Wind farm noise complainants and anti-wind groups: how many, how large?

anti-wind

On January 10 Prime Minister Tony Abbott signaled that it might be timely for the National Health and Medical Research Council to review the evidence on wind farms and health saying “it is some years since the NHMRC last looked at this issue: why not do it again?” He appears to be poorly informed. The NHMRC reviewed the evidence in 2010, and has been re-reviewing it again since 2012, with the release of a public discussion document imminent.

There have been no less than 19 reviews of the evidence on wind farms and health published since 2002. All have concluded that while sometimes a minority of people exposed report adverse health effects from living near turbines, there is no good evidence that these effects are directly attributable to the turbines.

anti-windBut there is good evidence that worry and anxiety about potential health impacts can make some people “worried sick”. This adds up to “wind turbine syndrome” – an unrecognized diagnosis – being a “communicated disease” or a nocebo phenomenon. Fiona Crichton and colleagues from Auckland University have published two compelling studies showing that nocebo effects can be stimulated in health subjects by feeding them worrying information prior to exposure to sub-audible infrasound.

So who is making all the fuss about wind farms and health that has seen the NHMRC devoting considerable resources to re-examining a phenomenon that seems destined to join the list of other new technology panics that came and went over the years (telephones, powerlines, electric blankets, microwave ovens, VDUs, mobile phones and towers and wifi are examples)? The answer here, as it is internationally, is very, very few people.

Last year, colleagues and I published a study examining the history of complaints about noise and health said to be caused by wind farms around Australia since the first farm commenced operation in Western Australia in 1992. Thirty three of Australia’s 51 wind farms (64.7%), including more than half  with turbine size greater than 1 MW, have never attracted a single complaint about  noise or health. These 33 farms have an estimated 21,633 residents living within 5 km and have operated complaint-free for a cumulative 267 years. Western Australia and Tasmania have seen no complaints.

From an estimated 32,789 people living within 5km of these 51 turbines, we found evidence of  just 129 people having  ever made a complaint. Ninety per cent of these made their first complaint after 2009 when anti-wind farm  hysteria began in earnest, fomented by opposition groups with connections to the mining and fossil fuel industries and groups trying to discredit anthropogenic climate change. Seventy-three per cent of the complainants lived near just 6 of the 51 farms, those being farms most targeted by anti-wind farm groups.

The situation overseas looks little different. Despite years of efforts by Ontario anti wind farm activists to incite fear among residents,  by March 2011, only 131 complainants had identified themselves across all of Ontario (population 13.5m), although this number appears to have been inflated by borrowing numbers from other provinces (“131 which include reports from other jurisdictions”) despite there being some 1200 turbines across Ontario.

Denmark has the highest concentration of wind turbines of any country, with 5,125 on-shore turbines in an area of 43,074 square km (Tasmania is 59% larger with 68,407 square km and Australia-wide, there are only 1634 turbines) Yet in this video posted on Dec 23 2013 by Denmark’s tiny anti wind farm movement, a national  estimate is given of just 50 people claiming to be adversely affected by turbines (at 7m.02).

Anti wind groups

And how about the anti wind farm groups? None of the 8 members of the executive of the Waubra Foundation live anywhere even remotely near of the small Victorian wind farm hosting town of Waubra, where the large majority of residents have been petitioning the Foundation to leave them alone and change its name. Last week, its CEO Sarah Laurie, was  the subject of an extended critique by Ontario’s Environmental Review Tribunal (read from pp98-110) after being proposed but rejected as an expert witness because, as leading Ontario environmental lawyer Diane Saxe wrote, Laurie was not a registered medical doctor and therefore was not permitted to diagnose medical issues or conditions, which her testimony had amounted to.

In late December 2012, an anonymously authored anti wind farm website, Stop These Things commenced publication. Its overwhelming focus is attacking wind energy in Australia.  On Christmas Day 2013, its author apparently had nothing better to do than pen a post boasting of the year’s extraordinary achievements. This was mainly about the number of hits made on its site (allegedly 350,000 over the year) and the number of supporters registered to receive updates (all of 1200, globally). But both STT’s web-counter and supporter totals appear to be manually updated, and so amenable to inflation.  With its total contempt for transparency, its claims for this large traffic volume are not open to any scrutiny. But everything points to the numbers being questionable.

STT’s author tells us that “Twitter doesn’t count”. But unlike the secret world of STT, counting is one of the things you can do with Twitter and Facebook.  Making its first post in December 2012, STT’s Facebook page has attracted a desultory 439 “likes”, fewer than most 14 year olds have. And it has just 287 Twitter followers. There can be few “causes” with less following. Of the 287, at least 27 are plainly not supporters, but journalists, wind industry workers or (like several I know) train wreck voyeurs, fascinated by the daily anonymous libel, and unmoderated climate change denialism that is posted. Twenty five followers don’t indicate their country of origin. Of the 262 who do, just  72 are Australians (less 15 who are not supporters), leaving just 57 potential supporters in Australia engaged enough to follow STT on Twitter. The rest are from the UK (86), Canada (38, of which 29 are from Ontario), 37 from the USA, 13 from Ireland, 4 from the Netherlands, and the other 12 from 12 different countries. As blogger Ketan Joshi has observed, unlike any other disease “wind turbine syndrome” seems to be a health problem that occurs mainly in English-speaking countries.

The STT Twitter account was opened on the same day of the website and for someone who believes Twitter “doesn’t count”, it’s curious that its bashful author  has wasted time tweeting an average of nearly three times a day.

Rally failure

Stop These Things organized an anti wind farm  rally on the front lawn of Parliament House in Canberra on June 18 2013, MC-ed by none other than prominent radio announcer Alan Jones who promoted it to his estimated 2 million radio audience.  But as this video shows, the rally was an embarrassing flop, with Nick Xenophon failing to show up, despite his leading billing.  The Daily Telegraph described the rally as “lacklustre” and estimated attendance at 100, not counting journalists covering the rally. Undaunted, the site posted triumphalist videos of each speaker who each avoided mentioning the all too obvious fizzer attendance.

Australia’s homeopathic-strength anti wind farm movement mirrors that in the few other countries where this phenomenon is concentrated.  Ontario is Canada’s epicentre of  anti-wind farm complaining, with very little evidence of complaints across the rest of that vast country.  A few hundred people attend the biggest anti wind farm rallies in Ontario, but the number of core activists is estimated to be less than 40.  The cyber cathedral of global anti wind farm activism is www.windwatch.org. It has a staggering low 1167 Twitter followers around the world.

In an interesting comparison of global interest, a video explaining the nocebo effect and referring to my wind farm study as an example, was published on 23 December 2013. By Jan 11 it had attracted a stunning 2.49 million views.

Our Australian wind farm study has attracted enormous interest. A pre-print of the paper I published on the University of Sydney’s eScholarship repository has already received the second highest number of views (13,938) out of 8224 on-line articles and books.

Protesting wind farms is a fringe activity, with a CSIRO  report and many opinion polls finding overwhelming public support for the farms. Quo vadis, Mr Abbott?

Simon Chapman, AO, is a professor  at the School of Public Health at the University of Sydney. He was also the 2013 Australian Skeptic of the Year

 

 

Comments

68 responses to “Wind farm noise complainants and anti-wind groups: how many, how large?”

  1. Nhan Avatar

    1 initiative has the potential ,unlimited energy ,despite inclement weather ,work 24/24

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  2. lisalinowes Avatar
    lisalinowes

    Mr. Chapman is trying to pawn off his wind advocacy as legitimate study. Instead, he repeatedly sounds like a thin-skinned zealot who debates the facts via personal attacks.

    1. Mike Barnard Avatar

      For those unfamiliar with Ms. Linowes — pretty much everyone who isn’t an anti-wind campaigner in the north eastern United States and those who pay some attention to them — she’s left out a couple of things.

      She is founder and Executive Director of the Industrial Wind Action Group, a group which appears to consist of her, and … well… her.

      As the Checks and Balances Project in the USA says:

      “On their website, the Industrial Wind Action Group links to articles and information from sources whose work is unscientific or has been linked to the fossil fuel industry – rather than objective sources that could help residents and government officials make informed decisions. According to our investigative research, the Industrial Wind Action Group continues to hype anti-wind rhetoric above reality.”

      http://checksandbalancesproject.org/2011/08/12/lisa-linowes-and-the-disinformation-of-industrial-wind-action-group/

      In other words, she’s virulently anti-wind energy and will believe pretty much anything said against it. And she’ll give no credence to rock solid research that finds that she, for example, is the cause of the problem, not the solution.

      History, if it remembers her at all, will not be kind to Ms. Linowes. Hopefully she’ll be able to find peace later in life with her dissemination of lies, support for fossil fuel generation and ongoing efforts to prevent actions that fight global warming.

      1. lisalinowes Avatar
        lisalinowes

        Ah yes, and now comes Mike, who, some months ago, with no experience in energy, markets, and even less (if possible) on energy policy) but who possesses a remarkable parrot-like skill to repeat what others say, made it his part-time job to turn back the millions around the world now raising awareness about the harms of industrial-scale wind energy. It’s only appropriate he’d nuzzle up to mr. chapman.

        1. Nick Valentine Avatar
          Nick Valentine

          “…millions around the world…”? Really? Sounds like confirmation bias to me. Any source for those numbers?

      2. George Papadopoulos Avatar
        George Papadopoulos

        Mike any comments about your association with IBM and its interests in intermittant wind energy and the “smart” grid patch that it sells:

        http://www.economist.com/blogs/babbage/2013/08/electricity-forecasts

        1. Nick Valentine Avatar
          Nick Valentine

          George, Mike has no comments.

          1. George Papadopoulos Avatar
            George Papadopoulos

            Nick, did you just e-mail him to see whether he is crying?

        2. Mike Barnard Avatar

          Nothing I haven’t said to you before, George, although your memory appears to be as abysmal as your logic, ability to discern fact from fiction and ethical positions.

          I’m one of about 450,000 employees of IBM. They make a relatively tiny amount of their money from Smart Grid and virtually nothing from anything directly related to wind energy. I have worked on a couple of smart meter proposals in the past dozen years, but that’s pretty tenuous.

          IBM makes a lot more money from selling products to oil companies, gas companies and distribution companies which ship their products. I’ve worked much more time on many more projects and proposals in those spaces. Odd that you don’t accuse me of being a global warming hypocrite. Maybe that will be your next idiotic tactic. Lord knows you aren’t original or intelligent enough to come up with an entertaining angle of attack on your own.

          How about your direct promotion of and sale of services for the tiny GeoVital Academy? It’s a cancer-survivor scam, pretends that completely irrelevant research has anything to do with its products (I’ve spoken to the researchers and they keep trying to stop GA from abusing their names) and pretends pseudoscience is science for purely venal reasons.

          This is a case of the filthy, rusted, decrepit, slimy, abandoned pot calling the just unwrapped, used once kettle black George. Do try actually seeing yourself in a mirror sometime.

          1. George Papadopoulos Avatar
            George Papadopoulos

            Mike, wow your response took a few months to cough up! Couldn’t you have said that before?

            But Mike you fail to mention if IBM doesn’t makes any money from selling coal. That’s the only industry that Chapman and you seem to be so obessed about funding the “anti-wind” movement.

            I also laugh at the fact you and Chapman keep raising the name of the Geovital Academy. My association with them ended months ago, and barely lasted 6 or so months. Enough time for me to see what was going on and move on. You and Chapman are just pityful loose canons!

          2. Mike Barnard Avatar

            What are you nattering about when you say months, George? I’ve corrected you a couple of times on your idiocy regarding professional biases and IBM, just as I occasionally must correct others like you who forget that you’ve been slapped down for this particularly inept ad hominem before. As mentioned, your memory is deeply challenged.

            I’m glad to hear that you’ve broken your ties with the GeoVital Academy. It’s unclear to me why you think that it taking six months to figure out that they were a disgusting scam, laden with pseudoscience and in it solely for venal ends is a good thing. It takes normal people about a minute on their website to see that. You really are quite amazingly slow, and have extraordinarily poor judgment.

          3. George Papadopoulos Avatar
            George Papadopoulos

            Mike, IBM does not make money out of coal – your obsession with the bad fortunes of the coal industry is telling. But IBM does have interests in the smart grid and unreliable energy sources and your obsession with the good fortunes of those industries is also telling.

            The fact that you resort to abusive language is also telling: I’ve hit a raw nerve haven’t I?

          4. Mike Barnard Avatar

            A nerve? You would be unlikely to be able to hit the ocean with a rock if you were in a boat George. Statements of fact aren’t abusive language.

            Please feel free to double down with your inept, fumbling and inane attempts to paint me as intellectually biased. Pretty much everyone following along at home is undoubtedly finding it amusing unless like you they are in the tiny percentage of people so deeply embedded in anti-wind bias that they would accuse a kangaroo of being in the bed of big wind if it didn’t piss on a wind turbine as it passed by.

          5. George Papadopoulos Avatar
            George Papadopoulos

            Mike, love your attitude to glossing off your use of abusive language. Maybe you apply the principle to facts? Perhaps a fib or two is OK with you also, if your trying to make a “statement of fact”?

          6. Mike Barnard Avatar

            George, you do realize that this thread started with you falsely accusing me of unethical behaviour which you claim I am hiding and lying about, don’t you?

            Do you actually engage any brain cells before your fingers move on the keyboard?

          7. George Papadopoulos Avatar
            George Papadopoulos

            Mike, do you suffer from a guilt complex? Is your only recourse abusive behaviour?

          8. Mike Barnard Avatar

            George, I’ve tried everything else with you. I’ve provided clear, fully referenced material proving you wrong. I’ve directly quoted high-credibility, peer-reviewed material, directly linking to it. I’ve pointed out clearly and irrefutably the errors in what logic you manage to muster. I’ve pointed out clearly the complete weakness of your evidence, usually with references.

            I’m not alone in this. Others have done the same.

            Yet, you are such a thick-skulled, ignorant, biased idiot that you are incapable of being reasoned with. It’s remarkable, really, that you actually recognize when I’m being abusive. Further, you have this hilarious belief that somehow attacking people with ad hominems is acceptable behaviour for you, but not for them.

            Ah, George, you are a truly stupid man. You really ought to stop pretending to sentience.

          9. George Papadopoulos Avatar
            George Papadopoulos

            Mike, just a slight high opinion of yourself there, and more abusive language. Perhaps have a read
            of this and see how well your understanding of literarture sticks: http://www.cma.ca/cjrm/vol-19/issue-1/21

            And before you write your response, go get yourself some herbal carminitive. It might help you settle down…

          10. Dan Wrightman Avatar
            Dan Wrightman

            For sure, Mike and the professor use some real “high credibility” material such as the number of Facebook likes and Twitter followers, because when it comes down to it, good science is really just a popularity contest isn’t it? The links to blogs written by partisan hacks are fantastic sources of scientific evidence as well. Who knew that political cheerleaders had such insight? What will they use next for evidence? Dear Abbey, astrology… the possibilities are endless.

          11. A Real Libertarian Avatar
            A Real Libertarian

            “good science is really just a popularity contest isn’t it?”

            Popularity contests are popularity contests.

            What else is grassroots activism but a popularity contest?

            After all, it’s really hard to have a base when almost everyone hates your cause.

            Which is where AstroTurf comes in…

          12. Dan Wrightman Avatar
            Dan Wrightman

            I see, so it really isn’t about the science anymore, its about popularity based on Facebook likes. Looks like the wind proponents are getting desperate.

          13. A Real Libertarian Avatar
            A Real Libertarian

            “I see, so it really isn’t about the science anymore, its about popularity based on Facebook likes. Are the wind proponents getting desperate?”

            Well the anti-winds were going on about how popular they were, Simon corrected them, you started going on about that, I corrected you, now you’re going on about this.

            I assumed you could remember what you were talking about, in the future I’ll try to take in to consideration your… special needs.

          14. Dan Wrightman Avatar
            Dan Wrightman

            It’s a silly conversation. Going off Facebook likes and Twitter followers we should all be listening to Katy Perry and Justin Bieber.

          15. A Real Libertarian Avatar
            A Real Libertarian

            “Going off Facebook likes and Twitter followers we should all be listening to Katy Perry and Justin Bieber.”

            Going off Facebook likes and Twitter followers we should all be thinking Katy Perry and Justin Bieber are popular.

          16. Dan Wrightman Avatar
            Dan Wrightman

            Yes but thinking Katy Perry is popular doesn’t correlate to her playing good music, much like the number of hits on the professor’s study doesn’t equate to good science.

          17. A Real Libertarian Avatar
            A Real Libertarian

            Why do you keep going on about science?

            We’re talking about popularity.

          18. Dan Wrightman Avatar
            Dan Wrightman

            Look this is a silly article and a silly conversation, Facebook likes and Twitter followers are irrelevant. What is relevant is that there is a grassroots movement against the installation of wind turbines near homes for various reasons including noise and health complaints. This grass movement has already had an effect on elections in Ontario. as wellthe Australian elections certainly didn’t turn out well for the wind proponents and that’s why articles like this are being written. Wind proponents are trying to play damage control and downplay any role that anti-wind activists have played in election results

          19. A Real Libertarian Avatar
            A Real Libertarian

            “Facebook likes and Twitter followers are irrelevant”

            No, they’re very relevant to whether anti-wind groups are popular.

            “In late December 2012, an anonymously authored anti wind farm website, Stop These Things commenced publication. Its overwhelming focus is attacking wind energy in Australia. On Christmas Day 2013, its author apparently had nothing better to do than pen a post boasting of the year’s extraordinary achievements. This was mainly about the number of hits made on its site (allegedly 350,000 over the year) and the number of supporters registered to receive updates (all of 1200, globally). But both STT’s web-counter and supporter totals appear to be manually updated, and so amenable to inflation. With its total contempt for transparency, its claims for this large traffic volume are not open to any scrutiny. But everything points to the numbers being questionable.

            STT’s author tells us that “Twitter doesn’t count”. But unlike the secret world of STT, counting is one of the things you can do with Twitter and Facebook. Making its first post in December 2012, STT’s Facebook page has attracted a desultory 439 “likes”, fewer than most 14 year olds have. And it has just 287 Twitter followers. There can be few “causes” with less following. Of the 287, at least 27 are plainly not supporters, but journalists, wind industry workers or (like several I know) train wreck voyeurs, fascinated by the daily anonymous libel, and unmoderated climate change denialism that is posted. Twenty five followers don’t indicate their country of origin. Of the 262 who do, just 72 are Australians (less 15 who are not supporters), leaving just 57 potential supporters in Australia engaged enough to follow STT on Twitter. The rest are from the UK (86), Canada (38, of which 29 are from Ontario), 37 from the USA, 13 from Ireland, 4 from the Netherlands, and the other 12 from 12 different countries. As blogger Ketan Joshi has observed, unlike any other disease “wind turbine syndrome” seems to be a health problem that occurs mainly in English-speaking countries.”

            Remember?

          20. Dan Wrightman Avatar
            Dan Wrightman

            Facebook and Twitter are irrelevant to the discussion of politics or science. Picking and choosing stats on Twitter followers proves nothing. As I pointed out in my comment above, Chapman calls National Wind Watch 1167 followers “staggeringly low” for but he doesn’t mention BigCityLib’s “staggeringly low” 258 followers https://twitter.com/Bigcitylib
            Facebook likes don’t translate well into boots on the ground or votes at the ballot box.

          21. A Real Libertarian Avatar
            A Real Libertarian

            National Wind Watch has 17,488 tweets at the moment.

            bigcitylib has 0.

            Think about that for a moment.

          22. Dan Wrightman Avatar
            Dan Wrightman

            So what???

          23. A Real Libertarian Avatar
            A Real Libertarian

            You do realize you’re just making your cause look psychotic, right?

          24. Dan Wrightman Avatar
            Dan Wrightman

            I think I would be far more concerned if I started writing articles about my opponents Twitter followers to the point of categorising their careers and their country of origin.

          25. St. Gore Avatar
            St. Gore

            Mike’s ‘Deus Ex Machina’ type attacks are perfectly illustrated here. He calls George a “thick-skulled, ignorant, biased idiot” and then turns right around in the same paragraph and accuses his victim (George) of engaging in “ad hominems”.

          26. Mike Barnard Avatar

            Excellent! My stalker who was banned from CleanTechnica but now skulks after me via Disqus has found this ancient thread and added more proof of his innate ignorance, this time related to Deus ex Machina, which he obviously couldn’t define or relate to my comments if he tried.

          27. St. Gore Avatar
            St. Gore

            Ha! You have no idea what it means. Go look it up, it’s on wiki.

          28. Mike Barnard Avatar

            And proof.

            St. Gore has never internalized the axiom that you can keep your mouth shut and be thought a fool, or open your mouth and remove all doubt.

          29. St. Gore Avatar
            St. Gore

            It’s now evident that you didn’t even look it up. You see Mike, you attack everyone with the same lame brain tactic. I called you out on your attack methods that you were using on George and then you turn around and try to use them on me?

            Lame and ridiculous at the same time.

            Everyone is wise to you, Mike. You’re the only one who doesn’t see it.

          30. A Real Libertarian Avatar
            A Real Libertarian

            I think it fits.

            The seemingly unsolvable problems of wind are easily resolved by you showing up and posting irrefutable proof that the “problems” are bullshit propaganda from the incumbents.

    2. Simon_Chapman Avatar
      Simon_Chapman

      It’s often said that many Americans just don’t get irony. Lisa would seem to embody that perfectly.

      1. George Papadopoulos Avatar
        George Papadopoulos

        My dearest professor, specialist of hahaha-hology, do you have any comments about the remark I made below?

  3. HarbourD Avatar
    HarbourD

    Kings County, Nova Scotia, Canada has a plethora of “wind fear ninnies”. I guess they all moved here! You can have them back! No, I mean really, come and get them!

  4. Jane Wilson Avatar
    Jane Wilson

    Fascinating that Mr Chapman’s reference for the number of people in Wind Concerns Ontario is actually a pro-Ontario Liberal Party blogger. That’s the best you can do? You call that a reference? Suffice it to say it is completely incorrect, as are the figures for Denmark…and probably everything else.

    1. Dan Wrightman Avatar
      Dan Wrightman

      Relying on urban partisan bloggers for information on rural grassroots movements is about as reliable as relying on wind developers to provide accurate noise and health complainant data for their wind developments. Poor, biased sources can only supply poor unreliable data.

      1. Simon_Chapman Avatar
        Simon_Chapman

        We await your authoritative non-partisan references to the real numbers Jane & Dan

        1. Jane Wilson Avatar
          Jane Wilson

          Absolutely: here is a link to a documentary film done for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation/CBC, which shows why the Ontario experience differs from that of other areas in Canada, and why there is opposition to industrial wind power plants so close to communities. The filmmaker visited Denmark where there are now more than 170 community groups opposed to the projects placed too close to people’s homes. http://www.cbc.ca/player/Shows/Shows/Doc+Zone/2012-13/ID/2332887223/

          1. Nick Valentine Avatar
            Nick Valentine

            Or is the Danish organisation the National Association of Neighbors Fighting Wind turbines? Or this one perhaps http://stilhed.eu?

          2. Mike Barnard Avatar

            Wind Rush was set up as a hatchet job on wind energy. There is no credible way that this degree of slant, distortion and inaccuracy could result without intentional effort. There is no way that this assemblage of known anti-wind voices came together on film without guidance and assistance of anti-wind groups, and there is no way that the enormous evidence to the contrary and the enormous number of experts who could counter this biased piece were ignored without deliberate exclusion. For a full analysis of the deep slant and exclusions of this relatively polished piece of a agitprop, please see this material:

            http://barnardonwind.com/2014/01/11/wind-rush-documentary/

        2. Dan Wrightman Avatar
          Dan Wrightman

          Mr. Chapman, the Big City Lib blog is essentialy a go team Liberal fan club. Using it as evidence is as accurate as asking diehard members of a sports club what odds they have of winning the championship. The reality is the Liberals are dying in rural Ontario, and have went from 15 of 21 seats to 5 in the last election, losing 3 cabinet ministers in the process. One of the big factors in this was the bull headed wind turbine push foisted on rural Ontario by the Liberals. This is acknowledged by most political pundits in Ontario regardless of their political leanings. http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/how-mcguintys-green-energy-policy-cost-him-a-majority-in-ontario/article556454/
          Regardless doesn’t it seem a little odd to believe that only 40 voters are changing the face of provincial governments and causing 83 Ontario municipalities to declare themselves Unwilling Hosts of industrial wind turbines. If there really were only 40 of us, this article would never have been written.

    2. Nick Valentine Avatar
      Nick Valentine

      Perhaps you could provide the correct figures?

    3. Mike Barnard Avatar

      Like Ms. Linowes, Ms. Wilson neglects to mention a couple of things.

      The first is that she is President of the anti-wind Wind Concerns Ontario, the umbrella organization for the small numbers of anti-wind campaigners in that province.

      The second is that Ms. Wilson complains about the provenance of the blog source, despite showing its work, when she and her tiny organization are deeply in bed with a handful of provincial Conservative Party climate-change denialists and anti-renewables Members of Provincial Parliament.

      She can’t have it both ways, not that she’d admit that.

      Having been dealing with the anti-wind noisemakers in Ontario for the past four years or so, I can name most of them from memory. It’s not that long a list.

  5. Richard Mann Avatar
    Richard Mann

    At the end of the day, readers have to decide for themselves what is more plausible: Wind companies and investors who gain financially, or people actually living near these enormous industrial machines: http://humanfaceofwindturbines.ca/. Not everyone is appears to be impacted, at least to the same degree, but there are certainly enough people coming forward. Many respected doctors and health professionals have spoken out. Here is an article from Canadian Family Physician: http://www.cfp.ca/content/59/5/473.full

    1. Mike Barnard Avatar

      The Commentary “Adverse health effects of industrial wind turbines” in Canadian Family Physician is a deeply misleading article by long time anti-wind activists with irrelevant credentials — retired pharmacist, chartered management accountant, general practitioner — that may lead unwary medical practitioners to inappropriately attribute symptoms to wind turbines and possibly exacerbate pre-existing conditions. It ignores the vast majority of evidence and opinions of medical professionals in assessments world wide that wind turbines do not cause health impacts. http://barnardonwind.com/2013/05/22/when-medical-practitioners-mislead-trio-targets-family-doctors-with-bad-information/

      1. Richard Mann Avatar
        Richard Mann
        1. Mike Barnard Avatar

          Dr. Robert McMurtry, in addition to his useful contributions to society, is founder of the anti-wind Society for Wind Vigilance, long-serving Board Member of the anti-wind Association to Protect Prince Edward County (APPEC), owner of a rural retirement residence in Prince Edward County Ontario near proposed wind farms, and initiator with his wife of a $2.5 million lawsuit against a nearby wind farm, also didn’t do particularly well as an expert witness. As he freely stated on Day 35 of the Ostrander Point Tribunal, he resigned from both the Society for Wind Vigilance and APPEC, as well as dropping his lawsuit, so that he could give the appearance of being unbiased and objective as an expert witness.

          Dr. Robert McMurtry’s testimony was discounted by the most recent judgement from Ontario ERTs, the December decision related to the Dufferin Windpower Project in Melancthon.

          He was allowed to testify as a courtesy, basically, then they ruled that his testimony was unreliable and of low value. He did better than Sarah Laurie, who was dismissed entirely.

          At that, he did manage to completely misrepresent Dr. Geoff Leventhall’s statements, taking one set of words out of context and putting another set into Dr. Leventhall’s mouth.

          http://barnardonwind.com/2014/01/08/ontario-tribunal-dismisses-health-scares-and-health-scarers/

          1. alistair clark Avatar
            alistair clark

            Thank you Mike Barnard. I haven’t enjoyed reading a discussion trail so much in years.You remind me of one of those industrial wrecking balls – awesome!

          2. Mike Barnard Avatar

            My pleasure. I appeared briefly in a Miley Cyrus’ video last year as well.

          3. George Papadopoulos Avatar
            George Papadopoulos

            Alistair, this a good clue about Barnard’s love with wind and role as IBM employee: http://www.economist.com/blogs/babbage/2013/08/electricity-forecasts

            I hope you can now see why he comes through as being sooo “objective”

  6. George Papadopoulos Avatar
    George Papadopoulos

    Oh yeah, Simon Chapman and his marketing strategy for the wind industry…

    He is meant to be a public health professor isn’t he? Why doesn’t he search for any official figures of complaints?

    1. Dan Wrightman Avatar
      Dan Wrightman

      He would rather rely on wind companies for “cough, cough” accurate data.

    2. Simon_Chapman Avatar
      Simon_Chapman

      George, if these “official figures” exist, why hasn’t anyone produced them in the nearly 12 months since my estimates were first published? Researching them should not be to hard for a man with qualifications from the Geovital Academy, endorsed by Noble (sic) Prize winner Ivan Engler. Have you graduated yet BTW? Do they give you a tin hat & a radiation shielding gown to wear at the ceremony? There could be lots of nasty wifi, and other evil radiation in the ceremony hall.

      1. George Papadopoulos Avatar
        George Papadopoulos

        Simon, I can see from the vitreol of your response that my message above seems to have hurt you a little – my apologies!!!! In case you are not aware of the concerns over WIFI, I suggest you read the Austrian Medical Association guidelines for EMR. Unlike your precious self, the authors of the document are only medicos…

        And, my dear professor, thank you for admitting that you don’t look for official figures – you rely on others to find them for you. I hope you don’t assume the coal industry, or whoever else, employs someone as capable as you! If you, with your internation contacts, wouldn’t know where to find them, how would I?

        Public health professor? No rather specialist is hahaha-hology: mock and laugh and bust your guts laughing, ridicule the victims etc etc.

  7. Dan Wrightman Avatar
    Dan Wrightman

    The hilariously weird part is when the article veers off course with a couple of paragraphs on Twitter followers and Facebook likes. Apparently 1167 followers is “staggeringly low” for National Wind Watch. Meanwhile an article from BigCityLib is linked as evidence of low wind activism, but no mention is made of BigCityLib’s “staggeringly low” 258 followers https://twitter.com/Bigcitylib2

    1. George Papadopoulos Avatar
      George Papadopoulos

      Dan, it is a new form of logic based on “ancient principles”. I call it Chapmanian logic: tread all over the victims, harass, ridicule, marginalise; and then sit back and create fairy tales to explain their “bizarre” behaviour…

  8. Alexander Avatar
    Alexander

    What about the health dangers (respiratory system, cardiovascular system and immune system) from burning fossil fuels (besides the carbon foot print)?. The benefit from wind power is so much more than the disadvantages.

  9. NoBirdChoppers Avatar
    NoBirdChoppers

    Turn it up to 65 decibel, same as Ministry of Environment measurements.

    1. A Real Libertarian Avatar
      A Real Libertarian

      Oh, my god!

      They sound just like a thunderstorm!

      It’s kind of short though, maybe you can back when it isn’t raining?

  10. NoBirdChoppers Avatar
    NoBirdChoppers

    Shirley wind farm Wisconsin 80 decibel

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