corruption

Excellent Open Letter to B.M.A., by Christine Metcalfe.

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Open letter to President of BMA

Credit:  Christine Metcalfe, 21.06.14. ~~

 

Dear Sir Sabaratnam Arulkumaran,

Although a very short time has elapsed since receipt of the last BMA reply on behalf of Mr. Bourne, it has been spent in serious thought and deep discussion with colleagues. Revisiting all reports and past research has made it possible here to give only a ‘tip of the iceberg/snapshot’ overview of these rapidly burgeoning problems. Please be aware that this final request is therefore made not only on behalf of the rising numbers of people suffering harm, but the many destined to join them should nothing be done to avert this. Health professionals, technical expects, engineers and others strive to have the implications of their valid findings fully understood by more of their peers and most importantly, the public.

This is why the decision was made to write to you as President of the BMA, to ensure your organisation’s attention is focused on an increasingly important health subject – namely the adverse health effects from exposure to operating wind turbines. I am referring specifically to wind turbine noise which includes infrasound and low frequency noise, which are not currently measured by the current noise pollution guidelines and regulations in the UK, (ETSU 97) despite wind industry knowledge since the 1980’s resulting from the NASA/Kelley research in the USA that wind turbine impulsive infrasound and low frequency noise directly caused a range of “annoyance” symptoms including sleep disturbance.

Responses received from your organisation’s Public Affairs Officer, reportedly from your CEO, appear to be using various pretexts to avoid both addressing this issue, and answering my specific questions. It will hopefully be understood that no offence to staff who have replied as instructed, is intended. With respect, it remains the case that, to my knowledge, neither your CEO nor your public affairs officer have medical degrees, and therefore are not bound by the medical codes of ethics which include the proviso to “first do no harm”.

The current widespread practice in the UK of continuing to ignore this issue is doing immense harm to the health of an increasing number of rural residents. Urban areas will become involved if current separation distances (only advised)remain and developments are installed near larger populations.

Despite the fact that no motions are currently on the table for your ARM, deliberately ignoring the issues I am raising demonstrates an alarming attempt by your organisation’s paid employees to evade a responsibility incumbent upon your organisation’s stated remit to inform members. It is clear that the BMA have a duty midway between resistance to political agendas which could interfere with their remit, and the clear requirements set out in their constitution.

No organisation with total inflexibility within rules when an obvious need for relaxation arises, can avoid working against the best interests of its members and ultimately in this case, the public they serve. So to avoid the BMA becoming part of the problem instead of actively participating in finding a solution, it is hoped that a route will be found to allow this subject to be raised at the coming meeting.

Given that your particular field of speciality is Obstetrics & Gynaecology, the reported effects from wind turbine noise of severe physiological stress and sleep deprivation should be of concern, as the consequences of both severe chronic stress and severe chronic sleep deprivation are well known to adversely affect both human fertility, and the health of women and babies during pregnancy and therefore foetal birth and health outcomes.

The recent report of miscarriages, stillbirths and birth deformities in mink in Denmark correlating directly with the start up of operation of four large VESTAS V 112 wind turbines in close proximity, provides clear evidence of adverse animal health impacts from wind turbine noise which have direct relevance for human populations. This information was included in material previously forwarded to the BMA and adds weight to the warnings given relating to human groups’ vulnerability from being forced to live in proximity to wind turbines.

In addition there are reports of disturbed fertility and menstrual cycles in women living near wind turbines in Denmark, Canada and Australia from both residents and health professionals.

Just some of the health professionals, including particularly medical practitioners, and acoustic experts and researchers who have firsthand knowledge of the severity of the reported health problems who are calling for urgent multidisciplinary research in this area include:

Professor Bob McMurtry, Dr Roy Jeffery, Associate Professor Jeff Aramini, Carmen Krogh and Mr William Palmer from Canada; Dr Alan Watts, Dr Wayne Spring, Dr David Iser, Dr Gary Hopkins, Dr Andja Mitric Andjic, Dr Sarah Laurie, Mr Les Huson, Mr Steven Cooper, Emeritus Professor Colin Hansen and Dr Bob Thorne from Australia; and Associate Professor Rick James, Mr Rob Rand, Mr Stephen Ambrose, Emeritus Professor Jerry Punch, Dr Jay Tibbetts, Dr Sandy Reider, Dr Nina Pierpont, Dr David Lawrence, Dr Paul Schomer, Mr George Hessler, and Dr Bruce Walker from the USA. There are others from Europe who are also becoming increasingly vocal on this issue as wind turbines increase in size and are being placed close to larger human populations.

I therefore ask that the UK BMA publicly resolve to support multidisciplinary independent research, such as the government in Australia has committed to do, and which other jurisdictions have commenced and which in some instances have completed, confirming wind turbine noise associated sleep deprivation, and inner ear problems, including the Ministry for the Environment in Ontario. These are issues which have been shamefully ignored by many UK authorities and medical practitioners to date.

As your Constitution confirms, human rights issues are a BMA concern, this being so, I refer you to pages 22–26 of the document “Leave no Marks” by the Physicians for Human Rights, where the clinical consequences and the legal precedents relating to torture from sleep deprivation and sensory bombardment from noise and light are clearly elucidated. Torture is clearly a human rights issue, so too sleep deprivation and sensory bombardment. This is precisely what many rural residents living near wind turbines in the UK are experiencing and have been reporting since Dr Amanda Harry’s survey, conducted in 2003.

I refer you specifically to Part 1 and Article 1 of the UN Convention against torture …

Article 1.

1. For the purposes of this Convention, the term “torture” means any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person for such purposes as … or intimidating or coercing him or a third person, or for any reason based on discrimination of any kind, when such pain or suffering is inflicted by or at the instigation of or with the consent or acquiescence of a public official or other person acting in an official capacity.

So, it could be successfully argued that a form of torture is being intentionally inflicted, because public officials have been told about it repeatedly and yet they are doing absolutely nothing to address the situation or prevent the known and established harm to human health. Should the defence be that this is not intentional, then it is at the very least gross negligence and dereliction of their statutory duty of care, or perhaps “wilful blindness”.

This distressing situation has resulted from the failure of many government public officials including those working in the respective government departments, e.g. DEFRA, DECC, local health environmental health officers, and medical practitioners working for the NHS to deal properly with this issue, despite being made well aware of the severity of the health problems, and the chronic sleep deprivation from wind turbine noise. Despite its resultant serious, known and predictable adverse health effects, these public officials have done nothing to address the root cause of the problems – wind turbine noise pollution – or to stop the cause of the sleep deprivation. Sleep deprivation alone is itself acknowledged to be a form of torture and is described as such by the rural residents who are so badly affected.

The Adverse Health Impacts from IWT’s attachment included in past exchanges included direct reports from those citizens affected and this is again included for your attention. The Davis case is referenced. That made it clear that noise nuisance was occurring for that UK family, and the fact that the developer settled rather than having the case heard to completion in the UK High Court confirms that view. Unfortunately the Davis family are unable to speak of their experiences – they have been silenced with a broad non disclosure clause. Use of such clauses has been reported in the UK, Canada, the USA, New Zealand and Australia and indicates the wind industry has much to hide.

The BMJ editorial in 2012 (over 2 years ago) raised wind turbine noise related sleep disturbance as an issue requiring attention. It is an entirely reasonable request that the BMA itself addresses the issue via its most senior officer bearers, and does not choose to continue to ignore it.

To add further to the ground base of information possibly not yet seen I have attached the Salt and Lichtenhan article describing how wind turbine noise affects people. The advice to acousticians extract below (my emphasis) is particularly relevant.

The primary role of acousticians should be to protect and serve society from negative influences of noise exposure. In the case of wind turbine noise, it appears that many have been failing in that role. For years, they have sheltered behind the mantra, now shown to be false, that has been presented repeatedly in many forms such as: “What you can’t hear, can’t affect you.”; “If you cannot hear a sound you cannot perceive it in other ways and it does not affect you.”; “Infrasound from wind turbines is below the audible threshold and of no consequence.”; “Infrasound is negligible from this type of turbine.”; “I can state categorically that there is no significant infrasound from current designs of wind turbines.” All of these statements assume that hearing, derived from low-frequency-insensitive IHC responses, is the only mechanism by which low frequency sound can affect the body.We know this assumption is false and blame its origin on a lack of detailed understanding of the physiology of the ear.

The WHO 2009 Night Noise Guidelines for Europe about the effects of chronic severe sleep disturbance are a particularly important and relevant source of information, e.g.

2.1.2 DEFINITIONS OF DISTURBED SLEEP.

Sleep disorders are described and classified in the International Classification of Sleep Disorders (ICSD) (American Academy of Sleep Medicine, 2005).

When sleep is permanently disturbed and becomes a sleep disorder, it is classified in the ICSD 2005 as “environmental sleep disorder”. Environmental sleep disorder (of which noise-induced sleep disturbance is an example) is a sleep disturbance due to a disturbing environmental factor that causes a complaint of either insomnia or daytime fatigue and somnolence. Secondary deficits may result, including deficits in concentration, attention and cognitive performance, reduced vigilance, daytime fatigue, malaise, depressed mood and irritability.

The attached letter to the AMA from Bruce Rapley BSc, MPhil, PhD, Principal Consultant, Acoustics and Human Health, relates audibility and infrasound effects from turbines and clearly summarises the known science and the consequences of ignoring what is known.

I am asking you personally to consider that by their example, those members of the United Kingdom medical fraternity who have acted according to their Hippocratic oaths – to name but a few, Dr Bridgit Osborne, Dr Amanda Harry, Dr Christopher Hanning, Mr A Farboud, Mr R Crunkhorn and Mr A Trinidade, together with Professor Alun Evans and Dr Colette Bonner from Ireland, have blazed a trail of which the UK Medical Profession can be rightly proud.

However, there is now an ethical responsibility for the current BMA office bearers to support much broader discussion of the subject regardless of current and past government policy, in order to prevent further “irreparable harm to physical and psychological health” as described in theFalmouth USA case where in December 2013 Justice Muse ordered an immediate injunction for wind turbines to be turned off at night, so people whose health had already been badly damaged on the basis of evidence presented to him, could sleep.

There is also an urgent need for the BMA to openly support multidisciplinary research together with the development and enforcement of health protective wind turbine noise pollution regulations and planning regulations in the UK. The current planning regulations and wind turbine noise guidelines in the UK are operating as a “licence to harm” UK rural residents. I am sure you will agree that this is unacceptable.

Finally, I am again presenting below for your attention and response, the questions which I request that your organisation answers.

Apologies are due for the length of this letter, but the importance and breadth of the subject matter defied my best attempts to reduce contents.

With thanks for your kind attention.

Yours sincerely,

Mrs. V.C.K. Metcalfe.

Questions.

1. Do you accept the evidence that sleep deprivation from wind turbine noise is occurring, and that sleep deprivation is extremely serious and health damaging? You will have presumably have seen Prof Alun Evan’s recent review and also the Arra and Lynn review, by two public health physicians in Canada which supported the concerns expressed in 2012 about wind turbine noise by Dr Chris Hanning and Professor Alun Evans published in the BMJ – your own journal.

2. Would you support turning wind turbines off at night if there are noise complaints, so that people can sleep?

3. Would you support conducting urgent multidisciplinary research involving full spectrum acoustic monitoring inside homes, and concurrent physiological monitoring of EEG, heart rate, blood pressure and sequential cortisol in those people who are reporting adverse health effects?

4. Has the BMA or any of its members ever received any money or gifts, either directly or indirectly from the wind industry? There are reports that some surgeries have been refurbished via “community grants” from wind developers.

5. As has been previously requested, what is your complaints procedure?

[Click here to read follow-up letter.]

The Left-wing Government of Ontario, is Destroying our Economy.

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Government stifles business in Ontario and Quebec, report says

BARRIE MCKENNA

OTTAWA — The Globe and Mail

Published Wednesday, Jun. 25 2014, 12:00 AM EDT

Canada is becoming a country of two solitudes when it comes to business investment.

Provinces are increasingly falling into one of two camps, according to a report being released Wednesday by the C.D. Howe Institute. In the West, business spending powers the economy. In much of the rest of the country, government spending is swallowing an ever greater share of economic activity, most notably in Ontario and Quebec.

The report puts a new spin on the “dead money” debate and why Canadian companies have been running up growing cash reserves since the recession.

The C.D. Howe report theorizes that governments in parts of the country may be crowding out and dissuading private investment.

Canada’s corporate cash holdings have continued to grow in recent months, according to Statistics Canada. Non-financial companies had cash holdings of $630-billion in the first quarter, up from $621-billion in the final three months of last year.

Part of the reason is that some provinces are creating a more business-friendly environment, while others are scaring away investment, argued the report’s author, Philip Cross, the former chief economic analyst at Statistics Canada and member of the C.D. Howe Institute’s Business Cycle Council.

“It’s not a case of dead money and companies not willing to invest,” he said in an interview. “You can see that in certain provinces, they are willing to invest like mad men.”

It’s more than just about the Alberta oil sands and other resources projects, Mr. Cross said. “The West has had resources for a long time. What unlocked them were good policies,” he said.

Mr. Cross said the blockage lies in Quebec, Ontario and much of Atlantic Canada, where high deficits and the prospect of higher taxes are crowding out access to capital and discouraging business investment, according to Mr. Cross.

And efforts to kickstart business investment with government money clearly are not working, he explained. “If I was a firm in Ontario, what I’m planning for next year is a hike in minimum wages, higher income taxes and the introduction of a new pension plan,” he said. “I’m dealing with all these things and I’m not planning on the future of my firm.”

Private-sector investment has grown rapidly in all four western provinces, particularly since the resource boom took off in 2003. In Alberta, business investment as a share of GDP reached 25.5 per cent in 2012, the highest of any province. Public-sector investment has stabilized at less than 3 per cent.

In much of the rest of the country, there has been a “marked shift” the other way. In Quebec and Ontario, for example, private-sector investment slumped to 7 per cent of GDP in 2012 from 10 per cent in the 1990s. Government spending in Quebec is now the highest in the country at 5.7 per cent of GDP. In Ontario, it’s roughly 4 per cent, up from 3 per cent in the mid-2000s.

A separate report released Tuesday by Toronto-Dominion Bank presents a much rosier picture of the investment environment. Senior economist Randall Bartlett is predicting that business investment is poised to “rev up” in Canada over the next two years after a long slump.

He says six things will drive investment – the strengthening U.S. economy, a rebound in corporate profits, stronger corporate balance sheets, shrinking spare capacity, low interest rates and growing business optimism.

Business investment will lead GDP growth over the next couple of years, expanding at an annual rate of 4 to 5 per cent through the rest of 2014 and in 2015, the report said. “As investment increases, so does productivity, and ultimately wages and incomes in the long term,” Mr. Bartlett said.

Follow BARRIE McKENNA on Twitter: @barriemckenna

Climate Alarmists Can’t Make Reality, Match up With Their Computer Models…

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The Greatest Climate Myths of All – Part 2.

Posted on June 26, 2014

Guest essay by Jim Steele,

Director emeritus Sierra Nevada Field Campus, San Francisco State University and author of Landscapes & Cycles: An Environmentalist’s Journey to Climate Skepticism

In part one, I wrote “In the simplest of terms, every study that has attributed the recent warming of the 1980s and 90s to rising CO2 has been based on the difference between their models’ reconstruction of “natural climate change” with their models’ output of “natural climate change plus CO2.” However the persistent failure of their models to reproduce how “natural climate changed before,” means any attribution of warming due to CO2 is at best unreliable and at worse a graphic fairy tale.”

 

Like failed modeling results illustrated in Part 1, scientists at the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit published Attribution Of Polar Warming To Human Influence1. Again their models failed to account for the heat during Arctic’s earlier natural warming (black line), a warming climate scientists called “the most spectacular event of the century”. Their “natural models” grossly underestimated the 40s peak warming by ~0.8° C (blue line) and when CO2 and sulfates were added the warming event was cooled further (red line). So how much do we trust models’ attribution when they get climate change half wrong?

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Over millennial time spans, researchers reported similar failures reconstructing the Medieval Warm Period writing, “Inter-model differences and model/reconstruction comparisons suggest that simulations of the Medieval Climate Anomaly either fail to reproduce the mechanisms of climate response to changes in external forcing, or that anomalies during this period are largely influenced by internal variability.“2 Modeling also fails at smaller regional levels with superior data coverage, such as California. As Dr. Phillip Duffy, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, wrote “Neither the nature of climate trends in California nor their causes are well understood.”3

Sidestepping such failures, alarmists note models can generate random unforced warming events about every 150 years and that last a decade or so. And so they suggest early Arctic warming was a random event caused by “internal variability” that can’t be modeled. But there was less than a 13% chance that random warming happened in the 30s, and that random warming could have equally contributed to the 80s and 90s, meaning CO2contributed little. And that arguments does not alter the fact that CO2-driven climate models fail to reproduce natural climate change of the past.

Alarmist believe CO2 is the “control knob” of climate change and Dr. James Hansen, who studied climate on lifeless planets devoid of oceans, proselytizes that belief. On other planets the “radiative balance” is the critical climate variable. But that narrow focus has biased Hansen and his disciples who have underestimated the power of ocean oscillations. Fortunately here on earth, there is a growing awareness that natural ocean oscillations persist for many decades and control how heat is stored, redistributed and ventilated. Those oscillations increasingly appear to be the most powerful “climate control knobs” and many advocates of CO2 warming now blame the cool phases of these ocean oscillations for “masking” or “hiding” hypothesized heat. But natural ocean oscillations have also raised temperatures, and regards to understanding both 20th century warming events in the Arctic, ocean oscillations offer the superior explanation.

From latitudes 40° North or South to the poles, the earth increasingly ventilates more heat than it absorbs. Climate change at those higher latitudes is dominated by variations in the transport of surplus tropical heat. Scientists estimate “Without these heat transports the atmosphere would have an equator-pole surface air temperature difference of 100° C, which is more than twice the present value of 40°C.”4 Equally important, surplus equatorial heat is generated by the sun, with a very small and dubious contribution from CO2. As reported by the IPCC in the Physical Science Basis, “In the humid equatorial regions, where there is so much water vapour in the air that the greenhouse effect is very large, adding a small additional amount of CO2 or water vapour has only a small direct impact on downward infrared radiation. However, in the cold, dry polar regions, the effect of a small increase in CO2 or water vapour is much greater.”

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However both 20th century Arctic warming events are associated with greater volumes of warm water intruding into the Arctic driven by the warm phases of the Pacific Decadal Oscillation, the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation and the Arctic/North Atlantic Oscillation. And as would be expected, the poleward range of southerly marine organisms has ebbed and flowed accordingly.

In a 2013 peer-reviewed paper,5 scientists examined the migration of marine organisms into the Arctic reporting, “The fauna of the southern North Sea exhibits clear changes. Particularly conspicuous is the increase of Mediterranean fish species and the occurrence of sardine eggs and larvae. There is no doubt, that these observations are associated with the climate change which has been shown to occur since several decades, and which, over the last years, has had important consequences for fisheries: decrease of catches,northwards shift of fishing grounds, adaptation to fisheries for different species. …particularly interesting questions are: will climate change continue and, also, shifts and changes of fish stocks, how long will this last, and which are the consequences, if this trend reverses?”

Sounds familiar, but the above quote was written by Aurich in 1953. Like the earlier warming event and migrations, the most recent northward advance of small fish such as sardines, anchovies and herring correlate very well with the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation and the current distribution of fish from southerly waters is “almost identical to that described by Aurich for 1951.”5 After the earlier warm event those fish retreated and were absent from the North Sea surveys during the 1970s and 90s. So the next few decades should provide the evidence needed to settle much of the climate debate. If natural cycles are indeed the climate control knob, the next 2 decades should witness a cool phase of the AMO and the retreat of southerly marine organisms. And the current scientific consensus that the upper 300 meters of the oceans have been cooling since 2003 bodes well for natural cycles prediction.13

To support dubious climate model attributions, the scientific literature has been increasingly spammed with papers creating the second greatest climate myth: migrating organisms are evidence of CO2 driven warming. However their arguments fail to account for the myriad of confounding factors affecting the biosphere. The same biological evidence used to instill CO2 fear, is also consistent with interpretations attributing landscape changes and/or natural climate cycles that modulate heat transport to the poles. If marine organisms migrated similarly pre-1950s when CO2 was an insignificant player, then the most parsimonious explanation is identical migrations today are driven by the same natural forces.

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Good science demands we examine how climate changed naturally in the past, not to uncritically dismiss the possibility of CO2–caused warming, but to understand to what degree present climate change is driven by historical cycles. Only by thoroughly examining climate history can we estimate natural contributions and evaluate earth’s sensitivity to rising CO2. This is most critical because climate history is now repeating itself.

However those eager to blame rising CO2 have downplayed natural oscillations. Alarmists recently published Global Imprint Of Climate Change On Marine Life,” which press releases hyped in the media. Alarmist websites like ClimateProgress ranted, “The research is more confirmation that “global change is real and has been real for a long time. It’s not something in the distant future. It is well underway.”

The truth is natural cycles are well underway, as they always have been. And that dynamic is being hijacked.

The “Global Imprint” analyses suffered from the same shortcomings uncovered in inflated claims that 97% of the scientists agree about climate change. The authors similarly surveyed on-line abstracts from which they extracted only papers suggesting ecological changes were driven by climate change. Their filter effectively removed all analyses examining other confounding factors. Furthermore most of the papers in their compilation only studied responses during the warm phases of natural ocean cycles beginning in the 70s, after most marine organisms had retreated south. Thus their meta-analyses totally obscured the cyclic warming and cooling that accompanied those migrations during the 20th century. From their carefully filtered database, they claimed, “81–83% of all observations for distribution, phenology, community composition, abundance, demography and calcification across taxa and ocean basins were consistent with the expected impacts of climate change.”8

But like the “97% consensus” methodology, their 83% disguised the fact that the vast majority of species were non-responders. Of the 857 species examined, only 279 (or 33%) changed distribution. Sixty-seven percent had no response and therefore “were not included because failure to detect a change in distribution may have several causes, including barriers to dispersal, poor sampling resolution or the dominance of alternative drivers of change.” Changes in distribution also has several caused but again their data selection guaranteed a statistical bias. If all the 857 species were accounted for, a mere 27% behaved in a manner “consistent” with CO2 theory. More importantly most of those species were also behaving in a manner consistent with natural cycles.

It was not surprising to see the IPCC’s Camille Parmesan co-authored this paper. As I have documented before Parmesan has “inaccurately” blamed CO2 warming forextinctions due to lost habitat from urban sprawl, hijacked conservation success to arguepoleward movement of butterflies was caused by climate change, and blamed CO2 and extreme weather for a population extinction caused by logging while neighboring natural populations thrived. Now she again hijacks marine migrations caused by natural climate oscillations as “proof” of global warming. And both the “Global Imprint” lead author and Parmesan co-authored a paper contradicting scientific consensus, arguing “Species’extinctions have already been linked to recent climate change; the golden toad is iconic.”15

In contrast to the fearful “science via press release,” the peer-reviewed literature is filled with evidence that supports a more parsimonious natural cycles explanation. In 1997 fishery biologists (not climate scientists) discovered the climate changing Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO) after realizing that every 20 to 30 years salmon abundance shifted between Alaska and Oregon. When the PDO entered it positive phase around 1976, biologists observed northward migrations of plankton, fish and bottom dwelling organisms. Likewise temperatures increased. Climate scientists also reported “when the PDO value changed from dominantly negative to dominantly positive values, a sudden temperature increase across Alaska was observed.”6 After the 1997 El Nino, the PDO began to trend back to its negative cool phase. Sea surface temperature anomalies reverted “to that seen throughout the North Pacific before 1976.”14 Bering Sea ice began to increase reaching record extent in 2012 and Alaska became one of the most rapidly cooling locations on earth as the average for Alaskan weather stations experienced a extraordinary temperature drop of 1.3° C for the decade.6

As eastern Pacific temperature trends from Alaska to the Southern California Bight reversed, species of fish that had once moved northward are now retreating southward. Researchers in the Southern California Bight reported that above all other environmental factors, the changes in fish abundance has correlated best with the PDO regime shifts.7Such evidence prompted Monterrey Bay Aquariums chief scientist to warn that “These large-scale, naturally occurring variations must be taken into account when considering human-induced climate change and the management of ocean living resources.”8 After all it was the shifting PDO that disrupted Monterrey’s fishing industry as described by John Steinbeck in Cannery Row.

In the Atlantic, poleward intrusions of warm water driven by natural cycles have similarly altered sea ice and the distribution of marine organisms. Satellite pictures (below) clearly show that the recent loss of winter Arctic ice has occurred along the pathway by which warmer waters enter the Barents Sea, deep inside the Arctic Circle, while simultaneously air temperatures far to the south remain cold enough to maintain a frozen Hudson Bay. Before those warm water intrusions facilitated the loss of sea ice, air temperatures in the 80s and 90s reported a slight cooling trend contradicting CO2 theory.12

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Much of the warming in the Arctic in the 20s and 40s, as well as in recent decades was likely due to increased ventilation of ocean heat after sea ice was reduced by intruding warm water and the altered atmospheric circulation. A comparison of Danish Sea ice records from August 1937 with satellite pictures from August 2013, illustrate very similar losses of Arctic ice. As would be expected, a slightly greater proportion of thicker sea ice formed during the Little Ice Age would likely remain during the first warming event compared to recent decades. The slightly warmer Arctic temperatures of the recent decade can be attributed to a greater loss of thicker multiyear ice that is ventilating more ocean heat. But past performance never guarantees the future. Scientific opinions and predictions must be validated by experimentation or future observations. If indeed natural cycles are the real climate control knobs, the next 15 to 20 years will settled the debate. While alarmists predict total loss of ice by 2030 (and earlier predictions have already failed), believers in the power of natural cycles expect Arctic sea ice to rebound by 2030. Until then the science is far from settled. And claims that the science is settled just one more of the great climate myths. (Part 3 will look at the chimeras created by averaging and meta-analyses)

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Literature Cited

Gillett et al (2008), Attribution Of Polar Warming To Human Influence. Nature Geoscience Vol 1

www.nature.com/naturegeoscience

González-Rouco et al (2011), Medieval Climate Anomaly To Little Ice Age Transition As Simulated

By Current Climate Models. PAGES news, Vol 19.

Duffy, P.B., et al., (2006), Interpreting Recent Temperature Trends in California. Eos, Vol. 88.

Liu, Z., and M. Alexander (2007), Atmospheric Bridge, Oceanic Tunnel, And Global Climatic

Teleconnections, Rev. Geophys., Vol. 45, RG2005, doi:10.1029/2005RG000172.

Alheit et al (2013), Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation (AMO) Modulates Dynamics Of Small Pelagic

Fishes And Ecosystem Regime Shifts In The Eastern North And Central Atlantic. Journal of Marine Systems, vol. 133.

Wendler,G., et al. (2012) The First Decade of the New Century: A Cooling Trend for Most of Alaska. The Open Atmospheric Science Journal, 2012, 6, 111-116

Jarvis, E. , et al., (2004), Comparison of Recreational Fish Catch Trends to Environment‑species Relationships and Fishery‑independent Data in the Southern California Bight, 1980-2000. Recreational Fish Catch Trends, CalCOFI Rep., Vol. 45.

Poloczanska et al (2013), Global Imprint Of Climate Change On Marine LIfe. Nature Climate Change Vol. 3.

Chavez et al.(2003) From Anchovies to Sardines and Back: Multidecadal Change in the Pacific Ocean. Science, vol. 299.

Bengtsson, L., et al., (2004) The Early Twentieth-Century Warming in the Arctic—A Possible Mechanism. Journal of Climate, vol. 445-458.

Rigor, I.G., J.M. Wallace, and R.L. Colony (2002), Response of Sea Ice to the Arctic Oscillation, J. Climate, v. 15, no. 18, pp. 2648 – 2668.

Kahl, J., et al., (1993) Absence of evidence for greenhouse warming over the Arctic Ocean in the past 40 years. Nature, vol. 361, p. 335‑337, doi:10.1038/361335a0

Xue,Y., et al., (2012) A Comparative Analysis of Upper-Ocean Heat Content Variability from an Ensemble of Operational Ocean Reanalyses. Journal of Climate, vol 25, 6905-6929.

Peterson, W., and Schwing, F., (2003) A new climate regime in northeast pacific ecosystems. Geophysical Research Letters, vol. 30, doi:10.1029/2003GL017528.

Parmesan, C., et al. (2011) Overstretching attribution. Nature Climate Change, vol. 1, April 2011

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Can Noise Make You Sick?….You Bet It Can!

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June 26 2014
By JEROME BURNE

plane taking off afp

AFP

A similar study last year by the School of Public Health at Imperial College London found that being exposed to higher levels of aircraft noise around Heathrow raised the risk of admission to hospital for heart disease by 20 percent

London – We are surrounded by the sounds of the machinery that make our lives comfortable and convenient. The constant thrum of traffic, the thunder of jet engines overhead.

But when we have to listen to these noises for too long or at the wrong time, they can inflict silent and stealthy damage. Increasing evidence shows this damage isn’t just to our ears, but to our blood vessels and hearts.

Nor is this just a problem for people who live near busy roads or under flight paths. New research suggests noise pollution also causes harm in places such as hospitals.

Recently the world’s experts gathered in Japan to discuss the latest findings about noise and health. Perhaps most eye-catching was the study that linked noise pollution to your waist size.

In a four-year project published last year, researchers from Karolinska University in Sweden found that the louder the traffic noise to which people in different parts of Stockholm were exposed, the greater the increase in their waist size – there was nearly a centimetre increase for every ten-decibel rise in the noise levels. This is like the difference between a whispered conversation and the noise level in an average house or personal office.

Last month, scientists from Karolinska University found an even more dramatic effect from plane noise. After tracking more than 5 000 people for ten years, they reported that the waistlines of those most exposed to plane noise increased on average by 6cm.

A similar study last year by the School of Public Health at Imperial College London found that being exposed to higher levels of aircraft noise around Heathrow raised the risk of admission to hospital for heart disease by 20 percent.

The effects of noise pollution are even felt by babies in the womb.

In another of the studies presented at the conference, researchers from Utrecht University in the Netherlands examined data from more than 68 000 births and found that for every six-decibel increase in traffic noise there was a drop of 15g to 23g in birth weight.

Low birth weight is linked to a range of long-term health problems, including high blood pressure, diabetes and heart disease.

Of course, the most common response to noise exposure is annoyance. But while this may be limited to making you feel angry or exhausted, a major review of research published in the Lancet last October showed it can also disturb sleep and increase the risk of hypertension and cardiovascular disease.

It also affects schoolchildren’s academic performance.

“We are gathering more and more evidence that noise in the environment can have a direct effect on health,” says Professor Adrian Davis, one of the authors of the Lancet review and director of population health science for Public Health England.

Sound affects you even in sleep

What is unsettling is that noise pollution can affect you without you even consciously hearing it.

At night, heavy traffic is a major cause of insomnia, with all the knock-on effects of missing out on the restorative phase of sleep, such as depression, weight gain, raised blood sugar levels as well as daytime sleepiness.

The result can be an increased risk of type 2 diabetes and heart disease.

But the noise doesn’t even have to keep you awake to have an impact. When the Imperial College researchers monitored sleepers’ blood pressure, they found it went up in response to a quite low sound, such as a passing car – even though this might register only 50 decibels, and even though the sleeper didn’t wake.

“It seems as if the subconscious never stops monitoring what is going on around you,” says Professor Paul Elliott, an epidemiologist (expert in the incidence of disease) at Imperial College.

Noise pollution makes you fat

So, what’s going on here? How can the sound of traffic make you put on weight or raise you risk of heart disease? “The connection comes from stress,” says Professor Elliott.

It dates back to our Stone Age ancestors, he says, explaining that back then, being alert to new sounds around you could mean the difference between life and death.

“In the wild, sounds are often a sign that something dangerous might be about to happen,” he says.

“When they catch our attention because they are new or annoying, our bodies produce stress hormones, such as adrenalin and cortisol, to make us ready to fight or flee.”

These hormones raise energy and make blood more ready to clot.

That’s good for a short-term emergency when you may be injured, but long term it’s one of the factors pushing up heart attack risk – which might explain the link between noise pollution and heart disease.

One of the chemicals from this cocktail, cortisol, is a hormone that makes it more likely you will pack on the pounds around the middle. This is the so-called visceral fat that also pushes up heart attack risk.

Noise can also increase blood pressure, another risk factor. When we’re stressed, the endothelium – the fine lining of the arteries – contracts, raising blood pressure.

The effect of noise stress isn’t limited to making us physically ill, it can also make it harder to concentrate, especially for children.

The background noise in the classroom shouldn’t be more than 35 decibels, but that can be doubled by cars passing by or planes overhead.

Research shows heavy traffic or being under a flight path is linked with learning more slowly. The children pay less attention or become more annoyed.

Hospital din can harm patients

Around 20 percent of people in the EU have to put up with traffic noise greater than 65 decibels in the day, while nearly a third have noise measurements greater than 55 decibels outside their houses at night – the level that can trigger problems, says the World Health Organisation.

A level of 45 decibels and below is considered ideal.

The problem isn’t limited to towns and cities. Aircraft fly over the countryside and agricultural machinery can be intrusive.

And as Anna Hansell, a doctor at Public Health England, explains: “If aircraft noise has an effect on the heart, then so might other sorts of noise that people find stressful – such as building works or constant loud music from neighbours.”

One of the big shocks of the Lancet report was the harm caused by noise in hospitals.

The review found that noise levels in hospitals have increased and are typically 15 to 20 decibels higher than the recommended 40 decibels – that’s the difference between the hum of a fridge and someone practising the piano.

Intensive care units, which look after some of the most vulnerable patients whose systems are already stressed, can be full of “irregular” sounds such as alarms sounding, phone ringtones and pagers going off, staff chatting and doors banging open and shut.

These are just the sort of sounds that can trigger the damaging stress “startle” response to noise.

The result is patients take longer to heal, need higher doses of painkillers and are likely to be readmitted to hospital, according to the Lancet review.

The review also found that staff, too, are affected by this constant noise, making them tired and suffer headaches. As Professor Davis points out: “Many of these noise sources can be dealt with simply with sound- absorbing ceilings and cutting the volume of ring tones – that would lower the rate of cardiovascular disease.”

Crying babies aren’t a risk

The decibel levels linked to health problems such as cardiovascular disease don’t seem too high – just 50 to 60 decibels for traffic noise.

That’s not very different from having a conversation (60 decibels), let alone a crying baby (100 decibels) or a rock concert (120 and up). So, why is traffic noise harmful and a screaming baby not? “There are several reasons why you can’t compare them directly,” says Dr Hansell.

“The rating for aircraft noise, for instance, is usually the average over 24 hours. So, you would have quiet moments and times when the level might reach 90 decibels. This sort of intermittent noise is much more annoying than a steady background noise.”

The sound of a screaming baby may be intermittent and stressful, but even the most distressed baby doesn’t keep going 24/7 for four or more years – the length of time of the studies that found health damage.

The key difference is that plane noise counts as “nuisance noise” – you don’t seek it out or enjoy it.

“Nuisance noise is harder to ignore and its effect is in addition to background noise,” says Dr Hansell.

And decibels aren’t the only feature that decides how a sound is going to affect us. Some types of noise are more stressful than others, possibly because they are less regular or are high or low-pitched – this varies with the individual.

There is a significant subjective element to the way people respond to sound, says Geoff Leventhall, an independent noise consultant, author and expert on the noise from wind turbines. “The actual level of sound as objectively measured in decibels makes up only about 30 percent of how it is perceived. People’s attitude can play a big part.

“Something that might be stressful viewed in one way, such as a thumping beat from a nearby club at 2am when you’ve got an early start, can be enjoyable if you are out for the weekend.”

Researchers such as Professor Elliott are well aware it’s hard to be sure it’s noise alone causing a problem.

“We found a connection between noise and heart disease in 3.6 million people living around Heathrow,” he says.

‘But that population includes a large number of people from South-East Asia who have a higher risk of heart disease anyway. That could have contributed to the result.’

However, with the growing body of evidence that noise is harmful, Professor Davis insists action is needed to tackle it.

“We need programmes to cut levels of stressful noise and enforce standards,” he says.

“The results could include improved learning in schools, better sleep for millions, a drop in heart disease, and hospitals that were far more pleasant.”

How to protect yourself

There are things we can all do to reduce the effects of noise, says Dr Hansell

Earplugs: “I use them in the cinema, at rock concerts and for sleeping, especially in noisy hotels,” says Dr Hansell.

Complain: “If we don’t all let people know when we’re being affected, nothing will change. So if a cinema film is too loud, ask the staff to turn it down. I’ve even written in about the announcements on the Northern line Tube being too loud.”

Relax: “If you can’t change it, try not to become annoyed or stressed by the noise, as that will increase your blood pressure!”

In decibels, how much noise are you exposed to?

10: Falling leaves

20: A whisper in a quiet library

30: Quiet conversation

40: The noise level in an average house or the hum of a fridge

50: Normal office noise or rainfall

60-70: Piano practice or the noise of a normal conversation at 3ft apart

70: Level at which most people play their radio

80: Noisy office or an alarm clock, loud singing, average sound of traffic

100: Bass drum, passing truck or a car horn

110: Screaming child

120: Rock concert

180: Plane taking off. – Daily Mail

Lack of Cost-Benefit Analysis for Green Projects is More Evidence that it is a SCAM!

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Auditors probe £16bn green energy contracts

Matt McGrathBy Matt McGrathEnvironment correspondent, BBC News

wind
Five offshore wind farms have been selected for early contracts

The government may have failed to protect the interests of bill payers when awarding green energy contracts, says the National Audit Office (NAO).

Eight long-term deals worth £16.6bn were signed earlier this year to secure projects said to be at risk of cancellation.

The NAO says too much money was awarded to these renewable sources “without price competition”.

It is concerned that this could ultimately increase costs to consumers.

Under an EU directive, the UK government is committed to producing 30% of electricity from renewable energy sources by 2020.

To drive investment in this area, the government has long operated a system of subsidising generators.

“We are not convinced that they needed to do this amount this early”

Jill GoldsmithNational Audit Office

In an effort to improve efficiency and value for money, the Department for Energy and Climate Change (DECC) embarked on a series of reforms to the electricity market over the past two years.

The major change has been the introduction of Contracts for Difference.

This is a two-way system where the government sets an agreed price for electricity and the generators either receive a subsidy or have to pay money back depending on the state of the market.

Ultimately, the idea is that generators would bid for these contracts, guaranteeing that consumers would get green energy at the most competitive price.

But with the system not fully up and running until April next year, DECC was faced with the tricky problem of how to fund enough renewables to meet 2020 targets.

Limiting opportunities

Its solution was to award early contracts to five offshore wind farms, two coal plant conversions to biomass and one biomass combined heat and power plant.

However the NAO is not satisfied that the way these contracts have been awarded is good for consumers and the long-term health of the renewables industry.

“Our view is that awarding £16.6bn of contracts has limited the opportunities to secure better value for money through competition under the contracts for difference regime, due to start this year,” said Jill Goldsmith from the NAO.

The NAO highlights the fact that the money will generate just 5% of the renewable electricity required by 2020.

It is also concerned that the department made its decision to commit consumer funding, not on the basis of price competition but with a weighting for the likely impact on the project of any delay or “hiatus”.

Willow Willow can be chipped and burned for energy in a biomass plant

“The qualification rule around hiatus required confirmation that the project would be put back if they didn’t get funding,” said Jill Goldsmith.

“It was a kind of yes/no qualification criteria which was largely based on confirmation from the project’s board that this was the case.”

The government watchdog is concerned that the prices that have been agreed for energy under these contracts “may provide higher returns than needed to secure the investment”.

The report suggests that the projects were likely to make money but the government did not ask for any information on projected costs and profits in the bidding process.

ERT’s Are Set Up, To Protect The Rich Wind Corporations, NOT Taxpaying Citizens!

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County and community members fighting Jericho Wind farm

at Ontario Environmental Review Tribunal

By Megan Stacey, The London Free Press

Thursday, June 26, 2014

(QMI Agency)

 

Emotions are running high at the opening day of an Ontario Environmental Review Tribunal hearing to determine the fate of a wind turbine project by NextEra Energy in Lambton and Middlesex Counties.

Community members and the County of Lambton are facing off against the Ontario Environment Ministry and NextEra Energy over the Jericho Wind Energy Project, which would bring 92 turbines to the region.

An opening statement by resident Muriel Allingham, who is appealing the provincial ministry’s approval of the Jericho project alongside several other community members, attacked NextEra as greedy.

In order to overturn the province’s approval of the Jericho Wind Project, Allingham and the County of Lambton must prove it will cause severe harm to humans or the environment.

The first presenter of the day, Elizabeth Bellavance, a local community and social justice advocate, urged the tribunal to consider the injustice of the requirement.

In any project other than renewable energy where products like wind and vibration are released into the environment, showing “adverse effects” is enough to halt their use.

The community’s case against NextEra is virtually non-existent without the testimony of Sarah Hornblower, a local woman and mother who would have been a key witness in the hearing. The tribunal denied a summons for Hornblower late Wednesday afternoon.

Hornblower has several autistic children who she says will be severely impacted by the new wind turbines, several of which would fall on her family’s farm.

She has entered into agreements with NextEra Energy which community leaders say are because she has evidence of severe physical harm arising from turbines.

The resistance of rural communities to wind turbine projects is nothing new. Many argue the turbines destroy quality of life due to noise, vibration, stray voltage, turbine placement on parks and soccer fields, and their impact on those with sensory disorders like Hornblower’s children, among other concerns.

At a break in the hearing, Marcelle Brooks, another community member who is part of the team appealing the NextEra Energy project approval, said they expect this case to be the same as many others they’ve seen in the past few years.

“Our vision here today is how it has been for the last four years for us in this battle, and that is to expose the corruption, to expose the injustice,” Brooks said.

megan.stacey@sunmedia.ca

 

The Climate Change Scam….It has always been, “About the Money!!”

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‘Climate Reparations’ an idea that seems to be all about money

Posted on June 26, 2014

Climate Reparations—A New Demand

Guest opinion by Peter Wood

At the Copenhagen Climate Change Conference in December 2009, leaders from more than a hundred nations gathered to consider an agenda that included a massive transfer of money from developed countries to the Third World.  The developed states were tagged to provide $130 billion by 2020 to help developing nations deal with the consequences of global warming.  The proposed transfer was widely discussed as “reparations” for the damage caused by use of fossil fuels in the developed world.

 

The Copenhagen proposal went down in ignominious defeat.  A motley collection of Third World countries brought the idea up again in 2013 in the run-up to the UN’s climate conference in Warsaw, but by then whatever impetus the idea had had was gone.  President Obama instructed the U.S. delegate to oppose it.  The State Department explained:

“It’s our sense that the longer countries look at issues like compensation and liability, the more they will realize this isn’t a productive avenue for the [UN Framework Convention on Climate Change] to go down.”

The U.S. Government may have sidled away from this climate change compensation scheme but the underlying idea hasn’t gone away.  When the broader public and the world at large dismisses a “progressive” idea, that idea is almost certain to find an enthusiastic welcome on university campuses.  The notions of “climate reparations” and more broadly “climate justice” have settled in as things that campus philosophers philosophize about and campus activists activize over.

Possibly this is something that busy people should ignore. “Climate reparations” may turn out to be like the campaign to establish Esperanto as a world language. Esperanto, invented in the 1870s, was put forward as a tool for ending ethnic conflict and fostering world peace.  It enjoyed an American vogue in the 1960s, perhaps best remembered for a 1966 horror movie, Incubus, starring William Shatner, in which the entire dialogue was spoken in Esperanto.

Those who speak to Americans right now of climate reparations might as well be lecturing in Esperanto, since few of us want this economic incubus.  But it is never wise to entirely ignore the ideas gestating in the faculty towers.  Sometimes they get translated into actual political movements.

From Race to Environment

This thought came to mind when I came across an essay by a writer for the New America Foundation.  In “The Cost of Ignoring America’s Past,” Hana Passen begins by setting forth an astonishing parallel:

“If we do not face the lasting impact of slavery, which has been abolished by law and condemned in the court of morality, how will we be able to legislate issues like climate change, which some still deny?”

Passen, it turns out, hadn’t conjured the moral equivalence of slavery and climate change out of thin air.  She was paraphrasing Atlantic editor Ta-Nehisi Coates, who sets it out even more starkly:

“What [slavery] reparations requires is a country and a citizenry that can look at itself in the mirror naked and see itself clearly,” Coates said during a recent conversation with New America President Anne-Marie Slaughter. “And that’s the same argument for climate change. What is required for reparations, that kind of citizenry, that kind of patriotism, is not just required on that front.”

Coates’ article in the Atlantic, “The Case for Reparations,” was a huge hit for the rather stodgy journal.  According to its editor James Bennett, Coates’ article “brought more visitors to the Atlantic [website] in a single day than any single piece we’ve ever published.”  It also sold out on newsstands.  But in his article Coates stuck entirely to the theme of racial reparations and did not raise the green flag of climate reparations he brought up his New America interview.

Reparations for slavery is an idea that has been churning among African-Americans for a very long time, and one that grows less and less plausible as a practical political matter with every year that passes since the Emancipation Proclamation (1863) and the passages of the 13th and 14th Amendments (1865, 1868).  But slavery reparations, or reparations for racial injustice more broadly conceived, are a durable fantasy, and it isn’t wholly surprising that a fresh enunciation of the case for them has excited attention.

But that’s a topic for another day.  The relevance of racial reparations to “climate justice” is that it serves as a conceptual and moral model.  Somebody has done something bad to someone.  Somebody has to pay.

Cotton Mather’s View

Mr. Coates is an editor, not an academic.  But the academic world is astir with ideas about how to apportion responsibility for climate change.  In this realm, any debate whether global warming is occurring and to what degree it can be attributed to human actions is entirely foreclosed.  It is simply assumed or asserted that catastrophic man-made climate change is upon us, and the discussion moves directly to identifying the culprits and apportioning the costs.  In this vein, the discussion bears a certain resemblance to debate in 17th century New England on how to handle the danger posed by witches.  It is as provocative today to express doubt in anthropogenic global warming (AGW) as it would have been to argue with Cotton Mather about relying on spectral evidence.  As Mather said, “Never use but one grain of patience with any man that shall go to impose upon me a Denial of Devils, or of Witches.” In what follows, I will abide by Mather’s counsel.

What do academics argue about when it comes to climate reparations?  Simon Carey, a professor of political theory at the University of Birmingham, lays out some useful distinctions in “Cosmopolitan Justice, Responsibility, and Global Climate Change.”  There is wide agreement on the “polluter pays principle” (PPP), Carey says.  But there is disagreement whether the true polluter is the individual who pollutes or the nation that benefits from his actions.  “Many of those who adopt the PPP approach to climate change appear to treat countries as the relevant units.”  Carey, who might be described as a climate liberal, rejects this collectivist approach, which he said is founded on the “beneficiary pays principle” (BPP). Current generations have benefited from the pollution caused by their ancestors, so the current generation should be held collectively responsible.  The Copenhagen proposal—which came four years after Carey’s article—embodies BPP logic.

Carey himself, however, believes that BPP violates PPP.  The original polluter often doesn’t pay at all, because he is dead, and the payments ignore all the improvements to the standard of living that flow from past industrialization. Carey isn’t against making people pay; he just wants individuals to pay for the harm they themselves do.  Presumably he would endorse making BP (the oil company) pay for the damage caused by the 2010blowout of its well in the Gulf of Mexico.

This summary is probably enough to suggest that the debate over climate reparations is a serious matter drawing serious attention from scholars.  I won’t take the space here for a deep dive into climate reparations scholarship, but a little snorkeling around the reef is enlightening.

Backward-Looking Laws

In 2008, Daniel Farber published “Basic Compensation for Victims of Climate Change” inEnvironmental Law and Policy Annual Review.  Farber attempted to identify the injuries that deserve compensation and the “responsible parties.”  He also gave voice to the racial reparations analogy:

“The problem is somewhat analogous to the diffuse issues raised by those seeking reparations for slavery and past racial discrimination.”

Farber is a professor of law at UC Berkeley where he holds a named chair and co-directs the Center for Law, Energy & the Environment.  He is a consequential and well-published figure.  His works include, not incidentally, a law review article, “Backward-Looking Laws and Equal Protection:  The Case of Black Reparations” (2006).  His books include Disaster Law; Disaster Law and Policy; and Eco-pragmatism:  Making Sensible Environmental Decisions in an Uncertain World.  His article on black reparations is essentially a meditation on Justice Stevens’ approach to reparations, who he says, “clearly prefers forward-looking rationales for affirmative action over remedial ones” and “might vote against reparations on that basis.”

Farber’s article on compensation for victims of climate change elicited a number of responses, most interestingly from Kenneth Feinberg, the man who served as Special Master to the September 11 Victim Compensation Fund and who also ran the $20 billion BP oil spill victims’ fund.  Feinberg disagreed with Farber’s approach that distributes financial responsibility among culprits by a “market share” contribution formula.  Feinberg thinks it “more reasonable—and more politically feasible—to expect governments themselves to fund any compensation regimen.”  Feinberg also thinks it is premature to start cutting the checks.  “There is a great deal to be said for waiting until climate change litigation develops and matures…”

Why Wait?

There are many in the sustainability movement, however, who aren’t inclined to wait at all.  They act quickly, as we saw recently when an adjunct professor at American University ventured a criticism on the op-ed page of The Wall Street Journal of the climate reparations movement.  Professor Caleb Rossiter noted that:

“More than 230 organizations, including Africa Action and Oxfam, want industrialized countries to pay ‘reparations’ to African governments for droughts, rising sea levels and other alleged results of what Ugandan strongman Yoweri Museveni calls ‘climate aggression.’”

Rossiter argued that the campaign extended to efforts “to deny to Africans the reliable electricity—and thus the economic development and extended years of life—that fossil fuels can bring.”  The reward to Rossiter for his airing this complaint was a prompt firingfrom his position as a fellow of the Institute for Policy Studies.  (Cotton Mather would approve.)

As part of the National Association of Scholars’ study of the sustainability movement, I have begun to track the “reparations” thread within the universities.  It has several aliases, including “environmental justice,” “climate compensation,” “climate change liability,” “climate debt,” and “climate reparations.”  The last in the list is the term preferred by Maxine Burkett, a law professor at the University of Hawaii, who argues that reparations put the “moral issues” appropriately at the center of the debate and offer the possibility of “galvanizing greater enthusiasm and commitment to repair from individuals, communities and nation-states.”  She thinks reparations would “foster civic trust between nations and manifest social solidarity.”

Judging from the Copenhagen and Warsaw conferences, that dream of international amity is far-fetched.  We might have a better chance by sitting ourselves down to learn Esperanto.

But lest this seem too airy a dismissal of a movement that combines heartfelt sympathy for a world imagined to be warming to disaster with cold determination to plunder the West by litigation and treaty, let me add that I take the reparations movement as a force to be reckoned with.  Hundreds of professors are honing it at law schools, environmental institutes, and schools of public policy.  Who pays?  As we say in Esperanto, Finfine, vi kaj mi. [Eventually, you and me.]

===============================================================

Originally published in Minding the Campus. Peter Wood is president of the National Association of Scholars.

German People Plead With Their Government, to Stop the Wind Scam!

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Letter to the Members of the 18th German Bundestag

On 26 and 27.6.2014 the German Bundestag wants to adopt the reform of the EEG. Despite harsh criticism by the EU Commission.

To ensure that no Member of Parliament can say afterwards that he knew nothing about health hazards and negation of species protection, wind delusion has all the members of the 18th German Bundestag wrote the following letter and sent by email.

If you want our people Represented write a few lines, come and find here the contact details for all Members: http://www.flegel-g.de/2014-Mailadressen-alle-Bt-18-Wahlperiode.html (you may have replace the semicolon with a comma to insert the list of deputies in an address line of your email program.)

 

Dear Members,

The reform of the EEG is at the Bundestag for a decision.Many lobbyists will contact you for months, so you use your voice to help these economic and ideological benefits. It tries to influence you and many wishes and demands are brought to you.

    We have no claims on you. 

    Rather, we would like to ask for your concerns to include the welfare of your electorate before making your decision.

Many of you have already before the federal election in 2013 of various lobby organizations such as the BWE (German Wind Energy Association) funded ” renewable energy revolution now “or thecitizen energy revolution sponsored by Juwi , BUND , BWE can, inter alia, collect, and these in the event of your choice to Bundestag pledged your support. Here it is not surprising that the official government commissioned report of the Advisory Council promptly disappeared because of the adverse outcome in the sinking and the complaint of the Regulatory Control Council for EEGremained unheard.
We, citizens of this country, taxpayers and voters, many of us living in the countryside, looking for your support. Not to us to enrich with your help or to convince you of an ideology, but because we want to remind you on Friday comply with the vote on the EEG reform your obligation to act for the benefit of the people.

With the themes of economy and national wealth, energy efficiency, unreliability of so-called renewable energy and skyrocketing electricity prices, we do not want to bother you, many others, such as the federal initiative power of reason , have already done to enlightenment. For this report, even the German media.

On the subject of social justice and democracy, which has to do with freedom of speech for dissenters and tolerance, with the village of peace, the preservation of specially unearned property and related old-age security and creditworthiness to read little and you may think it’s all good in the country?

From energy poverty, which was a marginal phenomenon in German society before and today has already reached hundreds of thousands of households the power switched off, you have heard certain. Also assume that the cost of the energy revolution by the EEG are not calculable by the perks for many lobby groups to absurdity of paying for not produced and not abzunehmenden power because of overload or not existing networks.
already today calls on the EU that in the foreign electricity produced from so-called renewable on domestic support measures must be subsidized if it is consumed domestically.
Surely you have already thought about how, for example, prices will explode only when, as with “Northern Link is planned, “in a big way power would be transported from the Norwegian pump storage plants in Germany, who is also the Norwegian producer profits through EEG would give to EU demands.

From the damage to nature and biodiversity, to the “gold rush” has done for wind power plants, biogas and photovoltaic fields, transported through the EEG, you must have heard this before.barotrauma caused by differences in air pressure can the lungs of bats and birds burst, the avifauna is driven by the effect of displacement from their habitats. Birds, especially Griffins as red kites are, by 300 km / h fast slain rotating blades . The avifauna is no food and no more breeding sites aftermonocultures have destroyed their habitat . Grassland birds are scared away either by wind power plants, such as the lapwing or the skylark or robbed by new animal by newcomers such as the fox and the wild boar of their nest. Avifauna lands in search of water on huge photovoltaic fields and burns . , the continental and intercontinental bird migration are robbed of their flight paths through huge barriers of wind power plants up to their altitude. nature and animal protection laws are a means of a license to kill with the granting of planning permission and successive reduction of the habitat of biodiversity through new spacing rules as a gift for EEG lobbyists undermined. square kilometers way forests are vanishing, and huge bogs are drained and abused as locations for wind power plants, and thus destroyed the main CO2 storage. , the right to rest in nature and an intact landscape is one of the human rights. These are sacrificed for years the energy turnaround.

The injustice against nature and against the civil rights will eventually trumped by the threat to the health of residents.
From botulism , the slow poisoning of humans and animals through the application of Gärschlämmmen from biogas plants you have already read?
Each funded by EEG biogas plant increases the spread of this dangerous disease!
make also of the rare earths for use in wind turbine gearboxes and photovoltaic their promotion of thousands of workers and their families sick, to destroy the environment in the producing countries?continuous noise than for Illness is you will be aware, he is often discussed, unless it comes from highways, factories, airports and was defined as “bad” noise. Continuous noise of wind power plants, pumps and cooling units, with additional noise peaks by impulsiveness, audio components and information is from local residents in accordance with policy specification to endure as a “good” noise, Ebeso as the non-audible, but by the vibrations from tactile infrasound and visual pollution Shadow Strike and Flashing continuously in a formerly quiet and relaxing surroundings in a natural environment. These diseases affect not only the psyche of the residents, but provide some of them serious disease symptoms.

The following diseases caused by noise are sure many of you do not realize it, because the issue of low-frequency and infrasound, which although researched for decades , it will infrasound weaponsare and the New York police demonstrators by infrasound wards, but is not made ​​by the local media publicized . If it does is once wrote or sent via infrasound, the lobbyists and ideologues sitzten in editing or in the editing room. This is abgewiegelt immediately and through studies vonPartner universities ( here and here ) of the various lobby groups that still against better knowledge of the hazardous nature of infrasound report which, although situated below the hearing threshold of 20 Hz, but body organs and material to vibrate and brings to vibrate the inner ear tissue, cardiac muscle, vein walls , among others damaged, forcing stressors for continuous activity and stimulates the immune system and leads to dangerous interference with the development of white blood cells and the appearance of immature cells in the blood .

For example demonstrates the latter study from 2010 clearly shows that the immune system by infra-sound even at low sound pressures is damaged. Thus, investigations of Dr. Pierpont, Dr. Harry, Professor Salt or Dr. Laurie were confirmed, which could prove beyond doubt in their studies, among other things, that emitted by wind turbine infrasound damages human health

That the selection of different sound disorders not only meeting people but also breeding animals shows the most recent example of Denmark, where in 1600 mink after commissioning of neighboring wind power plants dead, malformed and arrived early to the world, adult mink each other with bites have seriously injured to Death.
studies and investigations on the vibration-acoustic disease (VAD) of the team led by Professor Mariana Alves-Pereira and Dr. Nuno Castelo Branco from the University of Lisbon, conducting research since 1980 on the subject of infrasound, first at cabin crew and pilots, since the late 90 then to wind power plants, there injured people have led to the introduction of an occupational pension for infrasound. The investigations of Vibro Acoustic Disease (VAD) deal with the lobby-independent-working team of the University Lusófona with tissue changes in humans and animals (horses, goats).
The first research there were in fact already in 1912 and 1917 in Austria .

Especially after Your MEPs colleague Ms. Hoehn of the Greens recently claimed in a letter of reply to a wind power opponents citizens’ initiative that the opinion of Prof. Salt a personal opinion and his research was flawed, it seems to be necessary to make reference to the long period of research and their diversity.

Call we want only some, but allow us the following request:
Pay attention to the relevant source information among the various studies. You’ll be amazed at how much research already operated for infrasound for 100 years and how many more studies have been published worldwide!
Mc Cauley, Kelly , Carl Philip, Nina Pierpont , Dres Enbom , Harry, Nissenbaum, Hubbart & Shepherd, Thorne , Laurie , mouse field, hamlets, Scholz and many more

There is even a study by Vestas in Australia who came only once to the public in 2004 during a wind energy conference. There, the wind turbine manufacturer Vestas warned of the effects of infrasound on the neighbors of its wind turbines. On their official website , however, they summon harmlessness of infrasound.
In Canada and Australia are currently established long-term measurements for infrasound place inDenmark is one such under the auspices of two ministries and carried out by the company to combat cancer in preparation.
, the Here in Germany there are now at least recently released feasibility study by Prof. Krahé of the University of Wuppertal . Mr. Krahé talks and publishes about infrasound way as his colleagues Salt , Kelly, Alves-Pereira, Nissenbaum , Hubbart & Shepherd, Ambrose & edge , Iser , Nobbs Doolan & Moreau , inter alia, the Inter-Noise. The texts are freely available to all interested parties.

(This link is important wg. Many of the various information, also affected!http://windwahn.de/index.php/krankheit-56/vibro-acoustic-disease/krank-durch-schall

You might wonder why nothing about reading in the general press and why it makes virtually no sound sick and attending doctor to speak in the FRG.
In a society that has delivered the various lobbies for years and that no questions this provides that lobbyists sit in Germany in droves in the Bundestag and the ministries make policy for their interest group and write the bills that are hardly tested adopted as law.
Harmful effects of tobacco and asbestos were at the instigation of the respective lobbies also many decades long downplayed with the help of lobby-dependent doctors, denied and covered up until you could no longer overlook the serious sequelae and wanted to finally to draw conclusions!

Quoting Prof. Dr. Alec Salt to the Ministry of Health in Victoria , AU, we would like you to please put your heart to ensure that it diemal not as long and our country is not ruled by lobbyists but by you as representatives of the people responsible for the welfare of your fellow citizens, which of course decide independently and freely without being guided by economic interests of others and of ideologies.
” It is irresponsible to maintain the highest degree of a Ministry of Health that low-frequency sound can have no physiological effect when publicly available experimental results prove the contrary. Ministry of Health of the public fails to protect against the potential risks of low frequency sound by its lack of objective and balanced assessment. “

By the way: There are quite politicians who have the courage to have their own opinion and this also known to do: For example, Senator Madigan, he buttoned up in the Australian Parliament during a 20-minute speech, just the, well paid by the beneficiaries of the use of wind energy and always most cited on the subject of nocebo effect Prof. Simon Chapman before and calling his “scientific” lobby study together with his cynicism in dealing with concerned and affected citizens by infrasound.
Whether there will be in Germany one day politicians who do the same by dieLobbystudien ofpsychologist Dr. John Pohl , Martin- Luther-University Halle-Wittenberg clear for all to hear as make the public what they are, courtesy report for the wind power industry, appears still very questionable.
A recent example of how the study leader Hübner and Pohl a study of annoyance due to wind turbines of the Faculty of Psychology tangible physical symptoms caused by infrasound negate simply click here . The fact that the interviewed residents of the expert absurdum which leads immediately ad by referring to the once positive attitude of local residents before the construction of the facilities and is plagued by disease symptoms but in the aftermath, speaks volumes, but is hardly noticed.

How many residents in the radius of 10 km and depending on sound sensitivity sometimes even more ill results, in addition to the many studies that 30-40 % of residents speak world from the personal accounts on many websites. . Therein you will find evidence of unsaleable property after the construction of wind farms, people who leave their homes due to unbearable symptoms but who give up their company and financially lose in addition to the home and all
Please visit the websites and make yourself a picture: windturbinesyndrome.com, illwind.org, waubra-foundation.org.au, stilhed.eu, windwahn.de (illness, WTS, wind delusion Story Chapter 3, Affidavit, WTS initial symptoms in the search function), etc. Many of the information pages have a translator function.

That it for several years in Germany, more and more doctors out there that inform and symptoms of the disease by sound, occurred after the commissioning of wind power plants, pumps or other technichen plants and thus take seriously affected residents, is a poisitive development. The fact that many of these doctors being tempted to provide education, to write articles and give lectures is another step towards a more offensive approach to the compulsive hushed topic infrasound:
Article by Dr. Vogt , Dr. Nelting , Dr. Kuck (Ärzteforum Emission Control) – Videos Dr. Mayer andDr. Repp

These lectures and articles allow any interested party, all parties concerned and the sick, to become familiar with the subject infrasound in relative brevity, and to understand its symptoms. 
It would be a great asset to our company if you would take the time , the Enlightenment and view videos from PPPs and to read the article. 
Possibly would also awakened in your interest to deal more effectively with this is, by the increase in technical, infrasound-emitting plants, since two decades propagating environmental disease – for the benefit of the population.

Please provide us fellow citizens, residents of infrasound-emitting plants by the wind power plant on pumps to chillers, among others devices the necessary protection against low frequency and infrasound!

Thank you for taking note of our concerns on behalf of all affected or threatened by infrasound and other specified environmental conditions members of the EPAW (European Platform Against Windfarms) in Germany, as well as our “wind delusion” readers and wish you and us make wise choices among concerns above instructions.

Sincerely,

Jutta Reichardt and Marco Bernardi
spokeswoman for EPAW in D and editors and Webmastering by www.windwahn.de

 

Aussie, Clive Palmer, Supports Demolition of Carbon Tax Scam….while Al Gore, Looks On!

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The truth inconveniently dawns on the Clive show THE AUSTRALIAN

  • JUNE 27, 2014

CLIVE Palmer must have been tempted to throw out some chicken pellets as he left. The former media adviser to Joh Bjelke-Petersen had just sold the chooks of the Canberra press gallery a chopping block and rotisserie, and they gobbled it up.

Journalists and commentators who had long campaigned against Tony Abbott and in favour of a carbon price had just been advised of a package that would kill the carbon tax, defer an emissions trading scheme into the never-never and put an end to carbon abatement through “direct action” — and they applauded. “Palmer in carbon tax blow to PM,” bellowed the front page of The Age, suggesting the Prime Minister’s plans to abolish the tax were in “chaos”, while The Sydney Morning Herald, which favours a price on carbon, editorialised that Mr Palmer’s intervention was a “positive” move for the environment.

That the Queensland coalmine developer and nickel-refining billionaire was audacious enough to think he could snow the media just by having Al Gore share his podium was bizarre enough. That so many in the media fell for it is droll and depressing in equal measure. As for Mr Gore, given his claims about the origins of the internet, he might have found 10 minutes to Google his new political ally before administering self-harm to his diminishing reputation as a climate evangelist. Did Mr Gore even know he was sharing the stage with a man who had often denied global warming was a problem and was planning to make billions of dollars from coal exports? Did the man who shared a Nobel prize for climate activism not even take the time to ascertain that what he was endorsing was the abolition of any and all substantial carbon emissions reduction schemes in this country?

SMH columnist Mike Carlton took to Twitter saying the announcement would “screw the Tories” but succeeded only in demonstrating his venom and lack of political acuity. “Cute of Palmer to front with Al Gore, though, it will drive the climate change deniers at News Corpse to an apoplectic frenzy, just watch,” was his take. If that weren’t embarrassing enough, no lesser figure than the managing director of the ABC shared an identical sentiment. “Sensing hyperventilation in The Australian’s editorial room,” tweeted Mark Scott. We should welcome Mr Scott’s honesty in publicly aligning himself with the embittered left fringe of politics but we should also despair that the ABC’s editor-in-chief should misunderstand policy and politics so comprehensively.

The policy implications of Mr Palmer’s stand are neither disappointing nor surprising. As expected — indeed, as promised — he will support the abolition of the carbon tax. Further, he has vowed to oppose Mr Abbott’s direct action plan. The Australian has always been sceptical of this policy because it will not lead to the lowest cost abatement. However, Mr Palmer’s stand means that the nation could be left with no scheme at all to enable the delivery of its emissions reduction target of 5 per cent below 2000 levels by 2020. The trump card, strangely lauded by much of the media, is his proposition to legislate an ETS that would be set at $0 until our major trading partners adopted similar schemes. This is a fundamentally sensible position at one level but includes some obvious paradoxes. Australia, effectively, already has an ETS because the carbon tax is due to switch to a market price next year. So what Mr Palmer really suggests is that a fixed price should be kept in place indefinitely but cut to the rate of zero. It would be a carbon price signal without a price signal. This is bizarre, of course, and really no more than spin. Few people could or would argue against an ETS to be imposed if and when our major trading partners adopted one. In fact that has been the consistent policy thread of most sensible advocates in this country since the Shergold report first informed the Howard government on these matters in 2007. And this newspaper has always supported that policy direction: an Australian ETS acting in concert with our trading partners. This is the only way to ensure we do not place ourselves at an economic disadvantage or simply export emissions, and jobs, offshore. The elephant in the room, which we suspect Mr Palmer sees but his media throng doesn’t, is that this won’t be happening any time soon. If ever. To demonstrate what a setback this is for carbon price supporters we simply need to consider the most optimistic scenario. Let us pretend for a moment that global agreement for a trading scheme occurred a decade from now. If that were the case we could see now that the ABC and Fairfax press have been cheering a policy that switches the nation from a $25.40 a tonne carbon price escalating every year for 10 years and raising a minimum of $70 billion, to one set at $0 raising nothing across a decade. Some progress.

And to shatter their climate dreams further, Mr Palmer, with Labor and the Greens, promises to axe the Coalition’s $2.5bn direct action plan that would have been spent entirely on domestic schemes to reduce carbon emissions. This is a great win for carbon pricing in the same way that the Titanic’s maiden voyage was a great win for trans-Atlantic travel.

Mr Palmer is demanding the renewable energy target remains in place. This initiative has long held bipartisan support but is under government review. Dismantling or reducing it would be difficult economically and politically, but keeping it will continue to put upward pressure on electricity prices. The heaviest burden will fall on the poor; not businessmen like Mr Palmer. By also insisting the Clean Energy Finance Corporation remains, Mr Gore’s newest friend ensures only some ongoing government subsidies and investments for industry; although without a carbon tax to fund it, the CEFC soon may wither and die.

So let’s consider the winners and losers from this week’s theatrics. Mr Palmer certainly wins because he has ensured that none of his companies will pay carbon tax and he has again been lauded by the ABC and other media, blowing more CO2 into his political balloon. Mr Abbott wins because he gets rid of the carbon tax and pockets the unexpected bonus of a $2.5bn budget benefit because he can’t get his direct action plan through the Senate. The Labor Party and the Greens lose because they will have conspired to eradicate any emissions reduction scheme — unless either of them backflips and supports direct action. The Greens eventually should wear the odium of having pulled off the extraordinarily counterintuitive feat of killing off climate action under Kevin Rudd, Julia Gillard and Mr Abbott. The hypocrisy eventually may catch up with them. Or not.

The Palmer United Party may stay united or may fracture in the Senate; we would not presume to guess where this coagulation of characters and interests might end. But in the best traditions of the Queensland white shoe brigade, Mr Palmer has spun the media and the southern politicians to his personal advantage. Wednesday night on the ABC’s 7.30 Sarah Ferguson said the PUP leader was “putting himself at the vanguard” of climate policy. A couple of hours later on Lateline Tony Jones asked Mr Palmer what had caused his “road to Damascus conversion” on climate. At least Jones also asked Mr Palmer if he was “feeding the chooks”. Still, praise from a Nobel laureate, the ABC and the Fairfax press is not bad for a bloke who killed off climate action.

Eventually, reality began to set in. Even the Ten Network’s Paul Bongiorno, who tends to make Radio National hosts sound mainstream, could see through the smoke and mirrors. “The Australian seems to call it as it is,” he summarised, referring to our front page headline of “Palmer kills carbon action”. Independent senator Nick Xenophon declared the Palmer-Gore doctrine was “more ham than plan” and Mr Palmer emerged from talks with the Prime Minister confirming the carbon tax would, indeed, be axed. Almost 24 hours on from the excitement of seeing Mr Gore take the stage with a man who has an equally large carbon footprint, the overexcited media pundits started to grasp what was happening. It dawned on the Greens that they had been sold a pup (pun intended) and they began hoping Mr Palmer was befuddled. And over at Fairfax, Tony Wright had worked out that an ETS dependent on action from our trading partners might be some time off. “Say, just after world peace is achieved,” he mused. “Or when Clive becomes Jenny Craig’s poster boy.” Or, perhaps, when Mr Gore next endorses a death blow to climate action.