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Return to sanity!
Wind Turbine Farmers Finding Out the Truth. It is NOT a Good Idea!
Farmer Seeks Wind Answers
Wednesday, October 29, 2014 5:14 AM by
Lucknow farmer looking for answers, compensation for wind farm construction
(Lucknow)-A Lucknow farmer is looking for answers, and compensation.
In a letter addressed to Jay Shukin of K-2 Wind, George Alton describes a threatening document received from the power company.
In the letter from K-2, it is suggested the spreading of manure on his farm constitutes a health hazard to construction workers, and an impediment to construction.
Alton goes on to describe the necessity for manure, and the work needed to ensure it is used efficiently.
The farmer goes on to cite several issues with the turbine construction, including ditch reconstruction, open pits, harvest delays, loss of farmable land, and trespassing.
Alton requests answers as to how K-2 Power plans to compensate him for his losses.
Bayshore Broadcasting News is awaiting a response from K-2 power.
King Island Wind Project Cancelled! We’ve got One Less Problem, Without You!
King Island Set Free from Turbine Tyranny: Hydro Tasmania Pulls Plug on Chinese Backed Wind Farm
October 29, 2014 by
In yet another sign that the Australian wind industry is on its last legs, Hydro Tasmania has pulled up stumps on its plans to spear 600 turbines into the heart of King Island – the jewel of Bass Strait.
In typical wind weasel fashion, Hydro Tasmania sought community “support” for 200 turbines – but that was just phase 1 – when in reality its end game was to lob 600 of the monsters over every last inch of the place.
The proposal had the full backing of the Peoples Republic of China – which saw King Island as a handy anchor for the 600 turbines it planned to supply to its partner (see our post here).
With Australia’s Large-Scale RET on the nose, Hydro Tasmania has announced that it has dropped the project altogether. Here’s an ABC report on Hydro Tasmania’s retreat.
Hydro Tasmania ditches $2b King Island wind farm project
ABC News
27 October 2014
Factors cited by Hydro Tasmania
- Low $A pushing up costs of turbines and other components
- Declining demand for power on national grid
- Projected increase in on-island construction costs
State-owned power generator Hydro Tasmania has killed off a $2 billion wind farm planned for King Island because it says the project is not economically viable.
Hydro had planned to build a 600 megawatt wind farm on the island, with the power generated to be connected to the National Electricity Market via a high-voltage underwater cable across Bass Strait to Victoria.
The wind farm was expected to produce 2,400 gigawatt hours (GWh) of renewable energy for the national market, which is enough to supply around 240,000 homes.
Chief executive Steve Davy said changing economic conditions had seen the estimated capital costs for the wind farm alone increase by around $150 million.
“We have exhausted all avenues by which this concept could progress and now do not believe it appropriate to continue with the feasibility study,” he said.
“We will now focus our resources on further investigating the benefits and viability of a second inter-connector as outlined in the Tasmanian Government’s recent state budget.”
Tasmania’s Energy Minister Matthew Groom said Hydro had “done the right thing”.
“Hydro Tasmania has today made a commercial decision that they won’t be proceeding with the King Island Wind Farm proposal on the grounds that the proposal unfortunately has been found to be not economically viable,” he said.
Donald Graham from the No TasWind Farm Group said “Blind Freddy could see two years ago that the project would not be feasible”.
“Eighteen months ago they told us they needed to spend two years and many millions to do a feasibility study before they could determine if is was feasible,” he said.
“They have done virtually nothing for 12 months and have discovered the obvious answer. And what did the island get out of it? Nothing other than a severely split community.”
RET uncertainty not a factor
Hydro director Andrew Catchpole said it was disappointing that the project was abandoned.
“Of course it’s disappointing when a project or an idea doesn’t work out but this happens in business all the time you need to investigate the idea to a point to decide whether it’s viable,” he said.
Hydro Tasmania, Australia’s largest renewable energy company, had voiced concern about future projects because of uncertainty surrounding the country’s Renewable Energy Target (RET).
He said many renewable energy projects across the country would depend on the outcome of the RET negotiations at a federal level but insisted the board’s decision was driven by economics.
“Our investigations eventually found that TasWind was not viable even if the RET was maintained at the existing level,” Mr Davy said.
The company also cited factors such as the lower Australian dollar which was driving up the cost of building the turbines and a drop in demand from the National Electricity Market (NEM).
Federal MP for Braddon Brett Whiteley said the project “did not stack up”.
“It would certainly have boosted jobs on the island and given the local economy a shot in the arm during the construction phase,” he said.
“The Government is committed to supporting a sustainable renewable energy sector with an amended RET that will ensure long-term certainty for the renewables sector so it can continue to contribute to Australia’s diverse energy mix.”
Residents divided on wind farm proposal
The project had divided residents of King Island, with many strongly opposed to its development.
The 200-turbine wind farm was facing a legal challenge by the No Tas Wind Farm group who argued it did not have enough community backing.
Hydro said the project would not proceed to a feasibility study if the island’s residents did not support it.
A survey taken in mid-2013 found almost 59 per cent of the community wanted the project to proceed.
The wind farm was expected to employ up to 60 workers on King Island if it went ahead.
Mr Davy thanked King Island residents for their input in the process and said Hydro Tasmania would continue to support the island.
“We recognise that the TasWind project has created significant community debate on the island over the past two years,” he said.
“We also recognise that today’s announcement will be received with mixed emotions.”
Mr Whiteley said he hoped the island could move on quickly.
“Although the proposed King Island wind project was not universally supported by the local community, I know some will be disappointed by this announcement,” he said.
“It is hugely disappointing that the process has caused so much division in what has always been a very close knit community.”
ABC News
STT followers will remember Hydro Tasmania as the bunch of liars and thugs that rode roughshod over the close-knit community of King Island in an effort to pepper giant fans all over the jewel of Bass Strait.
In the first round, Hydro Tasmania promised King Island locals that unless 60% supported their planned project, they would simply abandon it – by dropping their planned “feasibility study” (see our posts here andhere). Hydro Tasmania then set about buying the votes it needed to show 60% supporting its project (see our post here).
Those shovelling Hydro Tasmania’s cash out to bribe the locals must have flunked basic arithmetic, because they only managed to muster 58.7% of the vote. But, never mind, Hydro Tasmania simply decided to ignore its earlier promise and launched into its feasibility study, anyway (see our post here). So much for keeping promises.
But, as they say: “what goes around, comes around”.
While the ABC reports Hydro Tasmania citing 3 factors that led to retreat, STT thinks they might have overlooked the 10s of $millions that Hydro Tasmania has already lost (and the 100s of $millions it will lose) on their existing Tasmanian wind farm operations – placing risky bets on the price of Renewable Energy Certificates (see our post here).
And, in the irony of ironies, it’s blaming the Federal Government’s RET Review and the threat that the Government will breach its “promise” to retain the mandatory Renewable Energy Target for those losses.
All that self-inflicted financial grief couldn’t be happening to a nicer bunch of lads.
Now that the threat of turbine terror has finally passed, King Islanders can celebrate a fabulous victory.
Climate Change is a Natural Phenomenon. Humans are NOT to Blame!
Climate Is Changing, And Some Parks Are Endangered, But Humans Aren’t The Cause
Editor’s note: The climate is changing, but is it humankind’s fault? Daniel B. Botkin, professor Emeritus in the Department of Ecology, Evolution, and Marine Biology at University of California Santa Barbara, doesn’t believe so. In the following column, he dissects the conclusions reached by the Union of Concerned Scientists in its report,National Landmarks at Risk, How Rising Seas, Floods, and Wildfires Are Threatening the United States’ Most Cherished Historic Sites.
Jamaica Bay National Wildlife Refuge The only wildlife refuge in the National Park System lies within New York City, and is not on the Union of Concerned Scientists List. The refuge is the largest bird migration stop in the Northeast, and serves as a buffer protecting urban development from major storms. Its well-developed paths among birds and flowering plants and along inland wetlands and waterways are available by public transportation to the 8.6 million residents of New York City. (Photo by the author)
For those of us who love our national parks and are confronted daily with media, politicians, and pundits warning us of a coming global-warming disaster, it’s only natural to ask what that warming will mean for our national parks. This is exactly what the well-known Union of Concerned Scientists discuss in their recent report, National Landmarks at Risk: How Rising Seas, Floods, and Wildfires Are Threatening the United States’ Most Cherished Historic Sites.
I’ve done research since 1968 on the possibility of human-caused global warming and its possible ecological effects, and have published widely on this topic, discussing possible effects on biodiversity and on specific endangered species as well as on forests, cities, and historical evidence of Arctic sea ice change. I’ve also been involved in the development of some aspects of some climate models, and having developed a computer model of forests that is one of the principal methods used to forecast global warming effects on vegetation, I sought out the UCS report with great interest.
The approach the Union has taken is to have the report written by four staff members: Debra Holtz, a journalist; Kate Cell, a fund-raiser for the organization; Adam Markham, with a B.S. in zoology, who was the founder of Clean Air-Cool Planet, a nonprofit organization “to promote innovative community-based solutions to climate change in the Northeast”; and Brenda Ekwurzel, the Union’s Senior Climate Scientist. She is the only author with research experience on the subject, has a Ph.D. in isotope geochemistry from the Department of Earth Sciences at Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory and has been on the faculty of the University of Arizona Department of Hydrology and Water Resources.
These four authors took the standard reports from such organizations as the United National Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, treating them as accurate and true, and then discussed the implications for 16 American historic sites. As shown in the accompanying table, they write that 11 of the sites are threatened by rising sea levels and their consequences (coastal erosion and flooding); two by inland flooding; two by wildfires; and one by “extreme heat and drought” (table 1).
The report opens with a bold assertion: “Many of the United States’ iconic landmarks and heritage sites are at risk as never before. Sea level rise, coastal erosion, increased flooding, heavy rains, and more frequent large wildfires are damaging archaeological resources, historic buildings, and cultural landscapes across the nation.” The report later goes on to add, “All of the case studies in this report draw on observations of impacts that are either consistent with, or attributable to, human-induced climate change based on multiple lines of scientific evidence.” To which the authors add, “This report sounds a wake-up call: as the impacts of climate change continue, we must protect these sites and reduce the risks.”
The point of the report, its opening theme and its major conclusion, is that these historic places are in trouble and it’s our fault, we have been the bad guys interfering with nature and therefore damaging places we value. This is consistent with the IPCC 2014 report and the 2014 White House Climate Change Assessment, for both of which I acted as an expert reviewer and testified before the House and Senate about.
TABLE 1. HISTORIC SITES AND CLAIMED THREATS TO THEM
Threatened by Sea Level Rise and Accompanying Flooding
- Boston’s Faneuil Hall and surroundings
- Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island
- Harriet Tubman National Monument Monument
- Historic Jamestown, VA
- NASA’s coastal facilities
- Annapolis, MD
- Fort Monroe National Monument
- Cape Hatteras Lighthouse
- Bering Land Bridge National Monument & Shishmaref; Cape Krusenstern National Monument, including Kivalina Native Villages and Ancestral Lands
- Pu’uhonua O Honaunau & Kaloko-Honokhau National Historical Parks
- Prehistoric Florida shell structures
Threatened by Future Floods
- Charleston, SC; Historic St. Augustine, Fl and Castillo De San Marcos
Threatened by Wildfires (and perhaps also flooding)
- Mesa Verde National Park and Bandelier National Monument & Santa Clara Pueblo
- Groveland, CA and other California Gold Rush era towns
Threatened by Extreme Heat and Drought
- Cesar Chavez National Monument, California
Back Bay Fens Park and Jamaica Bay National Wildlife Refuge
Reading the dire forecasts of the UCS report, I thought immediately about two seaside places familiar to me: Back Bay Fens Park in Boston and Jamaica Bay National Wildlife Refuge in New York City. Back Bay Fens park was designed by Frederick Law Olmsted, the famous landscape architect known especially for designing New York City’s Central Park. Back Bay was a problem because it was a landfill on Boston’s shore that flooded frequently, which caused various problems.
To understand what Olmsted did in designing Back Bay, one has to step back and consider Boston’s original site, which had certain advantages for a major city: a narrow peninsula with several hills that could be easily defended, a good harbor, and a good water supply. But as the city grew, demand increased for more land for buildings, a larger area for docking ships, and a better water supply. The need to control ocean floods and to dispose of solid and liquid wastes grew as well. Much of the original tidal flats area, which had been too wet to build on and too shallow to navigate, had been converted, before Olmsted got involved, to flat land — hills cut away and the marshes filled with their soil. The filling of Back Bay began in 1858 and continued for decades.
Olmsted’s solution to the flooding and sewage pollution was a water-control project he called the “fens.” His goal was to “abate existing nuisances” by keeping sewage out of the streams and ponds and building artificial banks for the streams to prevent flooding—and to do this in a natural-looking way. His solution included creating artificial watercourses by digging shallow depressions in the tidal flats, following meandering patterns like natural streams; setting aside other artificial depressions as holding ponds for tidal flooding; restoring a natural salt marsh planted with vegetation tolerant of brackish water; and planting the entire area to serve as a recreational park when not in flood. He put a tidal gate on the Charles River—Boston’s major river—and had two major streams diverted directly through culverts into the Charles so that they flooded the fens only during flood periods. He reconstructed the Muddy River primarily to create new, accessible landscape.
Professor Botkin’s two most recent books are The Moon in the Nautilus Shell and Powering the Future: A Scientist’s Guide To Energy Independence.
The result of Olmsted’s vision was that control of water became an aesthetic addition to the city. The blending of several goals made the development of the fens a landmark in city planning. Although to the casual stroller it appears to be simply a park for recreation, the area serves an important environmental function in flood and sewage control. Confronted with the combined problems of ocean surges and flooding from river runoff inland, Olmsted did not waste his time complaining about whether or not people have caused the problem. He just set out and solved it.
Jamaica Bay National Wildlife Refuge, although not directly planned to solve flooding problems, does so in much the same way that the Boston Back Bay Fens does. The Refuge has become one of my favorite places in New York City. It is the largest migratory bird sanctuary in the northeastern United States. It is the only wildlife sanctuary that is part of the National Park System, and it lies within the city of New York, in view of the Empire State Building, as my accompanying photograph shows. New York City residents wanting contact with nature can get there by public transportation.
The Refuge faces onto Long Island Sound and includes inlets and wetlands directly connected to the Sound. The refuge was damaged during tropical storm Sandy, but it served the same multiple functions that Back Bay does in Boston — it acted as a buffer between that major ocean storm and city structures inland.
As I read the UCS report, Back Bay Fens and Jamaica Bay Refuge were in mind as what to do about coastal flooding along cities. Then I went to the scientific evidence that should be forming the basis for the UCS report, and which I will turn to now.
The Scientific Evidence
What is the evidence that sea level is rising, that wildfires, drought, and episodes of very high temperatures are increasing, and what is the evidence that such changes are our fault? Let’s take them one by one.
As is well-known, we are blamed for causing a global warming mainly because our burning of fossil fuels is increasing the carbon dioxide (CO2) concentration in the atmosphere. Since this is a greenhouse gas, we must be warming the climate.
Yes, carbon dioxide, the greenhouse gas that gets so much attention, has increased greatly and rapidly, from 280 parts per million to 400, and as this graph shows, it is continuing that rapid rise.
Has Earth been warming?
Climate has always changed and is always changing. The last Ice Age, which covered places like what is now New York City with ice two miles deep, ended between 17,000 and 12,500 years ago, with overall but highly variable warming since then. Among the variations during the last thousand or so years, there was a warming period lasting approximately 300 years, from A.D. 950 to 1250, known as the Medieval Warm Period (warming compared to what climatologists today call “normal,” taken in general by today’s climatologists to mean the average surface temperature during the past century between 1960-1980 or between 1960–1990). This is the time when Vikings settled Greenland and reached North America, and when in the southern Pacific the Polynesians did a lot of their expansion among far-flung Pacific islands.
The Medieval Warming was followed by the “Little Ice Age,” which lasted from approximately mid-1400 to 1700 A.D and somewhat later. Crop failures occurred in western Europe, and some mountain glaciers in the Swiss Alps advanced to the extent that they filled valleys and destroyed villages. Areas to the north that had enjoyed abundant crop production were under ice. This was the time when the human population was devastated by the Black Plague, whose effects may have been exacerbated by poor nutrition as a result of crop failures, and by the damp and cold that reached out across Europe and even to Iceland by about 1400. It was also the time of the early European settlement of the United States. As I have written elsewhere, when the Pilgrims said it was a cold winter, it was a very cold winter.
A warming trend started in the mid-nineteenth century. This was interrupted from about 1940 to 1960 by a cooling, and then the temperature rose until about 20 years ago. An important scientific paper published September 1 this year states that Earth’s surface temperature has not changed for the past 19 years, and 16-26 years for the lower atmosphere. That’s the conclusion of University of Guelph statistician and Professor of Economics Ross R. McKitrick, who used a novel kind of statistical analysis. He points out that this lack of warming is of “particular note because climate models project continuing warming over the period. Since 1990, atmospheric carbon dioxide levels rose from 354 ppm to just under 400 ppm, a 13% increase.”
Carbon dioxide is definitely continuing to increase in the atmosphere, but Earth’s surface and atmospheric temperatures aren’t tracking it. Even though our activities are adding carbon dioxide rapidly to the atmosphere, it seems to be having no effect right now on Earth’s average surface and lower atmosphere temperature.
However, the UCS report blithely comments, “Climate models show that if our emissions of carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping gases remain high, Bakersfield could have almost 50 days of extreme heat, with temperatures reaching 104°F or more, by 2050—up from four days a year on average between 1961 and 1990.”
But if the temperature has not changed in 19 to 26 years, then how much credence can we give to this assertion? We must ask whether the climate models have been accurate predictors of recent climate change.
John Christy, the climatologist who is said to be the primary person responsible for the development of satellites that measure Earth’s temperature, compared the combined forecasts of major global climate models with observed temperature change since 1980. As you can see in his graph, there is no correspondence. The climate models do not even come close to forecasting actual temperature change; they forecast a huge, steady increase. In contrast, as you can see in the graph, the temperature has varied a little, as it always does, but as the new paper that I mentioned earlier asserts, it has not changed.
John Christy’s Comparison of Global Warming Model Forecasts
Actual Temperature Change since 1980 (Courtesy of John Christy, Alabama State Climatologist)
Thus the climate models cannot be considered reliable bases for forecasting the future. Indeed, other experts on model validation say that the climate models have never been sufficiently validated in any other ways as well, and therefore are not an accurate representation of the real world we live in. Conclusion: our addition of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere does not appear to be increasing Earth’s temperature.
Whatever is happening to Earth’s climate does not seem to be our fault.
Sea Level Rise
What about the claim that sea level rise is another factor “damaging archaeological resources, historic buildings, and cultural landscapes across the nation? Well, the sea level has been rising since the end of the last Ice Age, starting about 14,000 years ago as the continental and mountain glaciers have melted and sea water has expanded with the overall warming. The average rate has been about a foot or two a century (about 23-46 cm per century). Data suggest that the rate was much greater until about 8,000 years ago.
Yes, sea-level rise is definitely a problem, but it is not a problem simply because it is our fault. It is a problem that we just haven’t bothered to face up to in any serious way until the global warming issue captured our attention. Whether or not we are adding to the rate of sea level rise, this is causing problems and will continue to cause problems. It would be a mistake to focus on it only if we were convinced it was our fault. For many years past, we should have been planning for sea level rise, and we need to make this an important environmental priority.
Frequency of Severe Storms
The main concern often expressed about sea levels is that severe ocean storms do greater damage than indicated by the simple rise in the water level. Therefore, it is necessary for us to look at how the frequency of severe storms has changed over time. Underlying the claim by the UCS report that 12 of the 16 sites are in danger of flooding is the assumption that the frequency of severe storms has increased, as have their landfalls. But the graphs below of severe storm frequency, show variation over time but no overall increase. Therefore, during the recent past the claim by the UCS report is contradicted. And since the climate models don’t even come close to forecasting temperature change, we cannot trust them to forecast changes in storm frequency.
Number of Severe Storms affecting the United States since 1970
(Courtesy of Roger Pielke Jr., Professor in the Environmental Studies Program, University of Colorado, from his House of Representatives Testimony 11 December 2013)
Frequency of Extremely Hot Days
This is controversial, because it is difficult to get information that summarizes these trends for the entire United States, and there are a variety of opinions and discussions about these data, so I put this into the article with some caution to the reader. But several graphs indicate that there has not been an increase in the average number of very hot days. For example, this graph shows days with temperatures above 95° F. This graph is based on the summary from all United States Historical Climatology Network weather stations that have been in operation since 1930.
Wildfire Frequency in the U.S. Has Not Increased
The UCS report claims that two historic sites within the National Park System are being, and will be, damaged by increases in wildfire frequency. But once again, a graph from the U.S. government agencies involved, of number of wildfires, shows no increase.
Furthermore, it is well-established that most major wildfires that occur these days are from the failure to allow much more frequent, and therefore light fires, to burn. The 20th century policy dominated by Smokey Bear — “only you can prevent forest fires” — and the belief, ill-founded, that all forest and grassland fires are bad and must be prevented — have had a damaging effect.
Wildfire Frequency
(Source EPA http://www.epa.gov/climatechange/)
As I wrote in my latest book, The Moon in the Nautilus Shell, this Smokey Bear policy also caused the extinction of Kirtland’s warbler, which nests in young jack pine, a tree species that regenerates only after fire. It was only when ornithologists realized the population had dropped in half in a decade and that fire suppression was the cause that the Audubon Society, the U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and the state of Michigan began prescribed burning programs.
As I also discuss in that book, excellent work by Professor Wallace Covington of Northern Arizona University, involving careful historical analysis of the pre-European ponderosa pine forests of that state, followed by careful removal of excess fuel and trees, followed by prescribed burns every 3 to 5 years, as was the natural rate—restored some of these forests to their beautiful and natural condition: large pines widely spaced with grasses filling the land between. In contrast, next door to his experimental forests is one of The Nature Conservancy ponderosa pine protected, no-touch areas, which does not resemble the pre-European ponderosa pine forests at all, but instead forms a very dense stand of young, small trees and a lot of fuel on the ground, just waiting for a wildfire.
Carefully managed Ponderosa Pine Forest, with excess fuel built up over more than a century removed and light fires every 3 to 5 years (Photo by the author)
Next to the strongly managed forest is a Nature Conservancy no-touch Ponderosa Pine Preserve. (Photo by the author)
What Should be Done About Sea Level Rise and Wildfires and Our National Parks?
As I have shown, observations do not support the claim that our activities are currently warming the globe. Does this mean that we should stop worrying about climate change? Of course not. Because sea level has been rising for thousands of years, the encroachment of ocean waters and damage from ocean storms have been problems for coastal structures, which we have just ignored. We have to face up to these. But arguing about whether this is our fault or not is beside the point and detracts us away from doing anything useful, as we focus instead of what can best be called a fairy-tale debate. The same must be said about wildfires. For decades, experts on wildfires have been calling for improved management of America’s forests, and the need remains important. We must remember Frederick Law Olmsted’s approach to designing the Back Bay Fens— solve the problem, do not waste your time arguing if we are to blame.
However, global warming has become the sole focus of so much environmental discussion that it risks eclipsing much more pressing and demonstrable environmental problems. The major damage that we as a species are doing here and now to the environment is not getting the attention it deserves.
We need to keep in mind the reality of Nature, which I have portrayed in a replacement for Smokey Bear: Morph the Moose (Copyright and trademarked by the author).
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Health Dept. working on a Way to Force Wind Industry to Address Health Concerns…
Paul Srubas, Press-Gazette MediaBrown County health officials have declared wind turbines a public health risk, but they haven’t determined how to put their declaration into action.
The county’s Health Board this month declared the Shirley Wind Farm operated by Duke Energy Renewables poses a health risk to its neighbors in the town of Glenmore. Three families have moved out of their homes rather than endure physical illness they blame on the low-frequency noise the wind turbines generate, according to Audrey Murphy, president of the board that oversees the Brown County Health Department.
“We struggled with this but just felt we needed to take some action to help these citizens,” Murphy said.
Murphy called the declaration a first step, but “the second step is up to the director of our Health Department, Judy Friederichs, and corporation counsel.”
The Health Department has statutory authority for licensing, inspection and enforcement for businesses where health and environmental problems are at issue, but just what that means for the wind farm has not yet been determined, Friederichs said.
State health officials have expressed interest in participating in Brown County’s discussion of the issue, Friederichs said. She, board members and the county’s lawyer need to put their heads together to determine the next step, she said. No timeline has been established.
“We’re all saying the same thing here: Now what?” Friederichs said. “There aren’t a lot of alternatives to mitigation. It really depends now on where this goes, what type of referrals we get, etc. There’s ongoing concerns. We’re going to have to really look at it, and it’s more of a legal question.”
Whatever happens, residents “are grateful to the Board of Health for reviewing the research and listening to the people of Brown County,” said Susan Ashley, who also lives in the Shirley area and who has helped rally opposition to the wind farm through the years.
Twenty families in the town have documented health issues since the wind farm started operated in 2009, Ashley said.
Duke Energy Renewables was not invited to the health board’s discussion and would have cited tests that determined sound levels from the wind generators were low and could not be linked to adverse health impacts, company spokeswoman Tammie McGee said. The company has not received any formal word about the board’s declaration, McGee said.
Dr. Jay Tibbetts, vice president of the Brown County health board and its medical adviser, said he knows of no science that proves there isn’t a link between health problems and the low-frequency noise the giant fans produce.
“There’s been nothing that’s debunked anything,” he said. “As far as what’s happening to these people, it doesn’t make a difference whether you’re in Shirley or Denmark, or Ontario, Canada. Forty people have moved out of their homes, and it’s not just for jollies. In Shirley, three people have moved out of their homes. I know all three. They’re not nuts. They’re severely suffering.”
People might not be able to hear the sounds the Shirley turbines produce, but Tibbetts said he knows of a teenager living in the area who can tell when the turbines are off or on without being able to see them. Area residents or former residents report headaches, nausea and other symptoms they say are brought on by the turbines, and those symptoms clear up when the residents move elsewhere for a time, Tibbetts said.
The board’s declaration may be cutting edge and controversial, but it wasn’t made lightly or without the weight of science behind it, Murphy said
“This is a serious step,” she said. “We didn’t make it lightly. There is science from around the world — the World Health Organization, Denmark, Poland, Germany. We believe there’s enough science.”
Darrell Ashley, who is Susan Ashley’s father-in-law and lives within a mile of the Shirley turbines, said his wife moved out of the house for several months until her symptoms disappeared. She has since moved back, and her symptoms are coming back, he said.
“I’m getting worse and I can’t afford to move out,” he said. “I’m just getting weaker — my legs, back, feet. My concentration is gone, head pressure, ear aches, headaches, it just goes on and on.”
Prior to 2009, when the turbines weren’t operating, he and his wife had no such problems, he said. He praised the health board and said he appreciated that someone finally listened to residents’ complaints.
Murphy said Brown County is probably the first governmental body in Wisconsin and perhaps the first in the country to make the formal declaration.
The board has been wrestling with the issue for about the last four years, Murphy said. While some scientific studies have failed to find a link between health risks and the low-frequency noise that wind turbines generate, two studies done recently on the Shirley Wind Farm specifically say otherwise, Murphy said.
“While there may still be debate about the precise mechanism that causes these sounds to induce the symptoms, it is clear from (these studies) … that acoustic energy emitted by operation of modern wind turbines is at the root of adverse health effects,” Murphy said.
More Proof, of the Futility of Wind Turbines….
Press Release: Wind farms generate below 20% of their supposed output for 20 weeks a year, a new report finds
- A new study has found that wind farms generate below 20% of their supposed output for 20 weeks a year, and generate below 10% for 9 weeks a year.
- Wind farms, on average, only exceed 90% of their rated output for 17 hours a year.
- Though the government acknowledges that wind farms produce much less energy than their sticker capacity would suggest, the report shows that even the average production (of around a quarter of capacity) is extremely misleading about the amount of power wind farms can be relied up to provide.
Wind farms are extremely volatile, with outputs fluctuating by five percentage points over short periods of time, a report based on new data by the Adam Smith Institute and Scientific Alliance has found. These findings suggest the UK’s energy infrastructure can never be reliant on them in any significant way.
Specifically, the study found that wind farms generate below 20% of their supposed output for 20 weeks a year, and generate below 10% for 9 weeks a year. Wind farms, on average, only exceed 90% of their rated output for 17 hours a year.
The paper, “Wind Power Reassessed: A review of the UK wind resource for electricity generation”, (http://www.adamsmith.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/Assessment7.pdf) looks at previously unexamined wind speed data reported by anemometers located at various airfields, used as a proxy for nearby wind farms, and concludes that UK wind farms, on average, exceed 80% of their supposed output for less than one week every year.
The study also looks at the short-term (30 – 90 minute) variability of wind generation and reveals swings in output are far higher than is normal from conventional energy generation, such as from gas or nuclear plants. Swings of five percentage points of output are not uncommon, which contradicts the claim that a widespread wind fleet installation will smooth variability. There are frequent but unpredictable periods where wind energy generation fails for days on end.
The report will severely undermine the case for a move towards yet more wind generation because it suggests that wind can never be a major, reliable source of energy for the UK. It also suggests that the UK’s drive to reduce its carbon footprint through expanding wind power is misguided. Wind power is so unreliable and intermittent that it makes much more sense to look to nuclear and gas as better low emission alternatives to the status quo.
In his research, the report’s author Dr. Capell Aris looked at 6.5m individual recordings from 22 sites in the UK and 21 from Ireland and the continent.
Commenting on the report, Dr Aris said:
The current reliance on wind energy to reduce carbon dioxide emissions is inefficient and compromises energy security. Power output of the studied system is below 20% of nominal capacity for over 20 weeks of the year, and below 10% for 9 weeks.
When we study those periods when production falls below 20% of rated capacity, more than three quarters of this occurs in periods longer than 12 hours. Each winter has periods where wind generation is negligible for several days.
The situation across the whole of northern Europe is much the same, so a Europe-wide power grid would provide no extra security; the study demonstrates that interconnectors will not solve wind’s intermittency problem.
Head of Policy at the Adam Smith Institute, Ben Southwood, said:
Wind farms are a bad way of reducing emissions and a bad way of producing power. They are expensive and deeply inefficient and it seems like they reduce the value of housing enormously in nearby areas. We probably do want to reduce carbon emissions, because according to the IPCC global warming will begin to slow economic growth in one hundred years, but nuclear and gas power are our best ways of doing that until cheap and efficient energy storage options are available on a vast scale to smooth the highly variable output of renewables.
Director of the Scientific Alliance, Martin Livermore, said:
This study is a graphic illustration that wind turbines cannot provide a secure supply of electricity, no matter how large the distribution grid.
Notes to editors:
For further comments or to arrange an interview, contact Kate Andrews, Communications Manager, at kate@adamsmith.org / 07584 778207.
The Adam Smith Institute is an independent libertarian think tank based in London. It advocates classically liberal public policies to create a richer, freer world.
The Scientific Alliance was formed in 2001 to encourage politicians to make policy on the basis of scientific evidence rather than lobbying by vested interests.
French Doctor Talks about Health Effects From Wind Turbines…..No More Denial!
Chevallier: wind turbines, eco sham and new drama Public Health
The Point – Published 10/24/2014 at 15:34
We swear by these symbols of environmental cleanliness. Yet the myth to reality, there is an abyss, and maybe even a scandal!
By DR. LAURENT CHEVALLIER
Ecology is still good. European companies seeking by all means to implement giant wind (we approach the 200 m high) in the French countryside, close to the houses. It is clear that wind turbines do not have anything green with the thousands of tons of concrete needed to support these steel monsters; about the energy, it is far from the account feedback from those already established.
My concern, as a physician and member of the European Association Physicians for a healthier environment being created, focus on health. A report by the National Academy of Medicine, published in 2006, concluded that the need to suspend (or prohibit) the construction of wind turbines with a capacity greater than 2.5 megawatts located within 1500 meters of housing. These are actually real industrial plants inducing nuisance, including noise.
Industrial wind turbines are in fact classified as ICPE: installations and plants that generate risks or dangers. Several scientific studies are being published, the results recommend that wind turbines are not located within 2.5 kilometers of homes. Thus, clinical observations of Dr. Michael Nissenbaum two wind farms in the state of Maine to the United States indicate that there is a correlation between the distance residential wind turbines and health problems for residents.
The responsibility of prefects engaged
A number of doctors have already identified multiple health problems related to ownership with these industrial machines. A medically defined the “wind syndrome” which includes increasing headache (noise and turbulence as triggers of migraines), ringing in the ears like tinnitus, sleep disorders, an increase of anxiety and depressive disorders, sometimes the appearance as Dr. Jean-François FERRIEU of “nausea, dizziness, palpitations, all of these chronic conditions can promote authentic depressions” said.
This dimension is not taken into account, or insufficiently, by the government, probably through lack of information. During this time, various local businesses, which more often then sell the exploitation rights to legally well structured international companies continue to put pressure on municipalities to accelerate Starts at times 500 meters of housing, wind farms, as they are never isolated wind turbines are located but the groups multiplied effects. The responsibility of prefects is committed to this day, since it is they who issue building permits.
Gel ongoing projects
On the evidence currently available, it would seem sensible in principle of responsibility to recommend minimum distances of 5 km between industrial wind turbines and homes. Ideally, it would be desirable to freeze all ongoing projects now and deepen health dimension not induce new diseases on a large scale.
It may also come to the conclusion that, for the health of humans and animals such as birds, farm animals or bats, precious “insecticides” natural which have been the subject of a report of the American Academy of Sciences (PNAS, September 29, 2014), it is sufficient to ban industrial wind turbines on land.
As noted by Nicolas Hulot , “initially, wind energy is a great idea, but upon arrival, it is a tragic realization. If we were told that at least it would close plants, but this is not the case. ”
Wind Turbines are a Waste of Time, Money, Agricultural lands, and Won’t Help the Environment!
Greens’ silence on folly of wind and solar powerby Ian Plimer News Weekly, October 25, 2014 A simple evaluation of ideological electricity shows that it is unsustainable. The answer is certainly not blowing in the wind. The amount of energy embedded in steel pylons, concrete footings, blades, wiring, magnets, land clearing and roads is more than a wind pylon would ever generate in its working life. Wind farms cannot generate electricity in a gentle zephyr or a gale, cannot operate continuously and optimistically operate at 20 per cent of nameplate capacity. Professor Ian Plimer Wind farms have the life of a parasite because they freeload themselves onto existing grids paid by conventional efficient energy, need subsidies and drain electricity from the grid when it is too cold. Wind turbines don’t run on wind; they run on subsidies. A single 1,000-megawatt wind farm produces at least 7 million tonnes of carbon dioxide in component construction and concrete. Almost 100,000 truckloads of concrete are required just for the footings. Maintenance by diesel-powered vehicles only adds to emissions. Wind farms need 24/7 back-up from carbon dioxide emitting coal-fired power stations. Wind farms do not reduce human emissions of carbon dioxide; they increase emissions. A wind farm using 660-kilowatt generators requires 7,600 generators at 20 per cent efficiency to produce 1,000 megawatts. At $2,000 per kilowatt installation, this would cost $10 billion. This is more than twice the cost of a reliable, clean, coal-fired 1,000-megawatt generator. The environmental effects of wind farms are devastating. Construction of wind farms in rural areas results in a decline in residents’ mental and physical health, decreased property values and community disharmony. A recent study showed hearing loss for people experiencing low frequency noise. In the United Kingdom, renewable energy costs, principally from wind, create fuel poverty for 2.4 million folk. In the 2012-2013 UK winter, there were an additional 35,000 deaths. This translates as six sick, elderly or vulnerable people killed every year for each installed wind turbine. At 20 per cent efficiency, 1,000 megawatts of delivered electricity requires about 800 square kilometres of cleared land. A nuclear or coal-fired power station requires up to 60 hectares of cleared land. Habitats are destroyed by land-clearing to reduce turbulence. Generator fires are common, and the resultant grass and bushfires cannot be water-bombed from the air as wind pylons are a flight hazard. Is this the modern face of environmentalism? In Spain, at least 18 million birds are slaughtered annually by wind-turbine blades. Bird deaths in Germany are more than 300 per turbine, and in Sweden almost 900 per turbine. German turbines kill more than 200,000 bats per year, and in the U.S. turbines kill some 2.8 million bats. Not to worry. Greens feel morally superior because they think that wind farms emit less carbon dioxide into the atmosphere and hence are saving the planet. We are certainly saving the planet from birds and bats. If a nuclear or coal-fired electricity generator damaged the environment as much as wind farms, there would be an outcry. Wind farms are meant to be a contribution to prevent global warming. However, patient people have been waiting for three decades for the evidence showing human emissions of carbon dioxide drive climate change. The evidence is missing in action. The same calculations can be made for solar power. The amount of embedded energy in the metal, concrete, glass and roads is far greater than can ever be produced in a solar farm’s life. Construction of solar panels leaves toxic chemicals in someone else’s back yard. The amount of carbon dioxide released in manufacture and maintenance is greater than the saving, and coal-fired generators need to be on standby all the time because solar power is not continuous. Solar power has an efficiency of about 10 per cent and, until the laws of physics are changed, this cannot be improved. Greens must be very pleased that the 4,000-megawatt Drax power station in Yorkshire is changing from coal to wood-burning. Some 70,000 tonnes of wood will be burned each day. Clear felling of forests in North Carolina, rail transport, pelletising, ship loading, 5,000 km of ship transport, unloading and train transport do not sound very environmentally friendly and result in huge carbon dioxide emissions from diesel and bunker fuels. The EU has deemed that carbon dioxide emitted from wood burning is recycled by plants yet carbon dioxide emitted from fossil fuel burning is dangerous. Go figure! Why are the Greens silent about the environmental damage of wind and solar electricity generation? Wind power is unreliable, uneconomic and environmentally damaging. No wind farm could provide mains power without generous subsidies, increased electricity charges and horrendous damage to the environment. Few jurisdictions have plans for disassembling a wind farm after its useful life. Defunct wind farms should remain on the skyline as a reminder to future generations of our environmental ecocide and a memorial to our stupidity resulting from caving in to green pressure. Fund managers have invested in wind energy to make money, not to save the environment. Their due diligence would have shown that wind farms are a costly, subsidised, high-risk method of ruining the environment and that a Renewable Energy Target was unsustainable ideology. Rather than plead to the government for even more money, fund managers should be sacked. It is not the role of government to bail out high-risk investors who follow fads and spend more money on advertisements in The Australian than on due diligence. Ian Plimer is an Australian geologist, professor emeritus of earth sciences at the University of Melbourne, professor of mining geology at the University of Adelaide, and the director of multiple mineral exploration and mining companies. He has published many scientific papers, six books and is one of the co-editors of Encyclopedia of Geology. His most recent book, Not For Greens, is available from News Weekly Books. |
Family Horrified to See Wind Turbine Blade Flying out of Control, Barely Missing Their Home!
Wind turbine blade smashes into Rowley Regis garden
Emma Brewin with the the propeller blade.
First published 03:00 Thursday 23 October 2014 in News
A FAMILY were left traumatised after a 4ft blade broke from a wind turbine in the grounds of a Rowley Regis school and spun out of control narrowly missing their house.
Mother-of-two Emma Brewin estimated the three propeller blades had been spinning at speeds of more than 160mph on top of the huge turbine during Tuesday’s strong winds before they broke off.
The Ross Heights’ resident said: “They were going like the clappers and the pole was shaking.”
Suddenly, there was a loud bang and she saw something “flying through the air” out of the corner of her eye.
She and partner Steve McGilligan, aged 49, were horrified to discover one of the heavy fibreglass blades had hurtled about 200 yards into their garden, sliced through a hedge and smashed into their next door neighbour’s bench before coming to rest in the garden.
Miss Brewin, whose daughter Jayde, aged 18, was out at the time, said her special needs daughter, Freya, aged 11, was particularly traumatised by the incident.
“If the propeller had broken off a second later it would have travelled in a straight line and smashed into our living room. We could have been killed,” said 40-year-old Miss Brewin.
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The wind turbine has caused annoyance to residents, whose homes back onto St Michael’s CE High School, since it was installed to make electricity for the new Rowley Learning Campus two years ago.
Miss Brewin condemned it as a “noisy eyesore” which sent a reflected strobe effect into her living room when caught by sunlight.
She described Tuesday’s incident as “unbelievable” and vowed to fight through the courts, if necessary, to prevent the wind turbine being put back.
St Michael’s CE High School headteacher Mike Wilkes said: “I am really disappointed that the failure of the turbine has caused distress to our near neighbours.
“As Interserve provide the facilities management we are working with them closely to ensure this never happens again as the health and safety of our students, staff and the local community is of paramount importance to us.”
A spokesman for Sandwell Futures, which owns the wind turbine, said an immediate investigation had been launched to establish why the blades failed during the strong winds as the area was hit by the tail end of Hurricane Gonzalo.
He added: “Fortunately no one was injured, but it was clearly distressing for those affected, and it’s important that we get to the bottom of how this happened.
“Luckily, this sort of incident is extremely rare, but we have launched an immediate investigation to establish why the blades failed.”
MI Wind Turbine Lawsuit Settled….Operating out of Compliance!
aeinews.org |
| MI turbine suit settled; another lesson in operating too close to already-generous noise limits
Posted: 22 Oct 2014 03:22 PM PDT
Marginal is indeed the word: the sound study found 4 locations where the sound level peaked at 0.3 to 1.2 decibels over the 45dBA noise limit (it takes 3dB for a difference between two sounds to be audible); when using 10-minute averages, there were no violations. The various explanations by the consultant, Brian Howe, illustrated the fine line that the turbine operations were walking. His report stressed “general compliance with sound level criteria,” and noted that the brief violations “do not represent a statistically significant portion of time and do not indicate a systemic exceedance.” In his initial testimony at an August Planning Commission meeting, he said that there are no recommendations to correct for these times because “there is not a situation where they are predictably going over 45.” Later, in a November letter to the Commission, after learning that the county had previously decided NOT to allow for occasional exceedances, he stressed that “I can assure the County that competent, material and substantive evidence supports the conclusion that the turbines are not in compliance at certain residences on occasion” and elaborated:
And this the first half of the central lesson here: it’s essential that enough of a safety factor is built in to the sound models to account for known variability in sound production (how loud the blades are in various unsteady wind conditions) and sound propagation (how far sound travels as it gradually loses power). Regular readers will know that variability is indeed, as Howe mentioned, often more than the simplified 3dB margin of error that was neglected here (see AEI’s 2012 report). The second half the lesson is related: when noise limits—for the sound of the turbines when it reaches nearby homes—are set as high as 45dBA, they will be regularly audible at these homes, and likely well above night-time ambient sound levels. As many acousticians have stressed for years, these situations are very apt to trigger a significant number of complaints, especially if there are dozens of homes in that nearby range. Here, we had the worst of both worlds: turbine siting plans that pushed sound right at the limit into nearby homes, and a limit that was on the high end of tolerability for many neighbors. Indeed, after one such cautionary report was presented to the Mason County Planning Board, it decided to lower the limit to 40dB, but that change was revoked after push-back from Consumers Energy. With this backdrop, this week the 17 original plaintiffs in the noise nuisance lawsuit agreed to a settlement offer from Consumers; Meanwhile, to the best of my knowledge, Consumers Energy’s challenge to the Mason County demand for mitigation is ongoing; the latest report I’ve found is that the company filed an appeal in July after its loss in Circuit Court. The implications of how that plays out could be far-reaching. The challenge consists of two related technical points: whether instantaneous exceedances should be considered violations, and whether unattended sound monitoring can reliably identify violations. The latter question gets down into the technical weeds, including accounting for the presence of other ambient noise as well as turbine sounds, and the choice of measurement metric (L90 or Leq, as well as strict adherence to other sound measurement standards identified in the ordinance, which, like many local ordinances, is not necessarily savvy about all the implications and options for measurement). As reported by Michigan Capital Confidential, a good source for coverage of this issue:
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"Mothers Against Wind Turbines™" Phoenix Rising... 
Comments
Interesting article. These points caught my eye:
On topics such as climate change and sea level rise, he notes, “….arguing about whether this is our fault or not is beside the point and detracts us away from doing anything useful.”
“…global warming has become the sole focus of so much environmental discussion that it risks eclipsing much more pressing and demonstrable environmental problems. The major damage that we as a species are doing here and now to the environment is not getting the attention it deserves.”
He makes some valid comments about wildfire policy, but his summary of recent wildfire statistics needs a little closer look. While he notes that “Wildfire Frequency in the U.S. Has Not Increased” since 1980, statistics from the National Interagency Fire Center (NIFC) offers some other key data.
For example, the number of acres burned has been considerably larger since the year 2000. Between 1969 through 2013 (23 years) a total of 6 million acres or more were burned in only 3 years; between 2000 and 2013, that threshold was reached 8 times.
Federal costs for wildfire suppression? Prior to 2000, that total never reached $1 billion; since 2000, those costs have exceeded $1 billion for 12 of the 14 years.
NIFC has compiled a table summarizing Historically Significant Wildland Fires(between 1803 and Aug 2013). That table lists 78 wildfires over a 210 year span; 25 of those listed (nearly 1/3 have occurred since the year 2000).
Whether or not wildfire policy or climate change are the cause, the fact is we’ve had a significant increase in the impacts of wildfires, based on several measures, in the past decade or so.