“The true cost of the clean, green wind power experiment:  Pollution on a disastrous scale”
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This toxic lake poisons Chinese farmers, their children and their land. It is what’s left behind after making the magnets for Britain’s [plus the rest of the world’s] latest wind turbines, and is merely one of a multitude of environmental sins committed in the name of our new green Jerusalem”

—Simon Parry in China & Ed Douglas in Scotland, The DailyMail Online Live (1/29/11)

On the outskirts of one of China’s most polluted cities, an old farmer stares despairingly out across an immense lake of bubbling toxic waste covered in black dust. He remembers it as fields of wheat and corn.

The lake of toxic waste at Baotou, China, which as been dumped by the rare earth processing plants in the background.

Yan Man Jia Hong is a dedicated Communist. At 74, he still believes in his revolutionary heroes, but he despises the young local officials and entrepreneurs who have let this happen.

‘Chairman Mao was a hero and saved us,’ he says. ‘But these people only care about money. They have destroyed our lives.’

Vast fortunes are being amassed here in Inner Mongolia; the region has more than 90 per cent of the world’s legal reserves of rare earth metals, and specifically neodymium, the element needed to make the magnets in the most striking of green energy producers, wind turbines.

[The DailyMail Online] Live has uncovered the distinctly dirty truth about the process used to extract neodymium: it has an appalling environmental impact that raises serious questions over the credibility of so-called green technology.

(more…)

Turbines declared a nasty neighbour as secret buyout is revealed.  Victorians who have endured health problems from a nearby wind farm have been gagged from talking in return for the sale of their land.”

—Peter Rolfe, HeraldSun.com (1/30/11)

Spanish multinational energy company Acciona has been quietly buying farms adjacent to its site at Waubra, near Ballarat, as an increasing number of residents in the tight-knit community complain of the ill-effects of living near turbines.

Since the wind farm started operating in July 2009, about 11 houses in the area have been vacated by people complaining of noise problems.

Acciona has bought at least another seven houses, the purchase of two of which appear to have been prompted by the new State Government’s threat to shut down the farm unless noise and permit conditions were met.

Locals in the tiny town of 700, 35km northwest of Ballarat, say the sales took place on the proviso landowners would not talk about the price of the purchase or negative health effects they blame on the wind farm.

Residents who refuse to move have accused the company of trying to buy their way out of trouble.

Noel Dean and other residents believe the Waubra wind farms have caused medical problems.

Noel Dean moved from Waubra to Ballarat 18 months ago because he could no longer stand headaches, tinnitus and poor health he believes are caused by high-frequency vibrations from turbines.  (Editor:  The writer of the article got it wrong.  It’s low-frequency noise/vibration.)

“The word is they’re buying everyone out and buying some of the other properties nearby just to hush them up,” he said.

“They know that we can’t fight them. We can’t win.

“They make you suffer so that you just want to get out of there. They know that it gets to you emotionally and physically.”

Mr Dean refuses to sell his property because he does not want future generations to suffer like his family. He only returns to the farm when he has to — about once a fortnight — and says every time he does he gets head pain within five minutes that takes up to 10 days to go away.

Doctors’ certificates seen by the Sunday Herald Sun back his claims.

“Once (the vibrations) get inside the house it bounces off the walls and makes you feel sick,” Mr Dean said. “If you’re exposed to it outside it goes into your inner ear and affects your balance. It’s put tinnitus in my ears which stops me sleeping.”

(more…)

“Noise levels that wake them … vibrations … and shadow flickering that … emits pulsating flashes”

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—Shelley Grieshop, The Daily Standard (1/27/11)

MARIA STEIN—“It’s simple. They’re too close to homes.”

That was the message to a packed house at the American Legion on Wednesday evening from an Illinois couple who live near a wind turbine farm.

Dave Hulthen and his wife, Stephanie, drove 5½ hours from their home in DeKalb County to speak at the townhouse meeting about their ongoing experience. Thirteen of 146 turbines in the wind farm are within a mile of their 8-year-old country home.

“Two of them are 1,400 feet from my home’s foundation,” he said, as whispers erupted across the crowd of more than 300 people.

The Hulthens were invited to the meeting by a group of about 30 area residents who believe the wind turbines being proposed locally aren’t suitable for the populated region. The group –- Citizens Against Turbines (CAT) –- have expressed their views at previously-held private and public meetings.

Spokesman for the group, Jim Niekamp of St. Henry, led the 2½-hour meeting Wednesday evening. Another public meeting is slated for 8:30 p.m. tonight at the American Legion hall in Fort Recovery.

Niekamp said NextEra, the wind energy company proposing the 40- to 70-turbine wind farm in southern Mercer County and a portion of Auglaize County, was invited to attend the gathering but “regretfully declined.”

NextEra also is the company that built the wind farm in DeKalb County.

The turbines located near the Hulthens’ 4½-acre property in northern Illinois became operational in December 2009, the couple said. The family has endured noise levels that wake them from their sleep, vibrations they feel within their bodies and shadow flickering that sometimes emits pulsating flashes inside their home, they said.

The rural life they loved has changed since the turbines arrived, Stephanie Hulthen said.

(more…)

—Calvin Luther Martin, PhD

This arrived in my In-Box this morning, from a friend and neighbor of Art’s.

Art Lindgren, a leader of the effort opposing excessive noise from Vinalhaven wind turbines, suffered a heart attack last night at a board meeting of the Fox Islands Electric Cooperative.

Lindgren had been in the midst of an evening presentation about the reporting by Fox Island Electric to ratepayers and ongoing complaints about violations of state noise standards. The informal entity Mr. Lindgren leads—Fox Islands Wind Neighbors—has urged the  State of Maine to enforce the law against Fox Islands Wind, the turbine operator.

At considerable effort, cost, and often under severe weather conditions, Mr. Lindgren mastered complex acoustic measurements, providing data from wind turbines from this rural, quiet area in Maine.

Lindgren was airlifted from Vinalhaven, ten miles from the Maine coast, by LifeFlight helicopter last night after being resuscitated by observers.

He is under treatment at Eastern Maine Medical Center in Bangor, ME.

Art Lindgren, Vinalhaven, ME

Art & I had been in correspondence just yesterday.  He said he was about to put together a submission for the Australia Senate’s inquiry into wind turbines. He kept referring to the tremendous stress he was under, daily, from the infernal turbines next door.  Often, no sleep, etc.

View from Art & Cheryl's window, Vinalhaven, ME

On hearing the grim news, I went back to Dr. Sarah Laurie’s “Blood pressures elevating dangerously after nighttime wind turbine exposure“—and wondered.

Preliminary results of investigations (24-hour blood pressure Holter Monitor) are showing that some people living adjacent to turbine developments (distance of 3 to 4 km = 1.9 to 2.5 mi) are getting episodes of hypertension (high blood pressure) at night, sometimes dangerously high, while they are asleep and while the turbines are operating.

As this will mostly be asymptomatic, people generally will be unaware that it is happening to them until this investigation is done on a night when the turbines are operating.

—Sarah Laurie, MD

(more…)

Editor’s note:  You don’t need to be from Cape Cod to appreciate this broadside.  You could be from Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan, and still savor it.  It’s a beautifully-crafted call to reason against the Gospel of Wind Energy that has gripped the Cape.

Don’t bother keeping track of the individuals and state agencies named herein.  Read it for the resonance it sets up inside you—resonating to the bullshit you, too, hear from the fevered “windies” hijacking your own community.

The Great Wind Energy Awakening that has seized the popular imagination preaches the way to salvation is by building gargantuan whirling pounding flashing thumping 50-story machines in your backyard.  Lots.  (That’s lots of machines and lots of backyards.)  The salesmen make you feel righteous by saying your community will be “hosting” a “farm.”  A wind farm.  And Lord knows everyone likes a farm, right?  Cows ‘n chickens plus, now, doin’ your part to save the planet from global warming.)

The problem being of course that, like all fly-by-night “get rich & righteous” schemes, it’s a swindle.  A costly one.  Especially to you.  (Naturally, the Chosen People are making serious money off it.)

No one hammers scammers better than Bibler.

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From:  Eric Bibler, President, Save Our Seashore (Wellfleet, MA)
To:  Brewster Planning Board, Selectmen, Finance Committee, Tax Assessor & Health Dept. (Brewster, MA)
Date:  1-25-11
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Cape and Vineyard Electric Cooperative (CVEC) Joins the “Cape and Islands Wind Disinformation Network”

After numerous unsuccessful attempts to obtain meeting minutes and other relevant public documents from CVEC, Save Our Seashore, following established formal procedure, filed an appeal with the Public Records Division of the Office of the Secretary of the Commonwealth. The Staff Attorney is now pursuing this request on our behalf.

Notwithstanding the provisions of MA Open Meeting Law regarding the maintenance and timely filing of minutes for public meetings, CVEC has not published any minutes since October of 2009.

(more…)

From:  McCann Appraisal, LLC

To:  The OttawaCitizen.com

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I am writing regarding the Ian Hanna case being heard presently in Ontario, and to offer a little more information and insight than was described in Lee Greenberg’s article today (1-24-11).

My expertise is not in health issues, but there is a direct relationship between those impacts and my proffesional studies of real estate impacts.

For example, numerous families have been forced to abandon their homes due to the factual impacts to health, sleep disturbances and the like, which the Canadian Wind Energy Association and the American Wind Energy Association prefer to dismiss as “concerns.”  Many others have been unable to sell their homes due to the presence of nearby turbines, and which a growing list of realtors and estate agents report as being the deciding factor in would-be buyer’s decisions to look elsewhere.

There is a measurable and significant loss of values within 2 to 3 miles, and noise impacts have been broadcast as far as 5 miles or more, in some instances, with 1 to 2 miles being commonplace. Value losses have been measured at 20% to 40%, with a total loss of equity in some instances.

Wind developers have been known to buy out the most vocal neighbors who refuse to roll over and play dead when they are initially ignored, and then turn around and sell those same homes for 60% to 80% below the appraised value—thus confirming value losses by their own actions.

Other developers have avoided future liability by bulldozing the purchased homes.

(more…)

Editor’s note:  This arrived the other day, from a young woman named Melissa.  (The young lady asked that her real name not be used, and we have honored her request.)  We asked if we could reprint her letter, and she said “yes.”  Melissa works for a wind energy company, collecting dead birds and bats.  Five hours a day.  She wrote because of the health effects she suffered from that job.

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“It was hell–purgatory, at best”

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Dear Dr. Pierpont,

Somehow, my Internet searching turned from “jobs” to “wind turbines and health” this morning. The first time I did such a search was about a year ago, when I was considering applying for a job searching for bat and bird carcasses on a wind farm.

I knew I didn’t want to take that job, but the bleak economy sort of forced me, after being jobless the previous year.

I am laid off for the winter and scheduled to resume in March. I feel obligated to return if I don’t find a better job before then, and I’m scared and desperate. I thought you might be able to help me.

I haven’t found much information on the health effects of being within 1 to 70 meters from the turbine base for 5+ hours a day. But I know what it did to me.

My symptoms from being directly under the turbines included severe anxiety, extreme agitation, wild rage, crying, headaches, and even thoughts of suicide. I had my first severe panic attack on the wind farm, one so bad I had to go home because I got chest pains. I was constantly agitated, and I would try to talk to myself to keep invasive thoughts out, and I’d often end up screaming in anger or on my knees crying. Sometimes I would send my boyfriend horrible text messages because I felt like I was going to explode. I was tired all the time and had trouble sleeping. I felt trapped. I love working outdoors, but this was absolute torture.

It was hell—purgatory, at best. I wore a Q-link EMF protection pendant, but I don’t know if it helped. I know it is best for me to never return, but I am afraid I would have to repay my unemployment compensation if I don’t return. Do you have any advice for me?

I think I am more sensitive to other vibrations, now, as from appliances and vehicles, etc. I hope I can limit my stress and find a healthy source of income. I am hoping to find a gardener/groundskeeper job for two, with a little house, in a semi-pristine location, far from annoying, manmade things.

Thank you for your time,

Melissa

—Lee Greenberg, The Ottawa Citizen (1/24/11)

An Eastern Ontario man has launched a court case that could put the brakes on the province’s green energy plans.

Ian Hanna, a 56-year-old property owner from Prince Edward County, says the government wasn’t fully informed when it concluded industrial wind turbines could exist 550 meters away from the nearest home. Hanna and his supporters say there is no medical evidence to support the decision and are asking a Superior Court judge to halt all wind development until a full medical study is performed. The case will be heard in Toronto on Monday.

“They didn’t look at the dangers, at what these things can do to people,” says Hanna, who operates a wine importing business. “We maintain they had an obligation to seriously consider the health of Ontario citizens before they allowed companies to come in and stick these things so close to their homes that they make them sick. So we’ve asked the court to declare those four sections of the act void.”

Anti-wind activists contend the low-frequency noise emitted from turbines leads to chronic sleeplessness, stress and even hypertension causing heart disease.

While these claims were initially given short shrift, they have lately gained greater currency.

Two-and-a-half years ago Hanna would have been thrilled to have spoken to an audience of 15 people. Anti-wind gatherings now regularly attract hundreds of people.

About 125 braved frigid temperatures Sunday afternoon to hear Hanna and two other activists speak at a public meeting organized by the North Gower Wind Action Group.

A rumbling hum filled the meeting room at the Alfred Taylor Centre as people filed in and took their seats. Organizer Jane Wilson said it was the sound of three wind turbines as recorded by a landowner in Maine who lives about a kilometre from the nearest wind turbine. “What is missing from this recording is the vibration,” Wilson said.

Wolfe Island resident Janet White painted a bleak picture of life among wind turbines. She said corporate wind developers have driven a wedge in the small community between those who oppose the development and those, like her neighbours, who support it and have allowed a company to install three turbines on their property.

White said the Wolfe Island wind turbine developments have created few jobs or other economic benefits for the community as a whole. “We’re not building anything, there’s no legacy here,” she said.

Underpinning the anti-wind movement’s new-found credibility is the presence of Dr. Bob McMurtry, an orthopedic surgeon and former dean of the University of Western Ontario’s medical school, who initially began researching turbines in the hopes of owning one himself.

His findings turned him against wind.

(more…)

From: Mauri Johansson, MD
Sent: Tuesday, January 18, 2011 4:17 PM
To: Nina Pierpont, MD
Subject: Wind Turbine syndrome.  What else?

Dear colleague, dear Nina!

Your book was a real eye-opener, and, in spite of vigorous resistance from the wind turbine industry, I think has started the wordwide opposition to the horribly unsafe “safety” distances, to avoid serious illness and damage among humans and animals.

Living and working in Denmark, Europe, now as retired MD/MHH in community and occupational medicine, I have started a resistance group in my local community. In this small country the neoliberal government has planned to build more than 1,000 turbines.  Each of them more than 2 MW, 150-200 meters high.  Most will be on land, with a setback distance 4x this height!

You can guess the noise and vibration inferno this will create!

There are now more that 80 groups in Denmark, and new ones are established weekly. But the government, the local responsible authorities, and the industry are oblivious.  Only money matters.

Now it looks like the Australian Parliament has noticed the health problems and is asking for help, worldwide.  I hope you will respond to the Australia government and inform them. Also, note the message about securing [giving immunity to] those who have signed a “gag clause,” permitting them to testify before parliament. What a good law!

I hope all the best for you.  I can imagine the pressures you are under!

All my best,

Mauri Johansson, MD, MHH
Sportsvej 17
7441 Bording
Denmark

“Noise from windfarm is affecting my health”

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—Katie Fitzpatrick, Manchester Evening News (1/22/11)

A woman suffering from tinnitus, headaches and fatigue believes the Scout Moor windfarm is making her ill.

Nicola Brierley says she has pain in her ears and hasn’t had a good night’s sleep following the arrival of the controversial facility in September 2008.

She claims a low frequency droning noise, similar to the sound of a helicopter, is constantly pulsating into her home, approximately a mile-and-a-half away from the 26 giant turbines on the moors above Norden.

Not only can she hear the vibrating noise she also feels the disturbance in her body.

Nicola, who lives in Cutgate Road with her four-year-old daughter Katie, has undergone two brain scans and hearing tests after consulting her GP.

But they have all come back inconclusive.

She has now asked the council’s environmental health department to investigate.

Nicola, who was not involved with the campaign against England’s largest onshore windfarm, says she has been feeling unwell for more than a year.

She has lived in the same road for 38 years but says this is the first time she has suffered these health problems.

Ann Kershaw (l) & Nicola Brierley (r)

She said: “I have a feeling of fullness in my ears and I don’t feel refreshed from a night’s sleep any more.

“I have suffered blinding headaches and terrible fatigue.

“It sounds like a vibration and it is like a helicopter noise or a refrigeration unit.

“Once I was screaming in agony the tinnitus was so bad.”

(more…)

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“Gresham’s Law of Green Energy”^†

Politicians continue to promote a mythical “green” economy that will soon emerge. They carry on much like the Spanish conquistadors who searched for the Seven Cities of Cibola, convinced the buildings really were made of gold. Forcing consumers to buy high-cost electricity from subsidized renewable energy producers will not and cannot improve overall economic well-being.

When the entire economic ledger is tallied, the net impact of renewable energy subsidies will be reduced economic growth and fewer jobs overall. In effect, “green” energy mandates are a new version of “Gresham’s Law,” in which subsidized renewable resources will drive out competitive generators, lead to higher electric prices, and reduce economic growth.

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—Jonathan A. Lesser, PhD, in Regulation Magazine (Winter 2010)^‡

While the U. S. economy continues to struggle, politicians, green energy advocates, and energy regulators have adopted a “green jobs” mantra. They espouse the view that policies mandating renewable resources will provide not only environmental benefits, but economic salvation as well.

(more…)

The emission of low frequency noise from wind turbines is . . . well-recognized. Over the course of the decade from 1980 to 1990, NASA researched this specific problem and its efforts led to a fundamental redesign of turbines. Low frequency noise emissions have improved, but have not been eliminated. Unfortunately, with current industry standards on wind turbines, manufacturers are not required to specify low frequency noise emissions.

To perpetuate the debate on health issues and wind turbines is at best unproductive and at worst dangerous to the future health of all of those living near turbines. Those who dismiss the concern as illegitimate only demonstrate how hopelessly uninformed they are.

We have the science, the expertise and the intelligence to tackle the issue head on if we define it in the appropriate framework. It is not about a wind turbine. It’s about protecting the health of the people in our community against the negative impact of environmental noise, whether they can hear it or not and irrespective of the source.

We need municipal politicians to use the knowledge we have, take the next steps beyond a moratorium and construct bylaws to get the sources of environmental noise away from inhabitants. We need to take that expertise and add it to a collective political voice that demonstrates we are prepared to take control of the development of our communities.

We do not need more health surveys to add to the portfolio of examples of human victims suffering from what science has already explained.  (Emphasis added.)

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—Dan Reid, The Sarnia Observer (1/8/11)*

Over the past few months, I have read with interest the comments on the proposed Silcote Corners wind farm near Meaford, Ont., and others around the province.

What I have found particularly intriguing is the consistent and almost automatic dismissal of the health impacts on people colocated with the turbines. I have listened to people arbitrarily dismiss health issues as being psychosomatic or regurgitate the popular excuse of the lack of scientific evidence.

With respect, I would suggest that whether these projects involve wind turbines really is inconsequential. The core issue would be the same if we were considering placement of a new manufacturing plant, an industrial complex of some type, an airport or a multi-lane highway.

The fundamental problem is environmental noise. Wind turbines are just the instrument.

To anyone who suggests we lack data regarding the impact(s) of environmental noise on human health, I would offer the following: Every year there are international conferences on this subject, some focused on certain types of environmental noise (i.e., low frequency noise). There are numerous journals published on the subject.

These publications catalogue a continuously growing collection of peer-reviewed experiments and studies by subject-matter experts, medical professionals and academics on the human impact of environmental noise.

Given the quality and depth of these resources, we are exceedingly well equipped to act in situations where humans are at risk, regardless of the source of the noise. And there is a well-established regulatory environment intended to minimize the risk of exposure.

(more…)

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“Rates set to jump for Pacific Power, PGE customers in January.  The biggest factor driving the increases: renewable power.”

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—Ted Sickinger, The Oregonian (12/17/10)

Come New Year’s, better strip the lights off the house and the Christmas tree ASAP.

Customers of Pacific Power will see their electric rates spike 14.5 percent in January. The increase comes in a one-two punch: an 8.4 percent general rate increase state utility regulators approved Friday, and a 6.1 percent increase for increased power costs they are expected to approve Dec. 28. Both take effect Jan. 1.

Meanwhile, customers of the state’s largest electric utility, Portland General Electric Co., will see a lesser, but still significant, rate increase of about 3.9 percent. A few mandatory cost adjustments in the works will bump that overall increase to 4.2 percent, effective Jan. 1.

The biggest factor driving the increases: renewable power.

Oregon’s public policy choices during the past few years are coming home to roost in rates, a trend that will continue and likely be exacerbated in coming years by environmental edicts dealing with global warming and haze reduction.

For the time being, state mandates requiring utilities to meet 25 percent of customer demand with renewable power by 2025 — with interim targets before then — are jump-starting utility investments in wind farms, hydroelectric projects and the transmission lines to access remote, windy areas. Those projects have a long life span and low fuel costs. But the upfront capital costs are steep, and the resource is intermittent.

The largest part of Pacific Power’s general rate case was driven by a new transmission line and the two new Wyoming wind farms it connects to the utility’s customers. The company also installed pollution controls at a coal plant in Wyoming and needs to replace cheap electricity it has been buying under long-term contracts that are expiring.

“It’s a big increase,” said Pat Egan, a spokesman for Pacific Power. “We know this is not a great time for this.”

But in the end, he said, the utility has little choice. It has been told to invest in renewables.

(more…)

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“The Dutch Lose Faith in Windmills”

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—Karel Beckman and Alexander Haje, The European Energy Review (1/13/11)

The new Dutch right-wing government has announced a radical overhaul of Dutch energy policy. It is cutting subsidies for most forms of renewable energy drastically, and is even putting an end to all subsidies for offshore wind, solar power and largescale biomass. It has also announced a warm welcome for new nuclear power stations—the first time a Dutch government has done so since the Chernobyl-disaster in 1986.

However, not all is lost for the renewable energy sector: the cabinet is still brooding on a long-term strategy and a “Green Deal” that might yet put the Netherlands back on a “greener” course.

Click here to read the entire article.

“There is absolutely no doubt that the value of lands adjacent to wind towers falls significantly in value.”

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—Shane McIntyre, National Sales Manager, Elders Rural Real Estate Services (1-18-11)

I have been a Licensed Estate Agent for 30 years, specialising in the sale of Rural property, essentially all over Australia, with an emphasis on Victoria and the Riverina. I have held senior management positions with the largest rural real estate companies in Australia.

Shane McIntyre

In recent years the growth of activity and the actuality of wind towers throughout the Victorian rural landscape has been significant.

Challicum Hills, Coddrington, and Mt Mitchell have all emerged as large-scale wind farms, located on the tops of the low hill-country, interrupting the landscape for many kilometres.

Of significant importance is the negative effect on the value of adjoining lands where wind towers have been erected. Visually, the towers are seen by the majority of the market as repulsive. Audibly, the towers affect the stillness a property enjoys, in particular the resonating tones in the night, invading serenity of the adjoining lands.

A proliferation of wind towers adjacent to a property has the same effect as high voltage power lines, rubbish tips, piggeries, hatcheries, and sewerage treatment plants.  That is, if buyers are given a choice, they choose not to be near any of these impediments to value.

The ultimate effect is that the number of buyers willing to endure these structures is significantly less than if the structures were not there. This logically has a detrimental effect on the final price of the adjoining lands.

Experts assess the loss of value to be in excess of 30 percent, and sometimes up to half.

(more…)

“There was pain most of the time!”

—The Courier (1/18/11)

Former Waubra resident Trish Godfrey [and here and here] yesterday told an Adelaide court how her dream home became “hell on earth” after wind farm turbines were turned on.

Ms Godfrey said she suffered sleep deprivation, headaches and nausea before moving out in April 2010 when Acciona purchased her property.

“It was like you had a hat on that’s too tight and you have a pain that just gets worse and worse, and you can’t take it off,” Ms Godfrey said. “There was pain most of the time.”

Ms Godfrey broke down in tears as she gave evidence at the Environment Resources and Development Court.

(more…)

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McCunney wins WTS.com’s Rubber Duck Award 2010!

In November 2010, Robert J McCunney, MD, one of the authors of the AWEA-CanWEA farcical report on Wind Turbine Syndrome (2009), filed a comparable report with the Public Service Board of the State of Vermont.  Once again, he attempted to trash Wind Turbine Syndrome.

The following month, Pierpont cooly reduced his report to rubble.  Click here for McCunney’s report and Pierpont’s response.  (See related editorial, “Pierpont KO’s McCunney.”)

WTS.com takes this opportunity to acknowledge Dr. McCunney’s on-going scientific contributions to Wind Turbine Syndrome by awarding him our annual Rubber Duck prize.*

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Sample page:

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*The Rubber Duck Award was established two years ago by Canada’s Financial Post (FP) to recognize extraordinary achievement in Junk Science.  “Winners are scored on the degree to which they succeed in meeting FP’s standard definition of Junk Science: When scientific facts are distorted, when risk is exaggerated or discounted, when science is adapted and warped by politics and ideology to serve another agenda.”

Editor’s note:  The Australian government says it’s conducting a study of wind turbines and human health.  They’re calling it “An Inquiry into the Social & Economic Impact of Rural Wind Farms.”

Yes, it includes a health component.  Supposedly. This is the Committee’s agenda: “The social and economic impacts of rural wind farms, and in particular:

(a) Any adverse health effects for people living in close proximity to wind farms;
(b) Concerns over the excessive noise and vibrations emitted by wind farms, which are in close proximity to people’s homes;
(Etc.)

Pierpont was asked to make a submission by the bill’s sponsor, Senator Steve Fielding, Leader of the Family First Party.  The Senator apparently thinks the Senate Committee will consider evidence submitted from people outside Australia.

That’s where the problem lies.

Senator Steve Fielding (Australia)

Doubtless Steve Fielding is a nice fellow, and well-meaning and all, but neither he nor his staff (see David Lipshutz, below) seems to grasp that there’s a serious “disconnect” between what Fielding thinks is going on and what this Senate Committee is actually doing.

What it’s actually doing is obstructing the submission of evidence—at least from Dr. Pierpont, the leading researcher on Wind Turbine Syndrome.

The posting, below, is a letter (email) we sent to Fielding’s Senior Policy Advisor, David Lipshutz, explaining that we’re meeting with nothing but stonewalling from the Senate Committee.

We urge you to contact the Senate Committee and Fielding (Lipshutz) and apply pressure.

Now, what do you bet the Senate Committee is quite happy to accept any amount of evidence from wind developers anywhere in the world?

Sound cynical?  You bet.  We’ve been on this merry-go-round for six years, and counting. (more…)

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Click here to listen to this 30-minute crash course on why wind energy is bullshit.  Health-wise, property-value-wise, “getting-off-foreign-oil-wise,” and as a so-called alternative, “clean, green, renewable” energy source.

Radio WOMR (Cape Cod, MA) interviews WTS.com guest editor, Eric Bibler, 1-11-11.

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Eric Bibler is a writer living in Connecticut. (Yes, the glasses are real.)

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Big Wind & Media exposed in bed together on Cape Cod (and everywhere else)

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From:  Save Our Seashore, Wellfleet, MA
Date:  January 8, 2011
To:  Mary Ann Bragg, Reporter; Paul Pronovost, Editor-in-chief; Anne Brennan, Assistant managing editor/digital media; Susan Moeller, News editor; Michael Medwar, Assistant news editor; Gregory Bryant, Online editor
Re: Reporting on the National Seashore Wind Turbine Proposal and Save Our Seashore

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Dear Ms. Bragg and Editors of Cape Cod Times,

We are writing to object to your reporting on recent controversies over the installation of industrial wind turbines in the National Seashore and elsewhere on Cape Cod.

As Ms. Bragg, Mr. Fraser, Mr. Cassidy, Mr. Harold, and more recently, Ms. Myers and Mr. Gonsalves can attest, we have copied the Cape Cod Times religiously on all communications to the Seashore, to the Cape Cod Commission, to the Barnstable County Assembly of Delegates, to Wellfleet and to officials in various other individual towns on Cape Cod, including Bourne and Brewster, where utility scale wind turbines have been, or are currently under consideration.

Additionally, we have provided the Cape Cod Times with copies of many other items, including official letters from the Selectmen of the Town of Wellfleet to their representatives to the Massachusetts state legislature, to the Speaker of the House, the President of the Senate and to the Massachusetts Municipal Association, opposing the Wind Energy Siting Reform Act last summer.

As you know, our letters to the National Seashore and various other entities included attachments of, or links to, many documents and additional information, including, but not limited to, all of the following: (more…)

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Unmasking the costly fraud which does business under the name “wind energy”

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—Eric Bibler, WTS.com guest editor

Any way you slice this problem, wind energy doesn’t pencil out. The numbers don’t work — and never will. The footprint is absurd and the product is almost useless.

Even  if NYC, Bombay, Rio de Janeiro and Shanghai were all located in close proximity to North Dakota — and you could have the whole state for your wind farm — the idea wouldn’t make any sense from an engineering or economic perspective.

In the Northeast (USA) — as everywhere — they seem hell bent on installing just enough of them to transform the landscape and inflict significant damage on fragile environments (ridge tops, valleys, agricultural areas, conservation land, coastlines) and local communities.

I honestly think that the operators don’t really give a damn about the output, the efficiency or the locations. For God’s sake, they don’t even have any customers, other than a piece of legislation that allows them to spin a meter and turn to the utilities and say: “Pay me!”

What is really ominous is the end game. The returns are heavily front loaded. The operators are all shell corporations with minimal assets (and I’ll bet that even the large utilities like Florida Power & Light have walled off individual projects into hermetically sealed LLC’s or subsidiaries).

There is not accountability.

Not only do they have every reason to walk away from these structures after a few years, once they become difficult, or expensive, to maintain, they actually have leverage over local communities to force them to continue subidizing their production! Let’s say that the legislature starts talking about not renewing subsidies for “alternative” energy; naturally, the operators will say, “If you do that, I’ll just declare bankruptcy and you can have the (obsolete) machines. I’ll write off the loss, at some inflated value, against my other business interests. Hey — good luck with that!”

The legislatures will cave, or they will be stuck with these rusting behemoths. Which one is worse? Tough to say, but neither one accrues to the benefit of the taxpayer.

Talk about a recipe for trouble.

We’re getting exactly what we deserve by passing all of this myopic legislation in a spirit of good intentions run amok — because we’re motivating the operators to take the money and run even as they pawn off all of the upfront, operating and residual, risks on the taxpayers. And because the entire industry is completely unregulated, they get carte blanche to evade all of the standard protections for citizens, property holders, local communities, conservation areas, historical preservation zones — you name it. They abuse all of them with impunity.

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Eric Bibler is a writer living in Connecticut. (Yes, the glasses are real.)

—Calvin Luther Martin, PhD

It’s difficult to get Nina Pierpont to respond to her critics.  “Calvin,” she fires back with withering look, “it’s a waste of my time. (1) I wrote the book.  (2) Salt & Hullar published their research in a peer-reviewed journal.  (3) Salt continues to publish.  (4) The Society for Wind Vigilance held its WTS conference last October, where loads of clinical evidence was presented.  (5) Every day, people come forward—around the world—complaining of the same symptoms I described.  My critics never, ever, interview a single WTS victim!  Never!  I waste my time replying to their clinical ignorance and—what’s worse—confounded intransigence.”^†

Nevertheless, I recently succeeded.  Sort of.  In response to a man who’s got a new gig railing against Wind Turbine Syndrome.  A medical doctor who should know better.  Like a man who’s found Jesus (or a lucrative corporate sponsor), Robert J. McCunney has been fervently working the New England states, preaching “Prepare ye the way of Big Wind!  Wind Turbine Syndrome is bunk!”

By way of background, McCunney was one of the authors of the AWEA-CanWEA rebuttal to Pierpont’s “Wind Turbine Syndrome” book—a transparent and shameful farce released by Big Wind mere days after Pierpont’s book came out.  (It would have been impossible for these jokers to have read her book and composed their report in 2 or 3 days.  Suggests they . . . didn’t read it, but based their response on book excerpts posted online over the previous few years.  Hardly respectable scholarship on their part.  But, then, you’re dealing with Big Wind and its hirelings.)

As 2010 wound down, McCunney testified before the Public Service Board of the State of Vermont (November).  Shortly thereafter a Vermont physician forwarded McCunney’s testimony and asked Pierpont if she would respond.

She did—in a “back of the envelope” manner.  When I gingerly suggested she re-work this into a more formal statement, she shot me that withering look.

Here it is.  Best I could do.

Robert J. McCunney, MD

My two cents?  For years I was a professor at a worldclass university—just as MIT is worldclass.  I read McCunney’s affidavit and wonder how on earth this man got tenure.  Scholarship does not appear to be this man’s strong suit.

Reflecting on this whole tragic comedy and people like McCunney, I recall H.L. Mencken’s portrayal of Wm. Jennings Bryan.  “Bryan always had one great advantage in controversy,” recalled Mencken after the famous Scopes (“Monkey”) Trial.

He was never burdened with an understanding of his opponent’s case. His talents, indeed, were always far more homiletical than dialectical; he was at his best, not in argument, but in denunciation. The fact made itself felt brilliantly during his last great combat with the evolutionists. Whenever he stated their doctrines he stated them inaccurately, and whenever he undertook to refute them he resorted to nonsense. His mind was of the sort that is simply unable to grasp scientific facts. They fevered him as flies fever a bull, and he got rid of them by lashing his tail.

—Mencken, “The Bathtub Hoax and Other Blasts and Bravos from the Chicago Tribune” (1958) p. 131.

† See this statement by Robert A. Dobie, MD, a physician who ought to know better.  The man actually has outstanding credentials.  Dobie has often represented industry in his consulting and legal testimony, and he has published important papers in otolaryngology.  He was one of the authors of the AWEA-CanWEA report trashing Pierpont’s research—one of the shameless authors who did not read her book before signing that report.  One wonders about his professional ethics.

A cautionary word regarding Big Electricity’s bid for “clean, green, renewable” hydro-power

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—Calvin Luther Martin, PhD

Editor’s note:  This article is public domain.  You are welcome to circulate & post as you wish.

New England power companies are rapidly moving forward with an ambitious plan to import large amounts of Québec (Canada) hydro-power.  A plan that will require building costly and environmentally disturbing new trunklines to carry “clean electrons” from the James Bay watershed to American homes and businesses.

I’m told New England governors and their energy pals are already popping the corks on the champagne.

I suggest this is premature. I am from Québec. Grew up there. I live 10 minutes from the Québec border. When I was a Rutgers professor, one of my specialties was Canadian Indians (the subject of my first book). When I was a professor, I had a year-long Canadian Embassy fellowship to study the history of Québec at Queen’s University (Kingston, Ontario), so I could teach the history of French Canada.

All by way of background.

Do these governors and their staffs and the energy lobby know how controversial the whole James Bay Project is in Québec? Indeed, throughout Canada? And most especially among the James Bay Cree and Canada’s First Nations in general?  (Think, “solidarity.”)

I think the answer is a thunderous “no!”  (I write this after reading a slick policy analysis of the proposal.)

Typical of all grandiose schemes, there are several “epistemic” (knowledge) holes.  Perhaps the biggest being the blind spot called “north of the border.”

The James Bay Project was the crown jewel of the Separatist crowd in the early ‘70s. And they kept building those dams. And as they did, the Cree and other First Nations kept getting madder and madder.

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WTS.com’s “Journalist of the Year” Award

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—Calvin Luther Martin, PhD

The only way that democracy can be made bearable is by developing and cherishing a class of men sufficiently honest and disinterested to challenge the prevailing quacks. No such class has ever appeared in strength in the United States. Thus, the business of harassing the quacks devolves upon the newspapers. When they fail in their duty, which is usually, we are at the quacks’ mercy.

—H. L. Mencken, “Minority Report”

Two years ago I resolved to call a spade a spade.  Off came the gloves.  Screw pleasantries; this was two-fisted and bare-knuckle.  I titled it, “How to fight the Big Wind onslaught:  A book outline in thirteen chapters.”

(To my embarrassment, it quickly became a Web sensation.  I’d wish my literary reputation to be more elegant.)

Midway through, I rounded on the media.

The media? Simpering assholes who have all gone with the wind. (Don’t you love it when they interview the smilin’ smirkin’ salesman sayin’ “Them turbines, folks—why them turbines is gonna electrify 35,000 American homes”—except nobody mentions it’s only if the wind’s blowing 25-35 mph 24/7, 365 days a year. That’s my all-time favorite line, right after “Don’t you worry ‘bout them turbines and noise. No louder than a hummin’ ‘frigerator, and God’s my witness!” Newspaper reporters always fall for this crap. Always. Everywhere.)

Second, stop expressing your concerns at meetings. Weenie word. Your biggest rhetorical enemy in this fight is this word, concerns. Drop it! The media loves to describe you as concerned. (“The hens expressed some concerns to the foxes.”) Screw concerned and start getting angry and defiant. And stop asking the windies questions and start informing them of the fact they and their goddam monster turbines and substations are not welcome in town. This is the your conversation with them: Get the hell out of Dodge!

I’ve seen little by the media that would cause me to revise my opinion today.

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