Editor’s note:  This past autumn, 2 physicians and a statistician published a significant article in the journal Noise & Health on the “Effects of industrial wind turbine noise on sleep and health.”  This website didn’t feature the article, worthy as it is, until we could twist Dr. Pierpont’s arm to review it—peer review it, if you like.  She has now done so, below.

.
—Nina Pierpont, MD, PhD (1/28/13)

Comment on:  Nissenbaum MA, Aramini JJ, Hanning CD.  2012.  Effects of industrial wind turbine noise on sleep and health.  Noise Health 14:237-43.

.
This paper demonstrates a significant relationship between distance from wind turbines (as a marker for noise intensity) and questionnaire assessments of sleep disturbance, daytime sleepiness, and mental well-being.  Physical well-being was also assessed by questionnaire but had no significant relationship to distance from turbines.

This is a good paper.  Its strengths are:

» Study and control populations (near and more distant from turbines, respectively) were selected by a random sampling method and assessed identically using the same questionnaires.

» The questionnaires are published and have been used and statistically refined in other populations for other kinds of problems.

» The data was analyzed in a complex multivariate fashion by a statistician.

» Significant relationships were found even though the sample size was small.

It appears to me that the investigators limited the scope of their inquiry to maintain the above conditions with the goal of keeping the study focused, easily explained, and publishable (a strength).  In the process, however, they disregarded salient aspects of the wind turbine noise problem which are harder to explain and more controversial (a weakness of this study from my point of view).

Specific comments are as follows:

» The focus on sleep quality and use of general questionnaires about well-being exclude the unique and striking health effects from wind turbines, which are at present borne out by the recent Shirley, Wisconsin (2012) noise study.  These effects include nausea, headache, and cloudy thinking independent of sleep disturbance (see Pierpont 2009, Ambrose and Rand 2011, Rand et al 2011, Shirley Wind report 2012).

» The sampling process for households and individuals within households is not made clear.  Data are presented for numbers of adults sampled, but not for numbers of households sampled.  The process for sampling households near turbines is clear (all were approached), but not the process of sampling the adults within the households (were all asked to participate?  who and how many declined?).  The process of choosing more distant households is also not specified, nor the process of sampling adults within these households.  (To get a random sample, you can use all, a random selection [e.g., drawing straws], or a regular selection [e.g., every third entry in a tax list of properties].  Refusal to participate biases the results, as do processes that involve volunteering to participate.  Thus all studies have some degree of sampling bias.)

» Physical well-being was assessed but results were not presented.  Negative or non-significant results can also tell us something about a phenomenon and should perhaps be included.

» The statistical modeling process used for drawing the regression (relationship) curves on the graphs is not clear.  In what way, for example, were age, gender, and site incorporated into the regression (as noted in the descriptive legends of Figures 1-3)?  How much of the variation in survey scores did these variables account for?

» However, there are simpler results presented numerically in Table 3, showing near vs. far comparisons for the various measures used, with their degree of significance.   We find there, for example, that the average Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index is significantly higher (meaning worse sleep) close to turbines, with a significance level of 0.046 for near vs. far.  The percentage of high results is not significantly different.  The result for the Epworth Sleepiness Scale is similar, with the near vs. far difference in average value being significant at 0.032.  The near vs. far difference in the average Mental Health well-being score is significant at 0.002, meaning it is 15 to 20 times more likely to be a real, non-random difference than the sleep measures.  Significance levels for the calculated regression equations (relating scores to distance as a continuous variable and incorporating some other variables) are similar, as shown in the descriptive legends for Figures 1-3.

» You can see this difference if you compare Figure 3 to Figures 1 and 2, looking at the patterns of scatter of the data points close to turbines compared to far away.  The fact that you can see a clear difference between near and far in the mental health results, but not for sleep results, is reflected in the degree of significance of the results.  The difference is due to the dense cluster of low points (poor mental health) for locations close to turbines, compared to only scattered, isolated low points for the locations far from turbines.

» I am pleased that, unlike an earlier, draft version of their report, the authors no longer attribute the mental health effects to the sleep deprivation, but just note that both are significant health effects that vary with distance from wind turbines.  They recognize that other symptoms they did not study may contribute to the mental health effects, drawing a parallel with low-frequency-noise-induced Sick Building Syndrome (page 242).

» The discussion of mechanism is measured and seeks to comfortably embed wind turbine effects with other types of noise disturbance.  In fact, there are qualitative differences due to the dominance of inaudible, low-frequency or infrasonic components over the audible components in wind turbine noise (see Shirley Wind report 2012).

» These authors, like others who study wind turbine noise effects, asked their subjects before-and-after questions about their subjective experiences and preferences.  These authors present these data in Table 3, showing significant near vs. far differences in responses to questions about changes when the turbines began operation, differences sleeping at home vs. away from home and turbines, and desire to move away.   These kinds of subjective explorations are typical in studies of wind turbine noise, the results often discussed informally in an introduction or discussion.  Face-to-face with affected people, researchers tend to step down from their posture as people who only measure objectively, ask natural before-and-after questions, find their own reasons for believing people, and present the information so gained as critical for their understanding of wind turbine noise effects (e.g., Ambrose and Rand 2011, Rand et al 2011, Shirley Wind report 2012).  Only my study (Pierpont 2009) documented before-and-after effects systematically in a natural experiment case-crossover format, basing the entire analysis on the premise that believing what the subjects have to say about their experiences of wind turbine noise is both reliable and the most efficient means to develop understanding of these significant new noise-related phenomena.  Though the scientific posture doesn’t recognize this kind of approach, every researcher does it anyway, because it is real and valid.  Even Eja Pedersen did this, though she confined the results of her in-depth interviews (in which she discovered people driven from their homes) to her thesis (2007), never publishing them in a journal.

» New research proposals in this field are wisely suggesting case-crossover formats.  The 2012 Shirley Wind  report, for example, recommends a short-term, prospective, experimental case-crossover exposure format using previously affected people, asking them to quantify their immediate sensory responses to wind turbines being on or off without other knowledge of the state of the turbines.  This approach could clarify experimentally the sensory, low-frequency-noise-associated phenomena that disturb physical sensation and mental processes apart from sleep, contribute to sleep disturbance, and differ among exposed people.

References

A Cooperative Measurement Survey and Analysis of Low Frequency and Infrasound at the Shirley Wind Farm in Brown County, Wisconsin.  Submitted in expurgated form to the Wisconsin Public Service Commission on December 27, 2012 and in complete form on December 28, 2012; both forms are available with commentary here.

Ambrose SE, Rand RW.  2011.  The Bruce McPherson Infrasound and Low Frequency Noise Study:  Adverse Health Effects Produced by Large Industrial Wind Turbines Confirmed.  Available here.

Rand RW, Ambrose SE, Krogh CM.  2011.  Occupational Health and Industrial Wind Turbines:  A Case Study.  Bulletin of Science Technology & Society 31: 359-362.

Pedersen E.  2007.  Human response to wind turbine noise:  perception, annoyance and moderating factors.  PhD dissertation, Occupational and Environmental Medicine, Department of Public Health and Community Medicine, Göteborg University, Göteborg, Sweden.  86 pp.

Pierpont N.  2009.  Wind Turbine Syndrome: A Report on a Natural Experiment.  Santa Fe, NM, K-Selected Books.  294 pp.

Editor’s note:  The following was sent by James Lovelock, creator of the Gaia Principle and a founder of the international Green movement, to the Torridge District Council as testimony against the proposed Witherdon Wood Wind Turbine project.  He by-lined it “Carey and Wolfe Valley Opposition to wind turbines.”  His statement was circulated by his wife, Sandra Lovelock.

Click here for the original.

December 11, 2012

I am James Lovelock, scientist and author, known as the originator of Gaia theory, a view of the Earth that sees it as a self-regulating entity that keeps the surface environment always fit for life.

When I was a schoolboy in the 1930s, I cycled from my home in Kent to Land’s End and back. England then enjoyed a countryside that was seemly and probably the most beautiful anywhere; every mile of my joumey was along quiet lanes in fresh air unperturbed by traffic. I passed through an ever changing landscape that reflected in its vegetation a diverse geology going from the recent rocks of Kent back almost to the Precambrian in Cornwall. Our land had evolved by chance to become a place where humans lived in peaceful coexistence with the natural world and so became a part of it.

In that humane ecology, animals and plants benefited from our presence as we did from theirs. Blake’s dark satanic mills existed, but within densely populated cities that occupied only a small part of the whole and, from those cities, untouched countryside was no more than a tram journey away.

Sadly, that splendid countryside has all but vanished; replacing it is an agribusiness, factory farming that is more efficient at producing food but dull to look at and ecologically poor. At the same time, better cars and roads have enabled a vast expansion of suburbia and of second homes. England is becoming one large town haphazardly interspersed with ‘Greenfield sites’. The few sizeable stretches of original countryside that remain are in rural North and West Devon and Northumberland, and here people and wild life still coexist in a more or less seemly and sustainable fashion; these are places where woodland and hedgerows still serve both humans and wild life.

This remaining English countryside is much more than an aesthetic asset; Earth scientists now recognise our planet to be a self-regulating system that sustains habitability for its inhabitants and for this function we need the natural forests and life in the coastal and deep ocean waters to interact with the air and ocean and so keep a constant and habitable environment.

Ideally, humans should live in coexistence with the other forms of life so that our presence is benign; but in most of the world this rarely happens. We need to treasure the few exceptions, such as the North Devon countryside, so that they can be an example of how humans can live sustainably with the Earth. A whole library of books, going from Gilbert White’s Natural History of Selbourne to the New Naturalist series of the 1960s, testifies to the richness, health and beauty of England as it once was. We are fortunate indeed that some of it remains in North West Devon and we must look upon it as our most precious of assets.

It is true that we need a better way of producing energy, and there is little doubt among scientists—and I speak as one of them—that the burning of fossil fuels is by far the most dangerous source of energy. By using it to power industry, our homes and transport, we are changing the composition of the air in a way that will have profoundly adverse effects on the Earth’s ecology and on ourselves.

Anything we do in the United Kingdom about energy sources is mainly to set a good example before the other nations; if we drew all of our energy from renewable sources, it would make only a small change in the total emission of greenhouse gas. But such examples are needed and are something to be proud of. The benign way we, in North Devon, live with our countryside is also an example to set before the world about how to live sustainably with the Earth.

How foolish to set two such noble ideas in conflict and arrange that one good intention destroyed the other. To erect a large wind turbine on the Broadbury Ridge above the Carey and Wolfe Valleys is industrial vandalism that will diminish the regard with which the countryside is held and make the region vulnerable to urban development and unsustainable farming. Even if there were no alternative source of energy to wind, we would still ask that this 84 metre high industrial power plant was placed in less ecologically sensitive areas. Better still, we should look to the French who have wisely chosen nuclear energy as their principal source.  A single nuclear power station provides as much as 3200 large wind turbines.

I am an environmentalist and founder member of the Green, but I bow my head in shame at the thought that our original good intentions should have been so misunderstood and misapplied. We never intended a fundamentalist Green movement that rejected all energy sources other than renewable, nor did we expect the Greens to cast aside our priceless ecological heritage because of their failure to understand that the needs of the Earth are not separable from human needs.

We need take care that the spinning windmills do not become like the statues on Easter Island, monuments of a failed civilisation.

James Lovelock

The above image was “pinched” from  Stop These Things

.
Editor’s note:  The Wisconsin Towns Association is calling on the State of Wisconsin to halt further installation of wind turbines across the entire state, until proper and thorough studies are done to clarify the impact of turbine infrasound and low frequency noise on human health.  The trigger for this startling and welcome resolution (by the WTA) was the Shirley ILFN Report, completed last month and described in detail, here.

Folks, this is a big deal!  A very big deal!  The WTA represents virtually all the towns and villages throughout the State of Wisconsin.  I have copied the following from the WTA website.

The Wisconsin Towns Association (WTA) is a statewide, voluntary, non-profit and non-partisan association of member town and village governments in the State of Wisconsin controlled by its Board of Directors. WTA’s twin purposes are to (1) support local control of government and to (2) protect the interest of towns. In furtherance of those goals WTA provides three types of services for its members: legislative lobbying efforts, educational programs and legal information.

If you visit the Home Page of the WTA, you will read the following.

WTA Board of Directors Action Regarding Wind Power

(1/23/13) The Wisconsin Towns Association has expressed concern since PSC 128 [Public Service Commission bill #128] was released about two years ago that the setback distances from non-participating residences to large industrial wind turbines of only 1,250 feet is too little.

In addition, a recently released report [Shirley ILFN Report] including work by four separate acoustical consultants has recommended that additional study be conducted on an “urgent priority basis” regarding the possibility of any human health effects from low frequency sound and infrasound generated by large industrial wind turbines.

Wisconsin Towns Association is not opposed to alternative energy, including wind turbines. However, serious health concerns have been raised by individuals and supported by this report that warrant further study.

We are urging the PSC to stop permitting the installation of large industrial wind turbines until such studies can be completed.

Click here to read the official resolution issued by the WTA.

 And so forth.  It ends with the following earnest request.

Richard Stadelman, Executive Director of WTA, has added the following commentary.  Click here for a copy.

It is significant that this report was prepared by four acoustical consultants with differing backgrounds and relationships with the wind turbines, in part with funding from PSC to a non-profit organization (Clean Wisconsin) who coordinated the survey who is generally pro-alternative energy such as wind turbines. It is also significant that all four consultants agreed upon the recommendation on an “urgent priority basis” for more study on the impact of low frequency sound and infrasound from wind turbines.

Several towns in the area of the Shirley project and in towns in nearby counties where additional wind turbines similar to the Shirley project have been proposed, have been pushing for this type of additional health study to determine the impact of such low frequency sound and infrasound on humans living near these types of turbines. Two towns in Manitowoc County asked the WTA board of directors to consider adoption of a resolution in support of asking the PSC for a moratorium on permitting and installation of any additional large wind turbines pending the completion of a sound survey and health study as recommended by the consultants in the report.

The WTA Board of Directors on Monday, January 21, 2013, adopted such a resolution with the following resolved clause:

Now Therefore, Be It Resolved, by the Board of Directors of the Wisconsin Towns Association that the Wisconsin Public Service Commission and the State of Wisconsin enact a moratorium to stop the permitting and installation of industrial wind turbines until further studies are done, solutions are found, and the State’s wind siting rule (PSC 128) is modified to implement standards that address ultra low frequency sound and infrasound from wind turbines that will protect the health and safety of residents.

The Wisconsin Towns Association has expressed concern since PSC 128 was released about two years ago that the setback distances from non-participating residences of only 1,250 feet was too low. In addition this report of four acoustical consultants has recommended additional study be conducted on an “urgent priority basis.” Wisconsin Towns Association is not opposed to alternative energy, including wind turbines. However, serious health concerns have been raised by individuals and supported by this report that warrant further study. We are urging the PSC to stop permitting the installation of large industrial wind turbines until such studies can be completed.

As always, we dedicate this story to that learned professor of public health, Australia’s very own Professor Simon Chapman.

“Falmouth residents:  ‘Take the turbines down!'”

.
—Sara Mannal, Falmouth Patch 1/24/13

Nearly one hundred Falmouth residents attended a Board of Selectmen meeting last night to peacefully protest and speak out against the ongoing operation of three identical industrial wind turbines in the Falmouth Industrial Park, pleading with selectmen t [sic]

The public was invited to provide comments at Wednesday night’s meeting in Town Hall related to various options that will be presented to voters at town meeting this spring.

Prior to the meeting, dozens of residents held a candle light vigil and prayed that the selectmen would not only hear their voices, but also take immediate action to stop what they described as a nuisance and danger to their health.

Nearly 50 residents voiced their opinion during the public comment session, with almost every comment opposing the future operation of the turbines.

Eric Sockol’s home at 819 Falmouth Highway is just 1,000 feet from Wind 2, a town-owned industrial wind turbine. Sockol passionately urged selectmen to remove the turbines immediately. He said Falmouth has an obligation to protect the health of its citizens, despite any economic consequences that may come from tearing down the turbines.

“Understand there are some issues that are more important than simply economics,” Sockol said.

Richard Bowen’s home also neighbors one of the town-owned turbines. Bowen said that the town had somehow made a great error by installing the turbines and feels town officials are not willing to own up to the mistake. Bowen also urged selectmen to take the turbines down.

“Do the right thing, please, for our sake,” Bowen said.

John Ford, a resident living on Blacksmith Shop Rd., said neighbors of Wind 1 and Wind 2 have lost peace and quiet and good health. Ford suggested using solar panels as an alternative to wind power.

“I request that you join your fellow residents and neighbors and decide to remove the wind turbines and replace them with people friendly photovoltaic arrays,” Ford said.

Judy Fenwick does not live near the turbines, but she was a member of the working group that was organized by the town to develop options for dealing with the wind turbines. Fenwick told selectmen that after much deliberation she believes that the health of Falmouth residents should be placed above any financial repercussions of removing the turbines.

“I ask that you don’t be counter dependent and that you ask the state for help before you ask the Falmouth taxpayers,” Fenwick urged.

Residents who were unable to make Wednesday night’s meeting can still submit a statement to the Selectmen’s Office by 4:30 p.m. Monday January 28th. Statements can also be emailed to townmanager@falmouthma.org by the deadline.

 .

—Steve Deslauriers, Green Bay Press-Gazette 1/23/13

The wind energy industry is today’s “big tobacco.” Big tobacco fabricated studies, denied the truth and tirelessly pushed lies upon the American people at the grave expense of the health and lives of the American people.

For decades, big tobacco successfully suppressed the inconvenient truth that smoking harms people’s health. The wind development industry closely follows big tobacco’s deception playbook — taking advantage of people’s best intentions to protect our environment as they desperately cling to outdated and inaccurate studies.

While society said “enough” when it comes to smoking, especially as it pertains to public spaces and second-hand smoke, the wind industry unapologetically continues to force its harmful product on Wisconsin families — not just intruding on public spaces, but primarily invading people’s homes with devastating effects.

The wind industry has proven time and again that their corporate greed is unencumbered by the inconvenient truth that turbines near people destroy lives.

The wind industry does not share the fact that many homes in Wisconsin have been purchased and some even bulldozed by wind developers because of unlivable conditions, or the fact that residents in every wind development in Wisconsin report common and debilitating effects from being forced to live in close proximity to industrial turbines.

Your child screams because of the pressure in her head. Your elderly mother suffers from debilitating headaches, dizziness, and heart palpitations. A soldier fighting for our country overseas has to learn that his wife and children are sleeping in the basement in a futile attempt to escape the conditions in their home. Or, at Duke’s Shirley Wind, three families have abandoned the homes they still own.

These experiences are not isolated to a few people in Glenmore. Just in this relatively “small” wind project of only eight turbines, sworn statements representing more than 50 Glenmore residents have been presented to the Public Service Commission of Wisconsin attesting to their own suffering that is alleviated once they are away from their homes near the turbines.

What about the fact that the current peer-reviewed science (that the wind industry says does not exist) validates the experience of these wind project prisoners and refugees. This reality is confirmed by the words of the wind industry’s own experts after testing at Shirley Wind for low-frequency noise (LFN). Their own expert said, “The completed testing was extremely helpful and a good start to uncover the cause of such severe adverse impact reported at this site. … The four investigating firms are of the opinion that enough evidence and hypotheses have been given herein to classify LFN and infrasound as a serious issue, possibly affecting the future of the industry. It should be addressed beyond the present practice of showing that wind turbine levels are magnitudes below the threshold of hearing at low frequencies … We recommend additional study on an urgent priority basis…”

Predictably, the industry and the organizations they substantially fund, like Clean Wisconsin and RENEW Wisconsin, seem to be doing everything they can to minimize the impact of the study of Shirley Wind in Glenmore despite its raw data and findings being circulated and studied throughout the scientific community. The current wind industry practice of irresponsibly siting turbines near people needs to stop until the harm already levied upon innocent people in Glenmore and elsewhere is completely understood and addressed.

It is beyond understanding how an industry that claims to be built on the desire to help the environment appears not to care for the people, livestock, or wildlife living in that environment. Read the Shirley Wind Study, and note the words of the wind industry’s own experts. Read current peer-reviewed literature on wind turbine noise. Listen to the experiences of those currently suffering near turbines. Do any of this, and we think you will agree that it seems the wind energy industry has now perfected the unconscionable tactics of “big tobacco.”

Despite the millions of dollars they have spent attempting to rewrite the facts, the truth cannot be altered.

.
Steve Deslauriers is a spokesperson for Brown County Citizens for Responsible Wind Energy, a community-based and community-funded nonprofit organization.

Editor’s note:  Huge windfarms are being planned for southern California, inland from San Diego.  The following excerpts are taken from an alarming article describing the process.  Note that there is already a relatively small windfarm on a Native American reservation, where people even 3 miles away are reporting Wind Turbine Syndrome.

Most disturbing is the revelation that the federal government seems intent on turning large areas of wilderness into an “energy corridor”—a sanitized phrase meaning, “We are going to drive out the residents of these rural places, and turn the landscape into a massive industrial zone.  We will also drive out the wildlife, which are likewise repelled by turbine ILFN.  So we can power Los Angeles, San Diego, etc.”

If you live in rural America, you’d better give some thought to the idea that your federal government may be planning on driving you off the land.  Sound outlandish?  History is filled with illustrations of this.  Look no further than American history itself, when Native Americans were systematically run off the land in what was called, romantically, “the winning of the West.”  Now, the New West is being turned over to Big Wind (Big Energy), and that landscape is going to be “won” from—you and what remains of the wildlife.

Some of you free-spirited westerners, who’ve read the Constitution, might want to hang onto your Winchesters.  Fire a few shots in the air when the wind turbine salesmen, working for the foreign company that’s gonna run you & the wildlife off the land, drive up in their fat little white trucks (all of them leased, by the way).

To read the entire article, click here.

“The Betrayal of Boulevard:  Can This Happen to Your Town, too?”

—Miriam Raftery, East County Magazine (1/11/13)

Retired tugboat captain Don Renard worked hard all his life before purchasing a little piece of heaven in San Diego’s rural East County. He bought a historic house, the former Ruby Store, once a stage coach stop in Boulevard. He and his family have been working to restore it—in between savoring quiet times spent watching the hawks, owls and song birds among the old oak groves around their home.

Iberdrola, developer of Tule Wind, successfully fought to remove significant protections in Boulevard’s Community Plan during the County’s General Plan Update – changes that made it easier to build massive energy projects. Supervisors approved those changes in August 2011, tossing out years of planning by residents. Those changes appall the vast majority of those who live in this quiet rural community.

But even more changes lie ahead. Boulevard Community Plan amendments are proposed in the County’s Wind Energy Ordinance and Soitec’s Programmatic EIR for the company’s four projects planned in Boulevard. The changes would remove protections and allow big wind and solar projects to be built next to homes, livestock, sensitive habitat and other resources even though the area is not zoned for commercial or industrial development.

Supervisors and Planning Commissioners for the County are also considering zoning the area as a renewable energy resource zone. Astoundingly, the proposed amendment claims renewable energy projects such as wind and solar are not considered “industrial-scale projects or facilities” for the Community Plan. Those changes align with the federal government’s plan to turn the region into an “energy corridor” – a designation made in Washington D.C., far from the places that will be impacted.

This energy corridor is to include three massive new wind farms in the Boulevard Planning Group’s jurisdiction – Iberdrola’s Tule Wind, Invenergy’s Shu’luuk, and Enel’s Jewel Valley – slated to cover thousands and thousands of acres. A fourth is planned just south of the border and a fifth, Ocotillo Wind, is nearing completion east of here, impacting habitat shared by local bighorn sheep. That’s in addition to the existing Kumeyaay wind facility on adjacent tribal land.

Tule Wind will despoil McCain Valley, sacred to Native Americans, settled by pioneers, and long a recreational favorite for people across the Southwest for its spectacular scenic visits. On federal Bureau of Land Management property, it is also the gateway to three federal wilderness regions. Do a hundred or more skyscraper-height turbines really belong here, towering over campgrounds and pristine views of this boulder-studded terrain?

Turbines will also be visible at Carrizo Gorge, a place known as “our Grand Canyon” to locals. It’s rugged terrain, where the explorer De Anza and the Spanish army once marched, a place where Lost Rock served as a sentinel landmark guiding Native American tribes in their seasonal migrations, as well as later pioneers.

Other projects are in various stages of application. No one at the higher levels of government seems to be looking at the cumulative impacts of multiple energy projects on communities like Boulevard.

The Campo tribe operates the area’s existing Kumeyaay wind facility – with turbines much smaller than the new giants proposed.

But some of Campo’s existing turbines are very near homes – and residents living near them complain of serious health impacts that they believe are related to infrasound and stray voltage—voltage measured at 1,000 times higher than normal in their tribal hall, homes, and church. Stray voltage can travel through the air or through the ground, entering homes through plumbing pipes or powerlines.

Campo built its turbines so close to the boundary of the Manzanita Indian reservation that blade flicker shadows the Manzanita tribal hall, where the thumping and whirring of turbine blades is a near-constant presence. View a video provided by a community member: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B5RCciotwIY

“In the tribal hall, two women were talking on their phones and a blue arc went between them,” Tisdale says. Pointing to a house about a quarter-mile from the turbines, she adds, “That woman just had part of her kidney removed.” A neighbor has suffered from sinus and ear problems, chronic fatigue, intestinal disorders, and “her well [pump] kept shorting out,” Tisdale adds.

Manzanita tribal members have been accepted into a California State University San Marcos health study to confirm whether cases of cancer and other illnesses are caused by the turbines, as an epidemiologist who measured the stray voltage believes. But even some residents far off the reservation claim to be negatively impacted. Don Bonfiglio, who lives three miles away, has written that he is kept awake by turbines. He has also stated that he witnesses a dozen slaughtered large raptors being placed in a golf cart for disposal after they were killed by the wind turbines at Campo.

My own ear throbs and hurts near turbines in the Campo area, easing as I move farther away.

We turn onto a road leading through the La Posta reservation. A La Posta tribal member who was exposed to turbines both at home and work said they were “making her crazy,” Tisdale noted.

—Calvin Luther Martin, PhD

If you live within the shadow of a “windfarm,” did you know that you are no longer considered a “person”?  You’re now a “receptor” and you’re given a number.  Say, Receptor 15.

You think I’m joking?  I’m not.  Wind companies now refer to people as “receptors” — a receptor with a number assigned by the wind company.

Thus, my name is Calvin Martin, except, if I live within a windfarm, I would be Receptor 15 — or whatever number I am assigned by Big Wind.

I’m going to repeat this.  I am no longer a human being—a person—suffering from wind turbine infrasound & low frequency noise; I am Receptor 15 who is “annoyed” by what I “allege” to be infrasound & low frequency noise.

The people driving me out of my home and destroying my health, the people driving my livestock to distraction and driving away the wildlife, the people turning my bucolic landscape into an industrial wasteland and turning me and my neighbors against one another — these people call me Receptor 15.

Or Receptor 98288.  (Just a bigger number.)

Consider Leon Greenman.  Mr. Greenman was “Leon Greenman” till he found himself living within the boundary of a concentration camp in Hitler’s Germany.  A concentration camp where the Third Reich was engaged in the “natural experiment” of liquidating what the National Socialists (Nazis) considered the “weaker” and “less desirable” members of the human species.

Thus Mr. Greenman got hauled off to a camp called Auschwitz, and was stripped of his name.  To the staff at Auschwitz, he became No. 98288.

Here’s what keeps me awake at night.  How short a step is it from Receptor 98288 to Auschwitz 98288, I wonder? Both programs being necessary—Were they not?—for the greater good of society, for the greater good of the earth (to avert global warming, in the case of wind energy), and of course the greater good of the fatherland.  Both create jobs—don’t forget that bonus.  And both create a large redistribution of income.  Both are technological, organizational, and propaganda marvels—one showcasing the ingenious technology of mass genocide-while-pretending-it’s-okay (inspired by the Chicago stockyard/slaughterhouse model, some historians argue), the other the ingenious technology of mass illness-while-pretending-it’s-not-happening.

Both programs are altogether brilliant “natural experiments.”

—Curt Devlin, Guest Editor, WTS.com

During my years at Boston College, I had the good fortune to study with Dr. William Ryan, then Professor of Social Psychology and author of a the acclaimed book, “Blaming the Victim.”  At the time of its writing, Dr. Ryan focused attention on pressing social issues of the day, such as poverty and racism.

He contended, for example, that we blame the poor for poverty and that we blame minorities for their own disfranchisement.  We fault victims for somehow inviting the social inequities they endure.  In effect, we hide behind an ideological façade rather than face our responsibilities to redress these injustices.

Lately, I have been struck by how Dr. Ryan’s description of this phenomenon applies to the victims of Big Wind—to those who have become ill or were forced to flee their homes to escape the toxic effects of industrial wind turbines sited in close proximity to them.

Just as we blame the poor for their poverty, we seem compelled to blame the victims of Big Wind for their own illness.  Apostles of the wind industry, like Dr. Dora Mills, Dr. Robert McCunney and Australia’s Professor Simon Chapman, are only too happy to furnish the tacit explanations needed to justify blaming these victims for their own plight.  These typically include psychosomatic causes, hypochondria, delusions, and other forms of mental illness.  Interestingly, these “diagnoses” are always arrived at without benefit of examining a single patient, conducting an independent study, or even speaking with those suffering adverse health effects.

It is guilt is by reason of insanity.  In this inverted logic, the victims are to blame, not the turbines.

In some cases, we are told the illness associated with these toxic monsters is actually caused merely by the negative perceptions created when someone is ill-disposed to renewable energy—as though anyone could be against such an idea in principle.  This is the always-handy nocebo effect.

The justification for blame is particularly absurd and reprehensible because it flies in the face of a simple fact.  Most of the people who become ill were actually in favor of wind energy; that is, until they gained firsthand experience of turbines spinning near their homes.

Why are so many ready to blame the victims of wind?  Why so willing to receive these explanations without skepticism, without demanding the same scientific rigor demanded of wind critics?  Dr. Ryan’s work is especially useful on this question.  The answer is simple; it is a convenient form of social denial.  People prefer blaming victims over taking responsibility for confronting the real issue.  It is much easier, for example, to blame someone in poverty for laziness, than to accept responsibility to find the true causes of economic inequities, much less take action to correct them.

This pitfall is easier to fall into than one might think.  It is easy to believe that if we feed the hungry, we risk rewarding them for being hungry.  It’s much harder to make sure they find ways to help them feed themselves.  Accepting personal or social responsibility requires change, action, or personal sacrifice to effect positive change or prevent harm.  It forces people to confront the contradictions and absurdities in their dogmas and replace them with facts, to reject social delusions and face inconvenient truths.

In short, it is much, much easier to blame the victims—than ourselves.

The overwhelming body of medical and scientific evidence demonstrates that infrasound, low frequency noise, and vibration of the kind produced by industrial wind turbines cause serious adverse health effects.  The evidence has mounted steadily for more than 30 years.  It shows compellingly that the symptoms and illnesses called Wind Turbine Syndrome and Vibro-Acoustic Disease are caused by exposure to this toxic form of sound energy.  Despite the vocal denials of the wind industry, there are no independent studies of merit to contradict this finding.  There are only the groundless, though profuse, assertions and rhetoric of the windy industry assuring us that their denial of the real dangers is well founded.

There is also incontrovertible evidence that industrial wind turbines produce excessive quantities of this dangerous form of sound and vibration.  Recently, the wind industry itself is being forced to gradually admit this fact.  But even if the underlying causal connection were a complete mystery, the simple empirical evidence that many, many people become ill when they are near turbines is undeniable to anyone with eyes, ears, or one iota of common sense.  Of equal importance, the same people who become ill near turbines, feel better when they get away from them.  This simple form of evidence, referred to as case-crossover data by epidemiologists, matches common sense.  It furnishes irrefutable proof that, in fact, the turbines are to blame, not the victims.

Wind turbines cannot eliminate our dependency on fossil fuels.  They will not reduce the emissions of greenhouse gases, nor save us from climate change.  Wind turbines are not safe, they are not clean, and they have proven to be economically unsustainable—time and time again. Wind power will not prevent irreparable harms to people as well as the environment caused by our own insatiable appetite for energy.  Wind cannot alleviate our obligation to one another to use energy wisely and conservatively.

There is virtually no benefit to justify the harm caused to victims.  Even if such benefits existed, they could hardly outweigh the harm being done to people.  If we continue blaming the victims and denying this truth, we will soon become victims of our own devices.  This ironic little reversal of fate is what Hegel referred to as dialectic, and it is inevitable.  We will become the victims of our own blindness and we will be blamed for it—though perhaps only by history.

This last thought is cold comfort to those who must face the steady erosion of their health, their families’ and financial reserves, and the destruction of their very livelihoods that is created by living too close to turbines.  The victims of Big Wind are like so many canaries in the mine shaft, who flee or fall in the face of this industrial toxin.  Those who blame them are like unwitting miners who stand staring dumbfounded at the obvious, wondering what these canaries have done to bring this catastrophe upon themselves—and then continue along their merry way down the mine shaft, oblivious to the clear and present danger as though they are immune to it.  Until it is too late.

Editor’s note:  Today, in Falmouth, MA, there is a protest demonstration against wind turbines—against the industrial turbines which have been destroying people’s lives in Falmouth for the past 3 or 4 years.  Watch Nina Pierpont’s video interviews of these Falmouth victims.

.
“Speak out, Stand up, Be Heard!”

Families in Falmouth can’t endure any more torture.  They need your help now.

The Falmouth Committee on Human Rights invites you to attend a public demonstration in support of windturbine victims everywhere.

On Wednesday, January 23, 2013 there will be public protest throughout the town of Falmouth. The demonstrations start at 2:00 pm in advance of the 6:30 pm Selectmen’s meeting.

Meet in front of the town hall at the Village Green parking area, Falmouth, MA.  Contact Dave Moriarty, 774-521-8474 for more details.

The Board of Selectmen will be taking public comments on the newly released $388,000 report.

Unless the conversion to a solar installation is adopted from among the recommendations of the Wind Turbine Options Group, Falmouth will be complicit with the State ofMassachusetts in continuing its unethical experiment on adversely affected wind turbine victims.

Turbine victims fear the report will be used to quiet citizen revolt against the failed energy policy of siting wind turbines near homes. If the town votes to continue operations, the result will be to extract residents from their homes.

Taxpayers and electricity customers of Massachusetts, who don’t want to see their hard-earned dollars used against their friends and neighbors, can make their comments known.

Media contact:  David Moriarty, 774-521-8474

Editor’s note:  The following is an Open Letter from a member of the Ontario Provincial Parliament to the Chief Medical Officer of Ontario, Canada.  Read between the lines of the letter, and you smell something rotten in the Chief Medical Officer’s office.

.
January 21, 2013

Arlene King, MD
Chief Medical Officer of Health
Province of Ontario
Canada

Dear Dr. King:

I am writing to you today to express my growing apprehension over the revelations arising from recent Freedom of Information requests that were released. In November 2012, emails from the Ministry of the Environment, released through the FOI process, reveal that provincial field officers had confirmed adverse health effects from wind turbine noise as far back as 2009, and were working on an abatement plan to assist affected residents. The released documents indicate that, in response to a redacted email from government staff, the MOE officers agreed to stand down.

I also have concerns with another FOI document I received, in which Q&A’s were prepared in response to your report, The Potential Health Effects of Wind Turbines. In one section of these Q&A’s, the track changes indicated that you should “add the word direct as studies would show a link through annoyance.” As the Chief Medical Officer of Health, I am sure you are aware that the World Health Organization has determined that annoyance is a health effect of wind turbines.

In another section of the Q&A’s document, this statement was made in relation to health and wind turbines: “there are no known indirect links.” Except, in the track changes comment box it said, “Not really true. The link between perceived noise and symptoms is probably linked to annoyance. The link with annoyance should be recognized.

The last section I would like to draw your attention to is one more Q&A. One answer stated: “Although some people living near wind turbines report symptoms such as dizziness, headaches and sleep disturbance, available scientific evidence does not demonstrate a causal link to wind turbines noise.” The track changes of this comment tells a different story, where you were told, “this answer isn’t credible. Either fess up to the annoyance link or delete.

Dr. King, Dr. Gloria Rachamin acknowledged under oath in the Kent Breeze wind farm case that your study did not look at the indirect health effects of wind turbines. These indirect health effects are the ones that cause the sleeplessness, depression, dizziness, headaches among other health problems.

I am asking you today to acknowledge publicly that your report did not study the indirect health effects of wind turbines. I also have many questions surrounding not only your report, but health complaints that were received by either the Ministry of the Environment, Energy or Health and Long-Term Care. For one, did the Ministry of Environment advise your office that complaints about wind turbines and health were being received? Were you contacted to investigate any of these complaints? Why were any of the reports from MOE field officers in 2009 not included in your 2010 report?

Respectfully, I ask that you review your 2010 report for clarifications between the direct/indirect link between wind turbines and health effects. I can respectfully acknowledge that the likelihood of a wind turbine blade falling off and hurting someone (a direct link) is highly improbable, but the valid health effects (indirect links) need to be studied so we can help families who have been displaced from their homes and are dealing with serious health consequences. I am sure that we can agree that the health and well-being of Ontario families is first and foremost for both of us.

I appreciate your time to review my correspondence, and I and many Ontario families await your response.

Sincerely,

Lisa Thompson, MPP-
Huron-Bruce*

*MPP = Member of Provincial Parliament

.
“TWP requested to suspend Miaoli wind turbine project”

—Helen Ku, Taipei Times (1/19/13)

The Bureau of Energy (BOE) earlier this week requested the UK’s Tongyuan Wind Power (TWP, 通威風力發電) to suspend installing six wind turbines in Miaoli County after protests by local residents who said the company’s construction activities had severely affected their quality of life.

The bureau yesterday said that more than 300 wind turbines have been installed on the west coast since 2000, but the latest incident is not the first time local residents have protested against power companies.

However, the bureau said it would make an overall review of similar projects to avoid causing public anxiety and help wind turbine installations proceed more smoothly in the future.

TWP has built 144 wind turbines in Taiwan over the past 10 years and this is the first time it has encountered protests from residents and been forced to pause construction.

On Wednesday, more than 200 Miaoli residents led by County Representative Liu Bao-ling (劉寶鈴) protested outside the Ministry of Economic Affairs to demand that the bureau end TWP’s wind turbine installations amid concerns the project would damage the county’s landscape, make low-frequency noise and affect drivers’ safety.

“TWP needs to continue further negotiations with residents on its wind turbine installation project. Before the two parties reach a deal, any kind of construction activity is banned, even though the company has obtained construction consent from the bureau,” bureau technician Chen Jing-shen (陳景生) said by telephone.

TWP said that before the construction project started in October last year, the company had reached an agreement with residents of Fangli (房裡), Haian (海岸), Shihpin (西平) and Yuangang (苑港) villages in meetings that were required by the Environmental Protection Administration during an environmental assessment.

“We invited local residents to come to meetings many times by posting announcements on the Yuanli (苑裡鎮) town hall’s bulletin board. However, only 10 to 20 people attended each meeting and the majority showed support for our construction project,” TWP deputy chief executive officer Wang Shuei-yi (王雪怡) said by telephone.

Wang said TWP in June obtained construction licenses for two and four wind turbines in the first and the second phases respectively, but was forced to stop working on the project last month, after local residents protested at the construction sites, saying that the construction had greatly reduced their quality of life.

“We provided evidence that proved our construction process was in accordance with the rules, and invited residents to visit our construction sites, but they were unwilling to accept our accounts for unknown reasons,” she said.

In response to the protesters’ claim that the six wind turbines were installed less than 200m from residents’ houses and that more than 4,000 people, or 56 percent of the township’s population, had said they did not support TWP’s construction project “because it is too close to their houses,” Wang said TWP clearly specified that each turbine was at least 350m from any building, and cast doubt on the petitioners’ reasoning and the figure of 4,000 people.

The company said it will continue talks with residents to avoid wasting equipment and money.

Editor’s note:  In the 10 years (Has it been that long?) I’ve been documenting Big Wind’s crimes against the earth and all that dwell therein, I must say I have never read a document as poignant and enraging as this one, below.  This poem by Mitchell Grabois.

Mr. Grabois was a resident of a new “windfarm” in Ludington (Mason County), Michigan, till he moved away, after fifty-six turbines moved into the neighborhood.  Each 1.8 MW.  Fifty-six turbines which began generating ILFN, slaughtering birds, and driving the neighbors mad—on Thanksgiving Day, 2012.

I learned about Mr. Grabois from a correspondent who wrote the following.

On Saturday I spent the day with Cary and Karen Shineldecker, “residents” of the “wind park.”  They shared an amazing poem with me, written by one of their neighbors, who, luckily, managed to sell his home and get out.  The poem was posted two days ago on an arts and poetry blog.

Cary and Karen are trying to sell their home.  They both have significant symptoms.   Cary was on Wind Wise Radio last night.  They both have headaches.  Can’t sleep.  Exhaustion.

They also wake up with panic attacks and have to take sleeping pills and beer before bedtime, just to get some sleep.  Their pillows are just 1139 feet from the nearest turbine, which is situated on a knoll above them, so audible and low frequency noise funnels down to their bedroom.

I thought you might like this poem, written by a former “wind park” resident and who did get out of his acoustically toxic home.  That “park” has a lot of people suffering from symptoms right now.  It’s only been plugged in since Thanksgiving.  Setbacks are ridiculous.  Oh, and there are a hell of a lotta “leasers” who signed easements for a whopping $100!  And these people are all gagged and their setbacks are  approximately 900 feet!

Only in Michigan would somebody sign an easement for 100 dollars!  These are not folks “hosting” turbines; these are folks on tiny properties who got conned.

Birds

I’m an Animal Control Specialist
a special kind
I don’t capture feral cats
or snarling dogs
don’t deal with skunks
or live critters of any kind

I pick up dead birds at the base of wind turbines
and put them in plastic sacks

I sometimes see the
moment of impact
when flight and life simultaneously cease
Once I caught an eagle as it plummeted to earth
I didn’t know what to do with it
On impulse I hugged and kissed it goodbye
then felt stupid
was glad no one was there to see

I never knew birds were so intent on their destinations
so obsessive-compulsive and unaware
I’ve seen them swerve mid-air to avoid my car’s bumper
but up in the sky five-hundred feet
they don’t expect cars

They get into a rhythm of flight
in which their blood assumes
that the elevations are free of
obstacles’ strife
but blades express their evil intent
by spinning

I live within the perimeters of this “wind farm”
in my old family farmhouse
Many of these farmhouses have tumbled down
More will tumble as people escape
the noise and flicker
and the weird unexpected symptoms they bring
the pressure in the ears
dizziness and nausea
the inability to concentrate
I can go on
but part of my contract is that I can’t talk about it
can’t even mention it

So just forget it
You didn’t hear it from me

No one will buy these fucking houses
They are as damned as if they’d been erected
in a Stephen King novel

My grandfather used to sit on the front porch
and listen to birdsong
and he’d say to me: Did you hear that?
Do you know who that is?
as if the bird were a human being I’d met
an uncle or aunt
whose voice I should recognize

Jays, chickadees, robins, red-winged blackbirds
I don’t hear them anymore
can’t hear them through the constant loud drone
of turbine acoustic pollution
the whirring blades
the grinding gears

But I make my living picking up the dead birds
I pluck the feathers
before I dispose of them
and store them in old shoe boxes
in my grandfather’s office
where he wrote poems and published them in farm journals
under the pen name Al Falfa

I know I’m crazy, but I think maybe my dead grandpa
runs his hands through those loose feathers at night
the loose feathers of dead birds
whose ancestors he lived with

You might think my job is not full-time
but it is
because my boss at Consumer’s Energy
wants the birds gone
pronto!
as soon as they hit the ground
if possible
He doesn’t want them laying around
for the anti-windmill photographers
to document
so all day I’m driving my rattle-trap Mazda pick-up
from one end of the township to the other

I grew up here
lived here all my life
but I never knew the place
“like the back of my hand”
until I followed Death around

—Mitchell Grabois
.

The Wounded Angel, Hugo Simberg

Editor’s note:  The following is a reply to a group of spirited “Down Easters” in the State of Maine, who are planning some “direct action” against the Big Wind juggernaut which has Maine by the throat.  They are provisionally calling it, Operation Dirty Laundry.  Beyond that, I reveal no more.

Bravo! Now you guys are “cookin’”! Operation Dirty Laundry! Yes!

Here’s a good rule of thumb to follow with wind energy: “What would Dr. Martin Luther King do?” Alternatively, what would Nelson Mandela have done? Or even Gandhi? Or Margaret Mead?

Maine. Maine is holy stone. Kiss a mountain on the mouth. Maine is holy water. Kiss a river and kiss a lake—on the mouth. Maine is holy forest. Kiss a spruce and white pine and hemlock and aspen—on the mouth. Maine is holy loons. Kiss a loon. On the mouth. Maine is holy seacoast. Kiss a Maine seacoast on the mouth.

Maine is not your goddam governor, Dept of Environmental Protection Commissioner, state legislators, congressmen, or US senators. These people are not the custodians of loons seacoast mountains rivers lakes forest marshland moose chickadees ravens or, for that matter, beavers. Nobody is their custodian! They belong to . . . themselves. Mankind in Maine (and everywhere else on earth) is merely a guest, a beneficiary, an applauding spectator.

This fly fisherman is not a “tourist,” here.
He is a guest of this river, of these fish,
of these forests and this very air.

Once you understand the above principles, you are on the road to real life and real success. We the People are guests, here. And the governor DEP commissioner legislature congressmen and, for that matter, US senators, are all the hired help for We the People. (Public servants! Remember that phrase?)

Why else are you folks . . . alive? Why else am I . . . alive? To drag my aging carcass through another 25 years? (I turn 65 in a few weeks.) Hell no! To applaud and be a good guest of This Good Earth—which begins with Maine. Which begins with NY State. Which begins with New Hampshire Vermont Kansas New Mexico California Alaska Ontario Nova Scotia—and so forth.

Let us not be victims of an illusion, after all; let us not think these “state” names mean a goddam thing in the Real World, in the Real Earth, in Real Humanity and Humanness. They are fictions. My life is not a fiction, however. Nor is yours. Those Maine mountains hemlocks white pines aspens moose beaver otter lakes rivers ponds seacoasts loons osprey hummingbirds blueberries—none of these are fictions. They’re as real as “real” gets.

What’s phony is: corporations bureaucrats guys with hard hats bulldozers earth movers tree pulverizers dynamite to blow up ridgelines lawyers guys with badges public meetings town boards public service commissions—and all that. Bogus, all. Inventions, all. Diversions from truth and all that really matters.

Fuck global warming!  I’m more concerned at the moment with how Big Natural Gas is fucking over the earth with “hydrofracking” and how Big Wind is fucking over the earth and sea and all that dwell therein with wind turbines—all in the name of “preventing” global warming!  If this farce were not so tragic, it would be hilarious!

Editor’s note:  This is the story of a man of conscience.  The story of a scrappy Australian lawyer who did a complete, 180-degree about face on wind turbines.  I have excerpted the story from an exciting new Australian site, Stop These Things.

Most websites devoted to the wind farm scam are limp-wristed, panty-waisted weenies.  (The fancy word is “pusillanimous.”)  They are polite and courteous to these wind energy thugs and their criminal industry.  Stop These Things shines a bright light on the skulduggery of these bums and calls them for what they are:  carpetbaggers, hucksters, and carnies, harvesting tax dollars while laying waste people’s lives and the countryside as they ride pell mell the Green Energy gravy train.  (Read “The ruinous privileges of renewable energy” for a crash course on “greenwashing” and “greenmail” [a “green” version of “blackmail”] in Australia.)

Lawyer Peter Barber is a seasoned campaigner when its comes to town planning.

Over the last 30 years he has appeared before the Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal, the state’s civil justice mediator, hundreds of times.

Frequently he has represented the big end of town: large infrastructure companies, miners, local government.

Like many in the legal profession, Barber has reveled in the battles.

“I did a lot of mining and extractive work … I’ve made hundreds of appearances before VCAT. I’ve challenged QCs … run up against them all.” . . .

His big mistake . . .

I went past some time later when they were under construction and I was absolutely horrified to see the towers going up. They didn’t have their nacelles (hubs) or blades on at that stage but I thought ‘what have I done to these people.’”

Barber leans across the table. “The principal objector … I still remember his name … was passionate. He started to get to me a bit during the hearing because he was genuinely concerned. I heard later he has not been a well man … he sold his place near the wind turbines. He is very saddened and has never been the same again.

“And that adds to my grief, if you like, my sorrow at my involvement. And I repeat, ‘what did I do to these people?’ I wasn’t the only one but I was a contributing factor.”

When did Barber first start to have doubts?

“Before the hearing had even finished,” he says. “I didn’t articulate any of these views at the time because I’m a lawyer. My duty was to my client at the time and to properly and honestly inform VCAT … but there was a moment in the hearing, when I had an internal voice.

“During the hearing I got off my backside and drove right around to the other side of the bay. I looked back along Wilsons Promontory and I thought ‘oh no’. My instructions were to pursue this through, which we did. I followed through on that but I had personal misgivings which were reinforced later on.”

Barber names one of the objectors to the Toora wind farm.

“He was passionate and articulate. He and others took us to local waterfalls and I thought this is not farmland. It’s not national park but there were lovely rolling hills. Now the views up through the hinterlands…”

He stops talking, looks out through the windows. The room fills with silence.

“It’s a damned shame,” he says at last.

Has he returned to the area since the wind farm began operation?

“I didn’t want to show my head down there,” he says. “I was feeling a bit ashamed of myself. What I did notice when I went down there was the community division over the project. It was bitter.

“They had just lost the Bonlac butter factory. Those jobs never got replaced. They thought they would get jobs out of wind farm tourism and this would help the loss … these working families. They thought farmers were going to get money and it would be a fantastic idea.”

Barber talks about the wind farm developer conducting secret talks with farmers to sign them up before going public on the project.

“The wind farm promoter got to the farmers first before they announced the project publicly. That’s their tactic.”

Then, in the strange way of things, something similar happened near Barber’s own backdoor. A Sydney-based company, Epuron Pty Ltd, proposed up to a seven-turbine wind farm five km from Eden on land owned by SEFE.

Barber says he had already become a member of the local chamber of commerce.

“I said at a meeting fairly early on ‘this is a windy piece of coast, please be aware of wind farms. They divide the community and they are not good. And they said ‘this area has been investigated. It is not suitable for wind farms. Next item’.”

That was five years ago.

Now if the chamber of commerce doesn’t fight to block the proposed wind farm, Barber says he will resign from the body and continue to fight the proposal with other concerned residents.

One last question: how would he describe the wind industry?

Barber’s response is immediate: “The wind industry is a pack of liars and con merchants who couldn’t lie straight in bed. I have absolutely no confidence in anything they say whatsoever.”

Editor’s note:  The following is a translation of a recent article on wind energy in a prominent Danish news magazine.  There are several parts to the article, including an interesting exposé of Vestas (one of the world’s leading manufacturers of wind turbines) complaining to the Danish government that recently proposed noise standards will severely damage Vestas’s business ventures, both in Denmark and abroad.

The translation was done by a Danish friend of this website.  Click here for the original article.
.

“A true noise hell:  Erik Nielsen had looked forward to a peaceful retired life, but the idyll and nocturnal sleep are destroyed by giant wind turbines”

“As a consequence of the noise & sleepless nights, Erik & Rigmor Nielsen are looking for a small cottage, where they can get peace.”

While thousands of people have to live in a noise hell from the giant wind turbines, which both [neighbor] associations and acoustic experts are raging over, the politicians have done nothing to investigate the matter properly.

The fact is, according to the Chairman of the Danish Society for Labor- and Environmental Medicine [DASAM], Vivi Schlünssen, it has not been properly investigated whether the many Danes who are daily exposed to tremendous noise from wind turbines are harmed by it.

“We are very concerned that the new regulations [of Jan. 1, 2012] on noise from wind turbines, have been conceived completely without investigating if people are harmed by living in constant noise.”

Doctors not asked

“The noise limits have been determined by engineers. There has not been a single medical doctor involved,” she says.

Vivi Schlünssen emphasizes that wind noise is very different from, for example, noise from a highway.

“Although the noise from the turbine is often lower [in amplitude], it is continuous, especially [a problem] at night, when the annoyance is increased.”

– The new rules [statutory order 1284 of Jan, 1, 2012, including low frequency noise] were conceived far too quickly.

“Our primary criticism is that it is not right that people should have to live with great noise nuisance, especially at night when it can interfere with their sleep,” says Vivi Schlünssen, who emphasizes that the problem of noise from wind turbines should be fully investigated.

Landowner vows to go to prison over wind turbines*

—Anwen Evans, Shropshire Star (1/16/13)

A protester said he was prepared to go to prison to stop massive pylons being built across Shropshire and Mid Wales.

Landowner Mark Johannsen, from Four Crosses, said he would fight to stop the 46-metre pylons from being built on his land and would cut them down if necessary.

He was one of more than 1,500 people who attended a meeting outside Welshpool Livestock Market last night.

Mr Johannsen said he would do everything in his power to stop the National Grid proposals from going ahead.

“I know landowners will have no choice as the National Grid will have a right to compulsory purchase the land, but I will cut them down and am even prepared to go to prison . . . to stop them being built on my land,” he said.

Myfanwy Alexander, from Llanfair Caereinion, said the Welsh Assembly had a “long and brutal” battle ahead of them.  She said: “These are crazy plans for vandalism which we will never forgive them for if they go ahead.”

Campaigner Steve Elliott, of Aston Rogers, near Marton, said people from Shropshire would be joining the people of Montgomeryshire when they travelled to Cardiff to protest.

In a letter of support, which was sent to the meeting Lord Alex Carlile, former Montgomeryshire MP, said: “These plans are an expensive folly and an insult to Welsh landscape.”

Welsh wildlife presenter Iolo Williams also pledged his support against [wind] turbines by letter saying they would damage the whole area.

Alison Davies, of campaign group Conservation of Upland Montgomeryshire, called on people to come together and fight the plans.

She said: “We will be campaigning in Welshpool and Newtown on Saturday and need about 100 people to come forward and volunteer their help for an hour.”

.
*This title is different from that of the original article, which was “Prison vow over pylons plan.”

.

We dedicate this video to Australia’s Prof. Simon Chapman.  Chapman is in the habit of now and then favoring the general public with specimens of his learning.

These days you’ll find Mr. Chapman girding his loins and going up and down the land thundering against the heresy of Wind Turbine Syndrome and its spirited champion, Dr. Sarah Laurie.  If Green Energy in Australia smacks of  a religion, Chapman is its Grand Inquisitor.

.
“Wind turbine causing headaches, nausea, Scituate family says”

—Janet Wu, WCVB Boston (1/12/13)

Mark and Lauren McKeever Friday asked a Plymouth Superior Court for a temporary restraining order against Scituate to halt operations of a giant wind turbine 640 feet from their house.

With three blades each 150 feet long, the turbine runs intermittently throughout the day and night.

“We can’t sleep, my children wake up in the middle of the night because of the noise and humming, and then they go to school where they can’t concentrate because they are sleep deprived,” said Mark McKeever.

He said his family is suffering from sleep disturbances, headaches, nausea, dizziness, extreme fatigue, anxiety, tinnitus and difficulty concentrating since the turbine was erected over their house last March.

On sunny afternoons, light flickers throughout their house and makes it impossible to stay in the house or even to do any yard work.

Mark McKeever said his family had two good weeks of sleep in recent months — when they went to New Hampshire for vacation.

“What they are doing is wrong,” said Mark McKeever, who has pleaded with the town’s board of health to at least shut the turbine down at night.

But town officials have been told by operators of the turbine that one-third of the wind generated is produced at night.

Town officials have said there is no proof that the turbine is causing the McKeevers’ health problems.

Mark McKeever said he has invited every official to come to his house and see for themselves, but none have shown up to date.

He is suing the members of the Board of Health for their refusal to act on his request for relief.

Editor’s note:  We recommend listening to this (lengthy) radio interview with acoustician, Rick James, as he explains the significance of the Shirley (Wisconsin) ILFN Report.  (Interview length, 68 minutes.)

Click here for Mr. James’s website, E-coustics.

Click here for the clinical ramifications of the Nuremberg Code.  Click here to discover the origin of the code.

Now watch this comedian ridicule the victims of wind energy’s “natural experiment.”

Editor’s note:  At the eleventh hour, just before plunging headlong over the much ballyhooed “fiscal cliff,” the US Congress renewed Big Wind’s Production Tax Credit, allowing wind developers to harvest taxpayer dollars for another 20 years.  

Twenty years?  Yes, you read it right.  Any windfarms which are begun in 2013 will be eligible for a tax credit for 20 years thereafter.  “Starting” a windfarm can be as trivial as taking a shovel and moving a pile of dirt—once local approvals have been secured.  

All the more reason for communities to stall these projects.

Congress has once again demonstrated its incompetence, in this case, its incompetence to grasp the fleecing of the American taxpayer by Big Wind.  (In fairness to the scrambled brains in Congress and the White House, the American Wind Energy Assoc. mounted a full court press, which was obviously effective.  Once more, lobbying by Big Money wins the day.)

Is this Congress really able to govern us?  Let me rephrase that:  Is the Congress competent to govern?  Notice how it handles our finances.  The following was sent by one of our readers.

Lesson #1

U.S. Tax revenue  $2,170,000,000,000

Fed budget  $3,820,000,000,000

New debt  $1,650,000,000,000

National debt  $14,271,000,000,000

Recent budget cuts  $38,500,000,000

Let’s now remove 8 zeros and pretend it’s a household budget:

Annual family income  $21,700

Money the family spent  $38,200

New debt on the credit card  $16,500

Outstanding balance on the credit card  $142,710

Total budget cuts so far  $38.50

Got it?

Lesson #2

Here’s another way to look at the debt ceiling.  Let’s say you come home from work and find there has been a sewer backup in your neighborhood, and your home has sewage all the way up to your ceilings.

What do you think you should do?  Raise the ceilings or remove the shit?

Editor’s note:  The following was written on December 18, 2012 by Father Sergei Shatrov, Abbot of the Holy Transfiguration Monastery near Canberra, Australia.  First, read this, from the monastery’s website.

The Holy Transfiguration Monastery is a male monastic community of the Russian Orthodox Church Abroad. Founded in 1982, the monastic community presided over by Abbott Hieromonk Sergius, abides in the pristine and rugged valley of the MacLaughlin River situated between Cooma and Bombala, New South Wales, Australia.

The natural surroundings surrounding the monastery influence and impact on the Orthodox traditional monastic spiritual way of life. Monasteries have traditionally sought a degree of isolation from the secular world, whether it was the desert ascetics of fourth century Egypt or the great Northern Thebaid monastic settlements in northern Russia as a means to spiritual enlightenment and salvation. However, in keeping within the traditions of hospitality, monasteries have always welcomed travellers and pilgrims that come to its doors. In providing this website as a tool for pilgrims and for those interested in Orthodox monasticism, we maintain a certain detachment from the world in order to preserve our spiritual heritage and disciplines.

In the past there were sermons on offer to visitors to the website. We hope that in the near future that we can provide further material.

Holy Transfiguration Monastery is to have a wind turbine farm erected adjacent to its property in 2013. In principal, we remain opposed to this intrusive development and you can click here to follow developments and offer your support for this important cause. Your support is crucial in helping preserve our monastic heritage of the Orthodox Church.

For all request and enquiries please Contact Us here.

I would like to take this opportunity to clarify the Holy Transfiguration Monastery’s position on wind turbines.

The Russian Orthodox monastic communities on the MacLaughlin and Snowy Rivers are environmentally self-sufficient and conscientious. Long before the Renewable Energy Certificate Scheme was set in place, we invested heavily into solar energy and environmentally sustainable projects as an expression of our deep relationship with the pristine and often fragile landscape. What the landscape gives in our spiritual and religious vocation is fundamental to the traditions of the monastic way of life. This is why we chose the Monaro as our home thirty two years ago; it is, simply put, a very beautiful part of Australia. To suggest that we are victims of scare-mongering and ignorant to the blight of Industrial Wind Turbines (IWTs) debate, is something I strongly reject and refute.

Having been to Hatay, Turkey, in early 2012 and spent time with the locals there who have over thirty 120 metre tall IWTs planted right in the middle of their villages by the German government, they described in careful detail the serious health concerns that are debilitating and greatly affecting their quality of life after the installation. To describe simple, poor people with little if any contact with the Internet as simply victims of the “nocebo affect” would be insulting.

Having also visited eight separate IWT farms and communities in NSW, South Australia and Victoria last week in person, the problem of the lack of independently verified data (the Federal Hansard noted that wind mast data hasn’t been released in the recent Senate Estimates Committee which I attended), lack of any proper community consultation, silencing dissent or protest toward IWT developments, the divisive and vexed issue of turbine host payments, and complaints unheeded with disdain and in some cases contempt—are some of the common themes I am constantly hearing.

We chose the Monaro as our spiritual home and we don’t want the landscape industrialised. Member of Parliament, Dr Mike Kelly, expressed recently that he personally didn’t want Eden’s Two Fold Bay IWT (now failed) development to go through because of “landscape aesthetics and damage to potential tourism.”  Cynic that I am of the political opportunism, I am afraid the Monaro wasn’t aesthetically pleasing enough for blocking development. In this age of Greed Energy, whatever happened to common sense?

Click here to read the travail of this monastery, powerfully written up in Australia’s “Stop These Things.”

—Jim Wiegand, Wildlife Biologist (California)

I was presented with this question recently. “How would I respond if I was running the USFWS (US Fish & Wildlife Service) and was not allowing this agency to cover for the wind industry?”

First of all we would have an accurate count of all the whooping cranes in Texas along with the sub adults and juveniles so real condition of this population could be disclosed to the public. After all over 200 are missing from this population and there are now thousands of deadly wind turbines that litter their habitat.

I would have USFWS personnel responsible for checking the GPS transponders on whooping cranes, checking on their well being every 6 hour period during daylight hours. Presently the whooping cranes are not checked on unless there is a lack of movement for 24 hours. This huge gap gives a wind farm more than enough time to move any dead whooping cranes.

I would have every gag order ever written into a wind industry dismissed under eminent domain laws for the sake of protecting our natural resources. It would seem to be an easy matter because is all too obvious that the extinction of wildlife and destruction our natural resources are far more valuable to our society and future than the small amount energy produced from wind turbines.

With the gag orders out of the way a complete investigation would be conducted into the history of operating wind farms. I would concentrate on the wind farms located in the habitat of endangered species.

I would have a federal law passed so it would be a felony to conceal the death of any protected species killed at a wind farm. Owners that profited from the concealment of bodies would lose their land much in the same way a drug dealer does. I would also have rewards, big rewards because we would be fishing for big fish.

I would initiate a series of truly constructive wildlife studies to determine the cumulative damage that has been done by these wind turbines. These studies have been avoided for over 28 years. Not one of the sell-out experts that worked on bogus wind industry studies would be a part of any of these new studies. I would set up a DNA data bank that would prove to the world that eagles and other species killed at wind farms were being killed from populations thousands of miles away. The USFWS is already in custody of many such carcasses. Analyzing these carcasses alone and comparing them to remote populations would probably be enough to establish vast mortality footprint of wind turbines.

I would have cadaver dogs searching wind farm properties for buried carcasses that were hidden from the world. Some locations in particular I would bet would have body dump sites that look like the Auschwitz.

I would try not to bother Congress with any of this because their time is much better spent investigating really important matters like Lance Armstrong, Barry Bonds, and Rodger Clemens.

Yes, it would feel pretty good to see a Dirty Harry sent in to clean house and kick some wind industry asses. God knows they sure need it. But justice usually only happens on the big screen. That is why so many films are successful.

—Calvin Luther Martin, PhD

That quotation is taken from the “Shirley, Wisconsin, ILFN Wind Turbine Report,” which came out a few weeks ago, just before Christmas,   (It has a longer, more formal name, but this is the name it’s going by as it ricochets around the Internet.)

The report was commissioned and paid for by the Wisconsin Public Service Commission (PSC).  The PSC requested the report because, in the course of taking testimony for the so-called Highland Wind Farm in the towns of Forest and Cylon (St. Croix County, Wisconsin), WTS victims from the existing Duke Energy “Shirley (Wis.) Wind Farm” presented testimony declaring they had to abandon their homes due to ILFN from nearby wind turbines.  (In case you don’t know, “ILFN” is shorthand for “infrasound and low frequency noise.”)

“Yikes!” responded the PSC. “We’d better check out these jaw-dropping Shirley claims before allowing Highland Wind Farm, LLC, to build another one of these wind farms!”  (The words are mine, not the PSC’s.)

Are you with me, so far?  (I know, it’s a little confusing.)

So, the PSC commissioned two agencies to arrange for proper, (hopefully) unbiased turbine noise measurements at selected homes within the Shirley Wind Farm.  They chose Clean Wisconsin, a statewide outfit well-known for being vigorously pro-wind turbine (virtually in people’s backyards), and Forest Voice, Inc., which opposes the proposed Highland Wind Farm (because its turbines will be virtually in people’s backyards).  Hence, between them, Clean Wisconsin and Forest Voice selected the acousticians.  The following is taken from the report.

Four acoustical consulting firms would cooperate and jointly conduct and/or observe the survey. Channel Islands Acoustics (ChIA) has derived modest income while Hessler Associates has derived significant income from wind turbine development projects. Rand Acoustics is almost exclusively retained by opponents of wind projects. Schomer & Associates have worked about equally for both proponents and opponents of wind turbine projects. However, all of the firms are pro-wind if proper siting limits for noise are considered in the project design.

And this is what the four concluded:

The four investigating firms are of the opinion that enough evidence and hypotheses have been given herein to classify LFN [low frequency noise] and infrasound as a serious issue, possibly affecting the future of the industry. It should be addressed beyond the present practice of showing that wind turbine levels are magnitudes below the threshold of hearing at low frequencies.

However, you need to read the entire report; it’s highly instructive and, for people around the world suffering Wind Turbine Syndrome (WTS) from absurdly and criminally-situated wind turbines—it’s a positively religious experience.  Hallelujah!

Robert Rand’s submission is especially enlightening regarding turbine noise/vibration as it relates to Pierpont and others’ understanding of Wind Turbine Syndrome.

(Note that Rand gets WTS each time he measures turbine ILFN.  God bless him for subjecting himself to this, once again, in the line of professional duty!  Bear in mind that, as Pierpont points out in her book, “Wind Turbine Syndrome,” WTS effects are cumulative. In short, Mr. Rand is damaging himself in the interest of science and humaneness—he doesn’t need the money.  The man’s a hero!)

The plot thickens.  It turns out Clean Wisconsin “redacted” (fancy word for “purged,” “removed”) some vital text from the report before submitting it to the PSC.  This is explained in Attorney Anne Bensky’s subsequent submission to the PSC.  (Open the report and scroll to the end.  Bensky’s submission to the PSC immediately follows the report.)  I have appended the section which Clean Wisconsin thoughtfully struck out—without telling the PSC.  (You can’t make up this stuff!)

One other thing.  Before reading the report, I recommend reading Rick James’s analysis, reprinted here with his permission.  James is a seasoned acoustician who has been pioneering the proper and accurate measurement of wind turbine infrasound and low frequency noise.

Please find attached a report for a wind utility in Wisconsin that was the focus of a study requested by, and partly sponsored by, the Wisconsin PSC. The purpose was to determine whether infrasound was present in the homes of three families in the footprint of the Shirley Wind project (owned by Duke Energy). These families have reported adverse health effects since the wind turbine utility commenced operation. All three have been forced out of their homes. They report experiencing symptoms of the type associated with wind turbine syndrome. These families offered to act as intervenor’s in another Wisconsin case, Highland Wind, which is in the application hearing phase. Affidavits were filed representing 50 residents near the utility, describing adverse health effects and home abandonment for the eight-turbine Shirley Wind project (click here for video) using Nordex N100 2.5 MW wind turbines.

Three homes were studied. R1 is about 3500 feet from the nearest wind turbine. R2 is about 1100 feet, and R3 is about 7000 feet away.  All three homes were found to have measurable infra and low frequency sound from the wind turbines, with levels decreasing as distance increases. The peak acoustic energy was found at the wind turbines’ blade passage frequency, which is less than 1 Hz for the Shirley Wind turbines.

Most modern, upwind, industrial-scale wind turbines, including the 1.5 MW turbines commonly installed over the past 5 years, can operate with hub rotation speeds that are similar to those of the Nordex. As turbine sizes (blade length, tower height, and in general power output) increase, the more likely it is that the hub rpm will be in the range similar to that of the Nordex units.

Rob Rand has a chart in the Team Report that shows the range of rpm’s against the frequency associated with inducing nausea that shows this trend. This is an important chart for showing how the conclusions for this PSC study of a single wind utility has implications for other wind utilities using other makes and models of wind turbines.

A revision to that chart did not make it into the report as posted on the PSC site, so I have included it, below.

Initially the PSC was going to have the study conducted by George and David Hessler. This posed a problem for credibility with the intervenors and others who know their position from other projects.  The attorneys for the citizens’ group, Anne Bensky and Peter McKeever for Forest Voice, and Glenn Reynolds, the attorney for the Town of Forest which also opposes the project, wanted the tests to be conducted but were concerned that the Hesslers would produce a biased study. It was decided they would push for a study that included four acoustics experts, some on the wind industry side (Hesslers), independents (Schomer and Walker), and one who has demonstrated the ability to find infrasound inside homes (Rob Rand).

The purpose of the study was to collect high quality audio samples during periods when the family members were present and “feeling” the wind turbines (emphasis added).  Wind speed and direction data at the outdoor microphones and from the wind turbine hub-level anemometer were also collected. Wind turbine power production was also collected. (The data from wind turbines is under a protective order and only available to select reviewers.) The Team Report summarizes the data and protocol. It also includes a Team conclusion and separate appendices from each acoustician, providing additional information about what they observed or derived from the study. They can also file follow-up reports as can other qualified experts within the time frame for responses to the PSC.

Mr. Walker’s equipment was the best of any of the acousticians, and became the focus for data collection. Unlike the instruments traditionally used by acousticians studying wind turbine infrasound, Mr. Walker’s equipment could accurately measure sounds in the lower region of infrasound. It allowed synchronized sampling and recording at multiple sites inside and outside a home over the frequency range from 0.5 Hz to 100Hz. These audio samples have been made available to Wade Bray and me for analysis using Head Acoustics’ software in a similar manner to what was done for the Bray/James study and Noise-Con 2011 paper on the GE 1.5 MW turbine in Ubly, MI.

Although there are details in the report that I would take issue with, I can say that the Team portion of the report presents a major step forward in the discussion about why adverse health effects are being reported by people living near modern, industrial-scale, upwind wind turbines. The primary conclusion of the Team is:

“The four investigating firms are of the opinion that enough evidence and hypotheses have been given herein to classify LFN [low frequency noise] and infrasound as a serious issue, possibly affecting the future of the industry. It should be addressed beyond the present practice of showing that wind turbine levels are magnitudes below the threshold of hearing at low frequencies.”

The argument about whether wind turbines produce infra and low frequency sound and, if they do, is it sufficient to cause adverse health effects, has taken a big step forward with this conclusion. That infra and low frequency sound is a primary characteristic of wind turbine acoustic emissions was established by the Team. The argument that infrasound produced by modern, upwind, wind turbines does not have sufficient amplitude to reach the threshold of hearing (set for steady, pure tones, not the complex mix of tones emitted by wind turbines) raised by the wind industry through its experts like Dr. Leventhall and the many acousticians and others who parrot his opinion, is now discredited.

I think this is a major step forward. We still need to establish what levels and other characteristics of infra and low frequency sound are needed to produce adverse health effects, but the argument that it is not present is shown to be false.

The wind industry and its supporters can no longer say that wind turbines do not produce significant levels of infra and low frequency sound just because the sound pressure levels do not rise to the Threshold of Perception of audible sounds.

Thus, “What you can’t hear, can hurt you” is the surviving paradigm.

Richard James, INCE

“What you can’t hear, can hurt you” is the surviving paradigm.

Except in this man’s mind.

Geoff Leventhall, PhD (Physics)

“Geoff Leventhall,” begins an online puff likely written by himself, “is a consultant, formerly an academic, who works internationally.  His main research and consultancy interests have been in problems of low frequency noise and in active attention of noise.

Whilst at the University of London he developed a highly regarded research group in acoustics, personally supervising more than 30 PhD students and a much larger number of MSc students. He left London University as Reader in Acoustics to join W S Atkins, a large UK engineering consultancy, as Head of Acoustics. In 1982 he established the Journal of Low Frequency Noise and Vibration and was editor for the first 18 years. In 1988 he was invited back to an academic post as Professor and Head of the Institute of Environmental Engineering in London, where he stayed for about 5 years. Since then he has been practising as a sole consultant, but continues to examine doctoral theses in acoustics. He is well known in the world of UK acoustics and has been President of his professional body (Institute of Acoustics). He is an Honorary Fellow of the Institute. He is, by invitation, a ‘Distinguished International Member’ of the US Institute of Noise Control Engineering.”

All this may be true.  These days, however, he is regarded by many as an enigma, even to fellow scientists who worked with him over the years.

Malcolm Swinbanks, PhD, used to work with Dr. Leventhall

One would think Leventhall would be a “natural,” even the standard-bearer, rallying to the overwhelming evidence that wind turbines generate infrasound which triggers a cascade of pathology now globally referred to as Wind Turbine Syndrome (WTS).

In this you would be mistaken.  Leventhall’s opinion of WTS is one of denial bordering on contempt.

Wind Turbine Syndrome, in his estimation, is basically a hysteria epidemic concocted by Dr. Amanda Harry (the UK physician who, a decade ago, blew the whistle on wind turbines causing ill health), Dr. Nina Pierpont (the American physician who elaborated on Harry’s research, giving its cluster of pathologies the name “Wind Turbine Syndrome”), and Dr. Sarah Laurie (the Australian physician who has further elaborated on Harry and Pierpont, and is now the most prominent physician, globally, battling for government recognition of WTS).

I first realised there might be a problem associated with wind turbines when I was introduced to a couple living near a wind farm in Cornwall. The distance from their home to the nearest turbine is about 400 meters. They told me about poor sleep, headaches stress and anxiety symptoms brought on when the wind was blowing in certain directions. At times, they told me that they have been so disturbed by the noise that after several disturbed nights sleep, they have sought refuge in a nearby bed and breakfast establishment (far enough away not to be similarly affected by the noise).

Since that meeting I have spoken to and/or corresponded with 39 people living between 300meters and 2 km from the nearest turbine of a wind farm all of whom were suffering from the consequences of the noise coming from the turbines. This disturbance is by no means always there and is worse in certain wind directions.

The cases mentioned below are from several wind farms in the UK with a variety of turbine sizes from the smaller, older turbines to the taller more modern turbines. However I have had correspondence from people living near wind farms in New Zealand and Australia and have evidence from other sources, (newspapers, journals and papers) of people being similarly affected in France, Germany, Netherlands and the USA.

What this shows is that there is number of people suffering from the consequences of noise from the wind turbines. I’m sure that the cases mentioned here are probably the “tip of the iceberg” and further independent investigation is warranted. The cases are kept anonymous in order to protect the individuals concerned. There is much concern within communities that if one is seen to complain about the noise that if they decide to move away their properties will be difficult to sell and possibly devalued as a result. Therefore they feel that they are in a “Catch 22” situation.

—Amanda Harry, MD (2007, although she did her first study 3 or 4 years earlier)

There are many things one can say about Geoff Leventhall’s cottage industry of trashing Wind Turbine Syndrome.  Perhaps the most salient is that he is not, by any stretch of the imagination or in any capacity whatsoever, a clinician or physician.  He’s a PhD in physics.  That’s it, folks!  He’s no more qualified to comment on clinical medicine than a used car salesman.

Except, this does not deter him.  In this he hoists himself, in the manner of Cervantes’s hapless hero, in ever more spectacular ways.