Ducking the Turbine Blades

It looks to me like Michigan and Ontario are going to be competing for the "Stupid" prize.  Yes, Dave, I agree, that the State (and the province of Ontario and all related land jurisdictions) should have standards. But more and more the standard really should be a zero tolerance for IWTs in fresh water reserves. As a bare minimum! Health issues continue to emerge from around the world.  Serious health issues that affect between 35-85% of people living too near.  Believe me, after 1500 hours of research, I can tell you that the disruption will be much more than aesthetic.  The renewable pressures we all feel are a chimera and here's a link to a report from two days ago from an engineer's viewpoint on turbines: just in general, not necessarily with the added ideological flotsam of fresh water turbines. Believe me, in ten or twelve years, should these behemoth cuisinarts for birds and bats BE actually installed, they will be mostly broken, decaying, not working, possibly already disconnected from the grid. (Don't believe the industry about the 20-25 years!) This is not long term thinking about the environment at all.

Here's the National Post article:

Wind power the worst kind of mirage - The National Post
The National Post
March 3, 2010
By Henk Tennekes
Wind energy is an engineer's nightmare. To begin with, the energy density of flowing air is miserably low. Therefore, you need a massive contraption to catch one megawatt at best, and a thousand of these to equal a single gas-or coal-fired power plant.
If you design them for a wind speed of 34 miles per hour, they are useless at wind speeds below 22 mph and extremely dangerous at 44 mph, unless feathered in time. Remember, power is proportional to the cube of the wind speed. Old-fashioned Dutch windmills needed a two-man crew on 12-hour watch, seven days a week, because a runaway windmill first burnt its bearings, then its hardwood gears, then the entire superstructure.
This was the nightmare of millers everywhere in the "good" old days. And what did these beautiful antiques deliver? Fifteen horsepower at best, in favourable winds, about what a power lawn mower does these days. No wonder the Dutch switched to steam-powered pumping stations as soon as they could, in the late 19th century.
Since the power generated by modern wind turbines is so unpredictable, conventional power plants have to serve as back-ups. These run at less than half power most of the time. That is terribly uneconomical -- only at full power do they have good thermal efficiency and minimal CO2 emissions per kWh delivered.
Think also a moment of the cable networks needed: not only a fine-maze distribution network at the consumer end, but also one at the generator end. And what about servicing? How do you get a repair crew to a lonely hillside? Especially when you decided to put the wind park at sea? Use helicopters -- now that is green!
For that matter, would you care to imagine what happens to rotor blades in freezing rain? Or how the efficiency of laminar-flow rotor blades decreases as bugs and dust accumulate on their leading edges?
Or what did happen in Germany more than once? German legislation gives wind power absolute priority, so all other forms of generating electricity have to back off when the wind starts blowing. This creates dangerous, almost uncontrollable instabilities in the high-voltage network. At those moments, power plant operators all over Europe sweat blood, almost literally. The synchronization of the system is also a scary job: alternating currents at 100,000 volts or more cannot be out of phase more than one degree or so, else circuit breakers pop everywhere and a brownout all over Europe starts.
One application might be attractive, though. Suppose you fill a water basin in the hills nearby using wind power when it blows, and turn the water turbines on when emergency power is needed for one reason or another (a power plant failure, a cold winter night).
Wind power is a green mirage of the worst kind. It looks green to simple souls but it is a technical nightmare. Nowhere I have been, be it Holland , Denmark , Germany , France or California , have I seen wind parks where all turbines were operating properly. Typically, 20% stand idle, out of commission, broken down. Use Google Videos to find examples of wind turbine crashes, start meditating and reach your own conclusions.
Why don't politicians listen to engineers? Why do engineers cave in to politically inspired financing? Merely to join the green daydreaming? I am an engineer; I want to be proud of my profession.

  We would do better to wake ourselves and forget the intensive "research" of various councils and developer/government wind logistic patrols as they search for money machines:  the research has already been done: Denmark, UK, Australia, you name it.  Why not learn from them?  What is that quote about lunacy being when we recognize mistakes and continue to make them??

Hi again from Toronto.  We all agree that there are disturbing pieces of evidence for people's health from many industrial sources. Interesting to note that not ONE SINGLE coal fired plant has been shut down internationally since the inception of IWTs.  So the mythology that turbines will clean the air is just that.  Denmark has increased coal production 50% since its foray into wind. You always need backup.  For more reading on this, please visit www.torontowindaction.com

Dr McMurtry of Western U   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_McMurtry

with immaculate and impressive qualifications, has called for a complete moratorium until more epidemiological studies are done.  Yes, a swath of folks are affected by sleep deprivation, infra sound (please look that one up...it is quite substantiated what that does to animals and people), and we don't yet know what is a safe siting for turbines.  Over water, sound travels differently, of course, and is amplified.  What is the safe setback?  Stay posted on this, because even eight miles away from turbines in the UK sheep are having still births to an alarming degree, with no other possible factor involved.  At our own lonely Pickering turbine, which has not performed well at all in the economic sense, the vet's business nearby went through the roof with owners bringing in dogs that were for the first time peeing in the house, and with sudden onset behaviour problems.  He attributes this entirely to the turbine near his practice. That is just one! Anecdotal perhaps, but as one scientist says: how many anecdotes become data?

Roger Watt expresses his concerns at this link.

http://retirees.uwaterloo.ca/~rwwatt/wind.html

And more reading on the health effects of shadow flicker is here:

http://retirees.uwaterloo.ca/~rwwatt/wind.html

Once you delve into it, we have to think that at minimum, Carl Sagan was right: Absence of evidence does not mean evidence is absent. More studies are needed. That's what everyone is calling for. Prudence and forthought. If you do have occasion to speak with folks who have suffered the consequences of being too close to a turbine, you will need little convincing in my view.  Even folks who are being paid yearly to have these on their land are complaining. 

Dr Lu Lombardi of Toronto is currently assembling a massive array of international studies and reports on "infrasound".  This should be released in the next six months.  This is the inaudible sound that the Nazis used to good effect as a torture method.  Well known health effects. Here is a link to his overview, calling for a moratorium.

http://www.torontowindaction.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=105&Itemid=169

The most fundamental signals which permeate this world are inaudible. They not only surpass our hearing, but they undergird our being. Natural infrasounds rumble through experience daily. There manifestations are fortunately infrequent and incoherent. Infrasound is inaudible to human hearing, being of pitch below 15 cycles per second. The bottom human limit. The plynth. The foundation. Infrasound is not heard, it is felt. Infrasound holds a terrible secret in its silent roar.

Infrasound produces varied physiological sensations which begin as vague "irritations". At certain pitch, infrasound produces physical pressure. At specific low intensity, fear and disorientation. Nazi propaganda engineers methodically used infrasound to stir up the hostilities of crowds who were gathered to hear their madman. The results are historical nightmares.  http://journal.borderlands.com/1996/the-sonic-weapon-of-vladimir-gavreau/

Elephants use infrasound to communicate. Much of the natural world survives with low and infrasound.  Disruption of natural flows of audible and inaudible sound is disastrous for many animals, why not for humans?

For the purposes of human and natural health, the precautionary principle should apply. Until complete studies have been completed, why risk 35% or more of any population, especially children, the elderly, the compromised, those who suffer depression? In my view, it's not worth it! Especially when the industry doesn't do what it purports to do: save the planet!  That is simply a lie.

I now know there are lies, damn lies, and wind lies...those are special. Designed to create money, dang the consequences.

Hi H2Oyu...cute moniker.  For some reason the link you provided did not detail who the producer of the report is/was.  Thanks for sending this, but it is really important to be able to tell who is paying for the report, and who sponsored it. Ironically, stats can just about prove anything, and reports can be garnered from anyone willing to express their version of the truth.  CanWea produced a health study report last year that was ridiculed in the press and by true experts as they had hired a doctor to express his opinion in a manner that would allow them to disclaim or dismiss health concerns. (Ironically, the CanWea report is very similar in language to a similar report prepared by the Tobacco industry some years back defending the position that tobacco does not harm human health!) Hope that doesn't shock folks!

 Ironically again, I just came home to Toronto from a community meeting today  in Creemore Ontario where four really amazing speakers presented,  three of whom acknowledged the health problems associated with turbines; one pharmacologist is currently conducting independent studies with a blind group; a leading law professor from the University of Toronto who debunked the economic and environmental values of turbines, Prof. Michael Trebilcock; John Laforet, President of Wind Concerns Ontario; and a local farmer whose friend nad neighbor signed a lease with a developer, but now is in Mt Sinai Hospital seriously ill (not from the turbines as they are not built yet), who would like to sell his land but cannot because his land is basically now not saleable at all due to the lease he signed with the Turbine folks. 

The health studies are coming fast and furious now. Japan, it was pointed out, has experienced so many health problems associated that they are conducting their own epidemiological studies.  One striking feature of the afternoon was a photo displayed by the scientist explaining infrasound and health effects.  The photo was of eleven or twelve people of all ages, a small child who had been hospitalized thirteen times for searing earaches that landed her in emerg. This little girl was assessed to NOT have any infections.  Attending physicians finally concluded that her earaches that left the kid screaming her head off were due to turbine "noise" or frequencies.  ALL of these people in the photo had to leave their homes, be housed by the industry in hotels, furnished suites, and none have been able to return due to   associated health problems.  I find that tragic.  They are not the only ones.  When folks are literally not able to sleep in their own homes, and must abandon their treasured homes, their safe space, that is very serious. 

The other speaker was Ian Hanna, a farmer in Prince Edward County, who has just launched a unique lawsuit. He is suing the Ontario Government as his land was invaded also by turbines at Big Island, which is not very big.  His suit is based on the "precautionary principle" which is defined in many places in various ways. He read to us the definition he likes best from the World Health Organization.  Very long, but very effective. http://www.euro.who.int/document/e83079.pdf

We can expect that the uprising that is happening along these lines in Ontario is common to many across the world.  Many expressed that today. 

I suspect, H2Oyu, that you also would support a "precautionary" approach, as emerging evidence points strongly that that would be advisable, certainly until more evidence is gathered.  You seem to have a strong scientific leaning, and would necessarily want more evidence rather than less, in light of technolgy that even MIGHT harm human health or the environment.

 My fear is that for about ten years in Canada we have been victims of our nervous systems, you might say.  (Marshall McLuhan's expression!)  We have wanted so much to do the right thing for the planet, and have been subjected to social marketing of a high order.  It has taken about this long to get down and dirty with the facts and emerging problems, some of which are hugely economic problems. Dr. Trebilcock expressed today that the collusion or relationship, whatever your bent,  between business and government in Ontario is akin to a marriage of the Baptists and the Bootleggers...folks that are brainwashed into thinking the industry is green and determined to proseletize this for reasons they know best, and the folks that just want to make a bundle off of it no matter what. (Just his words)

And from precious farm land being gobbled up and lovely vacation land subsumed in the swish and shadow flicker,  to now the proposed drinking water abomination set for the Great Lakes...it's hard to have the right words. Really hard. There is nothing green that I can see in this industry.  The Turbines are transported hundreds and thousands of miles, manufactured out of petrochemicals, plastics, mired in cement, oiled and lubricated and maintained with hundreds of gallons of oil, sprayed with chemicals that strip the layers of bugs from helicopters, and don't deliver the punch it said it would.  Without the subsidies that developers are lining up for, there would be no wind industry. 

Here's Dr. Trebilcock's National Post article: Wind Power is a complete disaster:

http://network.nationalpost.com/np/blogs/fpcomment/archive/2009/04/08/wind-power-is-a-complete-disaster.aspx

My wish is to have the light shine on this industry in such a manner that they will need to tell us why their industry does not do what it has expressed it will do for the environment, for jobs, for cleaner air, for the economy.  Put the same challenge to our governments.  And have us all connect the dots...and for heaven's sake, please apply the precautionary principle to 20% of the world's remaining fresh water supplies.  Let's all talk to each other, and share our stories, so we can fight this idea together. It's really not a good idea.  I continually hear from scientists that it is not a good idea: migration routes, aesthetics, property values, human health, bad economics...gosh, how many more reasons do we need to put the brakes on?

Thanks!