Double Whammy

Double whammy to the anti-wind farm brigade

 

Simon Chapman18 Mar, 9:18 AM

Read more: http://www.businessspectator.com.au/article/2013/3/18/wind-power/double-whammy-anti-wind-farm-brigade#ixzz2Nu62SjGT

A study of mine published Thursday night delivers a double whammy to those who argue that wind turbines cause health problems in communities.

Earlier this week researchers at the University of Auckland published an experimental study showing that people primed by watching online information about health problems from wind turbines, reported more symptoms after being exposed to recorded infrasound or to sham (fake) infrasound.

The study provided powerful evidence for the nocebo hypothesis: the idea that anxiety and fear about wind turbines being spread about by anti-wind farm groups, will cause some people hearing this scary stuff to get those symptoms.

The double whammy for the scaremongers comes in the form of an historical audit of all complaints made about wind farm noise or health problems on all of Australia’s 49 wind farms. Australia’s first wind farm, which still operates today, started generating power in 1993 at Esperance in Western Australia. Twenty years on, our 49 wind farms have seen 1471 turbines turning for a cumulative total of 328 years.

In recent years, and particularly since 2009, we’ve heard a lot about health complaints involving wind turbines, thanks to the efforts of groups such as the Waubra Foundation (none of whose directors live in or near the Victorian town of Waubra) and the interconnected Landscape Guardians. And, just as the nocebo hypothesis would predict, the great bulk of health and noise complaints have arisen since 2009: 82 per cent of complainants made their first complaint after that date.

There are some 32,677 people living within 5km of these 49 wind farms around Australia, and just 120 – or one in 272 – of them have ever made formal complaints, appeared in news reports or sent complaining submissions to government. Moreover, 81 (68 per cent) of these are people living near just five wind farms, each of which have been heavily targeted by wind farm opponent groups.

Our study tested four hypotheses relevant to the nocebo hypothesis:

1. Many wind farms of comparable power would have no history of health or noise complaints from nearby residents (suggesting that factors that don’t relate to the turbines may explain the presence or absence of complaints)

2. Wind farms which had been subject to complaints would have only a small number of such complaining residents among those living near the farms (suggesting that individual or social factors may be required to explain different ‘susceptibility’)

3. Few wind farms would have any history of complaints consistent with recent claims that turbines cause acute health problems (suggesting that explanations beyond turbines are needed to explain why acute problems are reported)

4. Most health and noise complaints would date from after the advent of anti-wind farm groups beginning to foment concerns about health (from around 2009) and that wind farms subject to organised opposition would be more likely to have histories of complaint than those not exposed to such opposition (suggesting that health concerns may reflect ‘communicated’ anxieties).

All four hypotheses were strongly supported by our study:
-- Almost two thirds (63 per cent) of all wind farms, including half of those with large (>1MW) turbines which opponents particularly demonise, have never been the subject of complaint.
-- The proportion of nearby residents complaining is minuscule.
-- Some complainants took many years to voice their first complaint, when wind farm opponents regularly warn that the ill effects can be almost instant.
-- Health complaints were as rare as proverbial rocking horse droppings until the scare-mongering groups began megaphoning their apocalyptic, scary messages to rural residents.

The first records of claims being made that wind turbines could cause health problems date from 2003, when a British GP wrote an unpublished report about just 36 people scattered around the UK who all said the turbines made them ill.

A Victorian country GP followed this up with an even smaller study in 2004, where after dropping 25 questionnaires to people living near the local turbines, eight reported problems like sleep difficulties, stress and dizziness.

Among the many problems with this study is the fact that in any community, regardless of the presence or absence of wind turbines, about a quarter to a third will have sleep problems, nearly half will have had a headache in the last week, and nearly one in six will have felt dizzy. When someone suggests that wind turbines – which some rural people don’t much like the look of – might be causing such problems, this ‘rural myth’ gets traction.

The rhino in the room for those who would dismiss the nocebo hypothesis is the small problem-ette of explaining why there are so many thousands of people living near wind farms who never complain. And of why between 1993 and 2004, there were no health complaints but 13 wind farms operating, including five with large turbines.

The standard response is that only some people are ‘susceptible’, just like only some people get motion sickness. Our data produce big problems for that explanation: it is implausible that no susceptible people would live around any wind farm in Western Australia where there have been zero complaints, around almost all older farms, nor around nearly half of the more recent farms. No credible hypotheses other than those implicating psycho-social factors have been advanced to explain this variability.

In the early days, those who didn’t like the turbines, complained that they looked ugly and were blots on pristine bush landscapes. A few worried that they might kill birds and bats (they do, but at a tiny fraction of the rate that plate glass, cars and feral cats kill). But as this lengthy 2004 report shows, health problems were rarely mentioned, with the few who did being seen as doing the cause no favours.

But then opponents decided to push the health issue: when someone says they are ill, you are supposed to be sympathetic, not sceptical. It was always going to be a winning strategy. My collection of health problems opponents have named now numbers 216.

Until now, this strategy has worked well for them, but the two studies now out should pour a large bucket of cold water on this core claim, as should even cursory consideration of the weird and wonderful claims being made by some of their leaders.

Australia’s high priestess of wind turbine syndrome, the unregistered doctor Sarah Laurie claimed last year that vibrations from wind turbines can “perceptibly rock stationary cars even further than a kilometre away from the nearest wind turbine” and that turbines can make people’s lips vibrate "as from a distance of 10km away”.

A pharmacist from near Yass in NSW, George Papadopoulos, claims to be able to experience the “problem” at remarkable distances,

Where does the problem stop? This is a difficult question to answer. On two occasions when the ILFN (infrasound and low frequency noise) nuisance was at its worst, I travelled out west. On one occasion I discovered that it appeared to have dissipated at Wee Jasper, 70km away from the closest turbines. On another occasion, and by far the worst of all days, the problem had dissipated when arriving at Young about 100km from the closest turbines.

But don’t worry – Mr Papadopoulos assures us:

Truly these figures appear subjective, outrageous, and for most, impossible to believe. However, I am reporting my findings that have taken hours and days to determine. I’m not just plucking figures out of the air.

Simon Chapman is Professor in Public Health at the University of Sydney.
This article was originally published by The Conversation.


Read more: http://www.businessspectator.com.au/article/2013/3/18/wind-power/double-whammy-anti-wind-farm-brigade#ixzz2Nu55ypub

More anti-wind sickness.....it's spreading

I am Sick of Anti-Wind Propaganda

By Paul Gipe

Yes, anti-wind hysteria has made me sick. I got queasy in my stomach when I thought of the 150,000 wind turbines operating worldwide and still no epidemic of death and disease had yet broken out despite the sickening anti-wind hype in the English-speaking world. I worried myself sick that a new black death would strike Germany and Spain who together have one-third of the world's wind turbines. I fretted even more that Europe would collapse in panic and mayhem from its 100,000 wind turbines, many now operating for decades.

Why then are Germans, Danes, and Spaniards not falling by the thousands to dementia and disease? Are they made of sterner stuff? Or is it simply that they don't speak English and can't read all the propaganda fostered by the anti-renewables lobby.
It is the anti-renewables lobby--it's not just anti-wind anymore, they're after solar too-that makes me sick.

It made me sick to learn a few days before the Ontario, Canada election that the Power Workers Union was caught with their metaphorical pants down. It seems that the pro-nuclear, pro-coal lobby group was uncovered funding an anti-wind, and anti-renewables campaign of commentary in newspapers, on the radio, and on the internet.

I felt a lot better after the disclosure forced this unethical campaign to close its doors-at least for now. I am feeling much better now too, after learning that a disgruntled citizen sued an anti-wind group in Ontario for violating the province's election laws by openly endorsing an anti-wind candidate.

The Nocebo Effect

Written by: Alison Rourke in Sydney, Australia

 

Windfarm sickness spreads by word of mouth

Health complaints from people living around turbines shown to be psychological effect of anti-wind lobby making people worry

 

Sickness being attributed to wind turbines is more likely to have been caused by people getting alarmed at the health warnings circulated by activists, an Australian study has found.

Complaints of illness were far more prevalent in communities targeted by anti-windfarm groups, said the report's author, Simon Chapman, professor of public health at Sydney University. His report concludes that illnesses being blamed on windfarms are more than likely caused by the psychological effect of suggestions that the turbines make people ill, rather than by the turbines themselves.

"If windfarms were intrinsically unhealthy or dangerous in some way, we would expect to see complaints applying to all of them, but in fact there is a large number where there have been no complaints at all," Chapman said.

The report, which is the first study of the history of complaints about windfarms in Australia, found that 63% had never been subject to noise or health complaints. In the state of Western Australia, where there are 13 windfarms, there have been no complaints.

The study shows that the majority of complaints (68%) have come from residents near five windfarms that have been heavily targeted by opponent groups. The report says more than 80% of complaints about health and noise began after 2009 when the groups "began to add health concerns to their wider opposition".

"In the preceding years health or noise complaints were rare despite large and small turbined wind farms having operated for many years," it says.

According to Chapman, when windfarms started being built in Australia about 20 years ago some of the anti-wind lobby was driven by people who simply did not like the look of them.

"Then in about 2009 things started ramping up and these people discovered if you started saying it was a health problem, a lot more people would sit up and pay attention. It's essentially a sociological phenomenon," he said.

Giving the illness a name like "wind turbine syndrome" and "vibro-acoustic disease" had been a key feature in its spread, Chapman said. He accepted that some people genuinely felt ill but "where you set up an expectation in people that something in their environment is noxious, that can translate into an expression of symptoms".

The findings run against the claims of the Waubra Foundation, a national group that opposes windfarms and says serious medical conditions have been identified in people living, working or visiting within six miles (10km) of wind turbine developments. The group says the onset of conditions including sleep deprivation, hypertension, heart attacks and depression correspond directly with the operation of the windfarms.
Waubra's chief executive, Sarah Laurie, said illnesses resulting from exposure to windfarms were "an inconvenient truth".

"There's been an attitude that the people who are getting sick are collateral damage," she said.

"People are not getting sick because someone tells them they're going to become unwell. They're waking up in the middle of the night and suffering from sleep deprivation because something is waking them up."

Laurie, who trained as a rural GP, said it was important that more research was done so we have a better understanding of exactly what's going on.

"No evidence doesn't mean no problem. It means the evidence hasn't been collected because the research hasn't been done," she said.

Chapman said that if wind farms did genuinely make people ill there would by now be a large body of medical evidence that would preclude putting them near inhabited areas. Eighteen reviews of the research literature on wind turbines and health published since 2003 had all reached the broad conclusion that there was very little evidence they were directly harmful to health.

Chapman cited a recent New Zealand study that exposed 60 healthy volunteers to both real and fake low-frequency noise, similar to what is produced by wind turbines and is sometimes known as infrasound. Half of the volunteers were shown television documentaries about health problems associated with wind turbines before they listened to the low-frequency noise; the other half were not. They were then played a mixture of noises. Those who had seen the videos about the adverse affects reported higher levels of symptoms whether exposed to the genuine or fake audio samples.
In spite of results like this, complaints from some living near wind turbines persist.

David Mortimer is a beef and cattle farmer in Millicent, South Australia, 400km south-east of Adelaide. Wind turbines were built on his farm in 2004.

"Mostly I've had sleep-related problems," he said. "At night I get a deep rumbling sensation in my head which makes it hard to get to sleep. I also get a pulsing in my heat that does not correlate to my heartbeat. It gives me an acute sense of anxiety and arrhythmia that goes on for days."

Mortimer said he sleeps well when he's away from the farm, when the silence in his head at night is "absolutely profound".

"As soon as we come back the symptoms reappear," he said. "A lot of people like me are complaining but politicians and wind farm companies are not listening."

An application for 160 new turbines has been approved to be built on his neighbour's property. Seventeen of them will be visible from Mortimer's house and within 3.5km of his home.

• Read the windfarm noise study

More on the "Nocebo Effect"

http://www.positivelypositive.com/2013/01/23/the-nocebo-effect-how-negative-thoughts-can-harm-your-health/

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/12/opinion/sunday/beware-the-nocebo-effect.html?_r=0

Research Finds Wind Farm Health Concerns Probably Caused By Anti-Wind Scare Campaigns (via Desmogblog)

ANTI-WIND farm activists around the world have created a silent bogeyman they claim can cause everything from sickness and headaches to herpes, kidney damage and cancers. This "infrasound" exists at frequencies too low for the human ear to detect but is present almost everywhere from offices and roadsides…

A wind energy worker speaks up!

Here is a fantastic editorial on living, and working among wind energy projects in Ontario. I hope it gets more people who live, work and support renewable energy to stand up and be counted.

This post has been reprinted from the blog site,
http://lifeamonggiants.com/2013/03/10/anti-wind-groups-make-me-sick/

Anti-Wind Groups Make Me Sick

 I often wonder if my experience living near windmills would have been different had I been inundated with the anti-wind message before we bought our home. If I had heard the ‘wind farms make people sick’ message over and over again, would that have changed my perception of reality? It’s hard for me to say. I consider myself a critical and analytical thinker. I am intelligent. I don’t fall for things easily. I may nod my head just to get through a silly conversation when I know the other party is completely irrational or beyond reproach, but I’m not going to believe anything at face value when I have doubts. I try to research things before I form judgement.

Wind power is a fairly new method of power generation in Canada. New things are scary. Humans have an inherent fear of the unknown. Many people also fear change. The anti-wind groups have taken advantage of these emotions and perfected the art of spreading fear, uncertainty and doubt about the health effects of wind energy. Anti-wind groups prey on those who are uncertain and uneducated about wind power. Working in wind, I have heard the most ridiculous claims about wind power. I have had to try very hard to keep my jaw from dropping in awe; I find it hard to comprehend how people can believe such utter crap. None of these things are worth repeating, as they do not deserve any more spread than they’ve already received. That, and the sheer idiocy would likely cause some blog readers to immediately bash their head on the nearest solid surface.

I am not writing this blog as a scientist, a doctor, an engineer or an accoustician. I don’t need to say the same things that science has said over and over again. The fact of the matter is this: The balance of peer-reviewed scientific evidence states that windmills / wind farms pose no risk to human health. None. Zip. Zero. Science wins over anecdotal evidence every time, unless of course you are part of an anti-wind group. There are plenty of scientific studies on the very real negative health impacts of fossil fuel burning and nuclear, but people are used to those sources of power. Ever wonder why all the anti-wind court cases get thrown out? There is NO real evidence with which they can win a case to stop development!

I watched one anti-wind court case with particular fascination because the people who were suing the wind farm’s parent company lived in my old neighborhood. This family was claiming to suffer all sorts of health problems since the windmills went up near their home. As I said, I lived quite close to these people at one point. Their home was located directly beside a rail line where freight trains would pass frequently. There was a railway crossing at the edge of their property where the train would sound it’s horn. The train would also sound at 3 other crossings nearby, all of which were audible from this property. The home which these people inhabited had no siding on it (and had been that way for years). Do I need to point out the blatantly obvious problems with this scenario? No? I didn’t think so.

I’m going to say something here that may seem shocking, but hear me out. People who live near wind turbines are suffering from real health issues. People are losing sleep, experiencing headaches, nausea and so on. The reason for this is what’s important here. Windmills are not making people sick. A person’s fear that they will be made sick by windmills is making them sick. The very messages that anti-wind groups spread are causing these symptoms. Our mind is a powerful thing. Dr Clifton Meador, of Vanderbilt School of Medicine in Nashville in the U.S, said fear can turn into self-fulfilling prophecy. “Bad news promotes bad physiology. I think that you can persuade people that they’re going to die and have it happen. I don’t think there is anything mystical about it. We’re uncomfortable with the idea that words or symbolic actions can cause death because it changes our biomolecular model of the world.”* Now death is a little extreme for what we’re discussing here, but it solidifies my point.

What if I been told that windmills would make me sick, make my dog sick, make my family sick, etc, over and over again until I believed it? Would living here, looking out at the things that supposedly make me sick every day, make me sick? If I truly believed in it, yes, I have no doubt that I would make myself sick. I would stress myself out thinking about these windmills making me sick. I wouldn’t sleep. I would give myself headaches. I would be filled with worry and anxiety. If my dog threw up (which is perfectly routine around here), I would believe that it was because of the windmills. In a situation where I am anxious or stressed about something I tend to develop a headache, so if I was stressed out by the windmills it makes perfect sense that I would have that happen. The symptoms are real. The cause has been wrongly attributed. Anti-wind groups are at the root of this suffering, planting seeds of doubt and fear in people’s minds until it manifests itself in illness.

I will say that I do believe that in earlier days of wind development some poorly placed windmills, some that were improperly installed or poorly designed could have been responsible for real issues. There are handful of people who have had real experiences that need to be learned from. In this article I am discussing the present day issue of widespread fear of wind energy and the consequences of that. I am pointing an accusing finger at the anti-wind groups. This has not been an easy thing for me to sit down and write, but I felt it was absolutely necessary. People need to think critically, do their homework and be realistic. Everyone needs a chance to educate themselves on wind energy before an anti-wind group convinces them that windmills are evil things that will cause harm. That is not reality.

There is so much more that can be said on this topic, but I don’t wish to dive in to politics, start dissecting research papers or quoting scientific studies. That has already been done. My mission is to quell fears, destroy doubts and satisfy uncertainties. My husband, my dog and myself live among windmills. We have worked underneath them for months on end. We have neighbors and friends who live in even closer proximity than we do. I am friends with turbine technicians and tradespeople who have spent countless hours inside nacelles, 80 meters in the air. We are all fine. We are happy. We are healthy. We chose to believe in science instead of scare tactics.

~Meredith

Read more...

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-1181335/The-health-alerts-make-ill-Negative-thoughts-induce-sickness.html#ixzz2N5XTdQ8k



Town Meeting Day: Wind energy on the agenda

This article was written by Candice Page, and appeared in the Burlington (Vt) Free Press.

___________________________________________________________________

Wind Energy in Vermount

When wind energy is on the agenda at tax-decision time, it’s a matter of for better or for worse, for richer or for poorer.

Tuesday in Lowell, town meeting voters will decide whether to eliminate municipal taxes altogether, thanks to payments from the Kingdom Community Wind project.
In Sheffield, voters will decide whether to repeat last year’s choice to use revenue from the First Wind turbine project to slash the tax rate by 84 percent.

But up the road in Newark, residents must decide whether to raise the tax rate by 5 cents to fight wind development on a local ridgeline.

In all, wind-related items are on the ballot in at least four Vermont communities this week. In southern Vermont, Grafton voters will debate an item — the wording of which already has touched off criticism — prompted by a wind company’s interest in a series of hills in town.

Vermont lawmakers are in the midst of a lengthy debate in Montpelier regarding whether, and how, the state’s process for approving commercial wind development should be reformed, in part to give greater weight to town plans that discourage — or embrace — wind turbines.

For some Town Meeting Day voters, the effects of wind-energy generation and the debate over it will be on display in more immediate ways.

In Newark, Selectboard Chairman Michael Channon won’t seek re-election. He said the town’s fight against proposed measuring towers has turned his volunteer job into a 20-to-25-hour-a-week marathon.

“I’ve had enough,” he said last week. “This has affected my business and my family’s life. It’s way too much.”

An $800 windfall

The owner of an average-value home in Lowell — worth about $150,000, the town treasurer estimates — paid $809 this year in taxes for town and highway expenses.
Next year, that bill is likely to drop to zero.

The 21 turbines of Green Mountain Power’s Kingdom Community Wind project started turning last fall on Lowell Mountain. Under a signed agreement with the town, GMP will pay Lowell $535,000 every year — more than enough to pay all the town’s bills, which amounted to $447,000 this year.

It takes four separate articles on the town warning to dispose of all that cash: The first calls on voters to use the wind payments to reduce the tax rate to zero. The remaining articles ask the town to set up a savings reserve fund and direct surplus money from 2012 and 2013 into that fund.

Town Treasurer Pam Tetreault cautions that, even should the articles pass, residents still will pay school taxes, as usual.

For Selectman Alden Warner, a supporter of the wind project, creating the savings fund is critical. Despite the influx of money, the Selectboard didn’t go on a spending spree, he said.

“We figured the same way we always had: ‘What do we need to get by?’” he said. “There’s nothing over and above what we usually do.

“My personal opinion is we need a ‘ramp up’ savings account,” he added, “so that whenever the wind towers are decommissioned, we can spread the increase in taxes over a few years.”

In addition, he said, revenue from the wind project might help Lowell expand its school, “which has been at its maximum for umpteen years.” He predicts the school census will grow, putting more pressure on the space.

“I think more people will be enticed to live in town because of our low taxes,” he said.

Although the wind project is now a reality, a coalition of opponents known as the Lowell Mountain Group sent postcards to residents urging them to attend town meeting to vote on how the new revenue should be used.

“Most people thought the money would automatically reduce our taxes. They weren’t aware it had to be voted on,” member Robbin Clark said last week.

Although she continues to oppose wind development — “The detriment to our area has been just awful,” she said — now that the project is up, it’s important to make sure the money is used to lower taxes, she said.

Getting used to riches

In using new revenue to save taxes, Lowell would be following in the footsteps of Sheffield, which has been receiving payments from the 16-turbine Sheffield Wind project since fall 2011.

The town is guaranteed $520,000 a year for 20 years. At the 2012 town meeting, there was debate about whether to eliminate town taxes altogether or to put some of the money into savings.

“I think last year we were confused. It was hard to wrap your mind around,” Town Clerk Kathy Newland said last week.

Voters split the difference, directing half the money to current expenses, half to savings.

The town tax on a $100,000 home (the average value of a residence on six acres or less in Sheffield, according to the state Tax Department) dropped from $743 to $118.
Voters will be faced with the same choice of how to spend the money this week.

“Hopefully it won’t be so confusing,” Newland said.

How to pay the legal bills

Lowell and Sheffield both endorsed wind energy development in public votes. Newark residents have been equally decisive in their opposition to plans by Eolian Wind Energy of Portsmouth, N.H., to erect a wind measuring tower on a hill known as Hawk Rock.

A majority of registered voters signed a petition opposing wind development. By a vote of 169-59, residents approved a new town plan that finds industrial-scale wind generation incompatible with the community’s values and vision of itself.

On Town Meeting Day, the bill comes due.

Already the town has incurred nearly $60,000 in legal expenses fighting Eolian’s plans and defending itself from a lawsuit brought by the owner of the land where the project would be built. More expenses lie ahead. An article on the warning proposes creation of a $50,000 fund to “assist in legal matters including but not limited to Industrial Wind related activities.”

One penny on the tax rate raises about $10,000 in Newark, so passage of the article would mean a one-year, 5 cent increase in the tax rate and another $84 on the tax bill of an average-value house worth $168,000.

“We need to have money set aside to the defend the town in any legal situation,” Selectboard Chairman Channon said.

“We just haven’t had to do that in the past.”

Cynthia Barber, executive coordinator of the local opposition group Newark Neighbors United, said the group expects the $50,000 item to pass.

“Given the support we got when the town plan was changed, we believe this ought to pass, but it’s not assured,” she said.

The vote will test Newark residents’ commitment to fighting commercial wind turbines, because the legal fund is not the only special spending item on the warning.
Before they get to wind energy, voters will be asked if they want to spend $250,000 to build a new Town Clerk’s Office.

“So we’re going to start right off having a difficult conversation about money,” said Noreen Hession, a strong opponent of wind development.

Talking in Grafton

Grafton voters won’t be asked to raise or spend money related to wind energy. There, local opponents asked the Selectboard to add an item to the warning to prohibit industrial wind turbines.

The board refused, saying it had received legal advice that towns in Vermont lack the authority to prohibit wind installations. Instead they drafted an article asking whether the board should “continue conversations” with the developer and put any specific turbine proposal to a nonbinding public vote.

The article seems likely to provoke the kind of divisions and heated debate that other communities have experienced when wind developers come to town.

Selectboard members in Newark have advice for their residents that might apply in Grafton, as well.

“Whether we ever live among industrial wind turbines or not it is our hope that we don’t lose our community,” Chairman Channon wrote in this year’s town report.

“This is a complex and emotional issue and I hope all residents will try hard to understand that all this will pass and the town of Newark will still be home,” he wrote.

 “Without community, it will just be real estate.”

http://www.burlingtonfreepress.com/article/20130304/NEWS07/303040004/Town-Meeting-Day-Wind-energy-on-the-agenda?nclick_check=1

The web of vested interests behind the anti-wind farm lobby

This article was written by Simon Chapman, Director of Research, University of Sydney, Australia;

"Simon Chapman PhD FASSA, is Professor in Public Health at the University of Sydney and a staff elected Fellow of Senate. He has published 439 articles in peer reviewed journals and 17 books and major reports. His h index is 40. His Public Health Advocacy and Tobacco Control: Making Smoking History was published by Blackwell (Oxford) in 2007. In 1997 he won the World Health Organisation's World No Tobacco Day Medal and in 2003 he was voted by his international peers to be awarded the American Cancer Society's Luther Terry Award for outstanding individual leadership in tobacco control. In 2008 he won the NSW Premier's Cancer Researcher of the Year medal; the Public Health Association of Australia's Sidney Sax medal; and was a NSW finalist in Australian of the Year. He was deputy editor (1992-1997) then editor (1998-2008) of the British Medical Journal's, Tobacco Control and is nowits Editor Emeritus."
____________________________________________________________
Oct, 2011

Following a July investigation by environmental correspondent Sandi Keane , a network analysis of links between the principal voices involved in demonising wind farms in Australia has been circulating in recent weeks.

The network diagram shows connections between some of the principal individuals who have been vocal in opposing wind farm development in Australia, several organisations that are at the forefront of the opposition, the Institute of Public Affairs and its love-child the Australian Environment Foundation and the Victorian Liberal Party.

In August, the Baillieu government announced it would be amending legislation to require all wind turbines to be sited further than two kilometres from any residence. 

The push is now on to get the NSW O’Farrell government do the same thing. The decision effectively guts the wind industry’s immediate prospects of further development in Victoria with wind industry insiders predicting that money will rush into South Australia, where already 21% of the state’s energy is sourced from wind.

(Click on the image for the full, readable version)

 

At the base of the diagram are various wind farms that have been targeted by those opposed and the connections with protest meetings that have been held in recent years. The often cosy relationships are never better illustrated than by looking at the links between the Waubra Foundation, the Australian Landscape Guardians and Victorian mining investor Peter Mitchell. Mitchell has uranium and coal seam gas interests and has spent a lifetime in the fossil fuel extraction industry.

Mitchell is the Waubra Foundation’s founding chairman and at least until February 2011, was also chairman of the Australian Landscape Guardians’ Science and Economics Committee.

The Waubra Foundation, the Landscape Guardians and Mitchell’s investment company Lowell Capital all have the same post office box, yet the “medical director” of the foundation, Sarah Laurie, wrote recently on a blog: ”The Waubra Foundation is not a front for the Landscape Guardians … Peter Mitchell … has kindly made his mailbox available for the use of the foundation, as we have extremely limited financial resources.”

Things must be tough: a post office box costs about 50 cents a day.

Amazingly, the Waubra Foundation website states that Laurie has an MD (research) degree from Flinders University. She does not: she has bachelor’s degrees in medicine from Flinders, but is unregistered to practice as a doctor. An MD is a postgraduate degree awarded to accomplished researchers for a body of published work.

One of Waubra Foundation’s governing principles states: “At all times to establish and maintain complete independence from government, industry and advocacy groups for or against wind turbines.” Its chairman Peter Mitchell is a strident opponent to the Stockyard Hill wind farm (which borders his weekender). Sarah Laurie ties herself in knots claiming that she doesn’t oppose the proposed Crystal Brook wind farm in her backyard, yet she’s devoted the past 15 months to fighting wind farms.

Fellow director Tony Hodgson is a founder of Friends of Collector, a protest organisation in the mould of the Landscape Guardians, he’s working hard to scuttle a wind farm adjacent to his weekender. Director Kathy Russell opposes the Mount Pollock wind farm in her backyard and is vice-president of the Australian Landscape Guardians, vice-president of the Victorian Landscape Guardians, spokeswoman for the Western Plains, Mount Pollock Landscape Guardians and the Barrabool Hills Landscape Guardians. The Landscape Guardians appears to have more office positions than members.

A front group bereft of credibility, we might wonder how the Waubra Foundation garnered the support of Michael Wooldridge (federal health minister under Howard) to also sit on their board. Wooldridge opposes the proposed Bald Hills wind farm, which borders his family’s farming interests in Gippsland. The Bald Hills project was almost scuttled by the Guardian’s heartfelt concern for the orange-bellied parrot.

A ban was overturned when it was shown that the whole wind farm might endanger one theoretical parrot every 667 years.

Having found limited success using protected species to prevent wind farms, the anti-windies settled on a new weapon, a manufactured health crisis. But last month, international journal Environmental Health Review published a review of all evidence about the proposition that wind farms cause health problems in those exposed. Like at least four other previous reviews, this latest review concluded:

“While it is acknowledged that noise from wind turbines can be annoying to some and associated with some reported health effects (e.g. sleep disturbance) … given that annoyance appears to be more strongly related to visual cues and attitude than to noise itself, self reported health effects of people living near wind turbines are more likely attributed to physical manifestation from an annoyed state than from wind turbines themselves. In other words, it appears that it is the change in the environment that is associated with reported health effects and not a turbine-specific variable like audible noise or infrasound.

“Regardless of its cause, a certain level of annoyance in a population can be expected (as with any number of projects that change the local environment) and the acceptable level is a policy decision to be made by elected officials and their government representatives where the benefits of wind power are weighted against their cons.”

So people who are annoyed or affected by wind farms are those who basically don’t like them and find the sight and sound of them upsetting, in much the same way that some people object to traffic, aircraft or street noise while others are indifferent to it. The idea that in themselves, they are intrinsically toxic to those exposed, has poor support in the scientific research literature.

The anti-wind farm movement regards such conclusions as profanity but has had a hard time getting the scientific community to take them seriously. For example, look up “wind turbine syndrome” (a new “disease” invented by a US general practitioner) in PubMed , and you’ll find zero entries. And if you look up “vibroacoustic disease”, the name for a new disease caused by inaudible, invisible sound waves put out by evil wind turbines, you’ll find papers by staff at a minor Lisbon university where the authors all repeatedly cite each other’s papers, but few others ever do.

Australia’s commitment to renewable energy faces formidable opposition from interests who think climate change is “crap” and who will be affected by the carbon tax. China, India, the US, Canada and many European nations are storming ahead with wind energy development. If flakey arguments about wind farms being harmful are not exposed, Australia will be tying one hand behind its back on the path to a greener economy.

Written by Simon Chapman,