Editor’s note:  In an article unsubtly titled “Wind Industry Big Lies,” British journalist James Delingpole zeroes in on Big Wind’s biggest lie of all:

And there’s no direct evidence that they affect house prices, in fact the Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors says they don’t.”

—RenewableUK (aka British Wind Energy Association)

“This,” indignantly responds Delingpole, going for the jugular, “is a quote—a genuine quote: not one devised by his enemies to satirise the outrageous absurdity of the wind industry’s specious claims—from Maf Smith, Deputy Chief of the wind industry propaganda arm RenewableUK [formerly called the British Wind Energy Association]. I suppose how far it qualifies as a lie depends on how you construe that weasel phrase ‘direct evidence.’  Evidence of one kind or another there certainly is aplenty.”  There is indeed, and Delingpole goes on to provide it.  Click here to read Delingpole’s article.

In the article, below, veteran Chicago property appraiser, Michael McCann, adds his own rebuttal to RenewableUK’s deceit.

“Direct Evidence of Value Impact:  An Appraiser’s Perspective on Living with Wind Turbines”

—Michael S. McCann, CRA, McCann Appraisal, LLC (Chicago, Illinois, USA)

I can understand why some people have no clue as to what constitutes “direct evidence of value loss” when they have zero training or education as a professional appraiser. Further, when self-interest is placed above objective analysis by anyone, wildly different opinions are the result.

However, different does not mean equal. Being duly licensed, and with over 30 years experience in professionally evaluating the impacts of one land use on the value of another, please permit me to clarify.

There is a hierarchy of evidentiary value, or how reliable certain information is construed, vis-à-vis other forms of potential evidence.

Case Study Data:  The most reliable method for determining property value

The most reliable evidence is represented by Case Studies, or individual examples of value loss, directly linked to the cause of value loss. This can be true for a contaminated property, a loss of parking from a shopping center, or indeed from a wind energy project of one or numerous turbines.

A good example of a Case Study is represented by a recent appraisal assignment in Michigan. I appraised this home (see above) prior to the approval or construction of the Consumers Energy Lake Winds project in Mason County, Michigan. All pre-turbine comparable sales considered, this property was worth $190,000. Nice home on a small acreage lot, remodeled and updated, great view of apple orchards and a rural countryside.

I appraised this property in June 2011, and the market increased about 9% since then, indicating it should have increased in value to about $207,000. With a typical Sale:List price ratio of 95%, under pre-project conditions, this adjusted value should have resulted in a recommended list price of $217,900, to allow for the negotiation to bring the selling price to the $207,000, June 2012 “market value.”

However, since then the wind turbine project was constructed and industrial-scale turbines have been built within about 1/4 mile of this residence (and many others). This family decided to move away from the turbines (which, incidentally, establishes the direct link) and local realtors told them that being located in the turbine project, they would not list the property based upon the appraised value, and would not list it unless it was discounted to a $169,000 asking price.

Thus, the realtor community acknowleged the loss of marketability, and enforced a beginning discount that was contrary to the pre-turbine project market value, much less the increase since then. With the nearest turbine quite obvious and present, the final sale price was $159,000, or 23% lower than market value (as adjusted for market appreciation during the intervening year).

In this Case Study example, the nearest turbine had been only “tested,” and there was no direct experience for the seller in their own home with any noise, audible or LFN, or flicker, although clearly within range of both noise and visual impacts. One of the owners did spend one night in a residence similarly situated near a turbine in the same turbine project that was running that night, and reportedly was disturbed to the point of being convinced he would not be able to endure living under such conditions.

This case study illustrates a 23% value reduction, clearly, and with no innappropriate considerations, from an appraisal perspective.

Absurdly, the wind energy industry has attempted, with some success, to cast this direct type of evidence as being “merely anecdotal,” and in their (non-expert) judgment, unreliable.

On balance, the Appraisal Institute is a far more reliable and authoritative source on valuation matters, methodology and techniques.  It is, as well, the leading education provider for appraisers in the USA, and is the oldest appraisal association. Their published text on valuation of detrimental conditions clearly states that “Case Studies” are the most reliable data upon which to base a professional valuation conclusion in situations of detrimental conditions—like this one.

In addition, courts of law will typically consider a very recent sale of a property to be the “best” evidence of its value—not merely “anecdotal.” The Uniform Standards of Professional Appraisal Practice (USPAP), which is a regulation applicable to the entire community of licensed appraisers, has a specific regulation (SR 1-5) which mandates an appraiser “must consider and analyze any sale of a subject property within the prior 3-year period.”

With regard to Case Study data, what the wind industry calls anecdotal or unreliable is exactly the type of information that the appraisal profession and the courts typically rely upon as being the best evidence.

Bottom line: Case Study data is factual and empirical, and is therefore the most reliable.

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Editor’s note:  WTS stands for “Wind Turbine Syndrome”

As a side note, I am aware that many homeowners bought out by wind developers or compensated for nuisance or value loss, have done so with required confidentiality agreements—in other words, “gag orders.” This, of course, makes Case Study data hard to come by.

Paired Sales:  The second most reliable method for determining property value

With that said, the second most reliable basis for demonstrating a “detrimental conditions” valuation opinion, when one does not have enough factual background on Case Studies, is the use of “paired sales.”  That is, one sale near turbines and one far away, in order to isolate the impact of the turbines on value. Of course, there still will be other disimilar features—say, a fireplace, for which the appraiser can make a reasoned judgment as to the contributory value of a fireplace to a home’s sale price, and make an adjustment for this or any other relevant differences. Since it requires a certain amount of judgment, use of Paired Sales is not immune from critique. One person may assume that the cost to install a fireplace (say, $10,000) is the appropriate basis for adjustment, and another may be able to demonstrate that the local “market” only pays 50% of cost, or $5,000 for a good quality fireplace. These types of assumptions can skew the results of analysis.  (More on this, below.)

Regression Analysis:  The least reliable method for determining property value. (This is the method used by the wind industry.)

Regression Analysis is the technique that was used by the now well-circulated Hoen/Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory report. The Appraisal Institute recognizes this technique as the third and least reliable method, which should only be used in the absence of data, such as the type of Case Study data that is most reliable and preferable, or absent the data to perform a Paired Sales analysis.

The problems with Regression Analysis are numerous. As in the “fireplace” example, above, the “researcher” has considerable latitude in setting the value of many of the variables, ostensibly to solve “ceteris paribus” (“everything else being equal”) for the dependent variable, or value impact from turbines. Poor choices by a researcher can greatly doom the analysis results, rendering it a case of “garbage in, garbage out.”

Statistical significance can be manipulated, as well, by “pooling” data from disimilar locations. (Google the phrase, “Final nail in Hoen’s coffin.”) Preceding an excellent analysis of the Sunak regression study from Germany in 2012, with isolated markets studied separately, Dr. Alec Salt wrote a succinct analysis of why wind developers use a 10 km study radius!  Basically, it allows statistical significance of unhelpful data to be weakened.

Beyond the Regression Analysis technique itself, one must also consider the objectivity of the analyst. The Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL) report (2009) authored mainly by Ben Hoen is highly suspect in this regard. Hoen was under contract (along with the Univ. of Calif. at Berkeley) to prepare the report for the US Dept. of Energy (USDOE), both of which (UC Berkeley and US DOE) are vigorouly and publicly “pro-wind turbine.” This creates a potential for “advocacy,” rather than an independent, objective study—hardly the objective standards required of professional appraisers.

Moreover, not being a licensed appraiser, Mr. Hoen was not bound by any enforceable code of ethics or standards of practice.  Although his report “looked” (to the untrained eye) to be compelling, in fact it failed to follow the property appraisal industry’s “best practices” standards.  Al Wilson, an appraiser eminently qualified in both Regression Analysis for mass appraisal and in assessing the impact on value from contamination, points out that Hoen’s Regression model fails to conform to any of the accepted and tested (verified) Regression models used by assessor’s for valuing properties for either ad valorem assessment or “mass appraisal” projects. It was idiosyncratic—custom made—for this project.  Leading Wilson to conclude that the LBNL report is unreliable for any public policy purposes.

As an invited “peer reviewer” of the 2009 LBNL report, I think it is fair of me to to point out that the authors elected to omit significantly important data, i.e., about 3 dozen sales within 3 miles of turbines that “deviated too far from the mean,” and a few developer buyouts, with only 2 re-sold from the developer in private transactions at 36% and 80% discounts from the prices just paid.  Thus, the sales which were most likely to affect any objective determination of value impact from turbines—that is, those “nearby”—were omitted. (See LBNL report, Dec. 2009, pp. 13-14, footnote 27.)

The Regression technique does not always yield unreliable or biased results. The Clarkson University study (2011) and the recent report out of Germany by Sunak (2012) both used Regression methodology and, without “pooling” the data, statistically significant findings were developed as high as 40% value loss (1/10 mile from turbines:  Clarkson study), 20%  value loss (3 miles from turbines:  Clarkson), and 25% value loss (lot values within 2 km:  Sunak).

Both the Clarkson and Sunak studies focused on nearby property values, which Hoen says they “know little about.” I submit that the nearby property values are exactly the issue, when considering zoning, siting or otherwise permitting of wind farms.

Finally, Hoen did not write that turbines cause “no impact on value.” He in fact acknowleged that there are cases “nearby” where values are likely impacted. However, he then fell back to the pooled data to claim that such impacts are neither uniform, widespread or statistically significant. His claim is reasoning is absurd; one would not expect impacts to be “widespread” in a 10-mile radius, nor “uniform” from one value loss example to another.

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Ben Hoen

In conclusion, it’s evident that wind developers are not relying on studies that utilize accepted appraisal methodolgy or techniques, since there is indeed data available to demonstrate what the impacts are (or are not) using Case Studies and Paired Sales—or even by using more reliable, independent and objective Regression studies. It’s worth pointing out that wind developers often misquote Hoen, and claim the report states “no value impact from turbines.”

Hoen and I agree on one thing: Property Value Guarantees (PVG’s) should be used with any wind project. This would cause all wind developers to be more careful in the siting location of any turbines, and also provide the basis for compensating or buying out owners who cannot live near turbines due to health or nuisance impacts, or who have had their home equity diminished by shoehorning turbines into populated areas, with no regard for compatibility with the neighborhood.

As a professional appraiser, I am not permitted to be biased for or against any client or issue. But I can advocate my professional opinions. Based on my review of wind turbine development and value impact trends, I can state confidently that there are indeed impacts on value near industrial-scale turbines. The data tends to support a range of 25% to 40% devaluation, although with so many homes abandoned after the development and operation of nearby turbines, the loss of equity is sometimes total.

When wind energy developers propose setbacks in terms of feet and meters, instead of miles and kilometers, they are essentially insuring that there will be negative impacts on property values, together with safety and welfare impacts. I leave the health and noise impact issue for physicians and credible acoustical engineers to address, except to point out the obvious:  these impacts are what cause many people to move away from wind projects.  Value loss is merely a means of partially quantifying the health effects of wind turbines.

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Editor’s note:  Mr. McCann can be reached at mikesmccann@comcast.net

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“Turbine opponents plead for health unit’s help”

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—Tracey Richardson, Owen Sound Sun Times (9/21/12)

Wind turbine opponents pleaded with Grey-Bruce’s public board of health Friday to do something to help them.

Frustration was evident in presentations from two groups — one from the municipality of Kincardine and one from Grey Highlands. It’s the first time a delegation opposing wind turbines has shown up on the doorstep of the health unit, although the matter has been addressed at previous public meetings.

At one point, an emotional plea came from Norma Schmidt — one of about a dozen people in the audience. “We’re suffering terribly. It’s a disaster,” she told them. “We just can’t live our everyday, ordinary lives.”

She told the board it was their responsibility to help them because it’s a health issue.

Board chair Arlene Wright told the group she sympathized with them and that the board “has been dealing with this for three years.”

The group also had a sympathetic ear in medical officer of health Dr. Hazel Lynn, who said after the meeting that she feels their frustration. She also believes their concerns are absolutely legitimate.

“I’ve been concerned about wind turbines for a long time, and I do know people who have been affected by them,” she said. “I think it is a direct effect and not an indirect effect.”

Lynn has been asked repeatedly over the years by local municipalities and residents to do a health study, but the health unit declined because of a lack of money and resources. But even if she had the money and resources, Lynn said she couldn’t do it.

“I’ve said look, I’m not the person to do it. I’m already biased. I think these people are affected directly by this technology and I feel somewhat annoyed, to put it mildly, that the energy and infrastructure act does not allow people to have that choice of having a turbine in their back yard or not.”

The health board heard stories from Virginia Stewart Love about people suffering from severe headaches, heart palpitations, sleeplessness and tinnitus. Some are not able to work and cannot have guests come to their home, she said.

Love was representing people in the Maxwell area living near 11 turbines of the Plateau Wind Project that came online last February.

“We are looking to you, the experts and professionals charged with the protection of our health to determine what the cause or causes are of the symptoms we are presenting, and to eliminate and prevent any further harm,” she told the board.

The board heard about plans to more than double the existing 120 Enbridge turbines in Kincardine. Rachel Thompson, chair of Health Affected Residents Meeting (HARM), told the board the planned turbines are 100 feet taller than the current ones, and that some people are living as close as 450 metres to turbines.

She said she knows of dozens of people wanting out of their leases with Enbridge for the turbines on their property, which were signed in 2004.

“It’s ruining real peoples’ lives here,” she told the board.

Many people suffering from the turbines can’t move for financial reasons, she added. “They feel trapped.”

Health Canada and the University of Waterloo are both conducting health studies, but they’re still two to four years from completion. Both Love and Thompson said that’s too long because people are suffering now.

The health board passed a motion asking Lynn to review the current literature and report back to the board on what it might do.

Lynn said public health is handcuffed under current legislation when it comes to acting on environmental issues. Lynn said health hazard legislation was set up for infectious disease, “so it’s really specific for me to write orders on a health hazard that has to do with sexually transmitted diseases, tuberculosis, those kinds of things. And that’s what it was set up for. So to put that into environmental terms is very difficult.”

Lynn can force someone to be tested for an infectious disease and take the medication for it, “but it’s very difficult to do that with wind turbines.”

She expects to report back to the board in a couple of months.

After the meeting, Schmidt, who lives near Underwood, said she has been forced from her home because of the wind turbines.

“I’m very ill because of it and I’m asking them (the board) to help me and people like me, because it’s a very serious health problem. Our area has been inundated with wind turbines.”

Thompson said she was encouraged by the board’s response.

“I feel very positive. I was really impressed with the intelligent questions that came from everyone on the board, and I feel like very positive actions will come forward from today’s delegation.”

She said she wouldn’t be surprised if the health unit ends up spending some time researching and “talking to people on the ground. I think they would be able to do a fantastic job of what we’ve started with the case studies. So I wouldn’t be surprised if they follow up on that.”

Editor’s note: This arrived in response to the posting, “Aldo Leopold, vanished ‘soundscape,’ and wind turbines.” I have no idea who wrote it, or even what country it came from—these being details of insignificance. It is enough to know it speaks from the heart, to the heart—of all humanity.

I just came in from sitting in my red rocking chair, outside on my stone porch. I like to sit there every night in the dark.

I heard this year’s family of coyotes, calling to the moon. I saw the bright moon behind the 150-year-old apple tree. My horse “Hobo” whinnied and snorted—he knew I was there.

It is a bit chilly, so I quietly walked over and piled some straw on top of Bulldozer, my little black pig. He gave a sleepy thank you and yawned.

Then I needed a velvet kiss from Hobo. So, even though my knee is sore, I padded through the grass to his fence—of his big valley. The moon lit up the white pattern on his chestnut face. He leaned over and nuzzled me.

“God, he smells so good and he feels so warm.” I got my velvet kisses; he got my voice, low in the darkness, almost a whisper calling him my favorite mighty steed.

Sometimes, when I say goodnight to my furry friends, I say “night night baby duck!” And when asked why I would call a pig or horse, dog or cat a “baby duck,” I explain that they are all so pure and innocent. To me they are like a baby duck.

Damn the wind industry! Damn damn damn them all!

With thanks to Matthew Seed

It’s only when you dig beneath the surface of the official lies and cover ups that you realise just how filthy and all-pervasive the wind farm scam is. Why are so few journalists investigating it? Why isn’t it on the front pages every day? Are we really so cynical and decadent that we no longer expect our trade bodies, our institutions, our government departments to behave with a shred of decency?

—James Delingpole

Editor’s note:  We would like to dedicate the article, below, to Derek (“I tell the truth”) Maitland—an Australian journalist who seems impervious to evidence.

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—James Delingpole, The Telegraph (UK), 9/19/12

And there’s no direct evidence that they affect house prices, in fact the Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors says they don’t.”

This is a quote—a genuine quote: not one devised by his enemies to satirise the outrageous absurdity of the wind industry’s specious claims—from Maf Smith, Deputy Chief of the wind industry propaganda arm RenewableUK.

I suppose how far it qualifies as a lie depends on how you construe that weasel phrase “direct evidence.” Evidence of one kind or another there certainly is aplenty. Here, for example, is a sad letter I received from a gentleman in Northamptonshire. (I’ve redacted some details because he doesn’t want his case jeopardised.)

The Farmer that owns the land adjacent to my property decided about four years ago to host a wind-farm. Despite  the support of the local planning officer, the District Council turned down the application unanimously, with one abstention. The Parish Council had also voted against it. Inevitably, the developer launched an Appeal, which was heard last October/November by The Planning Inspectorate. The Planning Inspector, of course, supported the developer and granted his consent to the application.

This is, as you will well know, the usual pattern. Around 85% of appeal hearings are granted consent by PINS. The turbines are very near (within 500 metres of) six dwellings, two of which are owned by the farmer and his son. My home is one of those within the 500 metre range.

Following the Inspector’s decision, I contacted a local firm of Estate Agents to obtain a valuation of my house before the development took place, plus a surveyor’s estimate of what the value would be once the wind-farm was built. The difference between the two estimates was £100,000 (about 25% of their estimated value of the property).

Armed with this information, I embarked on a correspondence with both The Planning Inspectorate (PINS) and The Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC). The purpose of my correspondence was to enquire to whom I should apply for compensation for this loss in value to my home. This was a somewhat  acrimonious correspondence, in the course of which DECC claimed that a report issued by the Institute of Chartered Surveyors in 2007 clearly stated that there was no evidence of any devaluation in the value of properties adjoining wind-farms.

There’s not an estate agent dealing with rural properties anywhere in the land that isn’t aware of the issue. “The majority of homebuyers don’t want to live anywhere near a wind farm—it’s as simple as that,” one tells me. And if they don’t broadcast the fact too loudly, he says, it’s for two reasons: first they want to get the highest possible price for their sellers; second because often these same rural agents represent landowners who are making money out of wind farms and they don’t want to upset their clients.

Then of course there was this recent report by the Valuation Office Agency:

The decisions by the Valuation Office Agency (VOA) to move certain houses close to wind farms into lower council tax bands are the first official recognition that the turbines can lower the value of nearby homes.

Although property experts have long acknowledged the harmful effect of wind farms on property prices, the association has until now been dismissed by the wind industry as conjecture.

In one recent case a couple saw the value of their home 650 yards from the Fullabrook wind farm near Braunton, Devon, fall from £400,000 to £300,000 according to a local agent’s estimate.

The couple, who were not attempting to sell their house, told the VOA that the persistent whooshing noise caused by the turbines and the visual intrusion—including a flickering shadow when the sun is directly behind the blades—made their property less valuable.

The VOA accepted their argument and agreed to move the property from council tax band F to band E, amounting to a saving of about £400 a year, the Sunday Times reported.

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Editor’s note:  In a short list of environmental philosophers, Aldo Leopold’s name would rank near the top.  I refer to true environmental philosophy, not the Green hysteria machine of corporate wind energy.  It was Leopold who coined the phrase, “land ethic,” and Leopold who exhorted us to “think like a mountain!”

I see no evidence of either land ethic or thinking like a mountain when I scan the ridgelines of Maine and Vermont, where gigantic machines entombed in cement beat the thin, delicate air once inhaled by living, breathing forests.

The entire ancient earth thinks prodigiously,
and the murmur of its great trees grows”

—Rainer Maria Rilke

It was Leopold who spoke reverently of watching the green fire go out of the eyes of a wolf he shot in his callous youth—vowing never to do so again.  If you have never read his Sand County Almanac—you must.  It’s a life changer.

He died in 1948, the year I was born, overcome by smoke while fighting a brush fire near his beloved Wisconsin wilderness camp.

The article, below, was sent to me by Boyce Sherwin, a friend and neighbor in my neck of the woods.  The article says nothing about wind turbines—not explicitly, that is.  Implicitly, it says volumes.  For those of you living in rural Ontario, rural France or Italy or England or Australia, rural Maine, or wherever turbines and their headache-pounding infrasound and banshee roar have commandeered your soundscape, you will grieve for the lost symphony of quietness, where “peace comes dropping slow.”

I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree,
And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made;
Nine bean rows will I have there, a hive for the honeybee,
And live alone in the bee-loud glade.

And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow,
Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings;
There midnight’s all a-glimmer, and noon a purple glow,
And evening full of the linnet’s wings.

I will arise and go now, for always night and day
I hear the water lapping with low sounds by the shore;
While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements gray,
I hear it in the deep heart’s core

—Wm. Butler Yeats, “The Lake Isle of Innisfree” (1892)

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“Aldo Leopold’s Field Notes Score a Lost ‘Soundscape'”

—Terry Devitt, reprinted in ScienceDaily (9/18/12)

Among his many qualities, the pioneering wildlife ecologist Aldo Leopold was a meticulous taker of field notes.  Rising before daylight and perched on a bench at his Sauk County shack in Depression-era Wisconsin, Leopold routinely took notes on the dawn chorus of birds. Beginning with the first pre-dawn calls of the indigo bunting or robin, Leopold would jot down in tidy script the bird songs he heard, when he heard them, and details such as the light level when they first sang. He also mapped the territories of the birds near his shack, so he knew where the songs originated.

Lacking a tape recorder, the detailed written record was the best the iconic naturalist could do.

“Leopold took amazing field notes,” says Stan Temple, a University of Wisconsin-Madison emeritus professor of wildlife ecology and now a senior fellow of the Aldo Leopold Foundation. “He recorded his observations of nature in great detail.”

Using those notes, Temple and Christopher Bocast, a University of Wisconsin-Madison Nelson Institute graduate student and acoustic ecologist, have recreated a “soundscape” from Leopold’s 70 year-old notes. But the dawn chorus that Leopold heard in1940 no longer exists at the shack, Temple explains. The mix of species today is different due to changes in the landscape and changes in the bird community around the shack.

More noticeable is the thrum of the nearby interstate highway, audible at every hour from Leopold’s storied sanctuary, and the other constant and varied noises of the human animal. Since Leopold’s time, for example, the internal combustion engine has roared to soundscape dominance, whether as an airplane overhead, a rumbling motorcycle, a whining chain saw or an outboard churning on the nearby Wisconsin River.

“The difference between 1940 and 2012 is overwhelmingly the anthrophony — human-generated noise,” explains Temple. “That’s the big change. In Leopold’s day there was much less of that.”

The resurrected soundscape of 1940s Sauk County is the first to be recreated from actual data rather than someone’s imagination of what the past sounded like, says Temple. The work fits into an emerging field of science known as soundscape ecology, which seeks to explain the role of sound within a landscape and how it influences the animals — birds, insects, amphibians, even fish — that live there.

Recently, a rarefied group of scholars who work in the new field met at the Leopold Center, just a few hundred yards from Leopold’s humble shack. The National Science Foundation-sponsored workshop drew not only scientists but philosophers, musicians and others with an interest in natural sounds. Temple gave the opening keynote, which featured the reconstructed dawn chorus.

“Aldo Leopold recognized that you can get a pretty good sense of land health by listening to the soundscape,” Temple says. “If sounds are missing and things are there that shouldn’t be, it often indicates underlying ecological problems.”

The soundscape produced by Temple and Bocast is a compressed version of the chorus described by Leopold, taking 30 minutes of notes and compressing them into five minutes of recording. Bird songs and calls were obtained from the extensive collection housed at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology’s Macaulay Library.

The background sound on which they superimposed the bird songs is all Wisconsin, but Temple and Bocast struggled to find a place where human noise was as it would have been in Leopold’s time: “There are combustion engines on the edge of hearing all the time,” says Bocast, whose dissertation work includes a bioacoustic study low frequency sounds made by spawning sturgeon.

Citing a recent study, Temple points out that in the lower 48 states, there is no place more than 35 kilometers from the nearest road, making it nearly impossible to tune out the hum of human activity, even in places designated as wilderness. “It is increasingly difficult to study natural soundscapes that represent normality,” says Temple, noting that its not just mechanical human noise that’s encroaching. The rain forests of Hawaii, for example, no longer sound like the rain forests of Hawaii. “They sound more like the rain forests of Puerto Rico because the calls of an introduced, invasive tree frog are becoming pervasive.”

Preserving the natural sounds of a place, avers Temple, may be just as challenging as conserving the mosaic of plants and animals that help keep an ecosystem intact. Like smell and sight, “sound can be what you associate with a particular landscape,” something Leopold appreciated and wrote about in several of his well known essays.

By noting and studying the role of sound in the natural world, Leopold proved again to be ahead of his time. Science is only now coming to grips with the totality of the sounds of nature (much like the sound of an entire orchestra) rather than the individual components of the soundscape, according to Temple.

Understanding how nature’s “music” is changing and how much attention we need to pay to the sounds introduced by people, he says, are challenges for soundscape ecologists. And we have much to learn about what the noise people make does to the environment.

Editor’s note:  An organization of German physicians and scientists is currently being formed in Bad Orb, Germany, at the instigation of an oral surgeon named Dr. Eckhard Kuck.  The group intends to increase public awareness of Wind Turbine Syndrome.  Drs. Laurie (Australia), Watts (Australia), Johansson (Denmark), and Pierpont (USA) sent congratulatory letters to the newly formed group (see below).

Dr. Sarah Laurie (Australia)

Sept 11, 2012

Dear Dr. Kuck,

I am delighted to learn that you and some of your colleagues are meeting together to discuss the serious health problems associated with exposure to operating wind turbines.

There are a growing number of independent, ethical and courageous health professionals and engineers who are investigating and then speaking out about what is going on around the world. In doing so, we are choosing to abide by our professional codes of ethics to “first do no harm” and to place the health and safety of the public paramount.

This is a global problem, and an entrenched and powerful global industry, which has every reason to oppose what we are doing. There are clear indications that the wind industry and some of their hired health and engineering professionals do indeed know exactly what is going on and why. Public health authorities universally are refusing to investigate further.

A global collaborative approach between such concerned ethical professionals is therefore urgently required. I look forward to working closely with you and your colleagues, to share information, progress the necessary research, and to support you in your efforts in whatever way I can.

With kindest regards and best wishes to you all,

Dr. Sarah Laurie, Chief Executive Officer

The Waubra Foundation

(Click here for a copy of the letter)

»»»»»»»»

Dr. Alan Watts (Australia)

Sept 11, 2012

Dear Dr. Kuck,

I am aware that you have joined with a small group of Physicians in Germany who are courageously committed to our profession and your Patients. A group of Doctors prepared to stand up and say what is right, not what is just safe or popular. You do not stand alone. There are others who likewise refuse to allow wind industry greed or Government ignorance or indifference to damage our global citizenry.

The advent of massive industrial wind factories into rural Australia precipitates increasing national incivility. They pit neighbour against neighbour and rent the very fabric of our once strong rural families, thereby destroying our social harmony and well-being.

They plunder our environment while enriching foreigners all under the guise of some mythical societal benefit. They take our health, our land, our peace of mind and our taxes. We surrender our precious mountains to this most gross industry. And in return they give us social chaos, environmental destruction, lies, deceit, scorn, and ill-health.

What price we pay.

The intractable health problems that have developed with the proliferation of industrial wind turbines have become a worldwide problem. The wind energy companies that are profiting are often international companies or consortiums and it has therefore become apparent that the battle to stop the insidious march of the wind turbines across our treasured landscapes must also be of worldwide proportions.

You and your group have our unbounded support. It is obvious that more doctors must accept the responsibility of their profession and to listen, understand, study and ultimately to speak out with authority and conviction. To anyone who has researched this topic there is much evidence to support it. We in Australia are actively seeking additional research and we are very critical of the various Environmental Assessments that are accompanying any applications to build wind farms largely (but not exclusively) because there is a refusal to monitor infrasound and to accept there are health implications.

A major duty of government via its planning instrumentalities and ministerial control is to anticipate, eliminate or mitigate this kind of societal disruption.

Those who endorse or profit from placing such industrial complexes near the homes of others have no inclination to safeguard or foster a civil and healthy society.

There is immense contradiction in supporting the concept of minimizing the human footprint on the earth while endorsing the destructive intrusiveness of physically massive, feckless energy wind projects.

The wind industry is based on greed, ignorance, subsidy and institutional deceit. Its propaganda rewards the greedy, flatters the gullible, exploits the well-intentioned.

Industrial wind is a fraud of enormous consequence. And people who value intellectual honesty should not allow themselves to be cruelly deceived by such industrial treachery or even by their government’s callous indifference.

I commend you and your colleagues for your efforts and wish you God speed.

Yours sincerely,

Dr. Alan C. Watts OAM

(Click here for a copy of the letter)

»»»»»»»»

Mauri Johansson, MD, MHH (Denmark)

Sept 12, 2012

Dear Dr. Kuck,

[We wish] our medical colleagues in the Hessen region the best wishes for the founding meeting September 12th 2012 of a regional medical group to strengthen the efforts to stop further erection of giant wind turbines close to human dwellings, to avoid further illness caused by these damaging interventions. We hope your new organization will soon cover all parts of Germany and then Europe and the whole world, in cooperation with all physicians of the same opinion.

In Denmark we are for the moment 6 physicians active in the necessary work to stop more onshore wind turbines, to prevent and avoid more annoyance and illness among the neighbors, and also initiate serious and independent research to define safe noise limits and distances, risk groups, a better understanding of the mechanisms of illness and much else that so far has been only in the hands of engineers and the turbine industry, working for profits but ignoring human health.

Perhaps you could ask the European Platform against Windfarms (EPAW) to establish an information base for physicians on their home page for further contacts?

On behalf of my colleagues and myself:  all our best wishes,

Mauri Johansson, MD, MHH

Specialist in Community and Occupational Medicine

»»»»»»»»

Nina Pierpont, MD, PhD (USA)

Sept 13, 2012

Dear Dr. Kuck,

Today you join a small band of physicians around the world who do what clinicians are supposed to do: they take their patients seriously. Today you have announced the creation of a group of German physicians who no longer will be silent about Wind Turbine Syndrome—a global industrial plague for which there is no end in sight.

I salute you and your colleagues for refusing to allow medicine to be subordinated to the will of industry and government, or to the frenzied multitude and media who make no effort to understand that Wind Turbine Syndrome is genuine and horrible.

Even more shocking are those who mock and dismiss victims of this industrial plague—and there are thousands of victims. I refer to scientists and clinicians who have never, ever, interviewed a single sufferer. I refer to government agencies and research institutes that write ponderous reports concluding there is no merit to this illness—declaring it is nothing more than hysteria. Where their conclusions are drawn from amateur or discredited principles of epidemiology, acoustics and neuro-physiology. Where conclusions are derived from turbine noise measurements that deliberately exclude infrasound—the rapidly pulsed infrasound with alarmingly high sound pressures which noise engineers with ultra-sophisticated equipment have been documenting for years.

These engineers, who risk their health and reputations, are heroes.

Infrasound is without doubt the chief cause of Wind Turbine Syndrome—yet every acoustician and physicist employed by the wind industry denies its presence and its insidiously modulated behavior. Or, if they grudgingly acknowledge it, they declare that infrasound has no impact on the auditory and vestibular organs of the inner ear—a subject about which these people know next to nothing.

On a larger front, wind energy has anointed itself the savior of the world against the Apocalypse of Global Warming. Emboldened by this sleight of hand, the wind industry has embraced the rhetoric and fervor of a messianic movement—one with a dangerously fascist mentality. Which explains why many of our colleagues are afraid to oppose dangerously sited wind turbines. Opposition can cost them their research grants, their reputations, their jobs—and, I fear, even their lives. (There have been death threats to some of us.)

I salute you this day for refusing to allow clinical medicine to be corrupted by this delusional, jack-booted, out-of-control industry. The risk you take is high—though not so high, of course, as the risk of losing your conscience and integrity by remaining silent.

Sincerely,

Nina Pierpont, MD, PhD

(Click here for a copy of the letter)

Editor’s note:  The following was written to David Michaud, PhD, Principal Investigator and Project Manager for Canada’s federal inquiry into Wind Turbine Syndrome (WTS).  (Except, no one in Canada seems to call it Wind Turbine Syndrome.  Go figure.)  Barbara Ashbee and her husband are among the numerous Canadians who were forced to leave their home owing to WTS.  They got lucky; they managed to persuade the wind company to buy them out—complete, of course, with a gag clause (non-disclosure agreement) forbidding them to discuss the terms of sale or, I believe, reveal that the reason for the purchase was WTS.  Except, Barb has seemingly broken that gag agreement—and God bless her for doing so!  (I love courageous people!)

“The numbers became shocking and the harm irrefutable”

—Barbara Ashbee (8/30/12)

In 2009, my husband and I had our lives turned upside down due to a wind project that started up around our home.  We begged for help from every level of government and public agency, and not one would assist us.

We suffered severe sleep deprivation (from audible and inaudible turbine noise), among other things, and eventually had to hire legal help to get out to save our health.

During and since this time, I attended ministry-sponsored workshops, presented before and submitted comments to the standing committee and the EBR registry on the Green Energy Act, attended meetings at government level, submitted information to provincial and federal health officials, to the senate, to the Premier to the Prime Minister, and so on.  We followed every formal complaint protocol and sent numerous messages, personally and via email, through our Member of Parliament and Member of Provincial Parliament.

You can multiply the above comments by the actions of other families in this province who have done the same. The federal government had the power to intervene and did not.

During our time through this and after we moved, with limited knowledge I researched and inquired as much as I could, trying to understand why so many people were being affected and why no one was helping them. Though a senior provincial ministry employee was claiming my husband and I were the only “complaint” in our project—and we hear the repetitive public message from provincial leaders that there were few if any problems in Ontario—we soon found out that not only had there been already hundreds of complaints, but many homes had been purchased [by the wind developers] and there were families in Huron County who, unable to live in their homes, were being housed in a motel by wind developer, Suncor–Acciona.

It did not take long for other families to come forward and get connected, including those in Clear Creek and Kincardine, Goderich, and so on. The numbers became shocking and the harm irrefutable.

It wasn’t just a case of an odd “unlucky receptor,” as we were called. We also learned of the proliferation of confidentiality agreements, gag clauses, non-disclosures—call them what you will—that are rampant in this industry, from the initial signing of an option to lease, to the final abandonment of a home.

How can people speak when they are under legal constraints not to?

How will you ever be able to grasp the scope of harm when people have been silenced?

How will you know what families have left their homes because of the turbine project, who simply gave up because they received no help?

How will you contact them?

Since at least 2006, families of 1st generation wind projects have been pleading for help. Many, as I say, have had to leave their homes.

How is it that Health Canada is only just now, in the summer of 2012, investigating what has been happening to citizens across the country for at least 6 years?

If I am reading correctly, you are going to decide to whom you talk in order not to create a situation of bias.  Let’s consider bias for a moment.

You have been in the background for 6 years while multiple families reported serious degradation of their home environment and adverse health issues after the wind projects started operating. Some of them have had to permanently leave their home, some without any compensation whatsoever.

You, as the federal level of government, repeatedly deferred issues back to the province as it was their policy, all the while knowing they were not assisting families or mitigating complaints.

Your panel has 2 NRCan (Natural Resources Canada) representatives on it.

» Antoine Lacroix, Eng., M.Sc., 
Wind Energy Engineer, Renewable Energy Technologies, Natural Resources Canada

» Paul Dockrill, M.Sc., 
Acting Program Manager, Wind Energy Technology Group, Natural Resources Canada

NRCan is a federal government body which, I discovered, has granted at least $250 million in repayable and non-repayable loans to prominent wind corporations, lobbyists and other proponents of wind, some of whom have actually used this money to buy-out aforementioned homes.

How can all of this not be a case for bias?

In fact, one NRCan employee made an anonymous derogatory comment in a public online site about my home’s property value. This was a home we loved and had invested much of our personal finances into.

Please let me know when the property comes up for sale. Since everyone claims that property values will decrease, I will expect a bargain basement price!”

How can this not be a case for bias?

How can this possibly be a sincere and genuine effort when you continue to let wind projects operate, knowing there are families who are suffering ill health and families who have had to abandon their homes?

How can you continue without imposing a moratorium on new projects until the investigation is done?

You have ignored information, overwhelming evidence and offers of help from the most peer-reviewed and published independent researcher in Canada. Why was Carmen Krogh not included on your panel?

Would you agree overall that the health of Canadian citizens holds lower rank than the financial interests of prominent corporations, or is this simply a bias for the wind energy industry?

Would you agree that policy triumphs over the health and welfare of Canadian families, or is this simply a bias toward the wind energy industry?

Public trust in all levels of government has been severely eroded.  We require and we deserve an independent review.  A formal inquiry is necessary so everyone can be heard, not just those whom you choose to hear.

To retain any sense of integrity, ethics and duty to “do no harm,” you must impose a moratorium and mitigate the existing problems, first.  How can you not?  Canadians deserve to live in a healthy environment in their own homes. That fundamental right has been taken away and has been pulverized.

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Editor’s note:  Send comments regarding the Health Canada study to David Michaud, PhD, iwind.turbine.health.study@hc-sc.gc.ca.

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—Calvin Luther Martin, PhD

There is a journalist in Australia who ferociously insists wind developers should not be called thugs and a**sholes.  (Don’t believe me?  Click here.)

Frankly, I find the man’s objections surprising.  I would like to ask him, “Why not?”  (I mean, journalists are supposed to have integrity, do their homework, tell the truth, stick to facts, blah blah blah.  Right?)

Derek (“I tell the truth”) Maitland & friend

The guy’s name is Derek Maitland, whom I would like to address rather personally.  (If you are squeamish about personal and, um, anatomically-enriched language, stop reading here.  Long ago I was a biologist.  Comparative anatomy was one of my favorite courses.)

Derek, buddy!  Take a look at this photograph.

The family who lived here was driven out by a wind developer.  Derek, stop jerking off over wind turbines and listen up:  What do you call someone who drives people out of their homes?  A thug, maybe?  A criminal degenerate?  Villain?

Derek, you misunderstand something fundamental about me and my colleagues & spouse:  I began calling these people thugs and bums and bullies and a**sholes and all that, not for their benefit or yours—but to warn NIMBY’s around the world (NIMBY:  Next Idiot Might Be You) that the wind developer schmoozing them and their town board was a villain of the worst sort.  Someone who makes you profoundly ill and tosses you out of your home is a villain—wouldn’t you agree?  (Ever read Charles Dickens?  He had plenty to say about this.)

Derek, words like a**hole were positively invented for people like that!  I know you didn’t go to college and stuff, but if you had you might have learned that language is beautiful and, well, it’s “okay.”  Use the language generously, not feebly or narrowly, and bring its full symphonic richness to bear where needed—as in labeling people-who-make-you-sick-and-eject-you-from-your-home “a**holes.”  (Some people would add the adjective “f**king” in front of “a**holes.”  That’s okay, too.  Don’t panic; really, it’s okay.  You call yourself a journalist; get a grip!)

What, after all, are you going to call them?  “Businessmen”?  “Wind developers”?  (Are the Mafia businessmen?  Were the Nazis who ran the death camps social workers?  When you’ve been made homeless and sick to the point where you can barely function, all in the name of “this is good for the fatherland”—doesn’t that bring to mind Nazis?)

What really clinches the aptness of the nomenclature (look it up) is that these, well, a**holes don’t stop.  Absolutely refuse to stop!  They have now done this foul deed to many people virtually around the world.  Australia, even.  Lots of abandoned or “forced-sale” homes in Australia, Derek!  Where academics like Simon Chapman soil themselves by ridiculing these victims as dupes of people like me and Dr. Pierpont and Dr. Laurie.  (In confidence, I have sometimes wondered whether God, not content with denying Mr. Chapman the faculty of thinking, perversely endowed him with the faculty of writing.  Have you ever seen his c.v.?  Comes with a Table of Contents.  But I digress.)

Derek, I’ll make you an offer you can’t refuse.  Nina & I will actually contribute serious money to your living in the abandoned home of one of these Wind Turbine Syndrome victims.  But you’ve got to give it 3 months.  Yeah, live there 3 months, minimum.  You pick the country.  Canada?  USA?  Australia?  New Zealand?  France?  Italy?  Scotland?  Ireland?  England?  Germany?  Scandinavia?  Even Japan?  There’s more countries; these merely come to mind.  (Why do you think Pierpont’s book has been translated into 8 foreign languages, with #9, Danish, in the works?)

You pick the country; I’ll make the arrangements.  You see, buddy, I hear from all these people, beginning years ago with the d’Entremonts in Nova Scotia, Canada (see the aerial photograph, above).  I get the phone calls, or my wife does, and we get the emails.  Thousands of ’em in the 8 years we’ve been dealing with wind developer a**holes.

Derek, before sealing this letter with a kiss—see picture, above—I think it’s fair to say you consider Wind Turbine Syndrome to be complete bullshit, correct?  (Is it okay if I use that word?  Maybe you’d feel better if I wrote it “bulls**t”?)  I mean, that’s why you wrote that article, after all—correct?

By the way, you got a whole sh**t-load of your information wrong.  Just two examples:  (a) I’m not the guy in the photograph.  That’s the retired Director of the Wead Memorial Library in Malone, NY.  David Minnich.  Friend of mine.  The guy, below, is me—with my better half, Nina Pierpont.  (b) Secondly, the snappy line “never rose above the rank of Associate Professor because, shortly after getting tenure, he refused to attend another department meeting, since he discerned that department meetings cause early dementia”—I wrote that for the Kerulos Center.  (An international organization that seeks to protect animals from violence.  I’m on their faculty.)  Yeah, it was me!  Poking fun at myself!  (Derek, buddy, don’t sweat it; I don’t think your pal, the editor, is gonna sh*t-can you for being a sh*tty researcher—you’re safe.  And, for the dementia part:  Would you really want to attend faculty meetings with guys like Simon Chapman?)

Of course I tell the truth. In fact, honesty and integrity were the key principles I learned from my first on-the-job . . . apprenticeship in journalism straight out of high school in Sydney more than half a century ago.

“Unlike the university and college ‘media degree’ courses of today, I was trained as a working cadet journalist by older journalists, editors and chiefs of staff and, like many of them, my first crucial moment of truth, or test of integrity, came on a newspaper assignment, not in a classroom lecture. . . .

“It means I don’t just approach any issue like a stenographer, I research it, I investigate it, even if it’s just to give readers a little bit of background that’ll help them get a better understanding of who’s who and what’s what and why something’s going on.”

—Derek Maitland, “Protecting Decency, Beating the Bullies” (8/23/12)

In other words, you’re proud of being a self-taught rustic ignoramus (evidently innocent of a college degree) with a flair for bombast and belligerence and, withal, not too too worried about “fact, honesty and integrity”—despite your loud protests to the contrary.  (Derek, it’s not too late to go to college, you know.  Might expand the mind a bit, mate!)

Nina Pierpont & Calvin Luther Martin

Back to WTS = bullshit.  I’m okay with that.  Surprised?  I’m okay on one condition:  You go live in one of those abandoned houses for 3 months—at my expense.  (Well, I won’t pay your entire freight, but a serious chunk of it.  You buy your own booze.)

After that, you write another article, letting people know whether WTS is bullshit (bulls**t) or not.

Now, I’m taking a gamble here, ‘cause you may be one of the lucky ones not affected by turbine infrasound.  Not everyone is flattened by it, you know, just as not everyone gets cancer or TB (pass this tidbit along to Chapman).  Nevertheless I’m gonna bank on your getting sick.  Puking and horrible headaches and, well, no sleep worth a damn—the whole 9 yards.

Sound like a deal?

Can I be honest?  If you don’t take me up on this, buddy, all the people who follow this website are gonna think you’re an a**hole like those developers—for not putting your backside where your mouth is.

Oh, almost forgot!  The article you allude to, “How to fight Big Wind”:  It’s one of the finest essays I’ve ever written (not a “thesis,” as you call it—see “going to college,” above).  No sh*t!  I admit the language is a little robust and colorful, but that’s beside the point; it’s actually done more good than anything scholarly I ever wrote.  Here I bust my a** to publish books with Yale Univ. Press, Johns Hopkins Univ. Press, Oxford Univ. Press, Univ. of California Press, and I win the “best book of the year” award (Albert J. Beveridge Award) from the American Historical Association, plus a Guggenheim and Senior National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship and American Council of Learned Societies Fellowship and blah blah blah—and, Jeez, I publish this vulgar little piece online and—wow!—it saves countless NIMBY’s from getting f**ked by the wind developer a**holes!

Infrasound from Wind Turbines Is Indisputable, and Moreover It Makes People Ill

I am a professional consultant engineer, and my company is based in the United Kingdom,” begins Dr. Malcolm A. Swinbanks in his testimony to the Michigan Public Service Commission, “but fourteen years ago I was asked to come to the US to lead an advanced research project for the Office of Naval Research. My American wife & I now live in Port Hope, Michigan. During the course of my career, I became a consultant to many different companies and research organizations on a wide variety of problems related to unsteady dynamics, noise, vibration, shock and acoustics.

“I have worked personally with both Professor J.E. Ffowcs-Williams, and Dr. H.G. Leventhall, two of the foremost UK acousticians. Twenty to 30 years ago, I worked directly in collaboration with both on several low-frequency noise installations, thus gaining first-hand experience of the problems associated with low-frequency noise and infrasound. My actual time-on-site addressing low-frequency noise probably well exceeds either”—Malcolm A. Swinbanks, PhD.  (Click here for Dr. Swinbanks’s full report to the Michigan PSC.  It is very revealing of the true nature of wind turbine infrasound.)

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Malcolm Swinbanks, PhD (9/11/12)

In his 2006 Canadian paper relating to infrasound and wind turbines, Leventhall criticised Dr Nina Pierpont for having referred to the impulsive noise from wind-turbines as “infrasound,” arguing that the relevant paper that she had quoted by G.P. van den Berg did not relate to infrasound at all, but only to dBA levels.

In 2003 & 2004, G.P. van den Berg actually published two separate papers, both relating to the specific windfarm in Holland that he (van den Berg) had assessed. The first paper did indeed only relate to dBA levels, but the second paper referred explicitly to low-frequency and infrasound, and described how the turbine blade passing in front of the tower could generate extremely low frequency impulses. Van den Berg did not consider that this infrasound was audible, but there is no doubt that he fully acknowledged its presence.

This second paper was presented at the conference on Low Frequency Noise in Maastricht in August/September 2004. Dr H.G. Leventhall was one of the conference organisers, and subsequently edited the proceedings.

Geoff Leventhall, PhD (Physics)

In 1989, NASA identified & reported that a windfarm in Hawaii, with modern-style upwind rotors, was generating impulsive infrasound & low frequency sound which they attributed to the effects of the rotor passing through wind-gradients and shadowing. They analysed the sound characteristics, and then simulated numerically how different wind-gradients could give rise to such effects.

I have myself analysed data from a windfarm in Michigan, which was generating unambiguous impulsive infrasound (emphasis added).  It was possible to identify separate impulsive contributions from six different turbines at distances of 1500 feet to 1.2 miles.

The maximum power spectral levels for the discrete frequencies associated with the harmonics of the impulses was 64dB SPL (Sound Pressure Level). But the overall rms (root mean square) sound power level was 77dB SPL, and the peak of the time waveforms of the impulses was 88-90dB.

This indicates one of the major errors that has consistently been made in assessing infrasound from wind-turbines. Examining rms power spectrum peaks shows only 64dB, while comparing time domain impulsive peak levels shows 88-90dB. This represents ~25dB difference in the assessment of the infrasonic intensity.

I explicitly pointed out this feature at the Stratford Conference on Low-Frequency Noise in May 2012, and at the Internoise Conference in New York in August 2012.

I would comment that I first became aware of the physical effects of infrasound when working extensively on site with an industrial gas turbine in 1980. I identified specific aspects which were closely related to some symptoms of sea-sickness with which I was very familiar, being a keen offshore sailor.

Thus I did not doubt that infrasound under some circumstances can cause adverse effects, and the relationship to sea-sickness implied that there was probably some interaction with the balance mechanisms of the inner ear.

So the more recent work of Dr Nina Pierpont did not strike me as heresy—rather, it endorsed an opinion that I had formed from my own direct, first-hand experience in an entirely different context, almost 30 years earlier.

Malcolm Swinbanks, PhD.

References:

(1) Infrasound from Wind Turbines:  Fact, Fiction or Deception. Geoff Leventhall. Canadian Acoustics Vol 34 No 2 (2006) p 29

(2) Effects of the wind profile at night on wind turbine sound. G.P. van den Berg. Journal of Sound and Vibration Vol 277 (2004) p 955

(3) Do wind turbines produce significant low frequency sound levels? G.P. van den Berg. 11th International Meeting on Low Frequency Noise and Its Control, Maastricht, 30 August–1 September 2004

(4) Noise Radiation Characteristics of the Westinghouse WWG-0600 (600kW) Wind Turbine Generator. K.P. Shepherd, H.H. Hubbard, NASA TM101576 July 1989

The province of North Holland has decided to stop building new wind turbines.

“There will be a total ban on new wind turbines by the end of the year, according to deputy Mr Bond. He says that large wind turbines do not fit into the province’s landscape.

“The decision is a setback for about twenty planned wind projects in North Holland which will not be approved.”

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“Are wind farms saving or killing us? A provocative investigation claims thousands of people are falling sick because they live near them”
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—James Delingpole, The Daily Mail (UK), 9/8/12

“The symptoms they claim to have suffered may vary—including dizziness, increased blood pressure and depression—but the theme remains the same”

It was Uplawmoor’s tranquillity and wild beauty that drew civil servant Aileen Jackson to settle there 28 years ago.

She’d had enough of life in the big city. Now she wanted somewhere quiet and rural to start a family, keep her horses, and enjoy the magnificent views down the valley and out to sea to the western Scottish isles of Arran and Ailsa Craig.

Then, two years ago, she says, it all turned sour.

A neighbour with whom she and her family had been friends decided to take advantage of the massive public subsidies for ‘renewable’ energy.

He put up a 64ft-high wind turbine which, though on his own land, stood just 300 yards from the Jackson family’s home.

The sleepless nights caused by its humming were only the start of their problems. Far worse was the impact on their health.

Aileen, a diabetic since the age of 19, found her blood glucose levels rocketing—forcing her to take more insulin and causing her to develop a cataract, she says.

Her younger son, Brian, an outgoing, happy, academically enthusiastic young man, suddenly became a depressive, stopped seeing his friends and dropped out of his studies at college.

Aileen’s husband William, who had always had low blood pressure, now found his blood pressure levels going ‘sky high’—and has been on medication ever since.

So far so coincidental, you might say. And if you did, you would have the full and enthusiastic support of the wind industry.

Here is what the official trade body RenewableUK has to say on its website: ‘In over 25 years and with more than 68,000 machines installed around the world, no member of the public has ever been harmed by the normal operation of wind farms.’

But in order to believe that, you would have to discount the testimony of the thousands of people just like Aileen around the world who claim their health has been damaged by wind farms.

You would have to ignore the reports of doctors such as Australia’s Sarah Laurie, Canada’s [America’s] Nina Pierpont and Britain’s Amanda Harry who have collated hundreds of such cases of Wind Turbine Syndrome.

And you’d have to reject the expertise of the acoustic engineers, sleep specialists, epidemiologists and physiologists who all testify that the noise generated by wind farms represents a major threat to public health.

‘If this were the nuclear industry, this is a scandal which would be on the front pages of every newspaper every day for months on end,’ says Chris Heaton-Harris, the Conservative MP for Daventry who has been leading the parliamentary revolt against wind farms, demanding that their subsidies be cut.

‘But because it’s wind it has been let off the hook. It shouldn’t be.’

Wind Turbine Syndrome. Until you’ve seen for yourself what it can do to a community, you might be tempted to dismiss it as a hypochondriac’s charter or an urban myth.

But the suffering I witnessed earlier this year in Waterloo, a hamlet outside Adelaide in southern Australia, was all too real.

The place felt like a ghost town: shuttered houses and a dust-blown aura of sinister unease, as in a horror movie where something terrible has happened to a previously thriving settlement but at first you’re not sure what.

Then you look to the horizon and see them, turning in the breeze . . .

The wind farm people said we’d be doing our bit to save the planet,” said one resident.

“They said these things were quieter than a fridge. They said it was all going to be fairy floss and candy.

“So how come I can’t sleep in my own house any more? How come sometimes I’m having to take 15 Valium tablets a day? How come, when I used to be a pretty mellow sort of person, I’m now so angry it’s only a matter of time before I end up in jail?”

I’ve since heard dozens of similar stories from nurses, farmers, panel-beaters, civil servants, businessmen and forestry workers across the world, from New South Wales to Sweden and Pembrokeshire.

The symptoms they claim to have suffered may vary—dizziness; balance problems; memory loss; inability to concentrate; insomnia; tachycardia; increased blood pressure; raised cortisol levels; headaches; nausea; mood swings; anxiety; tinnitus; palpitations; depression—but the theme remains the same.

Here are ordinary people who settled in the country for a quiet life only to have their lives and property values trashed at the stroke of a bureaucrat’s pen.

In December 2011, in a peer-reviewed report in the Bulletin of Science, Technology & Society, Dr Carl Phillips—one of the U.S.’s most distinguished epidemiologists—concluded that

there is overwhelming evidence that wind turbines cause serious health problems in nearby residents, usually stress-disorder type diseases, at a nontrivial rate.”

According to a study by U.S. noise control engineer Rick James, wind farms generate the same symptoms as Sick Building Syndrome—the condition that plagued office workers in the Eighties and Nineties as a result of what was eventually discovered to be the Low Frequency Noise (LFN), caused by misaligned air conditioning systems.

The combination of LFN and ‘amplitude modulation’ (loudness that goes up and down) leads to fatigue, poor concentration and dizziness.

And sleep specialist Dr Chris Hanning believes it stimulates an alert response, leading to arousal episodes throug the night that make restful sleep impossible.

I’ve spoken with many sufferers and sadly the only treatment is for them to move away from the wind farm.”

But if the problem is really so widespread, why isn’t it better known?

The short answer is money: the wind industry is a hugely lucrative business with millions to spend on lobbying.

What’s more, until recently, it benefited from the general public mood that ‘something ought to be done about climate change’ and wind power—supposedly ‘free’, ‘renewable’ and ‘carbon-friendly’—was the obvious solution.

‘For years among the metropolitan elite it has been considered heretical to criticise wind power,’ says Heaton-Harris.

In the last decade, however, a host of evidence has emerged to indicate it is not the panacea it was thought to be.

From economists such as Edinburgh University’s Dr Gordon Hughes we are told that wind energy is unreliable and intermittent, with no real market value because it requires near 100 per cent back-up by conventional fossil-fuel power.

From research institute Verso Economics we are told that that for every ‘green job’ created by taxpayer subsidy, 3.7 jobs are killed in the real economy.

It is said that thanks to the artificial rise in energy prices caused by renewable subsidies, expected to reach £13 billion per annum by 2020, at least 50,000 people a year in Britain are driven into fuel poverty.

And newly released Spanish government research claims that each turbine kills an average 300 birds a year (often rare ones such as eagles and bustards) and at least as many bats.

Yet still, despite collapsing share prices and increasing public scepticism, the industry continues to grow.

As Matt Ridley noted recently in The Spectator, there are ‘too many people with snouts in the trough.’

Aristocratic landowners have done especially well, such as the Earl of Moray (£2 million a year from his Doune estate) and the Duke of Roxburghe (£1.5 million a year from his estate in Lammermuir Hills).

South of the border, the Prime Minister’s father-in-law Sir Reginald Sheffield makes more than £1,000 a day from the eight turbines on his Lincolnshire estates. Even smaller landholdings can generate a tidy profit: around £40,000 per year, per large (3MW) turbine, for no effort whatsoever.

The biggest winners, though, are the mostly foreign-owned (Mitsubishi, Gamesa, Siemens) firms for whom wind was until recently a virtually risk-free investment.

In Britain, onshore wind farms are subsidised by a levy on consumer bills at 100 per cent; offshore wind is subsidised at 200 per cent: no matter how little energy the turbines actually produce, in other words, healthy returns are guaranteed.

The debate over wind farms has aroused huge passions.

I’ve had death threats. I’m told I’m a witch. I’ve had my reputation trashed in the newspapers,” says Australian campaigner Dr Sarah Laurie.

“And for what? All I’ve ever done is say, ‘People are getting sick and something should be done to stop it.'”

When Aileen Jackson protested about some of the 23 new turbine projects proposed for Uplawmoor, she too was threatened.

Her car, she says, was vandalised; broken glass was strewn in her horses’ field; on two occasions she found her horses’ anti-midge coats had been cut off and slashed to pieces, the horses left covered in blood from where they rubbed themselves against a fence to stop the itching.

There’s no suggestion anyone locally concerned with wind farms was involved.

But legitimate proponents of wind farms are candid about the benefits.

‘There’s so much money to be made from these things, that’s the problem,’ says Jackson.

‘You’ll talk to the farmers and they’re quite open about it. “I’ve worked hard all my life and this is my pension plan,” they’ll tell you.’

What horrifies the communities threatened by wind farm developments is how powerless they are to stop them.

At Northwich in Cheshire, I attended the annual meeting of National Opposition to Windfarms (NOW), where lawyers including Lord Carlile (NOW’s chairman) advised local protest groups on how to challenge wind developments in their area.

The desperation was palpable. Current planning laws have a presumption ‘in favour of sustainable development’.

Wind farms are deemed vital to Britain’s EU-driven campaign to cut its carbon emissions by 20 per cent by 2020. Arguments about wind turbines’ public health impacts seem to cut little ice with planning inspectors.

The whole system has been rigged in the industry’s favour. One of the biggest bones of contention is regulation of acceptable noise levels.

In Britain, wind developers are bound by ETSU-R-97, a code that places modest limits on sound within the normal human hearing range—but which fails to address the damaging aspect of wind turbines: infrasonic (ie, inaudible) Low Frequency Noise.

But according to RenewableUK’s ‘Top Myths About Wind Energy’ section, accusations that wind farms emit ‘infrasound and cause associated health problems’ are ‘unscientific’.

It quotes Dr Geoff Leventhall, author of the Defra report on Low Frequency Noise And Its Effects: ‘I can state quite categorically that there is no significant infrasound from current designs of wind turbines.’

And Robert Norris, head of communications at RenewableUK, says: ‘There’s no evidence to link the very low levels of noise produced by wind farms with any effects on people living nearby.

‘Low frequency noise isn’t a problem. Extensive measurements taken repeatedly by scientists across Europe and the USA show the level of sound is so minimal that it can’t be perceived, even close up.’

However, Robert Rand of Rand Acoustics in Maine, who has done work on wind farms and been a consultant in acoustics since 1980, says:

All wind turbines produce low-frequency noise. The reason it doesn’t show up on wind industry tests is that the equipment they use excludes low-frequency noise.”

Dr John Constable Director of the Renewable Energy Foundation adds: ‘Audible noise disturbance from wind turbines, particularly at night, is known to be a very serious and fairly common problem, but low frequency noise is a mystery.

‘No one knows enough about it to say anything definite, one way or the other. This is one of those cases where more research really is needed.’

Dr Alec Salt, a cochlear physiologist at the Department of Otolaryngology at the Washington University School of Medicine in St Louis, Missouri, has studied the topic since the Seventies.

The idea that there is no problem with infrasound couldn’t be more wrong,” he says.

“The responses of the human ear to LFN are just enormous. Bigger than to anything in the audible range.”

Audible sound stimulates the inner hair cells on the cochlea (the auditory portion of the inner ear), but LFN triggers the outer hair cells, sending neural signals to the brain. Military special ops departments have known about it for some time.

A 1997 report by the U.S. Air Force Institute For National Security Studies notes:

Acoustic infrasound: very low frequency sound which can travel long distances and easily penetrate most buildings and vehicles.

“Transmission of long wavelength sound creates biophysical effects, nausea, loss of bowels, disorientation, vomiting, potential organ damage or death may occur.”

Yet as Dr Phillips notes, instead of protecting the public, governments are actually complicit by encouraging wind farm development via generous subsidies.

It’s ridiculous. Here is an industry which is putting the health of tens of thousands of people at risk. If this were a pharmaceutical company sales would have been suspended by now.”

His views are shared by orthopaedic surgeon Dr Robert McMurtry, once Canada’s most senior public health official:

Whatever you think about climate change, you can be sure that wind energy is not the solution.

“There is an abundance of evidence to the show that infrasound from wind farms represents a serious public health hazard. Until further research is done, there should be an immediate moratorium on building any more of them.”

Newspaper columnist Christopher Booker called wind farms ‘the greatest political blunder of our time’ and ‘a monument to an age when our leaders collectively went off their heads’.

But a recent statement by energy minister Charles Hendry says: ‘Studies have considered the noise phenomenon known as amplitude modulation (AM) but show that to date only one wind farm in the UK has presented a noise nuisance to residents. The issue has since been resolved.

‘We will keep the issue of AM under review and welcome the additional research on AM that RenewableUK have commissioned,’ in answer to a parliamentary question from Chris Heaton-Harris.

Heaton-Harris is not impressed.

Wind farms are destroying people’s lives, destroying the environment, destroying the economy—but instead of opposing it, all three main political parties are committed to building more of them.

“And it’s not accidental. This is a stitch-up between the wind lobby and its friends in Parliament and it’s an outrage.

“It’s the biggest health scandal of our age and the metropolitan elite just don’t care.”

“Medical issues became serious to the point of being potentially fatal”

Editor’s note: The following narrative is taken from a formal submission to Health Canada’s current study of wind turbine impacts on human health. The submission was made by Carmen Krogh on behalf of the narrator, a woman who has asked to remain anonymous. Click here to read the entire submission.

For the last four years our lives have been thrown into turmoil by unsafe industrial wind turbines that were built too close to our home.

When we first began to notice the physiological effects that the wind turbine emissions were having on our bodies, we felt as though we just needed to make the authorities aware of the issue and then there would be a good faith effort to address it and resolve it. Instead, considerable time and resources, both private and public, have been used to deny that a problem even exists. In some cases, the contention has been made that all negative effects being experienced are caused by us, and are our fault.

In good faith, we have participated in the processes of the Ontario Ministry of the Environment and other authorities. There has been no recognition, no mitigation, and no resolution offered. As the wind turbines continued to operate, one as close as 400 metres away from our home, the effects of sleep disturbance compounded; our health continued to decline, and certain medical issues became serious to the point of being potentially fatal. One of the medical issues that I was experiencing was uterine blood haemorrhaging. I had lost so much blood that I found myself in the Emergency Room of the local hospital, on the brink of having a stroke. At that time, it was obvious, beyond any doubt that we could not continue to live at our home.

Since May 2010, we have been renting safe houses to stay at while we continue to maintain our home, including paying the mortgage, property taxes, hydro and insurance which totals approximately $1200 per month. The expenses for our rental house alone have totalled approximately $30,000 over the last 28 months. The financial burden has been extremely stressful. It is worsened by the fact that we are deprived of the amenities and comforts of our “home.” When the stress and the sadness become overwhelming, we remind ourselves of how lucky we are that we have been to be able to leave our home. We know that for some, this is not an option.

The following are some details regarding medical treatments received by one member of our family since the commencement of operation of industrial wind turbines near our home.  In the 42-month period between April 2009 and September 2012:

» 33 appointments with family doctor. (By comparison, throughout the 50-month period between February 2005 and April 2009, there were a total of 9 visits to family doctor.)

In addition to visiting my family physician:

» Sleep investigation at sleep disorders clinics (2)

» Investigation by specialists in otolaryngology, audiology, heart and stroke, vascular, neurology, internal medicine

» Ultrasounds, CT scans and other procedures

» Surgical procedures (3)

» Magnetic Resonance Imaging (head) (2)

» Heart monitoring

» Stress test

» Numerous EKG’s, blood work

» Emergency room visits (3)

» Other consultations

For the last four years, every action of every day has in some way been affected by this disruption to our home life. We have been forced to make life changing decisions because of the imposition of industrial wind turbines into our homes.

Our ability to make rational decisions has been precluded by the inconsistent messages and actions of authorities. We have watched as the discourse has shifted from the absolute denial that wind turbines cause harm to human health, towards the recognition that sleep disturbance and other health effects are “expected” to be experienced by a “nontrivial percentage of persons…” or “15 percent of a population exposed…” etc. We do not think it is reasonable that authorities have not taken urgent, drastic measures to address the harm that is being reported by Canadians and to prevent it from happening to others.

Much of the stress of our situation has been exacerbated by the strain on social relationships. Obviously someone who possesses no expertise on the issue is not qualified to opine on the health hazard or our health status. However, this has not prevented members of the public (including landowners participating in the wind turbine project that surrounds our home) from aggressively pushing their points of view. For example, we continuously hear statements such as:

The wind turbines are not causing harm to your health.”

“They are not going to shut the wind turbines down.”

“They should not shut the wind turbines down.”

“You should sell your house and move on.”

These are not helpful statements, and trying to find one’s place in the community is complicated by how hurtful these kinds of comments are. It is very clear to us–in fact, it cannot be denied–that the wind turbines around our home are hazardous to our health. It is not reasonable that we should be expected to be able to make decisions when what we know to be true is being denied by others who are not qualified to hold opinions.

Very early in the process we realized that the authorities were not engaged in a good faith effort to understand and mitigate the situation. We had no other recourse but to launch a civil claim against the owner/operator of the industrial wind turbines. The claims relate to negligence, nuisance, trespass, strict liability and Rylands and Fletcher. The claim seeks an injunction and damages for losses incurred.

The stress of pursuing a legal claim, in addition to the other stresses of our lives presently is overwhelming. We are aware that it is unrealistic for us to expect that we can afford to pursue the claim against a defendant who is part of a billion-dollar, industrial, energy complex that has the support of the Ontario government and others, and which cannot afford to have a precedent set in court that enjoins the operation of a wind turbine project because of its hazardous nature. It is our expectation that Canadian governments should endeavour to recognize known health hazards and take actions to protect the health of Canadians. There should be a minimum safe standard for the separation distance between an industrial wind turbine and a home. We feel that it has become increasingly clear that 400 metres is not an adequate separation distance for an industrial wind turbine from a family’s home. We do not feel that it is reasonable that we should have to have this recognized in a court; this is a matter of public policy that should have been addressed long ago.

Over the last several years we have met and communicated with many others whose lives have been impacted by the imposition of industrial wind turbines close to their homes, or close to the homes of their friends and families. These people consistently feel overwhelmed and isolated. While some may have the choice to leave, some do not. It is very discomforting to realize that there could be children who are being harmed by nearby wind turbines, where parents may not understand what is happening or are unable to take action to protect the children.

We know many people whose financial security depends on their ability to live at and use their homes. For rural residents especially there is an unquantifiable difference between “property value” and a property’s “market value.” Property value relates to our ability to enjoy and use property to live, earn income, grow food, age-in-place, and enjoy leisure time. For some, market value is irrelevant until it is necessary to sell, which to many rural residents, is never part of the plan.

In many rural communities where wind turbines have been developed, residents trace their roots back many generations. Residents are proud of their heritage and are committed to the vitality of their communities. Residents are fiercely protective of the environment and feel blessed by nature’s abundance. Like many Ontarians, we felt as though we lived in the most beautiful part of the Province.

The conversion of agricultural land to be used for industrial wind turbines changes the character of the community. The imposition of these changes without proper regard and accounting of all of the environmental effects creates significant burdens for rural residents. Across the world, the development of industrial wind turbine projects has created conflict in communities. This is not attractive to prospective buyers and the stigma is insurmountable. Though the authorities may not officially recognize it, industrial wind turbines can be hazardous to human health and can totally destroy property value. Citizens are aware of this and react accordingly.

The Ontario government consistently refers to a 550 metre “minimum” separation distance between homes and industrial wind turbines. At our house there are two wind turbines less than 550 metres away. If we were to sell we would be obliged to disclose the health effects that we experienced and attribute to the wind turbines.

Obviously the potential pool of buyers for our home is limited by these factors. Why should we be forced to sell and incur this loss of equity?

We know others who are aware or suspect that nearby wind turbines are negatively affecting their health, but who cannot afford to lose equity in their homes. They become prisoners, and are, in reality, being harmed in their own homes. And while it may be one thing when it happens to adults, it is more unacceptable if there are children involved.

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Whooping Crane flock numbers plunge during Winter 2011-2012.  Wildlife biologist implicates wind turbines.

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—Jim Wiegand, California “raptor” specialist and Berkeley-trained wildlife biologist

This graph speaks volumes.  (Editor’s note:  Click here for the complete graph, of which the following is but a portion.)

With the installation of thousands of new turbines planned for Central Flyway states, the Wood Buffalo-Aransas Whooping Cranes could disappear even sooner than 2017. The Whooping Crane Conservation Association is very aware that a true crisis has developed. Yes, drought conditions can stress a species, but these declines are not from drought.

The time to move is today! For this to happen the public needs to reject the wind industry lies and cover-up about their impact on this species. There really is enough indirect evidence to conclude the wind industry is killing these birds.

It’s obvious from the graph that in the last several years mortality has skyrocketed. The fact that no Whooping Crane death has been ever recorded at a wind farm is true—though meaningless.  Wind farms are patrolled daily by personnel looking for bodies, and a huge white bird would be hard to miss.  By now everyone should realize that Big Wind operates in complete secrecy, with absolute control of their wind farms.  (Don’t believe me?  Try changing the regulations so a body could not be hidden. Such an initiative would meet head-on with every ounce of resistance the industry could muster.)

A sliced-up Whooping Crane body will never be produced from a wind farm.  And should one happen to die with a transmitter attached, wind energy employees will simply take the transmitter and give it a ride away from the site.

“No dead body equals no evidence and therefore we are innocent” is, I submit, patent bullshit.

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Click here and here for companion articles by Wiegand.

Editor’s note:  Read Dr. Sarah Laurie’s lengthy and thorough comments to the Health Canada Study being conducted by Canada’s federal government on Wind Turbine Syndrome.  Click here.  The following is Dr. Laurie’s cover letter.

Please find attached my comments on the proposed Health Canada Study.

“First do no harm” is an ancient tenet of medicine, which is of great relevance to this study.

I sincerely hope that the ethics of the study group’s medical professionals and acoustic/noise engineer are held paramount in the way the study is conducted, and in the choice of people performing the research.

I have grave reservations about the outcome of the proposed study, on both counts, if these considerations are not strictly adhered to, in addition to ensuring that those researchers are most appropriately qualified, experienced, and also free from political and ideological bias, or the protection of their vested interests.

To continue to ignore the obvious human suffering of Canadian rural citizens, and to fail to investigate the problems thoroughly, with the utmost scientific integrity, and with the most appropriate study design will be to continue to do serious harm to those who are relying on the responsible authorities to protect them.

Yours Sincerely,

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Dr Sarah Laurie

—Marshall Rosenthal

Victims of “green group-think” need now to form support chapters. In communities around the world.  Let them borrow from the formats of Alcoholics Anonymous and the Quaker meetings before them.

They could create regional councils, such as the three towns of Falmouth, Plymouth, and Kingston, MA, while keeping their doors open to folks from Fairhaven, Duxbury, Woods Hole, and beyond. They might take turns having their meetings in a different town each week. (There’s something to be said for the “floating crap game”!)

They could share, first-hand, their life experiences under the wind turbines. They would cement their resolve and trust and compassion to unite and design effective strategies to turn back “Mother Green and her hysteria-machine” which destroys anyone who tries to stand in its way or, simply, any resident who is unfortunate to live in its proximity.

They should document their conversations and share them with the world via YouTube and any and all the Internet-supported media. Their conversations would become the basis for legal testimony to be heard in the courts and congresses of the world.

Let the people restore a healthful world for their children to grow and thrive in. May the “Precautionary Principle” and the Hippocratic Oath always guide them:  “Do no harm!”

Editor’s note: “Marsh” (as he prefers to be called) has added the following addendum. If you wish to participate in the First Falmouth Conference on Human Rights—and I hope you do, and I can assure you Nina Pierpont will ask to participate—then correspond directly with Marsh at marshsue@verizon.net or Dave Moriarty at waveydavei@aol.com.

Oh Calvin, what a lovely surprise to find this published on your website! Now, I can tell what we have been doing. We are Dave Moriarty, of West Falmouth, MA, and myself, a NYC transplant into the rurals of the Berkshires.

We have created the Falmouth Committee on Human Rights. The FCHR is organizing the First Falmouth Conference on Human Rights and Dave has stepped up to become the Acting Coordinator of this effort. Yesterday, Dave reserved the Meeting Room of the Main Branch of the Falmouth Public Library, which can seat 192 persons, for the location of the Falmouth Conference.

The date of the event is Saturday, November 10, from 1-4 PM.

The format for the conference will be the hosting of the most powerful panel of experts we can recruit, who will be asked to present their best information relating to what we have identified as one of the greatest threats to the world citizenry in our time: Industrial Wind Power.

We are working to assemble credentialed experts in medicine and epidemiology, engineering and acoustics, economics and government, artists and poets, and bona fide victims of the wind power scourge, to gather and to converse, and to seek strategies that they can bring back to their communities, so the precious quality of life, the very pursuit of peace and happiness can be assured for generations to come.

We mean business! This is not just “nice dreams.” Public officials, like the Chairperson of the Falmouth Board of Health, may use our podium to declare a Health Emergency in the Town of Falmouth, MA, and ORDER THE TWO TOWN-OWNED WIND TURBINES TO BE SHUT DOWN IMMEDIATELY, or she can read in the newspapers about how she failed in her sworn duty to the wind turbine victims of Falmouth. (Be a hero/heroine or be a craven fink. Your choice!)

We are asking folks from neighboring sister towns and from any and every place in the world to join us, in person, or via Skype—a wonderful electronic communication medium that will bring people from anywhere around the world into our Meeting Room.

Just think, on that splendid day we will all be able to see and speak with each other! What bliss!

The idea of a vast interacting network of wind power victim support groups combining the brilliance and greatness of heart of the best people of the world cannot fail! We must do these things for our children.

If you wish to participate in this endeaver or receive more information, please write to Dave Moriarty, Acting Coord. at waveydavei@aol.com.

Editor’s note:  The following is quoted verbatim from the Wall St. Journal:

Federal subsidies have spurred the growth of renewable-energy production in recent years, but many of those subsidies are set to expire soon unless Congress acts.

“Supporters say the subsidies will allow renewable technologies to grow enough to become cost-competitive with conventional energy sources—and that their benefits include reduced pollution and decreased dependence on foreign oil.

“Critics want to scale back or eliminate the subsidies, arguing that renewable sources have had decades to get established but still aren’t cost-competitive with conventional energy.

“Tell us what you think in advance of a special report we’ll be publishing in The Wall Street Journal. We may use some of your comments in print.”

Click here to vote.

The vote currently stands as follows:

With thanks to Tracy McCabe Stewart

Editor’s note: The following was written by Jim Wiegand, responding to the claim that Whooping Crane experts blame drought (global warming?)—not wind turbines—for the recent plunge in Whooping Crane numbers.  Wiegand disagrees.

—Jim Wiegand, California “raptor” specialist and Berkeley-trained wildlife biologist

Wind turbines are as inherently dangerous as a handgun. Plain and simple, they are killers. Instead, people should be promoting new wind turbine designs.

I will tell you about the US Fish & Wildlife Service (USFWS), whose biologists monitor Whooping Crane survival.  USFWS biologists did not find or produce the bodies of the hundreds of missing Whooping Cranes that have disappeared over the last several years.  In fact, if you look at USFWS reports, you will notice they always sidestep the wind turbine danger for cranes. (Incidentally, while examining these reports, notice the lack of GPS and tracking data given about these birds.)

I have experts who have been involved with these cranes for decades, providing me with up-to-the-minute information. They love these birds and are 100 percent convinced the wind industry is killing these birds and hiding the bodies.

Consider the testimony from Tom Stehn and other experts, given during a lawsuit in Texas. It conflicts with information given out publicly by the USFWS:

But the strange thing that happened in, not only in the year of 2008-2009, during that drought, many whooping crane juveniles were observed without their parents, wandering around the National Aransas Refuge. And as Dr. Chavez will report in his testimony, if there’s a food scarcity, the number one concern of the crane pair is to survive themselves. That’s number one. Number two, if there’s enough food, the chick can survive.

“And it appears from the evidence that, actually Dr. Chavez has observed this happening, that the parents, if there’s a food scarcity, will hoard the food for themselves, and the chick leaves the parents searching for food elsewhere. So the family situation is broken up during that type of stress.”

—from Dr. George Archibald’s testimony, US District Court, “The Aransas Project v. Bryan Shaw et al.,” pp. 75-6.  Click here to go directly to pp. 75-6.

What Archibald describes, above, is not “drought” mortality. Adults of any species are much more skilled at foraging and would easily out-survive their offspring in severe drought conditions. This is wind turbine mortality. Adults are leaders and flock leaders are in front of their groups in flight. They would be the first to encounter turbine blades.

Make no mistake on this, we will be losing the Whooping Crane population to the propeller-style wind turbine, and when it happens I want everyone to remember the corruption behind all this.

» The USFWS with their “voluntary regulations” for the wind industry.

» The bogus mortality searches around turbines with search areas 8-10 times too small.

» The wind industry gag orders written into contracts with leaseholders and employees.

» The high security at all wind farms.

» The wind industry personnel picking up bodies and hiding them.

» Bogus population surveys.

» Bogus impacts studies

» The 100’s of Whooping Cranes that went missing shortly after thousands of wind turbines were placed in their habitats.

» Most of all, remember the silence about any of this from the USFWS and the wind industry.

In 2011, 272 of the birds were counted in the Aransas Wildlife Refuge before they left on their northward migration to Canada. The birds went on to nest and produce 35 fledged young. At that time there were approximately 300-plus cranes in the flock.

This year, after they migrated to the Aransas Wildlife Refuge, only 192 were counted. More than 100 of these birds disappeared in a year’s time. To help cover up this catastrophic loss, the USFWS adopted a new methodology for “estimating” Whooping Crane numbers. The new USFWS methodology was put in place so the declining Whooping Crane population could then be exaggerated. With this phony survey method the population was then estimated 27% higher, at 245. This is part of the wind industry mortality cover-up that has been going on for over 28 years between the industry and the USFWS.

Fact is, there has been a dramatic increase in the mortality of the Whooping Cranes since 2006 and their population has been declining. Over this period of time thousands of wind turbines have been stuffed into their migration route. In a few years there will be so many turbines with so much rotor-sweep in their habitat, it will be impossible for them to survive. It is my belief that the free-flying Whooping Cranes population will be lost within 5 years.

A footnote about eagles and wind turbines.  It is not a good time to be an eagle in America. Any day now the USFWS will be issuing new standards for the wind industry. These new standards, or changes in the laws, were requested by the industry. The wind industry wants to expand into America’s wetland habitats and in the process they know they will be killing many bald eagles. The new standards or regulations will allow this industry to build their wind farms and in the process not let an increase in eagle deaths stop them. The new proposals also allow for wildlife groups like the Sierra club to be compensated during the mitigation process.

Imagine that! Eagles will die and wildlife groups will be paid off!

With their unregulated expansion, the wind industry will soon be killing several hundred bald eagles a year from collisions with their deadly turbines. In California, the golden eagle population is already collapsing. This is not conjecture; It is fact. Thousands of square miles of eagle habitat now sit empty. What is happening to this nation’s eagles by the wind industry is only one chapter of this industry’s insidious 28-year mortality cover-up.

» Coal, natural gas and other energy sources are not exterminating rare, highly protected bird species. Wind turbines are and I have the proof.

» Coal, natural gas and other energy sources did not destroy the habitat for the California Condor.

» Coal, natural gas and other energy sources are not creating bogus mortality and population studies or hiding the deaths of hundreds of Whooping Cranes.

» Coal, natural gas and other energy sources are not wiping out the Golden Eagle population in California.

» Coal, natural gas and other energy sources are not wiping out the Golden Eagle population in Scandinavia.

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Editor’s note:  We also recommend, “Wind Power Takes Precedence over Protecting Endangered Cranes” (9/4/12).

“All at Sea: Offshore wind farms will leave Scotland feeling blue”

—Ben Acheson, ThinkScotland (9/1/12)

Editor’s note: Before reading Acheson’s article, below, take a look at “World’s Biggest Offshore Windfarm Planned off Scottish Coast,” 8/31/12.

Sixty-three individual policy initiatives are employed by the UK and Scottish Governments to address the energy and climate change agenda. Mother Green and her hysteria machine successfully convinced policymakers that the unbridled deployment of renewable technologies would reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Only wind power could be rolled-out fast enough to even attempt to meet emissions reduction targets, so there are now 322 operational wind farms in the UK with another 44 under construction, 276 consented and 320 in the planning process. Over half of these wind farms are strewn across Scotland.

Groupthink—the practice of thinking or making decisions as a group, resulting typically in unchallenged, poor-quality decision-making—unquestionably drove the rush for wind and blinded by planet-saving romanticism, the environmental lobby became the mouthpiece of the wind industry. It conjures memories of Lenin, who branded Western socialists as ‘useful idiots’ when their blind ideology aided the realpolitik aims of the Soviet Union. Even politicians were duped. Opposing wind farms was ‘socially unacceptable’ according to former Climate Change Minister, now Labour Leader, Ed Miliband. Thus, the majority kept silent as green scaremongering prophesised impending doom unless we gave way to thousands of turbines.

Nevertheless, as turbines multiply, objectors are less frequently discounted as out-of-touch aesthetes, sentimentalists and nimbyists. Leading Scottish scientists have lambasted turbines built in forested areas and on deep peatland, which stores 55kg of carbon per cubic metre—three times as much as tropical rainforest. Europe’s largest onshore wind farm, Whitelee Wind Farm, was not only built on the deep peatland of Eaglesham Moor, south of Glasgow, but the Forestry Commission revealed that over 1,500 acres of forest were felled to facilitate the project. The irreparable damage caused to natural carbon sinks means that more CO2 was released into the atmosphere than would ever be saved by turbines.

Despite the huge outlay on turbines, DEFRA reported that the UK’s carbon footprint in 2009 was actually 20% greater than in 1990 and the Global Warming Policy Foundation found that a temperature rise would be postponed by a mere 66 hours by 2100 despite costing £120 billion per year in wind power investment. This damning evidence has caused many observers to predict the imminent end of the wind farm scam.

Wind energy has not, however, been completely consigned to the Gerald Ratner book of botched businesses. Developers are now industrialising our fragile marine environment with bigger, more expensive turbines that will supposedly harvest this ‘free’ resource more efficiently whilst appeasing interfering nimbyists and luddites. In reality, bigger turbines will only mean bigger environmental impacts.

Offshore wind is often overlooked, if not completely forgotten by anti-wind campaigners. Just 1,371 offshore turbines are grid connected in Europe, spread across fifty-three wind farms in ten countries, producing just 0.4% of the EU’s total annual electricity consumption. Scottish waters are yet to house any major offshore wind farms but the development of offshore wind in Scotland is set to expand rapidly as the Government strives to meet renewable energy commitments.

At a European Wind Energy Association conference in Amsterdam last November, the Energy, Enterprise and Tourism Minister Fergus Ewing announced that 15 areas of Scottish waters have been identified for development of offshore wind farms. Nowhere is safe. North Berwick, the Firth of Forth, the Moray Firth, Orkney and Shetland, the Western Isles and Ayrshire coastlines will all be transformed into vast electricity factories. Apart from the visual impacts, the financial implications for Scottish households and the destruction of many local fishing industries, the plans have worrying consequences for the marine environment.

The term ‘blue carbon’ is relatively unheard-of but its environmental importance is unrivalled. Blue carbon stores are the peatlands of the sea—natural carbon sinks that absorb and store millions of tonnes of carbon.

Every day, 22 million metric tonnes of CO2 is absorbed by the oceans. An estimated 55% of all carbon in the atmosphere which becomes sequestered in natural systems is cycled into our seas. Blue carbon ecosystems, which include seagrass meadows, kelp forests, saltmarshes and mangrove swamps, store up to 70% of the carbon permanently stored in the marine realm and Scottish waters are home to over 20% of all seagrass meadows in north-west Europe.

Despite their importance, around 2-7% of global blue carbon sinks are lost annually. The rate of loss can be four times that of rainforests. Building massive turbines near such resources will only exacerbate the damage and release huge amounts of CO2 into the atmosphere. The pro-wind lobby will maintain that most UK seagrass meadows grow in depths of 0-5 metres and therefore they won’t be affected by offshore turbines. But shallow water wind farms already exist in the UK—Gunfleet Sands, Kentish Flats and Scroby Sands wind farms all have turbines in depths ranging from 0-11m—in fact seagrass and kelp can grow in depths of up to 20 metres. In any case, the issue is that turbines can impact these ecosystems even if they are not built directly on top of them.

When excavating the seabed for the foundations necessary for turbines to stay upright in stormy seas, huge amounts of sediment will be introduced into the water column. Larger sediment will be deposited close to the turbines, smothering all life and creating a ‘dead-spot’ around the development. Finer sediment will be easily transported by unpredictable waves and currents and deposited elsewhere, often in shallow inshore waters. Ill-informed environmentalists claim that new, safe habitats will be created for marine species. But arguing that installing turbines in a stable ecosystem will increase the populations of living organisms is scandalous misinformation, akin to arguing that installing large industrial turbines in the middle of a pristine forest will somehow increase populations of birds and badgers!

Renewable energy developers are again manipulating green groupthink to industrialise our coastlines with turbines. But the accelerated transformation of our seascapes into vast, rusting electricity factories is a philosophy of fools. Arguing that the cost of inaction is greater than the cost of action may sound convincing at first, but protecting our natural carbon stores – peatlands, forests and blue carbon sinks – is priceless.

Even in the unlikely event that climate change targets are achieved with wind power, it will be a Pyrrhic victory. The Government gambled with onshore wind energy and we lost. They should not attempt to pick winners. We must find what is right for Scotland and until then, a greener future must be built on the strong foundations of energy conservation and energy efficiency.

Oscar Wilde famously said that ‘experience is one thing you can’t get for nothing’. Scotland has experienced the unrelenting imposition of wind power and it most certainly did not come for nothing. But renewable energy companies are the only ones who learnt from the onshore wind experiment. They learnt that vast sums of money can be acquired if the lucrative subsidy regimes are harvested before the anti-wind intelligencia is mobilised. They also recognised that the sound carries twice as far when someone else blows your horn and they are happy to sit by whilst misguided environmentalists fight their corner.

Green groupthink must never conquer common-sense. Where is the value in destroying some of our most important and fragile ecosystems in order to build wind turbines that will struggle to last 20 years? The lesson for everyone is that the green lobby does not have the monopoly on environmental protection. You do not need a Greenpeace membership card to care for the environment. No single person owns the environment. Each and every one of us has a duty to protect it because we do not inherit the land, or seas, from our ancestors; we merely borrow them from our children.

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Ben Acheson is a Parliamentary Assistant to Struan Stevenson MEP at the European Parliament in Brussels

“Hopes of slashing greenhouse emissions just blowing in the wind”

—Graham Lloyd, Environment Editor, The Australian (9/1/12)

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Alongside the politics of the carbon tax, a floor price, a linking to Europe or whether a direct investment scheme would be better than a market-based scheme, the bottom line surely must be whether any carbon emissions actually are being saved.

The early signs are that a $23 carbon tax has displaced some marginal high-cost generation in South Australia and Queensland, but it is too soon to say whether this is a trend or coincidence.

But any gains are swamped by the findings of a two-year analysis of Victoria’s wind-farm developments by mechanical engineer Hamish Cumming.

His analysis shows that despite receiving hundreds of millions of dollars from green energy schemes driven by the renewable energy target, Victoria’s wind-farm developments have saved virtually zero carbon dioxide emissions in the state.

A forensic examination of publicly available power-supply data shows Victoria’s carbon-intensive brown-coal power stations do not reduce the amount of coal they burn when wind power is available to the grid.

Cumming says surplus energy is wasted to make room for intermittent supplies from wind.

Cumming’s findings have been confirmed by Victoria’s coal-fired electricity producers and by independent energy analysts who say it is more efficient to keep a brown-coal power-station running than turn it down and then back up.

Without gas or some other form of peaking power supply the Victorian electricity system is not equipped for the vagaries of wind power.

Even in South Australia (SA), which uses gas, not coal, for base-load power and makes much greater use of wind, Cumming estimates the cost of greenhouse gas abatement at $1484 a tonne.

Cumming used data published by the Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO), which tracks power sector generation every five minutes.

The results showed fossil fuel generators, in the same periods when wind turbines had been operating, fluctuated their output to match demand but did not reduce their rate of coal consumption.

In an email to Cumming, electricity generator IPR-GDF SUEZ Australia confirmed his findings.

“Given that the power stations mentioned are all ‘baseload’, their generation output is relatively constant 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, other than due to minor fluctuations depending on market demand and/or shutdown of generation units for maintenance or repairs,” a company spokesman said.

Cumming says his investigation demonstrates how green energy theories do not always match the facts.

A two-year email exchange between Cumming and energy companies and government regulators shows how the industry would prefer to rely on models than real-world data.

In response to questions from Inquirer, the AEMO admits that wind power presents some “challenges” but says it does displace greenhouse gas emissions from coal and gas.

“When wind is blowing and generating electricity it displaces coal and gas-fire plant in the dispatch merit order,” AEMO principal media adviser Melissa Baldwin says. “As a result, fossil fuel-fired plants burn less coal (or gas).”

In theory, maybe.

Cumming references an AEMO presentation to the Australian Competition & Consumer Commission where the AEMO showed that for the wind farms in South Australia in 2009 the greenhouse gas abatement was only 3 per cent of the total capacity of the wind farms installed.

This equated to a 0.6 per cent reduction of greenhouse gases for the entire state’s electrical generation from fossil fuels.

Since then Cumming says he has established that even with the continued expansion of wind farms in South Australia, the AEMO figures show the abatement has risen to only about 4 per cent of the installed capacity, or just more than 1 per cent greenhouse gas abatement.

This is the same figure that was established in the past three months in The Netherlands and presented to the Dutch parliament. The Netherlands report suggests the greenhouse gas used to build and maintain a wind farm will not be abated even across the total life of the wind farm.

Cumming says this is exactly what he has been telling the state and federal government for the past three years.

He says the greenhouse gas savings in Victoria are even less.

In a letter to Victorian Attorney-General Robert Clark, Cumming said the owners of Yallourn, Hazelwood and Loy Yang power stations had confirmed in writing that the power stations combined consume about 7762 tonnes of coal an hour.

“They have confirmed that the power stations do not change the coal feed intake 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year. The coal consumed by these three power stations alone makes base-load power available at a rate of 6650 megawatts,” Cumming wrote.

Victoria also burns coal, powering an additional emergency standby of 630 megawatts, according to Sustainable Victoria documents that were presented in your Mortlake Planning Panel. Victoria’s demand only exceeds 6650MW generally for less than 10 hours every 72, and rarely exceeds 7200MW.

“AEMO five-minute data shows that peaks are picked up (ones that exceed base load) by Hydro or fossil fuel generators.”

Cumming has called for Victoria’s wind developments to be stripped of public subsidies.

“I have now confirmed that Acciona [a wind energy company] is not abating any GHG (GreenHouse Gas) at all, nor has it ever nor will it during the life of the project,” Cumming wrote to Clark. “Can you please arrange for a full forensic carbon audit to be performed on Acciona Waubra, and when you also conclude that it is not abating GHG, make it repay the RECs (renewable energy certificates) and other subsidies it is claiming, and ensure Acciona is charged a carbon tax of approximately $15m that it owes.”

Hugh Saddler, managing director of Sustainability Advice Team Pty Ltd, says brown-coal power stations in particular are designed and built to operate on a continuous load basis. “You can see that in the longer term, in term of emissions policy, you would get a better outcome from closing down one of the brown-coal power stations altogether and using some more gas for the load following,” he says.

In response to Cumming’s findings, David Clarke, senior manager, community relations for Acciona Energy, which operates the Waubra wind farm, said a SKM report commissioned by the Clean Energy Council found “a 100MW wind farm operating at 35 per cent capacity factor would each year on average reduce emissions by 26,700 tonnes in the National Electricity Market.” And a Sustainability Victoria commissioned report in 2006 found “abatement of between 0.25 and 0.31 million tonnes per annum for the 100MW.”

However, Cumming said the reports on greenhouse gas abatement did not take into account the continuation of burning coal during the time the wind farms were operational.

The reports you refer to are theoretical abatements, not real facts. Coal was still burnt and therefore little if any GHG was really abated,” he told Clarke.

“Rather than trying to convince me with reports done by or for the wind industry, or the government departments promoting the industry, I challenge you to give me actual coal consumption data in comparison to wind generation times data that supports your argument.

“The AEMO data for this clearly shows Waubra is not abating any GHG, nor has it since the first day it began operation.”

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Editor’s note:  Listen to these radio interviews with mechanical engineer, Hamish Cumming.  Click here and here.

It’s worth reading this companion article, “Facts about the Savings of Fossil Fuel by Wind Turbines in the Netherlands” (8/28/12), where the author concludes the following:

One must conclude that under the present conditions in the Netherlands a 100 MW (Megawatt) ‘name plate’ capacity wind development produces on average 23 MW because of the capacity factor. 4,6 MW (20%) of this has to be subtracted from the final net result because of initial energy investments. From the actual Statline production figures we know that 27% of this 23 MW = 6,17 MW represents the actual fossil fuel and CO2 savings. But from this figure we need to subtract the amount of energy invested in the construction works: 4,6 MW. The net total of fuel saving electricity provided by our wind turbines therefore is 6,17 – 4,6 = 1,57 MW on average over the year. That is ~1,6% of the installed capacity. It makes wind developments a Mega money pit with virtually no merit in terms of the intended goal of CO₂ emission reduction or fossil fuel saving.

“What is going to happen next? The current plan is to extend wind capacity to 8 GW onshore and 4 GW offshore. Presently wind name plate capacity is about 15% of the average domestic electric power need, which is roughly 14 GW. If the capacity exceeds 20% we enter into a new phase in which frequent curtailment sets in: there wil be periods in which the grid simply cannot absorb the supply. This situation already exists in Denmark and Ireland. Then we shall see a further dramatic decrease of the fuel-replacing effectiveness. In a previous study, we used a model in which the most conservative scenario had a thus defined wind-penetration of 20%. We found that in that case savings were already negative, which means that wind developments actually caused an increase in fossil fuel consumption. The present study based on actual data shows that we are well on the way to reach that stage.”