Under the category….”We Told You So!”….Wind Turbine Noise is Harmful!

July 11, 2015July 11, 2015 / 1957chev / 1 Comment

Can YOU hear wind farms? Researchers prove human hearing is better than thought and ‘turbine phenomenon’ is real
German study found humans hear sounds from around 8 hertz
This is a whole octave lower than had previously been assumed
Wind farms produce something known as infrasound at 16HZ
Wind energy sector has previously claimed noise was inaudible
By ELLIE ZOLFAGHARIFARD FOR DAILYMAIL

Wind farms are not only a blight on the landscape, the noise of these giant structures can make you ill.
This is the controversial claim of some turbine opponents who infrasound from the rotor blades and wind flow is damaging our health.
To settle the debate, scientists have taken a closer look at the frequency range of human hearing – and revealed that humans can hear lower sounds than have been previously assumed.
Infrasound describes very low sounds, below what is thought to be the limit of hearing, which is around 16 hertz. But scientists say humans can hear far more than previously thought. This image shows how the auditory cortex lights up when someone hears infrasound

Infrasound describes very low sounds, below what is thought to be the limit of hearing, which is around 16 hertz. But scientists say humans can hear far more than previously thought. This image shows how the auditory cortex lights up when someone hears infrasound
The project, which is part of the European Metrology Research Programme (EMRP), was coordinated by the German National Metrology Institute (PTB).
Infrasound describes very low sounds, below what is thought to be the limit of hearing, which is around 16 hertz.
It’s not just generated by the ‘turbine phenomenon’ of wind farms, but sometimes when a truck thunders past a house, or
The wind energy sector has previously claimed that infrasound generated by wind farms are inaudible and much too weak to be the source of health problems.
‘Neither scaremongering nor refuting everything is of any help in this situation,’ said PTB researcher Christian Koch.
‘Instead, we must try to find out more about how sounds in the limit range of hearing are perceived.’
To do this, the team generated an infrasonic source which is able to create sounds that are completely free from harmonics.
The researchers didn’t go as far as to say wind farms were damaging health. But their research did find that humans hear lower sounds from around 8 hertz on – a whole octave lower than had been assumed
+2
The researchers didn’t go as far as to say wind farms were damaging health. But their research did find that humans hear lower sounds from around 8 hertz on – a whole octave lower than had been assumed
Volunteers were asked about their hearing experience, and these statements were then compared by to their brain scans.
The results revealed that humans hear lower sounds from around 8 hertz on – a whole octave lower than had previously been assumed.
The study also revealed a reaction in certain parts of the brain which play a role in emotions.
‘This means that a human being has a rather diffuse perception, saying that something is there and that this might involve danger,’ Christian Koch says.
The researchers, however, didn’t go as far as to say wind farms were damaging health.
‘We’re actually at the very beginning of our investigations,’ said Koch. ‘Further research is urgently needed.’
WIND TURBINES ARE NOT MAKING YOU SICK, CLAIMS REPORT
Sickness caused by wind turbines is not a real illness, a controversial report claimed last year.
Instead, symptoms such as nausea, dizziness and migraines are simply imagined by those living nearby, say US scientists.
Compiled by the Energy and Policy Institute in Washington DC, the report says ill-health blamed on turbines is merely the result of the ‘nocebo’ effect.
This is a term for something that creates a negative reaction in a person, despite there actually being nothing to affect their health or well-being.
The new US report reveals how court cases against wind turbines in five Western countries have been regularly dismissed.
In 49 cases brought to court in the US, Canada, New Zealand, Australia and the UK, 48 were dismissed as having no basis to their claims.
And the only winning case, in Falmouth, Massachusetts, related to noise caused early in a turbine’s operation that apparently caused grievance to some nearby residents.
‘These claims about wind turbines causing health impacts are not being upheld, which means there isn’t sufficient evidence to prove that wind turbines cause any problems with human health,’ said Gabe Elsner, the nonprofit’s executive director, according to Climate Central.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-3156778/Can-hear-wind-farms-hum-electricity-Researchers-claims-human-hearing-better-thought.html#ixzz3fbzfclCb
Follow us: @MailOnline on Twitter | DailyMail on Facebook

Climate Alarmism as an Excuse for Useless Wind Turbines….

July 11, 2015 / 1957chev / Leave a comment

STT’s Take on the ‘Global Warming’ Story

July 11, 2015 by stopthesethings

****

Now and again, STT gets a comment that seeks to pin us down as “anti-wind”, “climate deniers”. Here’s one from Enough Already:

I agree with your specific arguments against wind turbines, but even hosting AGW-denial articles puts me off. It perpetuates stereotypes of dumb bogans when we need all possible intelligence on this side!

I consider the wind turbine industry as greedy environmentalism armed with slick propaganda. You can’t effectively fight articulate propaganda with conspiracy theories like AGW-denial. We anti-wind folk need to stick to science.

CO2 is well understood as the main source of radiative forcing; it moderates the more powerful water vapor that cycles in and out. The Earth would be mostly frozen without that “trace gas,” CO2, but most denial arguments dumb that down by saying there’s just not enough CO2 to matter (sip a glass of water with “just” 400 ppm of cyanide and see how it goes). Denying AGW is like denying the whole CO2 greenhouse effect.

While Enough Already doesn’t appear to level that charge fairly and squarely against STT, his or her comment is worthy of dissection and defence on our part.

Dear Enough Already,

We apologise if some of those who appear on our pages with views contrary to your own concerning “AGW”, as you put it, offend your sensibilities.

We agree that “intelligence” is a useful weapon in any public or political discourse; hence our own particular choice of language. For example we do not claim to be “anti-wind folk”; nor do we accept such a tag.

The guff about STT (or any other repository of common sense, for that matter) being “anti-wind” is … well … just plain silly.

****

STT loves a summer breeze just as much as the next family sweating on the beach – we’re partial to a ‘winter-stormy’ when jumping into the surf for a little ‘board action’ – and we’re pretty fond of the howl of wind, mixed with heavy rain drumming on an iron roof in June. And sailing just wouldn’t be the same without a little puff of the stuff, to fill the jib.

No, it’s the nonsense that is wind power that’s the target for STT – for obvious reasons:

There’s Only One Problem with Claims that Wind Power ‘Kills Coal’: and that’s the Wind

Language matters.

As George Orwell – a bloke who knew a thing or two about the way words are employed by the powerful and corrupt – put it:

If thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought. A bad usage can spread by tradition and imitation even among people who should and do know better.

The use of words and phrases such as “anti-wind”, “denier”, “denial”, “belief” and “believer” have no place in science, politics or economics. The latest hysterical abuse of our mother tongue is the phrase “climate denier”.

No one at STT, well actually no one anywhere, denies that there is such a thing as the “climate”.

That word, by definition, incorporates within it the concept of “change”; for if the climate had not changed over the 4.6 billion years that our Earth has been lapping around the Sun, it would have probably remained a solid frozen lump of ice; and we would not be here arguing the toss about a few degrees, one way or the other.

****

The nonsense peddled by climate hysterics is premised on some ‘Goldilocks fantasy’ that, at some point in the recent past (we can’t quite pin down when) the climate was “just right”. Ever since, apparently, we’ve been lurching towards a man-made climate catastrophe. STT grew up in the 1970s and was terrorised in school with forecasts of a looming ice age. 20 years on and the reign of terror was reversed: global incineration was next on the menu.

While we note your use of the term AGW, we understand that to incorporate “global warming” as an irrefutable fact. It is, however, a theory with which there is only one problem: and that’s the evidence. Even the most hysterical have been forced to accept the fact that global surface temperatures have not budged for 18 years, despite human generated CO2 emissions increasing at a rollicking rate: generally referred to as “the pause”. The last piece STT read on the topic takes us back to our childhood with warnings about, wait for it, another looming ice age:

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/climate/chances-of-little-ice-age-on-rise/story-e6frg6xf-1227415254811

And it’s the lack of evidence for global warming that appears to have shifted the terminology to “climate change”: a tautology if ever there was one.

Of course, the climate “changes” – change is endogenous to the model. Whether that change is significant or “dangerous”, as the most strident hysterics would have us believe, is yet to be seen. Humans have tolerated severe ice ages and, somehow, miraculously managed to survive. If the planet warms, as we’ve been lately warned, STT is pretty confident we will survive that too: it’s called “adaptation” – a feature of humanity, oft referred to as “ingenuity”.

However, in the main, we leave the topic of global warming or climate change (whichever is your poison) to others.

STT takes the position that man-made emissions of CO2 may increase atmospheric temperatures. But we don’t concede that wind power has made – or is even capable of making – one jot of difference to CO2 emissions in the electricity sector; principally because it is NOT – and will never be – an ‘alternative’ to conventional generation systems, which are always and everywhere available on demand:

South Australia – Australia’s ‘Wind Power Capital’ – Pays the Highest Power Prices in the World and Wonders Why it’s an Economic Basket Case

Let’s assume, as we do, that man-made CO2 emissions in the electricity sector are a problem. Then the only presently available solution is nuclear power; unless, of course, you’re prepared to live in Stone Age darkness.

Our attack is directed at a meaningless power source; that is insanely expensive, and utterly pointless, on every level. For those on both sides of the argument (including “AGW deniers” as you refer to them) that foolishly connect industrial wind turbines with global warming (or climate change) they, in effect, box themselves into a logical corner.

On the one hand, if the AGW hysterics are wrong (and icebergs start turning up in Port Phillip Bay), then, applying their (by then failed) man-made CO2/warming argument, we should scrap every last (planet cooling) wind turbine and start burning coal and gas as fast as humanly possible to warm the joint up, in order to prevent the ‘big freeze’.

****

On the other hand, if the AGW “deniers” are wrong, temperatures start to rise, and Australia looks set to become a boiling desert devoid of all life forms (save card-carrying “Greens”, of course), then the hysterics will claim absolute licence (if not high moral imperative) to carpet this, and every other country, in an endless sea of giant industrial wind turbines. Having pinned their arguments against wind power on the basis that CO2 caused AGW is a furphy, the “deniers” would be forced to logically concede their opponents’ case; and, with it, to also concede the need for a completely wind powered electricity system.

Hence, STT seeks to completely disconnect claims for and against global warming, and wind power generation.

As wind power can only ever be delivered (if at all) at crazy, random intervals it will never amount to a meaningful power source and will always require 100% of its capacity to be backed up 100% of the time with fossil fuel generation sources; in Australia, principally coal-fired plant. As a result, wind power generation will never “displace”, let alone “replace” fossil fuel generation sources.

Contrary to the anti-fossil fuel squad’s ranting, there isn’t a ‘choice’ between wind power and fossil fuel power generation: there’s a ‘choice’ between wind power (with fossil fuel powered back-up equal to 100% of its capacity) and relying on wind power alone. If you’re ready to ‘pick’ the latter, expect to be sitting freezing (or boiling) in the dark more than 60% of the time.

Wind power isn’t a ‘system’, it’s ‘chaos’ – the pictures tell the story: this is the ‘output’ from every wind farm connected to the Eastern Grid (based in NSW, VIC, TAS & SA – and with a combined installed capacity of 3,669MW) during May.

Consider a country where its electricity supply was exclusively based on wind power generation; a place where businesses would attempt to run around the vagaries of the wind; where houses would be well-stocked with candles and their occupants left to keep food cold with kero-fridges or iceboxes – and those homes otherwise run on wood, sticks or dung, used for cooking or heating. Sounds like fun, doesn’t it?

As soon as that country had the chance (due to the availability of technology and/or as a process of economic development) it would build a system based on power generation sources available “on-demand” (ie coal, gas, hydro, nuclear, geo-thermal).

Its people would then be able to enjoy around the clock illumination; factories could run to the clock, and not the weather; homes would be heated and cooled according their occupants’ needs, making life safer and more comfortable (no-one need be frozen to death or expire from the heat because the wind stopped blowing); economic development and prosperity would follow, as night follows day.

Placed in the practical context of the needs of a functioning society, wind power can be seen as the patent nonsense that it clearly is. If a country didn’t have a conventional power system (as we have), it would build one, anyway.

Once people grasp that fact, the rest of the wind industry’s ‘case’ falls away.

Talk about “wind farms being in the right place” just sounds silly; ergo, with arguments about distances from homes; separation from bird nesting sites or migration routes etc, etc.

All of these other considerations – while legitimate – simply jump to the periphery and dilute the strength of the key argument.

Keep hitting our political betters with the pointlessness of wind power as a generation source and the rest falls away.

What reasonable decision maker would back policies that favour something that has no economic benefit? Moreover, as the central claim that wind power reduces CO2 emissions in the electricity is a complete falsehood, the justification for the hundreds of $billions in subsidies directed to wind power looks like pure lunacy, at best; or graft and corruption (aka ‘crony’ capitalism), at worst.

What the wind industry hates most are facts.

STT dishes them up on a daily basis. The facts outlined above – and which we’ve detailed many times before – are unassailable.

Wind power is a fraud, pure and simple.

Australia has just locked in a $45 billion electricity tax which will be directed as subsidies to wind power outfits to generate power which has NO commercial value.

Were that same amount to be applied to building state-of-the-art nuclear power plants, Australia would enjoy cheap, dependable power for a century to come. Moreover, anyone concerned about AGW, as you clearly are, should be pleased as Punch knowing that the power being generated will not add a single gram of the CO2 gas to the atmosphere. And, who knows? Maybe, just maybe, the Earth’s climate will remain constant – forevermore fixed in a “just right” Goldilocks state.

The Truth About Wind Turbines Being Brought To Light, in Australia

July 10, 2015July 10, 2015 / 1957chev / Leave a comment

Dr Malcolm Swinbanks tells Senate: ‘NASA’s 1980s Research on Health Effects from Wind Farm Noise More Relevant Than Ever’

July 10, 2015 by stopthesethings

****

The Senate Inquiry into the great wind power fraud has heard evidence and received submissions from some of the best in the acoustics and health business: Dr Malcolm Swinbanks, among them.

Here’s what he had to say.

Senate Select Committee on Wind Turbines – 23 June 2015

SWINBANKS, Dr Malcolm Alexander, Private capacity

CHAIR (Senator Madigan): I declare this meeting open and welcome Dr Malcolm Swinbanks. Information on parliamentary privilege and the protection of witnesses has been provided to you, has it?

Dr Swinbanks: Actually it has not. It was not in amongst the emails that I got. Perhaps you could quickly indicate.

CHAIR: The committee has your submission. I now invite you to make a short opening statement, and at the conclusion of your remarks I will invite members of the committee to put questions to you.

Dr Swinbanks: Just briefly, I will review the submission that I made. I addressed four separate issues: first of all, the physical mechanisms for generating low-frequency sound and infrasound; secondly, the mechanisms by which people can perceive such infrasound; thirdly, I commented on the health effects and, in particular, two reports relating to these supposed health effects or the absence of them; and, finally, I gave an account of my own personal experience of adverse effects I have encountered when taking measurements near to a wind turbine installation.

If I could start off with the generation of infrasound, it is not often realised that NASA, in the early 1980s, actually carried out research on upwind rotor turbines. That is the modern configuration where the rotor is upwind of the supporting the tower, rather than downwind. Wind developers have often dismissed NASA’s work, saying it was not relevant because it related only to downwind turbines, but this is completely inaccurate. NASA had in fact identified the benefits of going to the upwind configuration at a very early stage.

They also examined the effects of multiple turbines operating together and the effects of the separation between those turbines. They found that seven to 10 diameters separation was the ideal requirement for a turbine located downwind of its neighbours. But, in recent years, some wind developers have compromised on that spacing and have reduced it even to as little as three diameters in some cases, and that is asking for trouble, because the increased turbulence leads to increased low-frequency sound and infrasound.

The other effect that has to be considered is that as wind farm arrays are made larger and larger, the rate of attenuation as you move away from the wind farm is reduced. The result is that the setbacks from the boundaries have to be much greater to achieve the same reduction in sound. In recent years, people have stated that they have problems at distances of as much as three miles, and that is entirely consistent with the effects of increasing the size of the wind farms. Finally, I would point out that under conditions where the temperature profile is what is known as a temperature inversion, the low-frequency noise and what would I call the ‘silent thump’ of wind farms can carry over distances of three miles or more.

I would like to turn to how people perceive infrasound. The conventional method of hearing is through what are known as the inner hair cells of the cochlear. The effects of infrasound can be measured by a G-weighting scale, which is very similar to the A-weighting scale. It is effectively an extension of it, although the exact values do not correspond directly.

Many people have evaluated whether or not the effects of infrasound are perceptible by simply comparing spectra with the hearing threshold and stating that the spectra are well below the threshold values and therefore the sound cannot possibly be perceived. That is not correct. At very low frequencies, it is the combination of different frequency components adding together which defines the total level of the infrasound, and that can be significantly greater than is observed simply by looking at the par spectrum.

People have reported having significant problems believed to be due to infrasound at distances from wind turbines. In that context, there are three different mechanisms which may be contributing to enhanced sensitivity. I have analysed a specific effect relating to the interaction with the thresholds as a result of low and high frequencies being present simultaneously.

In America, Dr Alec Salt has identified that the outer hair cells of the cochlear are actually much more sensitive at very low frequencies. He believes that there is some input to the nervous system resulting from them. Most recently, Paul Schomer, also in America, has considered the possible effects of sound pressure on the vestibular organs, which are the balance organs, and those effects could give the person on the receiving end a sensation of apparent motion, even though they are actually stationary.

I would like to make a further addition, which is just related to my own experience. Lying in bed, at a distance of three miles from a wind farm, my wife and I have on occasions been disturbed by the wind turbine noise. The most marked feature is that when you have gusts of wind, the turbine noise is masked by the gust and you get a huge sense of relief, only to find that when the wind subsides, the turbine noise returns and you again find yourself subject to the relentless sound.

The point is that when the wind gusts rise it is very much like the effect of when you come out of a tunnel into the light—a huge sense of relief. The sound levels of the turbines under those circumstances are probably less than the average sound levels of the wind, but nevertheless they are far more disturbing. This is noted also at higher frequencies, where people have identified that the annoyance from turbines at 35 dB(a) can be comparable to the annoyance of other more conventional sources at 55 dB(a). One commonly sees statements made that wind turbine noise is no different from any other noise, but the fact is it is different. It is clearly more perceptible at lower levels, and criteria relating to more conventional noise do not necessarily apply.

Turning to the health effects of wind turbines, there was an early report in 2009, which was an American Wind Energy Association funded report. This was the first time that experts had been brought together from both the medical profession and the acoustics profession. That report has been regarded as a definitive baseline report, and subsequent reports have tended to draw on it because of the qualifications of its authors. I consider that report to have been extremely biased. It failed to mention at all two of the most important aspects of wind turbine perception.

Firstly, that in rural areas the hearing threshold is much reduced compared to the threshold when you are in urban areas and consequently you are much more sensitive to additional noise.

Secondly, there is increasing sensitivity with continuing exposure. Some authors have described this as learned aversion. I have also experienced that at firsthand myself 30 years ago when working on natural gas compressor installations, which are effectively jet engines driving a compressor into an exhaust. In those circumstances, I found that over time, ultimately a period of two years, I had become very sensitive indeed to the low frequency noise and I could detect it under circumstances where previously I could not detect it at all.

That same health report misrepresented guidance which had been given in America by the Environmental Protection Agency as long ago as 1974—that is 40 years ago—and they have failed to indicate that the presently permitted sound levels in the USA are too high and can lead to sleep disruption.

The most recent health report that has been produced, again, funded by CanWEA, the Canadian Wind Energy Association, finally acknowledges the excessive permitted levels in the United States and the resultant consequences for sleep disturbance, but it does not highlight this. The statement is effectively buried in 25 pages of closely-spaced text. Now I believe a lot of the problems have been created as a result of that report and some of its successors, because it has completely understated the nature of the problem and has led, undoubtedly, to people being exposed to higher levels than they should be exposed to.

At the same time, it is common practice to place the burden of the effects of wind turbines onto the homeowners by stating that it is annoyance on the part of the homeowners and nocebo effects.

By placing the burden on the homeowners, the apparent responsibility of the wind developer is reduced but, at the same time, this ignores completely the fact that the noise and, indeed, the infrasound can represent a significant intrusion into a rural home, particularly at night when people are trying to sleep. So I believe the correct terminology is to say that people suffer annoyance. It is something which is imposed on them.

I would also comment with respect to the nocebo effect that many communities welcomed wind turbines—this was particularly true of one island community in Vermont—but once the turbines started they discovered that there were some significant adverse effects. That is the very opposite of a nocebo effect.

A nocebo effect is when there is prior anticipation of a problem, not when the problem is noted after the event. In that sense, I would like to make a brief comment that NASA, as long ago as 1982, presented a curve which showed the levels of infrasound that could cause adverse reactions by occupants. This showed that the levels of infrasound could be very much lower than the nominal threshold of hearing. People debate whether or not this is due to effects of vibration on a house structure—this is for people inside a house—or whether it is a true perception of infrasound; but that does not really matter. The fact is that, at octave levels as low as 60 decibels, which is a very low level for infrasound, there can be adverse reactions from occupants. That data goes back almost 35 years. Finally, I would like to—

CHAIR: Excuse me, Dr Swinbanks—

Dr Swinbanks: comment briefly on my own personal experience of wind turbine health effects. I was asked by some friends of mine to help them measure the infrasound levels in the basement of their home at the wind farm at Ubly in Michigan.

It is noteworthy that this particular wind farm had been designed in 2005, at which time Dr Nina Pierpont, a doctor in New York state, had been opposing that wind developer because of concerns she had relating to the likely noise environment of a wind farm. She has been roundly criticised all around the world for supposedly promoting scare stories. But in fact the wind farm that was developed at Ubly by exactly the same developer has proven to demonstrate all of the adverse effects that Dr Nina Pierpont warned about. Indeed, 10 families ultimately took legal action against that wind farm. The matter was settled out of court. But the important point is that I myself experienced directly many of the effects that Dr Nina Pierpont warned about, and she certainly was not making it up. The fact is that these effects can occur.

In my particular case, I was working on a very calm evening when wind turbines were operating but there was very little wind at ground level and you could not hear the turbines at all inside the house. I actually had to keep going outside to check that they were still running. After three hours in the house I began to feel ill and I found that I was lethargic and losing concentration, but it was not until sometime afterwards that I began to realise that it was the wind turbines that were likely to be responsible.

The level of infrasound that I was measuring was a level that I considered to be very low and definitely not a problem. After five hours in the house I was only too glad to leave, and I thought, ‘At last I’m getting away from this,’ only to find that, when I started driving, my driving ability was completely compromised. The front of the car seemed to sway around as I consistently oversteered. I had lost coordination and I had difficulty judging speed and distance. When I arrived home, my wife observed immediately that I was ill; she could see that straight off. And it took me a further five hours to finally recover and for the effects to wear off.

The important point about that incident was that I had considered that the conditions—a nice calm evening at ground level, but with the turbines still running—were extremely benign, and I had wondered whether I would even get any results. So I certainly was not anxious about infrasound. Similarly, when I got—

CHAIR: Excuse me, Dr Swinbanks—

Dr Swinbanks: Yes?

CHAIR: We have got very short time. Would you mind if we go to questions now?

Dr Swinbanks: Yes, that is fine. In fact, I had effectively completed, so that is fine.

CHAIR: We will start with Senator Urquhart.

Senator URQUHART: Thanks, Dr Swinbanks. I picked up, I think, from your opening statement that you live near an operating wind farm—is that right?

Dr Swinbanks: Yes. We have a farmhouse in Michigan, and the county, Huron County, in which we live decided that they were going to install very large numbers of wind turbines.

They installed a first set at two locations in the interior of the region where we are, and the significant problems developed at one of those wind farms, but since then they have been installing progressively more wind turbines. We have an installation three miles south of us, which affects us only when the wind blows from a southerly direction and then only under certain weather conditions. But the intention is to install many times more turbines, and, essentially, the whole county will be covered in turbines if this situation continues as it is.

Senator URQUHART: Have you published any articles on infrasound from wind turbines in any peer-reviewed journals?

Dr Swinbanks: Not in peer-reviewed journals. I have presented, at conferences, the work that I have done, and it has represented a sequence of work. But I believed that it was better simply to get the information out into the public domain.

Senator URQUHART: In your submission you mention Steven Cooper’s study from the Cape Bridgewater wind farm. Do you believe this was a scientifically valid study equipped to make conclusions about the link between participant sensations and infrasound?

Dr Swinbanks: I believe that in a situation where people are reporting the effects that they observe while at the same time the operating characteristics of the wind farm are being monitored remotely, if you find that there is then a close correlation between those two situations, when they are well separated and there is no communication between the relevant parties, that does imply that there is a significant link and that people are reacting to real events.

Senator URQUHART: We heard from the Association of Australian Acoustical Consultants. They had done a small statistical analysis of Mr Cooper’s work. In this they found that Mr Cooper did not meet his hypothesis 63 per cent of the time. Do you think it is reasonable to suggest causality when a hypothesis is not meeting close to two-thirds of the event occurrences?

Dr Swinbanks: I would point out that I am not a statistician. I do not approach my own work from a statistical point of view. What I prefer to do is go and find out for myself what it is all about, and from my own experience I believe that what Steven Cooper has observed is entirely credible.

Senator URQUHART: Here in Australia we have had a population level study done that found no difference in the prescriptions that Australians had been given regardless of the distance that they lived from wind farms. Are you aware of any population level studies internationally that have found otherwise?

Dr Swinbanks: I am not aware of such studies. But I do know a lot of families whose life has been made pretty miserable by the wind turbines, and I find that every bit as impressive as the statistics that people collect. It is a characteristic of the medical profession that they operate hands-off and perform their evaluations entirely on a statistical basis.

In the engineering profession, whenever possible we go and find out what it is like and subject ourselves to those conditions to gain an appreciation for ourselves. Sometimes I read documents from people who clearly have no direct experience. It is apparent from what they say. In this particular instance, occurrences are so comparatively rare amongst the general population that it is very easy to end up with a large number of negative responses and only a very small number of positive responses; yet the fact is that those positive responses can be directly associated with real problems.

Senator URQUHART: We are going to hear in a minute from Dr Leventhall. He has put forward in his submission that a much higher correlation in Mr Cooper’s work could be found between audible noise and sensations rather than infrasound and sensations. Do you agree with Dr Leventhall that the correlation that Mr Cooper found is statistically much higher with audible noise than infrasound?

Dr Swinbanks: There are both components of sound present. The definition of infrasound, according to Dr Leventhall himself, is that there is a very fuzzy boundary between infrasound and low-frequency noise. He has stated that that often causes confusion.

In reports that he has written his definition of infrasound versus low-frequency sound, which is generally considered to be audible sound: he has defined boundaries of 20 hertz on some occasions as being the boundary between the two effects—16 hertz. In a different report he talked of 10 hertz to 200 hertz. Finally he even proposed five hertz to 200 hertz in a 2006 paper. So the point is that this definition of where you are between infrasound and audible noise is a very flexible definition. I do not consider that it is particularly important whether the noise is truly audible or just perceived as a sensation. The important effect is that people do detect something; they detect a sensation and can tell that something is happening.

I learnt this 30 years ago when I was working on a gas turbine installation. Initially, I was very insensitive to the sound but, ultimately, I could drive up in my car and detect that the gas turbines were running even before the car engine had been turned off. There was a very marked increase in sensitivity. So I do not really think that it is important whether it is audible noise or inaudible noise that gives rise to the sensation. The fact is: people do experience real sensation, and these sensations can be very unpleasant.

Senator BACK: You mentioned size of wind farms. Were you referring to numbers of turbines or the actual physical size of the individual turbines, or both, when you made your comments in that regard?

Dr Swinbanks: I am referring primarily to the number of turbines. That is obviously related to the overall dimensions of the wind farm. But I have in mind, in particular, the Macarthur wind farm, which has very closely spaced turbines. It has a very large number—something in excess of 140.

People are, I understand, experiencing adverse effects at distances of three miles. I believe that is a consequence of a large, closely spaced wind farm. Whether the effects would be as severe if the spacing of the turbines is made greater, I believe that would relieve some of the effects. But I think the main issue is the sheer number of turbines.

Senator BACK: You mentioned about what the 2009 American Wind Energy Association report had failed to take account of. You made the reference to increased sensitivity over time—increased exposure—and you gave an example of your own situation with gas turbines. One of the witnesses who has appeared before us, Dr Tonin, from this Association of Australian Acoustical Consultants, put to the committee that you could undertake this testing for infrasound using a pneumatic signal attached to hearing protectors effectively in a quiet room for a limited period of time. I think he mentioned 15 or 20 minutes. Could you comment on how much value you regard such testing would be in trying to come to terms with our situation?

Dr Swinbanks: My attention was drawn to that paper, and I have read it. I have two immediate comments.

Firstly, he was attempting to distinguish whether symptoms were due to actual infrasound or due to nocebo effects. The important point is: there are two different outcomes which could distinguish between those effects, but, in fact, there are many more than two possible outcomes from the experiment. There are up to 16 outcomes of which only two are definitive outcomes relating to nocebo effects or infrasound effects. When I looked at the data, the most impressive correlation that I could see from the data was that the sheer action of putting on the headphones appeared to have increased the symptoms of the people being studied by at least 44 per cent. This was an experiment in which putting on the headphones had a measurable effect. I would argue that we do not yet know what exactly the mechanism causing people to suffer adverse effects.

As I indicated, NASA, 30-odd years ago, had shown that people could experience adverse reactions at what are nominally very low levels of infrasound, but that was in houses where there was possibly vibration from the structures—and we do not know whether people are sensing anything through their body rather than their ears, because people often report in low-frequency noise or infrasound environments that they can feel—

Senator BACK: Can I stop you there. We need to get the answers fairly quickly so that all of us can have a go. You made reference to the circumstances of your own experience, where the wind was gusting and then was not gusting and the sound of the turbines with each.

Some people have put to us the idea that an average sound or an average level is adequate. You in your paper have suggested that the use of an averaging technique may be missing cumulative pressure fluctuations and, in particular, peak pressure. Could you briefly explain that further and whether or not there is a value in averaged sound or averaged levels of infrasound decibels, please.

Dr Swinbanks: My immediate comment is that there is no value at all in an averaged level. In that example I gave, if you average it all, you find that the wind turbine level if anything would be less than the gusting level and you would then conclude that the wind turbines are not significant, whereas in fact it is very clear that they are significant.

But the other important point is that there is a very well acknowledged paper that was written in 2004 by two authors, Moller and Paterson, where they made it very clear that for the very low frequencies it is the actual shape and time history and peaks of the waveform that are important. In fact, Dr Leventhall, in an expert witness statement a couple of years ago, criticised me for supposedly not having read that report properly, but what I was doing was studying directly what the report recommended—namely, the time history and shape of the waveforms rather than long-term averaged versions of the waveforms.

Senator BACK: Thank you.

Senator LEYONHJELM: Dr Swinbanks, I have several questions. I hope we have time for them. Dr Leventhall was giving evidence in 2013 to a Vermont Senate hearing on the adverse health impacts of wind turbine operations in which he said they were ‘made-up, make-believe’, ‘hoo-hah’ and ‘a propaganda technique’. I understand he also dismissed some of your work on impulsive infrasound. Has he communicated those concerns to you?

Dr Swinbanks: He has not communicated the concerns directly.

I have known Dr Leventhall for 40 years, but until very recently I had not seen him for 20 years. I was quite surprised, when I met him, that he appeared to have a very different perspective on the noise conditions in America from the perspective he gave at that Vermont meeting.

When he was in the UK, he told me that he thought the sound levels in America were disgraceful.

At the Vermont conversation, he attributed problems to ‘hysterical reaction’. The point is that permitted noise levels in the United States are significantly higher than in other countries and certainly higher than in Australia, so it is hardly surprising that there is what he called ‘hysterical reaction’. You would certainly expect that, if people are subjected to more adverse conditions, they are going to react and respond more strongly.

But it most certainly is not hoo-ha. I can say that from my own experience. There is no question that there are some significant effects. We do not know precisely what the mechanisms are. But people did not know what the mechanisms for seasickness were for many hundreds of years, and they still recognised the existence of seasickness.

Senator LEYONHJELM: In the NASA work in the 1980s, Kelley describes in detail the physical sensations resulting from infrasound. Are his descriptions consistent with what residents are now describing as the physical impacts of wind turbine sound?

Dr Swinbanks: Yes, I believe they are consistent. These symptoms have been known for a long time. Dr Leventhall says they are entirely consistent with his knowledge of low-frequency noise. He does not find it surprising, but he argues that it is not due to infrasound.

As I have indicated, Dr Leventhall has even defined low-frequency noise as being from five hertz up to 200 hertz, which overlaps very substantially a region that most people tend to call infrasound. So we have a situation where, for frequencies around 12, 13 and 14 hertz, do you say, ‘That’s infrasound. That can’t be a problem,’ or do you say, ‘That’s low-frequency sound. The symptoms are perfectly understandable’?

The fact is it is a very fuzzy distinction and you can place yourself either side of that boundary dependent on precisely how you choose to define the boundary. I believe that the symptoms are consistent. They are certainly consistent with low-frequency noise. It is a moot point whether or not people are subconsciously hearing something. They are aware of something. I have no doubts about the nature of the symptoms.

Senator LEYONHJELM: I just want to ask you a few technical questions. Your submission had some graphs that showed the pressure fluctuations and frequency. Mr Cooper’s report points out the need for narrowband measurements and not one-third octave bands for DBA or DBG when looking at infrasound and low frequency. Do you agree with that?

Dr Swinbanks: Certainly. I would not even dream of using one-third octaves or even averaging, over extended periods of time, just the pure spectrum levels.

A proper analysis is both a narrowband frequency analysis coupled with a temporal analysis to look at the time history, as I commented earlier. If you go out to sea in a small boat, you do not worry about the spectrum of the waves; you worry about the shape of the next wave. This is what happens as you go down in lower and lower frequencies. For frequencies like 20 hertz and upwards, you tend to be more concerned with the blurring overall effect, but, as you get down to the very lowest frequencies, it is the shape of the individual waveforms that influences you. So one certainly should not be using these long-term averaging techniques.

Senator LEYONHJELM: Following up on from a question from Senator Back earlier in relation to peaks and averages, could you comment on whether or not it is possible to take a recording of infrasound or low-frequency sound—whatever you like—from a wind turbine and replicate it in a laboratory under controlled conditions in order to measure whether or not there is an adverse effect to it?

Dr Swinbanks: Yes, it is possible to do so, but the way in which people have been doing it so far, to me, seems a bit back to front.

What they should be doing is, first of all, testing people who are known to be sensitive to wind turbines to try to find out what conditions enable an accurate replication of the effects.

I do not see the point in just setting up an experiment in a laboratory and saying, ‘We didn’t observe anything’ if you have not first established, for a person who does suffer ill-effects, whether or not they actually respond to that test. There are real questions about what exactly are the important effects and what exactly should be reproduced in a laboratory. For example, I have quoted the NASA work of 30 years ago.

People consider that, possibly, it was the vibration of the structures that people were sensing rather than the physical pressure variations of the infrasound. We do not know exactly what gives rise to the adverse effects. One has to validate any laboratory testing by being satisfied that people who are sensitive and have reported adverse effects can indeed experience those effects under the test conditions.

Senator CAMERON: Thank you for being here, Dr Swinbanks. You are three miles from the wind farm—is that correct?

Dr Swinbanks: That is correct.

Senator CAMERON: Was your house there before the wind farm was built?

Dr Swinbanks: Yes. I must make it clear that I am not directly complaining about those noise levels because at the moment the effects occur only when the wind is blowing from the south, which is only five per cent of the time. They only occur under circumstances of very severe temperature inversion. So it is a very occasional event. The point is simply that it can occur, and people who are in a position where they are encountering those sorts of conditions more frequently could also be expected to encounter such effects at such distances.

The point that I am making is that such effects can be detected at these distances, not that those effects are a significant intrusion at the moment. But I would point out that in the future they are proposing to build turbines not just to the south of us, but to the west and the north-west, in which case those conditions may prevail for 35 or 40 per cent of the time. The fact is that modest numbers of turbines at sensible distances are not generally a consistent problem. Large wind farms operating under adverse circumstances can indeed be a significant problem at those sorts of distances.

Senator CAMERON: So when the turbines started to be built, was there an opposition group formed in your area?

Dr Swinbanks: There was never an opposition group as such, but there were a significant number of people who were making known their concerns. There was not a formal opposition group, but people were making known their concerns. The fact that there were two wind farms built at an early stage meant that people had some experience of what could be happening.

The interesting feature was that you might say that those two wind farms, if you looked at them initially, looked pretty similar and pretty comparable; but one of them gave rise to very severe problems, while the other one did not appear to give rise to anything like as many complaints. The skill of constructing a good quiet wind farm is still pretty well lacking. It is very much a trial and error process, unless people obey sensible guidelines like ensuring that the separation between the turbines is of a sensible size and they are not choosing to mount turbines in locations, for example, on ridges where there can be a significantly distorted wind pattern and shear flow effects. The point is that there is a difference between a well constructed wind farm with sensible spacings and numbers and a poorly constructed wind farm.

Senator CAMERON: You also indicated that an inversion caused problems, and you gave evidence in relation to one night when it was not windy, and you had to keep going outside to check if the turbines were operating, then you became lethargic, you were losing concentration, you lost coordination when you were driving. Were you the only one in your household who had these symptoms?

Dr Swinbanks: It was not my household, it was the house belonging to some people who lived at the wind farm, who had asked me to take the measurements for them.

Those people have experienced adverse effects to the extent that they actually had to rent alternative accommodation and go and sleep in the alternative accommodation at night. They initially tried to look at weather forecasts and decide if they could sleep in their own house or not, but they ultimately decided that the wind conditions could change during the night, and it could go from a benign night to a bad night. Therefore they began to sleep away from the property routinely and regularly.

The particular point that I should like to make is that I was extremely surprised to experience these symptoms. I thought it was a non-event. But one particular point was that I was using a computer very extensively, and if there is a relation to motion sickness, I would certainly comment that if I am in a motor car and I try to use the computer or read—assuming I am not driving—I can very quickly become ill. I wondered whether this was purely conjecture, whether the fact that I was concentrating on using a computer actually enhanced the severity of the effects.

Senator CAMERON: Are you aware of the study that was done by Fiona Crichton, George Dodd, Gian Schmid, Greg Gamble, and Keith J. Petrie, titled ‘Can expectations produce symptoms from infrasound associated with wind turbines?’ It was a peer reviewed analysis reported in Health Psychology. They indicated that if there were high expectancy that you would get sick from infrasound then you would become sick. They did work with infrasound and sham infrasound, and it really did support the analysis that the psychogenesis and nocebo effect were real. Have you had a look at that?

Dr Swinbanks: Yes, I am familiar with that and I wrote a criticism of that document at the time. The point was that the difference between their sham infrasound and their real infrasound was essentially negligible. The real infrasound was at a level of 40 decibels, which is very low, and not surprisingly there was no difference in the response of any of the people between the sham and the actual infrasound. The other point is that the duration was only 10 minutes. In the effects that I described it took five hours for the full effects to become apparent.

I have related that whole situation to sea sickness. It used to be the case, in the 1970s, when I did a lot of sailing, that one would frequently encounter people who considered that seasickness was just psychological. Very often, they learned the hard way that it is not. But the point is that, if you wanted to test two groups of people for seasickness, you would not put two separate groups into two separate boats and put them on a flat, calm lake for 10 minutes and then announce that any reactions prove that seasickness was caused by a nocebo effect. That would actually be regarded as a joke. So I am afraid that I consider that that particular experiment was more an experiment in a pretty obvious psychology than anything relating to the validity of whether infrasound represents a real problem or not.

Senator CAMERON: So many questions, so little time. Thank you.

CHAIR: Dr Swinbanks, is the sound pressure level important when considering biological effects of infrasound and low frequencies, or could it be the frequency via acoustic resonance?

Dr Swinbanks: I think I should make it clear that I am not a biology specialist, so anything I say is amateur in that context. But I believe that the long exposure times can be a factor in inducing effects in people. Again, drawing a parallel with seasickness, it was not uncommon to go to sea for eight, 12 or even 24 hours and think, well, you are not going to get seasick this time, only to discover suddenly at the end that you do in fact start to succumb. In that context you can find that the onset of the symptoms can seem to be very rapid, even although you have been exposed for a long duration. So I think there are important considerations relating to duration of exposure.

I point out briefly that Dr Alec Salt, who is an expert on the characteristics of the cochlea, has suggested there is a phenomenon known as temporary endolymphatic hydrops, which is a progressive swelling and blockage of the little pressure relief hole at the end of the cochlea. If that becomes blocked then you can become very much more sensitive to infrasound. So it is quite possible to hypothesise that long-duration exposure is causing a blockage to progressively develop, and when it becomes severe then the person will start to experience much more extreme effects from the sound pressure than they would if there were no blockage.

So you could imagine in those circumstances that there might be a protracted period where there was no effect and then a comparatively rapid onset of effects. It would then take time after the exposure for those effects to clear, so you would then have persistence for some time afterwards. This is a whole area that requires a great deal more study. One of the conclusions, though, of the original 2009 AWEA report was that there was no need for any further research. I would completely disagree with that. I think it is apparent that people are now taking the issue seriously and at last people are beginning to investigate more thoroughly exactly what may be happening.

CHAIR: From what you have told me, I take it that the level of sound pressure is less important?

Dr Swinbanks: There are several factors that are important and when they come together they can effectively reinforce one another. I am not certain that you can take out one specific component and reject the rest. It is a combination of different contributions that can ultimately lead to the end condition. But the obvious conditions are length of exposure, sound pressure levels but also the frequency and the nature and character of the time history of the wave forms.

CHAIR: Thank you. We are running over time. If there are no further questions—

Senator BACK: I have one, but it will have to go on notice.

CHAIR: Dr Swinbanks, there may be further questions placed on notice by senators. We would appreciate it if you accept those and respond.

Dr Swinbanks: Certainly.

CHAIR: Thank you for your appearance before the committee.

Dr Swinbanks: Thank you for giving me the opportunity to speak. I am very grateful for that.

CHAIR: Thank you.

Hansard 23, June 2015

Dr Swinbank’s evidence is available on the Parliament’s website here. And his submission to the Inquiry is available here (sub189_Swinbanks).

****

Nice work, Malcolm! That couldn’t have been clearer or plainer. But that’s usually the case where a witness is dishing up good ol’ common sense.

In his evidence, Dr Swinbank’s talked about his own unnerving experience with turbine generated infrasound, for more detail on what happened see this post:

Top Acoustic Engineer – Malcolm Swinbanks – Experiences Wind Farm Infrasound Impacts, First Hand

And we’re very pleased to see Dr Swinbanks smashing the wind industry’s claim that the NASA research from the 1980s has no relevance to the present calamity, simply because the blades were shifted from behind the tower (‘downwind’) to in front of the tower (‘upwind’). For a detailed rundown on the NASA research and its relevance to what wind farm neighbours are forced to suffer, see this post:

Three Decades of Wind Industry Deception: A Chronology of a Global Conspiracy of Silence and Subterfuge

After hearing and receiving a vast swathe of evidence of the kind given by Dr Swinbanks and a cast of others, our political betters in Australia’s Parliament won’t be able to run the Sergeant Schultz defence any longer ….

Realistic View Of Government-induced Climaphobia, & the Unintended Consequences”.

July 9, 2015 / 1957chev / 1 Comment

Editorial by Tom Harris

July 8, 2015

‘Marching with the enemy’

Imagine pro-tobacco groups wanted to participate in fund raising marches for cancer research. ‘We want to help defeat cancer too,’ the tobacco advocates announce.

Anti-cancer campaigners would never march in solidarity with tobacco promoters. They know that if smoking increased, cancer rates would undoubtedly rise as well. Marching arm in arm with those working against one’s interests is irrational.

This logic does not seem to have occurred to the groups concerned with social justice and wildlife protection who participated in the July 5 “March for Jobs, Justice, and the Climate” in Toronto. They were, in effect, marching with the enemy, groups such as 350.org and Citizens’ Climate Lobby which unwittingly encourage outcomes that are harming the poor and disadvantaged, biodiversity, and endangered species.

For example, by promoting the idea that carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions must be reduced to prevent dangerous climate change, climate mitigation activists support the expanded use of biofuels. This is resulting in 6.5% of the world’s grain being diverted to fuel instead of food, causing food price spikes that are a disaster for the world’s most vulnerable people.

The growing demand for biofuels is also creating serious problems for indigenous land owners in developing countries. In a February 2015 open letter to the European Parliament endorsed by 197 civil society organisations from Asia, Africa, and Latin America, it was asserted:

“The destruction of forests and fertile agricultural land to make way for oil palm plantations is jeopardising the food sovereignty and cultural integrity of entire communities who depend on the land as their source of food and livelihoods.”

Replacing virgin forests with monoculture plantations to provide palm oil for biodiesel greatly reduces biodiversity over vast regions.

In another attempt to reduce CO2 emissions, hundreds of thousands of industrial wind turbines (IWT) are being constructed worldwide. For example, the Ontario government is erecting 6,736 IWTs across the province, the most recent as tall as a 61 story building.

Only 4% of the province’s power came from wind energy in 2013 and 1% from solar, yet together they accounted for 20% of the commodity cost paid by Ontarians. Despite massive government subsidies for wind power, electricity rates in Ontario have soared, mostly affecting the poor and seniors on fixed incomes.

IWTs kill millions of birds and bats across the world. Ontario’s situation has drawn the attention of the Spain-based group, Save the Eagles International, which, on May 23, issued the news release “Migrating golden eagles to be slaughtered in Ontario.” They showed that some of the turbines planned for Ontario are being placed directly in the path of migrating golden eagles, which are already an endangered species.

The consequences for people living near IWTs can be severe as well. Besides a significant loss in property value, health concerns abound.

A particularly tragic example is occurring in the West Lincoln and surrounding regions of Southern Ontario. There, despite the objections of local residents, wind developers have received approval to install at least seventy-seven 3 Megawatt IWTs, each up to 609 ft. tall, the largest such machines in North America.

One resident, Shellie Correia of Wellandport has a particular reason to be concerned.

Her 12 year old son Joey has been diagnosed with Sensory Processing Disorder and it is crucial that he live in an environment free from excessive noise. But as a result of Ontario’s Green Energy Act, the primary focus of which is climate change mitigation, an IWT will be sited only 550 metres from their home.

Correia explained in her January 2015 presentation before the government’s Environmental Review Tribunal, “On top of the incessant, cyclical noise, there is light flicker, and infrasound. This is not something that my son will be able to tolerate.”

But the approvals go ahead anyways. As Correia told the Tribunal, “No one was able to help, because of the Green Energy Act.”

The drive to reduce CO2 emissions makes it difficult for developing countries to finance the construction of vitally-needed hydrocarbon-fueled power plants. For example, in 2010 South Africa secured a $3.9 billion loan to build the Medupi coal-fired power station only because developing country representatives on the World Bank board voted for approval. The U.S. and four European nation members abstained from approval because of their concerns about climate change. They apparently wanted South Africans to use wind and solar power instead, sources too expensive for widespread use even in wealthy nations.

Finally, because of the belief that humans control climate, only 6% of the one billion dollars spent every day across the world on climate finance goes to helping vulnerable people cope with climate change today. The rest is spent trying to stop phenomena that might someday happen. This is immoral, effectively valuing the lives of people yet to be born more than those in need today.

In all of these cases, climate mitigation takes precedence over the needs of the present. Groups such as Ontario Coalition Against Poverty, Oxfam Canada, and Great Lakes Commons, all of which participated in Sunday’s event, must distance themselves from climate activists, not march with them.

Tom Harris is Executive Director of the Ottawa-based International Climate Science Coalition.

Dr. Bruce Rapley Tells Inquiry, that “Nocebo effect”, Just More Wind Industry Lies!

July 9, 2015 / 1957chev / 1 Comment

Dr Bruce Rapley tells Senate: Wind Farm Nocebo Story “Nefarious Pseudoscience” & an “Insult to Intelligence”

July 9, 2015 by stopthesethings Leave a Comment

****

Australia is blessed with a former tobacco advertising guru who is paid a packet by wind power outfits – like near-bankrupt Infigen – to pedal a story that the adverse health impacts caused by incessant turbine generated low-frequency noise and infrasound (such as sleep deprivation) are the product of “scare-mongering” – which, on his story, affects only English-speaking “climate deniers”; and that never, ever affects those farmers paid to host turbines.

This grab bag of nonsense is pitched up under the tagline “nocebo”. Now, that doesn’t sound altogether scientific, but nor does the term “anti-wind farm wing-nut”, used by the guru as part of his efforts to diagnose (without clinical consultation, mind you) those said to be suffering from “nocebo”. We think he uses a magic stethoscope mounted in an orbiting satellite to reach his long-distance, infallible medical diagnoses.

More fortunate, however, is the fact that the Senate Inquiry into the great wind power fraud got to hear from a relevantly qualified health and acoustic expert. Dr Bruce Rapley gave this blistering evidence to the Inquiry – which makes a complete mockery of the arguments pitched up by the chancers and showboats paid by the wind industry to downplay, diminish and deny the obvious impacts that incessant low-frequency noise and infrasound has on human health.

Senate Select Committee on Wind Turbines – 19 June 2015

RAPLEY, Dr Bruce Ian, Principal Consultant, Acoustics and Human Health, Atkinson & Rapley Consulting Ltd

CHAIR: Welcome. Can you please confirm that information on parliamentary privilege and the protection of witnesses and evidence has been provided to you?

Dr Rapley: I can confirm and I have read the document.

CHAIR: The committee has your submission. I now invite you to make a brief opening statement and, at the conclusions of your remarks, I will invite members of the committee to put questions to you.

Dr Rapley: I understand that time is of the essence, so I have provided a full opening statement in writing to you but I will read a brief opening statement, if that is alright with you. Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for this opportunity to address your Senate inquiry on this very important topic.

There are two main problems with the way the sound from wind turbines is measured and controlled. Firstly, by use of the A-weighting and, secondly, by the averaging over time. A-weighting is an anachronistic attempt to describe human hearing, initially conceived and averaged on the reception of pure sounds heard through earphones by 23 laboratory workers at the Western Electric Laboratories of the AT&T Telephone Company in the late 1920s.

The salient point is that the human organism is a frequency modulated difference engine. That is why we react to differences between instantaneous sound pressure levels—that is, the peaks. Averages are a human, anthropomorphic, construct used to generate a single descriptive value to describe a complex dataset. In creating such a statistic, much of the variance of the data is necessarily lost. The 10-minutes averages, used in almost all environmental noise controls, have little value in terms of human or animal response.

The reason that animals, including humans, respond to instantaneous sound pressure levels is a simple matter of evolutionary adaptation. Single, often sudden, or pulsating, acoustic events are very descriptive of the environment in that they frequently contain information that is indicative of a threat and therefore essential for survival. While averages have some uses, hence their invention, the danger is not in what they reveal; rather it is in what they conceal. The use of the 10-minute average so commonly used in environmental noise monitoring is designed to smooth out the peaks, thereby missing the most important part of the soundscape: sudden loud noise events, or in the case of wind turbines, pulsating peaks of low-frequency sound.

This methodology favours the wind industry. Thus, in one fell swoop, they have managed to hide the very sound effects that are causing much of the adverse biological response. The wind industry can and does hide behind the statistics, much to the detriment of public health. With the ever-increasing size of these industrial generators comes a significant overhead: noise pollution.

It is my understanding that one such mitigation strategy that has been suggested to this commission: phase desynchronisation. This is in fact not only impractical but deeply flawed on basic principles of physics. It is my intention to correct this misunderstanding so that no precious time is wasted on an idea that is without merit.

Further, the wind industry’s strategies of denial, obfuscation, sustained personal attacks on professionals advising of the problems, and ridicule of those who are suffering, followed by buy-outs with gagging clauses must be exposed for the ruse that it is. That the wind industry and its supporters continue to fly the flag of the nocebo principle must also be shown for the misapplication of science that it is. The nocebo principle cannot be applied to a palpable phenomenon by definition. To continue to fly this particular flag is to insult the intelligence of genuinely impacted people and to bring the scientific method and science into disrepute. It is a staggering misuse of the scientific method and does nothing to advance the understanding of this complex problem.

In the future, I believe that the adverse health effects of wind turbines will eclipse the asbestos problem in the annals of history. In my opinion, the greed and scientific half-truths from the wind industry will be seen by history as one of the worst corporate and government abuses of democracy in the 21st century. I look forward to answering your questions, Senators. Thank you.

CHAIR: Thank you, Dr Rapley. In your submission, why do you think the A-weighting is inappropriate for the measuring for the acoustic output for wind turbines?

Dr Rapley: The A-weighting was a good idea 80 years ago but it is not a good idea now. It is an average, it is predicated on averaged hearing of a small number of people using very poor equipment, using pure tones, occluded headphones, in 1928. The equipment was very poor in those times.

The A-weighting has been revised a number of times as equipment has got better over the years. The problem is that it progressively discounts frequencies below 1,000 hertz, and it totally ignores everything below 20 hertz. It is not a good indicator of what is in the acoustic environment.

A very important point here is that human hearing sensitivities are continually changing. In much of this debate, I see a lot of talk about acoustics, physics and measurements. What I do not see is a good understanding of the basic science of human biology and hearing—and that is not just dealing with the human apparatus of the ear; it is also dealing with the processing by the human brain and the auditory cortex, and the filtering systems therein. It is a complex problem. The A-weighting is a poor indication of average hearing, badly implemented. It does not describe the frequency region, where most of the biological effects, we believe, are being initiated. It averages out the very values we need to look for and it cannot find the values that are actually causing the problem. Why this continues to be used is beyond my understanding. It is a complete scientific anachronism; it is inappropriate.

CHAIR: Dr Rapley, could you explain to us what are heightened noise zones?

Dr Rapley: Okay. Can I ask you: have you seen the second submission of mine: Elements of Wind Turbines Sound Synchronicity Phase and Heightened Noise Zones?

CHAIR: Yes, some of us have.

Dr Rapley: I think its best described there, but let me describe this, if I can, in a simple manner. Sound is an energy form which we describe as a wave. The way to look at this is let us imagine that we are looking at the surface of a still pond. Onto that pond we drop a stone. We all know what happens: the ripples will spread out. If you were to drop two stones into the pool at the same time, both would create ripples, and the ripples would interfere with one another. We call this superposition theory—the addition of wave energy as a vector quantity in space.

What happens is that, when one wave exactly coincides with another wave from another pebble, the two waves add together. It is a simple matter of algebraic addition; it is very simple. You get large waves and large troughs, but as the waves move out you will see that a crest and a trough will hit. They will cancel each other out. That is what we call a node in physics. That is an area which is not moving; it is a null spot. The null spots are a necessary creation of interacting waves in a three-dimensional environment. Heightened noise zones are simply zones where several or many crests and troughs of waves interact in such a way that you get a supercrest, supertrough.

The simple way to look at it is this. Stones dropped into a pond cause ripples. The ripples interact. Where the ripples cause double-height waves, that is a heightened noise zone. The one thing that you know is that, wherever there is a heightened noise zone, one of these antinodes, in close proximity—within half a wave length—there will be a node, the null spot. Simply waves hitting one another, combining, causes this problem. Phase, I am afraid, is not the question; it is not the issue.

CHAIR: Thank you, Dr Rapley. Senator Day?

Senator DAY: What sort of research do you think should be undertaken in the short term to better understand the science of this phenomenon?

Dr Rapley: I think that is one of the most important questions that you have to consider. Observational studies are urgently needed to study the low-frequency and infrasound emissions. It is of those people affected inside their homes—that is the priority. I have to stress this: laboratory studies cannot replicate the situation experienced by those people in close proximity to large wind turbines, and they cannot provide the study data we need.

What we have to do, now that we are in a crisis situation in terms of public health and regulation, is do the first studies on sensitised individuals. We should not be looking at large cross-sectional population studies of non-exposed people, laboratory studies. No longer are a few A-weighted sound levels and wind speeds of any use in correlating environmental conditions to subjects’ experiences.

We need to look at sensitised individuals first, because that is where the most rich data can be obtained. Research that relates to full-spectrum and also narrow-band analysis with an objective physiological measure in the people that you are investigating, who are suffering the worst impacts in their homes and workplaces, is the only strategy that can produce the results that we urgently need. We cannot afford as a country to waste time on other issues.

We must address those who are severely impacted in their homes, use the full-spectrum narrow-band analysis, and that needs to be combined not just with diaries of their experience but with real physiological measures. I have the technology to be able to do that; the technology has been invented. We can do this, but it has never ever been done. The technology is now available. Time is of the essence.

Senator URQUHART: In your submission you said the acoustic emissions from wind turbines are unique. Can you outline what makes wind farm infrasound unique?

Dr Rapley: Yes, I can. The wind farms produce wave forms which are unlike any other naturally occurring forms of infrasound. This is well documented in the scientific literature. The fact that they are different, by definition, means they are unique, and the unique character is that they are like impulsive sounds. But there is a complexity here that few understand. I will try to explain it.

We are not just dealing with a single low frequency like one hertz, two hertz or whatever it happens to be. What we are looking at is a combined effect of the infrasound in addition to all of the other sounds emitted plus all of the sounds in the environment. When you look at the environment you see a range of frequencies, which includes the hiss of the wind in the trees and the wind going through the turbines and their structures. All of that white noise, plus the acoustic noise that wind turbines produce by nature of their gears and the air flowing over the nacelle, the tower and the blades, gives you a complex sound packet.

The wind turbines are unique because the low frequency, because the rotation of the blades, essentially throws you packets of sound. It is likened to amplitude modulation of the existing sound. That is not just a physical phenomenon. That is also a phenomenon within the human organism, and that would take a lot more time to explain. But what we hear is a facsimile of what is in the environment, in the same way that a fax machine does not send your words; it sends dots and dashes which are reconstructed. The human brain reconstructs the sound.

With wind turbines, the unique combination of pulsing low-frequency bursts not only causes amplitude modulation effects in the atmosphere—the physical molecules of the air itself—but actually confuses the ear so the biological mechanism is tricked. It is not used to hearing this combination of sound. It is a very unique sound. I know of nothing in the natural soundscape that is even within cooee of this type of sound. So when that sound—this complex series of packets of pulsated noise—hits your ear, it affects the muscles that hold the ossicles and therefore determine the status position of the oval window in the cochlea but it also affects the outer hair cells, which have the main role of controlling the volume or the sensitivity of all of the cochlea in little tiny individual pieces.

When you inject infrasound pulsations what you are doing is introducing low-frequency pulses below the normal human hearing, which interferes directly with the afferent and efferent control systems of the sensitivity of the cochlea. What this does is magnify and amplify the amplitude modulation. It is kind of like listening to your stereo and turning the knob up and down so you get this changing volume. The sound does that, but the ear makes it far worse because of the physiology of how it works.

The brain is not designed, as far as we understand it, to deal with low frequencies being imposed on the control circuitry of the gain or the feedback control of sensitivity. That sound is doing something that nothing else in the world does. That is why it has such an important effect on humans—because it actually confounds the control circuitry that allows us to hear. I hope that gives you some explanation. It is exceedingly complicated.

Senator URQUHART: Thank you for that. You also mentioned in your submission that thousands of people living in close proximity to wind farms report similar adverse health effects. The committee has heard that there are many countries where health impacts of wind farms are rarely raised as a concern, particularly in non-English-speaking countries. What factors do you think could account for these geographic differences?

Dr Rapley: There are undoubtedly going to be geographic differences, but this is the problem with data collection. The same thing occurs when you start to look at the incidence of diseases in a population or the incidence of crime in a community. It is the reporting which is largely at fault. The fact is that people are affected by this, and the numbers are in the thousands. I only have to look at the emails that cross my desk from all over the world. I get bombarded from the UK, Ireland, France, Canada, the United States, Australia, Germany.

There are tonnes of these things out there but, because the system does not understand the problem, nor does it have a strategy, many of those complaints go unlisted. If I were to look, for example, at the list of complaints for the wind farm which is in my territory, in the Manawatu, in New Zealand, we are talking hundreds upon hundreds of complaints. They were all logged but never actioned. Nothing happens about them; they just get lost. Unless you go looking for them, you will not find the data. You have to burrow down into the data to find it. You cannot just rely on the simple reporting. That is highly erroneous and a very bad way to do science.

Senator URQUHART: The Health Canada study, which looked at 1,200 residents, found that there was no correlation between wind farms and self-reported sleep problems, illnesses, perceived stress or quality of life. If wind farms are causing the health impacts, why do you think they are not showing up in large-scale epidemiological research such as the Health Canada study?

Dr Rapley: There is an old biblical reference, ‘Seek, and ye shall find.’ If you deliberately set out not to find something, there is a very good chance you will not find it. I think that study is flawed on so many levels it is not even worth considering.

Senator URQUHART: In which areas do you believe that that study is flawed?

Dr Rapley: The way I think they collected the data is a problem. The questions that they asked to collect that data were flawed. But it is such a huge issue we would need several hours for me to sit down and explain it. I am happy to do that in writing, but if we are short of time—there are so many things wrong with that study. It is too big a topic to do in a couple of minutes. I see I have nine minutes remaining.

Senator URQUHART: Okay.

Dr Rapley: I am happy to answer that in writing later.

Senator URQUHART: Thank you.

Senator BACK: Dr Rapley, you made the comment with regard to the nocebo effect and you said, ‘It can’t be applied to a palpable’—I did not get the last word.

Dr Rapley: Phenomenon.

Senator BACK: Could you expand on that for us, please? Obviously it is a topic of quite intense interest in this inquiry.

Dr Rapley: Yes, it is. Firstly, quite bluntly, on first scientific principles it is the wrong terminology.

It is a piece of very poor academic science to even invoke the term. The definition of nocebo, in medicine, is—from the Latin ‘I shall harm’—an inert substance or form of therapy that creates harmful effects in a patient. Therefore, the nocebo effect is the adverse reaction experienced by a patient who receives such a therapy. Wind turbines are not a therapy. Sound is not an inert substance devoid of biological perception or effect.

Nocebo is the wrong word. It is very simply a bastardisation of a term invented for nefarious purposes to attempt to invoke some sort of pseudoscientific authenticity. The term that should be used is psychogenic or psychosomatic.

It just stuns me that people continue to use this. It is the wrong term to begin with and it does not explain the effects that we see. It is simply a ruse. It is a red herring that is put out and promoted by certain academics and the industry to explain a phenomenon. It fails on first principles. But it fails because it cannot account for those who were pro-turbine prior to commissioning only to experience adverse health effects post-commissioning that they were later able to relate back to turbine emissions. I think Dr Swinbanks will be talking on this.

We have animals affected by this. Normally we would believe that animals are not really susceptible to media hype, so the fact that animals are doing this is showing that that cannot work. We also have physiological mechanisms of action now that have been proposed—and this is years ago. The nocebo effect is akin to a self-fulfilling prophecy. It is akin to what I call ‘the magician’s dilemma’—are you familiar with that concept?

Senator BACK: No, I do not think I am. But I am about to be!

Dr Rapley: The magician’s dilemma is this: suppose you watch a magician performing a trick, perhaps sawing a lady in half. We know that you cannot actually saw a person in half, because they are going to die. That happens every day in surgery. But you think about this and you say: ‘Gee, I think I’ve worked this out. I know how he’s making this appear to happen.’ You have come up with the answer: this is how magicians cut a woman in half; it is a complete ruse; it is a trick.

That is true, but the fallacy in the logic is that just because you have proposed one theory to explain the phenomenon, that does not mean that all magicians use the same tricks to do the same bit of magic. They may have a completely different method that you have not thought of, and this is why you cannot latch on to any one single explanation, because of multiple causation. The magician’s dilemma is that you think that you have found the answer and that it is the only answer. There are many ways to skin a roo, as I think you say over there—or a cat in New Zealand—and there are many ways to do a trick.

There are many reasons why there are health effects of wind turbines. We now know that there are good physiological mechanisms to explain this. We have known for 30 or 40 years that the effects are there. Science is an empirical art form. First it involves observation, and after observation we then start to think, ‘How did that happen?’ We create a hypothesis, we find a way of testing that and we carry out those tests to see if it agrees with our theory of how the woman was cut in half. That is what science is about. We have the observations over decades. We have a new situation with larger wind turbines—

Senator BACK: We have only got seconds left, and I know another colleague wants to ask a question. So I do thank you for that very extensive explanation.

Senator LEYONHJELM: Can you just keep your comments brief please; we are running out of time. You do not think very much of the A-weighting. What measure would you use if you wanted to monitor compliance with a standard? What standard would use and what process would you use for determining an appropriate sound level?

Dr Rapley: I would use unweighted sound levels. I would use no weighting at all. It would be unweighted and it would be the equivalent of what you may understand by ‘narrow band’.

Senator LEYONHJELM: We asked one witness that question and he just said straight 30 dB, unweighted. Would you agree?

Dr Rapley: Not at all. Not with a 30 dB, because the one thing that you are missing from the equation is the biology and the human response. You must not look at this purely as a physical phenomenon. That is where the mistakes are made. You need to understand the response of the biological organism and the fact that human hearing is changing. There is no one magic decibel level; it depends on environments.

Senator LEYONHJELM: That presents a regulatory issue. How do you set a standard? In your submission you went to great lengths to criticise the New Zealand standard. But governments and regulators like standards. If there was to be a standard, what should it have in it?

Dr Rapley: That standard can only be proposed after the research that I am saying is vitally important and urgent is done. When we understand what you would call in general terms the dose-response relationship, then I can give you the standard. I cannot do that in the absence of that science. That must be completed first. I am happy to answer it when the science has been done.

Senator LEYONHJELM: Just to clarify, you also talked about nodes, and what you are suggesting is that there is no way of replicating those nodes in a laboratory environment. Is that right?

Dr Rapley: I think you are confusing two answers there. The point is that nodes exist with complex waveforms—complex sound in a complex environment. Therefore, what I am saying is, forget the nodes; the fact is you cannot replicate in a sealed room, a little laboratory room, what is happening in the real world for people living in a house near wind turbines.

Senator LEYONHJELM: I am also working on an assumption—correct me if I am wrong—that, with respect to ordinary emissions from a wind farm, you could be in reasonable proximity to a wind farm and not be affected, but if you move to another area that is a similar distance from a wind farm, where the sound is exaggerated, amplified or whatever, that is more likely to adversely affect you. I am assuming that that might be a node. Am I wrong there?

Dr Rapley: The node is in fact the quiet part. It is the antinode that is noisier. I know it is a funny piece of terminology. I first discovered it some years ago. I walked down a country road at quarter past 10 in the evening. It was a still night. There were no stars. It was totally black. I really had to feel the road. I had never heard wind turbine sounds. What I heard was what to me sounded like a didgeridoo. It occurred very suddenly. I took two steps forward and it disappeared. I took two steps back—that is about two metres—it came back.

Nodes and antinodes are sometimes very small in area, sometimes large, but they are forever moving. As they are forever moving, you cannot use phase cancellation to make all of the houses in an area get no sound. It is an absolute impossibility. Wherever there is a node there is an antinode. You just cannot make that happen.

Senator LEYONHJELM: We have had anecdotal evidence presented to the committee about adverse effects on animals, but others have said that there have not been any at all. Are you aware of any published work on the effect of turbines on animals?

Dr Rapley: Yes, I am. I would have to go and look those references up. They certainly do exist. It is interesting that in the veterinary medicine textbook of diseases of cattle, sheep, pigs and horses by Blood, Henderson and Radostits—

Senator LEYONHJELM: I know it well.

Dr Rapley: they tell you in chapter 30 of the importance of sound effects on animals. It is a brilliant textbook. It is obviously still in use today. There are papers and references I could find for you and send to you. But can I bring you back to one more important point. The scientific method is predicated first on observation. Much needs to be looked into in the grey literature, the anecdotes, to find that data. Once we have that, then the papers will come. There are papers in the literature, but I would have to go and dig those up. I do not have them in front of me.

Senator LEYONHJELM: We get the impression that if the wind farms made available their data on their operating hours, their wind speed, their own sound measurements, their energy emissions and that sort of stuff they could be analysed in conjunction with separate sound monitoring in order to improve our scientific understanding of this. Would you agree?

Dr Rapley: Absolutely. That is not a question. That is rhetorical. It is a no-brainer. Of course it would. The problem that we have been beset with for many years is that the wind turbine people will not release their data. They say it is commercially sensitive. They are absolutely inhibiting us from getting that data. They are hiding. We cannot get it.

I can give you, on another occasion, chapter and verse of trying to get that data where I myself have monitoring stations set up. The wind industry is deliberately hiding that data so that we cannot use it. This means that, as scientists, we have to get it for ourselves. We have to duplicate that effort, which is a waste of time and resources and doggy in the manger. Public health is what is suffering here.

CHAIR: Dr Rapley, are you happy for us to send you questions on notice?

Dr Rapley: Absolutely. I would be more than happy to respond to questions in a timely manner.

CHAIR: Thank you for your appearance before the committee today, Dr Rapley.

Dr Rapley: Thank you for your time.

Hansard 19, June 2015

Dr Rapley’s evidence is available from the Parliament’s website here.

It’s Happening All Over the World. Electricity is Becoming a “Luxury Item”! Energy poverty!

July 7, 2015 / 1957chev / Leave a comment

EPA’s war on the poor

Friend,

What happens when government regulations cause more harm than they prevent?

In an important new research article at CFACT.org, senior policy advisor Paul Driessen joins with energy analyst Roger Bezdek to consider EPA’s “Clean Power Plan” and ask, “what effect will the regulation itself have on poor and minority communities?”

The answer is shocking.

“The plan will result in higher electricity costs for businesses and families, lost jobs, lower incomes, higher poverty rates, reduced living standards, and diminished health and welfare, our exhaustive recent study found. This damage will be inflicted at the national level and in all 50 states. The CPP will impact all low-income groups, but hit America’s 128 million Blacks and Hispanics especially hard.”

Obama Administration bureaucrats want to dramatically increase the cost of electricity, despite the fact that these painfully expensive rules will provide little or no meaningful benefit to the climate or the environment.

“The EPA regulations will significantly increase the minority family ‘energy burden’ – the percentage of annual household incomes they must pay for residential energy bills – and thus the number of families driven into energy poverty. Inability to pay energy bills is second only to inability to pay rent as the leading cause of homelessness, so increasing numbers of poor and minority families will become homeless.”

Over the weekend we shared a Hoover Institution piece on Facebook, “When Bureaucrats Get Way With Murder,” which calculates that every $7 to $10 million in regulatory costs induces one fatality through what is called the “income effect.” The author concludes that excessive regulation is tantamount to “statistical murder.”
When bureaucratic ideologues over-regulate, the law of unintended consequences will take its toll.

Unfortunately, the poorest and most vulnerable among us will find that toll hardest to pay.

For nature and people too,

Craig Rucker
Executive Director

Obama and EPA imperil minority welfare

By Paul Driessen

& Roger Bezdek

The Wind Scam is Much More Financially Detrimental, Than the Windpushers Claimed.

July 7, 2015 / 1957chev / Leave a comment

STUDY: WIND FARMS EVEN MORE EXPENSIVE AND POINTLESS THAN YOU THOUGHT

Reuters

by JAMES DELINGPOLE

The cost of wind energy is significantly more expensive than its advocates pretend, a new US study has found.

If you believe this chart produced by the US Energy Information Administration (EIA), then onshore wind is one of the cheapest forms of power – more competitive than nuclear, coal or hydro, and a lot more than solar.

But when you take into account the true costs of wind, it’s around 48 per cent more expensive than the industry’s official estimates – according to new research conducted by Utah State University.

“In this study, we refer to the ‘true cost’ of wind as the price tag consumers and society as a whole pay both to purchase wind-generated electricity and to subsidize the wind energy industry through taxes and government debt,” said Ryan Yonk Ph.D., one of the report’s authors and a founder of Strata Policy. “After examining all of these cost factors and carefully reviewing existing cost estimates, we were able to better understand how much higher the cost is for Americans.”

The peer-reviewed report accounted for the following factors:

The federal Production Tax Credit (PTC), a crucial subsidy for wind producers, has distorted the energy market by artificially lowering the cost of expensive technologies and directing taxpayer money to the wind industry.

States have enacted Renewable Portfolio Standards (RPS) that require utilities to purchase electricity produced from renewable sources, which drives up the cost of electricity for consumers.

Because wind resources are often located far from existing transmission lines, expanding the grid is expensive, and the costs are passed on to taxpayers and consumers.

Conventional generators must be kept on call as backup to meet demand when wind is unable to do so, driving up the cost of electricity for consumers.

“Innovation is a wonderful thing and renewable energy is no exception. Wind power has experienced tremendous growth since the 1990’s, but it has largely been a response to generous federal subsidies,” Yonk stated.

Among the factors wind advocates fail to acknowledge, the report shows, is the “opportunity cost” of the massive subsidies which taxpayers are forced to provide in order to persuade producers to indulge in this otherwise grotesquely inefficient and largely pointless form of power generation.

In the US this amounts to an annual $5 billion per year in Production Tax Credits (PTC). Here is money that could have been spent on education, healthcare, defence or, indeed, which could have been left in the pockets of taxpayers to spend as they prefer.

Instead it has been squandered on bribing rent-seeking crony-capitalists to carpet the landscape with bat-chomping, bird-slicing eco-crucifixes to produce energy so intermittent that it is often unavailable when needed most (on very hot or very cold days when demand for air-conditioning or heating is high) and only too available on other occasions when a glut means that wind producers actually have to pay utilities to accept their unwanted energy. This phenomenon, known as “negative pricing”, is worthwhile to wind producers because they only get their subsidy credits when they are producing power (whether it is needed or not). But clearly not worthwhile to the people who end up footing the bill: ie taxpayers.

Hence the observation of serial wind energy “investor” Warren Buffett, who says: “We get a tax credit if we build a lot of wind farms. That’s the only reason to build them. They don’t make sense without the tax credit.”

But even this report may underestimate the real costs of wind energy. It doesn’t account for the damage caused to the health of people unfortunate enough to live near wind turbines, as acknowledged officially for the first time in this report produced for the Australian government.

Nor does it account for the environmental blight caused to the landscape – far greater, asChristopher Booker has reported, than that created by the greenies’ bete noire fracking.

When Professor David MacKay stepped down as chief scientific adviser to the Department of Energy and Climate Change (Decc) last year, he produced a report comparing the environmental impact of a fracking site to that of wind farms. Over 25 years, he calculated, a single “shale gas pad” covering five acres, with a drilling rig 85ft high (only needed for less than a year), would produce as much energy as 87 giant wind turbines, covering 5.6 square miles and visible up to 20 miles away. Yet, to the greenies, the first of these, capable of producing energy whenever needed, without a penny of subsidy, is anathema; while the second, producing electricity very unreliably in return for millions of pounds in subsidies, fills them with rapture.

Nor yet does it factor in the epic destruction of avian fauna caused by these supposedly eco-friendly devices. According to Oxford University ecologist Clive Hambler:

Every year in Spain alone — according to research by the conservation group SEO/Birdlife — between 6 and 18 million birds and bats are killed by wind farms. They kill roughly twice as many bats as birds. This breaks down as approximately 110–330 birds per turbine per year and 200–670 bats per year. And these figures may be conservative if you compare them to statistics published in December 2002 by the California Energy Commission: ‘In a summary of avian impacts at wind turbines by Benner et al (1993) bird deaths per turbine per year were as high as 309 in Germany and 895 in Sweden.’

Because wind farms tend to be built on uplands, where there are good thermals, they kill a disproportionate number of raptors. In Australia, the Tasmanian wedge-tailed eagle is threatened with global extinction by wind farms. In north America, wind farms are killing tens of thousands of raptors including golden eagles and America’s national bird, the bald eagle. In Spain, the Egyptian vulture is threatened, as too is the Griffon vulture — 400 of which were killed in one year at Navarra alone. Norwegian wind farms kill over ten white-tailed eagles per year and the population of Smøla has been severely impacted by turbines built against the opposition of ornithologists.

Nor are many other avian species safe. In North America, for example, proposed wind farms on the Great Lakes would kill large numbers of migratory songbirds. In the Atlantic, seabirds such as the Manx Shearwater are threatened. Offshore wind farms are just as bad as onshore ones, posing a growing threat to seabirds and migratory birds, and reducing habitat availability for marine birds (such as common scoter and eider ducks).

In Britain, Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne has belatedly acknowledged the problem – which his Prime Minister’s “greenest government ever” helped create – by promising to rein in green energy subsidies.

The cost of subsidising new wind farms is spiralling out of control, government sources have privately warned.

Officials admitted that so-called “green” energy schemes will require a staggering £9 billion a year in subsidies – paid for by customers – by 2020. This is £1.5 billion more than the maximum limit the coalition had originally planned.

The mounting costs will mean every household in the country is forced to pay an estimated £170 a year by the end of the decade to support the renewable electricity schemes that were promoted by the coalition.

But given the damage that has already done to the British landscape by wind turbines it may well be a case of shutting the stable door after the horse has bolted. Especially when you consider that this man has already made £100 million out of the scam and that there are no mechanisms to get any of that wasted money back.

Nobel Prize-Winner Speaks Out Against “Gov’t-Induced Climaphobia”!

July 7, 2015 / 1957chev / 1 Comment

Climate Depot Exclusive

Dr. Ivar Giaever, a Nobel Prize-Winner for physics in 1973, declared his dissent on man-made global warming claims at a Nobel forum on July 1, 2015.

“I would say that basically global warming is a non-problem,” Dr. Giaever announced during his speech titled “Global Warming Revisited.”

Giaever, a former professor at the School of Engineering and School of Science Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, received the 1973 physics Nobel for his work on quantum tunneling. Giaever delivered his remarks at the 65th Nobel Laureate Conference in Lindau, Germany, which drew 65 recipients of the prize. Giaever is also featured in the new documentary “Climate Hustle”, set for release in Fall 2015.

Giaever was one of President Obama’s key scientific supporters in 2008 when he joined over 70 Nobel Science Laureates in endorsing Obama in an October 29, 2008 open letter. Giaever signed his name to the letter which read in part: “The country urgently needs a visionary leader…We are convinced that Senator Barack Obama is such a leader, and we urge you to join us in supporting him.”

But seven years after signing the letter, Giaever now mocks President Obama for warning that “no challenge poses a greater threat to future generations than climate change”. Giaever called it a “ridiculous statement.”

“That is what he said. That is a ridiculous statement,” Giaever explained.

“I say this to Obama: Excuse me, Mr. President, but you’re wrong. Dead wrong,” Giaever said. (Watch Giaever’s full 30-minute July 1 speech here.)

“How can he say that? I think Obama is a clever person, but he gets bad advice. Global warming is all wet,” he added.

“Obama said last year that 2014 is hottest year ever. But it’s not true. It’s not the hottest,” Giaever noted. [Note: Other scientists have reversed themselves on climate change. See: Politically Left Scientist Dissents – Calls President Obama ‘delusional’ on global warming]

The Nobel physicist questioned the basis for rising carbon dioxide fears.

“When you have a theory and the theory does not agree with the experiment then you have to cut out the theory. You were wrong with the theory,” Giaever explained.

Global Warming ‘a new religion’

Giaever said his climate research was eye opening. “I was horrified by what I found” after researching the issue in 2012, he noted.

“Global warming really has become a new religion. Because you cannot discuss it. It’s not proper. It is like the Catholic Church.”

Concern Over ‘Successful’ UN Climate Treaty

“I am worried very much about the [UN] conference in Paris in November. I really worry about that. Because the [2009 UN] conference was in Copenhagen and that almost became a disaster but nothing got decided. But now I think that the people who are alarmist are in a very strong position,” Giaever said.

“The facts are that in the last 100 years we have measured the temperatures it has gone up .8 degrees and everything in the world has gotten better. So how can they say it’s going to get worse when we have the evidence? We live longer, better health, and better everything. But if it goes up another .8 degrees we are going to die I guess,” he noted.

“I would say that the global warming is basically a non-problem. Just leave it alone and it will take care of itself. It is almost very hard for me to understand why almost every government in Europe — except for Polish government — is worried about global warming. It must be politics.”

“So far we have left the world in better shape than when we arrived, and this will continue with one exception — we have to stop wasting huge, I mean huge amounts of money on global warming. We have to do that or that may take us backwards. People think that is sustainable but it is not sustainable.

On Global Temperatures & CO2

Giaever noted that global temperatures have halted for the past 18 plus years. [Editor’s Note: Climate Depot is honored that Giaever used an exclusive Climate Depot graph showing the RSS satellite data of an 18 year plus standstill in temperatures at 8:48 min. into video.]

The Great Pause lengthens again: Global temperature update: The Pause is now 18 years 3 months (219 months)

Giaever accused NASA and federal scientists of “fiddling” with temperatures.

“They can fiddle with the data. That is what NASA does.”

“You cannot believe the people — the alarmists — who say CO2 is a terrible thing. Its not true, its absolutely not true,” Giaever continued while showing a slide asking: ‘Do you believe CO2 is a major climate gas?’

“I think the temperature has been amazingly stable. What is the optimum temperature of the earth? Is that the temperature we have right now? That would be a miracle. No one has told me what the optimal temperature of the earth should be,” he said.

“How can you possibly measure the average temperature for the whole earth and come up with a fraction of a degree. I think the average temperature of earth is equal to the emperor’s new clothes. How can you think it can measure this to a fraction of a degree? It’s ridiculous,” he added.

Silencing Debate

Giaever accused Nature Magazine of “wanting to cash in on the [climate] fad.”

“My friends said I should not make fun of Nature because then they won’t publish my papers,” he explained.

“No one mentions how important CO2 is for plant growth. It’s a wonderful thing. Plants are really starving. They don’t talk about how good it is for agriculture that CO2 is increasing,” he added.

Extreme Weather claims

“The other thing that amazes me is that when you talk about climate change it is always going to be the worst. It’s got to be better someplace for heaven’s sake. It can’t always be to the worse,” he said.

“Then comes the clincher. If climate change does not scare people we can scare people talking about the extreme weather,” Giaever said.

“For the last hundred years, the ocean has risen 20 cm — but for the previous hundred years the ocean also has risen 20 cm and for the last 300 years, the ocean has also risen 20 cm per 100 years. So there is no unusual rise in sea level. And to be sure you understand that I will repeat it. There is no unusual rise in sea level,” Giaever said.

“If anything we have entered period of low hurricanes. These are the facts,” he continued.

“You don’t’ have to even be a scientist to look at these figures and you understand what it says,” he added.

“Same thing is for tornadoes. We are in a low period on in U.S.” (See: Extreme weather failing to follow ‘global warming’ predictions: Hurricanes, Tornadoes, Droughts, Floods, Wildfires, all see no trend or declining trends)

Media Hype

“What people say is not true. I spoke to a journalist with [German newspaper Die Welt yesterday…and I asked how many articles he published that says global warming is a good thing. He said I probably don’t publish them at all. Its always a negative. Always,” Giever said.

Energy Poverty

“They say refugees are trying to cross the Mediterranean. These people are not fleeing global warming, they are fleeing poverty,” he noted.

“If you want to help Africa, help them out of poverty, do not try to build solar cells and windmills,” he added.

“Are you wasting money on solar cells and windmills rather than helping people? These people have been misled. It costs money in the end to that. Windmills cost money.”

“Cheap energy is what made us so rich and now suddenly people don’t want it anymore.”

“People say oil companies are the big bad people. I don’t understand why they are worse than the windmill companies. General Electric makes windmills. They don’t tell you that they are not economical because they make money on it. But nobody protests GE, but they protest Exxon who makes oil,” he noted.

Dr. Ivar Giaever resigned as a Fellow from the American Physical Society (APS) on September 13, 2011 in disgust over the group’s promotion of man-made global warming fears.

In addition to Giaever, other prominent scientists have resigned from APS over its stance on man-made global warming. See: Prominent Physicist Hal Lewis Resigns from APS: ‘Climategate was a fraud on a scale I have never seen…Effect on APS position: None. None at all. This is not science’

Other prominent scientists are speaking up skeptically about man-made global warming claims. See: Prominent Scientist Dissents: Renowned glaciologist declares global warming is ‘going to be a big plus’ – Fears ‘Frightening’ Cooling – Warns scientists are ‘prostituting their science’

Giaever has become a vocal dissenter from the alleged “consensus” regarding man-made climate fears. He was featured prominently in the 2009 U.S. Senate Report of (then) Over 700 Dissenting International Scientists from Man-made global warming. Giaever, who is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and won the 1973 Nobel Prize for Physics. (Watch news coverage here.)

Giaever was also one of more than 100 co-signers in a March 30, 2009 letter to President Obama that was critical of his stance on global warming. See: More than 100 scientists rebuke Obama as ‘simply incorrect’ on global warming: ‘We, the undersigned scientists, maintain that the case for alarm regarding climate change is grossly overstated’

Giaever is featured on page 89 of the 321 page of Climate Depot’s more than 1000 dissenting scientist report (updated from U.S. Senate Report). Dr. Giaever was quoted declaring himself a man-made global warming dissenter. “I am a skeptic…Global warming has become a new religion,” Giaever declared. “I am Norwegian, should I really worry about a little bit of warming? I am unfortunately becoming an old man. We have heard many similar warnings about the acid rain 30 years ago and the ozone hole 10 years ago or deforestation but the humanity is still around,” Giaever explained. “Global warming has become a new religion. We frequently hear about the number of scientists who support it. But the number is not important: only whether they are correct is important. We don’t really know what the actual effect on the global temperature is. There are better ways to spend the money,” he concluded.

Giaever also told the New York Times in 2010 that global warming “can’t be discussed — just like religion…there is NO unusual rise in the ocean level, so what where and what is the big problem?”

Related Links:

Exclusive: Nobel Prize-Winning Physicist Who Endorsed Obama Dissents! Resigns from American Physical Society Over Group’s Promotion of Man-Made Global Warming – Nobel Laureate Dr. Ivar Giaever: ‘The temperature (of the Earth) has been amazingly stable, and both human health and happiness have definitely improved in this ‘warming’ period.’

2012: Nobel Prize Winning Physicist Ivar Giaever: ‘Is climate change pseudoscience?…the answer is: absolutely’ — Derides global warming as a ‘religion’ – ‘He derided the Nobel committees for awarding Al Gore and R.K. Pachauri a peace prize, and called agreement with the evidence of climate change a ‘religion’… the measurement of the global average temperature rise of 0.8 degrees over 150 years remarkably unlikely to be accurate, because of the difficulties with precision for such measurements—and small enough not to matter in any case: “What does it mean that the temperature has gone up 0.8 degrees? Probably nothing.”

When Science IS Fiction: Nobel Physics laureate Ivar Giaever has called global warming (aka. climate change) a ‘new religion’ -When scientists emulate spiritual prophets, they overstep all ethical bounds. In doing so, they forfeit our confidence’

American Physical Society Statement on Climate Change: No Longer ‘Incontrovertible,’ But Still Unacceptable

Skeptic win… American Physical Society removes ‘incontrovertible’ from climate change position

Politically Left Scientist Dissents – Calls President Obama ‘delusional’ on global warming

SPECIAL REPORT: More Than 1000 International Scientists Dissent Over Man-Made Global Warming Claims – Challenge UN IPCC & Gore – Climate Depot Exclusive: 321-page ‘Consensus Buster’ Report

Another Prominent Scientist Dissents! Fmr. NASA Scientist Dr. Les Woodcock ‘Laughs’ at Global Warming – ‘Global warming is nonsense’ Top Prof. Declares

Green Guru James Lovelock on Climate Change: ‘I don’t think anybody really knows what’s happening. They just guess’ – Lovelock Reverses Himself on Global Warming

More Than 1000 International Scientists Dissent Over Man-Made Global Warming Claims – Challenge UN IPCC & Gore

Top Swedish Climate Scientist Says Warming Not Noticeable: ‘The warming we have had last a 100 years is so small that if we didn’t have climatologists to measure it we wouldn’t have noticed it at all’ – Award-Winning Dr. Lennart Bengtsson, formerly of UN IPCC: ‘We Are Creating Great Anxiety Without It Being Justified’

‘High Priestess of Global Warming’ No More! Former Warmist Climate Scientist Judith Curry Admits To Being ‘Duped Into Supporting IPCC’ – ‘If the IPCC is dogma, then count me in as a heretic’

German Meteorologist reverses belief in man-made global warming: Now calls idea that CO2 Can Regulate Climate ‘Sheer Absurdity’ — ‘Ten years ago I simply parroted what the IPCC told us’

UN Scientists Who Have Turned on the UN IPCC & Man-Made Climate Fears — A Climate Depot Flashback Report – Warming fears are the “worst scientific scandal in the history…When people come to know what the truth is, they will feel deceived by science and scientists.” – UN IPCC Japanese Scientist Dr. Kiminori Itoh, an award-winning PhD environmental physical chemist.

‘Some of the most formidable opponents of climate hysteria include politically liberal physics Nobel laureate, Ivar Giaever; Freeman Dyson; father of the Gaia Hypothesis, James Lovelock — ‘Left-center chemist, Fritz Vahrenholt, one of the fathers of the German environmental movement’

Flashback: Left-wing Env. Scientist Bails Out Of Global Warming Movement: Declares it a ‘corrupt social phenomenon…strictly an imaginary problem of the 1st World middleclass’

More Proof That Infrasound From Wind Turbines is a Serious Threat!

July 7, 2015July 7, 2015 / 1957chev / 1 Comment

Stationary wind turbine infrasound emissions and propagation loss measurements

Author: <rel=author value=”Huson, Les”>Huson, Les

Summary.

Microbarometers have been used to quantify the infrasonic emissions (0.05Hz to 20Hz) from five wind farms in Victoria, Australia. The wind farms measured include; Macarthur wind farm (140 turbines type Vestas V112 3MW); Cape Bridgewater (29 turbines type MM82 2MW); Leonards Hill (2 turbines type MM82 2MW); Mount Mercer (64 turbines type MM92 2MW), and; Waubra (128 turbines 3 types of Acciona Windpower 2MW).

Upwind indoor measurements at the Macarthur wind farm during an unplanned shutdown from full power and subsequent startup to 30% load has shown that stationary turbines subject to high winds emit infrasound pressure below 8 Hz at levels similar to the infrasound emissions at blade pass frequencies and harmonics.

The stationary V112 turbine infrasound emissions are caused primarily by blade and tower resonances excited by the wind. It is apparent from the mismatch of resonances and blade pass frequency components that Vestas have carefully designed this unit to minimise fatigue of the wind turbine.

Short range (up to 2km) measurements from the Leonards Hill wind farm have shown the determination of attenuation rate with distance to be problematic due to interference between the two turbines. A model to explain the unexpected attenuation results at Leonards Hill has demonstrated that the commonly observed amplitude modulation of blade pass tones is the result of changing phase between turbine rotor speed and changes in wind speed.

Long range measurements from two different wind farms over a distance of 80km have shown that infrasound below 6Hz has a propagation loss approximating 3dB per doubling of distance.

Les Huson, L Huson & Associates, Woodend, Victoria, Australia
6th International Conference on Wind Turbine Noise, Glasgow, 20-23 April 2015

Download original document: “Stationary wind turbine infrasound emissions and propagation loss measurements”

When Bill Gates Says Wind is A Waste of Time, and Money, He Knows What He’s Talking About!

July 7, 2015 / 1957chev / Leave a comment

Bill Gates says Subsidies for Wind Power a Pointless Waste: Time to Back Nuclear & R&D on Systems that Can Actually Work

July 7, 2015 by stopthesethings

****

Gates: Renewable energy can’t do the job. Gov should switch green subsidies into R&D
‘Only way to a positive scenario is innovation’
The Register
Lewis Page
26 Jun 2015

Retired software kingpin and richest man in the world Bill Gates has given his opinion that today’s renewable-energy technologies aren’t a viable solution for reducing CO₂ levels, and governments should divert their green subsidies into R&D aimed at better answers.

Gates expressed his views in an interview given to the Financial Timesyesterday, saying that the cost of using current renewables such as solar panels and windfarms to produce all or most power would be “beyond astronomical”. At present very little power comes from renewables: in the UK just 5.2 per cent, the majority of which is dubiously-green biofuel burning¹ rather than renewable ‘leccy – and even so, energy bills havesurged and will surge further as a result.

In Bill Gates’ view, the answer is for governments to divert the massive sums of money which are currently funnelled to renewables owners to R&D instead. This would offer a chance of developing low-carbon technologies which actually can keep the lights on in the real world.

“The only way you can get to the very positive scenario is by great innovation,” he told the pink ‘un. “Innovation really does bend the curve.”

Gates says he’ll personally put his money where his mouth is. He’s apparently invested $1bn of his own cash in low-carbon energy R&D already, and “over the next five years, there’s a good chance that will double,” he said.

The ex-software overlord stated that the Guardian’s scheme of everyone refusing to invest in oil and gas companies would have “little impact”. He also poured scorn on another notion oft-touted as a way of making renewable energy more feasible, that of using batteries to store intermittent supplies from solar or wind.

“There’s no battery technology that’s even close to allowing us to take all of our energy from renewables,” he said, pointing out – as we’ve noted on these pages before – that it’s necessary “to deal not only with the 24-hour cycle but also with long periods of time where it’s cloudy and you don’t have sun or you don’t have wind.”

So what are the possible answers, in Gates’ view?

Gates is already well known as a proponent of improved nuclear power tech, and it seems he still is. He mentioned the travelling-wave reactors under development by his firm TerraPower, which are intended to run on depleted uranium stockpiled after use in conventional reactors. He also spoke of methods of using solar power to produce liquid hydrocarbons, which, unlike electricity, can be stored practicably in useful amounts: “one of the few energy storage things that works at scale”, as he put it.

Gates also spoke of the radical plan of high-altitude wind farming using kite-balloons flying high up in the jet stream – though he admitted that that one was something of a long shot.

In Gates’ view, decades from now a few of today’s new-energy companies will have become massive and early investors will have reaped the sort of rewards that he, Paul Allen and Steve Ballmer have from Microsoft. But many others won’t be so lucky.

“Now there’s a tonne of software companies whose names will never be remembered,” he told the FT interviewers.

Analysis

Gates has said a lot of this before. The main new thing is the firm assertion that renewable energy technology as it now is has no chance of powering a reasonably numerous and well-off human race.

This is actually a very simple thing to work out, and just about anybody numerate who thinks about the subject honestly comes to the same conclusion – examples include your correspondent, Google renewables experts, global-warming daddy James Hansen, even your more honest hardline greens (they typically think that the answer is for the human race to become a lot less numerous and well-off).

Unfortunately a lot of people aren’t numerate and/or aren’t honest, so it’s far from sure that the colossal subsidies pumped into today’s useless renewables will get diverted into R&D which could produce something worthwhile.

In the UK at least this would be quite difficult, as the subsidies are not actually subsidies as such – no tax money is paid out to windfarmers and solar-panellists from the Treasury.

Rather, the system works by artificially pumping up the price of ‘leccy and gas and channelling the extra cash – minus various margins for various people involved – to the windfarmers and panel people, such that they get paid vastly more than the market price of the power they produce.

A lot of people – including the government at times – prefer to pretend that this isn’t happening at all: that prices are going up because of the gas market, or corporate profiteering, or something, and that green policy isactually saving people money in some way.

So given that officially nobody is paying any more money and therefore there aren’t any subsidies, they probably can’t be diverted to anywhere. The newly-reelected Chancellor is trying to stop them getting bigger, but he probably won’t manage to seriously reduce them overall, let alone re-purpose them.

Bootnote

¹DUKES chapter 1 (pdf page 1) and chapter 6 (pdf page 4)
The Register

	How The Climate Grif… on There is NO Global Warming…
	Bob Bateman on Government-Induced Climaphobia…
	William Hooi on Germany’s Renewable Energy Dis…
	Jessica on Issues for Landowners to Consi…
	Raymond on Poorest Families Left Powerles…

"Mothers Against Wind Turbines™" Phoenix Rising…

Children Deserve Protection!

Return to sanity!

Under the category….”We Told You So!”….Wind Turbine Noise is Harmful!

Climate Alarmism as an Excuse for Useless Wind Turbines….

STT’s Take on the ‘Global Warming’ Story

The Truth About Wind Turbines Being Brought To Light, in Australia

Dr Malcolm Swinbanks tells Senate: ‘NASA’s 1980s Research on Health Effects from Wind Farm Noise More Relevant Than Ever’

Realistic View Of Government-induced Climaphobia, & the Unintended Consequences”.

Dr. Bruce Rapley Tells Inquiry, that “Nocebo effect”, Just More Wind Industry Lies!

Dr Bruce Rapley tells Senate: Wind Farm Nocebo Story “Nefarious Pseudoscience” & an “Insult to Intelligence”

It’s Happening All Over the World. Electricity is Becoming a “Luxury Item”! Energy poverty!

The Wind Scam is Much More Financially Detrimental, Than the Windpushers Claimed.

STUDY: WIND FARMS EVEN MORE EXPENSIVE AND POINTLESS THAN YOU THOUGHT

The cost of wind energy is significantly more expensive than its advocates pretend, a new US study has found.

Nobel Prize-Winner Speaks Out Against “Gov’t-Induced Climaphobia”!

More Proof That Infrasound From Wind Turbines is a Serious Threat!

Stationary wind turbine infrasound emissions and propagation loss measurements

When Bill Gates Says Wind is A Waste of Time, and Money, He Knows What He’s Talking About!

Bill Gates says Subsidies for Wind Power a Pointless Waste: Time to Back Nuclear & R&D on Systems that Can Actually Work