With thanks to the telegraph.co.uk

.
—Donna Quixote, “Parents Demand Protection for Their Children from Wind Turbine Emissions,” Quixote’s Last Stand, 4/16/13

A group of determined parents will arrive at Queen’s Park on Thursday morning April 18 at 11:30 to demand a meeting with Premier Kathleen Wynne to discuss the risks to their children from industrial wind turbines. The group is led by Shellie Correia of West Lincoln whose son Joey has Sensory Processing Disorder.

“I met with Kathleen Wynne in my hometown just before Christmas when she was campaigning for the leadership of her party,” says Correia. “I gave her many reports and a letter from Joey’s doctor and I haven’t heard from her since.” Correia’s concerns and those of parents all across Ontario are for their children, some with special needs such as autism and other issues who are at risk.

Dr. Chrystella Calvert is a Behavioral Pediatrician and treats Joey. She agrees. “Noxious stimuli (or unexpected, or unnatural stimuli) are a source of environmental stress that affect the human brain. . . . Wind turbines concern me, given my strong knowledge of neurobiology,” says Dr Calvert. “I, as a “normal brain” (or typical brain) individual, would not want this risk to my mental health (or my children’s) in my neighbourhood.”

The vast 77-turbine wind project is slated for the area with massive 3 megawatt wind turbines, some at exactly 550 meters from Joey’s home.

In her letter Dr. Calvert states, “Science has no evidence that this abnormal, incessant stimulus does not have long-lasting effects on the developing fetal, child, and adolescent brain. In a developed society like Canada, we must advocate and protect the most vulnerable members.”

Non-consenting neighbours have filed complaints about the wind project in West Lincoln and are aware that the government sponsored Research Chair from the University of Waterloo wants to use them as part of a pre- and post- wind turbine study. The group says it is unethical to impose a health risk on a community and then study it to see what happens.

Shellie Correia and the other parents at Queen’s Park tomorrow need answers.

.
Click here for video.

With appreciation to Stop These Things!

Editor’s note:  Australia’s Simon Chapman, a sociologist on the faculty of the School of Public Health at the Univ. of Sydney, has become a wind industry evangelist arguing that Wind Turbine Syndrome is frankly nothing more than the hypnotic powers of suggestion being diabolically exerted  (by Drs. Pierpont, Laurie, and others) on weak-minded, envious homeowners who are pissed off that their neighbors, and not they themselves, are profiting from lucrative wind turbine leases.  (Some of these simpletons are so spectacularly conned and pissed off that they abandon their homes at great, indeed ruinous, financial loss.)

One might call this novel theory, Chapman’s Pissed Off Postulate.  (Presumably, «le grand professeur’s» logic makes more sense in the field of sociology—which, by the way, is not to  be confused with real science.  As an academic discipline, sociology has never overcome the accusation of being either stupendously obvious or stupendously absurd.  Chapman’s Postulate illustrates the latter.  There are those who argue sociology would be better classified as “literature,” in which case Chapman’s pronouncements could be more appropriately accepted as comedy or satire in the tradition of Jonathan Swift’s “Modest Proposal” or Rabelais’s “Gargantua and Pantagruel.”)

Still, something rankles.  There is a more sinister undercurrent, here.  Like the proverbial sorcerer’s apprentice, Chapman doesn’t grasp the repercussions of the genie he has conjured up.  Ridiculing and dismissing WTS victims transforms them—poof!—into guinea pigs who can be sacrificed for the “greater good” of the “global warmist” movement.

Seriously, what do we call such preaching by the likes of Mr. Chapman and, to a lesser degree, Tim Flannery?  Crude comedy?  Or satire, along the lines of Swift’s “modest proposal” that poor Irish women should rear children for the dining pleasure of English aristocracy eager to pay for such tender delicacies?

In my mind, Chapman is a literary comic.  Fair enough.  But when does literature, like Chapman’s absurdist comedy, become pseudo-science—pseudo-science in the service of public policy?  This is what alarms me about Chapman et al.  (Chapman’s a professor at a School of Public Health, after all, and Flannery is Chief Commissioner of the Australian Climate Commission.)  Notice that when Dr. Pierpont, a genuine scientist and genuine clinician, was interviewed several weeks ago by National Public Radio regarding Wind Turbine Syndrome, a substantial portion of the resulting article was given over to Professor Chapman.

Simon Chapman, a professor of public health at the University of Sydney, . . . believes that wind turbine syndrome, which has been an especially contentious issue in Australia recently, is “probably an example of community panic.” . . . Chapman and others have said that wind turbine syndrome is a result of the nocebo effect, in which merely suggesting that something could be harmful to your health causes it to be so.

—Audrey Carlsen, “Could wind turbines be toxic to the ear?” Shots:  Health News from NPR (4/2/13)

Remember National Socialism.  If Nazism’s modest proposal of “racial cleansing” had been regarded merely as a kind of vulgar satire or comedy, this would have been bad enough.  But when it became, horrifically, canonized as “science” undergirding public policy—it was then the true madness was unleashed.

We are indeed experiencing wind energy “totalitarianism.” Witness Ontario’s Green Energy Act, mandatory “renewable portfolio standards,” and town governments on Cape Cod and Vinalhaven (Maine) literally sacrificing human “receptors” (or to use Swift’s satirical imagery, hapless children, together with their parents) for the “greater good.”  In this brave new world, Chapman’s absurdist comedy can swiftly become a justification for evil.  Indeed, it already has.

The author of the article, below, is one such “receptor” who, dammit, is fed up with being sacrificed!  He and his wife suffer from Wind Turbine Syndrome.  (More alarmingly, perhaps, they are victims of “WTS without turbines”—something that would be better called ILFN Disease.  Which illustrates that WTS is clearly a subset of a much larger acoustic epidemic.)  The author is, moreover, evidently a scientist aware of how real science works, as he takes pains to explain.

—Simon G.

My wife and I—like so many others—got our Wind Turbine Syndrome (WTS) not from a wind turbine installation but from inaudible ILFN (infrasound/low frequency noise) from the fans of a heat exchanger unit on a neighboring lot.  After 3 months of exposure, I checked into the Emergency Room of our hospital.  So yes, people with WTS / SBS (Sick Building Syndrome) do end up in hospitals . . .

A few months later we got the authorities to conduct an analysis of the ILFN in our house. The result:  A peak at 18Hz, at levels just below the threshold of hearing. When presenting the facts to the medical faculty of a major university in our country (in Central Europe), we were surprised to learn that the effects of ILFN were known to them since 1985, when they did a survey on the effects of low-level infrasound from heating/ventilation systems on office workers.

In that report, they clearly define the symptoms as a result of the effects that ILFN has on the central nervous system. The possibility of a “nocebo” effect is actually discussed as a potential explanation.  But with a much better-fitting model available, the “Nocebo Theory” was quickly dismissed by the research team.

So, Professor Simon Chapman’s hogwash is only a mere 28 years behind what proper scientists in the field of occupational medicine know today.  Some early literature describing the effects of ILFN on the vestibular system even dates back to 1969 (Tempest) and even earlier.

Now, my background is in human factors / occupational medicine and not sociology (Prof. Chapman’s field).  Before I would even as much as think of issuing a statement about some effect that might fall in the territory of sociology, I would first do some basic homework on the issue.  The benefit of this approach is 3-fold:

a) it follows the rules of common sense

b) that’s how scientists work

c) it minimizes the risk of publicly making an ass of myself

Apparently, this is not how know-it-all Chapman approaches things. Therefore, one should seriously question his ability to work according to scientific standards as well as his ability to apply common sense. And why anyone would want the world to see their cognitive and/or professional shortcomings, I have no clue.

Usually, seemingly irrational behaviour can make a lot of sense when money is involved—but that’s just speculation.

Editor’s note:  Professor Ross McKitrick, a University of Guelph economist who for years has been analyzing wind energy, discusses the new Fraser Institute Report on the economics of wind energy in Ontario, Canada.

In two words, the Fraser Institute (using data provided by the Ontario government) concludes that wind energy in Ontario is a “flop” and a “fraud.”  The report uses more high falutin’ language than this, but it amounts to the same thing.

Dr. McKitrick is a member of the Fraser Institute.

Listen to CBC’s short interview with McKitrick , here.

Click here for the full report.

Editor’s note:  This man (below) died to save a forest from developers.  No, they were not wind developers; they happened to be destroying a forest for a highway.  Same effects, different purpose.  Click here to watch the video.

Mikhail Beketov was a Russian newspaper editor who opposed the destruction of the Khimki forest (and its resident wildlife) for a highway between Moscow and St. Petersburg.  He was warned by anonymous phone callers that he would be “maimed” for his continuing opposition.

They made good on their threat; one frigid night, two men beat him with an iron bar, smashing his hands, legs, and skull.  Though left alive—in a pool of blood and a coma in subzero weather for days—he lost his speech, and several of his fingers and a leg were amputated.

Within 5 years, he died of his injuries.  His attackers have never been found.

Will Wind Warriors be subjected to this brutality when they, like Beketov, stand up to wind developers destroying ridgelines and wilderness and farmland?  So far, it has not happened, despite threats of harm.

Mikhail Beketov’s murder reminds me that, yes, this is possible.  Same effects on wilderness or farmland and wildlife, same corruption, same greed.  What is to prevent another murder?

Editor’s note:  Listen to the reports of Wind Turbine Syndrome victims in the following radio interview.  Click here.  Then ask, Why is this torture allowed to continue?

Alan Jones, well-known Australian radio host, interviews Australia Federal Senator Ron Boswell and Ann Gardner (past award-winning super-fine wool producer in Victoria whose business was forced to shut down because of turbines next door).

Editor’s note:  Unfortunately the pending lawsuit, described below, will likely go nowhere.  Wrong law firm.  Wrong court.  Though, mostly, wrong tactic.

.
—John S. Hausman, www.mlive.com (4/8/13)

LUDINGTON, MI – Seventeen neighbors of the Lake Winds Energy Park wind farm south of Ludington have sued Consumers Energy Co., alleging that noise, vibrations and flickering lights from its 56 towering turbines are causing sleeplessness, headaches, dizziness and other physical symptoms as well as economic loss.

The neighbors filed their lawsuit April 1 in Mason County Circuit Court. They seek monetary damages in excess of $25,000 and a court order for Consumers to “cease and desist in their activities” and to “abate the intrusions.”

Consumers Energy declined to comment on the case on Monday. But the company will issue a statement in response to the lawsuit Tuesday morning, spokesman Dan Bishop said Monday.

The neighbors’ lawyer, Craig W. Horn of Saginaw, declined to comment on the case Monday.

According to the complaint, the neighbors allege that throughout the project’s testing period and immediately after it began operation last November, they noticed the following “intrusions” on their properties and homes:

• Frequent, “highly disturbing” noise from the turbines.

• Vibrations or a pulsing sensation as the blades pass by the pedestal.

• A flicker/strobe effect inside their homes when sunlight passes through the blades.

• Glare when sunlight shines on the turbines.

• Numberous flashing red lights reflecting off the rotating blades that “overwhelm the night sky” and are visible inside their homes.

The lawsuit alleges the neighbors, all of whom say they own property and live in homes within a half-mile of some of the turbines, have suffered “some and/or all” of the following physical conditions, which they attribute to the wind farm:

• Inability to sleep and repeated awakening.

• Headaches and pressure.

• Ringing and aching in the ears.

• Dizziness.

• Stress and tension.

• Extreme fatigue.

• Reduced ability to concentrate.

• Nausea.

The lawsuit claims the plaintiffs will continue to suffer harm, including physical injury, emotional distress and loss of property value if they continue to be exposed to the wind farm’s operation.

The $250 million Lake Winds Energy Park development in Mason County’s Riverton and Summit townships, between Ludington and Pentwater, generates 100.8 megawatts of electricity. Its Vestas turbines are 312 feet high at the hub, with rotor blades having a 328-foot diameter.

She’s stands 5 feet tall, weighs 100 pounds, and is going eyeball to eyeball with one of North America’s mightiest wind energy companies.

So far, neither Esther nor NextEra has blinked.

Esther Wrightman publicly and unabashedly contends NextEra Energy has committed acts of terrorism against her community—against both people and wildlife.

NextEra has responded by hiring a Toronto law firm to notify the young mother of two that they have had enough of Mrs. Wrightman referring to them as “NextTerror” or “NextError.”  I quote:

All such uses of the NextEra name and logo in the Video, the Second Video and on the Website are unsanctioned, in violation of NextEra’s intellectual property rights, and defamatory.

Accordingly, please remove the Video and Second Video from YouTube.com and any other internet sites, and please remove all pages and postings from the Website that contain the altered “NEXTerror” and “Nextterror Bullies Canada Inc.” logos or the word “NextTerror” by Friday, March 22, 2013 at 5:00pm and confirm that you have done so.

Failing removal of the Video, Second Video, the “NEXTerror” and “Nextterror Bullies Canada Inc.” logos and “NextTerror” word from the Website, NextEra will take the legal steps necessary to ensure removal.

While we sincerely hope that we can engage in a discussion of these issues and that legal action will not be required, NextEra reserves all of its other legal rights and remedies, including an action for damages or defamation as appropriate.”

As of this writing, this is where matters stand.  Deadlocked.

Esther tells WTS.com that she took a call this morning from a breathless reporter asking “if I had to ‘think about it’ before responding to NextEra.”

“Well yeah,” she matter-of-factly replied, “but it wasn’t a matter of whether I’d fight it; it was a matter of how I’d fight it.”

Click here to read how Esther is fighting it.

She intends to defend her charge in a court of law, if necessary, and prove that NextEra is intimidating, bullying, bungling, nasty, and hurtful to her community and protected wildlife. (NextEra recently created an uproar when it audaciously removed, with government approval, and “re-located” an active eagle’s nest in order to build wind turbines nearby. Esther and her colleagues filmed the event, which they judged—quite rightly—despicable.)

Armed with nothing more than a high school education, the unqualified support of a husband who is disabled and out of work owing to an acoustically toxic workplace, a courage and sense of righteousness to match the biblical David, and abundant brains (read her response to NextEra; a Harvard-trained lawyer could not have done better)—this mom is going to take on Mr. Big.  Before a judge, if necessary.  Certainly before a huge public audience.  (Click open “Ontario Wind Resistance” and notice that there are, at last count, 98 Comments to Esther’s article—an article which has gone viral around the world.)

If I may address a note to Esther:

Young lady, you’re a hero! You’ve grabbed Goliath by his beard and told him he’s a bully and a philistine.  And you’re not backing down, even as he threatens you with calamity.

My dear, the eyes of the world are on you.  Already we are getting emails about you from Denmark, Spain, and Australia, and many from the USA and of course Canada.

Well done!”

And if I may address NextEra:

You folks have maneuvered yourselves into a corner.  There is little doubt you could win a lawsuit.  There is even less doubt you would lose—spectacularly—the public relations battle.

Rural Ontario is a powder keg of outrage over what wind developers like you have done to communities—a powder keg waiting for a spark to trigger massive, convulsive civil disobedience.  People are made ill by wind turbines built too close to their homes.  Many of these Wind Turbine Syndrome victims have abandoned their homes.

This diminutive mom may turn out to be the spark that triggers a major push-back.  I suggest you re-read the Old Testament story of David & Goliath.

By the way, many of us, including Dr. Nina Pierpont and Dr. Sarah Laurie (Australia), have volunteered to testify on Esther’s behalf.  Drs. Pierpont & Laurie would relish explaining to a judge and jury how wind energy companies willfully and recklessly harm people’s health.  Which may be why Esther pointedly uses the word “terrorism.”

I realize you folks have no quarrel with her right to resort to the word “terrorism”; your point is that she does not have the right to pin it to your company name.  As I say, legally you may be proven correct.  Morally, however, may be a different story.  Inevitably, a legal confrontation will generate a moral confrontation, where the latter will dwarf the former in significance.

Think carefully how you proceed down this slippery slope.

Editor’s note:  The following article was translated from French using Google Translate.  The photo, below, accompanied the article.  It shows the wind developer, Mr. Desgroseillers, pointing out where he had planned  to build his “wind farm”—before  the new law, passed last month, booted him out.

.
—Patrice Laflamme, TVA Nouvelles, 3/25/13

No wind turbines can be built less than 2 km from a home and 1 km of a road in the Haut-Saint-Laurent, in the Montérégie.

The Quebec government has officially endorsed the amended interim control (RCI) of the Haut-Saint-Laurent surrounding these structures in its territory, which the council of mayors adopted on 9 January.

The Minister of Municipal Affairs, Regions and Land Occupancy (MAMROT), Sylvain Gaudreault, approved the new RCI in a letter dated March 13.

“The Regulation respects the policies of the government in terms of development.  Therefore, under the Planning Act and planning, it shall take effect the day on which this notice is served,” the minister said in this letter for the prefect of the MRC, Alain Castagner.

In the territory of Haut-Saint-Laurent, this revised version of RCI forbids the erection of wind turbines 2000 m (2 km)  from any dwelling and 1000 m (1 km) from any public road.

The new version of RCI also seeks to protect agricultural fields, cultivated floodplains, and woodlands, as well as bike lanes from the presence of wind turbines. It also establishes the 1000 m distance between the turbines and the Linear Park of the Haut-Saint-Laurent and 2000 m separating the site Droulers / Tsiionhiakwatha Saint-Anicet.

“As a prefect, I’m glad that the RCI has finally been accepted by the Minister,” said the mayor of Saint-Anicet and prefect of the MRC, Alain Castagner, in a telephone interview.

Mr. Castagner stated that the Minister would have been wrong not to endorse the RCI changes because, he said, “the government had endorsed the approach taken by the Haut-Richelieu last year and we were inspired to amend ours.”

The prefect insisted that any wind farm developers in the region will meet the requirements of the new RCI. “The aim of RCI does not prevent the construction of wind turbines in the MRC, but establishes reasonable distances (setbacks) in an effort to protect the citizens,” he said.

Godmanchester residents opposed to the construction of ten turbines in the municipality, warmly welcomed Minister Gaudreault’s decision. “I’m very happy for all citizens. This is very good news.  People felt they were listened to by our leaders. The minister’s response pleases us greatly,” said the spokesman of the group, Carole Trepanier.

Ms. Trépanier recalled that in a letter sent Nov. 13 to Minister Gaudreault, she wanted to raise awareness of the mobilization orchestrated by those citizens who oppose construction of  ten turbines in Godmanchester. “We wanted to persuade the government to be protect us from wind turbines affecting our health. We wanted to demonstrate that wind turbines in Godmanchester would have negative impacts on the beauty of the landscape and property values,” she said.

Ms. Trépanier also pointed out that 570 people have so far signed the petition launched in recent weeks in the region against the construction of a wind farm in Godmanchester. “There was no community support for the project. Citizens have supported us in our efforts, because we educated them,” she said.

Ms. Trépanier said she was relieved to see that all elected municipal leaders of Haut-Saint-Laurent became aware of the “health hazards posed by wind turbines.”

The president of International Barter, Jean-Claude Desgroseillers, said he was disappointed by the acceptance of the new RCI by the minister, adding that such a decision would effectively block any future construction of wind turbines in the MRC.

With this new version of RCI, the prefect of the MRC wondered if there are still areas of land in the Upper St. Lawrence where it will be possible to build wind turbines. “If such areas remain, they would have to be large,” he said.

Receptor #62 addresses protest rally in Toronto, Ontario, 4/3/13

.
—Ginny Stewart, Ontario Wind Resistance (4/6/13)

I am known as Receptor 62 of Mike Crawley’s Plateau Wind Project in Grey Highlands, Grey County; a faceless, nameless person to our government and to AIM/IPC/GDF Suez who labeled me as such. This is the way they want it; out of sight, out of mind. If they can dehumanize us then they can ignore the pain and suffering that their policies, their regulations, and their machines are causing.

I have a name and a face as do 22 others from 8 families in my community. We have all been stricken with symptoms that we did not have prior to the installation of IWTs near our homes. Each us reside less than 1500 meters from the nearest turbine. Some of our common symptoms are interrupted sleep, sleeplessness, heart palpitations, headaches, nausea, ringing in the ears, pressure in the head and ears, a tingling or vibrating feeling in the body, dizziness, nose bleeds, high blood pressure, lack of energy, depression, irritability and yes, anger. We have phoned the developer, and the MOE, we have filed complaints we have appealed to the Medical officer of health, all to no avail. We are aware of others who choose to remain silent for reasons important to them, but who none the less deserve to be counted.

There is a young man in my community, who was vibrant and active, dynamic in his job. Now he misses work because he cannot bring himself to get out of bed in the morning after a restless night to make the long commute required to get to his place of employment.

A young father who suffers from vertigo which now has become more pronounced since the turbines began to operate, worries about the health of his children. His doctor has recommended that he be fit with a pacemaker. He is only 35 years old.

Young children have begun to have chronic nose bleeds; adults now have high blood pressure. Some complain that they can no longer think or function properly. They lack energy and are depressed most of the time, preferring not to return home at the end of the work day to face another sleepless torturous night.

One family has already moved away but not before giving the lease holder nearest his home a piece of his mind as he was leaving. Another family just a few days returned from a three week holiday has also made the decision to leave. You see after only 2 days away from home and the turbines they felt a renewal of their health. The wife while monitoring her blood pressure was able to stop taking the drug she had been prescribed. The husband felt relief by being able to sleep again, the pains in his abdomen disappeared. 2 days after coming home all of their symptoms returned in full force. Now they are making preparations to put the house on the market, hoping that they can sell it with a minimal financial loss.

I too fear for the loss of my home and my health, which has already been degraded. I suffer from loss of sleep, excessive ringing in my ears. Sometimes there is pressure in my ears. Many of you I’m sure can relate to the pain caused by a rapidly descending aircraft. Just imagine that lasting for several hours. Nausea and headaches are no longer a stranger to me. I have also suffered many infections no doubt caused by my immune system being compromised.

My home along with some of my neighbour’s homes was the subject of Dr. Nick Kowen’s Noise Survey which demonstrates that the turbines exceed the noise limits set by the MOE most of the time. We have phoned the developer and the MOE we have filed complaints, we have appealed to the Medical officer of health, all to no avail.

We are not wind opponents or activists we are people, unwilling participants, walking wounded, and singled out by our government to participate in a nightmare that has been imposed on us without our consent. And now we are to be studied by our governments to determine the depth of our suffering, and what would be an acceptable percentage of people harmed. They are talking about 29%! They are looking at raising the noise level to 45dB! They are looking to make policy changes under the guise of a health study.

In September of last year I made a presentation on behalf of my neighbours and myself to the Medical Officer of Health for Grey/Bruce counties, Dr. Hazel Lynn. As a result the Board of Health requested her to conduct a literature search and provide summary conclusions. In a letter to me she states that “every published peer-reviewed study we considered demonstrated some level of positive correlation between self reported adverse health effects and living distance from turbines” but more research needs to be done. Well I did not sign up to be a lab rat, did you?!! We do not have 10 or 15 years to wait for more research! A positive correlation has been determined! So what are they waiting for?

Prevention, precaution and do no harm are well established health principals. To allow harm is inconsistent with these principals especially the precautionary principal. It is time for the medical community to step up to the plate. Medical Officers of Health in counties where people are being harmed have an obligation to respond that harm and should be ordering the turbines shut down. The threshold of impairment of health has been met and exceeded. We are about to have an epidemic in this province as our government feeds the industry frenzy to install more turbines and as they go online.

Last night I had the honour of speaking for the people of Huron East at a council meeting. The families are looking down the barrel of their future, one that will condemn them to the horrors of a policy gone wrong. They are fearful and looking to their leaders to protect them from what is coming. The room was filled to capacity, standing room only. Sitting on the floor in front of me was a young mother with her four children. They are innocent and their parents are helpless to protect them; the council says that the law will not allow them to protect them either.

Please look at our faces, remember them and not the receptor numbers that we have been assigned. Send a message to The Chief Medical Officer of Health, Dr. Arleen King and tell her that we will not be dismissed. It is our right to be respected and to have our health and dignity protected and restored regardless of the circumstances of our ill health. Dr. King has the power to shut them down. The time has come to shut the turbines down!!! Shut them down!!

Stephana Johnston, an eighty-one-year-old former schoolteacher, with a wind turbine visible through her kitchen window, 526 metres from her property in Clear Creek, Ontario. There are eighteen turbines within a 3-kilometre radius of her home. Within days of the turbines going into operation, Stephana says that she began to experience physical symptoms that she hadn’t had before:  ringing in the ears, anxiety, a feeling of pressure in her head, and sleep deprivation due to the turbine vibrations.

She now sleeps in a trailer 16 kilometres from her house, where she says those symptoms dissipate.

Stephana was a Green Party candidate in the 2008 federal election and is active in campaigning against proposed wind turbines in areas near homes.

—Peter Bregg, Photographer

Editor’s note:  Stephana wrote the following as a comment upon this article, “Clean wind is clean only until it enters the blades. After that it is dirty wind.”

For the last four years, I have been attending Emergency Rooms, where the E.R. physicians don’t know what to do. A family physician has tried to eliminate every cause (Like testing for syphilis! Negative), testing for sleep apnea (negative), West Nile virus (negative), Lyme disease (negative), but has no treatment to offer.

It’s really an uphill battle to educate medical professionals who believe they know more than their patients do about themselves.  (Stephana holds a B.A. degree from the University of Toronto in Anatomy—Ed.)

My son has been working on a solution this last winter and spring. He outfitted his trailer, which is 15 km away from IWTs, with hydro (What a shock as to the cost!), built safety features into the entrance and put in a back-up generator. Once the night-time temperatures are 5 degrees C, I will make the change to “roughing it in the bush” until the night time temperatures drop below 5 degrees C again.

While living this simple life, I’ll have to investigate another living arrangement well away from the IWTs.

Reading Thoreau should be a great help.

All suggestions from readers will be most welcome as well.

All the best to every Wind Warrior.

Protest groups say talk of jobs and profits are a joke

.
—Jim Gallagher, Sunday World (3/31/13)

To many they have become the scourge of 21st Century Ireland.

Families around the country are being driven from their homes by the noise and disruption of windfarms.

Those living close to the turbines claim their lives have been ruined by the noise, vibrations and light flicker from the giant machines.

Protesters claim windfarms were built without local consultation and without any debate into long-term health effects.

And yet there are plans to bring thousands more of the towers to every corner of Ireland.

Power

Developers boast they will make billions of euro for the country and create tens of thousands of jobs. But opponents demand to know where this mass employment will come from as the turbines are all made abroad and once erected are remotely controlled from places like Germany and Denmark.

The most contentious plan of all is to bring a staggering 2,000 turbines to five midland counties and offshore locations to make power for the UK – because Wales refused to have them.

Two companies, Mainstream Renewable Power and Element Power, are currently signing up landowners across Offaly, Tipperary, Laois, Kildare and Meath to allow the towers on their land, following the signing of “a memorandum of understanding” between the Irish and British governments in January.

Once up and running, all the power created will be sent directly to the UK. The news has sparked the launch of a wave of protest groups to protect the rights of local communities.

Most say they are not against windfarms, but want turbines built away from homes and with proper consultation.

In Co. Cork, seven households have taken the unique step of suing local developer Enercon Services for driving them out of their homes. Life became so tough for the Banteer residents that they quit their properties 18 months ago and never went back.

The landmark case could set a precedent for multiple actions in the future.

Another couple in their 60s were temporarily forced out of their home near Roscommon after becoming traumatised by the lack of sleep. Michael and Dorothy Keane now plan to move to rented accommodation.

Dorothy said they had moved to their rural home for a peaceful retirement, but the constant humming inside their house drove them demented.

“Our doctor put us on sleeping tablets but told us to get out of the house,” she said. “Going into our bedroom is like going into a torture chamber. That relentless pitch drives you insane.”

Furious

Michael said: “When a Galway friend said come and stay with us we left our home.”

The Keanes are furious that An Bord Pleanala gave permission for the windfarm at Skrine Hill with no noise level conditions.

“It’s outrageous. If anyone else makes noise you can ring the police, but windfarm companies have carte blanche to do what they like,” said Dorothy.

In Kilrush, Co. Clare, Astrid Adler said her health had suffered from the Monmore Windfarm 750m away and she now regularly hyperventilates.

“There are seven turbines, but they want to build 45 more.We would leave, but nobody would buy our house,” she said.

“We have tried to track down the mysterious German owners but if you want to complain there is nowhere to go. The original planners sold it on immediately and nobody takes responsibility.”

Philip Hickey (51), lives just 370m from one of six turbines erected in Ballylusk, Co.Wexford, in breach of planning rules which stipulate they should be a minimum of 500m from homes.

“We have to listen to it all day. This was our dream home but they have ruined it,” said Philip.

“If we could move we would, but nobody would buy our house now. It was once worth €300,000, but now it’s worth zero.”

Campaigner Yvonne Cronin, of Moycullen, Co. Galway, said 103 turbines had been given planning permission within an 8km radius of her house and 17 were currently being erected. She said 60 per cent of the land zoned for windfarms by the council was in densely populated areas.

“We’ve had two years of public meetings, but the developers never come. They just do not seem interested in defending what they do.”

Yvonne said her group had found 14 breaches of planning rules which should have ruled out planning permission.

She said the council was interested only in money – €8,000 per turbine in planning fees and €18,000 in rates for the next 15 to 20 years.

Meanwhile, the Lakelands Windfarm Information Group (LWIG) has been set up to fight the Midlands development.

Biggest

Spokesman Andrew Duncan said it would be the biggest windfarm in Europe, with the tallest turbines, and would cripple local property prices. And all for the benefit of the UK.

The new turbines will be a massive 185m (610 ft), with 75 ton blades, requiring 1,000 ton concrete bases, the size of an Olympic swimming pool.

Landowners were being offered a €1,000 signing on fee, another €10,000 when planning permission is approved and €18,000 to €24,000 annual rent once a turbine begins producing power.

LWIG claims the windfarms will split communities because landowners get the cash, but locals have to live with the consequences. It said claims that 40,000 jobs would be created and the country would make billions were laughable.

“The whole thing is nonsense. It’s a huge money-making venture for the companies and the power is for export,” Duncan said. “It was originally intended for Wales but they won’t tolerate them.”

The LWIG believes the companies will sell off the development once planning permission is acquired and won’t be involved in construction.

“Windfarms should be put in appropriate locations with proper planning to protect communities,” said Andrew.

The action group called for a moratorium on windfarms while the government reviews its outdated 1998 guidelines. A report is due at the end of the year.

A Mainstream spokesman said yesterday that the sale of 5,000MW of energy to the UK would be worth €2.5 billion. And he said the aim would be to build the giant turbines in Ireland by persuading foreign manufacturers to open a plant here.

“Once we know where we want to build the windfarms we will start an environmental impact assessment and will go out to every area to hold information days,” said the spokesman.

“We will always act within the regulations. We are not developers who build a wind farm and then run away.”

Editor’s note:  Wind energy is billed as “clean” by its promoters—as in the slogan “clean, green, renewable.”  The truth of the matter is wind turbines are major “noise polluters.”

Noise engineers Richard James and Robert Rand explain.

Noise polluters is the proper way of framing the issue with wind turbines.  An honest discussion about wind energy that is based on evidence from operating projects would have to say that “clean wind” is “clean” only until it enters the blades.  After that it is “dirty” wind.  The interaction between in-flowing air and the blades of the wind turbines changes the wind from something that is healthy and refreshing to something that causes people and animals to become sick. How can any machine that changes wind from healthy to unhealthy claim to be “Green” or “Clean?”

When nuclear energy was first promoted it, too, was promoted as a safe, clean way to produce electricity.  Even if there had been no risks associated with radiation, there were consequences to the environment which included heating of the water used to cool the reactors, which altered fishing and other natural habitats.

With wind energy production, the turbine blade alters the air moving across it.  The consequences of this change are complex and not always intuitive.  New studies are giving rise to concerns about warming of areas around large arrays of turbines.  In addition, the pressure changes that appear as large wakes propagating at the speed of the wind and also noise emissions which propagate at the speed of sound have been shown to be detrimental to weather radar and have produced radar “blind” spots in communities with big projects.

Both sources of modulating pressure have effects on people, agricultural animals, wildlife, and structures—effects that were not properly accounted for during the design of the machines or mitigated by evidence-based safety margins when siting projects. Given that wind energy is only produced during periods with sufficient upper level winds, there is still a need for backup electric production, with the result that the anticipated benefit of less pollution from coal and gas-fired utilities has not occurred.

In sum, wind turbines are neither “clean” nor “green.”

—Richard James, E-Coustic Solutions (Okemos, Michigan)

“Noise polluters” is an appropriate way to refer to wind turbines and those who operate them with adversely affected neighbors complaining.

Acoustically speaking, wind turbines are “dirty”:  they create noise pollution, also known as unwanted sound.  We know this from reports by affected neighbors.  It is worth noting that the wind coming into the turbines is not always even and smooth; the fuel, as it were, is “dirty,” and the wind turbine acoustic output is also “dirty.”

Just like a gasoline or diesel engine stumbling, thumping, and backfiring on dirty fuel, a wind turbine is noisier when running in turbulent or shearing winds.  Turbulent and shearing winds are the norm in many areas where wind turbines have been located.

However, the wind turbine test standard IEC 61400-11 prevents a full accounting of wind turbine acoustic emissions by (1) requiring testing be done only under very smooth airflow conditions (shear <0.2), and (2) requiring A-weighting which filters out low-frequency emissions from analysis, and (3) requiring time averaging which hides dynamic modulations.

People often ask me, “What is a safe distance for a wind turbine?”  I appreciate the question because it indicates the questioner has some concept that there can be noise pollution problems for people (and animals) near wind turbines. After reading the reports from Australia, and especially since April 2011, when Steve Ambrose and I got clobbered by the wind turbine noise & pressure emissions in Falmouth, Massachusetts, I have been replying that I know of no safe distance from wind turbines at this time.  Ambrose & I suggested in our reports that we experienced a dose-response relationship between the wind turbine pulsations and adverse health effects, with a time onset and a time to recovery, and recovery related to our being many miles away or the wind turbine being off.

—Robert Rand, Rand Acoustics (Brunswick, Maine)

WTS keeping you awake at night?  The wind company won’t believe you?  The govt. won’t believe you?  Are you forced to spend nights in a hotel?

Your solution may lie in the picture, below.  If you live in Canada or another country with free medical care (not really “free”; it’s paid for by taxes), consider checking into—not a hotel room—but a hospital and spending the night snoozing in a hospital bed.  Free!

After all, you’re sick, right?  You’ve probably got vibrations going on inside, perhaps a headache & nausea, and you awaken in the night in a panic—all classic WTS symptoms.  When you’re sick, do you . . . check into a hotel?  No!  You get admitted to a hospital!

Do this whenever you’re suffering from WTS at night.  If enough WTS victims do this, by golly the government might start taking you seriously.

This clever solution was suggested by Jackie, below.  Consider it as a form of civil disobedience.

My heart goes out to all WTS victims.  I fear that very soon I will live the same tragic experiment.

Recently, an Industrial Wind Turbine project leader asked, “If WTS is a problem, then why aren’t our hospitals full of these so-called sick people?”  Our anger & discussions led to a “lightbulb” moment.  Fortunately, we have a national healthcare system in Canada.  I urge all victims to go to your local hospital, to get a good night’s sleep.  The nurses might wake you up occasionally to take your temperature, but this would be better than spending your hard-earned tax dollars on a hotel room.

If they won’t do health studies, then a regular trip to the hospital, several nights in a row, may make them pay attention.

—Jackie

·
Editor’s note:  The following is a “cry of the heart” from a wind turbine refugee.  Itasca Small (in the grainy photo, below) is a registered member of the Chickasaw (American Indian) Nation in Oklahoma.  Wind Turbine Syndrome drove this woman from her home.  She wrote her letter as a comment to “Wind Turbine ‘Hosts’ Get Wind Turbine Syndrome (Australia).”  I took the liberty of elevating her letter to a posting in its own right.

Itasca’s comment underscores the need for WTS victims, including WTS refugees, to unify.  We must give them a forum, a “safe haven,” where they can commiserate with one another, give each other strength and support, and forthrightly, without fear of ridicule (Simon Chapman, are you reading this?) express their suffering to the rest of us.  God bless you Itasca for doing so!

Andreas Marciniak is a South Australian whose comment to “Wind Turbine ‘Hosts’ Get Wind Turbine Syndrome (Australia) prompted Itasca’s response.  Andreas had to abandon his home and for the past year or two has lived—believe it or not—in a shed on his aged mother’s property.

I was once a professor of history at a big, fancy university.  I am enraged as I write the above paragraphs—enraged this inhumaneness is happening.  Inhumaneness to “little people.”  I remember that the corporate machinery of History has often ground vulnerable people to a fine powder.  As long as I have breath, I will give these victims a voice; I will let them bear witness to what has been done.  I care not about their literary skills, their religious enthusiasms, or political party; I care they are being brutalized.

I used to write learned books.  I do so no longer.  My books did nothing to save people from the atrocity recounted, below.

Dear Andreas Marciniak,

I am very sorry that you are a “Displaced-Refugee Victim” of IWTs, as am I.  I thank God that my sister has been able to give me shelter in her home.  Otherwise, I don’t know what I would have done when my adrenal glands were driven down into Addison’s Disease by the IWTs at least approximately 11.25+ miles from my home.  TRULY, I WAS DYING!  I am still striving to recover from the devastating effects.

Other neighbors are experiencing effects from the IWTs at least as far as 12.5 miles distant, and I haven’t talked with “neighbors” farther away.  Unless my calculations are wrong, 12.5 miles is roughly equivalent to 20.1 km. This distance is to the closest turbine, the others are farther away across the total miles of the “wind power plant,” which originally affected me with just 30 IWTs, and now consists of 60 – 2.2MW IWTs.

The distance the infrasound travels depends upon more factors than just measured distance!  Ten km is not a sufficient setback in some locations; who knows just how far the damaging influence extends given the right conditions?  After all, it is the infrasound generated and propagated that is measured across-the-globe to monitor earthquakes and nuclear weapon tests!

These perniciously destructive monsters SHOULD NOT BE SITED ANYWHERE ON EARTH!  Living beings are located within the contaminated, or threatened, areas over most of the face of the earth!  I can’t locate the report right now, but in addition to Ivan Buxton’s revealing report, there is an excellent study that reveals just how insidiously destructive off-shore-sited IWTs are to sea-based lifeforms and to the entire oceanic environment.

And, that doesn’t even address all the other reasons why this TRULY Man-Caused Plague should be eliminated from the planet!

We must fight on a larger front than 2 km setbacks!  NIMBYism (Not in My Backyard) applies to any willingness to accept arbitrary, measured setbacks in any location.  Until Warriors Against the Wind come to grips with this truth, we will not be united in an effective way, and we and others will continue to be injured in many ways by those who still believe wind and solar energy will save the planet—just not in their backyard!  Well, although I am not a pantheist nor a Gaia-worshiper, the WHOLE EARTH IS MY BACKYARD!  And, THE WHOLE EARTH IS EVERYONE’S BACKYARD!

But, the carpetbaggers will continue to reap unconscionable, ill-gotten profits aided and abetted by those well-meaning, misguided, indoctrinated minions who honestly believe they are saving the environment. (“Carpetbaggers” is a pejorative term for the unscrupulous Northerners who infested the American South in the aftermath of our Civil War of the 1800s, feeding upon the misery and misfortune of the defeated Southerners.)

I pray that We, the Displaced-Refugee Victims of Industrial Wind Energy, will not long continue to suffer the devastating effects caused by our misguided fellow-human beings.

Amen.

Editor’s note:  Watch this video and weep.  Watch this video and burn with anger.
·

With appreciation to the Editor of Stop These Things!  If you are not regularly reading STT, you are missing one of the great revivals of investigative journalism.  Just when you thought journalists were ciphers (ass-kissers) for government and industry, STT joined the blogosphere.  Thank God!

·
Editor’s note:  The couple, above, leased their land to a wind company.  They subsequently became ill with Wind Turbine Syndrome (WTS).  They were recently interviewed by Australia’s radio talk-show host, Steve Price.  Joining them in the interview is the CEO of the Waubra Foundation, Dr. Sarah Laurie.

Click here for the interview.

Professor Simon Chapman, a sociologist in the School of Public Health at the Univ. of Sydney (Australia), insists WTS is contracted by the power of suggestion.  (No, I’m not kidding!)  It turns out this is news to Mr. & Mrs. Mortimer, who think Mr. Chapman’s thesis is—dare I say it?—horseshit.