Wind Turbine Syndrome

Blogger: Thanks to the people who sent this in to me.

Wind Turbines: Some Deeper Questions
A book commentary by David Orton and Helga Hoffmann-Orton

Wind Turbine Syndrome: A Report on a Natural Experiment
by Nina Pierpont, MD, PhD, K-Selected Books, Santa Fe, New Mexico,
2009, 292 pages, paperback, ISBN-13: 978-0-9841827-0-1.

“Symptoms include sleep disturbance, headache, tinnitus, ear pressure, dizziness, vertigo, nausea, visual blurring, tachycardia, irritability, problems with concentration and memory, and panic episodes associated with sensations of internal pulsation or quivering that arise while awake or asleep.” p. 26. (Health effects experienced by some people living near 1.5 to 3 MW wind turbines, built since 2004.)

“Keep wind turbines at least 2 km (1.25 miles) away on the flat, and 3.2 km (2 miles) in mountains…Second, all wind turbine ordinances should hold developers responsible for a full price (pre-turbine) buyout of any family whose lives are ruined by turbines – to prod developers to follow realistic health-based rules and prevent the extreme economic loss of home abandonment.” p. 254.


Introduction
This book commentary was written in the context of our own local situation, and to make Nina Pierpont’s Wind Turbine Syndrome: A Report on a Natural Experiment better known to others who have wind turbines sprouting up like industrial mushrooms in their backyards and regions. Pierpont, a rural physician living in upstate New York, writes about health impacts suffered by people living close to wind turbines. The book is essentially about human health, and does not discuss ecosystem health, a more encompassing topic with wider dimensions. The reference to ‘natural experiment’ in the subtitle, refers to “a circumstance wherein subjects are exposed to experimental conditions both inadvertently and ecologically (within their own homes and environments).” (p. 5)


Our situation
We live in rural Pictou County, Nova Scotia, and within visual distance from the 51 MW Dalhousie Mountain wind turbine complex – re-branded ‘wind farm’ presumably to convey an innocuous bucolic image. Its 34 industrial wind turbines are a ‘first phase’, with the developers ‘promising’ more to come, rationalized in the name of reducing greenhouse gases, not creating economic rewards for the developers. The proponents are R.M. Synergy Ltd and Stantec Consultants Ltd. Dalhousie Mountain is now a ‘forest’ of rotating wind turbines hundreds of feet tall. The 1.5 MW turbines measure approximately 120 meters in height from the ground to the tip of the rotor blade. The site is a hilly area and about 340 metres above sea level. The wind farm is a massive intrusion on the viewscape of many people, not only in our own immediate area, but also for those travelling on the Trans-Canada Highway between Truro and New Glasgow.

The environmental assessment for the Dalhousie Mountain project was approved on September 2, 2008, less than a month after it was submitted. John Livingston, perhaps Canada’s deepest eco-philosopher, as well as a life-long naturalist, told us in his 1981 book The Fallacy of Wildlife Conservation, that “EIA (Environmental Impact Assessment) is a grandiloquent fraud, a hoax, and a con.” (p. 33) He also discussed what he called “resourcism”, pointing out that in our society, once anything is considered a “resource” for human use, this allows us to consider “nature as our subsidiary” and its demise is only a matter of time.

We are told in one of the submitted environmental assessment documents: “The visual impact of installing 34 turbines in an unpopulated area to provide much needed electricity can only be considered a responsible addition to the aesthetics of Pictou County.” Another revealing comment from the same document, shows its blindness to the wonders of the natural world: “Industrial fixtures become endearing features for our communities, describing the culture or the ‘way we live.’” The impact is not just visual, since as well as the turbines themselves, there are new roads, new connecting power lines, the cutting of trees, a new electrical sub-station, lights on some of the turbine blades for aircraft, and increased human traffic.

This promoter, like other industrial wind farm enthusiasts, does not seem to understand, as E.F. Schumacher instructed us in Small is Beautiful: A Study of Economics As If People Mattered, that “for every activity there is a certain appropriate scale.” (p. 54) We are not talking here about a small group of wind turbines ecologically situated, community owned and controlled, and helping to supply energy to the local bioregion, with the revenues community-generated, not privately accumulated, within an overall societal strategy of seriously reducing citizen energy lifestyles and hence greenhouse gas emissions. The operator of this wind farm now has a contract from Nova Scotia Power to produce wind-generated electricity for 25 years and wants to significantly expand the number of turbines on the mountain.

In Nova Scotia, the provincial New Democratic government aims to generate 40% of electricity from “renewable resources” by 2020. (There is, of course, no let-up on the offshore promotion of fossil fuel exploration and extraction by the Nova Scotia government.) “Renewables” include, as well as wind turbine generated electricity, biomass harvesting from forests already ravaged by industrial forestry, and placing electricity generating turbines in the tidal Bay of Fundy – newspaper reports have spoken of 200 to 300 units – with costs unknown to the marine ecosystem.

The provincial government, along with its federal counterpart, is also in financial partnership with a South Korean company planning to manufacture wind turbines in Trenton, a town in Pictou County. (According to newspaper reports, the government money amounts to 70 million dollars.) So the wind turbine push is on. Support for industrial wind turbines crosses party lines. Elizabeth May, in the name of the federal Green Party, on August 19, 2008 stated about the Dalhousie Mountain project, “The Green Party is pleased to support a local entrepreneur in the undertaking of this project. Its over-all environmental impact is unquestionably positive.”


Faced with this new industrial reality in our area, we belatedly started to look into the industrial wind turbine issue, from the perspective of deep ecology. We are trying to read as widely as possible, and are still doing more research on the topic. While exploring the subject, we came across references to “Wind Turbine Syndrome” and the name Nina Pierpont. We got her book to see what she had to say – hence this commentary.
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Continued at http://home.ca.inter.net/~greenweb/Wind_turbine_questions.pdf

Clearcutting/Urban Sprawl Decimating Songbirds

Clearcutting, urban sprawl decimating songbirds

By KEVIN BISSETT The Canadian Press
Sat. May 15 - 4:54 AM


Eastern kingbird





FREDERICTON — A rapid decline in the number of songbirds across North America should serve as a wake-up call about what is being done to the environment, a Canadian biologist warned Friday.

Bridget Stutchbury, a professor at Toronto’s York University, said a growing number of bird species will be at risk unless immediate action is taken to protect large natural areas that serve as breeding grounds.

"The facts can be shocking, and so shocking they are almost hard to believe," Stutchbury said in Fredericton.

"When you talk about biodiversity loss, very realistic forecasts are that in the next 100 years we are going to lose 10 to 15 per cent of the world’s birds in terms of species.

"Just to give you a feel for the numbers, the wood thrush, which should be a common forest bird, has declined by 40 per cent since the 1960s," she added.

Other species in decline include the evening grosbeak and Eastern kingbird.

Stutchbury said the decline is the result of a loss of habitat due to clearcutting and urban sprawl, not climate change.

She said Canada’s boreal forest serves as a bird nursery for the continent and must be protected to, in turn, protect birds.

"Unless something radical is done in terms of setting aside protected areas for wildlife and plants, it’s all going to unravel because there are dozens of species on a straight-line trajectory to zero," she said.

David Coon, policy director of the New Brunswick Conservation Council, said the same is occurring in New Brunswick with the decline of the Acadian forest because of clear-cutting.

"Restoration is essential if we’re going to rebuild a sizable area of Acadian forest," he said.

"We are literally cutting our biological life-support base out from under us."

This is the United Nations’ international year of biodiversity. Countries around the world agreed to achieve a significant cut in the loss of ecosystems and species under a treaty signed in 1992.

"No country met the targets," Coon said.

"They are now negotiating new targets."

Stutchbury said coffee presents one of the biggest problems for migratory birds because tropical forests that serve as bird refuges each winter are being cleared to make way for coffee plantations.

She said coffee drinkers can help by insisting their coffee is grown in the forests.

She also encourages reduced pesticide use.

Stutchbury said it’s important to protect birds because they also help forests by controlling the number of insects and by spreading seeds.