liberal fail!

Industrial Wind Turbines….Far Too Close to Human habitation!

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Wind Setbacks: Safety First (unless you’re a wind developer)

Lisa Linowes – July 1, 2014

Safety

After years of debate there is still disagreement and uncertainty regarding appropriate safety setback distances. This uncertainty has benefited the wind industry. Thousands of turbines are erected that are dangerously close to where people live.

Last month, Ohio infuriated wind proponents by passing Senate bill 310, a bill that delays the state’s renewable electricity standard for two years and eliminates the requirement that half of the renewables mandate be met with in-state resources.

Within days of SB310 passing, Ohio Governor John Kasich approved a change to the safety setback distances for wind turbines. Under the new law, setbacks will now be measured at the property line of the nearest adjacent property as opposed to the wall of a nearby home. In practice, this will require minimum distances of at least 1,300 feet from property lines to each turbine base.

Wind developers and Ohio’s media cried foul over due process claiming the legislature gave no warning of the setback rule change or opportunity for testimony. They insisted the provision was ‘anti-wind’ driven by coal and oil interests intent on destroying the economics of large-scale wind andcalled on the governor to veto the change.

Industry Setback Recommendations

For decades, the wind industry has advanced the notion that these massive spinning structures can safely be erected a few hundred feet from where people live and gather.

The industry’s preferred setback has been 1.1x to 1.5x the height of the tower (including the blade) which was derived from the fall-zone of the tower. We saw variations on this over the years beginning in California, that measured as much as 3-4x the total tower height. In general, there was no consideration in the setback distances for noise nor did the 1.1 to 1.5x setback adequately address ice/blade throw.

In 2006, the California Energy Commission examined setback standards in the state. The conclusion of the study called for a setback distance just shy of 1000 feet to protect against turbine failure [1]. This distance was less conservative than what Vestas had recommended (although Vestas has since eliminated this standard from its documentation and claims it is not involved in siting decisions.)

Simple math describing motion shows that ice or debris from a 100-foot long blade can be thrown nearly 1700 feet from the base of the turbine [2]. Turbine manufacture, Vestas, has reported debris from its V90 turbine being thrown 1,600 feet.

Assessing Risk from Turbine Failure

In assessing risk to the public, the wind industry typically assumes a probabilistic perspective where they examine the probability of failure and the chances of an individual being present at the time of the event. If the probabilistic assessment assumes that people are infrequently present when a blade might be thrown, for example, then it’s not surprising that the industry reports a low risk of harm even at close range.

According to William Palmer, a utility reliability engineer responsible for analyzing the impact on public safety at a nuclear facility in Ontario Canada, deterministic risk assessments provide a more accurate understanding of risk and necessary mitigation measures. Deterministic risk assessments require analysts to assume that a person is permanently standing at the limit of risk (edge of the safety zone), and are considered to be there during the accident. If people are nearby all the time, their risk of being hurt is high.

Safety cannot take a back seat to statistical probabilities but that’s exactly what communities have accepted from the wind industry for years.

What About Ice Throw?

Project developers often represent that ice throw is unlikely to occur because ice generally melts gradually and slips off the blade and down to the ground below. Iberdrola Renewables made this claim in 2010 prior to receiving approval to construct its Groton Wind facility in New Hampshire. However, according to Iberdrola’s Emergency Plan written for Groton Wind employees and released this year, “shedding ice may be thrown a significant distance as a result of the rotor spinning or wind blowing the ice fragments.”

GE Wind states that rotating turbine blades may propel ice fragments up to several hundred meters if conditions are right depending on turbine dimensions, rotational speed and many other potential factors.

As more turbines are sited in cold climates, the wind industry has considered safety distances based on the level of allowable risk [3]. The figure on the right maps distances from the turbines based on the estimated annual icing events at the project site and degree of risk. In colder climates, icing can occur during non-winter months.

Very little public information is available that documents the frequency of ice throw and the distances flung from the turbines. Surveys have been conducted of large project operators in an effort to track the size and distance of ice fragments being thrown but the results are inconclusive as there is no way to assess how well the area around the turbines was searched, especially at great distances from the towers. One operator of a wind installation admitted large turbines will throw a four hundred pound chunk of ice one thousand feet.

Conclusion

After years of debate there is still disagreement and uncertainty regarding appropriate safety setback distances. This uncertainty has benefited the wind industry. Thousands of turbines are erected throughout the U.S. that are dangerously close to where people live.

In the last 5-6 years, communities have adopted setbacks at or greater than the distance codified under Ohio law. More modern ordinances include two setback protections. The first protects property owners from ice/debris flying off the turbines. This ranges from 1300 feet to 1 mile or more away. The second setback distance is implied based on noise limits that cannot be exceeded either at the property line or the wall of an occupied building. If the noise standards are correctly applied, turbines may be erected 1.25-1.5 (or more) miles from the property line/building.

According to Mr. Palmer, the goal of public safety risk assessment is to ensure that we do not impose risks on unsuspecting members of the public. We agree!

——————————————————————————–

[1] Noise and ice were not considered.

[2] Distance is dependent on the length of the blade, its angle at the time of the incident, the speed of rotation and the vertical distance from the ground.

[3] The distances in the graph are based on turbines with a 50-meter rotor diameter. Newer turbines have rotor diameters well over 100-meters.

JUL12014

 

Global Warming Alarmists, have Some Bitter Pills to Swallow!

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Forget Global Cooling Predictions…It’s Already Happening!

Global Temperature Falling More Than A Decade!

By P Gosselin on 30. Juni 2014

Climate scientists on both sides of the debate agree on one thing: the earth’s surface and atmosphere have (unexpectedly) stopped warming; there’s been no temperature increase in over 17 years and counting.

While global warming scientists insist the pause is only temporary and that warming will resume in earnest sometime in the future (once the missing heat comes out of hiding), other scientists are very skeptical. Today a growing number of distinguished scientists all over the globe believe the earth will be cooling due to the forces of natural cycles that have recently come into play.

Yet as many scientists are making forecasts of cooling, there’s one fact that seems to have escaped them: the datasets of the world’s leading climate data institutes clearly show that planetary cooling is already taking place and has been happening for over a decade.

2002_Cooling

Chart source: www.woodfortrees.org.

Danish solar scientist Henrik Svensmark recently declared: “Global warming has stopped and a cooling is beginning.” The cold reality, however, is that the cooling actually started 12 years ago!

There are more signs other than temperature readings that show global cooling is in full swing. Antarctica has just set a new record positive sea ice anomaly. Global sea ice has been mostly above average for a year and half, flying in the face of stunned scientists who warned just 5 years ago that the Arctic could soon be ice-free in the summertime. Moreover Asia, Europe and North America have been hard hit by a string of unexpectedly harsh winters.

So how cold is it going to get and for how long?

Although a large number of scientists agree on cooling, they differ widely on how much and for how long.

Geologist and climate researcher Sebastian Lüning of Germany in a just released video forecasts a global cooling of 0.2° by 2030, before it starts to warm up again. However, many scientists see this as too mild of a forecast. Russian solar physicist Habibullo Abdussamatov, for example, predicts another Little Ice Age by 2055. Also Russia’s Pulkovo Observatory claims we “could be in for a cooling period that lasts 200-250 years.”

Long list of experts

At his Climate Depot website, Marc Morano has a list of a number of renowned scientists who believe the data are clear on what’s ahead.

Prominent geologist Dr. Don Easterbrook warns that “global cooling is almost a slam dunk” for up to 30 years or more. The Australian Astronomical Society warns of global cooling as the sun’s activity “significantly diminishes”.

The reason for the cooling? Scientists agree that it’s natural solar and oceanic cycles overpowering the overhyped effects of greenhouse trace-gas CO2.

 

– See more at: http://notrickszone.com/2014/06/30/forget-global-cooling-predictions-its-already-happening-global-temperature-falling-more-than-a-decade/#sthash.iiRucSUK.dpuf

Farmers in Sweden, Too Smart to Fall for Climate Alarmist B.S.!

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Swedish farmers have doubts about climatologists

June 27, 2014 – 06:10

Farmers rely more on their own experiences with changing weather than on climatologists who have no agricultural experience, according to Swedish research.

By: Georg Mathisen

Climatologists are not often found in the Swedish countryside. So farmers have their doubts about climate predictions. (Photo: Microstock)

Researchers the world over almost unanimously agree that our climate is changing because of the increasing amounts of carbon dioxide humankind pumps into our fragile atmosphere. But many farmers – at least Swedish ones – have experienced mild winters and shifting weather before and are hesitant about trusting the scientists.

Surprised

The researcher who discovered the degree of scepticism among farmers was surprised by her findings.  Therese Asplund, who recently presented her PhD thesis at Linköping University, was initially looking into how agricultural magazines covered climate change.

Asplund found after studying ten years of issues of the two agricultural sector periodicalsATL and Land Lantbruk that they present climate change as scientifically confirmed, a real problem.

But her research took an unexpected direction when she started interviewing farmers in focus groups about climate issues.

Asplund had prepared a long list of questions about how the farmers live with the threat of climate change and what they plan to do to cope with the subsequent climate challenges. The conversations took a different course:

“They explained that they didn’t quite believe in climate changes,” she says. “Or at least that these are not triggered by human activities.”

Used to changes

The climate of course has previously gone through natural spells, and the farmers tend to think in terms of their experiences in recent decades.

“Many have a lot of experience, for instance they recall the mild winters of the 1960s,” explains Asplund.

The farmers also distrust climatologists partly on the grounds of what they perceive of as too much concurrence.

“They think information about climate change is too uniform. Credibility would increase if more contrary perspectives were presented,” she says.

Office science

And above all: They think climatologists lack the experience they have living in keeping with the soil, weather and growth seasons.

The climate of course has previously gone through natural spells, and the farmers tend to think in terms of their experiences in recent decades. (Photo: Mary Evans Picture)

“Climate researchers also are given less credence by farmers because they think the scientists draw their conclusions from theoretical analyses rather than practical experience,” says Asplund.

She finds it hard to say how climatologists can make use of the farmers’ experiences:

“For the research of a scientifically trained climatologist, the opinions of farmers might not be all that essential.  But that does not necessarily make their views irrelevant. For a sociological approach to climate research the farmers’ opinions are highly relevant, on a par with those of other social groups,” asserts Asplund.

Information is not enough

She is concerned about understanding disparate ways of thinking and responding with regard to climate issues.

“With insufficient knowledge, we risk believing that information will readily alter human perceptions and behaviour. The example of climate communication in Swedish agriculture shows what challenges a climatological point of departure for communication can encounter,” says Asplund.

After talking with focus groups all over Sweden, she thinks that information alone cannot change attitudes and behaviour – no matter how well rooted it is in empirical science.

Does this mean it is harder than thought to get Swedish farmers to engage in climate-friendly agriculture? The researcher says both “yes” and “no”.

It will be hard as long as the implementation of improvements is voluntary. But in the discussions the farmers signal that they can adapt – if not to physical climate changes, at least to climate policy decisions. Thus it should be no harder to get them to adjust to climate measures as to other political mandates.

But there is one proviso: “This is a resistance to decrees which they think undermine competitive Swedish agricultural production,” says Therese Asplund.

————

Bad Investments in “Novelty Energy Sources” are a Burden for Ratepayers!

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Power price hikes bite in Queensland

By AUSTRALIAN ASSOCIATED PRESS

PUBLISHED: 01:08 GMT, 1 July 2014 

Queenslanders face a dramatic hike in power bills with the start of the new financial year, and households with solar panels are also likely to take a hit to the hip pocket.

The average power bill is expected to rise by $191, or 13.6 per cent, pushed up by green policies and the increasing cost of poles, wires, and electricity generation.

However, prices will only go up by about 5.1 per cent if the federal government’s carbon tax is repealed.

Queensland’s Energy Minister Mark McArdle has blamed much of the hike on the former Labor government’s over-investment in the power distribution network.

“Every power bill that is issued, 54 per cent of that bill relates to the cost of poles and wires – the gold-plated legacy of Labor that we’re now having to unravel,” Mr McArdle told ABC radio.

Pensioners and seniors will be able to apply for an electricity rebate of $320 after the government upped concessions to $165 million for this financial year.

“The Queensland government promised to lower the cost of living wherever we could and we’re making sure that pensioners and other vulnerable Queenslanders get some relief on household costs,” Mr McArdle said.

Consumers are forking out 50 per cent more for electricity than they did three years ago, and shadow treasurer Curtis Pitt says price hikes under the Newman government total $560.

“Campbell Newman arrogantly promised to lower Queenslanders’ electricity bills, yet ever since he’s become premier they’ve just gone up and up and up,” he said.

This financial year, about 50,000 homeowners who have solar panels will no longer be guaranteed a feed-in tariff of eight cents.

Government-owned distributors will no longer be responsible for paying the tariff and households will have to negotiate directly with electricity retailers for the price they are paid for the solar power they generate.

The 44 cent tariff, paid to some 284,000 people who were first to sign up to the scheme, will remain unchanged.

Australian Solar Council chief executive John Grimes says consumers need to shop around, or join forces to negotiate as a block with electricity retailers.

“As an independent customer, with an average-size system on your roof, you really have little leverage when talking to a utility,” Mr Grimes told ABC radio.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/wires/aap/article-2675908/Power-price-hikes-bite-Queensland.html#ixzz36B33NYym
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Wind Turbines are Useless, and Destructive. What were they thinking? Oh ya….$$$$$

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Alan Moran: Wind Power FAILS on all Scores

June 28, 2014

report-card

Renewable energy as a means of reducing emissions fails two key tests
Herald Sun
Alan Moran
26 June 2014

REGULATORY change will always disadvantage some while advantaging others. But the benefits of deregulation far outpace the costs and Australia carries a weighty regulatory burden, one that has deprived us of enjoying the world’s highest living standards.

The most costly regulations are the ever-mounting environmental red tape and Australia’s unique union-dominated controls over employment conditions. The deleterious effects of these have been somewhat offset by deregulatory progress in import tariffs, for example, and in opening up areas such as ports, travel and telecommunications to greater competition. Privatisation has also helped in this regard.

Unfortunately we have gone backwards in energy supply policy with the carbon tax and forced substitution of cheap coal-generated electricity for expensive renewables. These government measures have resulted in Australian electricity prices being transformed from among the world’s lowest into one of the highest.

This has contributed to placing intense competitive pressure on industry and commerce over the past few years; households have as a result incurred higher prices for the goods and services they buy, as well as taking a direct hit from skyrocketing electricity bills.

While the Palmer United policy remains unclear it seems that the carbon tax is likely to be removed with the new Senate. The future of the other strings to these regulatory bows is less certain. Chief among these is the Renewable Energy Target (RET) under review by a panel chaired by leading businessman Dick Warburton.

The RET forces all electricity consumers to incorporate a proportion of wind and solar energy into their electricity supply. This renewable energy is three times as costly as the energy it displaces and will soon comprise 20 per cent or more of total supply. At that stage it will add 30-50 per cent to total wholesale electricity costs. The RET alone will mean household electricity bills go up by 7 per cent and those of industrial users by 10 per cent. Other state-based measures add to this cost.

The RET review has attracted some 24,000 submissions, mostly from green zealots regurgitating slogans offered up by their leaders. This group is unaware or uncaring that the renewable energy scheme means a considerable increase in electricity costs for industry and households.

Some claim the subsidies help consumers since they drive down electricity prices. But any such price reduction is similar to that which would follow from government supplying cheap bread. The price might fall but not enough to pay for the costs involved and the price falls would result in commercial suppliers ceasing to operate, creating future shortages.

Also supporting green subsidies are a number of publicly-financed bodies. Many of these, such as the cities of Melbourne and Sydney, have no expertise on the matter but their councils’ irresponsible approach to spending involves employing green personnel for vanity purposes.

Others like Climateworks and the Grattan Institute were given taxpayer funding by Labor-Greens government to promote renewable energy.

A second group of submissions is businesses and their representatives who have made investments in subsidised renewables and are keen to protect those investments and even to create additional subsidies.

The third is specific business interests, largely in aluminium, which recognise the deadly costs of the RET scheme and seek to quarantine themselves from its effects.

The IPA mining representatives and the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry form a fourth group, which notes that the renewable scheme is a horrendous waste of resources, needlessly drives up electricity costs, and finances lobbying activity that pollutes the political process. These bodies argue that the scheme should be axed immediately and all subsidy payments terminated.

Twenty years ago, the two green technologies favoured by subsidies — wind and solar — were touted as being on the verge of becoming competitive with coal, gas and oil. Almost no serious analyst nowadays believes this.

That bold but discredited technological optimism was joined with a rationale that subsidies to green energy would reduce carbon emissions. As a policy, renewable energy as a means of reducing emissions fails two key tests. It founders on the shoals of adamant refusals by other countries to embark on serious carbon emission reductions and on clear evidence that renewable policies only reduce emissions at a very high cost.

To date, Australia has wasted $20 billion in worthless renewable energy investments, mainly on windfarms but also on solar, including the rooftop panels. Just to put that in perspective, $20 billion would build 100,000 new houses. According to modelling undertaken by Acil Tasman for the RET review, unless the program is stopped immediately a further cost of $13 billion will be incurred. Of course, if we also provide subsidies to new renewable facilities, many more billions will be wasted.

Beneficiaries of the subsidies argue that unless they are maintained, Australia will suffer adversely by being regarded as a nation imposing “sovereign risk” on investors. This, so it is said, will discourage future investments. Sovereign risk is where governments seize property without proper compensation.

But changing a tax or subsidy can hardly be considered an imposition of sovereign risk. Such changes happen all the time and invariably mean losses to somebody.

Moreover we have seen policy changes in recent years that have very severe repercussions on investments.

Take the automotive industry, where reductions in industry protection, changes to industrial relations laws and the energy price hikes have caused investment write-offs amounting to billions of dollars. Or the “alcopops” industry, severely impaired by a sudden and unexpected 70 per cent tax increase. Or cigarette manufacturing, hounded from Australia by tax hikes and restraints to marketing.

We also saw the former Commonwealth government, in response to claims by the ABC about animal cruelty, dramatically close the live beef trade to Indonesia. Many graziers had to shoot their stock and average prices fell by a third.

The victims of these government activities got no compensation. Importantly, nor did the measures bring a rise in investment risk.

While the less government meddling there is in the economy the better, the fact is taxes, subsidies and tax rates do change. No government can reasonably expect to bind its successors to paying a worthless subsidy for 15 years as is nominally the case with the RET. And no investor would sensibly expect this.

The renewable energy scam, alongside the carbon tax, was one of the many targets of the late Ray Evans, whose funeral is today. He was a co-founder of the Lavoisier Group established to combat misinformation about climate change. The current Shadow Resources Minister, Gary Gray, was a former member. Ray did not live to see the costly green edifices of economic self-harm dismantled. But the new Senate, in spite of resistance from the Greens and Labor’s leadership, will begin the necessary economic repairs next week.

Alan Moran is the Director, Deregulation at the Institute of Public Affairs
Herald Sun

In addition to the fine analysis above, Alan also had this to say on the Catallaxy blog:

Many governments are seeking ways of escaping the wanton cost impositions irresponsible green predecessors have bequeathed them.  None more so than Spain, the former poster child of green energy.  Following its election the current Spanish Government has wound-back previously agreed green energy subsidies.  This has prompted claims of retrospectivity and sovereign risk, including anappeal to Brussels.

The Spanish risk premium seems unaffected by this and has in fact been declining.

Australia’s renewables rort, with seemingly guaranteed high returns, has provided a bonanza for many union pension funds, but these have mainly provided the capital and sold back the forecast stream of electricity.  Those most at risk from a termination of the scheme are the electricity retailers, who have taken long-term contracts on the wind power as part of the portfolio of forward buying to cover the requirements imposed by the current legislation.

Renewables and climate change matters were among the many issues of government imposed costs and liberty curtailments addressed by the late Ray Evans whose funeral is today.
Catallaxy Files

In his Herald Sun piece, Alan refers to modelling by “Acil Tasman”. The firm is now called ACIL Allen and it produced modelling which is fundamentally flawed – grossly underestimating the impact of the mandatory RET on retail power prices – simply because it failed to consider the impact of the Power Purchase Agreements struck between wind power generators and retailers that sets the price paid for wind power at rates 3-4 times the average wholesale price for power (see our post here).

Alan refers to the risk faced by Union Super Funds and retailers. He could have also included the major banks who have lent to wind power outfits (see our post here).

Any banker, Union Super fund manager or retailer who thinks they can safely rely on Clive Palmer’s current “support” for the mandatory RET as a sound basis for their future financial health should think again. Big Clive took the Greens and their acolytes for fools over his brief brush with an Emissions Trading Scheme – which blasted like a comet across the night sky – but went straight to the political dustbin. Anyone betting the house on Clive Palmer’s next move is a very brave punter, indeed.

clive palmer sleeping

Wind Weasels Deny the Problems, Instead of trying to Correct Them…

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Got Wind Turbine Syndrome? This Harvard Medical School Professor believes you!

Jun 27, 2014

doctor

Editor’s note:  You’ve heard of the Harvard Medical School, correct? And I’ll bet you’re aware it’s one of the finest medical schools in the world, right?   Harvard Medical School has a number of world-class institutes and centers.  One being the Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary (MEEI).

Put it this way. Let’s say you are a Saudi Arabian prince, or a head of state (president, prime minister) of a foreign country. Or Bill Gates or Warren Buffet. You’re someone in this stratum of society, in other words, and your doctor says you have an inner ear disorder, something affecting your utricle or saccule or semicircular canals, or your cochlea.  Because you don’t want to mess around with medical mediocrity, you have your physician make an appointment for you at Massachusetts Eye & Ear.

You fly to Boston and meet with a specialist at MEEI.  The specialist is likely to be a physician doing a fellowship in neuro-otology.  (He’s called a “Fellow in Neuro-otology.”)  Or perhaps it’s one of the senior, attending physicians — that is, one of the full-time faculty.

The doc does a bunch of tests, but he’s still mystified about what’s going on. He needs to consult with some colleagues.  If he’s really stumped (or “she,” if the doc’s a woman), he asks the director of the Clinical Balance & Vestibular Center for a consult. (Think of going to the Vatican and being seen by one of the archbishops or cardinals about a spiritual problem. If the cardinal can’t help you — and if you’re really lucky — the cardinal may ask the pope for a consultation.)

When the Medical Director of Mass. Eye & Ear’s Clinical Balance & Vestibular Center comes on board, you can safely assume you are seeing the ultimate authority on balance and vestibular disorders — in the world. The pope.  Or at least, you’re seeing one of the half-dozen best qualified and knowledgeable and trained and recognized specialists in the world.

Follow me so far?

When Dr. Stephen Rauch says the following, it’s worth paying attention to.   (Incidentally, Dr. Rauch has read Dr. Pierpont’s  book, “Wind Turbine Syndrome.” Dr. Rauch met with Dr. Pierpont in Cambridge, Mass., several years ago.)

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

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

When the Medical Director of Harvard’s Clinical Balance & Vestibular Center says the above, and says this, the question becomes: “Why are we still discussing the veracity of Wind Turbine Syndrome in these pages, and in the media, and with wind developers, and with wind turbine manufacturers, and with politicians — with anyone, for that matter?”

Why are we even considering ludicrous theories like the “nocebo effect” advanced by Australian sociologist Simon Chapman, whose scholarly speciality is “tobacco industry advertising”?  (I’m serious.)  Why are we listening to British physicist Geoff Leventhall(whose physics Dr. Pierpont has had to correct on at least one occasion), who for years has been a paid consultant to wind energy companies and has absolutely no clinical credentials, who for years maintained that wind turbines produce negligible infrasound, and for years argued that “if you can’t hear something audibly, it can’t affect you negatively” — why are we still paying attention to this irrelevant man?

Who gives a goddam whether Geoff Leventhall or Simon Chapman think Wind Turbine Syndrome is real or not?  (Am I missing something in this discussion?)

In addition to Dr. Rauch, there is Dr. Alec Salt, worldclass neuro-physiologist at theWashington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, Missouri, where he is head of theCochlear Fluids Research Laboratory.  Dr. Salt specializes in inner ear disorders. He’s been doing this for decades, publishing in major clinical journals.  Dr. Salt is the one who demolished Leventhall’s silly thesis that “if you can’t hear it, it can’t hurt you.” (Leventhall was not the originator of that stupid idea; he’s just parroted it for decades and, like a wind-up toy, refuses to stop.)

Geoff 600

Between Harvard’s Dr. Rauch and  Washington University’s Dr. Salt, and Dr. Pierpont’s meticulous, peer-reviewed research (M.D. from the Johns Hopkins Univ. School of Medicine, Ph.D. from Princeton in Population Biology), there really need be no further discussion about the legitimacy of WTS.  Yes, the neuropathology of WTS needs further elucidation, but there is absolutely no question whether the illness is real. Anyone who denies it is simply playing games — and the moon (don’t you know?) is made of Swiss cheese and the Easter Bunny, folks, is honest-to-god real.

Read on. The author of the following article, Alex Halperin, requested an interview with Dr. Pierpont before writing the article. She declined. (At this point, she prefers that specialists like Dr. Rauch speak to the issue.)

Rauch

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“Big Wind Is Better Than Big Oil, But Just as Bad at P.R.”

— Alex Halperin, The New Republic (6/15/14)

Nancy Shea didn’t learn about the wind farm until after she moved to northwest Massachusetts to enjoy a quiet country life. The news didn’t bother her. Shea, who describes herself as “green” and “crunchy,” favors clean and renewable energy. But just days after the 19-turbine project went online Shea sensed something wrong. She “felt kind of queasy,” one day in the kitchen. Later she woke up feeling like she had bed spins.

Shea’s husband did some research and learned about wind turbine syndrome (WTS), a condition said to be caused by “infrasound,” an inaudible low-frequency sound produced by the turbines. Sufferers complain about symptoms like insomnia, vertigo, headaches and disorientation. “It’s a hard to describe sensation, you just want to crawl out of your skin,” Shea says.

A few nights later, the couple could hear the turbines spinning—the closest is 2,200 feet away. It sounded, Shea says, like a jet repeatedly flying over their cabin. Neither of them could sleep and they drove through a snowstorm to another property they have several miles away. Shea felt better immediately. Similar symptoms have been reported worldwide by people who live near wind turbines. But America’s wind industry says their condition is psychological.

There’s a great deal to like about wind power. It’s a domestic, renewable power source that doesn’t produce greenhouse gasses. It doesn’t require digging anything out of the ground and, unlike nuclear energy, doesn’t create any risk of catastrophic accidents. According to the American Wind Energy Association (AWEA), more than 70 percent of the public view wind energy favorably. Following President Obama’s recent push to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, there’s every reason to believe that these giant pinwheels will become more familiar sights on the American landscape. (The towers alone are hundreds of feet high.)

Clean energy, however, is not the same thing as flawless energy. Producing power on a large scale involves processes and infrastructure which disrupt ecosystems and have other unintended consequences. Dams, for example, remain the most important source of renewable power in this country and environmentalists hate them.

Wind farms have raised objections for ruining views and being noisy. But the fight over WTS presents a more difficult challenge for the industry. And while wind power advocates like to think of it as a forward looking and pragmatic fix for America’s energy needs, when it comes to managing this mysterious phenomenon, they’re foolishly borrowing from the bad old energy playbook.

Earlier this year, two physiologists at Washington University in St. Louis published a paper in the journal Acoustics Today detailing several mechanisms by which infrasound from wind turbines could have detrimental effects. One, for example, is “excitation” of nerve fibers in the inner ear that are related to tinnitus and “aural fullness.” The article concludes that more study of infrasound is needed and pointedly states:

If, in time, the symptoms of those living near the turbines 
are demonstrated to have a physiological basis, it will become apparent that the years of assertions from the wind industry’s acousticians that “what you can’t hear can’t affect you”… was a great injustice.

Last year the same journal published an article by an England-based acoustician named Geoff Leventhall who argues that wind turbines don’t produce infrasound at sufficient levels to cause health problems. When I called Leventhall, whose clients have included wind power developers, he said he doesn’t believe WTS exists. Leventhall doesn’t dispute that infrasound can distress people. His disagreement with the Washington University scientists, grossly simplified, is in how the infrasound produced by wind turbines should be measured.

In written responses to questions, AWEA says that waves on the seashore, a child’s swing, a car and even a human heartbeat expose people to higher levels of infrasound than wind turbines do. AWEA relied heavily on Leventhall’s work and calls him “the most cited and referenced acoustician regarding wind energy in the world.” The organization cited two studies, one from Australia, one from New Zealand, which suggest that WTS results from a “nocebo” effect, essentially that if people are told wind turbines make them sick, they will feel sick around wind turbines. Leventhall endorses this view.

In an email, one AWEA manager wrote that “Independent, credible studies from around the world have consistently found that sound from wind farms has no direct impact on human physical health.” AWEA also cites a 2012 report prepared for two Massachusetts state agencies by an independent panel which found no evidence of the existence of WTS. (Activists who oppose situating turbines near homes have numerous objections to the report.)

Anyone who has ever played the NIMBY game knows the power of a scientific imprimatur. But the two sides are wielding their science to achieve asymmetrical goals. In the Washington University paper, Alec Salt and Jeffrey Lichtenhan write:

Whether it is a chemical industry blamed for contaminating groundwater with cancer-causing dioxin, the tobacco industry accused of contributing to lung cancer, or athletes of the National Football League (NFL) putatively being susceptible to brain damage, it can be extremely difficult to establish the truth when some have an agenda to protect the status quo.

In these cases, industry’s primary goal isn’t to be right on the merits, though that would be nice, but to continue operating. As long as it’s planting turbines, the wind industry is winning. But as long as it’s simply dismissing WTS, the industry is putting itself at risk of losing its sympathetic, clean image.

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

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

In fact, the inconstant nature of symptoms can compound WTS. Even when someone doesn’t feel the effects, they’re always conscious of wind speed and direction as they try to sense when their symptoms might return. (Turbines produce infrasound independently of audible noise.)

Massachusetts governor Deval Patrick aims to increase the state’s wind energy capacity to 2000 megawatts by 2020, a total equal to roughly 15 percent of the state’s current electricity production. In a densely populated state that means more people are inevitably going to feel affected by WTS, even if it doesn’t exist.

As wind power has become more prominent, so have complaints. Scores of residents of Herkimer County, N.Y. are suing the Spanish wind power company Iberdrola over a wind farm. A judge has ordered that two wind turbines in Falmouth, Mass. can only be operated 12 hours a day and not on Sundays.

The wind industry might take a lesson from Nancy Shea: People are generally reasonable, maybe more reasonable than they should be. Shea refuses to spend any more nights in the house she and her husband bought. She calls it a “dead asset.” Nonetheless, she still considers herself pro-wind.

In the annals of corporate public relations debacles, WTS is a relatively minor one, at least for now. It would be self-defeating if the industry squanders this promising moment by failing to candidly address WTS concerns. Not doing so invites further attacks from Fox News and National Review and other conservative groups looking for an excuse to bash clean energy.

The best advice might come from the Salt and Lichtenhan article. Big Wind, it argues, should “acknowledge the problem and work to eliminate it.”

Rauch-c-516x226

 

Faux-green Eco-fanatics are bad for our Environment, and everything in it!

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Never-Ending Green Disasters.

Newton’s 3rd law of motion, if applied to bureaucracy, would state: “Whenever politicians attempt to force change on a market, the long-big-govtterm results will be equal and opposite to those intended”.

This law explains the never-ending Green energy policy disasters.

Greens have long pretended to be guardians of wild natural places, but their legislative promotion of ethanol biofuel has resulted in massive clearance of tropical forests for palm oil, sugar cane and soy beans.  Their policies have also managed to covert cheap food into expensive motor fuel and degraded land devoted to bush, pastures or crops into mono-cultures of corn for bio-fuel. This has wasted water, increased world hunger and corrupted the political process for zero climate benefits.

Greens also pretend to be protectors of wildlife and habitat but their force-feeding of wind power has uglified wild places and disturbed peaceful neighbourhoods with noisy windmills and networks of access roads and transmission lines. These whirling bird-choppers kill thousands of raptors and bats without attracting the penalties that would be applied heavily to any other energy producers – all this damage to produce trivial amounts of intermittent, expensive and blackout-prone electricity supplies.

Greens have long waged a vicious war on coal, but their parallel war on nuclear power and the predictably intermittent performance of wind/solar energy has forced power generators to turn to hydro-carbon gases to backup green power. But Greens have also made war on shale-gas fracking – this has left countries like Germany with no option but to return to reliable economical coal, or increase their usage of Russian gas and French nuclear power. Their war on coal has lifted world coal usage to a 44 year high.

Greens also say they support renewable energy, but they oppose any expansion of hydro-power, the best renewable energy option. For example, they scuppered the Gordon-below-Franklin hydro-electric project, which would have given Tasmania everlasting cheap green electricity. But they never mention their awkward secret – the Basslink under-sea cable goes to Loy Yang power station in Victoria and allows Tasmania to import coal-powered electricity from the mainland.

Robbie Burns warned us over 200 years ago:

“The best laid schemes of Mice and Men
Gang aft agley,
An’ lea’e us nought but grief an’ pain,
For promis’d joy!”

Climate Alarmists Try to Push Their “Religion”, on the Rest of Us! Just Say NO!

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CO2 GOOD; CLIMATE CHANGE BUNK;

GREENS ARE RAGING EXTREMISTS,

SAYS GREENPEACE CO-FOUNDER

by  19 Jun 2014

“Climate change” is a theory for which there is “no scientific proof at all” says the co-founder of Greenpeace. And the green movement has become a “combination of extreme political ideology and religious fundamentalism rolled into one.”

Patrick Moore, a Canadian environmentalist who helped found Greenpeace in the Seventies but subsequently left in protest at its increasingly extreme, anti-scientific, anti-capitalist stance, argues that the green position on climate change fails the most basic principles of the scientific method.

“The certainty among many scientists that humans are the main cause of climate change, including global warming, is not based on the replication of observable events. It is based on just two things, the theoretical effect of human-caused greenhouse gas emissions, predominantly carbon dioxide, and the predictions of computer models using those theoretical calculations. There is no scientific “proof” at all.”

Moore goes on to list some key facts about “climate change” which are ignored by true believers.

1. The concentration of CO2 in the global atmosphere is lower today, even including human emissions, than it has been during most of the existence of life on Earth.

2. The global climate has been much warmer than it is today during most of the existence of life on Earth. Today we are in an interglacial period of the Pleistocene Ice Age that began 2.5 million years ago and has not ended.

3. There was an Ice Age 450 million years ago when CO2 was about 10 times higher than it is today.

4. Humans evolved in the tropics near the equator. We are a tropical species and can only survive in colder climates due to fire, clothing and shelter.

5. CO2 is the most important food for all life on earth. All green plants use CO2 to produce the sugars that provide energy for their growth and our growth. Without CO2 in the atmosphere carbon-based life could never have evolved.

6. The optimum CO2 level for most plants is about 1600 parts per million, four times higher than the level today. This is why greenhouse growers purposely inject the CO2-rich exhaust from their gas and wood-fired heaters into the greenhouse, resulting in a 40-80 per cent increase in growth.

7. If human emissions of CO2 do end up causing significant warming (which is not certain) it may be possible to grow food crops in northern Canada and Russia, vast areas that are now too cold for agriculture.

8. Whether increased CO2 levels cause significant warming or not, the increased CO2 levels themselves will result in considerable increases in the growth rate of plants, including our food crops and forests.

9. There has been no further global warming for nearly 18 years during which time about 25 per cent of all the CO2 ever emitted by humans has been added to the atmosphere. How long will it remain flat and will it next go up or back down? Now we are out of the realm of facts and back into the game of predictions.

Moore makes his remarks in the foreword to a new book by bestselling Australian geologist Dr Ian Plimer called Not For Greens. The book describes the various, complex industrial processes which go into the making of just a single teaspoon, starting with the mining of various metals.

If Greenpeace’s membership remained true to their principles they would have to eat with their bare hands because, as Moore notes, they are opposed to mining in all its forms.

“If you ask them for the name of any mine that is operating in an environmentally acceptable standard you will draw a blank. They have become so cornered by their own extremism that they must deny their daily use of cell phones, computers, bicycles, rapid transit, and yes, the simple teaspoon.

When it comes to Wind Turbines….there is NO democracy!!

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Windfarms and local democracy

April 2, 2014

Scotland Against Spin windfarm image Apr 2014 approved for reproduction

By LINDA HOLT

Scottish wind policy has been on a collision course with local democracy for a long time. The Scottish Government has promoted wind energy via target-led, developer-led planning policies instead of a plan-led system with clear restrictions on development, which is what planning is supposed to be about.

Instead there are so many holes in wind planning policy at national level (and often due to expressed or feared central government insistence at local authority level) that to call it a sieve would be to pay it a compliment.

Everything has to be considered on a case-by-case basis and every wind developer argues that his guideline-busting, spatial-plan-busting proposal is a special case, given the overriding nature of the Government’s 2020 renewables targets. Local authorities and reporters are inclined to agree often enough to make repeated punts at several hundred thousand pounds a shot worthwhile.

Scottish Governments have brazenly politicized the consenting process by appropriating the Electricity Act of 1989 to bypass (what remains of) the democratic planning process. The Act allows ministers to consent windfarms over 50 MW (and their extensions) ‘in the national interest’.

It was meant to ensure that NIMBY problems would not stop major power stations, which the country clearly needed, from going ahead. But a 50MW wind farm does not produce anything like the energy of a nuclear power station or even a small gas-fired power station.

In fact while the latter can produce its nameplate capacity or very close to it, no windfarm on earth produces its nameplate capacity for any length of time. Average annual output is very rarely even the 30% of nameplate capacity developers routinely claim and usually closer to 20%. In other words, applying the 1989 Acts to windfarms whose actual capacity is under 50MW is a democratic cheat to get more windfarms built.

The Scottish Government knows people aren’t happy. As with other troubling aspects of wind development, it has commissioned a study to pilot an alternative model for democratic engagement: citizens’ juries. SAS sits on the stewarding board, and Graham Lang has been a witness for three different juries in different parts of Scotland.

The leader of the research Oliver Escobar is speaking at a public event shortly in Edinburgh which seeks to ‘reclaim local democracy’.

According to an industry publication ‘the wind industry in Scotland is single-mindedly focused on delivering every last ounce of onshore and offshore capacity before the Renewables Obligation goes dark in three years’ time’. As the pace of wind development hots up as never before, the Scottish Government is sitting on its hands. Commissioning studies, laudable as they are, looks like fiddling while Rome burns.

Meanwhile those directly affected are taking matters into their own hands. Various legal actions against wind farm consents are underway following in the trailblazing footsteps of Aileen Jackson, Christine Metcalfe, Sally Carroll, Donald Trump and Sustainable Shetland.

Communities are also rising up. Recently, SAS were at a public meeting of Dunkeld and Birnam Community Council where voters called their local MSP John Swinney to account over allowing their iconic area to be besieged by 10 new wind farm developments.

Swinney tried to hide behind the ministers’ code of conduct and to pretend we have a clear and robust planning system for wind, but residents who already have Griffin and Calliacher windfarms on their doorsteps were not convinced. As this newsletter goes topress, another unprecedented communities’ meeting has been called to resist wind development in the Angus Glens.

The Scottish Government should be in no doubt that community councils the length and breadth of Scotland will be following Dumfries & Galloway’s lead. The cries of ‘Enough isenough!’ and ‘We can’t cope’ are growing. Paid employees in the Scottish Government, local authorities, SNH, SEPA and other official agencies cannot say so publicly but we know many agree.

LINDA HOLT is press officer for Scotland Against Spin

Noise Makes People Fat! Where are the Earplugs? LOL!

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Noise makes you Fat!

Posted on 27/06/2014

planes over londonForget the sugar folks. Three in my tea please! A recent study has come out with the conclusion that Noise makes you fat. There is nearly a centimetre increase for every ten-decibel rise in the noise levels. Is that why the most obese people live in cities? And I thought it was Big Macs and daytime television! Seriously though this study from Imperial College, London, does raise serious concerns, not lost on those suffering noise ‘pollution’ from wind turbines. Although the target of this study is urban, there is a fundamental difference in that the background noise from wind turbines issues is usually very low. That suggests that the often lower figures from  wind farms are as debilitating as those higher, 50-60 decibels, experienced in cities and around airports. There was another radio program recently that identified the fact that neurones are the bodies receptors to noise. In many circumstances they can blanket the noise after a short while as the body adapts to it’s environment. Walk into a noisy room and you can’t here what anyone is saying but after a few minutes we adapt and can hold a conversation. This adaption though can increase our stress levels and tire us more quickly. Just because we adapt to the noise does not mean it is not affecting our bodies. 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, and yet people think they have learnt to live with it. We have variances with families with one partner badly affected and the other oblivious to any noise. What we should be asking is, are the impacts on health the same or different. We might find the answer is disturbing. So far the BMA, which has just moved it’s investments from fossil fuel to renewables, and the Government have chosen not to properly fund research into these issues. As well as the more obvious noise we have to address those low frequency, low level infrasound which has been known for years can have serious impacts on the human body. That is why they were used as a form of torture. What is unsettling is that noise pollution can affect you without you even consciously hearing it. Changes in noise, change of wind direction, a turbine starting may not wake us but our natural instincts, back from Stone Age man, causes the heart rate to increase, the blood to thicken and induces stress. Our fight or flight reaction to danger. I think a noticeable question on why you can live with a baby crying; most women would tell you even that has limits; the loud music of a disco or the health debilitating issue of wind farms can be identified as “nuisance noise” – you don’t seek it out or enjoy it. Now the question you all want answered. Can I blame the wind turbine noise on my expanding waistline? 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. Well over the last ten years it would be difficult to blame that on the noise but what is a fact is that stress induces comfort eating. A piece of chocolate makes you feel better ( a bar makes you feel sick!). So on that report I would suggest a certain caution. But hey, if the excuse works for you! What is pretty obvious though is that noise that causes sleep deprivation, also causes health issues. The decibel levels linked to health problems such as cardiovascular disease, Type 2 Diabetes and risk of hypertension don’t seem too high but do affect heart rate and stress, especially when intermittent, as experienced from Turbines.  Many turbine related health issues are stress related and dismissed by the industry as psychosomatic.  What we never chose was to have wind farms foisted upon us so the issue of “nuisance noise” is exceedingly relevant.

At this time the health implications of noise, be they psychosomatic or not, are not adequately addressed in planning. The industry statement that no proof of health issues exists is patently inaccurate and out of date. The first report on health implication goes back to a US study in 1987 and various peer reviewed studies have been released since them. Why do the politicians, councillors, planners and many in the Medial profession adopt such an ostrich like demeanour.  One day this may well bite them on the backside with numerous class actions for literally billions of pounds in damages because they never followed the precautionary principle! Perhaps one day soon those no win no fee adverts on TV will be all about “Are you affected by a Wind Farm?” Phone us and collect £zillions.