Governments the World Over, Try to Evade Responsibility for Harming Citizens with Wind Turbines!

August 21, 2014 / 1957chev / Leave a comment

From Scotland: Turbines and the health risk

The Herald Scotland — 13 August 2014
I WAS interested in the Scottish Government’s response to the Winds for Justice concerns about the health implications of wind turbines on those living in close proximity to them (“Protesters fight wind farms on grounds of health”, The Herald, August 11) when it said there was “no clear evidence of a causal link between the operation of wind turbines and adverse health effects”.

I WAS interested in the Scottish Government’s response to the Winds for Justice concerns about the health implications of wind turbines on those living in close proximity to them (\”Protesters fight wind farms on grounds of health\”, The Herald, August 11) when it said there was \”no clear evidence of a causal link between the operation of wind turbines and adverse health effects\”.
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In April, 2012, The British Medical Journal reviewed the consequences of wind turbine noise and available evidence and concluded at that stage that “wind turbine noise seems to affect health adversely and an independent review of evidence is needed”.

With the thousands of wind turbines already in operation in Scotland and many thousands more planned, the health implications should be of concern to the Scottish Government and at least until further studies and review of the evidence, as suggested by the British Medical Journal, no more should be constructed within two kilometres of homes.

The Scottish Government was made aware at the time of the BMJ article but chose not to take it on board.

Dr James Weir,

Glenlora Cottage,

Lochwinnoch.

Etowa County Residents Ecstatic! Wind Leases Terminated, Wind Pushers Leave Town!

August 20, 2014 / 1957chev / Leave a comment

Wind energy company pulling out of Cherokee, Etowah County projects, opposition says

on August 19, 2014

CENTRE, Alabama — Groups opposed to a proposed wind farm project in Cherokee and Etowah counties say the company behind the development has informed them that it will not be building a wind farm in Alabama.

According to a document filed July 9 in Cherokee County Probate Court, Pioneer Green Energy President Andrew Bowman signed a memorandum terminating a lease to about 1,889 acres of property, slated to be developed for the project.

Mitzi Gibbs Eaker, with No Wind Alabama, said a similar agreement was signed in Etowah County.

Charlie Stewart, the attorney for Pioneer Green, had no comment beyond the filed documents. Company officials referred media inquiries to Stewart.

Pioneer Green Energy announced last year it planned to develop wind energy projects in Cherokee and Etowah counties, and said land leases had already been secured.

Five Cherokee County residents filed suit in an attempt to stop the development, and a group of Etowah County residents also filed suit, opposing the project in their county.

Pioneer Green later announced the $40 million Cherokee County project, which called for seven to eight turbines, probably would not begin construction until 2015. Company officials said the larger Etowah County project, which projected 30 to 45 turbines costing $160 million, probably would begin no earlier than the end of 2015.

Residents said they opposed the project for several reasons – among them environmental and property value concerns, noise, the change to the landscape and the long-term prospects of the development. “No Wind Alabama” took its name from what it said was the reason why wind developments have largely avoided the South -because of a lack of wind energy to supply sufficient power.

Pioneer Green officials countered that wind energy technology has improved to the point where wind could be used in areas earlier thought unable to support it.

Ginny Shaver, a Leesburg resident who opposed the project, said the turning point was in getting legislation passed calling for design specifications, setbacks and other regulations.

“When we got the local bills, that was the winning moment in my eyes,” Shaver said. “We had so much support from residents, in our groups, and it was just good, old fashioned lobbying from the people. From there, it was contacting legislators, making trips to Montgomery. It was literally a David versus Goliath thing. We didn’t have money, but we had people, and it was just a question of getting information out and educating folks.”

Eaker, who said she opposed the project because it would have negatively impacted her parents’ property in Etowah County, said she never felt confident of the outcome until attorneys informed her of the documents today.

“The residents are ecstatic that they can get back to their lives as normal,” she said. “We never felt confident. We always wondered what they had in their back pocket. It was only when we learned that the leases had been terminated that we knew it was really over.”

For All the People Who Have Asked or Wondered about the “Copycat” website….

August 20, 2014October 19, 2014 / 1957chev / 2 Comments

There are 2 people that resigned from my Mothers Against Wind Turbines group, who are trying to run their own group, and are using my name. I am delighted that they are starting their own group, but disgusted, that they are trying to steal my name. My trademarked name. It is the name I came up with, while looking for a way to protect my son, as well as help other families protect their children. My story is on my blog, but surprisingly enough, they have put it on their mothersagainstturbines.com website, and refuse to remove it, even though I have asked them repeatedly, to do so. I want everyone to know, I do NOT endorse what these people are doing, I have no involvement with these people, and I am working toward resolving this issue.

I want to thank everyone who has been patient while this mess gets straightened out. Shellie Correia

The Original Mother Against Wind Turbines

® r for a registered trademark. The owner of a registered trademark may commence legal proceedings for trademark infringement to prevent unauthorized use of that trademark. However, registration is not required. The owner of a common law trademark may also file suit, but an unregistered mark may be protectable only within the geographical area within which it has been used or in geographical areas into which it may be reasonably expected to expand.

*****IMPORTANT*****

It has been brought to my attention, that the people using my name, Mothers Against Wind Turbines, with inc stuck at the end of it, are soliciting the people of West Lincoln, for money. These are the same individuals that resigned, and then snuck around, behind my back, and took all of the money out of my MAWT account. Thousands of dollars that had been earned by myself, and some supporters from the community. They had NO right to do this. I would highly recommend that any donations toward the wind fight go directly to: http://swearontario.wix.com/swearontario Thank you, Shellie Correia

Main Stream Media, Not Reporting Honestly, When it Comes to Wind Turbines…

August 19, 2014August 19, 2014 / 1957chev / Leave a comment

ABC’s Pro-Wind Power Bias Exposed as a National Scandal

August 19, 2014 by stopthesethings

Ever had the feeling that certain quarters of the media give the wind industry an easy run?

Australia’s National broad-sheet, The Australian stands as an exception; publishing plenty of pieces that, quite rightly, highlight the obscene cost and spurious “benefits” of the mandatory Renewable Energy Target and its product: the wind industry (for just a few examples, see our posts hereand here and here and here and here).

Not so, over at “your” ABC. The ABC (aka “Aunty”) is referred to as “the National Broadcaster”; it has numerous TV channels and radio stations that broadcast news and current affairs across the country. It is fully funded by Australian taxpayers to the tune of around $1.3 billion annually.

When it comes to renewable energy, and the wind industry in particular, the ABC runs a consistent narrative that touts the purported benefits, but rarely, if ever, delves into the fundamental flaws of trying to rely on highly unpredictable, unreliable and intermittent wind power. Moreover, the ABC avoids any investigation or analysis of the massive stream of subsidies added to power bills and directed to wind power outfits in the form of Renewable Energy Certificates (RECs), courtesy of the mandatory RET (see our post here).

Indeed, when confronted with that – inconvenient – part of the ABC’s pro-wind industry narrative, the ABC’s journalists become defensive and appear to act as advocates for the wind industry, rather than advocating for the Australian taxpayer and power consumer (ie, those that pay for the ABC) – as in this 7.30 interview of the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry’s Chief Economist Burchell Wilson (see our post here).

The wind industry puff pieces – often engineered by wind industry spin doctors, the Clean Energy Council – put up by the ABC conflate the issue of climate change with wind farms time and time again. If there’s a mention of the former, there’s almost certain to be an image and/or reference to the latter.

The ABC’s climate change narrative puts wind power up as THE solution to climate change, deliberately ignoring the facts; namely the need for 100% of its capacity to be backed up 100% of the time by fossil fuel generation sources, which means, therefore, that wind power cannot and will never reduce CO2 emissions in the electricity sector (see our postshere and here and here and here and here and here and here).

Wind power is not a substitute for conventional generation sources and – if CO2 is the problem – presents as a solution to nothing (see our post here).

The wind industry has never produced a shred of evidence to show that wind power has reduced CO2 emissions in Australia’s electricity sector. To the contrary of wind industry claims, the result of trying to incorporate wind power into a coal/gas fired grid is increased CO2 emissions (see thisEuropean paper here; this Irish paper here; this English paper here; and this Dutch study here). But, despite the evidence, the gullible and naive that pass for journalists at the ABC suck up the drivel spouted by the wind industry and its parasites, and present wind industry spin as gospel fact.

What’s that they say about never letting the facts get in the way of a good story?

With news that PM, Tony Abbott, his Treasurer, Joe Hockey and Finance Minister, Mathias Cormann have joined forces on a mission to scrap the mandatory RET outright, the ABC immediately went into damage control, trotting out the “usual suspects” – spin doctors from the Climate Institute and Clean Energy Council hell-bent on saving the RET for the benefit of their paymasters; and giving panic stricken rent-seekers, like Infigen an unchallenged forum to plead for policy mercy.

On ABC’s News 24 (and elsewhere on the ABC) wind industry cheer squad, the Climate Institute trotted out “modelling” based on a complete fiction that subsidies to wind power outfits will drop from $70 per MWh in 2020 to around $10 per MWh by 2030.

The starry-eyed presenters at the ABC might have been able to challenge that transparent myth if they had bothered to take a cursory peek at the legislation that makes up the mandatory RET and applied a little good old fashioned arithmetic to its terms. By 2020, the RECs issued to wind power outfits (1 REC per MWh dispatched) will be worth at least $65 – and are expected to trade at around $100 by then – which means the subsidy extracted from power consumers and directed to wind power outfits will be worth at least $65 per MWh and, more likely, $100 per MWh. Between 2020 and 2031, the REC Tax/Subsidy will add between $36 billion and $50 billion to Australian power consumers’ bills (see our post here). But simple and hard facts are lost or ignored as “inconvenient” and “unhelpful” to the ABC’s pro-wind industry “narrative”.

More than just a little suspicious that the ABC is infected by groupthink and could, just maybe, be a teensy-weensy bit biased in favour of renewables, the Institute of Public Affairs commissioned independent research to see if their hunch had something in it.

Here’s The Australian on the – not so surprising – findings.

Environment of fear as ABC fails bias test
The Australian
James Paterson
12 August 2014

THE ABC is not like any other broadcaster. With more than $1 billion in public funding, we rightly demand the ABC be rigorously fair, balanced and impartial.

On energy policy, we now know the ABC fails that test. As reported in The Australian yesterday, the Institute of Public Affairs released research that conclusively demonstrates the ABC’s bias against fossil fuels and in favour of renewable energy.

Energy policy is vital to our prosperity. Despite an abundance of natural resources, Australians pay among the highest electricity prices in the world, as a direct result of policy choices that have unquestionably been influenced by media coverage. However, this analysis could easily be replicated with the same results in other areas of ABC coverage.

In March, the IPA commissioned the independent media monitoring agency iSentia to analyse the ABC’s coverage of energy policy issues in relation to the coalmining industry, the coal-seam gas industry and the renewable energy industry. In the largest study of its kind, iSentia analysed 2359 separate ABC reports over a six-month period on these industries across national, metropolitan and regional radio and television.

The results were striking. iSentia found an astonishing 52 per cent of all ABC reports on renewable energy were favourable. Just 10.8 per cent were unfavourable.

Yet only 15.9 per cent of coalmining stories were favourable, while 31.6 per cent were unfavourable. And just 12.1 per cent of coal-seam gas stories were favourable and 43.6 per cent unfavourable. The renewable energy industry is heavily reliant on subsidies and regulatory favours via the mandatory renewable energy target. Indeed, independent modelling conducted by Deloitte Access Economics for the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry has found the RET alone will cost the Australian economy $29 billion by 2020, push up power prices for households and businesses and kill 5000 jobs.

Yet iSentia found only 14 stories that cast the economic impact of the renewable energy industry in an unfavourable light. An incredible 117 stories suggested that renewable energy had a positive economic impact.

CSG and coalmining generate thousands of jobs and billions of dollars of exports, without government subsidies or regulatory favours, but the ABC was obsessed with the potential environmental impacts of the fossil fuels.

During the sample period, only 37 stories were broadcast that depicted the economic impact of the coal industry in a positive light, against 115 that suggested the industry would have a negative environmental impact. The benefits brought by CSG to the Australian economy merited the ABC’s attention only 52 times, but the assertion the industry would have a negative environmental impact was delivered in 259 stories.

iSentia found — surprise, surprise — that hopeful language featured in 93 stories on renewable energy, compared with 21 stories on CSG. The language of fear was used in 306 stories on CSG compared with 51 stories on renewable energy.

That’s hardly surprising given the interviewees. On coal-seam gas, the ABC’s go-to man is NSW Greens MP Jeremy Buckingham, quoted in 92 stories — more than double the next most prominent guest. While federal Environment Minister Greg Hunt was the most quoted in stories about coalmining, a close second was Queensland Greens senator Larissa Waters.

On both radio and television, and across regional, metropolitan and national programs, the ABC consistently and overwhelmingly favoured renewable energy and treated the coalmining and coal-seam gas industries with extreme disfavour. This suggests the problem of bias at the ABC is endemic across the organisation.

If, as David Marr said, you have to be a leftie to be a journalist, then those who choose to work at a public broadcaster instead of a commercial outlet are even more likely to be left-wing. Once surrounded by others of a similar world view, and insulated from their audiences by the absence of a commercial imperative to seek advertising, it’s predictable that the personal preferences of journalists dominate coverage.

If bias at the ABC is systemic, only structural reform will solve it. A new board or management won’t change the culture. Privatising the ABC is the only way to ensure taxpayers’ money is not used to fund biased coverage.

James Paterson is director of communications at the Institute of Public Affairs.
The Australian

The Australian’s Editor had this to say.

ABC all puff and wind on coal
The Australian
12 August 2014

IF the national broadcaster realised the climate change debate was about facts and options rather than motives and agendas, it might be able to bring itself to discuss the implications and possible causes of more than 15 years without a rise in global average temperatures. The now notorious groupthink at Aunty — outed by none other than its former chairman Maurice Newman — can’t seem to cope with raising this global warming pause lest it insinuate some scepticism about the causes and trajectory of climate change.

That any group of inquiring minds could be so timid about dealing with reality is troubling enough, but when you consider this cohort is paid by taxpayers for the express purpose of providing balanced, objective and comprehensive communications about relevant facts and opinions, it approaches a national scandal. The world’s most prominent climate scientists seem to be capable of discussing how the climate is defying models without abandoning their alarm, retreating from their scientific theories or being isolated by their peers. But at the ABC, where they perhaps see themselves as a foothold of enlightenment holding back the hordes of capitalist exploitation and scientific denialism, we can only assume that they can’t handle the truth.

And so it is, presumably for the same reasons, with discussion of energy issues. Because the ABC has religion on climate — we saw in an Institute of Public Affairs report yesterday — it is intent on portraying coal as the devil and renewable energy as the saviour. Now, even if we were generous and said this ultimately might be the case, it does not excuse important facts about coal versus renewables in the here and now being ignored or misrepresented. The economic case is abundantly clear thanks to the overwhelming cost advantages of coal in electricity generation and its contribution to GDP. Coal generates 70 per cent of our electricity and more than 40 per cent worldwide. It is a $120 billion export industry, making us the second largest exporter after Indonesia. And, as the IPA reports, the cost per megawatt hour of coal-fired power is about $35, whereas wind and solar generation is typically at least three times the cost and available only a third of the time.

Yet ABC coverage gives three times more favourable coverage to renewable energy over coal, and in return provides three times more negative reporting on coal over renewables. Surprisingly the ratios are even worse — less favourable coverage and more negative — for coal-seam gas, even though this is the resource that has revolutionalised the energy sector worldwide by producing affordable baseload generation with about half the emissions of coal. Carried out by media monitors iSentia, which analysed 2359 reports over six months, the survey found the “language of fear” was used in more than a quarter of the CSG stories, a fifth of coal stories but about one in 20 renewable reports.

The ABC tends to discount the economic benefits of coal and CSG, preferring to focus on perceived environmental harm, while it trumpets the green benefits of renewables, tends to ignore costs and impracticalities but exaggerates potential economic gains. As Bjorn Lomborg often points out in these pages (ridiculously decried as a sceptic for his trouble), the climate challenge demands consideration of economic imperatives: costs, benefits, options and alternatives. Taxpayers deserve that debate. They can handle it.
The Australian

Wind Turbines are Bad for our Health. No More Denying!

August 15, 2014August 15, 2014 / 1957chev / Leave a comment

Scotland’s Toxic Shock: Wind Farms Poisoning Neighbours

August 15, 2014 by stopthesethings

Some time back, in our post “The Breakout” we talked about just how sick and tired we all are of crippling wind power driven electricity prices, how those unfortunates stuck with giant fans are sick and constantly tired as a result of incessant and debilitating low-frequency turbine noise – and how the world is growing tired of the nauseating stream of wind industry corruption, lies and deceit.

Adverse interference with water tables is just another “wonderful” feature of “eco-friendly” wind farms. The largest turbines require a steel reinforced concrete base of around 400 m³.

The base itself – depending on the rock strata – for 3MW turbines will be set up to 30 m below the surface and – if the soil is unstable and rock anchors are required – reinforced concrete pillars are drilled up to 90 m below the surface and literally screwed into the rock strata. In either event, there will be obvious disturbance of – and interference with – underground water or streams percolating underground.

Wind power outfits routinely lie about the impact of their giant fans on groundwater. One of them – Scottish Power – was caught out in Bonnie Scotland not only poisoning the local inhabitants drinking from their water supply – the water supply it polluted – but lying and obfuscating in classic wind weasel fashion about the harm that it is causing to human health (see our post here).

Since then, the list of environmental havoc caused by wind farms across Scotland has grown to such proportions as to be fairly called an unmitigated ecological disaster. Here’s the Sunday Post cataloging just some of the trail of toxic destruction caused by the roll-out of wind power across the Highlands.

Special Investigation: Toxic wind turbines
Sunday Post
Derek Lambie
23 March 2014

Damning evidence of wind farms polluting the Scottish countryside can today be revealed by The Sunday Post.

Scotland’s environmental watchdog has probed more than 100 incidents involving turbines in just six years, including diesel spills, dirty rivers, blocked drains and excessive noise.

Alarmingly, they also include the contamination of drinking water and the indiscriminate dumping of waste, with warning notices issued to a handful of energy giants.

The revelations come just a week after our investigation showed £1.8 billion in Government subsidies have been awarded to operators to build turbines since Alex Salmond took office in 2007.

Anti-wind farm campaigners yesterday insisted Scotland’s communities are now “under siege” and demanded an independent inquiry into the environmental damage.

Murdo Fraser MSP, convener of Holyrood’s Economy, Energy and Tourism Committee, said: “I am both surprised and concerned by the scale of these incidents.

“The fact there were more than 100 complaints is a dismal record. This should serve as a wake-up call that wind energy is not as clean and green as is being suggested.” He added: “What’s worse is that the current Scottish Government seems to have an obsession about wind power and the expansion in the number of turbines shows no signs of relenting any time soon.”

Promotion of green energy, particularly the growth of onshore and off-shore wind farms, has been one of the SNP’s key policies since 2007.

The Scottish Government’s target is to generate the equivalent of 100% of the country’s electricity consumption, and 11% of heat demand, from renewables by 2020.

In recent years, ministers have invested heavily in the sector, insisting Scotland has a quarter of all of Europe’s wind energy potential.

But wind power is becoming increasingly unpopular, with giant turbines now scattered across much of the Scottish countryside.

There are now 219 operational wind farms in Scotland, with at least 2,400 turbines between them.

Moray has the most sites, with 20 in operation, while Orkney has the most turbines, with 600 across the archipelago, although the majority are owned by farmers and other individuals.

Now, we can reveal the Scottish Environment Protection Agency has investigated 130 ‘pollution reports’ connected to wind farms or turbines over the past six years. In June 2012, elevated levels of the banned insecticide Dieldrin were found in samples from a private drinking water supply in Aberdeenshire.

A redacted SEPA report, obtained under Freedom of Information, states: “It was noted a wind turbine had recently been erected by the nearby farmer.”

Run-off from the construction of a wind farm near Loch Fyne in February 2012 caused concern that fish had stopped feeding, with SEPA officers discovering a burn was “running brown” and that “a noticeable slick on Loch Fyne was visible”.

In another incident in November 2011, 1,000 litres of oil leaked from a turbine at the Clyde wind farm in Abington, Lanarkshire, resulting in an emergency clean-up operation.

Warning letters have been sent by the environment agency to a number of operators, including Siemens, after another fuel spill at the same 152-turbine site four months later.

A report on that incident states: “Siemens…maintained it was under control. However…operators who then visited the area did not see any action being taken and fuel ponding at the base of the generator”.

A warning was issued to Scottish and Southern Energy in February 2011 after the Tombane burn, near the Griffin wind farm in Perthshire, turned yellow as a result of poor drainage.

The same firm was sent another letter in June that year after SEPA found high levels of silt in a burn near a wind farm in Elvanfoot, Lanarkshire.

Officers also then discovered “significant damage” to 50 metres of land and found “the entire area had been stripped of vegetation” as a result of unauthorized work to divert water.

Other incidents investigated since 2007 include odours, excessive noise from turbines and heavy goods vehicles and the indiscriminate dumping of waste and soil.

Dr John Constable, director of the Renewable Energy Foundation, a charity that publishes data on the energy sector, said: “The new information from SEPA deepens concerns about the corrupting effect of overly generous subsidies to wind power. Many will wonder whether wind companies are just too busy counting their money to take proper care of the environment.”

Linda Holt, spokeswoman for action group Scotland Against Spin, said: “A lot of environmentalists actually oppose wind farms for reasons like this. If you go to wind farms they are odd, eerie, places that drive away wildlife, never mind people. The idea they are environmentally-friendly is not true — they can be hostile. We have always suspected they can do great harm to the landscape and now we have proof.”

Officials at SEPA stressed not all 130 complaints were found to be a direct result of wind farms, with some caused by “agricultural and human activities” near sites and others still unsubstantiated.

A spokesman added: “While a number of these complaints have been in connection with individual wind farms these are generally during the construction phase of the development and relate to instances of increased silt in watercourses as a result of run-off from the site. SEPA, alongside partner organisations, continues to actively engage with the renewable energy industry to ensure best practice is followed and measures put in place to mitigate against any impact on the local water environment.”

Joss Blamire, senior policy manager at Scottish Renewables, insisted the “biggest threat” to the countryside is climate change and not wind farms. He added: “Onshore wind projects are subject to rigorous environmental assessments. We work closely with groups, including SEPA, the RSPB and Scottish Natural Heritage to ensure the highest conservation and biodiversity standards are met.”

The revelations come just months after evidence emerged of contamination in the water supply to homes in the shadow of Europe’s largest wind farm.

People living near Whitelee, which has 215 turbines, complained of severe vomiting and diarrhoea with water samples showing high readings of E. Coli and other coliform bacteria.

Tests carried out between May 2010 and April last year by local resident Dr Rachel Connor, a retired clinical radiologist, showed only three out of 36 samples met acceptable standards.

Operators Scottish Power denied causing the pollution, but admitted not warning anyone that drinking water from 10 homes in Ayrshire was, at times, grossly contaminated.

Dr Connor said: “I would expect this likely contamination of drinking water must be happening all over Scotland. If there is not an actual cover-up, then there is probably complacency to the point of negligence by developers and statutory authorities.”
Sunday Post

According to Scottish Renewable’s head spin doctor, Joss Blamire, the real threat to peoples’ health is “climate change”. Try telling that to the Whitelee wind farm’s victims – suffering severe vomiting and diarrhea caused by E. Coli and other coliform bacteria.

Much to the annoyance of the likes of Joss Blamire, Dr Rachel Connor has done precisely what competent and caring medicos do: she’s examined the evidence, analysed the data and concluded that peoples’ health is suffering as a direct result of water contamination caused by wind farms.

Built on subsidies and lies, wrapped in half-truths, peopled by spin doctors, bullies and thugs, and toxic to the point of making people violently ill – the wind industry represents the greatest economic and environmental fraud of all time. This insanity must end now. In Australia, that means an end to the mandatory RET – the largest transfer of wealth from the poorest to the richest in the history of the Commonwealth (seeour post here). And all that subsidy and suffering for no measurable environmental benefit.

James Delingpole shares a Few “Inconvenient Truths”, About Tom Steyner

August 14, 2014 / 1957chev / Leave a comment

TOM STEYER’S EPIC GREEN FAIL: PART II

by JAMES DELINGPOLE 13 Aug 2014

Tom Steyer, the fossil-fuel powered hedge funder has suffered further setbacks on his $100 million mission to save the world from ‘global warming’ by destroying the US economy.

He is hoping to raise $50 million from left-wing environmentalist billionaire donors for his NextGen political action committee. But so far, it emerged at a renewable energy conference in Aspen, Colorado this week, he has managed to raise just $7 million.

“He wants to raise $50 million that he can match,” a conference organizer told FOX31 Denver. “Right now, he’s raised about $7 [million].

Steyer is continuing to put a brave face on affairs.

Acknowledging that some donors prefer to give to organizations other than NextGen, Steyer believes activists demanding action on climate change will have an impact on the November election. “The ultimate question will be will we have enough money to run the programs we need to run and the answer is yes,” Steyer said. “Definitely, yes.”

But prospective donors may have decided that Steyer is tainted beyond redemption by a string of recent revelations about his murky financial background. As Breitbart reported last month, a fair chunk of this green evangelist’s fortune came from his hedge fund Farallon Capital’s investments in the coal industry. With help from Steyer’s financing, coal production from Indonesia to China increased annually by 70 million tons – the equivalent, some experts have speculated, of around one melted glacier and thirty drowned baby polar bears per annum.

Though Steyer has since detached himself from his Big Coal financed hedge fund and claims to have seen the light, the suspicion remains that he is rather less interested in saving the planet than he is in lining his own pockets and those of fellow Democrats in the left wing Billionaires Club.

Consider, for example, his mutually beneficial dealings with Nancy Pelosi. Steyer has been a great supporter of the former House speaker, financially and politically. By strange coincidence, Steyer’s business projects have been boosted by around $1 billion in government aid, much of it announced by Pelosi herself.

In 2004, reports Free Beacon, Steyer’s Farallon Capital bought two million feet of commercial real estate in the Mission Bay area. At the time, according to the San Francisco Business Times, it was “decrepit and seemingly abandoned.”

But, reports the Daily Signal, with the help of fairy godmother Pelosi this soon changed. She waved her wand (made of yew, it is rumoured, like Lord Voldemort’s) and showered the area with taxpayer-funded gifts: a $942 million public transportation link between Mission Bay and downtown San Francisco; $10 million in stimulus funds for a Mission Bay biotech cluster; $25 million for the repair or removal of piers in the area. Steyer has claimed there is no link between his political donations and these government grants – but Farallon has certainly benefited handsomely from this non-arrangement.

Another of Steyer’s completely un-business-related enthusiasms is his fervent opposition to the Keystone XL pipeline. This, of course, has nothing whatsoever to do with the fact that he has long had a stake in a rival pipeline called Kinder Morgan. Though he promised that he would divest himself of financial interests in Kinder Morgan by the end of 2013, it is not clear that he has yet done so.

Posted This To Prove that Wind Turbines are NOT Green!

August 13, 2014 / 1957chev / 3 Comments

In China, the true cost of Britain’s clean, green wind power experiment:

Pollution on a disastrous scale

By SIMON PARRY in China and ED DOUGLAS in Scotland

This toxic lake poisons Chinese farmers, their children and their land. It is what’s left behind after making the magnets for Britain’s latest wind turbines… and, as a special Live investigation reveals, is merely one of a multitude of environmental sins committed in the name of our new green Jerusalem

The lake of toxic waste at Baotou, China, which as been dumped by the rare earth processing plants in the background

On the outskirts of one of China’s most polluted cities, an old farmer stares despairingly out across an immense lake of bubbling toxic waste covered in black dust. He remembers it as fields of wheat and corn.

Yan Man Jia Hong is a dedicated Communist. At 74, he still believes in his revolutionary heroes, but he despises the young local officials and entrepreneurs who have let this happen.

‘Chairman Mao was a hero and saved us,’ he says. ‘But these people only care about money. They have destroyed our lives.’

Vast fortunes are being amassed here in Inner Mongolia; the region has more than 90 per cent of the world’s legal reserves of rare earth metals, and specifically neodymium, the element needed to make the magnets in the most striking of green energy producers, wind turbines.

Live has uncovered the distinctly dirty truth about the process used to extract neodymium: it has an appalling environmental impact that raises serious questions over the credibility of so-called green technology.

The reality is that, as Britain flaunts its environmental credentials by speckling its coastlines and unspoiled moors and mountains with thousands of wind turbines, it is contributing to a vast man-made lake of poison in northern China. This is the deadly and sinister side of the massively profitable rare-earths industry that the ‘green’ companies profiting from the demand for wind turbines would prefer you knew nothing about.

Hidden out of sight behind smoke-shrouded factory complexes in the city of Baotou, and patrolled by platoons of security guards, lies a five-mile wide ‘tailing’ lake. It has killed farmland for miles around, made thousands of people ill and put one of China’s key waterways in jeopardy.

This vast, hissing cauldron of chemicals is the dumping ground for seven million tons a year of mined rare earth after it has been doused in acid and chemicals and processed through red-hot furnaces to extract its components.

Wind power’s uncertainties don’t end with intermittency. There is huge controversy about how much energy a wind farm will produce (Pictured above, wind turbines in Dun Law, Scotland)

Rusting pipelines meander for miles from factories processing rare earths in Baotou out to the man-made lake where, mixed with water, the foul-smelling radioactive waste from this industrial process is pumped day after day. No signposts and no paved roads lead here, and as we approach security guards shoo us away and tail us. When we finally break through the cordon and climb sand dunes to reach its brim, an apocalyptic sight greets us: a giant, secret toxic dump, made bigger by every wind turbine we build.

The lake instantly assaults your senses. Stand on the black crust for just seconds and your eyes water and a powerful, acrid stench fills your lungs.

For hours after our visit, my stomach lurched and my head throbbed. We were there for only one hour, but those who live in Mr Yan’s village of Dalahai, and other villages around, breathe in the same poison every day.

Retired farmer Su Bairen, 69, who led us to the lake, says it was initially a novelty – a multi-coloured pond set in farmland as early rare earth factories run by the state-owned Baogang group of companies began work in the Sixties.

‘At first it was just a hole in the ground,’ he says. ‘When it dried in the winter and summer, it turned into a black crust and children would play on it. Then one or two of them fell through and drowned in the sludge below. Since then, children have stayed away.’

As more factories sprang up, the banks grew higher, the lake grew larger and the stench and fumes grew more overwhelming.

‘It turned into a mountain that towered over us,’ says Mr Su. ‘Anything we planted just withered, then our animals started to sicken and die.’

People too began to suffer. Dalahai villagers say their teeth began to fall out, their hair turned white at unusually young ages, and they suffered from severe skin and respiratory diseases. Children were born with soft bones and cancer rates rocketed.

Official studies carried out five years ago in Dalahai village confirmed there were unusually high rates of cancer along with high rates of osteoporosis and skin and respiratory diseases. The lake’s radiation levels are ten times higher than in the surrounding countryside, the studies found.

Since then, maybe because of pressure from the companies operating around the lake, which pump out waste 24 hours a day, the results of ongoing radiation and toxicity tests carried out on the lake have been kept secret and officials have refused to publicly acknowledge health risks to nearby villages.

There are 17 ‘rare earth metals’ – the name doesn’t mean they are necessarily in short supply; it refers to the fact that the metals occur in scattered deposits of minerals, rather than concentrated ores. Rare earth metals usually occur together, and, once mined, have to be separated.

Villagers Su Bairen, 69, and Yan Man Jia Hong, 74, stand on the edge of the six-mile-wide toxic lake in Baotou, China that has devastated their farmland and ruined the health of the people in their community

Neodymium is commonly used as part of a Neodymium-Iron-Boron alloy (Nd2Fe14B) which, thanks to its tetragonal crystal structure, is used to make the most powerful magnets in the world. Electric motors and generators rely on the basic principles of electromagnetism, and the stronger the magnets they use, the more efficient they can be. It’s been used in small quantities in common technologies for quite a long time – hi-fi speakers, hard drives and lasers, for example. But only with the rise of alternative energy solutions has neodymium really come to prominence, for use in hybrid cars and wind turbines. A direct-drive permanent-magnet generator for a top capacity wind turbine would use 4,400lb of neodymium-based permanent magnet material.

In the pollution-blighted city of Baotou, most people wear face masks everywhere they go.

‘You have to wear one otherwise the dust gets into your lungs and poisons you,’ our taxi driver tells us, pulling over so we can buy white cloth masks from a roadside hawker.

Posing as buyers, we visit Baotou Xijun Rare Earth Co Ltd. A large billboard in front of the factory shows an idyllic image of fields of sheep grazing in green fields with wind turbines in the background.

In a smartly appointed boardroom, Vice General Manager Cheng Qing tells us proudly that his company is the fourth biggest producer of rare earth metals in China, processing 30,000 tons a year. He leads us down to a complex of primitive workshops where workers with no protective clothing except for cotton gloves and face masks ladle molten rare earth from furnaces with temperatures of 1,000°C.

The result is 1.5kg bricks of neodymium, packed into blue barrels weighing 250kg each. Its price has more than doubled in the past year – it now costs around £80 per kilogram. So a 1.5kg block would be worth £120 – or more than a fortnight’s wages for the workers handling them. The waste from this highly toxic process ends up being pumped into the lake looming over Dalahai.

The state-owned Baogang Group, which operates most of the factories in Baotou, claims it invests tens of millions of pounds a year in environmental protection and processes the waste before it is discharged.

According to Du Youlu of Baogang’s safety and environmental protection department, seven million tons of waste a year was discharged into the lake, which is already 100ft high and growing by three feet each year.

In what appeared an attempt to shift responsibility onto China’s national leaders and their close control of the rare earths industry, he added: ‘The tailing is a national resource and China will ultimately decide what will be done with the lake.’

Jamie Choi, an expert on toxics for Greenpeace China, says villagers living near the lake face horrendous health risks from the carcinogenic and radioactive waste.

‘There’s not one step of the rare earth mining process that is not disastrous for the environment. Ores are being extracted by pumping acid into the ground, and then they are processed using more acid and chemicals.

Inside the Baotou Xijun Rare Earth refinery in Baotou, where neodymium, essential in new wind turbine magnets, is processed

Finally they are dumped into tailing lakes that are often very poorly constructed and maintained. And throughout this process, large amounts of highly toxic acids, heavy metals and other chemicals are emitted into the air that people breathe, and leak into surface and ground water. Villagers rely on this for irrigation of their crops and for drinking water. Whenever we purchase products that contain rare earth metals, we are unknowingly taking part in massive environmental degradation and the destruction of communities.’

The fact that the wind-turbine industry relies on neodymium, which even in legal factories has a catastrophic environmental impact, is an irony Ms Choi acknowledges.

‘It is a real dilemma for environmentalists who want to see the growth of the industry,’ she says. ‘But we have the responsibility to recognise the environmental destruction that is being caused while making these wind turbines.’

It’s a long way from the grim conditions in Baotou to the raw beauty of the Monadhliath mountains in Scotland. But the environmental damage wind turbines cause will be felt here, too. These hills are the latest battleground in a war being fought all over Britain – and particularly in Scotland – between wind-farm developers and those opposed to them.

Cameron McNeish, a hill walker and TV presenter who lives in the Monadhliath, campaigned for almost a decade against the Dunmaglass wind farm before the Scottish government gave the go-ahead in December. Soon, 33 turbines will be erected on the hills north of the upper Findhorn valley.

McNeish is passionate about this landscape: ‘It’s vast and wild and isolated,’ he says. Huge empty spaces, however, are also perfect for wind turbines and unlike the nearby Cairngorms there are no landscape designations to protect this area. When the Labour government put in place the policy framework and subsidies to boost renewable energy, the Monadhliath became a mouth-watering opportunity.

People have been trying to make real money from Scottish estates like Jack Hayward’s Dunmaglass. Hayward, a Bermuda-based property developer and former chairman of Wolverhampton Wanderers, struck a deal with renewable energy company RES which, campaigners believe, will earn the estate an estimated £9 million over the next 25 years.

Each of the turbines at Dunmaglass will require servicing, which means a network of new and improved roads 20 miles long being built across the hills. They also need 1,500 tons of concrete foundations to keep them upright in a strong wind, which will scar the area.

Dunmaglass is just one among scores of wind farms in Scotland with planning permission. Scores more are still in the planning system. There are currently 3,153 turbines in the UK overall, with a maximum capacity of 5,203 megawatts.

Around half of them are in Scotland. First Minister Alex Salmond and the Scottish government have said they want to get 80 per cent of Scotland’s electricity from renewables by 2020, which means more turbines spread across the country’s hills and moors.

Many environmental pressure groups share Salmond’s view. Friends of the Earth opposes the Arctic being ruined by oil extraction, but when it comes to damaging Scotland’s wilderness with concrete and hundreds of miles of roads, they say wind energy is worth it as the impact of climate change has to be faced.

‘No way of generating energy is 100 per cent clean and problem-free,’ says Craig Bennett, director of policy and campaigns at Friends of the Earth.

‘Wind energy causes far fewer problems than coal, gas or nuclear. If we don’t invest in green energy, business experts have warned that future generations will be landed with a bill that will dwarf the current financial crisis. But we need to ensure the use of materials like neodymium and concrete is kept to a minimum, that turbines use recycled materials wherever possible and that they are carefully sited to the reduce the already minimal impact on bird populations.’

But Helen McDade, head of policy at the John Muir Trust, a small but feisty campaign group dedicated to protecting Scotland’s wild lands, also points out that leaving aside the damage to the landscape, nobody is really sure how much carbon is being released by the renewable energy construction boom. Peat moors lock up huge amounts of carbon, which gets released when it’s drained to put up a turbine.

Environmental considerations aside, as the percentage of electricity generated by wind increases, renewable energy is coming under a lot more scrutiny now for one simple reason – money. We pay extra for wind power – around twice as much – because it can’t compete with other forms of electricity generation. Under the Renewable Obligation (RO), suppliers have to buy a percentage of their electricity from renewable generators and can hand that cost on to consumers. If they don’t, they pay a fine instead.

One unit cell of Nd2Fe14b, the alloy used in neodymium magnets. The structure of the atoms gives the alloy its magnetic strength, due to a phenomenon known as magnetocrystalline anisotropy

There’s a simple beauty about RO for the government. Even though it’s defined as a tax, it doesn’t come out of pay packets but is stuck on our electricity bills. That has made funding wind farms a lot easier for the government than more cost-effective energy-efficiency measures.

‘If you want a grant for an energy conservation project on your house,’ says Helen McDade, ‘the money comes from taxes. But investment for turbines comes from energy companies.’

Already, RO adds £1.4 billion to our bills each year to provide a pot of money to pay power companies for their ‘green’ electricity. By 2020, the figure will have risen to somewhere between £5 billion and £10 billion.

When he was Chancellor, Gordon Brown added another decade to these price guarantees, extending the RO scheme to 2037, guaranteeing the subsidy for more than a quarter of a century.

It’s not surprising there’s been an avalanche of wind-farm applications in the Highlands. Wind speeds are stronger, land is cheaper and the government loves you.

‘You go to a landowner,’ McDade says, ‘and offer him what is peanuts to an energy company yet keeps him happily on his estate so they can put up a wind farm, which in turn raises ordinary people’s electricity bills. There’s a social issue here that doesn’t get discussed.’

By 2020, environmental regulation will be adding 31 per cent to our bills. That’s £160 green tax out of an average annual bill of £512. As costs rise, more people will be driven into fuel poverty. When he was secretary of state at the Department of Energy and Climate Change, Ed Miliband decreed that these increases should be offset by improvements in energy efficiencies.

It’s a view shared by his successor Chris Huhne, who says inflation due to RO will be effectively one per cent. Britain’s low-income families, facing hikes in petrol and food costs, will hope he’s right.

Individual households aren’t the only ones shouldering the costs. Industry faces an even bigger burden. By 2020, environmental charges will add 33 per cent to industry’s energy costs.

Jeremy Nicholson, director of the Energy Intensive Users Group, says that, ‘Industry is getting the worst of both worlds. Around 80 per cent of the contracts for the new Thanet offshore wind farm (off the coast of Kent) went abroad, but the expensive electricity will be paid for here.’

Our current obsession with wind power, according to John Constable of energy think-tank the Renewable Energy Foundation, stems from the decision of the European Union on how to tackle climate change. Instead of just setting targets for reducing emissions, the EU told governments that by 2020, 15 per cent of all the energy we use must come from renewable sources.

Because of how we heat our houses and run our cars with gas and petrol, 30 per cent of electricity needs to come from renewables. And in the absence of other technologies, that means wind turbines. But there’s a structural flaw in the plan, which this winter has brutally exposed.

Study a graph of electricity consumption and it appears amazingly predictable, even down to reduced demand on public holidays. The graph for wind energy output, however, is far less predictable.

Take the figures for December, when we all shivered through sub-zero temperatures and wholesale electricity prices surged. Peak demand for the UK on 20 December was just over 60,000 megawatts. Maximum capacity for wind turbines throughout the UK is 5,891 megawatts, almost ten per cent of that peak demand figure.

Yet on December 20, because winds were light or non-existent, wind energy contributed a paltry 140 megawatts. Despite billions of pounds in investment and subsidies, Britain’s wind-turbine fleet was producing a feeble 2.43 per cent of its own capacity – and little more than 0.2 per cent of the nation’s electricity in the coldest month since records began.

The problems with the intermittency of wind energy are well known. A new network of cables linking ten countries around the North Sea is being suggested to smooth supply and take advantage of 140 gigawatts of offshore wind power. No one knows for sure how much this network will cost, although a figure of £25 billion has been mooted.

The government has also realised that when wind nears its target of 30 per cent, power companies will need more back-up to fill the gap when the wind doesn’t blow. Britain’s total capacity will need to rise from 76 gigawatts up to 120 gigawatts. That overcapacity will need another £50 billion and drive down prices when the wind’s blowing. Power companies are anxious about getting a decent price. Once again, consumers will pay.

Wind power’s uncertainties don’t end with intermittency. There is huge controversy about how much energy a wind farm will produce. Many developers claim their installations will achieve 30 per cent of their maximum output over the course of a year. More sober energy analysts suggest 26 per cent. But even that figure is starting to look generous. In December, the average figure was less than 21 per cent. In the year between October 2009 and September 2010, the average was 23.6 per cent, still nowhere near industry claims.

Then there’s the thorny question of how many homes new installations can power. According to wind farm developers like Scottish and Southern Electricity, a house uses 3.3MWh in a year. Lobby group RenewablesUK – formerly the British Wind Energy Association – gives a figure of 4.7MWh. In the Highlands electricity usage is even higher.

Last year, a report from the Royal Academy of Engineering warned that transforming our energy supply to produce a low-carbon economy would require the biggest investment and social change seen in peacetime. And yet Professor Sue Ion, who led the report, warned, ‘We are nowhere near having a plan.’

So, against the backdrop of environmental catastrophe in China and these less than attractive calculations, could the billions being thrown at wind farms be better spent? Undoubtedly, says John Constable.

‘The government is betting the farm on the throw of a die. What’s happening now is simply reckless.’

NUCLEAR, COAL, SOLAR, HYDRO, WIND: HOW THE ENERGY OPTIONS STACK UP

Enlarge

The British energy market is a hugely complicated and ever-changing landscape. We rely on a number of different sources for our energy – some more efficient than others, some more polluting than others.

Here, you can see how much energy each type contributes, how much they are predicted to contribute in 2020, how much carbon dioxide they generate and how efficient they are.

Renewable energy sources receive varying subsidies – which are added to our energy bills – as a result of the government’s Renewables Obligation, whereas ‘traditional’ sources do not.

Critically, government cost figures do not include subsidies, whereas our measure shows precisely how much money a power station receives for each megawatt-hour (MWh) it produces, which includes the price paid for the energy by the supplier and any applicable subsidy. This is an instant measure of an energy supply’s cost-efficiency; the lower the figure, the less that energy costs to produce.

Note: figures relate to UK energy production. Approximately seven per cent of our electricity comes from imports or other sources

Residents of Slovenia Looking for Protection from Wind Turbines!

August 13, 2014 / 1957chev / 2 Comments

Letter to Slovenia re Known Adverse Health Impacts of Wind Turbine Noise

Mr Diego Loredan, Chairman,
Ms Katarina Dea Zetko,

Civil Initiative for the Protection of Seno žeška Brda

I have been asked by Ms Katarina Dea Zetko to write to you, concerning the proposals to site large industrial wind turbines, 130 metres high, sited as close as 800 metres to homes in rural Slovenia. You are welcome to use this letter to educate others, and to make it publicly available.

In my opinion, based on my first hand knowledge of what has happened to wind turbine neighbours in Australia and elsewhere internationally, this is a recklessly irresponsible and dangerous plan and will inevitably result in serious adverse health effects for citizens of Slovenia who are neighbours of such turbines, out to significant distances. This is happening around the world, and I know of no reason why Slovenian citizens will not have the same adverse health impacts being reported internationally.

Breaches of UN Convention Against Torture

Decisions made by public officials to approve such an unsafe development, or to allow a development to continue to operate in spite of directly causing adverse health consequences such as sleep deprivation and “sensory bombardment from noise”, could be held to be breaches of the UN Convention Against Torture. Both “sleep deprivation” and “sensory bombardment from noise” have been acknowledged as methods of torture by the Physicians for Human Rights. TheUN Committee Against Torture has also specifically acknowledged that sleep deprivation is used as a method of torture.

The Committee against Torture (CAT) has noted that sleep deprivation used for prolonged periods constitutes a breach of the CAT, and is primarily used to break down the will of the detainee. Sleep deprivation can cause impaired memory and cognitive functioning, decreased short term memory, speech impairment, hallucinations, psychosis, lowered immunity, headaches, high blood pressure, cardiovascular disease, stress, anxiety and depression.”

Consequently, behaviour by public officials including specifically elected politicians and public servants in Slovenia, such as approving such a dangerous development, or allowing a wind development to continue to operate, whilst knowing that the turbines are causing adverse health effects from sleep deprivation and sensory bombardment with noise could be held to be a breaches of the UN Convention Against Torture and other Cruel, Inhuman and Degrading Treatment, which I note Slovenia is a signatory to. Article 2 of the UN Convention Against Torture states:

1. Each State Party shall take effective legislative, administrative, judicial or other measures to prevent acts of torture in any territory under its jurisdiction.

2. No exceptional circumstances whatsoever, whether a state of war or a threat of war, internal political instability or any other public emergency, may be invoked as a justification of torture.

3. An order from a superior officer or a public authority may not be invoked as a justification of torture.

Background

By way of background, I am the CEO of the Waubra Foundation, which is a not for profit charity, established in Australia in 2010, to advocate for independent multidisciplinary research to investigate the reported health problems being reported by people exposed to infrasound and low frequency noise. Sources of that environmental noise include machinery used in coal mining, turbines used in gas fired power stations, compressors used in refrigeration units and field compressors used in extraction and transportation of gas, as well as industrial horizontal bladed wind turbines. I have worked full time, pro bono for the Foundation since July 2010.

My previous occupation and professional training was in rural general practice, where I worked as a medical practitioner in rural and remote environments in Australia.

I have been accepted to give expert evidence in legal tribunals on this subject in both my own country, Australia, and Canada, and have given evidence at multiple parliamentary inquiries in Australia. I have been involved in facilitating multidisciplinary research and acoustic data collection in Australia, and have been actively collaborating with concerned health practitioners, researchers and acousticians internationally for four years.

What Distance Is Safe?

We don’t know.

The necessary research has not yet been done. Unlike most other products, where prior product safety is established, the wind industry has never been required to show there are no adverse health effects. It will become evident, below, that in fact the wind industry are well aware of the serious health problems their products directly cause, and indeed that they have known for thirty years.

Clinically, we know the impacts of chronic sleep deprivation and chronic stress increase over time with cumulative exposure. These effects from exposure to excessive environmental noise especially at night are very well known, and have been the subject of numerous reports from the World Health Organisation.

We also know that serious adverse health effects including chronic severe sleep deprivation are being reported by residents living up to 10km away from 37 VESTAS V 90 wind turbines (approximately 130 metres from tower base to blade tip) located along a ridge top in Australia, at Waterloo Wind Development. At that location, I am personally aware of the occupants of five households who have either permanently left their homes, or are forced to leave regularly in order to regain their health, some under the instruction of their treating health professionals, who have included local general practitioners (family physicians) or cardiologist. The turbines have been operating almost four years.

We also know that as wind turbines become more powerful power generators (taller towers and longer blades) that their sound energy shifts down to lower frequencies, below 200 Hz. As Danish Professor Henrik Moller pointed out in his paper in 2011, this will predictably cause more “annoyance” symptoms for the neighbours. Therefore a larger buffer distance will be required, if larger wind turbines are used, in order to protect people’s physical and mental health and sleep.

We also know that when wind turbines are sited too close together, with insufficient inter turbine separation distances, that this will increase the generation of infrasound and low frequency noise from upwind bladed wind turbines, and will therefore additionally increase the adverse health effects from “annoyance” symptoms, including repetitive sleep disturbance, which are directly caused by the infrasound and low frequency noise.

The recommended inter turbine spacing separation distance to minimize the generation of turbulence, accepted by acousticians based on aeronautical engineering knowledge has historically been 5 – 8 rotor diameters. The three sites in Australia where population noise impact surveys have been conducted have all had almost all inter turbine separation distances significantly less than the recommended 5 – 8 rotor diameters. Those surveys are at Waterloo 15 (by Mrs Mary Morris), at Macarthur 16 (by Mrs Anne Schafer) and at Cullerin Range (by Mrs Patina Schneider). This may partly explain the number of reports of sleep disturbance from the operating wind turbines, and the distance of impact.

This distance of 10km for reported acoustic impacts is consistent with my knowledge of the acoustic impact zone, from individual residents reports to me, which resulted in our Explicit Cautionary Notice in June 2011 with a ten km suggested buffer zone between wind turbines and homes. Since then, residents who have become sensitized to these frequencies have reported they are noticing impacts out to 17 – 20 km and in some instances even further, particularly at night, when they are downwind, when there is heavy cloud cover, or very cold air and a temperature inversion effect, and where there are multiple wind turbines. These are all acoustic and weather factors long known to acousticians to facilitate sound energy propagation. The residents’ reports are consistent with this knowledge, yet most of the residents (who are generally farmers) have no backgound knowledge in acoustics – they simply report what they experience and the wind and weather conditions at the time.

I note that one of the acoustic consulting firms environmental assessment for a recent wind project proposal in Australia has acknowledged a distance of 10km from cumulative impacts. Marshall Day Acoustics in their report for RATCH re the Mt Emerald wind development have recently referred to 10km in the context of cumulative impacts from other wind developments, and they are now specifically referencing infrasound and low frequency noise. In section 5.6 they stated in their section “review of cumulative impact” (my emphasis in red):

“Separate wind farm developments that are in close proximity to each other have the potential to impact on the same receiver. It is therefore necessary to assess any potential cumulative noise impact on receivers, where such circumstances exist

We understand that there are no other wind farm developments currently planned or operating within 10km of the proposed MEWF. On this basis, cumulative impacts of noise from more than one operating wind farm are not considered further.”

The existence of adverse health effects including repetitive sleep disturbance out to 10km has therefore been specifically confirmed with three population impact surveys conducted in Australia at the Cullerin Range, Waterloo and Macarthur wind developments, which were all presented as evidence in the Cherry Tree legal case in Victoria in October 2013. In that case, the two tribunal members specifically acknowledged the existence of adverse health effects including sleep deprivation in their comments, despite eventually approving the development, “because it was government policy”. In their orders in April 2013, they stated:

” 116 There is evidence before the Tribunal that a number of people living close to wind farms suffer deleterious health effects. The evidence is both direct and anecdotal. There is a uniformity of description of these effects across a number of wind farms, both in south east Australia and North America. Residents complain of suffering sleep disturbance, feelings of anxiety upon awakening, headaches, pressure at the base of the neck and in the head and ears, nausea and loss of balance.

117 In some cases the impacts have been of such gravity that residents have been forced to abandon their homes.

118 On the basis of this evidence it is clear that some residents who live in close proximity to a wind farm experience the symptoms described, and that the experience is not simply imagined.”

The 2012 Waterloo survey by Mrs Morris submitted to the Cherry Tree Tribunal hearing was accepted as the only Australian research included in the recent National Health and Medical Research Council’s (NHMRC) 2014 Systematic Literature Review. The other surveys, conducted in an identical manner by Schneider and Schafer for the Cherry Tree case were not completed in time for the NHMRC nominated cut off date for inclusion in its review (September, 2012), although that rule was inconsistently applied in the final NHMRC Literature review document.

Whilst there are serious concerns about the NHMRC 2014 Literature Review, with respect to the misclassification and exclusion of relevant studies, the 2014 NHMRC systematic literature review did concede that there is research evidence of sleep disturbance / deprivation, “annoyance” symptoms and poorer quality of life in wind turbine neighbours.

Conflict of interest issues concerning a number of members of the NHMRC literature review panel have been identified, and remain unresolved. It would appear these conflicts of interest have indeed had an impact on some of the decisions made by that panel, particularly with respect to directing that certain research should not be considered by the literature review authors.

These conflicts of interest are a serious matter, and were exposed in Parliament by two Federal Senators; Senator John Madigan and Senator Chris Back, who are both directly well aware of the adverse health effects experienced by wind turbine neighbours in Australia.

Other supportive relevant evidence, professional opinions and affidavits used in legal proceedings relating to the distance of impact issue are listed in Appendix 1, at the end of this letter.

Knowledge of Direct Causation Of “annoyance” Symptoms FromILFN in the 1980s

Dr Neil Kelley’s research funded by the US Government in the 1980’s, performed in collaboration with multiple research universities and institutes including two separate branches of NASA and aeronautical faculties established a direct causal relationship between wind turbine generated impulsive infrasound and low frequency noise and what were called “annoyance” symptoms, which included repetitive sleep disturbance and body vibrations.

The direct causal relationship between these frequencies and annoyance symptoms was later confirmed in a laboratory study, which Dr Neil Kelley reported to the American Wind Energy Association conference in 1987. This research resulted in a significant change to the design of horizontal axis wind turbines from downwind bladed to upwind bladed, in order to prevent or minimize the generation of these frequencies, because of their known, established, adverse health effects.

Subsequent research by NASA researchers Shepherd and Hubbard in 1989 established that the new upwind bladed wind turbines could also generate surprisingly elevated levels of infrasound and low frequency noise, when the incoming air was turbulent. Turbulent air is inevitable when wind turbines are sited too close together, hence the critical importance of ensuring sufficient inter turbine separation distances of at least 5–8 rotor diameters, mentioned previously.

However, as you know, from experiences already reported by neighbours to turbines in Slovenia, a single smaller wind turbine can cause the generation of infrasound and low frequency noise, particularly as the blade passes the tower, so one turbine can be enough to cause serious health problems for neighbours who become sensitized to the lower frequency sound energy, if it is sited too close.

Are “Annoyance” Symptoms The Same As “Wind Turbine Syndrome”?

I am aware that Dr Nina Pierpont has already written to you on this subject and confirmed that in her opinion, “Wind Turbine Syndrome”, long denied by the wind industry and some of its vocal supporters in Public Health to exist, has the same symptoms as “annoyance” symptoms, which were reported by Dr Neil Kelley’s research participants, and which have been long known to acousticians working particularly in the area of low frequency noise.

These symptoms were listed by Dr Pierpont in her study and the executive summary, and include sleep deprivation, along with a variety of other disabling symptoms such as severe nausea, vertigo, tinnitus, body vibrations, anxiety symptoms, and numerous other symptoms documented consistently by the various researchers and medical practitioners who have treated these people, which also include physiological stress symptoms.

There are an increasing number of health and acoustics professionals and researchers with direct knowledge of the severity of the reported health problems who are also using the phrase “Wind Turbine Syndrome” to describe the symptoms. These include most recently Dr Colette Bonner, the Deputy Chief Medical Officer for Ireland, and Dr Steven Rauch, Harvard Medical School Professor, and Director of the Massachussets Eye and Ear “Clinical Balance and Vestibular Centre”. Dr Rauch was recently reported in an article as follows:

Dr Steven Rauch, an otologist at the Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary, and a professor at Harvard Medical School, believes WTS is real. Patients who have come to him to discuss WTSsuffer from a “very consistent” collection of symptoms, he says. Rauch compares WTS to migraines, adding that people who suffer from migraines are among the most susceptible to turbines. There’s no existing test of either condition but “nobody questions whether or not migraine is real.”

“The patients deserve the benefit of the doubt,” Rauch says. “It’s clear from the documents that come out of the industry that they’re trying very hard to suppress the notion of WTS and they’ve done it in a way that [involves] a lot of blaming the victim.”

I note that British Acoustician Dr Geoffrey Leventhall who consults extensively for the wind industry, has acknowledged that these symptoms of “annoyance” caused by exposure to environmental noise, are identical to the symptoms of “wind turbine syndrome” and further, that the symptoms have been known to him for years. This view is reinforced by the contents of the Literature Review written by Dr Leventhall for the UK Government Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) in 2003.

I have heard Dr Leventhall acknowledge this specific point that the “annoyance” symptoms are identical to “wind turbine syndrome” symptoms in a presentation he gave, via video link, to a workshop run by the National Health and Medical Research Council, in June 2011 in Canberra. The link to the presentation and powerpoint presentation are available on the National Health and Medical Research Council’s website.

So, to summarise, the key points so far:

1. There is agreement amongst the leading Acoustician used by the wind industry, and a growing number of medical practitioners, including senior government medical practitioners and leading clinicians that “Wind Turbine Syndrome” symptoms exist, and are caused by wind turbine acoustic emissions, and that they include sleep disturbance.

2. There is research from 30 years ago which established a direct causal relationship between acoustic emissions in the infrasound and low frequency noise range and “annoyance” symptoms including sleep disturbance.

3. Sleep disturbance, if prolonged, will lead to chronic sleep deprivation.

4. The clinical consequences of sleep deprivation are well known, are deleterious for both mental and physical health, and have been well documented in the research literature including the WHO.

5. Sleep deprivation is acknowledged as a method of torture, which the UN Convention against Torture prohibits, under any circumstances, even in war, and the order of a superior cannot be used to excuse culpability for allowing it to occur, or to continue. Criminal sanctions apply.

Recent acoustic survey research by Australian independent acoustician Steven Cooper, commissioned by wind developer Pacific Hydro, and conducted in collaboration with three households at Cape Bridgewater in Victoria, has provided further confirmation of the work by Dr Neil Kelley. The preliminary results of this work are publicly available on Pacific Hydro’s website, and are explained in a recent media article by Australian journalist Graham Lloyd. In the case of one research participant, there was 100% accuracy with her predictions about whether or not the turbines were operating, based on her perceptions inside the home.

This resident is partially deaf, and like others, has become progressively more sensitized to the emissions, over the five years the turbines have been operating.

What About The Wind Industry Assertions About The “Nocebo Effect” Causing the Symptoms?

This recent Cape Bridgewater evidence from research commissioned by Pacific Hydro, conducted by Steven Cooper, and that of the US Research in the 1980’s led by Dr Neil Kelley (well known for thirty years to the global wind industry), are in direct contrast to the unproven assertions by the wind industry and some of its vocal supporters that a “nocebo effect” is responsible for the symptoms being reported by the residents. A nocebo effect can be summarized as the assertion that publicity about the symptoms is itself causing them.

As Australia’s National Health and Research Council’s recent Systematic Literature Review acknowledged, there is no research evidence (collected from the residents reporting the symptoms), to support a “nocebo effect” being responsible for the resident’s symptoms.

I further note Dr Michael Nissenbaum’s salutary warning that such a diagnosis of “nocebo effect” in the absence of a proper investigation to determine the cause of the reported symptoms, would lead to a charge of professional misconduct by the health practitioner making that diagnosis in most western medical systems. As Dr Nissenbaum also points out, non medical practitioners (such as some in public health who are proposing these theories) do not have such legal obligations to their patients.

The leading proponent of the nocebo effect hypothesis is a Professor of Public Health at Sydney University with a background in sociology and epidemiology, and an expert advisor to the Climate and Health Alliance. Professor Simon Chapman is not a health practitioner, and has no clinical training or legal responsibilities including a duty of care to patients.

Professor Chapman’s active role in assisting a wind turbine product manufacturer (VESTAS) launch a global denial of any adverse health effects from its products, when VESTAS own engineer Erik Sloth had stated otherwise ten years earlier and had specifically mentioned the need for research and safer buffer distances, gives cause for concern.

Can The Frequencies be Prevented From Entering Homes?

There is no known way of preventing large industrial upwind bladed horizontal axis wind turbines from generating these frequencies, because they are generated every time the turbine blades pass the tower. In other words, they are an inherent design constraint of horizontal axis wind turbines.

Steven Cooper’s work together with work by another Australian Acoustician Les Huson has also suggested that in some locations, vibration caused by the tower resonating in the wind, without the blades turning, is also generating frequencies in the infrasound and low frequency noise range. It is possible that these frequencies may themselves also be causing symptoms and sensations for some people, as they are being reported by some particularly sensitized people when the turbine blades are not turning but the frequencies are still present.

There is no known way currently to prevent these very low frequencies entering building structures and impacting adversely on humans.

The only way to prevent the symptoms including chronic sleep disturbance and consequent severe cumulative sleep deprivation from long term exposure is to ensure the wind turbines are sited far enough away from homes and workplaces, so people do not become progressively sensitized to the sound and vibration energy, and adversely impacted by it, especially with respect to their sleep.

The Problem of Increasing Sensitisation

Dr Leventhall and Dr Neil Kelley have both acknowledged historically that increasing sensitization is known to be a problem with prolonged exposure to ILFN. More recently, ENT specialist Dr Amir Farboud and his colleagues from the United Kingdom have also raised this issue, and speculated as to the possible mechanisms.

In other words, people “do not get used to” or habituate to the low frequency sound energy – rather they become more adversely affected with prolonged exposure, unless they can remove themselves from the environment, OR the noise source is turned off.

This fact adds strength to the call for adequate buffer distances, in order to protect the health of the community.

The wind industry itself acknowledged the need for adequate buffer distances in 2004, in aVESTAS presentation to the Australian Wind Energy Association, (later the Clean Energy Council). VESTAS engineer Erik Sloth conceded that the noise models used at that time were not accurate, and that there was a need for adequate buffer distances, and a need for more research.

Industrial wind turbines have increased significantly in size since this presentation was given, ten years ago. As previously stated, Professor Henrik Moller’s research clearly showed that as the power generating capacity of the wind turbines increase, so too does the proportion of sound energy in the low frequency and infrasonic range, and therefore it can be predicted there will be more “annoyance” symptoms for the neighbours.

Concluding remarks

All Slovenian public officials, including politicians and public servants, who are involved in approving these projects, and responsible for health and noise pollution regulation subsequently, need to be mindful of the obligations of Slovenia from the UN Convention Against Torture.

They need to ensure they are aware of the very latest research in this area, as well as historical research from thirty years ago, which clearly demonstrated a direct causal link between wind turbine generated impulsive infrasound and low frequency noise and serious adverse health effects, known as “annoyance”.

If this particular project is approved, with such large powerful wind turbines so close to homes, it is inevitable that some Slovenian residents will be seriously harmed, from the consequences of cumulative sleep disturbance and long term sleep deprivation alone. This is regardless of what other symptoms individual residents may develop because of individual pre existing vulnerabilities or risk factors, identified by Dr Pierpont’s research, and confirmed or acknowledged by others since including Dr Leventhall (namely extremes of age, migraines, motion sickness and existing inner ear pathology).

I am happy to provide further specific information on request.

Yours sincerely

Sarah Laurie,
Bachelor of Medicine, Bachelor of Surgery, Flinders University, 1995

CEO, Waubra Foundation

See following pages for the list of attachments to this letter, and for the appendix.

Attachments (downloadable at the following links)

Waubra Foundation: Recent Summary of Adverse Health Effects, 1st June, 2014http://waubrafoundation.org.au/resources/wind-turbine-noise-adverse-health-effects-june-2014/

Waubra Foundation: Open letter to NHMRC re flaws in 2014 Systematic Literature Review, 2014http://waubrafoundation.org.au/resources/waubra-foundation-open-letter-nhmrc-re-systematic-literature– review/
Waubra Foundation: Submission to the Australian Federal Government RET Review, 2014http://waubrafoundation.org.au/resources/renewable-energy-target-review-waubra-foundation-submission– 2014/

Explicit Cautionary Notice http://waubrafoundation.org.au/about/explicit-cautionary-notice/

Explicit Warning Notice http://waubrafoundation.org.au/2013/explicit-warning-notice/

Letter to AMA and recent literature review, Emeritus Professor Alun Evans, Epidemiologist, Ireland, 2014 http://waubrafoundation.org.au/resources/evans-prof-emeritus-alun-dismiss-any-adverse-effects-absurd-view-mounting-evidence/

Letter to AMA by Swedish Otoneurologist Dr Hakan Enbomhttp://waubrafoundation.org.au/resources/enbom-h-infrasound-from-wind-turbines-can-trigger-migraine-and-related-symptoms/

Letter to AMA from Danish Occupational Health Physician, Dr Mauri Johansson, 2014http://waubrafoundation.org.au/resources/johansson-dr-mauri-m-d-highly-alarming-position-paper-from-medical-association-ama /

Letter to AMA from Professor Robert McMurtry, Canada, 2014http://waubrafoundation.org.au/resources/prof-robert-mcmurtry-former-dean-medicine-writes-ama/

Letter to AMA from NZ scientist Dr Bruce Rapley, New Zealand. 2014http://waubrafoundation.org.au/resources/rapley-b-letter-ama-audibility-and-effects-infrasound/

Article by Professor Salt and Professor Lichtenhan in the Winter Edition of Acoustics Today, 2014http://waubrafoundation.org.au/resources/salt-n-lichtenhan-j-t-how-does-wind-turbine-noise-affect-people/

Physicians for Human Rights, “Leave No Marks” 2007 with particular reference to pp 22 – 26 relating to the use of sleep deprivation and sensory bombardment with noise as methods of torture http://physiciansforhumanrights.org/library/reports/leave-no-marks-report-2007.html

Appendix 1 — Evidence for 10km acoustic impact zone from 2 – 3 MW turbines

Waubra Foundation’s Explicit Cautionary Notice, June 2011 first mentioned problems out to 10kmhttp://waubrafoundation.org.au/about/explicit-cautionary-notice/

Acoustic evidence of wind turbine noise extending out to 10km

NASA research from 1985 by William Willshire http://waubrafoundation.org.au/resources/nasa-long-range-down-wind-propagation-low-frequency-sound/

Professor Colin Hansen’s ongoing work relating to wind turbine noise out to 10km from Waterloo wind turbines is not yet published, however his opinion based on acoustic evidence was included in his letter to the Victorian Department of Health, regarding false and misleading statements about infrasound in their technical document issued in 2013http://waubrafoundation.org.au/resources/prof-colin-hansen-writes-victorian-dept-health-recent-wind-arms-health-doc/

Steven Cooper’s acoustic data from Waterloo wind development (8km)http://waubrafoundation.org.au/resources/are-wind-farms-too-close-communities/

Mr Les Huson’s expert evidence from the Cherry Tree case, relating to Macarthur, where he found that there was no attenuation of infrasound between 1.8km and 6.4 km from the nearest wind turbines, indicating that wind turbine generated infrasound will be travelling for very large distances (much greater than 10km) http://waubrafoundation.org.au/resources/huson-l-expert-evidence-at-vcat-cherry-tree-hearing/

The various population noise impact surveys done in Australia are here:http://waubrafoundation.org.au/library/community-noise-impact-surveys/
Waterloo, South Australia – VESTAS V 90 (37 along a ridge)

Mrs Mary Morris’s 2012 survey conducted at Waterloo in South Australia. This survey was the only Australian research included in the 2014 NHMRC Systematic Literature Reviewhttp://waubrafoundation.org.au/resources/waterloo-wind-farm-survey-2012/

This 2012 survey by Mrs Morris was based on one conducted in 2011 by Frank Wang, an Adelaide University Masters student, but the population surveyed in Wang’s survey was only out to 5km http://waubrafoundation.org.au/resources/evaluation-wind-farm-noise-policies-south-australia/

Mrs Morris then compiled this information in 2013 showing what happened when the turbines at Waterloo were off for a week http://waubrafoundation.org.au/resources/morris-m-waterloo-case-series-preliminary-report/

Cullerin Range, NSW, 2 MW Repower turbines, sited on a ridge

Mrs Schneider’s 2012 and 2013 population noise impact surveys show the extent of the sleep deprivation. Nothing has been done about the severe night time noise related sleep disturbance and adverse health impact for these NSW residents by any NSW government department, despite many complaints which are documented in the 2013 survey.

http://waubrafoundation.org.au/resources/cullerin-range-wind-farm-survey-august-2012/

http://waubrafoundation.org.au/resources/schneider-p-cullerin-range-wind-farm-survey-follow-up-july-august-2013/

Macarthur Wind Development, 140 3 MW V 112 VESTAS wind turbines, sited on flat land in Victoria

This survey was conducted only 6 months since the wind development commenced operating. Residents report being far more adversely impacted now, because of the predictable and known adverse cumulative health effects of chronic sleep deprivation and chronic stress.http://waubrafoundation.org.au/resources/macarthur-wind-energy-facility-preliminary-survey/

Evidence from Macarthur Wind Development Residents and acoustician Mr Les Huson was heard during the Cherry Tree Court case before the Victorian Civil Administrative Appeal Tribunal in 2013. Links to affidavits from Macarthur residents relating to that court case are below:

Mrs Maria Linke (lives 5km away, with her husband and four children – sleep adverse affected immediately) http://waubrafoundation.org.au/resources/linke-m-witness-statement-vcat-cherry-tree-hearing/

Mrs Jan Hetherington, widow, glass artist, working from her home 3km away from nearest wind turbine http://waubrafoundation.org.au/resources/hetherington-j-witness-statement-vcat-cherry-tree-tribunal/

Mr Andrew Gardner, Farmer, home is 1.8km away from nearest wind turbinehttp://waubrafoundation.org.au/resources/gardner-statement-vcat-cherry-tree-hearing/ (1.8km away)

Download the letter including footnotes and attachments→

The People of Ontario Want, and Deserve, Some Straight Answers!

August 13, 2014 / 1957chev / 1 Comment

Eric Jelinski

9:38pm Aug 12

Sharing a letter that a friend has sent to Bob Chiarelli, Ontario Minister of Energy,

Dear Minister Chiarelli,

RE: Electricity Questions:

As you may or may not be aware for the past several years I have taken an interest (some would say compulsive) in the electricity sector and during that time have written extensively in several media outlets including the Financial Post. I also took directorships in organizations like Energy Probe and Wind Concerns Ontario both of whom have expressed concern about the aggressive push, by your government, for the addition of unreliable, intermittent and expensive wind and solar electricity generation. This letter is not meant to argue your support or otherwise of “renewable energy” but to present questions that baffle me and many others. The questions are outcrops of the various legislative and regulatory changes the OLP have made from within your ministry since first elected as the governing party in 2003. The questions below are begging for answers so I would greatly appreciate your giving serious thought to them and recognize that the intent is for enlightenment. Convince me and others that your Ministry does have a plan that will present industry with competitive electricity pricing without driving residential ratepayers into “energy poverty”!

Here are my questions:

Q.1.The Ontario government hands out up to $8,500 to purchasers of EVs (electric vehicles) if they buy a high end $85,000 Tesla automobile and presumably don’t collect an “ecotax” but if an Ontario resident purchases a 12 volt replacement battery for their car they pay $15.00. A Telsa battery is 375 volts so shouldn’t your government be collecting an ecotax of $470.00 from the buyer instead of handing out $8,500 as a grant?

Q.2.Why do all of the local distribution companies (LDC) hand out discount coupons encouraging us to purchase CFL bulbs that contains mercury; a deadly toxin and where the packaging suggests you almost have to use a hazmat suit if it breaks to clean it up?

Q.3.Why does the Ontario Ministry of Energy classify “conservation” as a generation source of electricity if we can’t plug our toaster into an outlet powered by “conservation” that will actually toast it?

Q.4.What grid is “conservation” generation connected to and is any of it exported?

Q.5.Why did you, as Energy Minister, order the creation of a service “Stream” that offers large industrial companies very cheap rates, for “consuming more electricity” when the rest of Ontario is told to “conserve?

Q.6.Why is the Ontario Power Authority (OPA) allowed to claim they will pick up your “old” fridge or freezer for “FREE” when they know the costs to pick them up are billed to the ratepayers via the Global Adjustment Mechanism (GAM)?

Q.7.Why do all the TV, radio and newspaper ads that the OPA and the LDCs contract for in the media, at the end of the commercial, say or state: “paid for by the OPA” when the truth is that the ads are “paid for by the ratepayers of Ontario via the GAM?

Q.8.Why are average ratepayers obliged to pay the costs of meteorological stations erected at industrial wind turbine installations to measure the electricity they may have generated but are being paid to NOT PRODUCE power?

Q.9.Why is the 36 page submission to the OEB (EB-2013-0326) by the OPA for the $483.4 million “Conservation” spending planned for 2014 considered a “business plan” when they have no specific information on the makeup of that almost $500 million spending of ratepayer dollars?

Q.10.Why does the term “Global Adjustment Mechanism” contain the word “Global” when the makeup of the GAM is all driven by the contracts signed by the OPA and other directives/regulations issued by the Ministry of Energy and apply only to Ontario’s ratepayers?

Q.11.Why is the 10% reduction on our electricity bills (due to expire December 31, 2015) referred to as a “Clean” Energy Benefit when it is a benefit that is the responsibility of the taxpayers; so shouldn’t it be labeled a “Taxpayer Energy Benefit?

Q.12.Why are consumers of electricity charged for electricity they never consumed, ie; “line losses”, no matter how far they are from the generator of that electricity and why has it been moved from the “electricity” line to the “delivery” line on our bills?

Q.13. Don’t you think this (Q.12.) is something that David Orazietti, Minister of Government and Consumer Services should look into and perhaps seek clarification on Q.6. And Q.7?

Q.14.Why hand out grants (funded by Ontario’s ratepayers via the GAM) of $650 towards the installation of energy efficient air conditioners while handing out only $431.76 on average (2012) to a only a few (.002% ) ratepayers suffering from “energy poverty” and may have to freeze in the cold or forgo nutritious food because their local distribution company has cut or threatened to cut their power?

Q.15.Why did you claim Ontario had generated a $6 billion profit from selling our excess electricity via the export market when that number was simply what we received for selling excess power that ratepayers had paid for at prices that were multiples of the $6 billion?

Q.16.Why did George Smitherman negotiate that “sole sourced” Samsung contract without the company having demonstrated any previous expertise in the generation of electricity from either wind or solar?

I have many more questions related to the activities of your Ministry over the past decade but have kept the list relatively short so I sincerely hope you will have the time to answer the few that I have raised. With the legislative recess set to go through to October 20, 2014 it would appear that you or your Ministry staff will have more than sufficient time to respond.

On another note some of my questions are directed at the Ministry of the Environment & Climate Change who are responsible for the issuing of the Renewable Energy Approvals (REA). Rather than writing a separate letter to Minister Murray I would appreciate it if you could have someone in your office co-ordinate his Ministry’s response. I have copied him via his e-mail address but for your edification here are those questions!

Questions for your colleague, Glen Murray in the Ministry of the Environment Chair:

Q. 1. Why does the Ministry of the Environment [and Climate Change] issue Renewable Energy Approvals (REA) when the applications are incomplete and lacking in the detail required under the rules/regulations established under the Green Energy and Economy Act?

Q.2. Why is the MoE not equipped to measure “infra-sound” when it has been found to be a major issue in many jurisdictions; causing health problems and is measurable?

Q.3. Why is the MoE unable to order compliance requirements to wind turbine developers when their “audible” noise limits exceed the guidelines/rules established?

Q.4. Why does the MoE issue REAs that are located in Important Bird Areas (IBA) that may endanger many “species at risk”?

I wish to thank you, Minister Chiarelli and Minister Murray, in advance, for your anticipated cogent reply to each of my questions as it will assist me and many of my friends, relatives and media followers in understanding exactly what it is that the Ontario Liberal Party is attempting to do with the Energy sector in the Province. The impact of the “sea change” that has occurred in the “Energy” portfolio are immense, affecting so many facets of the lives of the residents of the province. The latter point is particularly noticeable when toting up the directives (85) that the Ministry has issued to just the OPA since that entity was created by one of your predecessors, Dwight Duncan, in the Energy chair you now occupy. Many other directives/letters have been issued to the OEB, the OPG and Hydro One so it is obvious that there is a plan. I believe it is important to convey to the residents and voters exactly what that “plan” is and why it has been enacted in Ontario but is being abandoned elsewhere around the world.

I await your edification!

Wind Industry Gets Rid of Top Acoustic Professor, Who Dared to Tell the Truth!

August 9, 2014 / 1957chev / 2 Comments

Vestas Helps Engineer Sacking of Denmark’s Top Acoustic Professor, Henrik Møller

August 9, 2014 by stopthesethings Leave a Comment

In Denmark, Vestas is the wind industry. And like the wind industry everywhere, it’s done its level best to infiltrate and influence every aspect of political and academic life: all aimed at preventing any pesky opposition to its plans to cover the planet with its giant fans.

Vestas isn’t afraid to cut all the ethical corners in its quest to be the world’s dominant fan maker: Vestas bosses are under investigation for abusing their positions to secure private financial gains through its business dealings with others in the wind industry (see our post here).

In Australia, Vestas splashed a fat pile of cash at “green” groups, going on the propaganda front foot, spending $millions in Australia to “shape the debate” – paying its team of dilettante advocates and juvenile propagandists a bucket of loot to “win hearts and minds” – and threw a fat pile of cash at the Australian Greens in their futile efforts to unseat STT Champion, SA Senator, Nick Xenophon at the Federal election last September (see our post here).

Back in Denmark, it appears Vestas has used its sway to see that Denmark’s leading academic expert on noise research, Henrik Møller would no longer be a thorn in its side. As a highly respected University Professor, Henrik Møller presented a clear and present danger to Vesta’s commercial interests: he has worked for years to show that turbine generated low-frequency noise and infrasound causes sleep deprivation and other adverse health effects; he has been especially critical of the noise “standards” set for households – which were written by the wind industry (read Vestas) in order to allow turbines to comply, no matter how large or how close to homes.

Vestas has been a vocal critic of Dr Møller and has continually complained about him to his boss, Dean Eskild Holm Nielsen. Vestas must be chuffed that its efforts have all paid off: Dr Møller has been sacked. Here’s John Droz Jr detailing Vesta’s successful effort to shoot the messenger.

The Danish Democracy Doesn’t Like the Truth
windfarmaction
John Droz Jr
5 August 2014

Henrik Møller, Denmark’s leading academic expert on noise research, has been fired by his university after exposing a far-reaching cover up by the Danish government of the health risks caused by wind turbine noise pollution.

Shock and outrage at this latest example of the heavy-handed cover up of government-backed junk science has brought strong condemnation from independent scientists. John Droz Jr, a respected critic of wind farms, has issued the following condemnatory response:

As you probably know, a passion of mine is defending my profession (Science) from assault.

This is approaching a full-time job, as those promoting political or economic agendas are painfully aware that real Science is a major threat to their aspirations — so they are aggressively attacking it on multiple fronts. (See ScienceUnderAssault.info.)

We now have yet another distressing example, where a leading scientist has lost his job — apparently for the crime of being a conscientious, competent academic, focused on quality research (instead of chasing grant money).

Dr. Henrik Møller, is a world-renowned expert on infra-sound, and has published several high-quality studies on low-frequency acoustics (like here, here, here, and here). More recently, some of these have dealt with industrial wind energy noise (e.g. here — which was peer-reviewed).

He has been praised as Denmark’s “leading noise researcher.” What’s even more important is that he has been courageous enough to have publicly spoken out against poor government policies, as well as the misinformation disseminated from the wind energy cartel.

In Denmark there have been several newspaper reports about this surprising firing, but I’m sending this to the AWED list as such an event should have much wider coverage. Here are English translations of a few Danish articles (I have the originals as well). It seems to me that some of the key points made in them are:

— Dr. Møller has had thirty eight (38) years of distinguished service for Aalborg University.

— Ironically, this institution publicly prides itself as looking out for its professors: “At Aalborg University we focus intensively on staff welfare and job satisfaction.”

— He was the only one of 200± researchers at the Department of Electronic Systems in Aalborg who was let go …

— The purported reason for his firing, is that the professor is no longer “financially lucrative” for the university …

— Despite claiming that the termination was due to a shortage of funds, the university had recently hired two additional people in the same department …

— Dr. Møller’s reasoned responses were:

1) During the last year he may not have produced that much income, but in many other years his work resulted in substantial profit to the university.

2) Statistically, approximately half of the faculty would be operating at a loss — so why single him out?

3) In his prior 38 years of employment, and reviews, he was never informed that his job was solely dependent on outside funding.

4) Additionally, prior to the sacking, he had not been informed that his income production was a problem that need to be addressed — giving him a chance to do so.

— The Danish Society of Engineers, and the Danish Association of Masters and PhDs, have gone on record stating that it is unreasonable to dismiss researchers due to a lack of grants. Furthermore they reportedly said such a policy is contrary to the Danish University Act, which specifies that the purpose of research is to promote education, not to be a profit-making venture …

— The VP of the Danish Confederation of Professional Associations stated that it’s rare that a Danish professor is fired.

— It has been reported that the wind industry has frequently complained about Dr. Møller to his boss (Dean Eskild Holm Nielsen) …

— Consider this: the same Dean Nielsen was a keynote speaker at the Wind Industry Association’s meeting, the day after he fired Dr. Møller!

— As one article explains, this termination might have also come from the fact that the Technical University of Denmark (DTU) has a very close association with the wind industry, and that Dr. Møller’s scientific research had resulted in embarrassing revelations.

— The same article states that with Dr. Møller out of the picture, wind industry friendly DTU will now take over responsibility for assessing acoustical impacts of industrial wind turbines on Danish citizens. (I wonder what conclusions they will reach?)

As one report accurately stated: it takes courage for academics to focus on scientific research, instead of pursuing outside funding.

Please consider writing a short, polite email to Dr. Møller’s boss (who fired him) objecting to this shameful termination: Dean Nielsen dekan-teknat@adm.aau.dk

It would be helpful to cc a reporter at an important Danish newspaper: Axel Pihl-Andersen:axel.andersen@jp.dkand bcc Dr. Møller:henrikmoeller2@gmail.com

Regards,
John Droz, Jr.
Physicist & Environmental Advocate

PS — Although his studies on industrial wind energy only comprise a small amount of his thirty eight years of academic work, they may have resulted in the most notoriety.

Since many of the people on this list are interested in that topic, here are a few other examples of Dr. Møller’s work related to wind energy, in his words:

1) We made an analysis of a wind project in Maastricht, planned to possibly have turbines from a Danish company. The City Council stopped the project after our report — a result that did not make us popular with the Danish wind industry.

2) A reason why we seem to be a nuisance to the wind industry in Denmark is that we keep finding errors in noise calculations and evaluations. As an example, we found serious errors in the environmental impact assessment behind a new law on a wind turbine test center, and the law had to be changed.

3) We also revealed that in a big Vestas promotion, they mixed up two acoustical terms (and Vestas had to change part of their campaign). I’m afraid there are only Danish newspaper articles about that — which is unfortunate, because it was quite funny.

4) We also criticized Danish regulation of wind turbine noise, which resulted in feature articles in Danish newspapers. I am not sure if others have been translated, but here is one example.

5) We also put together some web pages about the Danish wind regulations, which made the wind industry complain about me to the Dean (again).

windfarmaction

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Etowa County Residents Ecstatic! Wind Leases Terminated, Wind Pushers Leave Town!

Wind energy company pulling out of Cherokee, Etowah County projects, opposition says

For All the People Who Have Asked or Wondered about the “Copycat” website….

Main Stream Media, Not Reporting Honestly, When it Comes to Wind Turbines…

ABC’s Pro-Wind Power Bias Exposed as a National Scandal

Wind Turbines are Bad for our Health. No More Denying!

Scotland’s Toxic Shock: Wind Farms Poisoning Neighbours

James Delingpole shares a Few “Inconvenient Truths”, About Tom Steyner

TOM STEYER’S EPIC GREEN FAIL: PART II

Tom Steyer, the fossil-fuel powered hedge funder has suffered further setbacks on his $100 million mission to save the world from ‘global warming’ by destroying the US economy.

Posted This To Prove that Wind Turbines are NOT Green!

In China, the true cost of Britain’s clean, green wind power experiment:

Pollution on a disastrous scale

NUCLEAR, COAL, SOLAR, HYDRO, WIND: HOW THE ENERGY OPTIONS STACK UP

Residents of Slovenia Looking for Protection from Wind Turbines!

Letter to Slovenia re Known Adverse Health Impacts of Wind Turbine Noise

Mr Diego Loredan, Chairman,
Ms Katarina Dea Zetko,

Civil Initiative for the Protection of Seno žeška Brda

Breaches of UN Convention Against Torture

Background

What Distance Is Safe?

Knowledge of Direct Causation Of “annoyance” Symptoms FromILFN in the 1980s

Are “Annoyance” Symptoms The Same As “Wind Turbine Syndrome”?

What About The Wind Industry Assertions About The “Nocebo Effect” Causing the Symptoms?

Can The Frequencies be Prevented From Entering Homes?

The Problem of Increasing Sensitisation

Concluding remarks

The People of Ontario Want, and Deserve, Some Straight Answers!

Wind Industry Gets Rid of Top Acoustic Professor, Who Dared to Tell the Truth!

Vestas Helps Engineer Sacking of Denmark’s Top Acoustic Professor, Henrik Møller

Wind energy company pulling out of Cherokee, Etowah County projects, opposition says

ABC’s Pro-Wind Power Bias Exposed as a National Scandal

Scotland’s Toxic Shock: Wind Farms Poisoning Neighbours

TOM STEYER’S EPIC GREEN FAIL: PART II

Tom Steyer, the fossil-fuel powered hedge funder has suffered further setbacks on his $100 million mission to save the world from ‘global warming’ by destroying the US economy.

In China, the true cost of Britain’s clean, green wind power experiment:

Pollution on a disastrous scale

NUCLEAR, COAL, SOLAR, HYDRO, WIND: HOW THE ENERGY OPTIONS STACK UP

Letter to Slovenia re Known Adverse Health Impacts of Wind Turbine Noise

Mr Diego Loredan, Chairman,Ms Katarina Dea Zetko,

Breaches of UN Convention Against Torture

Background

What Distance Is Safe?

Knowledge of Direct Causation Of “annoyance” Symptoms FromILFN in the 1980s

Are “Annoyance” Symptoms The Same As “Wind Turbine Syndrome”?

What About The Wind Industry Assertions About The “Nocebo Effect” Causing the Symptoms?

Can The Frequencies be Prevented From Entering Homes?

The Problem of Increasing Sensitisation

Concluding remarks

Vestas Helps Engineer Sacking of Denmark’s Top Acoustic Professor, Henrik Møller

Mr Diego Loredan, Chairman,
Ms Katarina Dea Zetko,