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Windfarm Sickness Spreads By Word of Mouth
eldavojohn writes "Just like the many stories surrounding alleged 'Wi-Fi sickness,' research is now showing that windfarm sickness spreads by word of mouth instead of applying universally to windfarms. Areas that had never had any noise or health complaints were suddenly experiencing them after 2009 when anti-wind groups targeted populations surrounding windfarms. From the article, '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.' While there's unfortunately no way to prove that someone is lying about how they feel, it's likely a mixture of confirmation bias, psychosomatic response, hypochondria, greed and hatred of seeing windmills on the horizon that drives this phenomenon."
People are still just as stupid as they've always been...
I suggest someone spread around the idea that coal power plants endager the health those nearby. A bonus is that this might actually be true.
I wish that, when people are frickin' stupid like this, folks would just roll their eyes at them rather than take them seriously.
People seem to come up with the dumbest reasons they think they're ill. I know it can be frustrating to feel badly and not know why, but come on. Use some science.
Or maybe one has nothing to do with the other.
Windmills good. Fracking good when done right.
Windmill sickness is no different than cell phone sickness or I saw a fracking rig nearby sickness.
Stop trying to score stupid political points.
Having a beautiful, natural view obscured by ugly windmills couldn't possibly cause stress and induce real physical sickness in folks, now could it?!
If you travel much, you'll notice that folks tend to be happier in areas with beautiful scenery, much less so elsewhere.
Another thing, most people tend to be very mild mannered. Quite a large number of people will accept a burnt pizza with a smile, only a small minoroty will complain. Perhaps these people were bothered all along and just didn't say anything to avoid rocking the boat...until it was pointed out to them that they had the right to speak up and demand a pizza that wasn't burnt to a crisp.
Can actually make you sick. Fear, paranoia, stress can all affect the mind to think there's something wrong with the body, until it manifests. That's why attitude is such an important part of recovering from sickness... if you think you're not going to get better, you may not, but it's guaranteed that it will take longer for you to get better as a consequence.
Then again I'd sooner listen a politician than an anti-windmill activist, you've gotta be f'in stupid to think windfarms are bad for your health.
I wish that, when people are frickin' stupid like this, folks would just roll their eyes at them rather than take them seriously.
People seem to come up with the dumbest reasons they think they're ill. I know it can be frustrating to feel badly and not know why, but come on. Use some science.
Well for as stupid as it sounds, it gets modded up on Slashdot (disclaimer: I am the submitter).
My work here is dung.
Windfarms make me sick when I think about how much money was wasted subsidizing power that is inherently unreliable and atleast somewhat unpredictable
That seems a bit biased of an article, but I guess that's par for the course these days. While I don't necessarily subscribe to the idea of "wind farm sickness", I am not a fan of wind energy as it's expensive and I actually do not like the aesthetics. Having just stayed in Palm Springs this past weekend, I find the massive utility scale wind farm there to be not a pleasurable experience; they are loud (although only nearby, if you're at a hotel some distance off you can't hear them) and I personally feel it's damaged the spectacular mountain landscapes you experience when there. As this is an entirely subjective opinion, it's not invalid at all in teh debate over wind farms, and denigrating that perspective by lumping it with "greed" or by suggesting that someone is "lying about how they feel".
"Windfarm Sickness"? Lame.
"Don Quixote Syndrome"? Much better.
Demanding constant attention will only lead to attention.
It's because the low frequency sound from the blades is the same frequency as the Brown Note
That's what you call double standards.
The psychosomatic consequences of windpower are nothing that should stop anybody from building windfarms. But when people in Japan, who have barely been exposed to any significant radiation at all, start complaining about imaginary symptoms of their exposure to radiation (as well as very real symptoms of unchecked overdosing on iodine) this is just yet another reason to do away with nuclear power.
Maybe it could. If it did you'd expect studying the incidence of the supposed symptoms that it causes would show that they had a correlation with the presence of windfarms independent of propaganda campaigns targeting the local area and attempting to convince people that windfarms are bad for health.
Science was created so that we didn't have to answer question be anecdote and supposition.
Yes, blah blah etc. We all know sound CAN have an affect on people, but the effect needs to be very targeted and it seriously can't do damage unless it is very powerful.
Windmills emit very low power vibrations, like absolutely stupidly tiny.
The things they can remotely do to people, at the absolute MOST, is cause a sense of eeriness. (this has also been linked to people seeing things in their peripheral vision when they are next to huge fans like in kitchens, happens all the time)
And then there is monaural and binaural beats, but a windmill group in any configuration is seriously unlikely to produce anything of any significance that it could cause anything to happen in the brain. A dry-cleaners would cause more energetic vibrations than a windmill could, most of the energy from a windmill is dissipated in the air before it even reaches you most times.
Washing your hair does more damn damage than a windmill could!
Never mind playing high-contact and even head-contact sports. (such as football, we have heard of that a lot in the past few years, tragic)
Windmills are only a danger to birds. That is one that needs to be watched.
and put up with the sound for a year, and then tell me you're not sick of it.
lol, my captcha to post this was 'quieted'.
Windsmills. Not in my backyard!
This is just another example of the placebo (or I guess the "nocebo") effect. If you tell people something will make them fell bad, particularly if they are inclined to dislike the thing in question (for whatever reason), they will almost magically start to feel bad. You can do this for fun and excitement at parties: Tell people you have an upset stomach from the salad (or soup or chicken or whatever). You'll pretty quickly find one other person who tells you they don't feel well either. And now there are two people spreading the "sickness".
This was mentioned above, but the reality is that a nearby coal power plant can actually make you sick, whereas a nearby windmill is almost certainly benign. And yet for many people, the power of suggestion is greater than people's "belief" in evidence.
Great warrior...hrmph! Wars not make one great.
Or "I've got secret crap in my drinking water" sickness.
upon the advice of my lawyer, i have no sig at this time
What do cigarettes have to do with it?
Does windmill construction require pumping undisclosed "trade secret" chemicals into the ground water?
and put up with the sound for a year, and then tell me you're not sick of it.
lol, my captcha to post this was 'quieted'.
Do you know what the power law is? Get a decibel meter go stand next to it, then back away ten feet, take a reading, then back away ten feet and take a reading, etc. Now measure how far that is from your house and do some basic math to fit it to a curve ... Hint: it's probably a flat line all the way to your house from background noise.
My favorite 3 words from this..." anti-wind groups"
The wind is evil and must be stopped!!
They have too much wind in their head.
If by "collective" you mean the collected knowledge built up by logic and experimentation, then yes.
"I feel sick, someone told me it was the windmills so it must be them" despite no medically known process that would cause this with several studies conducted that found no link is not comparable to the fact that pumping chemicals into the ground contaminates the groundwater.
These people do feel sick, I'm sure. The cause isn't the windmills - it's the placebo affect in reverse. Most people don't feel sick until someone tells them the windmills are making them sick. The ones who felt sick before are from some other cause, there is exactly the same amount of evidence that the sickness could be caused by houses, roads, or mailboxes as there is that it's caused by windmills, that is to say, none. They felt sick, and point to a random object and blame it. Not rational or logical, but a lot of people do it.
In a fashion so does the flu... All mouths should be permanently sealed shut.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
Having a beautiful, natural view obscured by ugly windmills couldn't possibly cause stress and induce real physical sickness in folks, now could it?!
If you travel much, you'll notice that folks tend to be happier in areas with beautiful scenery, much less so elsewhere.
Another thing, most people tend to be very mild mannered. Quite a large number of people will accept a burnt pizza with a smile, only a small minoroty will complain. Perhaps these people were bothered all along and just didn't say anything to avoid rocking the boat...until it was pointed out to them that they had the right to speak up and demand a pizza that wasn't burnt to a crisp.
This. Of course there may be some hypochondria involved, but people living close enough to hear whoosh-whoosh all day long, have their house invaded by shadow effects or their formerly rustic countryside tarnished have all reasons to complain.
Flourescent (adj): smelling like ground wheat.
1,23 million world deaths traffic related, 2007 data shows.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_traffic-related_death_rate
The cell phone guys already know this - people report symptoms even when the tower isn't powered on.
Notably and tellingly, the biggest cluster of autistic children is in Hollywood. How much is real, how much is better detection, and how much is bizarre wishful thinking of the same anti-placebo effect?
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
It's probably Carbon Monoxide and Soot withdrawal that is causing these wind farm health episodes.
Codifex Maximus ~ In search of... a shorter sig.
It's the alarminst NIMBYs who want it removed are making you ill.
The answer, therefore, is not to remove the wind turbines but those who complain.
So in an Village the T-Mobile sets up a tower. Suddenly people started complaining and pointed at the tower for the reason. The Telekom guys were baffled, imagining what would happen if they actually powered it up.
I have a new pill that will heal all of those wind ills, others may claim it's a placebo pill but rest assured it will heal any illness caused by these wind farms.
That's like saying to someone working at a smelting plant that their job is impossible because a normal room thermometer on;y goes up to 60C or so, and the glass or plastic would melt in a furnace.
Mass hysteria is Contagious and documented Psychogenic illness
"Windfarm Sickness"? Lame.
"Don Quixote Syndrome"? Much better.
I like it! But I was thinking something more like "Giant Fan Death" ...
people experiencing wind-turbine related illnesses and whether or not they own a Dyson "bladeless" fan.
If a normal electric fan produces "annoying buffeting", imagine what those super-sized wind turbines must do!
Don't know about you, but personally I find it very FORTUNATE that there's no way to tell if somebody is lying about their feelings. Although I'm sure the frickin' transhumanist idiots will find a way to rob people of the dignity of having their own thoughts to themselves, too, eventually.
Having a beautiful, natural view obscured by ugly windmills couldn't possibly cause stress and induce real physical sickness in folks, now could it?!
Most people I know thnk that the windmills look kind of cool. Your declaring both that they are ugly, and that they cause people stress because of that ugliness is conjecture.
until it was pointed out to them that they had the right to speak up and demand a pizza that wasn't burnt to a crisp.
A pizza analogy - Awesome!
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
I will break you!
Getting tired of Slashdot... moving to Usenet comp.misc for a while.
Not quite 'sickness', but my aunt lives on the side of a large hill overlooking a pretty valley... Her balcony used to be a nice place to sit and relax. Now her down-hill neighbor (approximately 2km away) has a wind turbine in his yard and the low frequency periodic noise from it has transformed her balcony into an annoying place to be and she can no longer sleep with the windows open. She's not claiming sickness, she's merely claiming annoyance..
Oh great. Now all of Slashdot is exposed to Windfarm Sickness. Good thing there's a vaccine available for it. (Goes by the brand name Reason, Logic, And Science.)
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
Most people? "Most" people I know don't mind seeing them in flat areas that are full of nothing but farms. Keep them off the beautiful mountains and hillsides and away from the beach, however.
In Ontario, the right-wing establishment have successfully united the usual anti-government, anti-progress suspects with some pissed-off farmers, rural retirees, and rich NIMBYs to create a particularly nasty strain of anti-windmill sentiment. They've become the Typhoid Mary of wind farm sickness.
It's true that the Ont. government was a bit overzealous in a few of its land acquisition, and there were a small number of households which were closer than what is considered a comfortable distance from some installations, but as far as i know, every such household has either been paid off or relocated.
The claimed negative health effects are spurious. I wonder what any of the hundreds of thousands of households located close to rail lines, expressways or airports must think when they hear people whinging about effects from wind generators...
Yes windmills kill some birds and bats. In North America the reported bird-kill from windfarms is a fraction of the kill from oil and gas operations.... and several orders of magnitude lower than the number of birds killed annually by.... house-cats. Like birds? Don't let your stupid cat out.
Finally, the technology is still pretty young. There's every reason to expect that wind generators will become more reliable, efficient, quieter, and that their energy can be stored and used more effectively. How many centuries has coal-burning taken to get efficient and clean up a bit?
Are you suffering from any of these symptoms?
Headaches
Joint pain
Loss of visual acuity
Decreased strength
Increased blood pressure
Occasional forgetfulness
Everyone gets headaches (I'm sure there's rare exceptions). The rest is just what happens when you get older. As long as there's enough people over 35-40, these "symptoms" will get positive results no matter what you blame as the cause.
Unlike the "Wi-fi sickness", people can actually hear low-frequency sound in blind tests.
The conclusion in the headline is just one of several possible. It's also possible that people actually do feel discomfort from the sounds, as opposed to word of mouth causally leading to ("spreads") statements to that end.
For fuck's sake James Randi would cut these people open with a lightsaber and say "I thought they smelled bad on the outside" and hide inside through the impending dark ages.
If this were correct then we would see these sorts of symptoms in nations where windmills are in much more common use than they are in the US. But we do not.
Just because you are paranoid does not mean that no-one is out to get you.
Everyone knows that the bad thing that windfarms cause is the slowing of the earths rotation.
yes I actually heard that from the mouth of one of the local nutjobs that are against the installation of a windfarm offshore.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
What makes them sick is knowing that their neighbor is getting $5K per year per machine and they aren't.
...next to your house!
I feel gravely ill, boss, I need to go home.
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
Not quite 'sickness', but my aunt lives on the side of a large hill overlooking a pretty valley... Her balcony used to be a nice place to sit and relax. Now her down-hill neighbor (approximately 2km away) has a wind turbine in his yard and the low frequency periodic noise from it has transformed her balcony into an annoying place to be and she can no longer sleep with the windows open. She's not claiming sickness, she's merely claiming annoyance..
Okay so let's say that from right up in front of the thing you experience 105 dB of sound. Now let's use some basic math to compute what 105 dB at 0.5 meters away sounds like when you're 2,000 meters away. 32.958 dB should be the intense ear splitting result at the balcony. Does your neighbor have some super noisy form of wind turbine or does your aunt go insane inside a kitchen when the refrigerator is running? Does she have to turn her air conditioning and refrigerator off in order to sleep? Because according to every resource out there, physics put that noise at sub 40 dB. Even if we bump it up to rock concert levels (120 dB) it should be 48 dB at 2 km and that's about as loud as an AC unit.
Now, how loud is acceptable at the edge of someone's property before you think the authorities should be involved? And think carefully about people who like to use air condition/compressors, mow their lawns, have yard parties with music, drive motorcycles and do any good patriotic non-save-the-rainforest stuff before you answer.
My work here is dung.
A nuclear plant, a wind farm or a coal plant.
You can pick any one of the three, but one of them is going to get built if you intend to keep being a power hogging drain on society.
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
I actually think that a wind farm looks really cool.....especially when they are sitting out in the middle of "wide open nothing" that would normally not have anything interesting to see.....
They used to have the same problem in medieval Spain. Those windmills drove Don Quixote nuts!
Proverbs 21:19
Does windmill construction require pumping undisclosed "trade secret" chemicals into the ground water?
There are no doubt people who think the Muppets were actual live creatures.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
The claimed negative health effects are spurious. I wonder what any of the hundreds of thousands of households located close to rail lines, expressways or airports must think when they hear people whinging about effects from wind generators...
The differences between the noises you cite and wind farms are as follows;
Consistency; The noise from a wind far is there usually 24/7 at a fairly constant rate. All the examples you cite are intermittent. There are periods if quiet between when trains and aircraft go by. When building roadways millions are spent on berms and sound fences to mitigate the noise. Even then there are periods of time, usually at night when people are trying to sleep, that roadways are much quieter.
Frequencies; This is a major factor. The frequency of a windmill is within an order of magnitude of that of the human heart beat. This closeness may cause physical issues.
A constant thump that resonates in one's chest 24/7 is very different from a train going by every 5 to 10 minutes.
Yes windmills kill some birds and bats. In North America the reported bird-kill from windfarms is a fraction of the kill from oil and gas operations.
Could that be because the number of wind farms are a fraction of the number of oil and gas operations? If the number of wind farms exceed the number of oil and gas operation that may change.
.... and several orders of magnitude lower than the number of birds killed annually by.... house-cats. Like birds? Don't let your stupid cat out.
Sorry by two wrongs don't make a right. Just because cats are worse than windmills doesn't mean that windmills do not cause significant damage. The other issue is that using raw numbers is misleading. Windmills have been found to kill a larger proportion of large endangered birds, raptors for example, than cats. Cats, on the other hand, kill a much larger proportion of smaller birds such as starlings and sparrows. Killing a few hawks is much more damage than killing a few hundred starlings.
I am currently on the fence at this issue as I have seen no controlled studies on the effects of strong low frequency sound.
I heard politicians cause boils and similar sores.
As a matter of fact, I know that many people who have cancer happen to live in the same exact neighborhoods politicians live.
Furthermore, the vehicular accidents increased several 1,000% in areas where politicians live, from 1888 to 2012.
Even more recently, people die in airplane accidents from areas where politicians live. Statistics from 1904 to present shows exponential increase!
I am not linking politicians to these horrible things. I am not saying politicians murder people, or similar, but it makes you wonder, eh? :D
So they are getting smarter...but more lazier? Maybe that is a better hypothesis.
People aren't getting any wiser, and propagandists are getting smarter too. While Fox News pushes *extremely dumb* ideas, it does so in a very slickly manipulative way that precisely targets the vulnerabilities of their demographic audience, effectively conditioning them to act less intelligent than they could be.
Other mass media companies do the same thing, as do advertizing and public relations businesses. They get paid for that.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
Just why would any sane person hate or even dislike a windmill on the horizon? Sure one guy likes vanilla and the next must have chocolate but really aren't our desires part of our sanity? This is rather like the legal nonsense about murderers. Isn't it rather obvious that a person that wants to shoot up a theater full of people is insane? Normal people simply do not have urges to wipe out school kids, customers at McDonalds or even shoot at Ronnie Raygun. And if someone is in a rage over a windmill disturbing their notion of what the horizon should look like they need to be confined until they can at least be medicated.
hatred of seeing windmills on the horizon
I can certainly understand that. I live in Scotland, where we used to have people coming from all over the world to see the outstandingly beautiful scenery. Now that the untouched landscape has been despoiled by greedy windfarm companies, tourism is dying off. These inefficient monstrosities only make money for a very small number of people, and the external effects destroy livelihoods.
Hydraulic fracturing 'done wrong' won't be known 'til your water supply is contaminated. Whatever uncertainty this implies could be offset by the requirement of liability bonding for drill rig operators and well owners. Think of it! There's a whole new opportunity for derivatives market makers. It's just crying out for the likes of AIG. (Maybe that's what Timmy Geitner will do after he retires from shilling for the Federal Reserve.)
I'm just waiting to see what happens when people outside Appalachia, people with political power, figure out that you can't replace, recharge or clean a contaminated aquifer.
If wind power is 'done wrong', it's less profitable. That's all.
There's no such thing as bad wind...
cue: stupid commentary
Perhaps they have been experiencing the symptoms for a long time, but couldn't figure out what was the cause.
They should install some garish but non functional thing on them, a big box on the side that has blinking lights, a fan, some cables and some steam-punkish looking stuff on it.
Then tell everybody they are "Windmill Disruption Dampeners" and that the company went almost bankrupt buying them for the residents.
Placebos work, even if the person KNOWS it's a placebo. ;)
Most people I know thnk that the windmills look kind of cool. Your declaring both that they are ugly, and that they cause people stress because of that ugliness is conjecture.
I think they look cool in some circumstances and really hideous in others. If my peaceful rural home and view were suddenly dominated by those things, I guarantee that I would be stressed by the new lack of peace and quiet and the devaluation of my home and property. So, no conjecture there. Makes perfect sense.
A pizza analogy - Awesome!
A delivery pizza analogy would be better, because that would also involve a car.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
Small point, but the main reason for preferring sea salt is that it tastes different than "normal" table salt.
The main reason for using sea-salt is: Iodine.
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
Me? I want my salt to be as refined and inorganic as possible. Na and Cl in equal proportions, nothing more.
The you will probably develop an thyroid problem. Please rate the parent comment -1 uninformed.
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
The problem with wind farms isn't just the silly people surrounding it but the ecological risks and damage done. In NA our bat populations are critically endangered and being destroyed by the pressure differential caused by various wind farms, if you bother to count the bodies. It sounds OK until you realize that bats are incredibly useful, they pollinate more than bees do, they control more insect pest populations than anything else. A single bat can eat many thousands of mosquitoes in a night.
In countries with more wind farms the damage is magnified. See Costa Rica. If only more people even gave a shit.
Do you have actual data to back up how many bats are being killing by wind gennies? I recalled people opposed to wind gennies saying they killed a lot of birds. However studies have shown cats kill more birds than wind generators. The article Do wind turbines kill birds? has a chart of statistics showing how many birds are killed by different things, from cars, wild and feral cats (but not pet cats?), to windows. Some may have a problem with the chart though, out of seven killers of birds 5 of the statistics are provided by the American Wind Energy Association, one by treehugger, and one by American Bird Conservancy. Sciam asks the question Are Wind Turbines Getting More Bird and Bat-Friendly? It partially answers by saying stake holders from AWEA, ABC, and National Audubon are working on ways to reduce bird and bat mortality rates.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
Wind farms aren't generally placed in scenic locations. I find them tolerably pleasant in the daytime and the ones I've been close too make no appreciable sound above the background wind noise.
However, the sea of blinking red lights at night could be a viable complaint if you lived nearby. They are far more intrusive than a radio tower here and there.
I am becoming gerund, destroyer of verbs.
General Electric-designed reactors in Fukushima have 23 sisters in U.S.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
It's probably Phronemophobia.
An effective "democracy" creates the illusion the people have a say in their government.
You could argue anything. The fact is, though, that if that argument were correct, then, whether or not people attributed the symptoms to the windfarms (that is, whether or people recognized the source of the symptoms), there would still be a correlation between the symptoms themselves and the presence of the windfarms, independently of propaganda efforts about the link between the windfarms and the symptoms. Something for which, as even the physician that is the head of the group pushing the idea that windfarms are a health hazard admits in TFA, there is "no evidence". (Of course, she tosses reason aside says that "no evidence doesn't mean no problem".)
I'll reiterate: science was created so that we no longer need to answer questions by anecdote and supposition.
Nuclear power is Hooked on Subsidies.
"How do France (and India, China and Russia) build cost-effective nuclear power plants? They don’t. Governmental officials in those countries, not private investors, decide what is built. Nuclear power appeals to state planners, not market actors."
Oh, about CATO:
"The Cato Institute is a public policy research organization — a think tank – dedicated to the principles of individual liberty, limited government, free markets and peace. Its scholars and analysts conduct independent, nonpartisan research on a wide range of policy issues."
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
This overlooks the fact that many specialty salts (including, but not limited to, most "sea salts") have less sodium per volume (and less sodium for their impact to taste, when used in a form where they aren't going to be completely dissolved before being eaten) than conventional table salt products because of the size and shape of the crystals, which means that, in many applications (particularly as a finishing salt rather than an ingredient added before cooking) you can use a non-trivially smaller mass of salt for the same effect, which does, in fact, reduce sodium without compromising taste.
Problem with discussions like this is that very few of the posters have any direct experience with multi-megawatt wind farms a few hundred meters from their formerly silent properties. Or any possibility that this might happen to them. But most of the folks living around these things had nothing to say -- for sure an annoyance factor. But there is more... problem as I see it is that wind proponents want to invent a whole new set of physical laws to govern the discussions around these industrial facilities. And conveniently ignore the mass of medical evidence accrued about the health impacts of prolonged exposure to very low frequency sound. So they want to proceed with a blank slate and ignore the US Navy testing on pilots, or UK health issues with blower and factory noise. And there is always the problem of structural resonance. As wind collectors have gotten larger, the setbacks to allow distance based attenuation have not grown proportionately -- an idea that assumes equi-directional radiation, not necessarily applicable without analysis. And a few studies -- like the Wisconsin noise study last year, found that a lot of the noise was in the same range that the Navy found made pilots sick. And the place studied was further from the turbines than we are going to be. There is always going to be mass hysteria -- but noise is measurable with instruments. And not everyone responds in the same degree to the same irritants. But one wonders how many of these discussions would exist if the poster had to put up with it themselves instead of asserting that someone else should?
I know I'm going to get rated down for this, but what if people are experiencing symptoms, but have no idea what is generating them. A lot of people are claiming confirmation bias here, but the term itself 'confirmation bias' can be used AS a confirmation bias. Asserting that what someone feels has no real merit because it's all made up in their head. It's a convenient way to shoot down someone elses opinion that's based on subjective observation. I'm starting to see it used this way more and more.
Getting back on topic though. People are claiming they're being irrational and uninformed, but really if they became aware of issues they were having that wouldn't be uninformed at all. Rather it would be people are making informed opinions on it.
I'm not using this as rational, but it's entirely possible to drive someone insane by constantly bombarding them with a certain stimuli. Absolutely positive. Some people may find the white noise generated by wind turbines soothing, but for others that can drive them nuts... In ways they never even knew were possible or were able to associate with anything.
Years ago, during the California power crisis, BC Hydro made a killing
An important note: the power crisis was caused entirely by market manipulation with Enron at the front of the line. There was never a shortage of capacity. Traders would call up power plants and convince them to shut down unnecessarily thus driving up demand and price. Surprisingly a few people at the top actually went to jail for it. Good times. See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_electricity_crisis#Involvement_of_Enron
While partially correct most people do not know the state government actually caused the crisis. I think it's very telling saying "capped retail electricity prices" was part of the problem. Most people who want government regulation use the CA energy crisis, if it is used, as an example of why deregulation cause problems. They are dead wrong about that. CA did not deregulate energy, all the state did was change the regulations. Owning both electrical generation and the distribution of that electricity was made illegal. Then people were able to choose the retail sellers they bought their electricity from. Those retail sellers were not allowed to raise their prices to users but generators were allowed to raise their prices to retail sellers. When the prices retailers had to pay was higher than what they were able to charge their own buyers, the end users, they were left with stopping the sell of energy or with going bankrupt. The entire crisis was caused by the state government.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
"and hatred of seeing windmills on the horizon that drives this phenomenon."
I think windmills on the horizon is a beautiful scenery comparable to a city skyline.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
Autistic children in Hollywood are due to the gene mixing of the nuts and flakes that live there.
I actually think that a wind farm looks really cool.....especially when they are sitting out in the middle of "wide open nothing" that would normally not have anything interesting to see.....
Same here. I can't make up my mind whether a wind gennie looks better off the coast, in the middle of a prairie, or on a mountain top. They all look awesome.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
I'm reading this line of comments and feel the need to point out that the radioactivity of coal power plant waste is merely a 'jee wiz' talking point. The various OTHER contaminants in coal that end up in the fly ash or up the smoke stack are of far greater concern.
If you're going to make a serious argument as to the hazard of nuclear vs coal, you SHOULD include more factors, such as the pollution, accidents, and such.
Deaths per TWh by energy source.
Nuclear: .04 .1 (1.4 world, including Banqiao) .44 .15
Coal, USA: 15
Coal, Electricity, World: 60
Coal, Electricity, China: 90
Hydro:
Solar, rooftop:
Wind:
I don't read AC A human right
Nuclear plant please.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
Why do you focus on one "primary energy source" instead of using different sources? I want solar where appropriate, wind where appropriate, and geothermal where appropriate. I also want government to stop all energy subsidies.
That is my strongest reason for opposing large subsidies it -- it does not work in the large, and oh yeah, that complete unfairness of stealing from one person to subsidize another
Guess what? Someone above provided this , External Costs of Coal Plants, however I already have this: International Institute for Sustainable Development’s Global Subsidies Initiative (GSI). Energy Subsidies Favor Fossil Fuels Over Renewables. And of course there's this:
Nuclear power is Hooked on Subsidies
"How do France (and India, China and Russia) build cost-effective nuclear power plants? They don’t. Governmental officials in those countries, not private investors, decide what is built. Nuclear power appeals to state planners, not market actors."
Coal and other fossil fuels are massively subsidized. As is nuclear power. Here's Rep Edward Markey bragging My Climate Bill 'Has Huge Subsidies For Clean Coal! Huge!' . Oops, it appears the video is not there now. At least it's not playing for me when it used to. In the video though he says coal, nuclear power, and corn based ethanol get Billions of dollars each in subsidies.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
(posting to undo accidental Redundant mod.)
But how many of those 23 are likely to get hit by a giant tsunami?
sustainable living
Does anyone have a link to the actual research? The linked Guardian article doesn't. All I can find is news articles talking _about_ the research. How about some primary sources?
sustainable living
Funny. I have the same feelings about bike routes in our city.
Are any of them on the coastline, at low elevation, and built on a fault line?
If so, I'm worried, and we should do something. Otherwise, keep the lights on.
Undoubtedly diseases carried by the hundreds of thousands of dead birds rotting away beneath the beautiful wind mills.
But how many of those 23 are likely to get hit by a giant tsunami?
Are you saying Fukushima never would have happened if there was not a tsunami? Hurricanes would not be ablet to damage a nuclear power plant enough? Tornadoes can't either? How about earthquakes?
I heard quite a few tymes the Fukushima disaster could never happen in the US because the US did not use it's design. Well golly there are 23 that do use it in the US.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
The summary makes a claim this is all psychosomatic and yet mentions noise complaints in the same breath as if the noise complaints are the same as hypochondria.
Are you saying Fukushima never would have happened if there was not a tsunami? Hurricanes would not be ablet to damage a nuclear power plant enough? Tornadoes can't either? How about earthquakes?
Fukushima's problem was caused by flooding in the basement where diesel generators were. All of the mentioned things could potentially cause enough problems in nuclear plants, but they would need to huge (like >7.75 magnitude earthquake *directly* under the reactor). Hurricane problems are similar to tsunami (loss of grid, rising water level). If there was strong enough hurricane coming that those would be big risk, people should be smart enough to shutdown the reactor & do other preparations in time as hurricanes can be detected way earlier than tsunamis/earthquakes.
http://www.windturbinesyndrome.com/2012/pierponts-research-on-wind-turbine-infrasound-vindicated/
I have lived a year in hell, a suburban environment in a stickframe house, light construction (no masonry), large rooms, and many windows. Near a major intersection. With old uneven streets and car tires striking like hammers over the pavement.
Have all the naysayers ever experienced infrasound? It is very distressing, even at low levels. The building construction largely attenuates audible frequencies but the very low natural resonances and impulse noise is pronounced. Who cares what an SPL meter says when your body is distressed and in constant fight or flight mode? You ever felt the thump of an inconsiderate person's car stereo? This is much worse, and there's almost no recourse for the affected, because it's all about the numbers or lack thereof. Infrasound is also factor Environmental Illness/Sick Building Syndrome.
Fukushima's problem was caused by flooding in the basement where diesel generators were.
Not according to Kirk Sorensen, a nuclear technologist who operates the site energyfromthorium.com who for Forbes wrote the article Explainer: What Caused The Incident At Fukushima-Daiichi. At first he writes "The tsunami destroyed the diesel generators that provide power to drive the pumps that circulate the water coolant through the reactor that removes decay heat." But a bit later he writes generators ran "until their day tanks emptied" of diesel fuel. If emergency generators were running then they could have been refueled. The hard part would of been finding the people who were willing to put their lives at risk. However anyone who supports nuclear power should be so willing, if they aren't willing to put their own lives at risk why do they support putting other people's lives at risk?
All of the mentioned things could potentially cause enough problems in nuclear plants, but they would need to huge (like >7.75 magnitude earthquake *directly* under the reactor)
The title of the article Earthquake threat to nuclear reactors far higher than realized sums it up pretty well. Risk from earthquake is up to 24 tymes higher than previously thought.
people should be smart enough to shutdown the reactor & do other preparations in time as hurricanes can be detected way earlier than tsunamis/earthquakes.
And what of tornadoes? They aren't as predicable as hurricanes. And at specific points they strike they are more powerful than hurricanes.
The biggest reason I oppose nuclear power though is because nuclear power is Hooked on Subsidies
"How do France (and India, China and Russia) build cost-effective nuclear power plants? They don’t. Governmental officials in those countries, not private investors, decide what is built. Nuclear power appeals to state planners, not market actors."
If all energy subsidies were dropped, including for fossil fuels and nuclear power then geothermal, solar, wind, and other clean(er) energy sources would be more cost competitive. Coal get tens of billions of dollars in subsidies. Without government loan guaranties Wall Street would not finance nuclear power. And if fossil fuels had to pay all of it's costs, instead of passing on external cost to others, their cost would be higher.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
Executives of corporations, or people who have stock in them, want the profitabiliy of their fossil fuel companies to stay up!
Executives of fossil fuel energy corporations, and the people who hold stock in them, or who just work for them, want their profitability to stay up!
All that proves, really, is that people are able to regurgitate information more accurately, probably, in part, driven by econimically-guided procreation: people who have been able to do this better are getting better jobs, have better prospects, etc, etc, etc.
Common sense, on the other hand, remains rare -- and I would argue it's rarer than it's been in the past. You'd think that the average populace would be more difficult to dupe -- but they're not. You'd think that the number of people who can see through an obvious farce would rise -- but I'm sure most would agree that this isn't the case.
Of course, sometimes it's really difficult to tell the difference between actual stupidity and self-centered ignorance. When another person impacts your life negatively through some act which just seems blatantly stupid, is it actually just because they are too selfish to take anyone else into consideration? Quite likely.
A group of people showing up in a town, pointing at someone and saying "She's a witch!" and the sheeple believe it, even though there had never been such a thing/person like that there before.
The feds start building and operating breeder reactors everywhere via a new branch of the Dept. of Defense. No complaining about the locations because if you do, you are supporting the terrorists. (By terrorists of course I mean the fossil fuel cartel.) Pretty soon electrical power will be too cheap to meter, and then we can get busy building an all new transportation infrastructure that runs on electricity.
Social Credit would solve everything...
That's a divide by zero error assuming a perfect nuclear plant. In that situation your lunch would be infinitely more radioactive so it's a trick to con people that don't consider background radiation.
If you want to see where this bullshit came from, take a look at the Oak Ridge newsletter article that kicked it off written by Mr Alex Gabbard (total count of peer reviewed publications still stands at zero, but he's published some joke books and fiction about moonshiners), an administrator there that started a failed PR campaign along the lines of "coal produces nuclear waste too so why do we have to worry about proper disposal of real nuclear waste". You'll find it on the net and it's a very good example of using cherrypicked data and incorrect assumptions (eg. X% of everything in coal goes up the stack instead of pollution controls working the way they do in reality) to fuel hysteria (check out the bit on the end about terrorist building nukes out of coal ash). That's a good example of exactly the sort of beatup from nothing we have with the windmills.
The really stupid thing here is coal kills a LOT of people in real ways so there is no reason for such a stupid lie since the effort to relax nuclear waste standards failed decades ago.
But how many of those 23 are likely to get hit by a giant tsunami?
And, did those other 23 put the emergency generators in the basement?
Depends on definition of Stupid.
A more apt description might be small minded or selfish or short sighted.
One could argue that people that pretend to be sick to prevent windmill propagation to save their land values isn't stupid. One could also argue that in the big picture, trying to protect local land values over the welfare of clean energy for all, is.
Then again, if they drink their own coolaid, then perhaps they are indeed.
I don't think it has anything much to do with the political party of the day, in this case the conservatives federally, or liberals provincially.
Problem existed prior to both, and continues today. One could argue it is a bigger deal now, simply because the issue of clean energy is more paramount. However one could also argue that the provinces have more power in this respect, and at least in Ontario, the Liberals have been pushing green energy, and in particular wind power greater than ever before.
This has more to do with wealthy cottage owners that anything else (which likely happen to be conservatives, simply because they are rich, and like things to stay that way). They join or create but really hijack environmental lobby groups, all in the name of public health, saving the birds and bats, or whatever hair brained thing they can come up with.... When in reality it is all about making sure windmills are not placed in the water offshore from their multi-million dollar cottage where they perceive that they will ruin the scenery and will devalue their property. There has been a project to put wind mills in lake Ontario for well over 10 years now, which has been shot to pieces by various "environmental groups" which are really comprised of land owner associations and cottage associations.
David Suzuki had a special expose TV show exactly on this issue. Talked to experts. Interviewed the associations, etc... Got them to admit on camera that their primary complain that is the only one that isn't totally unfounded was the protection of "environmental aesthetics", i.e. perceived natural beauty.
This is a about a bunch of rich people having a lobby to government to protect their interests, nothing more.
Sister does not mean identical. You do realize that the Fukushima plant was specifically designed to deal with the terrain and did so in a manner that made sure the water drained away from the reactor instead of into the reactor?
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
Ah, but you didn't actually SAY that earlier, so I didn't have a clue what you were talking about. My ORIGINAL post specified air pollution and accidents as well as 'fly ash', after all. I refer back to the second paragraph in my first post - "you SHOULD include more factors, such as the pollution, accidents, and such."
Second, in my initial response to you I simply addressed your assertions - I didn't really move beyond disproving your claim that 'fly ash is essentially sand', pointing out it's toxicity(with sources!), then moving on to your claim that the mercury was 'easily caught', showing a cite from the EPA that measures not specifically targeted at capturing mercury, including the pollution controls you mentioned, caught only about a third of it. Then I restated my original claim - with admittedly more focus on mining accidents, because fly ash was #1, air(mercury) pollution #2, and thus #3 became accidents.
THEN you called me a "poorly informed alarmist". I'll be honest, I really stopped reading after that and just went to make coal sound as scary as possible. I didn't even really read the part about mining deaths being "off topic" until today. To which I'll disagree. When you're looking at the cost of a power source in human life, accidents during it's extraction are fair game. Like I said earlier, I feel I backed away from 'alarmist' techniques by breaking out China, which has an absolutely horrible record when it comes to coal power, from both safety and pollution standpoints.
Historically nuclear radiation has led to more financial loss than loss of life. I'm going modify my original statement from doing more research though - it's not just fly ash that's the problem, it's coal ash in general. Due to concerns about long term effects, a coal ash spill can end up a bit like a nuclear spill; people moving away from the site long term. While smaller in scope, there are also more ash spills, plus it's a major concern for landfill and such.
It's complicated, of course. You've seriously focused on the 'fly ash', which was originally almost a throw away in my mind - I remembered hearing about multiple spills of fly ash and the toxic concerns and stuck it in there. I should probably have flipped the two - putting the 'up the smoke stack', IE air pollution, as the bigger concern, first. Eh, it's a internet posting, I don't exactly edit these much.
I don't read AC A human right
There might be something to that. If you recall your high school physics. Truth is we know shit about wind and climate.
To get an idea, consider the energy output of a windmill and divide it by the span of the prop to get the amount of energy removed per centimetre of length, assuming the width is about the same all the way is good enough. That puts it at the scale of a small fragile bat. The number you get is very small because it is less than the pressure of the prevailing wind on an area the size of a bat since you can't get all the energy out of the wind due to bearing friction etc.
Now do you see why I am dismissing the "bats killed by pressure drop" stupid bullshit as the PR campaign lie it is? It's the sort of thing that sounds OK initially due to technical terms thrown in to hide the really stupid lie, but if you think about how a windmill works the audacious lie is apparent. People caught out with it are also likely to be embarrassed that they fell for something so stupid so it's hard to talk them out of it.
I don 't know if the length is directly proportional to the amount of energy captured by wind mills. I bet the area of the blade, as well as it's pitch, is more important. Oh, and obviously the height. The bottom of the blades are supposed to be higher than the tallest thing that can block the wind. That includes trees. And I bet that that is higher than most bats will be flying.
And no I don't expect your explanation as to why you dismiss the "bats killed by pressure drop" as stupid bullshit. For all I know what you said was bullshit. More of the NIMBY shit delaying wind farms, even off the coast. You still did not provide evidence which is what I asked for. Can you provide scientific studies supporting your position? That is what I'm looking for.
Now here are some of the things I found:
"While direct collision is thought to be responsible for most of the bat fatalities observed at wind facilities (Horn et al. 2008), recent work by Baerwald et al. (2008) suggests that some of the observed bat fatality may be due to barotrauma (i.e., injury resulting from suddenly altered air pressure). Fast- moving wind turbine blades create vortices and turbulence in their wakes, and bats may experience rapid pressure changes as they pass through this disturbed air, potentially causing internal injuries leading to death. The occurrence of barotrauma in bats, the proportion of individuals that succumb immediately versus those that fly away injured, and the associated influences on the estimation of bat fatalities are uncertain."
That's 5 links to science to your zero links. I found those by Googling
Should there be a Law?