scandals

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.

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This Article, written in May….hit the Nail, right on the head….Scary!

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Warning: Reading about How the Ontario Liberals

Keep on Winning Might Make You Sick

by  on May 22, 2014 in Commentary

Enough is enough.

You would think the sheer waste of taxpayer dollars through scandals and mismanagement would be enough to hang the Liberals.

Especially since, at the same time your money swirls down the toilet, the Liberals continue to run deficits (seven in a row) andIllustration: Truth and Lie pile up debt that your grandchildren’s children will still be paying off.

Yet in spite of their mistakes and outright lies (the hit parade includes: the billion-dollar gas plant cancellation and the failure to provide proper oversight of Ornge air ambulance expenses and out-of-control spending at the Ontario Lottery and Gaming Corporation and elsewhere) they’ve managed to hold onto power for 11 years. How is that?

I’ll give you three reasons. (Hold on, it’s a long explanation.)

1. They buy votes with big spending promises.

George Bernard Shaw got it right. “A government that robs Peter to pay Paul can always depend on the support of Paul.”

When even the tax-the-rich NDP recognize that Ontarians are taxed to the hilt and refuse to put up with any “new taxes, tolls or fees that hit middle-class families,” you know Ontario must be in financial trouble.

Net debt is projected to climb to $269.2 billion for 2013–14 and hit $324.5 billion by 2017–18 (nearly 40% of Ontario’s economy). In fact, Ontario’s debt has more than doubled since the Ontario Liberals came to power in 2003–04 when the provincial debt stood at $138.8 billion (or 27.5% of the economy).

Interest payments are the third largest expense in the budget. And right now interest rates are low. When rates go back up, each point will add another $3 billion to our annual interest payment, points out economist Jack Mintz.

But in spite of repeated warnings about the need for spending cuts, from former Liberal finance minister Dwight Duncan (who conveniently woke up to the Ontario’s debt problem in his last few months in office) and public servants in Ontario’s finance ministry, what did the Liberals propose in the budget that forced an election?

Big spending promises, of course. Billions for schools and hospitals, roads and bridges, billions more for corporate grants, and millions for a smorgasbord of social services.

With this budget, the Liberals are in fact driving toward a deficit $2.4 billion higher(or 24% more) than they previously projected—in spite of hiking taxes by almost $1 billion. The deficits planned for 2015–16 and 2016–17 also increased by $1.7 billion and $1.8 billion.

In other words, the Liberals forecast spending to jump by $3.4 billion this year, $900 million more than projected in the 2013 budget, with program spending expected to climb by nearly $3 billion to $119.4 billion.

With Ontario already in a fiscal mess, the NDP (yes, the NDP, a party not known for financial responsibility), criticized the budget as “a mad dash to escape the scandals by promising the moon and the stars.”

2. They pander to unions, whose members make up a big chunk of the electorate.  

The real beneficiary of the tax-and-spend Liberals has been the unions.

For starters, over half of Ontario’s program spending goes to pay public-sector workers their salaries and pension benefits.

What’s more, when the Liberals came into power in 2003, only 14,926 public-sector employees were making $100,000 or more. Today, 97,796 Ontario public-sector workers are on the so-called Sunshine List, an increase of 655% in just 10 years.

But, really, who can be surprised when about 70 percent of public-sector employees are unionized (compare this to the roughly 15 percent unionization rate in the private sector)?

The fact is the Liberals have pandered to unions, especially teacher’s unions, handing out massive, unaffordable pay hikes.

From 2003 to 2011, the McGuinty Liberals increased education spending by 45%, hiring 14,000 more teachers (up 10%) and increasing salaries by 24%—all while student enrollment actually dropped by 6%.

And teachers repaid the favour, “volunteering and voting for McGuinty’s Liberals in huge numbers during the past three elections.”

But following a narrow election win in 2011 (voters were angry over broken promises and higher taxes), McGuinty shifted direction, proposing to freeze teacher wages for two years and curb benefits to reduce the government’s alarming $14.4 billion deficit.

The teachers reacted with predictable outrage.

So despite all their talk about austerity, the Liberals just couldn’t say “no” to their vote-rich cash cow.

While the McGuinty government was calling for wage freezes publicly, it secretly negotiated a three percent wage increase with the Ontario Public Service Employees Union, which represents 35,000 voters, er, government workers.

And forget about Kathleen Wynne taking a firm stance on public-sector wages and benefits.

In a clear bid to win back union support, one of her first moves as premier was to negotiate an LCBO contract that gave 7,000 unionized workers a $1,600 signing bonus over two years—about $9 million— and wage increases of two% in 2015–16.

Her education minister also renegotiated new contracts with the province’s two biggest teachers unions, the Ontario Secondary School Teachers’ Federation and the Elementary Teachers’ Federation of Ontario, offering better maternity benefits, fewer unpaid days off, and an improved “sick-day bank.”

And the quid pro quo?

Millions of dollars spent on attack ads directed exclusively against Tory leaders in Ontario’s 2003, 2007, and 2011 elections—by a powerful coalition of special interest unions that includes the Ontario English Catholic Teachers Association, the Canadian Auto Workers, and the Ontario Secondary School Teachers’ Federation and calling itself the Working Families Coalition.

The so-called Working Families coalition first “came together in 2003 to discredit then Tory premier Ernie Eves and get Dalton McGuinty elected.” Their ad campaigns had such a big impact on the election results, they followed up with more of the same in the 2007 and 2011 elections. For this campaign, they’re just getting started, but expect a barrage of attack ads aimed squarely at Tim Hudak.

The coalition’s negative ads effectively doubles the advertising budget of the Liberals at the expense of the Tories through loose election laws around third-party advertising. Unlike political parties, third parties “can spend as much as they want, take contributions as large as they want and keep their financial backers hidden until long after the campaign is over.”

In Ontario’s 2011 general election, Working Families spent $1.6 million to help the Liberals.

Other big spenders included the Elementary Teachers’ Federation—$2.6 million—and the English Catholic Teachers’ Association, which spent $1.9 million to help defeat the PC party. For comparison’s sake, out of 21 registered political parties, only two spent more than $2 million on advertising. The Elementary Teachers’ Federation, the biggest third-party advertiser, spent more on advertising than nineteen political parties combined.

Spending records for the 2007 election (the first year third parties had to register with Elections Ontario) show a similar story. A shocking “90 per cent of the $2.3 million raised by third-party advertisers for the 2007 campaign went to organized labour or groups opposed to specific Tory policy positions.”

Plainly, Ontario’s election laws are giving Liberals with their deep-pocketed union allies an unfair advantage.

3. They reward party insiders with lucrative contracts.

In Ontario, it’s not what you know, but who you know.

From eHealth Ontario and Cancer Care Ontario to the Local Health Integration Networks, the Liberals have a history of rewarding party loyalists with “cushy, untendered contracts” and well-paid appointments.

In 2004, Mike Crawley, the then-president of the Ontario Liberals, was awarded awind power contract that guarantees his company AIM PowerGen $66,000 a day for 20 years. That’s a total of $475 million dollars.

In 2010, nearly two-thirds of the $68 million of taxpayers’ money spent on the 14 LHINs went to cover the salaries and remuneration of government-appointed board members.

Pat Dillon, the business manager of the Provincial Building and Construction Trades Council and the head of the infamous Working Families Coalition, has received a number of appointments—to Premier Wynne’s Transit Panel, the Ontario College of Trades, the WSIB Board, Infrastructure Ontario, and more.

The Globe and Mail recently reported that Ontario Liberal friends and allies were awarded millions of dollars in taxpayer-funded contracts because of loopholes in the rules surrounding government expenditures. The report goes on to say that, “while there is no indication that any of the transactions were illegitimate, the lack of transparency makes it difficult to determine what services were provided at taxpayers’ expense.”

The sad truth? It pays to be a friend of the Liberals. Ontario taxpayer, not so much.

The Ontario Liberals are long past their best-before date

After 11 years, it’s time to hold the Liberals to account.

Imagine if some pimply-faced thug robbed a gas station and got caught, he’d get what? A thousand dollars tops and some jail time.

But the Liberals who have “stolen” billions of taxpayer money through incompetence and cronyism remain unpunished.

It’s time to throw the Liberals out. They’ve inflicted enough damage on the province. It’s time they answered for their crimes against taxpayers.

 

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

Greenpeace has Become a Corrupt Organization, that Promotes Alarmism!

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Greenpeace In Decline Like The AGW Scam

They Support

by Tory Aardvark

 

Dr Patrick Moore “They have a whole fleet of ships, pretending the $32 million Rainbow Warrior III is powered by the wind when it has two large diesel engines for propulsion. I like to joke that when we first sailed against US hydrogen bomb testing in Alaska we did not have a nuclear weapon on board." Dr Patrick Moore “They have a whole fleet of ships, pretending the $32 million Rainbow Warrior III is powered by the wind when it has two large diesel engines for propulsion. I like to joke that when we first sailed against US hydrogen bomb testing in Alaska we did not have a nuclear weapon on board.”

Things have not been going well for environmental NGO Greenpeace in the last few months, there was the insanely stupid attempt to interfere with Gazprom operations in the Arctic, which led to the Arctic 30 enjoying the hospitality of the Russian penal system for a few months. Greenpeace also lost a ship, the Arctic Sunrise which is still impounded in the Russian port of Murmansk, and likely to be there until it rusts away and sinks, or ends life as a towed target for the Russian Navy.

In the words of Greenpeace Co-Founder Patrick Moore “I’d like to think that Greenpeace left me, rather than the other way round. I became a sensible environmentalist. Greenpeace became increasingly senseless.”

Greenpeace apart from being increasingly senseless have also been caught losing millions in donations by failed currency trading, been labelled as a threat to national economic security, and one of their top executives has been caught out hypocritically commuting by air from Luxembourg to Amsterdam.

All this makes for very bad publicity for Greenpeace:

“Greenpeace has been careful to cultivate an image as intrepid defenders of the environment,” editorializes Der Spiegel, a major German newspaper. “Calling themselves the rainbow warriors, activists hang from factory chimneys, throw themselves in front of whaling ships or risk jail time in Russia by calling attention to the plight of the Arctic.”

“Now, another activity has been added: playing the financial markets,” Der Spiegel adds. “For an organization almost entirely financed by donations, the revelation is a PR disaster, endangering from one day to the next the greatest asset Greenpeace possesses: its credibility.”

Even that organ of left wing biased climate change propaganda the UK Guardian has turned against Greenpeace:

The Guardian, a left-wing newspaper, has been especially critical of Greenpeace lately. The paper even obtained internal documents detailing the disarray within Greenpeace International.

A November 2013 document obtained by the Guardian shows that Greenpeace’s executive team was for years fully aware of major problems within the group’s finance department.

“[The] international finance function at GPI [Greenpeace International] has faced internal team and management problems for several years and the situation did not improve during 2013 despite efforts and support,” says the Greenpeace document.

India’s Intelligence Bureau has come to the conclusion that Greenpeace is a threat to the countries national economic security:

The Indian Express reports that the Intelligence Bureau submitted a report to the prime minister’s office saying Greenpeace was “negatively impacting economic development” through political activism and its anti-fossil fuels agenda. The reports says that Greenpeace activities have reduced the country’s GDP by 2 to 3 percent a year.

The report mentioned other activist groups, but singled out Greenpeace for trying to “change the dynamics of India’s energy mix” and orchestrating “massive efforts to take down India’s coal fired power plants and coal mining activity.”

“It is assessed to be posing a potential threat to national economic security… growing exponentially in terms of reach, impact, volunteers and media influence,” the report warns of Greenpeace, adding the group is finding “ways to create obstacles in India’s energy plans” and to “pressure India to use only renewable energy.”

It is not just in India, but other countries as well there seems to be a shift towards curtailing the activities of Green NGO’s, in Tasmania the politicians want to remove charitable status from Green NGOs and give the status to real charities:

The government is being pressed to alter the charitable status of environmental groups after a Liberal MP successfully argued to his party that the groups are not “real charities” like the Red Cross or the Salvation Army.

A motion introduced by MP Andrew Nikolic to the Liberal federal council called for environmental groups to be stripped of charitable rights, such as the ability to receive tax-deductible donations.

Nikolic, the federal member for the Tasmanian electorate of Bass, said the groups should not be subsidised for political activism, some of it which he claimed was illegal. The conference motion passed the motion unanimously.

The news of Greenpeace’s massive loss of donations currency trading was soon followed by the revelations that Greenpeace’s international program director Pascal Husting was regularly taking the plane from his home in Luxembourg to the office in Amsterdam:

The UK Telegraph noted that Greenpeace actively campaigns against “the growth in aviation,” which the group says “is ruining our chances of stopping dangerous climate change.”

“Each round-trip commute Mr Husting makes would generate 142kg of carbon dioxide emissions,” reports the Telegraph. “That implies that over the past two years his commuting may have been responsible for 7.4 metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions — the equivalent of consuming 17 barrels of oil.”

None of these antics have done much to bolster Greenpeace’s declining credibility with its life blood, the millions of people who make the small donations that keep Greenpeace functioning, instead they have been shown to be nothing more than one of those duplicitous  corporations the environmentalists so love to despise.

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

.
“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

 

Those Brilliant Aussies, Deliver the Final Death Blow to the Wind Industry!

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Wind Industry Doomed as Smokin’ Joe Hockey Shuts Down CEFC Lending for Wind Farms

June 29, 2014 by  Leave a Comment

gore and palmer

Having killed the “carbon” tax in an eye-blink – a business killing and family punishing $23 a tonne tax on carbon dioxide gas – Clive Palmer vowed to use his ability to block legislation proposed by the Coalition in the Senate to prevent any changes to the mandatory Renewable Energy Target; and the abolition of the Clean Energy Finance Corporation.

Retaining the Clean Energy Finance Corporation and the mandatory RET makes no sense for a political party which helped to kill the “carbon” tax because of the punishment it caused to businesses and households through spiralling power bills. Since big Clive’s announcement, The Australian has produced a plethora of articles to much the same effect.

For our overseas followers, Clive’s 3 PUP Senators – plus their ally, Ricky Muir of the Motoring Enthusiasts’ Party – are able to block any legislation put up by the Coalition in the Senate, where Labor and the Greens oppose it; or, conversely, to side with the Coalition and get legislation passed where Labor and the Greens choose to block it, with the support of 2 of the cross-benchers, like John Madigan and Nick Xenophon. That leaves Palmer with the ability to throw his considerable weight against or behind Coalition backed legislation. On that matrix, with Palmer’s support, any attempt to kill the CEFC – a Green/Labor created renewables slush fund – is bound to fail.

But – in politics – there’s more than one way to skin a cat.

Treasurer, Joe Hockey and Finance Minister, Mathias Cormann had planned to sell off the CEFC to the private finance sector. The loans written by the CEFC amount to assets on its books which could be sold, at a price, to any financial institution ready to take on the risk. No doubt, the sale price would be at a considerable discount to the current face value of the loans, but Hockey and Cormann apparently took the view that it was better that some other sucker take the risk; rather than leave the Australian taxpayer exposed to the CEFC’s reckless approach to lending. A sale would have also prevented any further risk exposure.

Big Clive’s declaration that he would prevent the abolition of the CEFC has thrown a spanner in the works; but only briefly. Hockey and Cormann have identified that the Coalition has the power to direct the CEFC to lend to certain types of projects and, more importantly, to prevent it from lending to others.

Hockey has already declared his hatred of “utterly offensive” wind farms and is hip to the fact that wind power is inefficient, insanely expensive and fails in its principal claim of reducing CO2 emissions in the electricity sector (see our posts here and here).

No prizes, then, for guessing which “renewable” generation source won’t be getting any more funds from the CEFC. Here’s The Australian on the Hockey/Cormann wind farm attack.

Direct action to benefit from Clean Energy Finance Corporation funds
The Australian
Sid Maher
28 June 2014

THE Clean Energy Finance Corporation is likely to be directed away from lending to wind farms in favour of programs that support the Coalition’s “direct action” plan such as energy-efficiency schemes and leasing for solar hot water systems.

In the wake of Clive Palmer’s declaration this week that his senators will vote to retain the CEFC, it has emerged that Joe Hockey and Finance Minister Mathias Cormann have the power to alter the CEFC’s investment mandate without parliament being able to reverse the move.

Senior government sources have told The Weekend Australian the CEFC could be instructed to favour direct action-style programs such as providing leasing for households to install solar hot water systems and for energy-efficiency programs instead of wind farms. Twenty-two per cent of the CEFC’s loans in its first year were for wind projects.

The likely change of direction for the CEFC comes as funding for the $2.55 billion Emissions Reduction Fund, the centrepiece of the Coalition’s direct-action policy, was contained in an appropriation bill that passed both houses of parliament this week.

However, the mechanism for distributing the funds is contained in amendments to the Carbon Farming Initiative, which is yet to pass the Senate.

Government sources remain hopeful of having the bill passed, despite Mr Palmer’s announcement that he would not support direct action because it was a “waste of money’’.

If direct action is blocked, with the money already allocated in an appropriation bill, an alternative plan is to distribute money to the states for carbon abatement programs under Section 96 of the Constitution.

Under Section 96, the federal government is able to provide tied grants to the states.

This would enable direct-action funding to be paid to the states for programs addressing energy efficiency, boosting soil carbon initiatives and increasing the take up of solar hot water systems.

In the wake of Mr Palmer’s announcement this week that he would support the abolition of the carbon tax, it is likely to be abolished either on July 14 or soon after.

The Palmer United Party leader’s call for an emissions trading scheme rated at zero appears doomed after failing to gain government support.

Mr Palmer is also backing the retention of the CEFC and the Climate Change Authority and will not support changes to the Renewable Energy Target before 2016 – after the next election is due.

Environment Minister Greg Hunt on Thursday split the CEFC repeal bill from the main body of the carbon tax repeal bills. The former appears set to be debated by the Senate after the main carbon tax repeal bills.

Under the legislation establishing the CEFC, the Treasurer and Finance Minister can provide direction on matters of risk and return, eligibility criteria for investments, allocation of investments between different types of clean-energy technologies, the types of financial instruments that may be invested in and “broad operational matters’’.

While the government can alter the investment mandate of the CEFC, existing legislation guarantees the CEFC the ability to write up to $10 billion in loans over the next five years.

The CEFC legislation allows the corporation to write $2bn of loans every year and, if it fails to reach the ceiling, the unused portion can be carried over to the next year.

As the political debate over its future has raged, the CEFC has written to all sides of parliament, including the crossbench senators, arguing its case for survival. It has also had meetings with MPs on its operations.

While the government can change the investment mandate, its ability to change the CEFC board, whose members have been given five-year terms, is limited.

Since it began operating from July last year, the CEFC has written $700 million in loans and has mobilised more than $1.8bn of private sector investment, for a total of $2.5bn in projects.

It argues its abolition would cost the government $100m a year in lost revenue.
The Australian

STT hears that Al Gore’s presence on the podium alongside Clive Palmer last week was orchestrated (and paid for) by our favourite whipping boys over at Infigen (aka Babcock and Brown) – Gore’s “stunned-fish-out-of water” performance was heralded by Infigen’s spin masters as a propaganda coup.

After the Gore/Palmer circus of the bizarre died down – the wind industry and its parasites were crowing about their “political masterstroke” in having Palmer announce his support for the mandatory RET and the CEFC.

Talk about your all-time backfires.

The Hockey/Cormann manoeuvre could well be the killer blow we’ve been looking for.

It’s other peoples’ money that started the great wind power fraud; and its depriving wind power outfits of access to other peoples’ money that will end it.

The CEFC represents the ONLY source of funds available to wind farm developers.

Wind power outfits have been unable to obtain funds from commercial lenders, simply because retailers stopped signing Power Purchase Agreements over 18 months ago (see our post here).

In the absence of a PPA, a wind farm developer has nothing to offer by way of valuable security for their loan with a bank: commercial banks will simply not lend in the absence of the security provided by a long-term (15-25 year) PPA. That, rather significant, detail has never troubled the CEFC, which is prepared to lend on unsecured terms at rates far below those which would be demanded by commercial banks lending on the same terms (see our post here).

By preventing the CEFC from lending to wind power outfits, the Coalition have virtually guaranteed that no new wind farms will be built in the foreseeable future; at least where the wind power outfits involved do not hold a PPA.

Now that’s a “coup”!

Joe Hockey and Mathias Cormann

 

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.

Hard-Hitting Probe, Into the True Impact of Wind Turbines…

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Special Investigation: Toxic wind turbines

BY DEREK LAMBIE, 23 MARCH 2014
  • Evidence has revealed environmental cost of wind farms.Getty Images

Part Two of The Sunday Post’s hard-hitting probe into the true impact of wind farms.

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 unauthorised 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 ScottishPower 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.”

 

Michigan Wind Turbine Company in Legal Trouble….for NOISE!!

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Court Backs Finding Of Wind Turbine Noise Problem

Lake Winds energy plant in Mason County now has to mitigate noise of its windmills

By JACK SPENCER | June 28, 2014

The Lake Winds Energy Plant in Mason County.

Michigan’s 51st Circuit Court has ruled that Mason County was justified in determining that wind turbines at the Lake Winds Industrial Wind Plant near Ludington are too noisy.

In his June 16 decision, Judge Richard Cooper denied Consumer Energy’s appeal to have the court overturn the county’s finding that the wind plant was exceeding the county’s established decibel level limits.

In a highly technical explanation, Judge Cooper said it was reasonable for the county to take into account the impact of maximum wind speeds that are not outside the norm. He also rejected the argument that excessive noise levels occurring only during certain periods of time should be allowed.

Lake Winds is a 56-turbine facility located south of Ludington. It was the utility company’s first wind plant project in Michigan. Residents who live near the $255 million plant began complaining of health problems shortly after the turbines began operating. They filed a lawsuit on April 1, 2013, arguing that noise, vibrations and flickering lights emanating from the wind plant were adversely affecting their health. Among the symptoms noted in the lawsuit were dizziness, sleeplessness and headaches.

In September 2013, the Mason County Planning Commission determined that the wind plant was not in compliance with safety guidelines. CMS Energy, which is the parent company of Consumers Energy, then appealed that decision to the Mason County Zoning Board of Appeals and lost. In January, CMS took the case to court and it has now lost again.

CMS spokesman Dennis Marvin said the utility has yet to decide whether it will appeal Judge Cooper’s decision to the Michigan Court of Appeals.

“Obviously, we were disappointed by the decision,” Marvin said. “We are still evaluating whether or not to appeal. In accordance with the court’s ruling we are cooperating with Mason County on our mitigation plan.”

Mason County has hired experts to continue tests at the wind plant. However, because wind speeds are generally low in the summer the testing isn’t likely to resume until September, at the earliest. Under the mitigation plan, affected wind turbines are now operating at reduced power levels to lower the sound level.

“CMS energy has no one to blame but themselves,” said Kevon Martis, director of the Interstate Informed Citizens Coalition, a non-profitorganization that is concerned about the construction of wind turbines in the region. “The citizens living inside Lake Winds wind plant paid for independent noise studies of the project before it was built. Independent analysis demonstrated that the turbines would not only exceed the noise ordinance as proposed by CMS and adopted by Mason County but that the turbine noise would create widespread complaints and result in legal action by those subjected to this industrial development in a rural environment.”

Lake Winds is part of the utility’s effort to meet Michigan’s renewable energy mandate, which requires that 10 percent of the state’s energy be produced by in-state renewable sources by 2015. Though the mandate was ostensibly aimed at reducing carbon emissions, the 2008 law did not require that emissions be monitored to measure the mandate’s actual impact.

“This should be a warning that there is a price to be paid for ignoring the clear acoustical science that predicted this social disaster long before the first shovel of dirt was ever turned,” Martis said.

~~~~~