Return to sanity!

Audiologists Explain Why Wind Turbine Noise harms the Ears…

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Negative Health Effects of Noise from Industrial Wind Turbines: Some Background

This post, the first of a three-part series, provides a broad overview of the topic. The second installment will review the major research findings linking low-frequency noise and infrasound from industrial wind turbines with effects on health and quality of life. Part three will discuss the relationship between various health effects and the processing of infrasound by the ear and brain.[1]

By Jerry Punch, PhD, and Richard James, INCE, BME

wind turbine noise health

Cary Shineldecker was skeptical about the wind project the Mason County, Michigan, planning commission was considering for approval. His home, two miles from Lake Michigan, was located in an area where nighttime noise levels were around 25 dBA, with only occasional traffic and seasonal farmland noises. The rolling hills, woodlots, orchards, fields, and meadows surrounding his property contributed to its peaceful country setting. He voiced his skepticism about the wind turbinesrepeatedly in community meetings held beforeConsumers Energy was finally granted approval to construct 56 476-foot turbines, one that would be 1,139 feet from his property line, six within 3,000 feet, and 26 close enough to be visible from his property.

Cary and his wife, Karen, started to suffer symptoms of ear pressure, severe headaches, anxiety, irritability, sleep disturbance, memory loss, fatigue, and depression immediately after the turbines began operating.

Gradually, as sleep disturbance turned into sleep deprivation, they felt their home was being transformed from a sanctuary to a prison. Deciding to sell their home of 20 years, they put it on the market in March 2011, and it has remained unsold for 3-1/2 years. For the past year and a half, their nightly ritual has been taking sleeping medications and retreating into their basement to try to sleep on a corner mattress.

The Shineldeckers received few offers to buy their home, and recently accepted an offer that would mean a substantial financial loss. They are scheduled to go to trial against Consumers Energy, and if their case goes to settlement without a trial, they will likely be forced into a confidentiality agreement about their case.

MANY SUCH COMPLAINTS

Similar complaints of adverse health effects (AHEs) associated with living near utility-scale wind turbines have become commonplace in the U.S. and other developed countries. Energy companies in the U.S., motivated by lucrative tax subsidies available for developing wind resources as a form of green energy, are pushing aggressively to install more wind turbines, typically locating them near residential properties. Many rural residents now have one or more industrial machines that stand over 40 stories tall on the property alongside their home. Complaints about noise from people living within the footprint of wind energy projects are very similar to those experienced by the Shineldeckers.

Those who have never visited a wind project or who visit one only during the daytime often leave believing that the complaints of noise are unfounded, and commonly assume them to be psychologically motivated or a form of NIMBYism [2]. Those living near wind turbines say that unless one is willing to spend several nights in the area they have not experienced the noise that causes the complaints.

The Changing Rural Landscape

Green energy push in many states are making these images much more common

Prior to the installation of the wind turbines, these rural communities were typically very quiet at night, with background sound levels ranging between 20 and 25 dBA. After the turbines began operation, the noise levels jumped to 40 or even 50 dBA, and sometimes higher. It is common for wind turbines to be barely audible during the day, yet be the dominant noise source at night. Environmental sounds are quieter in the evening, lowering the background sound levels, and wind speeds tend to be higher at blade height during nighttime hours, which increases sound emissions. Further, nighttime weather conditions enhance sound propagation. The result is that at night wind turbines can be a significantly more noticeable noise source than during the daytime.

Commercial wind turbine blades produce aerodynamic noise in both the inaudible and audible range, collectively referred to as infrasound and low-frequency noise (ILFN). Although some of the audible noise is above 200 Hz, much of it falls into the low-frequency region around 0-100 Hz. Infrasound, generally considered to be inaudible, encompasses sound energy in the range from 0-20 Hz. It is measureable with either an infrasonic microphone or amicrobarometer. The frequency and amplitude of wind turbine noise depend mainly on the blade-rotation speed. Measurements show increased acoustic energy with decreasing frequency, reaching a maximum at frequencies under 1 Hz.

Promoters of wind energy frame it in agricultural terms that portray it asharvesting the wind. This framing leads to the belief that wind farms are a natural fit with agricultural land use.

do wind turbines make about as much sense as a nuclear reactor?

From this viewpoint, farmers should also be allowed to use their land to harvest the energy of the atom by hosting a small nuclear plant. Hosting a utility-scale wind turbine is not farming; it is operation of a commercial utility. The installation of utility-scale, energy-conversion machines requires strict zoning and regulation, as one would expect for a zoned industrial region. These machines are in no way similar to traditional agricultural equipment. Thus we consider the term industrial to be an accurate description of utility-scale wind turbines.

Wind turbines are often sited in regions where agricultural land use is intermixed with residential land use. A single wind energy utility typically consists of 40 to 60 wind turbines. Forty-five 2-MWatt turbines cover about 36 square miles of land. This requires only 10 to 20 farmers to sign leases for hosting one or more of the turbines, but may put several hundred non-participating farms and residential homes within the risk zone for noise disturbance.

While a few farmers or landowners in the host community benefit financially, many others—often at ratios of 20 to 1 or higher—find that the peace and quiet of evenings and nights that attracted them to the rural community is replaced with the unwanted consequences of audible sounds and inaudible infrasound.

In the final two installments of this three-part series, our goal is to explain the bases for a variety of health complaints that are being associated with the current practice of locating industrial-scale wind turbines as close as 1,200 to 1,500 feet from homes. In areas with a relatively long history of industrial wind turbines (IWTs), a distance of at least 1-1/4 miles (2 kilometers)—and more in areas with hilly terrain—is now considered necessary to avoid negative impacts on health.

jerry punch

Jerry Punch is an audiologist and professor emeritus at Michigan State University in the Department of Communicative Sciences and Disorders. Since his retirement in 2011, he has become actively involved as a private audiological consultant in areas related to his long-standing interest in community noise.

Richard James

Richard James is an acoustical consultant with over 40 years of experience in industrial noise measurement and control. He is an adjunct instructor in Michigan State University’s Department of Communicative Sciences and Disorders and an adjunct professor inCentral Michigan University’s Department of Communication Disorders.

Footnotes    (↵ returns to text)

  1. Interested readers may wish to refer to the article, “Wind-Turbine Noise: What Audiologists Should Know,” published in the July-August 2010 issue of Audiology Today, as a backdrop for this series↵
  2. Not In My Back Yard: NIMBY↵

No More Free Ride for Windweasels in the US!

/ 1957chev / 2 Comments

Republican Mid-Term Victory Spells Doom for US Wind Industry

November 11, 2014 by

wind_turbine_fire

The US has just been through its mid-term elections, which saw sweeping gains by the Republican Party in the Senate, House, and in many gubernatorial elections, as well as state and local races.

The Republicans gained control of the Senate for the first time since 2006, and increased their majority in the House. The Republicans also gained several seats in governors’ races, defeating one incumbent Democrat and picking up three seats vacated by retiring Democrats. Counting continues with the Republicans set to pick up a number of seats in the House, and, possibly the Senate.

With Republicans firmly in control of Congress, the smooth subsidy-sailing enjoyed by the US wind industry (until now) is about to hit stormy waters.

John Boener, Mitch McConnell

Those US States that piled into wind power in a big way have seen power prices rocket, with some seeing increases of over 34% (Idaho). From 2008-2103, the top 10 wind power states saw their electricity prices rise an average of 20.7%, which is seven-fold higher than the national electricity price increase of merely 2.8% over the same period (see our post here). The cost of wind power is so uncompetitive that Nebraska has just knocked-back a long-term wind power deal because it was “just too expensive” (see our post here).

The adverse economic impacts of propping up the wind industry with exorbitant fixed priced State Feed-In-Tariffs and the Federal Production Tax Credit aren’t lost on Republicans. Here’s a wrap up on where America’s wind industry is headed.

It May be Lights Out for the Wind Industry Come the Midterms
FOXBusiness
Chris Versace
27 October 2014

The International Energy Agency recently cut its forecasts for oil demand growth for this year. Nevertheless, production in North America is exploding led by the shale oil boom. Already, the U.S. has become the world’s largest producer of oil and natural gas.

For energy products like oil and natural gas operating in the marketplace, this excess production means lower costs for consumers. Lower prices have their own consequences for the industry as well. Analysts at Sanford C. Bernstein & Co recently released a report revealing that current at prices as much as one-third of U.S. shale oil production will be “uneconomic” to harvest.

For government-backed industries such as wind energy, the relationship is directly the opposite – the more they produce, the more it costs ratepayers and taxpayers. Recent analysis shows that states with the largest use of wind power have the highest electricity bills. Such factors have caused private investors to largely bypass wind companies and leave them largely dependent upon the government for their survival.

Wind energy companies rely heavily upon a government construct known as the “Production Tax Credit” (PTC) to support their bottom lines. The PTC is a federal program that provides billions of dollars annually to subsidize renewable energy facilities such as wind farms. Generally speaking a clean technology facility receives a tax credit for 10 years after the date the facility is placed in service with the tax credit amount ranging from $0.23 per kilowatt-hour (kWh) for wind to $0.011 per kWh for qualified hydroelectric.

Looking at the International Journal of Sustainable Manufacturing, researchers concluded that “in terms of cumulative energy payback, or the time to produce the amount of energy required of production and installation, a wind turbine with a working life of 20 years will offer a net benefit within five to eight months of being brought online.” This raises the question as to why any tax credit for wind energy would span more than just a few years at most let alone 10 years after the facility is up and running.

Congressional support for the PTC is largely split along party lines. Fifty-five Members of the House led by Rep. Mike Pompeo, (R-Kan.), have written a letter to the tax writing committee demanding an end to the wind energy subsidies. The letter stated:

“We offer our full support of the current process undertaken by the House Committee on Ways and Means that will allow the most anti-competitive and economically harmful tax provisions, specifically the wind energy production tax credit (PTC), to expire. Ensuring that our nation’s patchwork tax code undergoes significant reform is a noble goal and, as part of this process, we believe Congress should stop picking winners and losers and finally end the wind PTC.”

It is presumed that a GOP controlled Congress would see the PTC on the chopping block in 2015 and a Democrat-controlled Congress will fight for renewal.

It would be an understatement to say that the outcome of the 2014 elections is important for wind energy producers. In an effort to see PTC friendly Harry Reid as Majority Leader, the wind industry has essentially turned the League of Conservation Voters (LCV) into their own personal Trojan horse.

Much of the LCV leadership has deep ties to the wind energy:

  • Tom Kiernan, CEO of the American Wind Energy Association (AWEA) serves as the Treasure of the LCV.
  • Peter Mandelstam, former AWEA board member and founder of Green Sails wind energy company also serves on the LCV board.

Unsurprisingly, much of the LCV’s campaign activities have been aimed squarely at renewal of the PTC. The organization brags that it will spend over $25 million supporting pro PTC candidates and attacking their opponents before November elections.

Should LCV’s campaign fail, loss of the PTC could prove fatal to some wind companies. As Warren Buffet recently told his loyal investors, “I will do anything that is basically covered by the law to reduce Berkshire’s tax rate. For example, on wind energy, 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.”

The outcome of the elections remain far from certain as does the fate of the PTC under any election outcome scenario and Washington D.C.’s capacity for cronyism should never be underestimated.

That said, it should leave investors holding off if not second-guessing the potential of First Trust ISE Global Wind Energy ETF (FAN) shares or its holdings that include Capstone Turbine Holdings (CPST), Otter Tail Corp. (OTTR), NextEra Energy (NEE) and others. Especially if the Republicans take control of Congress as expected, and run a full tally of their friends and enemies during this election cycle, it may well be lights out for the wind energy industry sooner than anyone expects.
FOXBusiness

storm tossed ship

The Truth Has Been Out There a Long time…Why Won’t the Gov’t Listen?

/ 1957chev / 2 Comments

Unreliables cannot provide energy security or enhance natural environment

· September 16, 2011

My new word for the energy sources popularly known as “renewables” is “unreliables”. Though there may be some tiny exceptions, the general characteristic is that they are all diffuse sources that cannot actually be controlled by humans or automated control systems.

One of the main reasons that energy has been a huge political topic since about World War I is that it plays a major role in the economic security posture of any nation. With accessible sources of energy that can be focused and exploited in a short period of time, a nation literally has the “power” to do great things for its population or to do very nasty things to others. It is a matter of choice as to how that power (energy per unit time) is deployed.

One of the issues that caused Japan to attack Pearl Harbor was a desire to protect sea lines of communication to secure sources of energy in the South Pacific. One of the main reasons that Hitler pressed into Russia was a desire to access energy sources in the Caspian region. A primary purpose of Rommel’s move through North Africa was gaining access to oil. Though there were other factors, America’s secure Texas, California, Oklahoma and Louisiana oil fields were a major factor in our ability to deploy sufficient power to defeat the Axis nations.

Throughout my military career, which lasted 33 years from the time I first entered the Naval Academy, I studied the importance of energy in our foreign policy actions. When I learned about Henry Kissenger’s famous statement “America doesn’t have friends. America only has interests.” it was in the context learning about efforts to secure access to energy resources that could supply our economy, ships, aircraft, trucks and tanks.

In the name of energy security, there are some people, like T. Boone Pickens, who try to sell the idea that unreliables like wind and solar energy can make a contribution. As a trained military man, that whole concept makes no sense. A diffuse source of energy that cannot be called on when needed is not a source of power; it is a source of impotency. It turns people into passive recipients of nature’s largess instead of being able to establish control and decision making authority.

Ready for Appalachian Trail
Please do not get me wrong; I like the natural environment. I simply do not agree with the notion that building massive collecting systems to harness energy from nature has anything to do with improving national security or providing power to the people. It does not enable development, but forces a reduction in living standards that is often portrayed as some kind of admirable “conservation”. The act of “doing without” might bring some kind of inner pleasure to some, but for a nation it brings poverty vice economic prosperity.Finally, I want to point out that many advocates of unreliables will attempt to point out that nuclear energy does not replace oil since we do not use oil in the continental United States to operate our power grid anymore. My response is multidimensional.

  • The operative word regarding oil on the electrical grid is “anymore”. Until nuclear pushed oil out of the market, it provided as much as 17% of our power. We burned it at the rate of a million barrels of oil per day in 1978.
  • Solar, wind, geothermal, waves, and ocean thermal energy cannot directly power cars and trucks either.
  • We do use a lot of oil for process heat. Nuclear energy can provide reliable heat as well as electricity.
  • Nuclear energy can push natural gas out of the electricity market and force well capitalized oil and natural gas companies to invest in compressed natural gas infrastructure to open up a new market in vehicles.

Most of the time, unreliables advocates get impatient with me before I finish the first bullet.

A contact suggested that blogging on Atomic Insights and engaging in discussions in a group called Nuclear Safety might be limiting the conversation to those who already agree with me. At his advice, I joined the “Sierra Club” group on LinkedIn. (The group is not affiliated or sponsored by the Sierra Club, but it includes individual members and other people who are interested in the Sierra Club.)

Some views can only be accessed by walking
That contact had started a conversation thread about nuclear energy and attracted some rather pointed commentary. Here is my first contribution to that discussion, which had already included almost two dozen comments.

Please allow me to politely join the conversation.

I am not a Sierra Club member, but I wish I could be one. I respect the organization’s long record of wilderness preservation achievements and agree with about 90% of the organization’s goals. I have studied its history in the roots of Ansel Adams (no relation) and John Muir and its epic struggles to prevent filling priceless canyons with water held back by enormous hydroelectric and flood control dams.

Though I am a life-long suburban dweller, I have spent many of the best hours of my life practicing “no trace” camping and hiking in eastern mountains in Georgia, North Carolina, Virginia, Maryland and Pennsylvania. I have been driving a 40+ MPG car since 2001, but even before that I always bought cars with as high a gas mileage as possible.

The reason I cannot join the Club is that I cannot come to terms with the illogic of its shift, dating back more than 30 years, from an official policy of “Atoms Not Dams” to a strong and inflexible antinuclear stance. I call myself a hard headed BHL; I learned that from my dad, the guy who taught me to appreciate camping in National Forests as being a lot more fun than the trips to Disney World that most of our neighbors took during their vacations.

Dad was an electrical engineer who was firmly rooted in rational approaches to problem solving. When I was about 8 years old, he came home from work and told me about the amazing new power plants that his company was building at Turkey Point, Florida that did not even need any smoke stacks.

We talked a lot more about nuclear power and by the time I was ready to go to college, I had decided I would become a nuclear engineer. I got detoured slightly; I actually majored in English, but I did it at a school where English majors were still required to take 4 semesters of calculus and post calculus math, 2 semesters of physics, 2 semesters of chemistry, 2 semesters of thermodynamics, a semester of basic propulsion systems and 2 semesters of electrical engineering.

When I graduated, I entered into the Navy nuclear power training pipeline and eventually served as the Engineer Officer on a submarine. When you have lived in a completely closed environment with a nuclear reactor as your sole source of power, it becomes very difficult to see why there is so much concern about the technology. We had clean air, all the clean fresh water we could want, air conditioning, and refrigeration. Our computers did not contribute to global warming.

The 9,000 ton ship I was on operated for about 14 years on a quantity of fuel that weighed just a little bit more than I do. Every used core that the Navy has produced since starting to operate the USS Nautilus is stored in a single, modestly sized building with an indoor pool in Idaho.

That almost magical technology is built on an incredible gift from god (mother nature if you prefer) that packs as much energy into a pound of uranium as it packed into 2 MILLION pounds of oil. I cannot understand why an organization that was founded on protecting as much of the natural environment and heritage as possible would prefer to cover vast quantities of it with industrial scale wind turbines built by some of the world’s largest and least admirable corporations. I do not understand why the Club supports projects like the Abengoa solar project that will cover hundreds to thousands of acres in the Mohave desert with shiny mirrors aimed at hazardous heat transfer liquids for no more than 50% of the day and predictably become idle monstrosities every single night.

Finally, and most illogically, I cannot understand why the national club, supported by Carl Pope’s strong statements over a number of years, is ignoring the feedback from local chapters in Pennsylvania who have seen first hand the full scale of the environmental destruction that comes with the industrial process of extracting methane gas using horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing.

(Note: BHL – Bleeding Heart Liberal)

I’ll let you know if any interesting conversation develops. During my twenty years of Internet conversations – dating back to Prodigy, USENET and AOL – I have had the sometimes disheartening experience of making the last comment in an interesting thread.

Once Again….I have reached out to the Gov’t, to help My Son, and all Children!

/ 1957chev / Leave a comment

November 10, 2014

The Right Honourable Stephen Harper

Prime Minister of Canada

Dear Prime Minster Harper,

I am writing to you, as supporter and friend of the

Conservative party. I am hoping that you will be able to intervene to help protect

all Canadians from intrusive health damaging  noise from industrial wind projects.

As you know, I have a personal interest in this issue. The large Niagara wind

project near my home has just received approval. It is no coincidence that its

approval was announced immediately after Health Canada Issued its flawed,

fraudulent report which claims it’s research sows that “there are no health

problems” from wind turbines

.

This Health Canada report was funded to the tune of $2.1 million from the

Canadian taxpayers, and therefore as Prime Minster, you are ultimately

responsible for it, and the consequences which flow from it’s use in Canada.

It is inevitable that many MORE Canadians will be harmed from wind turbine

noise as result of this study which has been widely criticized for adopting

methodology designed to hide and deny the health problems, rather than

properly investigate them. It is telling that

x   Health Canada ignored the advice of professionals with expertise in this

are who are independent of the wind industry

x   Health Canada used various parties who have conflicts of interest

including commercial conflicts of interest with the wind industry, and did

not disclose them

x   Health Canada issued the report without the date, making it impossible for

others with extensive experience working directly in this area, to critique it

properly

x   The report gives very appearance of being “made to order” by the wind

industry and delivered by our government, in order to be able to continue

to knowingly harm vulnerable Canadian citizens, by pretending “there is

no problem”

With respect other project just approved near my home, the closest wind turbine

would be 550M from the center of our home. The wind developer has admitted

that it would be producing noise, at the maximum allowable levels. These

decibel levels were arbitrarily established, and only with healthy brains, in mind.

There is no evidence to demonstrate that the current levels of noise pollution

from wind turbines in Ontario are safe, and there are Ministry of Environment

Field Officers who have admitted these levels are not safe. No consideration has

been given to individuals, who suffer from sensory processing issues, such as

my son, Joey.

Joey’s specialist wrote a letter for me to share, which is enclosed, explaining that

the noise from a  wind turbine in close proximity our home would be very

harmful, for my son. The cyclical, and uncontrollable nature of wind turbine noise

is especially unbearable.

I also have realized, during my struggles with the Provincial government, and

their many branches, that there has been nothing put in place to protect anyone,

regardless of what problems may arise, as result of the industrial wind projects

being forced into areas where they are not appropriate. I have met, and spoken

personally, to Premier Wynne, Minister Chiarelli, Agatha Garcia ­Wright, from the

M.O. E., and many more gov’t branches, trying to get some sort of assistance,

in finding a solution to my problems, but to no avail. Getting help Federally, is my

only option, at this point, because the only suggestion they would give me, is

“get a lawyer”. Unfortunately, I live in Ontario, and we are struggling to pay our

ever­ growing electricity bills, on top of sky­rocketing prices for the basics that

families need. Paying fora lawyer is not something many families can afford,

and the Liberal government knows that.

As you can see, I desperately need help to protect my son. The recent Health

Study was woefully incomplete, and did not even mention children, or any type of

special needs individuals. Indeed children were explicitly excluded.

Please help us find a solution to this very serious problem – for Joey, as well as

for ALL Canadians.This Health Canada Report, needs to be withdrawn, and

immediately subjected to rigorous peer review, with all of the data made public

immediately, to professionals and researchers with expertise in this area.

Reviews of all the possible conflicts of interest of all involved with this report, need

to be conducted, and made public.

A failure to take these steps, and to allow the Health Canada study to escape

proper critical scrutiny and peer review could eventually lead to charges of public

officials being complicit with torture occurring, given the widespread occurrence

of serious prolonged sleep deprivation alone, That, along with all the other health

problems residents are experiencing and health practicioners such as Joey’s

paediatrician are warning about. Such possible legal action against public

officials is being seriously considered internationally.

Sincerely,

Shellie Correia, Founder and Director,

Mothers Against wind Turbines

Wind Turbines are Indeed, a Health hazard!

/ 1957chev / Leave a comment

Wind turbines declared health hazard in Wisconsin

By Thomas Lifson

An historic first! Jack Spencer in Michigan Capitol Confidential writes:

…the Board of Health in Brown County, Wisconsin, where Green Bay is located, has declared a local industrial wind plant to be a human health hazard. The specific facility consists of eight 500-foot high, 2.5 megawatt industrial wind turbines.

The board made its finding with a 4-0 vote (three members were not present) at an Oct. 14 meeting after it had wrestled with health complaints about the wind plant for more than four years. Ultimately, the board’s ruling was based on a year-long survey which documented health complaints and demonstrated that infrasound and low-frequency noise emanating from the turbines was detectable inside homes within a 6.2-mile radius of the industrial wind plant.

Jay Tibbetts, a physician and a member of the Brown County Board of Health, said the board based its position that the turbines constitute a health hazard on the weight of evidence.

“I can tell you that we are absolutely not an anti-wind energy board,” Tibbetts said. “We worked on this for four and a half years before making this decision. Three families have moved out. I knew all of them. We also know that this isn’t only happening here. In Ontario 40 families have abandoned their homes to get away from the effects of wind turbines.”

According to Tibbetts, micro barometers were placed in homes located in the area surrounding the industrial wind plant. The purpose of this was to detect acoustic emissions, including infrasound and low frequency noise emanating from the turbines.

“They found that there were tones of infrasound and low frequency noise as far away as 6.2 miles from the nearest wind turbine,” Tibbetts said. “There were no complaints associated with the home that was 6.2 miles away, but there were complaints associated with one 4.2 miles away.

“We have 80 people on record who have made health complaints, including a nurse who is going deaf,” Tibbetts continued. “We can’t just ignore this.”

In addition to these problems, I am aware that wind turbines sin arid locales, such as the massive wind farm near Palm Springs, California, kick uop a lot of dust, aka particulate matter. Moreover, there is no mention of the toll on migratory birds that tend to follow the same wind patterns that wind farms are situated to exploit. Doug Schmidt points out:

The Truth About the Climate Scam, Fear Mongering, and Faux-Green Energy!

/ 1957chev / 1 Comment

Bjørn Lomborg: Climate Change “Fixes”? – the “Cure” is Worse than the “Disease”

November 10, 2014 by Leave a Comment

Bjorn-Lomborg-wsj

When it comes to assessing the costs, risks and benefits of environmental policy, Bjørn Lomborg is one of the very few that provide balanced, detailed analysis supported by facts and evidence. The economic choices we make – about allocating scarce resources to unlimited wants – should – as Lomborg consistently points out – be made taking into account all of the costs weighed against properly measured benefits (see our post here).

Bjørn Lomborg has become one of the most high profile critics of insanely expensive and utterly pointless renewable energy policies across the globe (see our posts here and here and here).

Bjørn’s back –  in this piece published by The Telegraph – in which he hammers the insane cost and utter pointlessness of tying our energy futures to unreliable and intermittent renewables, like wind power.

Climate change is a problem. But our attempts to fix it could be worse than useless
The Telegraph
Bjørn Lomborg
3 November 2014

Panicked, ill-thought-through responses to the threat of climate change could hurt more people than they save

The UN Climate Panel came out with its final report yesterday. It is a summary of its 3 main reports, published over the last year. It tells us that global warming is real and a significant problem. And as usual, the media hears something else – in the words of Mother Jones magazine, how future warming will be “ghastly, horrid, awful, shocking, grisly, gruesome.”

In between the alarmist hype and the reality of climate change we once again risk losing an opportunity to think smartly about energy and find a realistic way to fix global warming.

We need to realise that the world will not come off fossil fuels for many decades. Globally, we get a minuscule 0.3pc of our energy from solar and wind. According to the International Energy Agency, even with a wildly optimistic scenario, we will get just 3.5pc of our energy from solar and wind in 2035, while paying almost $100 billion in annual subsidies. Today, the world gets 82pc of its energy from fossil fuels, in 21 years it will still be more than 79pc.

The simple reason is that cheap and abundant energy is what powers economic growth. And for now, that means four fifths from fossil fuel, and much of the rest from water and nuclear. While wind is lower cost in a few, rural areas, coal is for the most part much cheaper, and provides power, also when the wind is not blowing.

As the poor half of our world is reaching for a similar development to that of China, they will also want much, much more power, most of it powered by coal. Even the climate-worried World Bank president accepts that “there’s never been a country that has developed with intermittent power.”

poverty_2226036b (1)

Realising that fossil fuels will be here for a long time means stronger focus on moving from coal to gas, since gas emits about half the greenhouse gasses. The US shale gas revolution has reduced gas prices and lead to a significant switch from coal to gas. This has reduced US CO₂ emissions to their lowest in 20 years.

In 2012, US shale gas reduced emissions three times more than all the solar and wind in Europe. At the same time, Europe paid about $40 billion in annual subsidies for solar, while the Americans made more than $200 billion every year from the shale gas revolution. Gas is obviously still a fossil fuel and not the final solution, but it can reduce emissions over the next 10-20 years, especially if the shale revolution is expanded to China and the rest of the developing world.

While global warming will be a problem, much of the rhetoric is wildly exaggerated – like when UN secretary-general Ban Ki-moon calls it “an existential challenge for the whole human race.” The IPCC finds that the total cost of climate change by 2070 is between 0.2pc and 2pc of GDP. While this is definitely a problem, it is equivalent to less than one year of recession over the next 60 years.

ban-ki-moon-hd-picture

Global warming pales when compared to many other global problems. While the WHO estimates 250,000 annual deaths from global warming in 30 years, 4.3 million die right now each year from indoor air pollution, 800 million are starving, and 2.5 billion live in poverty and lack clean water and sanitation.

When the UN asked 5 million people for their top priorities the answers were better education and health care, less corruption, more jobs and affordable food. They placed global warming at the very last spot, as priority number 17.

Climate policies can easily cost much more than the global warming damage will – while helping very little. The German solar adventure, which has cost taxpayers more than $130 billion, will at the end of the century just postpone global warming by a trivial 37 hours.

While a low carbon tax in theory could help a little, the political reality is that climate policies almost everywhere have been ineffective, done little good while sustaining the most wasteful technologies. The IPCC warns than less-than-perfect climate policies can be 2-4 times more expensive. Biofuels, for instance, have driven up food costs, likely causing an extra 30 million starving, with prospects of starving another 100 million by 2020. And it is likely that biofuels cause net increase in CO₂ emissions, because they force agriculture to cut down forests elsewhere to grow food.

This is why we have to be careful in pushing for the right policies. For twenty years, the refrain has been promises to cut CO₂, like the Kyoto Protocol. For twenty years these policies have failed. We should instead look to climate economics to find smarter solutions.

The fundamental problem is that green energy is too expensive, which is why it will need billions in subsidies the next two decades. Instead of making more failed promises to pay ever more subsidies, we should spend the money on research and development of the next generations of green energy sources. If we can innovate the price of green energy down below the cost of fossil fuels, everyone will switch, including China and India. Economics confirm that for every dollar spent on green R&D, we will avoid $11 of climate damage.

But this requires us to separate the hype from the real message from IPCC: global warming is a problem, but unless we fix it smartly, we won’t fix it at all.
The Telegraph

panic-disorder-971

Massive Wind Project Planned for Key Migratory Bird Corridor-Lake Huron

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MEDIA RELEASE

Short-eared Owl by Ashok Khosla
The Short-eared Owl, a species listed as endangered in Michigan, is one of many birds using the area in Huron County slated for major wind energy expansion.
(Washington, DC, November 6, 2014) American Bird Conservancy (ABC) has raised serious concerns about a plan by Heritage Sustainable Energy, DTE Energy, Exelon Corporation, and NextEra Energy to construct additional commercial wind turbines in Huron County, Michigan, which could eventually result in up to 900 turbines in the area. This plan is advancing despite the fact that U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) radar studies show vast numbers of birds migrating through or wintering in this area.
In an October 30 letter to the FWS Regional Director, ABC charged that the proposed expanded wind development—which already includes 328 turbines—threatens a major confluence of neotropical migratory birds and raptors, including federally protected Bald and Golden Eagles.
“Many species that are threatened or endangered in the U.S. and within the state of Michigan, such as the Piping Plover, Kirtland’s Warbler, Henslow’s Sparrow, and Short-eared Owl, migrate through or inhabit this area. This triggers serious Endangered Species Act (ESA) concerns,” said ABC’s Dr. Michael Hutchins, National Coordinator, Bird Smart Wind Energy Campaign.
“We have reviewed the recent radar studies conducted by FWS in this area and must conclude that Huron County is not an appropriate area for wind energy development, given the potential and substantial risks it poses to federally protected birds. If this is an example of ‘proper’ siting of wind energy development, then we wonder what criteria are being used to make such decisions,” Hutchins said further.
“An annual spring migration of thousands of eagles, hawks, and falcons travel through this area and congregate along the Huron County shoreline,” said Monica Essenmacher, President of Port Crescent Hawk Watch, a raptor conservation group in Michigan. “We have documented this occurrence since 1992, so there is a high likelihood of major raptor mortality from continued construction of these turbines.”

The ABC letter says that in addition to ESA-protected birds, vast numbers of other migrants also move through or breed in these areas. Although there is no current provision for a federal permit to harm or kill these birds (called a “take permit”) under the Migratory Bird Treaty Act (MBTA), ABC suggests that the FWS should consider this option as soon as possible, so that it can be used as an additional tool for proper siting and operation of future wind energy facilities.

Under FWS’ current voluntary permitting guidelines, wind energy companies are not required to apply for incidental take permits under the Bald and Golden Eagle Protection Act or the ESA when the project sits on private property. ABC asserts that this is a loophole allowing wind developers to kill federally protected birds with impunity. To remedy this, the organization is calling for independent post-construction monitoring and for the institution of a permit process that imposes fines to developers who kill more protected birds than their permit would allow.
ABC supports the development of clean, renewable sources of energy such as wind and solar power, but also believes that it must be done responsibly and with minimal impact on our public trust resources, including native birds and bats and particularly threatened, endangered, and other protected species. ABC supports Bird Smart Wind Energy, which emphasizes the importance of careful siting and mitigation to prevent unintended impacts to wildlife. As this study suggests, the risk to birds and bats can be substantial, depending on the circumstances. Another studysuggests even higher mortality.
Developers typically argue that they can effectively mitigate the impacts of wind development, but ABC—and the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)—caution that most forms of mitigation touted by the wind industry have not yet been scientifically tested for their efficacy. ABC strongly agrees with the DOE’s recent statement that “…technologies to minimize impacts at operational facilities for most species are either in early stages of development or simply do not exist.”
Regarding the Huron County wind energy expansion, ABC has requested that an Environmental Impact Statement be prepared for the project and says that “… the voluntary (FWS) guidelines (must) be followed to the letter, which means consultation under Section 7 of the ESA, applications for incidental take permits under the ESA and Bald and Golden Eagle Protection Act, a three-mile setback from any shoreline, and an Avian Protection Plan … before the companies are allowed to go ahead with any construction.”
ABC also asks that the wind energy companies share bird mortality data with the public. “At present, these data are being treated as proprietary information, but these are public trust resources being taken,” said Hutchins. “The public has a right to know.”
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American Bird Conservancy is the Western Hemisphere’s bird conservation specialist—the only organization with a single and steadfast commitment to achieving conservation results for native birds and their habitats throughout the Americas. With a focus on efficiency and working in partnership, we take on the toughest problems facing birds today, innovating and building on sound science to halt extinctions, protect habitats, eliminate threats, and build capacity for bird conservation.

Wind Turbines Get the Green Light, to Slaughter Birds & Bats…NOT GREEN!

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Posted on November 6, 2014 by

It just gets worse:

[…] Wildlife consultant Jim Wiegand has written several articles that document these horrendous impacts on raptors, the devious methods the wind industry uses to hide the slaughter, and the many ways the FWS and Big Green collude with Big Wind operators to exempt wind turbines from endangered species, migratory bird and other laws that are imposed with iron fists on oil, gas, timber and mining companies. The FWS and other Interior Department agencies are using sage grouse habitats and White Nose Bat Syndrome to block mining, drilling and fracking. But wind turbines get a free pass, a license to kill.

Big Green, Big Wind and Big Government regulators likewise almost never mention the human costs – the sleep deprivation and other health impacts from infrasound noise and constant light flickering effects associated with nearby turbines, as documented by Dr. Sarah Laurie and other researchers.

In short, wind power may well be our least sustainable energy source – and the one least able to replace fossil fuels or reduce carbon dioxide emissions that anti-energy activists falsely blame for climate change (that they absurdly claim never happened prior to the modern industrial age). But of course their rants have nothing to do with climate change or environmental protection.

The climate change dangers exist only in computer models, junk-science “studies” and press releases. But as the “People’s Climate March” made clear, today’s watermelon environmentalists (green on the outside, red on the inside) do not merely despise fossil fuels, fracking and the Keystone pipeline. They also detest free enterprise capitalism, modern living standards, private property … and even pro football!

They invent and inflate risks that have nothing to do with reality, and dismiss the incredible benefits that fracking and fossil fuels have brought to people worldwide. They go ballistic over alleged risks of using modern technologies, but are silent about the clear risks of not using those technologies. And when it comes to themselves, Big Green and the Billionaires Club oppose and ignore the transparency, integrity, democracy and accountability that they demand from everyone they attack.

Read it all …

Typical of the political green class, and ‘Big Media’. Hypocrites. Climate Change was just the line needed to cover their extortion.

Great Election! Republicans Are More Likely to Be Co-operative With Canada!

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Lawrence Solomon: Democrats’ loss is Canada’s gain

(November 6, 2014) It’s too late now for Obama and the Democrats to impose policies harmful to Canada.

This article, by Lawrence Solomon, first appeared in the National Post on November 6, 2014

Democrats lost big in the U.S. mid-term elections this week. Republicans won big. And Canada also won big, as in big sigh of relief. Canada is a winner less because of what Republicans will now do than because of what a president in search of a legacy-with-the-left can’t do.

Number One on the Obama Can’t-Do list involves carbon taxes or other global warming measures that could set back Canada’s economy. In a far-sighted move the day after Obama won the presidency six years ago, a prescient Prime Minister Harper tied Canada’s global warming policies to those of the United States. This stratagem — justified by the need to harmonize policies with our largest trading partner — extricated Canada from economically harmful pledges to cut back on our own emissions, unburdening our economy and helping us storm past the 2008 financial crisis better than any other G8 country.

Harper — thought to be a closet climate skeptic — took a calculated risk that paid off in spades. The Obama administration failed to pass global warming legislation while it controlled Congress and by 2010, when the Democrats lost the House of Representatives, it was too late — climate skeptic Republicans wouldn’t saddle America, and by extension, Canada, with global warming legislation. Now it is also too late for Obama to otherwise bind Canada. Though Obama may follow through on threats to act on climate change through regulatory decrees, these would be temporary scattershots from a diminished lame duck that Canada could slough off. Canada has dodged the climate change bullet.

Number Two on the Obama Can’t-Do List is trade protectionism, a favourite among many Democrats including Obama, who first won election on a pledge to reopen NAFTA on environmental and labour grounds. Various “Buy American” trade bills recently introduced in Congress, such as the “Made in the U.S.A. Act” sponsored by Democratic Senator Mark Pryor of Arkansas, are now dead. Pryor is among the Democrats that voters just tossed out of Washington.

Number Three: Canada can also breathe a big sigh of relief that free spending Democrats are now reined in. Obama’s exploding of the national debt — by the time he’s done, it may have doubled to $20-trillion — has destabilized Western economies, making everyone fearful of inflation and curbing the private sector investment needed for economic growth. Republicans not only took the Senate, they so bolstered their majority in the House of Representatives, where spending bills originate, that Democrats have likely lost the ability to spend federal dollars for decades to come — gerrymandered House districts make it difficult for incumbents to lose.

More welcome sighs come in at the state level, where the mid-term elections toppled several governors in traditionally Democratic states. Restraint-minded Republican governors are now in charge in more than 30 states, good augers for pro-growth policies in our largest trading partner.

Canada could benefit from more than relief from Democratic harms. Republicans are likely to pursue policies that would positively help our economy, most notably by passing legislation that would force Obama to accept, or veto, the Keystone XL Pipeline, a project that has been under review longer than the Second World War.

Pundits are betting that Obama will finally approve Keystone, both to chalk up an accomplishment for what is now an almost non-existent legacy and to please the unions, the many Democrats and the general public that favour it. To give Obama a fig leaf, the pundits expect Harper to throw in a concession on climate change.

But the pundits could be wrong. Obama has betrayed most of his constituents through broken promises — unions for his failure to deliver jobs and, ironically, because Obamacare is destroying the 40-hour work week; youth for the NSA spying on them; Latinos on his failure to implement immigration reform; peaceniks for his drone attacks and America’s reentry into Iraq. Approving Keystone would add to this string the one cause he has served passably well — environmentalism, whose backers include the Hollywood crowd that mostly remains in his thrall. His legacy with those who count to him could only be kept by chucking Keystone.

But even chucking Keystone could now be too late for Obama. He has become such a liability to his party that few Democratic politicians have a strong allegiance to him and many would fear losing their seats in the next election if they were seen to side with him. If Obama vetoed a bill to proceed with Keystone, the two-thirds majority required to override his veto might materialize.

Lawrence Solomon is the executive director of Energy Probe.