or a biologist, or a birder – we all need your insight and expertise. And if anyone comes across more reports, send them along and I’ll post them.

The other day a helpful contact wrote this to me:

“These are public trust resources being killed. And the public has a right to know.”

I’ll add that it is also our duty to protect them from our own destructive kind in whatever way we can.

~Esther Wrightman

Donald Trump Tells the Unvarnished Truth About Renewable Energy!

/ 1957chev / 1 Comment
 http://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/290093-trump-wind-power-kills-all-your-birds

By Timothy Cama – 08/02/16 

Donald Trump bashed renewable energy sources Monday night, saying solar power doesn’t work well and wind turbines kill birds.

The GOP presidential nominee has stated his preference for coal and natural gas, and has previously said that solar power is unreliable and wind turbines are unsightly and harmful to wildlife.

“It’s so expensive,” Trump said of alternative energy at a rally in Pennsylvania.“And honestly, it’s not working so good. I know a lot about solar. I love solar. But the payback is what, 18 years? Oh great, let me do it. Eighteen years,” he said, turning to wind power. “The wind kills all your birds. All your birds, killed. You know, the environmentalists never talk about that.”

Solar power has historically been expensive, but its costs have fallen dramatically in recent years.

The Solar Energy Industries Association estimates that the cost to install solar panels has dropped by 70 percent since 2009 to just over $2 per watt for photovoltaic technology.

The wind industry has challenged Trump’s previous statements about wildlife deaths, including his contention earlier this year that turbines kill more than a million birds a year.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service estimates that wind turbines kill about 500,000 birds annually in total, much less than other bird threats like cats and buildings.

Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton has set a goal to expand the country’s solar power capacity sevenfold and generate enough renewable electricity in the United States to power every home by 2027.

At the Pennsylvania rally Monday, Trump also promised to reduce the frequency of coal mine inspections.

“I have friends that own the mines. I mean, they can’t live,” he said.

“The restrictions environmentally are so unbelievable where inspectors come two and three times a day, and they can’t afford it any longer and they’re closing all the mines. … It’s not going to happen anymore, folks. We’re going to use our heads.”

Global Warming Scam….Unraveling at the seams!

/ 1957chev / 1 Comment

MONDAY, 4 JULY 2016

770 papers questioning AGW “consensus” since 2014

Source

Since January 2014, the last 2 and half years, 770 peer-reviewed scientific papers have been published in scholarly journals that call into question just how settled the “consensus” science is that says anthropogenic or CO2 forcing dominates weather and climate changes, or that non-anthropogenic factors play only a relatively minor and inconsequential role. (LINK)

Just a paragraph from a post on Pierre Gosselin’s great blog NoTricksZone.

It was written by Kenneth Richard who goes on to say:

Instead of supporting the “consensus” science, these 770 papers support the position that there are significant limitations and uncertainties apparent in climate modeling and the predictions of future climate catastrophes. Furthermore, these scientific papers strongly suggest that natural factors (the Sun, multi-decadal ocean oscillations [AMO/PDO, ENSO], cloud and aerosol albedo variations, etc.) have both in the past and present exerted a significant influence on weather and climate, which means an anthropogenic signal may be much more difficult to detect or distinguish as an “extremely likely” cause relative to natural variation.  Papers questioning the “common-knowledge” viewpoints on ocean acidification, glacier melt and advance, sea level rise, extreme weather events, past climate forcing mechanisms, the “danger” of high CO2 concentrations, etc., have also been included in this volume of 770 papers.

Mr Richard points out also that there are 240 papers supporting a Skeptical-of-the-Consensus Position for 2016 (here.)

Now, Question for Mainstream Media (MSM):

Will you still promote the Great Global Warming hoax? The hypothesis HAS been falsified. (seelink) (see Scientific Method Falsified) AND Pauline Hanson’s One Nation No2 Queensland candidate Malcolm Roberts looks like gaining an Australian Senate Seat.

Malcolm Roberts, with empirical evidence, can destroy the MSM’s support of the hoax.

Litigation is the Only Language WindPushers Understand!

/ 1957chev / Leave a comment

Wind Farm Noise Victims Sue Developer & Noise Consultant for $Millions

StopTheseThings

Jury-being-sworn-in-006

Litigation is where the rubber hits the road: myths get replaced with facts; evidence overtakes spin and propaganda. Court rooms (and where they determine the facts, juries) strike fear into the (ordinarily icy) hearts of those that stand behind or run with wind power outfits.

Wherever in the world civil actions have been pursued in nuisance and negligence, wind power outfits have bent over backwards to settle out of court.

Sure, wind power operators have deep pockets (obscenely stuffed with the massive subsidies drawn from their victims, among others). But they have never won a common-law case demonstrating that wind farms do not cause noise nuisance.

And the reason they have never won such a common-law case, is that every one that has ever been pursued by wind farm neighbours (and, in Texas, 23 contracted turbine hosts – see our post here), has been settled, very quietly, out of court.

True it is that wind farm developers routinely ‘win’ rubber-stamp planning approvals, when they’re out to spear these things into the hearts of rural communities, despite furious objection from the vast majority within those communities.

However, the common law right to live in one’s own home free from unreasonable interference from noise has nothing to do with noise ‘standards’ (written by the wind industry), planning terms or the views of bent quasi-government authorities, like Australia’s NHMRC.

The Waubra wind farm – which is run by Spanish outfit, Acciona – has drawn something like 1,400 noise complaints and has driven 11 farming families from homes that neighbour its operation, since it started operating over 6 years ago in July 2009 (see our post here).

The owners of those homes had been complaining bitterly about low-frequency noise and infrasound from the moment the turbines commenced operation.

Terrified of litigation, Acciona’s lawyers quietly went to each of the families complaining; purchased their properties and stitched them up with bullet-proof gag clauses – that prevent them from ever talking about the “sale” (see our post here).

So terrified were they that word of Acciona’s out of court settlements would get out, they even pursued one of the victims, Trish Godfrey all the way to Adelaide in South Australia in an effort to prevent her from giving evidence in a wind farm planning case about her acoustic torment – (seethis article and our posts here and here).

Other common law nuisance cases where the developers have paid out substantial compensation to plaintiffs neighbouring wind farms, include English couple, Julian and Jane Davis who won a £2 million out of court settlement from a wind farm operator (detailed here).

Another involved the claim filed in April 2013, by a group of 17 residents living next to the Lake Winds wind farm (others joined the group later) against Consumers Energy in Mason County Circuit Court, Michigan. One of the successful plaintiffs, Cary Shineldecker summed up the result of their lawsuit, which was resolved during the late summer and autumn of 2014:

“It was just about to go to trial; in fact I was in court waiting to be the first to testify, when we were told a settlement had been reached,” Shineldecker said. “It took about two months to work out the wording; then ours was actually finalized the week of Dec. 17.

“To me, we were helping others by being willing to take a stand,” Shineldecker added. “One of these days the facts are going to come out. Twenty years from now the health impacts of living with these industrial wind turbines will be common knowledge. It will be like the way it happened with cigarettes. But right now those who know the truth are a minority.”

The full story is covered here: US Wind Farm Operator Settles to Shut Down Neighbours’ Dynamite Damages Case

Cary Shineldecker hits the nail on the head when he says that “One of these days the facts are going to come out”. And that’s precisely the reason that the wind power outfit being sued settled with him and all of the other plaintiffs in that case. And, for the same reason, why Acciona bought out and gagged 11 families at Waubra in Victoria. And, again, why Julian and Davis were offered £2 million on the steps of the Court before the trial began.

In the US, another case has been bubbling along: here’s an update on its progress.

Homeowner: “I will have to move due to the constant noise and flicker shadow that comes into my home”
Jefferson’s Leaning Left
Richard Wiley Sr. 16 June 2016

Iberdrola and the same sound engineer who did the work on the original Clayton-Thousand Island Horse Creek industrial wind turbine sacrifice zone is still involved in a lawsuit with Herkimer County homeowners.

Fairfield homeowner, “I will have to move due to the constant noise and flicker shadow that comes into my home.”

In 2012 more than 60 residents of Herkimer County sued the developer and their sound engineer claiming that the 37 turbines they built are bigger and noisier than they were told during the planning stage. They claim the turbines are causing health problems and depressing their property values. Plaintiffs have said they will have to move from their homes.

The plaintiffs are represented by, Melody D. Scalfone (www.scalfonelaw.com) and Jeff DeFrancisco (jeff@defranciscolaw.com).

The lawsuit has been in local, state and national news. Attorney Scalene has traveled with one of the plaintiffs to other states to give testimony concerning living under industrial turbines.

From a source, JLL has learned that the lawsuit that you can read at this link is progressing.

Some of the claims against Iberdrola and their sound engineer:

94. The Defendants represented to the Town of Fairfield and residents in the areas where the turbines were placed that the subject wind turbines would not be noisy, would not adversely impact neighboring houses, and there would not be any potential health risks.

95. Defendant Atlantic Renewables LLC released “projected” noise levels that showed that the wind turbines would not go over 50 dB.

96. The aforementioned 2006 noise level study by Defendant Atlantic Renewables LLC was based on projections for General Electric 1.5LSE, 389-foot tall turbines, and not the Gamesa G90, 476-foot turbines, that Defendants collectively placed in the Hardscrabble project.

98. The Defendants failed to adequately assess the effect that the wind turbines would have on neighboring properties including, but not limited to, noise creation, significant loss of use and enjoyment of property, interference with electrical functioning of homes such as satellites, television, internet and telephone services, diminished property values, destruction of scenic countryside, various forms of trespass and nuisance to neighboring properties, and health concerns; among other effects.

99. Despite the foregoing, and in opposition to many residents who own property in close proximity to the wind turbines, in 2010 the Defendants erected 37 Gamesa G90 wind-turbines that stand 476 feet tall in and around the Towns of Fairfield, Middleville, and Norway, New York.

102. In 2011, the Defendants conducted a noise study that showed noise levels as high as 72 dB.

103. As a result of the aforementioned 2011 study, the Defendants thereafter faulted their own study and conducted two additional noise studies to demonstrate compliance with the Town of Fairfield’s Local Ordinance 1 of 2006, which sets the maximum noise level at 50 dB.

104. These new studies conducted by the Defendants show the average wind speeds, direction and expected percentage of operation.

105. The Defendants’ new studies did not measure the maximum wind speeds and do not measure the noise levels in the winter months, when the noise levels are higher.

106. The Defendants’ new studies fail to acknowledge and assess the extent of the problems, including the full log of Plaintiffs’ complaints that are in the thousands.

108. Since the huge wind turbines in this project produce very little electricity, when the government subsidies expire, the people in the Hardscrabble area will be confronted with a poorly maintained and deteriorating wind energy facility that may one day become derelict.

114. The Defendants’ noise studies also fail to address the aforesaid levels of infra and low frequency sounds by only focusing on audibility, and not on other sensations such as vestibular and other symptoms that fit with the Wind-Turbine Syndrome profile or other health concerns.

115. The wind turbines are causing such significant problems and/or injuries that residents, including the Plaintiffs, are continuing to have many difficulties on their properties, house values have been significantly compromised, and some residents were even forced to abandon their homes; among other damages as set forth in this complaint.

121. The aforesaid Defendants carelessly and negligently created and/or assisted in the creation of the massive wind-turbine structures that have caused and continue to cause significant harm to residents in the area of the turbines.

122. The aforesaid Defendants carelessly and negligently failed to adequately disclose the true nature and effects that the wind turbines would have on the community, including the Plaintiffs’ homes.

125. The amount of the damages sustained herein by Plaintiffs exceed the jurisdictional limits of all lower courts.

128. The studies performed by CH2M Hill, Inc. and Mark Bastasch, P.E., INCE lacked a total and real assessment as it related to the potential harm.

129. It is a requirement of acoustic engineers, pursuant to the International Conference on Electrical and Electronics Engineering and civil engineers (as per New York State licensure) to protect public safety, health, and welfare.

130. Defendants knew or should have known that the wind turbines erected produce acoustic pressure pulsations that affect peoples’ health.

131. It was the responsibility of CH2M Hill, Inc. and Mark Bastasch, P.E., INCE to advise their clients and the public, including Plaintiffs, of the potential for adverse health risks and other impacts to property in the Hardscrabble project area.

133. As a result of the aforesaid, the Plaintiffs have suffered significant and permanent injuries as more fully set forth herein.
Jefferson’s Leaning Left 

insomnia

As the evidence of the harm caused by incessant turbine generated low-frequency noise and infrasound goes from solid to incontrovertible, more and more victims will enlist lawyers and get the remedies (injunctions) and compensation (damages) to which they are obviously entitled. While the Herkimer County case is being mounted against the developer and its pet acoustic consultant, the list of potential defendants isn’t so limited.

The grounds for liability to victims are pretty straightforward: common law claims in nuisance and/or negligence (for starters) to obtain substantial damages for personal injury – caused by either – for pain and suffering, loss of amenity and enjoyment of life etc – as well as very substantial damages for the loss of the use and benefit of homes; diminution in the value of those homes and properties; relocation costs etc, etc.

The obvious cast of defendants includes:

  • the wind power outfits concerned;
  • the landowners hosting the turbines that cause the damage;
  • local Councils (where they are responsible for approving noise conditions and/or enforcing them);
  • State government Planning Departments (where they are responsible for approving noise conditions and/or enforcing them);
  • authorities, such as Environmental Protection Authorities (where they have either been involved in the creation – and/or (non)-enforcement – of wind farm noise standards);
  • acoustic experts engaged by the wind industry for their manifest failure to protect the health and well-being of wind farm neighbours – part of their (purported) ethical responsibilities, and especially those involved in the production of the noise standards;
  • State Health Departments, etc.

In short, a veritable cast of ‘thousands’. And behind them (with the exception of turbine hosts) stand a phalanx of insurers and underwriters – who will, no doubt, be taking a good hard look at their exposure.

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 wind power outfits have doggedly refused to cooperate whenever victims are trying to impose even those woeful standards; and who, when troubled by an ‘unhelpful’ noise report, simply get their pet acoustic consultants to ‘redraw’ the results and, using fabricated data, claim compliance with an utterly irrelevant ‘standard’: Pacific Hydro & Acciona’s Acoustic ‘Consultant’ Fakes ‘Compliance’ Reports for Non-Compliant Wind Farms

Whether it’s in Herkimer County, or elsewhere, a day of legal reckoning approaches; and it can’t come soon enough.

judges-gavel

Our Best Buddies in Australia, Taking a Well-Deserved Break!

/ 1957chev / Leave a comment

Australia Votes: STT Takes a Little Break

July 2, 2016 by

voting

In a thousand places, from Albany to Yerranderie, from the Bungle Bungles to Zeehan, around 16 million Australians have just ticked a few boxes that will determine which team gets to control its Federal Parliament for a while.

As to the future of the wind industry, the result matters little: without bi-partisan support, the LRET (on which the whole stinking rort depends) is as dead as the dodo.

Bill Shorten went into the contest talking up a ludicrous 50% target; wisely, Malcolm Turnbull didn’t say much at all.

Bankers, power retailers and investors aren’t going to place any bets on a weather driven ‘system’, with its existence wholly dependent on massive subsidies that have to outlast religion.

Plenty of government backed industries have seen the plug pulled without warning: just ask woolgrowers and car manufacturers. The only difference that arises from the election result is just how fast the whole debacle collapses: the demise of massively subsidised wind power is inevitable; its doom in Australia (as elsewhere) is a matter of when, not if.

Mindful of Yogi Berra’s adage about how tough it is to make predictions (especially about the future), STT is happy to go out on a limb and call this election a resounding victory for STT Champion, Nick Xenophon.

Nick Xenophon

****

Nick, South Australia’s favourite Greek, has been a lone-wolf in Australian politics for almost 20 years: sitting in SA’s Upper House from 1997-2007 and in the Federal Senate from 2008.

This time around, Nick has fielded candidates across the Country (under the banner the ‘Nick Xenophon Team’) – in both the House of Representatives and the Senate.

NXT should easily bag 5 Senate spots (perhaps 6) and a couple of lower house seats too.

Jacqui Lambie, Independent Senator from Tasmania will not only retain her spot, but is odds on to bring another on her ‘Jacqui Lambie Network’ ticket, Devonport Mayor, Steve Martin to Canberra with her.

In the last Parliament, Jacqui ran pretty close to Nick Xenophon; and has already stated her intention to follow Nick’s policy lead in the next Parliament.

Xenophon and Lambie

****

With 5-6 of his own and Jacqui Lambie plus 1, Nick and Jacquie will provide an insurmountable obstacle in the Senate, to whichever of the major parties takes control of the lower house.  (Bearing Yogi Berra’s warning in mind, STT predicts a narrow victory for the Liberal/National Coalition in the House of Representatives)

And that presents one almighty headache for the wind industry, its parasites and spruikers.

You see, Nick detests these things on economic grounds:

Nick Xenophon slams “reckless” CERES Project as an “economic kick in the guts” for SA

And on social and health grounds:

Xenophon calls it: ultimately, this is a question about excessive noise

While sitting on the Senate Inquiry into the great wind power fraud, Nick often led the charge; ripping into the wind industry’s parasites and their routine lies and propaganda:

Senate’s Wind Farm Inquiry Turns Up the Heat On Pac Hydro’s Malfeasance

Vesta’s Ken McAlpine Forced to Apologise to Dr Sarah Laurie for …. well, just being ‘Ken’

And he also helped Clive and Trina Gare get their compelling evidence across to the World, about being paid over $200,000 per year to host these things and, due to the turbine noise induced sleep deprivation they suffer, ruing the day that the developer, AGL ever set foot on their property:

SA Farmers Paid $1 Million to Host 19 Turbines Tell Senate they “Would Never Do it Again” due to “Unbearable” Sleep-Destroying Noise

After that Inquiry closed, the Senators on it produced a raft of recommendations, including a 5 year cap on a wind power outfit’s entitlement to receive Renewable Energy Certificates; that entitlement is currently legislated to continue until 2031, even for turbines that started operating way back in 2001. And the Senators also recommended that RECs would no longer be issued to projects in States that refused to adopt strict Federal Regulations on infrasound and low frequency noise:

Senate Recommendations Spell ‘DOOM’ for the Australian Wind Industry

STT hears that one of the first items on Nick Xenophon’s agenda is to have all of the Senate’s recommendations implemented and enforced.

Whether it’s Electricity Bill Shorten or Malcolm Turnbull in charge of the House of Representatives, it will be a wily and experienced political animal, who voters simply call “Nick”, that will run the Senate: and sensible energy policy is well and truly on his policy radar.

Time for a break

STT has been hard at this since December 2012. After picking up 29,270 followers, punching out 1,360 posts and clocking up more than 1,465,000 views, STT is putting our boots up for a while and taking a little break.

Thanks for your support and your efforts in helping to spread the word about the greatest economic and environmental fraud of all time.  Keep up the good work, keep giving the wind industry hell and we will see you all in a couple of weeks. We’ll do our best to get your comments up, but – with our editorial team going bush – it might take us a bit longer than usual.

camping

Windpushers Cover Up the Truth About Wind Turbines!

/ 1957chev / Leave a comment

Why Wind Turbine Noise is Just So Incredibly Annoying to Wind Farm Victims

June 29, 2016 by

insomnia

‘Annoyance’ is a term much used, and frequently abused, in relation to the acoustic torture caused by incessant turbine generated low-frequency noise and infrasound.

Those that abuse the term, including a former tobacco advertising guru, claim that the known and obvious effects of being immersed in thumping waves of pulsating air pressure (ie noise and vibration), night after merciless night (such as sleep deprivation) are all the product of fertile imaginations and/or scaremongering.

Unfortunately for the guru and his shameful ilk, cases such as Clive and Trina Gare put paid to that lie. The Gares are cattle graziers with their home property situated between Hallett and Jamestown and, since October 2010, have played host to 19, 2.1MW Suzlon s88 turbines, which sit on a range of hills to the West of their stately homestead. Under their contract with AGL they receive around $200,000 a year; and have pocketed over $1 million since the deal began.

On 10 June 2015, the Gares gave evidence to the Senate Inquiry into the great wind power fraud during its Adelaide hearing: [Hansard from the hearing is available here as HTML and here as a PDF (the Gare’s evidence commencing at p55)].

Their evidence destroys the wind industry lie that turbine hosts never, ever complain; and the propaganda that it’s only “jealous” wind farm neighbours who complain about wind turbine noise, “jealous” because they’re not getting paid, apparently. The Gares pocket $200,000 a year for the ‘pleasure’ of hosting 19 of these things; and, yet, make it very clear that it was the worst decision of their lives.

In their evidence they describe the noise from turbines as “unbearable”; requiring earplugs and the noise from the radio to help them get to sleep at night; and the situation when the turbines first started operating in October 2010 as “Crap, to put it honestly” – evidence which is entirely consistent with the types of complaints made routinely by wind farm neighbours who don’t get paid, in Australia and around the world. Despite AGL spending tens of thousands on noise “mitigation” measures – double glazing, sound deadening insulation and the like, the noise from turbines continues to ruin their ability to sleep in their own home, as Trina Gare put it:

No, they were waking me up on the weekend. You wake up to the thumping. This is with all the soundproofing in the house. As I said, I sleep with the radio on every night. If they are really cranked up I have to turn the volume up, so I will probably just go slowly deaf.

In her evidence Trina Gare stated, in the same terms as her husband Clive, that:

In my opinion, towers should not be any closer than five kilometres to a dwelling. If we had to buy another property, it would not be within a 20-kilometre distance to a wind farm. I think that says it all.

For more on the Gare’s experience, see our post here.

As to the real meaning of the term ‘annoyance’ – in the realm of acoustics (which is what matters here) it has nothing to do with whether wind farm neighbours detest the look these things; and is all to do with hard-wired and involuntary neurological responses to a man-made stimuli received and processed in the brain.

Waking up to a clap of thunder or the screaming siren of a smoke alarm is an integral part of a biological system designed to respond to unseen, nocturnal threats and to, thereby, keep itself alive.  So far, so obvious.

For a properly qualified expert’s view on annoyance, here’s what Dr Bob McMurtry told the Senate Inquiry last year:

First, adverse health effects have been reported globally in the environs of wind turbines for more than 30 years with the old design and the new.

Second, the wind energy industry has denied adverse health effects, preferring to call it ‘annoyance’ even though annoyance, however, is an adverse health effect. Certainly it is a non-trivial effect when sustained because it results in ‘sleep disruption’, ‘stress’ and ‘psychological distress’— those are direct quotes from others’ research.

Third, annoyance is recognised and was treated by the World Health Organization as an adverse health effect, which is a risk factor for serious chronic disease including cardiovascular and cancer.

Fourth, experts retained by the wind energy industry have preferred the diagnosis of nocebo effect to explain the adverse health effects, but the claim does not withstand critical scrutiny as there is a dose-response effect and nocebo does not have a dose-response effect. And there is a clear correlation between exposure and adverse health effects. Researchers have talked about dose-response. I should also comment that making that diagnosis without a comprehensive evaluation of a person or patient would qualify as non-practice, and I know that has been said in this committee before.

One question though is what it is about wind turbine noise emissions, that makes them just so incredibly annoying?

That question was taken up by a team of American researchers and the answer was published last month in the Journal of the Acoustic Society of America.  This time, the work was done in the lab, with volunteers exposed for half-a-minute; rather than on unwilling victims subjected to a life-time of relentless sonic torture.

We have picked out the thrust of the study below and the whole paper is available in PDF here: Short-term annoyance reactions to stationary and time-varying wind turbine and road traffic noise

To the wind industry’s countless victims, the results will come as no surprise.

Short-term annoyance reactions to stationary and time-varying wind turbine and road traffic noise
Journal of the Acoustic Society of America  139, 2949 (2016)
Beat Schäffer, Sabine J. Schlittmeier, Reto Pieren, Kurt Heutschi, Mark Brink, Ralf Graf and Jürgen Hellbrück
24 May 2016

Abstract
Current literature suggests that wind turbine noise is more annoying than transportation noise. To date, however, it is not known which acoustic characteristics of wind turbines alone, i.e., without effect modifiers such as visibility, are associated with annoyance.

The objective of this study was therefore to investigate and compare the short-term noise annoyance reactions to wind turbines and road traffic in controlled laboratory listening tests. A set of acoustic scenarios was created which, combined with the factorial design of the listening tests, allowed separating the individual associations of three acoustic characteristics with annoyance, namely, source type (wind turbine, road traffic), A-weighted sound pressure level, and amplitude modulation (without, periodic, random).

Sixty participants rated their annoyance to the sounds. At the same A-weighted sound pressure level, wind turbine noise was found to be associated with higher annoyance than road traffic noise, particularly with amplitude modulation.

The increased annoyance to amplitude modulation of wind turbines is not related to its periodicity, but seems to depend on the modulation frequency range. The study discloses a direct link of different acoustic characteristics to annoyance, yet the generalizability to long-term exposure in the field still needs to be verified.

What they did

In this study the researchers recruited 60 participants (ages 18-60; median age 35 years; self reporting that they had normal hearing and felt well at the time of the experiment) and asked them to listen to 30 sounds (each 25 second long recordings) in a semi-sound proof room.

participant

While listening to each of the individual sounds, separated only by a second, they were asked to respond (using a computer) to this question:

When you imagine that this is the sound situation in your garden, what number from 0 to 10 represents best how much you would be bothered, disturbed or annoyed by it?”

The sounds had been synthesized to represent wind turbine noise or road traffic noise of equivalent A weighted sound pressure levels. Comparisons were made over a range of sound pressure levels and with different types of amplitude modulation.

source

‘Without amplitude modulation’ corresponds to a stationary noise. Wind turbine noise with periodic amplitude modulation represent situations with high-frequency swishing (normal amplitude modulation) as well as low-frequency thumping sounds (other amplitude modulation). Random amplitude modulation is more typical of road traffic noise on streets with low or intermediate traffic density. The authors acknowledged that because that some of these noises (such as periodic traffic noise) would not necessarily occur in nature but were included for completeness in the study.

sound amplitude modulation

At all sound pressure levels tested, the participants found that wind turbine noise was more annoying that its road traffic noise equivalent.

They even looked at how long it took for the participants to record their annoyance – and in all tests wind turbine noise was found to be more annoying and at a much earlier time, when compared to road traffic noise. In fact, as participants listened to more samples of wind turbine noise they became increasingly more annoyed and formed their opinion quicker as they became accustomed to just how annoying wind turbine sounds could be.

box plots

As part of their study they tried to prove that the characteristics of the participants were not playing a role in how annoying they were finding wind turbine noise. They were able to eliminate gender, age, how sensitive the person was annoyance in general, as well as their attitude towards the sources (wind turbine noise or road traffic noise). Wind turbine noise was just more annoying to everyone.

They pooled the results and compared annoyance to the A weighted equivalent continuous sound pressure level with and without the different types of amplitude modulation. Periodic and random modulation of wind turbine noise increased the annoyance, but the same pattern could not be seen in road traffic noise. They concluded that the increased annoyance reaction to amplitude modulation of wind turbine noise was not related so much to the period, but more on the modulation frequency range.

pooled results

While the study has plenty of obvious limitations – subjects were only exposed to a short sound grab of 25 seconds – by way of comparison with road traffic noise, it vindicates wind farm victims and provides yet more objective proof to reject the wind industry’s nocebo nonsense, if any more was needed.

Oh, and if the factor of human fallibility in this experiment troubles scientific types, why not check out the ‘experiment’ being conducted with Britain’s Badgers Wind in the Gallows: Study Shows Badgers Suffer Merciless Stress & Torment from Wind Turbine Noise & Vibration

Pretty hard to suggest that badgers suffering immune system destroying stress for the very same reasons – exposure to incessant wind turbine noise and vibration – are, somehow, victims of ‘suggestibility’ or their aesthetic take on these things.

Slowly, but surely, the evidence supplants the lies and the myths.

Proof