Devaluation of Homes

Village Destroyed to Accommodate Wind Turbines.

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Company’s extreme wind strategy: “Recently we bought most of a village to make a windpark.”

Kølby in northern Jutland is being bought up by the Swedish energycompany Vattenfall.

We solve the problem of unsellable properties in peripheral regions. We solve the problem of neighbours being critical of wind farms.”

Farm in Bollerup
Farmhouse purchased by Vattenfall for demolition.(photo: René Schütze)
The Copenhagen Post

Company’s extreme wind strategy: Towns today, turbines tomorrow

By Philip Tees

Swedish energy company Vattenfall is going to extreme lengths for the sake of its Danish windfarms – buying up whole villages in rural Denmark, razing them to the ground and replacing the buildings with wind turbines, Børsen reports.

Mette Korsager, who is responsible for Vattenfall’s onshore wind projects in Denmark, told the business newspaper that the strategy was to make it easier for the company to achieve the goal of installing 250 MW of wind turbines in Denmark by 2018-2019. “We typically buy up farms in bad condition and demolish the farmhouse,” she said.

“Recently we bought most of a village to make a windpark.”

Helps the region, according to Vattenfall

That village is Kølby in northern Jutland, and Vattenfall plans to acquire a total of 20 properties.

Korsager told Børsen the strategy served a number of purposes. “We solve the problem of unsellable properties in peripheral regions,” she said.

“We solve the problem of neighbours being critical of wind farms, and we make it easier to reach agreements about the installation of wind turbines at the municipalities because we go in and help them by developing problem areas.”

Kølby in northern Jutland
Kølby in northern Jutland.(photo: Google Street View

Useless, Unreliable, and DANGEROUS! Wind Turbines Self Destruct!

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Berserk Warriors: it’s the Dane’s Turn to Take Cover as (Yet) Another Turbine Self-Destructs

January 22, 2015 by Leave a Comment

turbine-collapse-germany1

Remember all those stories about wind turbines lasting for 25 years – without so much as the need for an oil-change – and being “safe as houses”?

Well, as STT followers well-know those ‘stories’ are unraveling at a rocketing rate – with giant fans collapsing in crumpled heaps;spontaneously combusting; and throwing blades to the four-winds – all over the world.

We’ve just about covered the Globe now, with “events” from Ireland (see our posts here and here); Scotland (see our posts here and here); Devon (see our post here); Nicaragua (see our post here)  – Brazil – Kansas –Pennsylvania – Germany and Scotland – where turbines have been going berserk like Viking Warriors.

berserkers

Now – if you’re nowhere near these things, you’re probably finding these events a bit boring and our posts a little repetitive?

But – if you’re within a bulls’ roar of these pyrotechnic-50m-blade-chuckers – your anxiety and blood-pressure levels could be excused for being a little on the high side.

However, we figure that we’re bound to keep them coming – forewarned is forearmed.

So here’s another about a turbine going “berserk” – this time, in Denmark.

Blades fly off runaway wind turbine
The Local Denmark
16 January 2015

turbine collapse denmark2

The blades and gearbox have been spun off a wind turbine in western Jutland after a malfunction allowed it to reach to dangerous speeds in high winds.

turbine collapse denmark 3

“There was a loud bang and then one of the blades span off, and shortly afterwards the the gearbox’s housing fell to the ground,” Henrik Nielsen, one of the officials at the scene, told Denmark’s TV Midvest. “The wings splintered, and fragments and smoke reached as far as 35 meters away from the turbine.”

No one was hurt due to a 100m safety zone which local police had enforced around the turbine ever since it first ran out of control on Thursday afternoon. Several turbine maintenance specialists had tried to bring the turbine under control, but in the end judged it too dangerous to approach.

turbine collapse denmark 4

“We cannot get close to it until the wind dies down,” Oluf Jakobsen, from the local Morsø municipality explained on Friday morning. “There’s nothing we can do but sit and wait for the outcome.”
The Local Denmark

Wind energy in Denmark : wind turbines in Holstebro , Westjutland

Little wonder then that the wind industry in Denmark has decided to bring in the bulldozers to flatten homes and whole villages (see our post here).

Creating vast-vacuums, devoid of all human life will, no doubt, help with their escalating public liability insurance premiums.

bulldozer-home

Danish Villages Bulldozed Because of Wind Turbines….Agenda 21

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This Town is ‘coming like a Ghost Town: Wind Industry Buys Up & Bulldozes Whole Danish Villages

January 20, 2015 by

The Specials there, outlining Vesta’s ultimate plans for a town like yours.

If any further evidence was needed to show that the wind industry is the extension of the human-haters – who regard people, in the words of Greenpeace founder, Patrick Moore “as the enemies of the Earth, a cancer on the planet” – that, these days, try to pass themselves off as “greens” out to ‘save’ the planet, then look no further than Denmark.

Denmark is the home of the original eco-fascist profiteers – Vestas – thestruggling fan maker – run by by a band of crooks – that exhorted the world to “Act on (its parallel universe version of the) Facts” a while back: paying $millions to the Australian Greens and Trotskyite fronts like Getup! & Co – and pitching lies like the one about the noise from V112s being just like the noise from a fridge 500m away (see our post here).Tune your ears into your electric icebox for a few minutes and compare it with this:

Well, it seems, that on their home turf at least, the Vesta’s ‘fridge-noise-analogy’ isn’t cutting the mustard.

Having already been whacked with costly lawsuits from wind farm neighbours – in one case a court awarding Dkr 500,000 (A$93,439) in compensation for the substantial reduction in the value of the plaintiffs’ home, caused by incessant turbine noise (see our post here) – the Danish wind industry has resorted to the wholesale destruction of homes in order to carpet the country in even more of the things. So instead of this:

Wind energy in Denmark : wind turbines in Holstebro , Westjutland

It’s down to this:

bulldozer-home

Company’s extreme wind strategy: Towns today, turbines tomorrow
The Copenhagen Post
Philip Tees
16 January 2015

Swedish energy company Vattenfall is going to extreme lengths for the sake of its Danish windfarms – buying up whole villages in rural Denmark, razing them to the ground and replacing the buildings with wind turbines, Børsen reports.

Mette Korsager, who is responsible for Vattenfall’s onshore wind projects in Denmark, told the business newspaper that the strategy was to make it easier for the company to achieve the goal of installing 250 MW of wind turbines in Denmark by 2018-2019. “We typically buy up farms in bad condition and demolish the farmhouse,” she said.

“Recently we bought most of a village to make a windpark.”

Helps the region, according to Vattenfall

That village is Kølby in northern Jutland, and Vattenfall plans to acquire a total of 20 properties.

Korsager told Børsen the strategy served a number of purposes. “We solve the problem of unsellable properties in peripheral regions,” she said.

“We solve the problem of neighbours being critical of wind farms, and we make it easier to reach agreements about the installation of wind turbines at the municipalities because we go in and help them by developing problem areas.”
The Copenhagen Post

STT bets that you just can’t wait for the wind industry to get in there and “help your region” by flattening every home as far as the eye can see?

And what an admission from the perpetrators of this grand-scale human expulsion project?

Aren’t we forever being told how much everyone loves wind turbines and just can’t get enough of them?

Now, why on earth would there be any kind of “problem of neighbours being critical of wind farms”?

One theory pedalled by a former tobacco advertising guru is that opposition to the ‘joys’ of living with giant fans is only a problem among English speaking countries: the guru reckons that complaints like those heard from dozens of wind farms around Australia are a cooked-up phenomenon exclusive to the English speaking world – as pitched-up inthis piece of propaganda on ABC radio and parroted in this piece of eco-fascist drivel from ruin-economy (for a taste of what the Taiwanese – not the world’s strongest English speakers – think about giant fans, see our post here).

Curious that Danes should complain about precisely the same effects from the incessant low-frequency noise and infra-sound generated by giant fans that Vestas’ victims at Macarthur in Victoria do?  (see our post here)

Curious too, that Vestas and Siemens refused to be interviewed for the video?  Surely, here was a golden opportunity to toss up some more “wonderful facts” about their products?  But, we guess, it’s probably safer to keep your head below the parapet when you’re not in complete control of the final product.

The only contribution from Vestas was a pious eco-fascist guilt trip – laid on thicker than a whale omelette – that appears towards the end of the video.

When presented with FACTS about the very real human suffering caused by their fans (ie the daily acoustic misery lived by thousands of people globally, just like those in this video) these monsters fallback on the “threat” of man-made catastrophic global warming in an effort to justify it. And follow on with the utter fallacy that wind power will rid the world of CO2 gas – an odourless, colourless, beneficial trace gas, essential for life on earth (aka “plant food”).

For the purpose of simplifying the argument, STT is happy to concede that man-made CO2 emissions may cause an increase in atmospheric temperatures – whether or not modest increases in atmospheric temperature from present levels represents a threat to humans or the planet is another question again (see our post here).

The one, teensy, weensy problem with the wind industry’s “save the planet” pitch is that 100% of the capacity from intermittent and unreliable wind power has to be backed-up 100% of the time by fossil fuel generators running in the background and burning fuel ALL the time – and, therefore, increases CO2 emissions in the electricity sector.

But – the Danish wind industry with its mission to bulldoze homes and replace them, and the families that occupy them, with exploding pyrotechnic, sonic torture devices – in an astonishing admission of guilt – at least now recognises that humans and giant wind turbines are entirely INCOMPATIBLE.

The wind industry is alive to that FACT – and – wherever they’ve had to concede it – they quietly buy out their victims’ properties, bulldoze them (see our post here) and make damn sure they stitch up the unfortunate (homeless) family with bullet proof gag clauses (see our posts here andhere) – that their lawyers enforce with the zeal and vigour of the Old GDR’s Stasi (see our post here).

So, wind farm neighbours, next time you’re being hectored by the wind industry, its parasites and spruikers about the ‘wonders’ of wind power and told it’s “all in your head”; or being called “dick brains” by the ABC’ssmarmy little cutie-pie wind industry apologist, Annabel Crabb (as she did in a recent ABC radio wind industry propaganda broadcast) – flick them the link to this story.

The audio and transcript of Annabel’s “dick brain” outburst can be found on the ABC’s website here. However, to avoid the need to listen to (or trawl through reams of transcript of) almost an hour of tedious and nauseating ‘green’ group-think, we’ve extracted the relevant parts of the transcript, which is available here.

During the ABC’s little wind industry love-in, having called wind farm neighbours “dick brains”, that fabricate their complaints, Annabel – giggles on cue – and proudly tells us that: “I’m going to buy a property next to a wind farm, just to express the sincerity of my resolve”.

Now you can let her know that there are plenty up for grabs in Denmark; and quite a few up for grabs in Australia, but she’ll need to be quick before the Caterpillar D9s are fired-up and brought in to flatten them.

annabel crabb

Most People Are Becoming Aware of Wind Turbine’s Futility, and Inaffordability!

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Wind Industry Keeps Losing ‘Hearts and Minds’: Community Opposition Rolls & Builds

January 19, 2015 by

1397574371-dublin-thousands-gather-to-protest-against-pylons-and-wind-turbines_4479876

Remember all the guff about everyone just “loving” wind farms: you know, the spin trotted out by wind industry spruikers – like the Clean Energy Council – in Mickey Mouse “surveys” that claim 150% of your compatriots just can’t wait to spear thousands of giant fans into YOUR slice of heaven (not theirs, of course).

As we’ve pointed out before, though, the answer you get depends very much on the question you ask (see our post here).

survey

And – funnily enough – it also depends on WHO you ask.

Sure enough, a gullible-green-voting-skinny-soy-latte-sipper from inner city Melbourne or Sydney is going to Tweet his support for wonderful ‘free’ wind power to Getup! – with exactly the same level of conscious ‘thought’ directed to the energy-end-game as when he’s madly re-Tweeting yet another 100 cat videos to his bearded-band of BFFs.

life organic

But ask anyone with a basic grip on reality – and the facts – and you tend to get a very different response.

Around the world, rural communities are fighting back hard against the great wind power fraud.

Wherever wind farms have appeared – or have been threatened – big numbers of locals take a set against the monsters being speared into their previously peaceful – and often idyllic – rural communities.

Their anger extends to the goons that lied their way to development approval – and the bent officials that rubber-stamped their applications and who, thereafter, help the operators ride roughshod over locals’ rights to live in and enjoy the peace and comfort of their own homes and properties (see our post here).

Australians are in there fighting hard – with the numbers solidly against wind power outfits that cause nothing more than community division and open hostility wherever they go (see our posts here and here and hereand here). In Australia, the wind industry, it’s parasites and spruikers have completely lost their grip on the ‘game’ (see our post here).

The Irish have already hit the streets to bring an end to the fraud: some 10,000 stormed Dublin back in April last year. The sense of anger inIreland – as elsewhere – is palpable (see our post here).

Rural Ontario is seething, with locals taking the law into their own hands – sabotaging turbines and construction equipment in order to defend their (once) peaceful and prosperous communities (see our post here).

And the Scots have joined in – tearing down MET masts in order to prevent wind power outfits from gaining a foothold and, thereafter, violating their right to live free from turbine terror (see our post here).

The back-lash against wind power outfits has been mirrored in the US – with communities rallying to shut down projects before they begin; and a raft of litigation launched by neighbours (see our post here) – as well as 23 Texan turbine hosts suing the wind farm outfit they contracted with for turbine noise impacts and loss of property value, etc (see our post here).

As community and political opposition to the great wind power fraud rolls and builds across the world, the charge that opponents are red-necked climate change deniers, infected with a dose of Not In My Backyard syndrome, starts to ring hollow.

Surely that charge can’t stick to each and every one of the 1,000 who signed the petition against the Mt Emerald wind farm proposal in Far North QLD – and the 92% of locals there who are bitterly opposed to it (see our post here)?

Mt Emerald Summary

The same level of opposition arises at the local level – wherever wind power outfits are seeking to spear turbines into closely settled agricultural communities (see our post here) – and extends to efforts that result in the destruction of pristine and fragile desert environments (seeour post here).

That includes dozens of communities across the Southern Tablelands of NSW, where locals are up in arms at efforts by wind farm outfits and the NSW Planning Department to sack and stack “community consultation committees” to ensure their development applications don’t face any real scrutiny (see our post here).

At Rye Park, 91% of locals are opposed to the wind farm Epuron plans to spear into their peaceful and prosperous farming community (see our post here).  And here’s the results of a survey carried out at a community meeting held there last year – taken by organisers to determine the level of support for wind power development in Boorowa, Yass, Rugby and Rye Park. After the speakers finished, the crowd delivered their responses to the survey to organisers: of the 104 in attendance, 88 people participated. The results were:

  • “I do not support wind power development in Boorowa, Yass, Rugby and Rye Park”: 80 votes (91%)
  • “I do support wind power development in Boorowa, Yass, Rugby and Rye Park”: 6 votes (7%)
  • “I am undecided about wind power development in Boorowa, Yass, Rugby and Rye Park”: 2 votes (2%).

No surprises there.

And communities like Tarago have erupted in anger at plans to destroy their lives and livelihoods (see our post here).

Australian farmers – who had signed up to host turbines based on the promise of a few thousand dollars a year per turbine – and, initially, sucked in by the lies pedalled by the hopeful wind power outfit concerned – have told the companies concerned to stick their fans where the sun don’t shine (see our post here).

A little while back, the usual response from those opposed to wind farms was along the lines of: “we’re all in favour of renewable energy, so long as wind farms are built in the right place”.

But that was before people understood the phenomenal cost of the subsidies directed at wind power through the mandatory LRET (see our post here) – and the impact on retail power prices (see our post here).

Fair minded country people are usually ready to give others the benefit of the doubt; and, not used to being lied to, accepted arguments pitched by wind power outfits about the “merits” of wind power: guff like “this wind farm will power 100,000 homes and save 10 million tonnes of CO2 emissions” (see our post here).

Not anymore.

Apart from the very few farmers that stand to profit by hosting turbines, rural communities have woken up to the fact that wind power – which can only ever be delivered at crazy, random intervals – is meaningless as a power source because it cannot and will never replace on-demand sources, such as hydro, gas and coal.

And, as a consequence, that wind power cannot and will never reduce CO2 emissions in the electricity sector. The wind industry has never produced a shred of actual evidence to show it has; and the evidence that has been gathered shows intermittent wind power causing CO2 emissions to increase, not decrease (see our post here; this European paper here; this Irish paper here; this English paper here; and this Dutch study here).

The realisation that the wind industry is built on series of unsustainable fictions has local communities angrier than ever and helps explain the remarkable numbers opposed: 90% is what’s fairly called a solid “majority” in anybody’s book.

The hostility that’s erupted among pro-community groups to the great wind power fraud is a world-wide phenomenon – with more than 2,000 groups doing their level best to bring an end to the greatestenvironmental and economic fraud of all time (see our post here).

And, for the wind industry and its parasites, the situation will only get worse from here. In our travels we’ve met plenty of people that started out in favour of wind power and turned against it.  But we’ve yet to meet anyone who started out opposed to wind power, who later became a supporter.  Funny about that.

turbine-2_3153749b

So, with that in mind, let’s have a look a little survey conducted where the right questions were asked of the right people, which gives a fair taste of the scale of the community backlash brewing in New Hampshire: of 353 residents (to whom surveys were sent) 41% are opposed to wind power plants; of the 226 that responded to the survey, 64% are dead-against.

Poll shows Groton voters oppose new wind plants
New Hampshire Union Leader
Dan Suefert
18 December 2014

GROTON — A master plan poll of town residents by the planning board shows most people in town are against adding more wind-energy plants.

According to planning board Chairman Steve Spafford, the board sent 353 mailings to all of the residents on the voting list, and received 226 of them back.

Of those, 89 people said they would approve more wind-energy plants, and 145 were opposed to the idea, Spafford said.

The town, which accepted the plans of Spanish wind-energy developer Iberdrola Renewables and allowed the Groton Wind Power Project, a 25-turbine, $120 million, 48-megawatt plant which went online in 2012, to be built.

In return, the town is given payments from the plant each year which were set at an amount that is roughly the town’s budget amount.

After some debate and legal questioning, the town accepted a proposal from EDP Renewables of Portugal this fall for a test tower on a local hill. Since then, EDP officials have announced that they will be filing an application for a $140 million, 15- to 25-turbine wind project called Spruce Ridge, which, if permitted by the state’s Site Evaluation Committee, would be built on land in five towns, including Groton.

The town is hoping to update its master plan in 2015, Spafford said, and needed to “get a sense of how people are feeling about new power projects, in this case wind projects.”

Earlier this month, the board mailed a survey to residents, asking, “Do you support more wind projects or oppose them?”

“We got a pretty strong response,” Spafford said. “We will likely add some wording on this for the master plan, and now we have something to tell the SEC when (EDP) files for this new project. according to our vote, the town is against more wind projects.”

EDP officials did not return requests for comment.

A local group opposing more wind power plants in the area, New Hampshire Wind Watch, said EDP should not ignore the vote.

“Industrial wind developers take notice, you are not wanted here,” said Wind Watch President Lori Lerner. “We have one huge turbine complex here already. One is one too many.”

“People live in this area because we don’t want to be urbanized. Now that the region has been ‘turbanized’ by (Groton Wind), residents in all towns in the region are coming together to fight this latest industrial scourge from EDP as the residents of Groton did so overwhelmingly (in the poll).”
New Hampshire Union Leader

turbine fire 3

Wind Turbines Have A Tendency to Tumble….Look Out Below!

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Gravity Bringing Wind Power to its Knees: Blades Keep Flying, as Farmers & Schoolkids Learn to Run & Duck for Cover

December 21, 2014 by 2 Comments

turbine collapse 9

A little while back we covered a spate of turbine collapses across the UK – terrorising locals not used to the sky-falling in around them on a regular basis (see our post here).

And we’ve dealt with the increasing numbers of turbine blades that routinely unshackle themselves in bids for airborne freedom, troublesome events, which the wind industry euphemistically calls “component liberation” (see our posts here and here and here and here).

As one of Newton’s predicted constants, gravity seems to be working its frightening magic without relent in Britain. Here’s, yet another, tale of toppling turbines from the UK – this time it’s the Scottish Highlands where things are going bump in the night.

Wind turbine topples over near New Deer
pressandjournal.co.uk
14 November 2014

turbine toppled new deer

A homeowner near the north-east village of New Deer was left bewildered yesterday after a wind turbine crashed to the ground through the night.

The structure is one of three 72ft turbines near the former Cairnorrie Primary School on the B9170 Methlick to New Deer road.

David Richards, who lives in view of the toppled turbine, described last night how he had first noticed that it had fallen over in the early morning of yesterday.

He said: “I don’t know when it happened. It was there – fine – on Wednesday afternoon when I went out to feed the animals. Then I came downstairs this morning and looked out the window and saw it was lying flat and sort of bent. It was a bit of a shock.

“We’ve not had it too bad around here. In fact, for a windy place, it’s actually been quite calm.”

“The people who put it up came and chopped it up and took away the top.”

Mr Richards, who has lived at his property near the B-road for nine years, said that he had originally objected to the plans when they were first submitted to the local authority.

“I just don’t like wind turbines. I think they’re a blot on the landscape. When we came, there weren’t any turbines. Then a new power line was put up, then the application for those went in. There were quite a few objections.

“They’re closer to us than they should be, and they’re closer to us than we want them to be. Some people love them, some people can’t be bothered by them, and some people don’t like them very much at all. I fall into that last category.

“The place is becoming a bit like ‘turbine alley’,” he added.

The turbine’s owners, a nearby farmer, declined to comment last night when approached.
pressandjournal.co.uk

And it’s not just farmers dodging flying blades and collapsing towers.

Oh, no.

Thanks to eco-fascist efforts to indoctrinate the young and impressionable on the “wonders” of wind, it’s school kids that have to learn the finer points of how to successfully run, duck and take cover: wind weasels have planted hundreds of their whirling monsters in schoolyards across the UK, including dozens at schools in the Highlands of Scotland.

Wind power outfits in Scotland have engineered propaganda opportunities around forcing kids to name wind turbines.

And the same tactic of brainwashing captive audiences of impressionable youngsters is part-and-parcel of the wind industry wherever you go: Australia, no exception (see our post here).

Infigen windy & gusto

A while back we covered the story of turbine blades being flung around the schoolyard at Caithness in Scotland (see our post here). Fortunately, that unscheduled “component liberation” event, didn’t end with decapitated pupils – but, give it time, and the casualties of “green” zealotry will mount, as more and more turbines collapse or otherwise self-destruct (see this article from last week for yet another story on collapsing fans and flying blades – this time next door to a community hall).

caithness turbine

It’s a point not lost on Highlander, Brenda Herrick who penned this brilliant letter published by her local rag, The John O’Groats Journal, in response to the local Council’s malign indifference to the risks to little lives and limbs created by the, wholly unnecessary, eco-crucifixes being used by wind weasels to warp the minds of the young and innocent.

To the Editor
Sir,

It is interesting that the Council responded to your article on the safety of school turbines last week by emphasising that they are ensuring they get value for money. It is unlikely these turbines will ever pay for themselves but that’s not the point. The Council did not consider the risks of installing fast spinning machines where children at school are forced to play until I alerted councillors to the danger and others became involved. No risk assessments were carried out at individual schools prior to installation.

Following publicity the Council braked the turbines and engaged the Building Research Establishment to produce a risk assessment process. The actual assessments were carried out by Council personnel. At installation each turbine had been surrounded by a small wooden fence, easily climbed by children. Following the assessment these were replaced by higher metal fences, which prevent children climbing in but do not protect them from falling parts, and maintenance intervals were halved. I am not sure what the Council’s “robust risk assessments” are designed to achieve but they cannot guarantee the safety of children.

The BRE report recommended “turbine siting safety zones” consisting of a Fall zone, a wider Topple zone and a wider still Ejection zone (parts flying off).

When I asked the Council “What is the actual diameter of an ejection zone as referred to in the reports, say for a 15m tower turbine?” the reply was “The Council’s approach has been on prevention of risk, thereby negating the need for exclusion.” So having commissioned a report they decided to ignore parts of it, presumably because in most school playgrounds there is no room for an ejection zone.

A blade flying off at speed can travel a considerable distance. They have apparently forgotten the incident on Skye in 2009 when a Highland school turbine started shedding springs and had to be taken down by the Head Teacher. The Council’s own sensible recommendations in its report of that incident included “Ensure that there is an adequate buffer zone from the main pathways and occupied area, in schools this should include entrance and regularly used pathways and playground areas.” There are no “buffer zones”.

The following are examples of school turbine failures I am aware of from press reports, so by no means a complete record:

The school’s wind turbine collapsed December 8 about 7 a.m., knocking down a power line and causing school to be cancelled for the day.

Last month the revolutionary eco-friendly school lost its green energy supply after a damper, used to control the blades, came off when bolts broke. The three-inch-square part, weighing several kilos, plunged to the ground, luckily outside school hours when there were no children around. 

But soon after being installed the wind turbine became faulty and after a few months seized up – showering the school’s playing field with debris.

A wind turbine at a school in Flackwell Heath has been repaired after part of it fell off into the school playground.

School wind turbine at Akron-Westfield school reported to be running out of control, suspected braking failure. School Superintendent described it as “life threatening”.

The turbine then collapsed, landing in the school’s playground, although no one was hurt.

Stunned students watched as a 40ft wind turbine crashed to earth during its installation on Fakenham High School playing field this lunchtime.

Within two years after installation, one of the three Proven 35-2 Wind Turbines installed at our Local High School came loose and crashed to the ground. It landed outside of the fenced off “Fall-Zone” behind the school.

A wind turbine came crashing down near Western Reserve High School.

Blade on the turbine at Seascale School blown off and landed 200m away in a field.

A FAMILY were left traumatised after a 4ft blade broke from a wind turbine in the grounds of a Rowley Regis school and spun out of control narrowly missing their house.

It is only luck that no-one so far has been injured at school.

There is a general denial of risk, presumably based on ignorance of the number of turbine failures occurring world-wide. One reason for this is that Renewable UK, the industry body, guarantees confidentiality to its members when reporting incidents.

Even the Health & Safety Executive cannot access their records and stated recently: “Consequently the HSE do not currently have a database of wind turbine failures on which they can base judgements on the reliability and risk assessments for wind turbines.” This is a disgraceful situation when turbines are so frequently close to people and buildings. Parents have a right to believe their children are not exposed to unnecessary risk in school grounds.

Brenda Herrick
Castletown
THURSO

For a run-down on the potential for murder and mayhem being caused by flying turbine blades in Scottish school yards, check out this detailed paper here and this summary of the chaos being created in this link here.

dirtyrottenscoundrelsoriginal

Of Course Wind Turbines Affect House Values, It’s Common Sense!

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Industry criticizes wind turbine reportHomeNews
by Jennifer Paterson18 Dec 2014

Is a $78,000 gingerbread house worth the investment?
The Christmas season is well underway: lights strung up outside the house, stockings hanging over the fireplace and the shopping (almost) done. It’s the time of year to take a break from your real estate investments – unless you are investing in the one house with building materials undoubtedly tastier than bricks and mortar: the gingerbread house.
Daily Market Update
Calgary resales market is ‘balanced’ says Conference Board… TD Economics forecasts slowdown in new Alberta jobs… Police uncover mortgage fraud… Employment insurance stable…
A recent study by the University of Guelph, which found wind turbines do not have an impact on nearby property values, might have earned a big sigh of relief from investors – but the study’s results have been strongly criticized by members of the real estate industry.

“I have had several deals fall apart in this area because, in the appraisal report, it has been mentioned that there are windmills visible or adjacent to the property and, once a lender gets wind of that (forgive the pun), they will not fund a mortgage,” said Angela Jenkins, a mortgage agent at Dominion Lending Centres, who lives and works in the Melancthon region, where the study was conducted.

“If a person cannot get financing due to windmills, then how can this be a positive thing?”

The study, which was published this month in the Canadian Journal of Agricultural Economics, analyzed more than 7,000 home and farm sales in the area, and found that at least 1,000 of these were sold more than once, some several times.

John Leonard Goodwin, who has been a real estate broker for more than 10 years in the Grand Bend, Ont. market, asserted that wind turbines absolutely do affect property values. “Turbines complicate your property enjoyment, period,” he said. “That alone spells depreciated value(s).

“Turbines should be in remote, unpopulated locations. To all the folks who have turbines on their property: Enjoy your $18,000 per turbine per year, because you will be giving most of the lease payments back (in much lower property value) when you sell.

“These monsters are very bad for Ontario,” he continued. “We all pay to subsidize the electricity they produce and they will also cause a significant loss of real estate value.”

Lynn Stein, a sales representative at Hartford and Stein Real Estate, lives and sells real estate in Prince Edward County, where a large-scale wind turbine project is slated to begin.

“The turbines that are proposed here are quite large,” she said. “The majority of the population here very clearly doesn’t want them.

“Put simply, if you were to buy your future home, given the choice, would you buy where you would have noise, shadow flicker, an industrial view, potential health issues caused by the turbines, and the possibility of a very difficult resale, or would you spend your money elsewhere?”

A Downed Met. Mast: Evidence of a Disgusted and Irate Community?

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More MET Mast Mayhem: Community Defenders Drop Mast in Fight to Save Homes near Bangor, Maine

December 19, 2014 by Leave a Comment

pisgah MET mast-600x800

The MET masts used by developers to gauge wind speeds are the vanguard for every wind farm disaster: no MET mast data, no wind farm. As soon as they go up, the locals circle their wagons, marshal their forces and declare war on the developer. No surprises there.

With the wind industry on the ropes in Australia, developers are quietly pulling down their MET masts at places like Robertstown in South Australia – much to the delight of locals (see our post here).

Wherever MET masts get the chop, the locals breathe a sigh of relief as it signals the developer’s defeat and a victory for a community under threat.

But there are a growing number of cases where locals haven’t been prepared to wait for the developer to remove their masts on the grounds of defeat.

In a “we’ll never surrender” move, farmers from Maine have joined efforts elsewhere to hit wind power outfits where it hurts – grabbing their weapons of choice (a selection of spanners) in order to help a local MET mast rest safely on the ground.

Here’s a story from Bangor, Maine of a community taking its future out of the hands of a bent planning system that decided to change the rules in favour of a lying, cheating wind farm developer – AFTER a court scotched the development.

Owner says collapse of meteorological tower at site of proposed Clifton wind farm an act of vandalism
Bangor Daily News
Nok-Noi Ricker & Ryan McLaughlin
9 December 2014

The meteorological tower atop Pisgah Mountain, erected in 2010 to collect data about where there was enough wind to harvest, was found damaged Sunday.

CLIFTON, Maine — Paul Fuller of Bangor and his business partner Mike Smith went to Pisgah Mountain on Sunday to cut down Christmas trees to decorate their homes for the holidays and discovered a meteorological tower on the hilltop Fuller owns had collapsed.

“The nuts and bolts from one [support] cable had been removed on one side and dropped it,” Fuller said Monday, after filing a report with Maine State Police Trooper Tucker Bonnevie.

“It’s a $30,000 piece of equipment that is destroyed,” said Fuller, who believes the slender 196-foot tall metal structure was downed as an act of vandalism.

Bonnevie said Tuesday that the tower had fallen, but “there’s no evidence at this time that any crime was committed.”

“We don’t know for sure that it’s vandalism,” Bonnevie said. “We don’t know if [the bolts] just gave way or somebody actually loosened them.”

Just one of around a dozen wires securing the tower came down, the trooper said.

Fuller and his wife in 2009 purchased 270 acres on Pisgah Mountain, which is located just south of Rebel Hill Road, and shortly thereafter approached the Clifton Planning Board about placing the meteorological tower on the hilltop to collect data about wind currents.

Fuller said the tower’s data demonstrated that there is plenty of wind to operate a wind farm, and in 2010 he submitted a five-turbine plan with the town.

The $25 million wind farm project was originally permitted in Oct. 2011, but local farmers Peter and Julie Beckford appealed the project’s permit and in December 2013 a Superior Court judge said the land use code was not followed.

The Pisgah Mountain developers filed an appeal in January to the state’s highest court to overturn the judge’s decision.

“We’re still waiting for the decision,” Fuller said Monday.

In the meantime, local planners have changed the wind farm ordinance by removing and adding items mentioned as hurdles in the Superior Court business and consumer judge’s decision.

“This doesn’t stop us in any way,” Fuller said. “It’s just frustrating because somebody [resorted] to vandalism.”

“There were not prints anywhere near the site or around it,” said Bonnevie.

The property is not gated and does not have security cameras, and “he lets anybody and everybody hunt there,” the trooper said of Fuller, adding he understands the proposed wind tower project is a controversial issue in town.

“At this point there is no evidence, but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t vandalism or criminal mischief,” Bonnevie said.

“It’s not an active investigation, but the investigation is ongoing,” the trooper said later. “I’m still asking around town.”
Bangor Daily News

So, hopeful turbine host, Paul Fuller is a bit peeved that his neighbours have downed a wind power outfit’s MET mast.

It’s pretty clear that Fuller doesn’t live anywhere near his hill-top hunting ground, but his neighbours, farmers Peter and Julie Beckford, among hundreds of others, most certainly do.

Fuller is keen to pocket 30 pieces of silver with scant regard to those who will suffer for his pitiful betrayal: at most, he would receive $10,000 per year, per turbine – in exchange for which he’ll render plenty of his neighbours’ homes sonic torture traps and uninhabitable; and, in any event, send the value of their properties plummeting.

Cute, too the efforts by the local “planners” to shift the goal posts in favour of the wind power developer AFTER the Superior Court had canned the project back in December 2013. Why play by the rules, when it’s far simpler to change them, retrospectively? That way you get to ride roughshod over communities, under the pretence of development “progress”.

It’s precisely that kind of insidious institutional corruption that has led to a breakout of sabotage and destruction being wreaked by community defenders in Scotland (see our post here) and in Ontario (see our post here).

STT predicts that 2015 will see an escalation of action by those people set upon by rapacious wind power outfits, turbine hosts blessed with the same moral compass as Judas and bent planning “systems” filled with eco-fascists eager to destroy the communities they’re paid handsomely to serve and protect.

While some, like Paul Fuller, might call dropping a MET mast “vandalism”, at least the people involved can be forgiven for having a solid moral (if not, legal) justification for their actions: defending homes and protecting families from harm has rarely been looked at with disdain, usually attracts plaudits and, where it results in a criminal offence, is excused under the law as “self-defence”.

Contrast the clearly understandable stance taken by Bangor’s farmers – facing a direct threat to their livelihoods, homes and health – with the “exuberant political activism” on display in the Peruvian desert last week; orchestrated by a team of nutcases, who had jetted in fresh from Uni campuses all around the world, for the purpose of “raising awareness” about imminent Global incineration.

Those of the hard-‘green’-left have been reduced to facile diatribes, as they seek to justify the consequences of the “awareness raising” efforts of their Overlords, Greenpeace: efforts that resulted in irreparable damage to highly significant sites of ancient Peruvian cultural heritage and artefacts – all in the name of making an infantile visual point about their ludicrous desire to go “100% renewable” and their ultimate goal of covering the entire globe with giant fans (well, your patch of it, not theirs).

greenpeace nasca lines

Greenpeace protest ‘permanently damaged’ Peru’s Nazca Lines, government says
The Wall Street Journal
Robert Kozak
16 December 2014

Drones sent up to study the Nazca Lines in Peru show that a protest against global warming by the environment action group Greenpeace permanently damaged an area around the famed geoglyphs, the government says.

Culture Minister Diana Alvarez-Calderon said yesterday that evidence gathered during an investigation by the government will be used as part of a legal suit against Greenpeace.

“The damage done is irreparable and the apologies offered by the environmental group aren’t enough,” she said.

Greenpeace has apologised for laying out big yellow letters on the desert floor beside the geoglyph of a giant hummingbird. The letters read: “Time for change! The future is renewable.”

The protest took place last week during a high-level UN-sponsored meeting taking place in Lima aimed at stopping global climate warming.

Peru says the activists damaged an area around the hummingbird by grinding rocks into the sandy soil. Access to the area around the lines is strictly prohibited.

President Ollanta Humala has called the Greenpeace actions a “lack of respect for our cultural patrimony and Peruvian laws”.

The ministry wanted the activists to be detained before they could leave Peru, but a judge initially refused to hold any of the activists and they are believed to have left Peru.

Greenpeace has promised to fully co-operate with any investigation and said it is willing to “face fair and reasonable consequences”. Greenpeace’s International Executive Director Kumi Naidoo met with Peruvian officials in Lima yesterday.

The Nazca Lines are a mysterious series of huge animal, imaginary human and plant symbols etched into the ground sometime between 500BC and AD500. The hummingbird design is one of the most famous and best preserved of the lines.

Experts disagree on why the lines were made, but some say they may have had ritual astronomical functions.

The UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation, or UNESCO, placed the lines on its World Heritage List in 1994.
The Wall Street Journal

What was that we were saying about justifying vandalism?

Shining a Light On An Unfair Process…..Wind Turbines Do Harm Neighbours!

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Sign a shitty turbine contract – everyone loses

Posted on 12/15/2014 by windaction

by Harvey Wrightman
I had a quick read of the recently published paper, part of a continuing project-thesis series for students in a graduate program at Western overseen by Dr. Jamie Baxter. I gather that Baxter originally viewed wind projects as a benign source of green energy and didn’t anticipate the more complex problems of the projects. I think most of us started from a similar position.  Baxter’s students attended some of the open house ‘sessions’ put on by the wind companies in Adelaide-Metcalfe. We were there also and you can imagine the fireworks that transpired. It was eye-opening for the students, that’s for sure. While I hardly think we need academic research into the cause of the resistance to wind projects, it may be a good idea to get it down formally somehow. I can’t write a peer-review; but, I can tell him how to make the process logical and fair. First, they must ditch the idea of bringing everyone (community, wind developers, government) together, providing them tools for discussion, and making some sort of consensus decision. This is just utopian BS that will please the wind fraudsters and fail the people who are sentenced to live there. You have to get the tools to the individuals, who will be targeted by the landmen, AND their neighbours. Wind companies don’t need any help.

It hardly matters how people rationalize or perceive their real-estate position once a wind project arrives, the over-riding fact is that it is an industrial development and such developments have impacts on all of the properties – lots of negative factors for everyone to share in. In the west Middlesex and north Lambton projects what is very interesting is that many of the large farm operators have refused to sign.  A family member of one such operation said to a wind company rep, “What you’re offering is not enough for what we’re giving up. Double your offer and we’ll negotiate.” This came at 3 AM after a night of discussions. No contract was signed. Wind reps left with empty pockets and groggy, sore heads. There’s a big empty space along 402 west of Strathroy that the wind companies badly wanted, but did not get. This is repeated elsewhere in Middlesex and Lambton.

I only wish more farmers had been able to figure it out so clearly before it was too late.

So, lacking that sort of common sense on a community level, I have 2 recommendations:

  1. Treat the wind companies like the franchise companies – where any contract signed between company and franchisee must have written independent legal advice (ILA) provided to the franchisee – think about who runs all those variety stores and puts in ungodly hours of time – immigrants who may have left very repressive regimes and are not inclined to buck the system here. Wind companies employ big city lawyers who write draconian 50+ page leases that are all in their favour. Then they get unlicensed, unregulated ‘persons’ – euphemistically called ‘landmen’ – who are trained in the ‘art’ of hard-sell, and set lose these mercenaries on rural residents who are not skilled enough to properly read and understand what they are pressured to sign. Wind contracts always container an exemption for the ‘Family Law Act’, otherwise an ILA would be needed.This issue arose in the OEB hearing into the Nextera-Bornish/Adelaide/Jericho transmission line. Curiously the land sale for the substation (~20 acres) had to have an ILA and it was filed as evidence in the OEB hearing. We argued that the same terms should apply to the property easements they needed for the line as they are signed in perpetuity. But Nextera protested and the OEB basically said, “Don’t worry, we won’t make you do that.”
  2. Now, I have to hold my nose when I say this, but if public policy demands that wind projects be built (and that’s what the GEA is all about), then unsigned residents in the area are effectively having their amenity taken away and that means a diminution of property value. So, we have a process for expropriation. It provides for independent property appraisal and stipulates that the subject owner of the property must be made ‘whole’ again – a fancy way of saying that not only shall fair and just value for the property be established, but damages (moving, etc.) must be considered and appraised by the same independent appraiser.  It’s not a pretty process, but it’s a whole lot better than “Good-bye and go to hell,” which is all we hear from the wind companies or the government now.

From the text of the study, it sounds like the interview base is not broad enough. It also falls into the trap of characterizing people as “new” or “old” to the area. This is another way of stereotyping people as rural (farmer) or urban (NIMBY). It just isn’t that simple. Many of the small lot owners are from local families – therein is the source of tension. It’s not necessarily a matter of ruralness. Also, the main property devaluation effect will be to the severed lots and the farm properties that are less suitable for cropping. Good workable land is still in high demand, turbines or not, though I would say there is a better and growing market for land that is not encumbered with a lease. Wind leases bring with them a very nasty tenant who can do what he wants when he wants and you can’t evict him. Leaseholders have found that out.

I’m left wondering about the solutions Baxter et al are seeking to the wind project strife – like suggesting better dialogue on a larger, community level (oh God, not more kindergarten open houses). They also make mention of ‘tool kits’ for both the wind companies and community members. I don’t know what more ‘tools’ the wind companies need.  They write leases that give them absolute control of the land. From the unsigned residents they expropriate their amenity and devalue their properties. The local councils are powerless to regulate their activities. The appeal process is biased and corrupt. It’s pretty clear to people living in the townships that the system is insurmountably stacked against them.

It all comes down to this: if a landowner unwittingly signs a shitty contract, his neighbours lose too. Everyone loses.

THAT’S WHY THE LANDOWNERS NEED COMPETENT LEGAL ADVICE BEFORE THE LEASES ARE SIGNED.

Wind Turbines DO Destroy Property Values….

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Wind farm property value study should not have been published: Queens prof

by ottawawindconcerns

You may have seen the Canadian Press story that surfaced on Sunday and Mondayabout a study done by a University of Guelph agricultural economics teacher, which was published in the Journal of Agricultural Economics. While the headlines said wind turbines caused NO effect on property value, the real study said otherwise: the co-authors noted that they had very little data, that expired listings (houses listed for sale that never sold) were not included, and neither were sales not on the open market, such as the properties purchased by wind power developers.

So the situation was: very few sales, houses not selling at all, and some houses that did sell changed hands many times. What’s wrong with that picture?

Well, plenty. Here’s a letter to the editor of the journal that published the study, released today. Too bad the damage has been done by the headline writers.

Letter to the Editors of Canadian Journal of Agricultural Economics:

The paper by Vyn and McCullough (2014) should not have been published in its current form as the results are being misinterpreted and highly publicized in the press and in radio broadcasts. The core issue is the lack of power in the statistical tests, a problem partially acknowledged by the authors but then dismissed by their focusing attention on tests for the sensitivity of their model specification. The article appears to encourage the misinterpretation of its statistical findings.

Out of the 5414 sales, only 79 post-turbine sales are of properties within a 5 kilometer radius and the rest are within a 50 kilometer radius. The diversity of the houses in the sample is very large as indicated by their price range of ten thousand to two million dollars and by the relatively low R-squares (0.57) in the hedonic regressions. Given the small number of properties that may have been adversely affected and the great diversity of properties in the sample, it is not at all surprising that the regressions yield no ‘statistically significant’ results. The shortage of observations on properties close to the turbines cannot be overcome by extensive sensitivity testing of model form. The problem is with the lack of data not with model form and focusing on the form tends to obfuscate the issue.

The authors do recognize the data problem: “Unfortunately, there are relatively few observations in the post-turbine periods that are in close proximity to turbines” (p 375) and “Hence, these numbers of observations are likely too few to detect significant effects, which represents a major limitation of this analysis” (p 387). But there are three problems that should have been picked up and corrected through the peer review and editorial decision process.

First, the authors conclude:

“The empirical results generated by the hedonic models, using three different measures to account for disamenity effects, suggest that these turbines have not impacted the value of surrounding properties” (p 388). This is wrong for two reasons. First they could not discern an impact which is different from not having an impact. Second, they misuse the term ‘value’. If you have a choice between two identical properties, identical in all respects except that one is close to a turbine while the other is not and if you choose the far one, then the turbine has an effect on the value of the property. This hypothetical example tests the paper’s hypothesis using common sense rather than a statistical measure.

Second, the authors claim:

“The findings of this paper will provide evidence that may help to resolve the controversy that exists in Ontario regarding the impacts of wind turbines on property values” (p 369) and then proceed to do all they can to make a non-finding appear important and repeat the general statement that they found no significant impact. They correctly said in the CBC interview this morning that their study did not find a statistically significant price effect but the public and reporters, not being familiar with statistical terms interpret this as saying that there was no price effect. Not finding a statistically significant impact due to a data shortage does not mean that there was no significant (i.e. important) impact. This distinction was not made clear enough in the paper nor in the follow up interviews and newspaper articles.

Third, the reviewers and finally the editors should have insisted on the power of the statistical tests to be calculated and reported. I understand that editors in the major health science journals insist on this as their readers, doctors and other clinicians, are not always aware of statistical fine-points but they need to be fully aware of the qualifications before using the results to change their practice. Given the potential impact a misinterpretation of the findings could generate, the test of the power should be reported even in the abstract. The reader should be told how big an impact would have to be before it can be detected by a statistical test with this number of observations. Had the price of properties near the turbines been 10 percent lower than they actually were, would the model have yielded a statistically significant finding of a price decrease at say the 0.05 probability level? What about a 20 percent decrease, would it have been ‘statistically significant’? Answers to this type of question would have been easy to produce and far more relevant that sensitivity tests of the model form.

The paper deals with an important issue that can have serious policy implications affecting the wellbeing of many people. The results can affect the location of wind turbine farms and the compensation claims of affected parties. Incorrect information or interpretations can be very hard to correct. In such cases, it is the journal editors’ responsibility to ensure that results are presented in a manner that, at the very least, does not encourage the misinterpretation of the findings.

Sincerely,

Andrejs Skaburskis, Professor Emeritus

North American Editor: Urban Studies,

School of Urban and Regional Planning,

Queen’s University,

Kingston Ontario, Canada

Torturing Residents With Wind Turbine Noise!

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UK Plan to Ban Noisy Wind Farms

December 6, 2014 by s

when-is-wind-energy-noise-pollutionNoisy wind farms face ban as ministers launch review into ‘annoying’sound levels
The Telegraph
Emily Godsen
30 November 2014

Exclusive: Energy department commissions review into disturbance from turbine noise in order to decide when annoyance becomes unacceptable 

Noisy wind farms that disturb local communities could be banned, after ministers launched an unprecedented review into the annoyance they cause.

In the first official admission that wind turbine noise can adversely affect local residents, the Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) has commissioned an independent investigation to assess the levels of sound wind farms produce and the extent of disturbance caused as a result.

Experts from the Institute of Acoustics will conduct the research next year, the Telegraph has learnt, and ministers across Government will then use the data to decide at which point the annoyance officially becomes “unacceptable”.

The review is likely to lead to tighter planning guidance for new wind farms and could force existing wind farm operators to restrict their turbines’ operation to stay within the limits.

It is also likely to open the door to claims for compensation by residents subjected to noise above the official nuisance threshold.

Many residents living near wind farms have complained of noise disturbance, while studies have linked wind turbine noise to poor sleep and mental health.

As well as the routine “swishing” noise of the blades spinning, turbines can sometimes produce “thumping” noises when sudden variations in the wind speed cause the blades to stall.

Current planning guidance limits the swishing noise to 43 decibels at night-time for the nearest property but does not deal with the thumping noises, which are a deeper pitch and can be heard at 40 decibels a kilometre away from the turbine.

Residents near some wind farms have likened the noise to a cement-mixer or a shoe stuck in a tumble-dryer.

A source said the new review would consider all types of turbine noise. “Everything is on the table,” they said.

Developers could be forced to use software to adjust the angle of the blades to prevent the thumping being caused at an unacceptably annoying level.

A spokesman for the DECC said: “This review should empower local people to stop disruptive wind farms and make sure local authorities have all the information they need before giving a planning application the green light.”

The review is expected to be completed by June. While the Institute of Acoustics will independently draw up the index of noise annoyance, the decision over what will be deemed an acceptable threshold will be a political decision for the next Government.

The Conservatives have already pledged an effective ban on new onshore wind farms if they win the election, by ending subsidies for those projects that do not already have planning permission. They have also pledged that all future onshore wind farm planning decisions would be determined by local authorities, instead of large projects being deemed nationally significant.

Matthew Hancock, the Conservative energy minister, said: “It’s important that we maximize the potential of domestic energy resources but we must do this in a responsible way. We cannot jeopardize our green and pleasant land.”

Ed Davey, the Lib Dem energy secretary, has heavily criticized the Conservative plan to ban onshore wind, arguing it would push up consumer bills by forcing the UK to build more expensive types of renewable technologies such as offshore turbines to hit green targets.

Wind industry body Renewable UK said it had already conducted extensive research into the extent of the thumping problem – known as Other Amplitude Modulation – and had devised the ways of tackling it.

Independent research published by the lobby group late last year had helped “to pinpoint when, where and how this sound varies”, Gemma Grimes, the group’s Director of Onshore Renewables said.

“We found that this can be addressed by using computer software to adjust the way turbines operate, changing the angle of the blades to minimize the sound levels.

“We’re hoping that this will now be incorporated within the Institute of Acoustics’ existing Good Practice Guidance document,” she said.

But she said she did not believe the existing guidance on swishing noises would or should be changed. “In this [Institute of Acoustics] guidance, which they published last summer, there was no question of changing the current noise limits, which are rightly very stringent, so we wouldn’t expect any alteration in that when they update the current document,” she said.
The Telegraph

Ever noticed how it’s only the wind industry, its parasites and spin-masters that use the terms “swoosh” and “swishing” to describe the noise produced by their giant fans?

Language abuse like that goes hand-in-glove with the same kind of corporate subterfuge that has given us lines about the noise from turbines being quieter than a refrigerator 500m away and as soothing as waves lapping on a moonlit beach (see our post here).

Funny, though, that those forced to live anywhere near these things never talk about “swishing” and, instead, use a raft of terms pulled from the darker reaches of our lexicon: “roaring”; “thumping”; “grinding”; “whining” – and phrases like “a truck rumbling down the road but never arriving”; “a jet plane overhead that never lands”; and – as appears in the piece above: “a cement-mixer” or “a shoe stuck in a tumble-dryer”.

It’s like the wind industry’s spruikers have never spent a night trying desperately to sleep anywhere near their masters’ monsters. Funny about that, too.

To give them a clue – and to help you decide on whether it’s the impacted neighbours’ choice of language that better describes the racket – here’s a couple of videos of these things in action. Take a listen and see what you think:

blob:https%3A//www.youtube.com/2189e6d8-9736-44e1-9d8f-c2b41473d799

STT particularly loves the second video – where a wind power outfit’s lawyer is telling a planning panel that “noise isn’t going to be an issue of concern” and compares the noise that would be produced by his client’s turbines with “a quiet library” and “an average home”. Hmmm …

STT also loves the claims by wind industry spin kings, Renewable UK that – when it comes to the thumping noise complained of by neighbours – like the Bob the Builder – it can fix most everything. Which begs the question, why is the “thumping” noise a problem at all?

bob the builder

But the argument about “fixing” the “thumping” noise is a typical red-herring response to the real and underlying problem: the incessant (and, therefore, grindingly annoying) nature of the low-frequency noise and infrasound emitted – where the former is audible and the latter isn’t, but operates on the auditory and other sensory systems to disturb sleep; with both combining to cause long-term sleep deprivation and other adverse health effects, as crack Professor Alec Salt explains in simple terms in this video – and as covered in our post here.

blob:https%3A//www.youtube.com/2679c3be-4b60-49cb-9923-fd24e9a26627

turbine collapse 9