“Professional” Windweasel, Mike Barnard, Tries to Defend Harm Caused by Wind Turbines

Bullying
Bullying a windfarm victim



In an article of August 22, 2014 by Lindsay Abrams, trying to discredit the claims of wind farm victims, we read: “Since 1998, 49 lawsuits in five countries have alleged that the clean energy source [wind farms] is making people sick. But according to new research published by the Energy and Policy Institute, the courts have shut those claims down in all cases but one.” http://www.suntimes.com/news/otherviews/29416340-452/wind-turbines-dont-make-people-sick.html

– I say: we could find similarly meaningless statistics if we went back in time, when the courts were absolving the Tobacco Industry.

– Most courts, like governments, have swallowed the windfarm scam hook, line and sinker. This recent judgment, evidencing a strong pro-wind bias, says it all:http://www.epaw.org/media.php?lang=en&article=pr48

– Court decisions can’t be held as the gold standard of truth and fairness. All the more in a society obsessed with political correctness, where certain ideas are arbitrarily declared “consensual”, and turned into dogmas which become ipso facto more important than the facts. Don’t we know that progress in science is almost always achieved by rejecting the “consensus”? And so it is with infrasound emitted by wind turbines: the dogma saying these emissions are benign is about to be blown apart, and this is what sparks desperate attempts at bullying and discrediting windfarm victims and the health professionals who support them.



The article proceeds to say: “The name “wind turbine syndrome” was coined by Nina Pierpont, a pediatrician who also happens to be an anti-wind activist”.

– This is the pot calling the kettle black. Mike Barnard, cited as a reference, is one of the world’s best known activists of the windfarm scam. He is in fact a professional activist, making a living from it, and receiving all kinds of help from the industry.

Mike Barnard
Mike Barnard

– Barnard, as quoted by the author of the article, criticizes people who “have declared themselves as experts”, forgetting that this includes himself. Indeed, he has no qualifications for doing what he does, yet he calls himself the “lead researcher” in the “new study” that is calling thousands of windfarm victims “liers”. The man does not know the meaning of the words “consistency” and “intellectual honesty”. He is the typical odious bully, and so appears to be Lindsay Abrams, who quotes him while adding a layer of smear of his own brew.

– Dr Nina Pierpont, on the other hand, is a courageous pediatrician who conducted field research years ago, paid with her own money, in which she found that wind farm neighbors who were complaining of sleep disruption, headaches, nauseas etc. had very consistent symptoms, which prompted her to coin a new ailment: the Wind Turbime Syndrome. She published a book on her findings, and is giving evidence in court around the world: does that make her an activist?

Dr Nina Pierpont
Dr Nina Pierpont



The propaganda piece continues: “But a review of 60 peer-reviewed articles published earlier this summer in the journal Frontiers of Public Health found only that audible noise from turbines can be annoying to some people — electromagnetic fields, low-frequency noise, infrasound and “shadow flicker” all were deemed unlikely to be affecting human health.”

– How could all these articles pretend that infrasound is “unlikely” to affect people, when we know that the military and the police have developed weapons using infrasound for debilitating enemy troops or unruly crowds? The technology is not mature yet, as a way must be found to spare friendly troops. But more devices are being patented all the time:http://www.schizophonia.com/archives/index.htm (click article: “Deadly Silence”)

– And what about the Vibro Acoustic Disease, a long-known ailment which affects people exposed to machines that produce infrasound? http://wcfn.org/2014/07/15/open-letter-to-the-danish-government/

– Then ask yourselves: if infrasound were harmless, would the wind industry and governments that promote it systematically refuse to conduct research into infrasound emitted by wind turbines? And this at the risk of being sued one day for gross negligence?
I can smell a rat, can’t you?



Finally, the author of the article resorts to personal attack: “When Dr. Pierpont attempts to appear in court as an expert witness, she is rejected outright along with her 294-page vanity press book, as happened in a tribunal related to the Adelaide wind farm in Ontario.”

– She did not “attempt to appear in Court”. Her testimony was called by windfarm victims but, abusively, the judge refused to hear their expert witness. What does that tell you about the independence of justice in Ontario, a Canadian Province thoroughly corrupted by the windfarm scam?
In other countries, she was allowed to testify, and her interventions have been very helpful, whatever the outcome.

– “rejected outright along with her 294-page vanity press book” says Lindsay Abrams.
– I say: while pro-wind litterature flourishes thanks to billions of dollars of public money spent to inundate the world with it, independent researchers must finance their own publications. Does that make these less valuable?
But Abrams could not resist bullying Dr Pierpont on this score, thereby bringing discredit upon himself.

Spain’s Failed Green Energy Experiment….Another Case Study from Institute for Energy Research

Spain’s Green Energy Experiment

AUGUST 27, 2014

The Institute for Energy Research released today a case study on Spain’s failed green energy policies. This is the second entry in a series of case studies on Europe’s green energy disaster (click here to read IER’s case study on Germany).

For years, President Obama has pointed to Europe’s energy policies as an example that the United States should follow. However, those policies have been disastrous for countries like Spain, where electricity prices have skyrocketed, unemployment is over 25 percent, and youth unemployment is over 50 percent

IER’s study found:

  • In 2000, Spain began a new program to subsidize renewable energy with the passage of its “Promotion Plan for Renewable Energies.”
  • Spain’s feed-in tariffs have created a “rate deficit” amounting to $41 billion (about $850 per person).
  • In 2011, Spain’s domestic electricity prices (including taxes) amounted to 29.46 U.S. ¢/kilowatt-hour (kWh), nearly 2.5 times more than U.S. prices.
  • Spain’s electricity prices increased by 92 percent from 2005 to 2011.
  • Rising energy costs hit low-income Spaniards the hardest–driving them into energy poverty
  • Despite myriad renewable subsidies and mandates, Spain’s CO2 emissions increased by 34.5% from 1994-2011.

Click here to read the full case study.

Click here to read IER’s previous study on Spain by Dr. Gabriel Calzada Alvarez.

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

Scotland’s Toxic Shock: Wind Farms Poisoning Neighbours

Laurence Well

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

lies

Why We Can’t Count on the Media, to Give the Whole Story!

How the media distort the news: Lesson 1 — Lies by omission

The Sydney Morning Herald carefully removed the scientific arguments from an article today. Are they afraid their readers are not smart enough to reach the “right” conclusions if exposed to the wrong information? Hey, but its only national policy and billions of dollars at stake.

Today Maurice Newman warned that we are not prepared for climate change (he’s talking about the cold kind). The Australian published his thoughts citing Archibald, Usoskin, Svensmark, Brekke, Lockwood and Curry. Their readers are apparently clever enough to handle discussions of cosmic rays and large hadron colliders.

In Sydney Morning Herald, Latika Bourke and Lisa Cox write an article about Newman’s views, but carefully omit all of the scientific arguments, as well as the potential problems with one sided science funding and the names and credentials of the scientists he talks about. The pair do, however, find space to repeat the litany of the IPCC’s estimate of 95% “probability” (it’s hard to believe Sydney Morning Herald readers have not heard this before).  They don’t mention that the IPCC estimate is a speculative and unscientific number which gets paradoxically higher as the IPCC’s predictions are proven wrong. Nor did they interview Newman and ask him his opinion of this.

Rather than talking about possibilities that scientists are discussing, it was more important to remind SMH readers that Prime Minister Abbott once said climate change was “absolute crap”. How that helps the nation decide on national climate policy is not made clear, though the implication is: skeptics only have dumb arguments. No doubt SMH readers will understand which opinion they are supposed to hold, and “lucky” for them, journalists Bourke and Cox are experts on atmospheric physics, particle collisions, and climate modeling. If only they’d explained the flaws in Maurice Newman’s arguments instead of concealing them, the whole nation would have been better off.

One day, the poor SMH readers, like ABC viewers, might be shocked when they discover how they were fed propaganda lines by dutiful journalists who, no doubt, thought they were doing a good job. Still, one great thing about the SMH is that the citizens of Australia don’t have to pay for it if they don’t want to.

The Australian‘s readers already know the IPCC position. The editors there, dare to give us the other side as well:

We’re ill-prepared if the iceman cometh

WHAT if David Archibald’s book The Twilight of Abundance: Why Life in the 21st Century Will Be Nasty, Brutish, and Short turns out to be right? What if the past 50 years of peace, cheap energy, abundant food, global economic growth and population explosion have been due to a temporary climate phenomenon?

What if the warmth the world has enjoyed for the past 50 years is the result of solar activity, not man-made CO2?

In a letter to the editor of Astronomy & Astrophysics, IG Usoskin et al produced the “first fully ­adjustment-free physical reconstruction of solar activity”. They found that during the past 3000 years the modern grand maxima, which occurred between 1959 and 2009, was a rare event both in magnitude and duration. This research adds to growing evidence that climate change is determined by the sun, not humans.

Newman talks about the one-sided funding in the US that largely “preordains” scientific conclusions and the cycle of governments funding scientists, who help fund governments, who fund more sympathetic scientists…

This mindset sought to bury the results of Danish physicist Henrik Svensmark’s experiments using the Large Hadron Collider, the world’s most powerful particle accelerator. For the first time in controlled conditions, Svensmark’s hypothesis that the sun alters the climate by influencing cosmic ray influx and cloud formation was validated. The head of CERN, which runs the laboratory, obviously afraid of how this heretical conclusion would be received within the global warming establishment, urged caution be used in interpreting the results “in this highly political area of climate change debate”. And the media obliged.

But Svensmark is not alone. For example, Russian scientists at the Pulkovo Observatory are convinced the world is in for a cooling period that will last for 200-250 years. Respected Norwegian solar physicist Pal Brekke warns temperatures may actually fall for the next 50 years. Leading British climate scientist Mike Lockwood, of Reading University, found 24 occasions in the past 10,000 years when the sun was declining as it is now, but could find none where the decline was as fast. He says a return of the Dalton Minimum (1790-1830), which included “the year without summer”, is “more likely than not”. In their book The Neglected Sun , Sebastian Luning and Fritz Varen­holt think that temperatures could be two-tenths of a degree Celsius cooler by 2030 because of a predicted anaemic sun. They say it would mean “warming getting postponed far into the future”.

If the world does indeed move into a cooling period, its citizens are ill-prepared.

The media IS the problem. With better media, we’d have better politicians, better bureaucrats, and better policy.

 
 

Liberals Hide the Truth about Bloated Taxpayer-funded Pensions!

Liberals sat on report critical of bloated pensions in hydro sector

Kathleen Wynne government’s is being ripped for sitting on report critical of bloated pensions in hydro sector since before the June 12 election.

 
 
A report critical of bloated, taxpayer-funded pensions in the hydro sector was written by Jim Leech, a former head of the Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan.

COLIN MCCONNELL / TORONTO STAR FILE PHOTO

A report critical of bloated, taxpayer-funded pensions in the hydro sector was written by Jim Leech, a former head of the Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan.

 

Premier Kathleen Wynne’s government is being ripped for keeping secret a report critical of bloated, taxpayer-funded pensions in the hydro sector since well before the June 12 election that lifted the Liberals to a majority.

The 45-page study into Ontario Power Generation, Hydro One, the Electrical Safety Authority and Independent Electricity System Operator recommends dramatically lower public contributions to “generous, expensive and inflexible” retirement schemesposing a “significant risk” to electricity prices.

At Hydro One, for example, taxpayers have been contributing an average of $5 for every $1 from employees, far higher than most civil service and private sector pension plans. Two-thirds of Ontarians have no workplace pension plan.

The report is dated March 18 and was posted on the Ministry of Finance website Friday on the eve of the Civic Holiday long weekend.

“This is awfully suspect,” said Progressive Conservative MPP Vic Fedeli, his party’s finance critic, questioning Wynne’s oft-stated goal of running an “open and transparent” government.

“There was ample opportunity to release this document with good public scrutiny. What are they hiding? What didn’t they want us to know?”

NDP pensions critic Jennifer French (Oshawa) said the Liberals “have been sitting in this report for five months.”

Government officials said they had intended to make the report public after Finance Minister Charles Sousa’s May 1 budget — which was rejected by opposition parties, forcing the election — and that posting it without fanfare was an oversight.

The Canadian Federation of Independent Business said the late release of the report is a blow to Wynne’s credibility as she pushes forward with an Ontario Registered Pension Plan (ORPP) for citizens without workplace pensions.

“Why now, why not before the election so people would have known what’s happening?” said Plamen Petkov, whose lobby group opposes the ORPP as too expensive.

“We’re very worried to see government agencies where employees are paying only 20 cents on the dollar for their pensions when taxpayers pay the other 80 cents. No wonder the government itself expects electricity prices to go up 42 per cent over the next five years,” he told the Star.

“It’s really disappointing. We recommend the government clean its own house first before they ask employers to contribute $3.5 billion a year to the Ontario Retirement Pension Plan.”

The report was written by Jim Leech, a former head of the Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan appointed last December to find ways of making electricity sector pension plans more affordable as the government struggles to eliminate a $12.5 billion deficit by 2018.

“The pensions are generous,” he concluded, noting benefits are “very close” to the maximum allowable under the Income Tax Act, “richer than most of the broader public service plans and employee contributions are also lower.”

For example, the Ontario Power Authority’s pension plan has a 50/50 employer/employee contribution ratio — a level that Leech recommends be reached within five years.

His report provides “advice on a roadmap and potential destination that is both affordable and financially sustainable,” said Beckie Codd-Downey, spokeswoman for Energy Minister Bob Chiarelli.

“The government will be reviewing the report in consultation with union representatives to assess the recommendations.”

Pensions will be subject to collective bargaining between the electricity agencies and their employees.