How infrasound from wind turbines can cause cancer

This article from the Alliance for Wise Energy Decisions reviews several research studies that show infrasound from wind turbines can cause cancer. Read the full paper at http://wiseenergy.org/Energy/Health/LFN_and_Cancer.pdf

Here is an introduction:

Recently, President Trump made a statement about the possibility of wind turbine noise causing cancer. Predictably much of the press scoffed at this claim. Even some Republican legislators objected. But what are the facts?

Since this is a technical matter, let’s clarify some basics… Infrasound is Low Frequency Noise (LFN)… Industrial wind turbines generate substantial LFN… A variety of wind turbine LFN caused human and animal health problems have been well-documented (see this small sample of studies)… But what about cancers?

The medical term genotoxins is separated into three main groups: carcinogens, mutagens, and teratogens (i.e. toxins that cause cancer, genetic mutations, or birth defects)… LFN has been identified as a genotoxic agent of disease, capable of inducing blood vessel wall thickening as seen in autopsy, as well as through light and electron microscopy studies. This can lead to well known consequences such as tumor development, cardiac infarcts and/or the need for cardiac bypass surgery. The pathology caused by excessive exposure to LFN is termed vibroacoustic disease (VAD), and has been diagnosed among several occupational and environmentally exposed populations.

To read about other health problems see: Health Hazards of Wind Turbines  

German wind power fails – a cautionary tale

Germany is a leader in electricity production from wind turbines. In 2014, Germany had 25,000 wind turbines installed. Their total installed capacity rating is 39,612 MW. But as Pierre Gosselin reports, these turbines actually produced an average of only 5,868 MW or just 14.8% of rated capacity. Even wind turbine installations in the windy North Sea are delivering only 20% of rated capacity (see report here).

This story shows the folly of replacing fossil-fuel or nuclear generation of electricity with solar and wind. In Europe as a whole, infrastructure investment in renewable energy (wind, solar, biomass) has consumed 600 billion Euros with little to show for it except high electricity prices (Source).

The graph below shows the intermittent nature of wind energy, the light blue area is the total generating capacity; the dark blue is actual electricity produced.

You can see the extreme volatility of wind power. Such volatility plays havoc with the electric grid and makes fossil fuel backup generation more expensive to run because it must constantly change production rate; it cannot be run efficiently. Those constant changes cause production of more emissions than would be produced without having to contend with the quirky wind power contribution.

Gosselin (a US citizen living in Germany, who received a Bachelor of Science in Mechanical Engineering at the University of Arizona) notes that “Resistance to wind power in Germany is snowballing.” “The turbines, which the German government says will become the ‘workhorse’ of the German power industry, ran at over 50% of their rated capacity only for 461 hours [out of a possible 8,766], or just 5.2% of the time.”

In addition to the unreliable power produced by allegedly “green” wind power, it is becoming increasingly obvious that wind generation is taking a large toll on wildlife and has deleterious effects on human health.

See: The effect of wind turbines on human health – “People who live near wind turbines complain of symptoms that include some combination of the following: difficulty sleeping, fatigue, depression, irritability, aggressiveness, cognitive dysfunction, chest pain/pressure, headaches, joint pain, skin irritations, nausea, dizziness, tinnitus, and stress. These symptoms have been attributed to the pressure (sound) waves that wind turbines generate in the form of noise and infrasound.

Wind turbines versus wildlife – “The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) and American Bird Conservancy say wind turbines kill 440,000 bald and golden eagles, hawks, falcons, owls, cranes, egrets, geese and other birds every year in the United States, along with countless insect-eating bats.

Wind turbines killed 600000 bats last year

Wind farms raise local and regional temperatures

Winds farms decrease weather radar ability to track storms

UPDATE: In a separate post, Gosselin adds in solar power and shows that in the last 30 days, in the dead of winter, both wind and solar power went AWOL three times.

END

British study shows wind power generates only 2 percent of rated capacity

A new study by The Scientific Alliance and the Adam Smith Institute claims that electricity generated by wind turbines throughout the UK amounts to only two percent of the combined turbine rated capacity.

“This study provides a rigorous quantitative assessment of wind variability and intermittency based on nine years of hourly measurements of wind speed on 22 sites across the country.” The researchers obtained wind data and calculated how much electricity would have been produced from modern wind turbines. They had to do the study this way because the wind industry does not make actual production figures public even though the industry is heavily subsidized by taxpayers.

Results of the modeling shows that power output from wind turbines would have the following pattern over the period of one year (8760 hours):

Power exceeds 90 % of available power (rated capacity) for only 17 hours per year.
Power exceeds 80 % of available power for 163 hours.
Power is below 20 % of available power for 3,448 hours (20 weeks).
Power is below 10 % of available power for 1,519 hours (9 weeks).
“Although it is claimed that the wind is always blowing somewhere in the UK, the model reveals this ‘guaranteed’ output is only sufficient to generate something under 2 % of nominal output.”

“Long gaps in significant wind production occur in all seasons.”

“The preceding deficiencies suggest the model wind fleet would require an equal sized fossil fuel generation fleet operating alongside it, especially during winter months.”

“…the model wind fleet reveals wind energy production is unlike that of all conventional fossil fueled or pumped storage plants; it does not follow grid demand on diurnal or even seasonal time patterns. Wind generation will therefore make heavy claims on the UK’s response and reserve market.”

See full report here.

The rationale of replacing fossil fuel generated electricity with wind or solar generation is that it will decrease dependence of foreign sources and reduce carbon dioxide emissions. But, in a 2011 study, Richard York of the University of Oregon studied the use of alternative energy in 130 countries to assess the contribution of various forms of non-fossil fuels. The study showed “that the average pattern across most nations of the world over the past fifty years is one where each unit of total national energy use from non-fossil-fuel sources displaced less than one-quarter of a unit of fossil-fuel energy use and, focusing specifically on electricity, each unit of electricity generated by non-fossil-fuel sources displaced less than one-tenth of a unit of fossil-fuel-generated electricity.”

A 2010 M.I.T. study found that wind farms raise the local temperatures by almost two degrees F and raise electricity prices because the wind farms require expensive backup generation.

See also:
Wind turbines versus wildlife
Wind turbines killed 600000 bats last year
Big Wind gets “get out of jail free card” from Obama Administration
Winds farms decrease weather radar ability to track storms

Wind turbines killed 600,000 bats last year

Press release from the University of Colorado, Denver:

Study shows wind turbines killed 600,000 bats last year

Bats pollinate crops, control insects

DENVER (Nov. 15, 2013) – More than 600,000 bats were killed by wind energy turbines in 2012, a serious blow to creatures who pollinate crops and help control flying insects, according to a new study from the University of Colorado Denver.

“The development and expansion of wind energy facilities is a key threat to bat populations in North America,” said study author Mark Hayes, PhD, research associate in integrated biology at CU Denver. “Dead bats are being found underneath wind turbines across North America. The estimate of bat fatalities is probably conservative.”

The study, which analyzed data on the number of dead bats found at wind turbine sites, will be published next week in the journal BioScience.

Hayes said areas near the Appalachian Mountains like Buffalo, Tennessee and Mountaineer, West Virginia had the highest bat fatality rates. Little information is available on bat deaths at wind turbine facilities in the Rocky Mountain West or the Sierra Nevadas.

The bats are killed when they fly into the towering turbines which spin at up to 179 mph with blades that can stretch 130 feet. Earlier estimates of bat deaths ranged from 33,000 to 880,000.

Hayes said his estimates are likely conservative for two reasons. First, when a range of fatality estimates were reported at a wind facility, he chose the minimum estimate. Secondly, the number of deaths was estimated for just migratory periods, not the entire year, likely leaving out many other fatalities.

“The number could be as high as 900,000 dead,” he said.

There are 45 known bat species in the contiguous U.S., many of which have important economic impacts. Not only do they control flying insects like mosquitoes, they also pollinate commercial crops, flowers and various cacti.

Those suffering the most fatalities are the hoary bat, eastern bat and the silver-haired bat.

Hayes said there ways to mitigate the killings. One is to have the turbines activated to spin at higher wind speeds when bats don’t tend to fly.

“A lot of bats are killed because the turbines move at low wind speeds, which is when most bats fly around,” said Hayes, who has studied bats for 15 years. “In a recent study in Pennsylvania, researchers adjusted the operating speeds from 10 mph to 18 or 20 mph and decreased fatalities by 40 to 90 percent.”

Hayes said with the expansion of wind energy in the future, more bats will likely die.

“I am not against wind energy. It’s clean, it reduces pollution and it creates jobs. But there are negative impacts,” he said. “Still, I think this is a problem we can solve.”

See also:

Wind turbines versus wildlife

Wind Farms Gone Wild

Big Wind gets “get out of jail free card” from Obama Administration

Winds farms decrease weather radar ability to track storms – puts people in danger

A new report from the National Weather Service says that wind farms have some unfortunate negative impacts on the ability of Doppler radar to track storms.

“Wind farms affect … radars in several ways; first, the turbines can block a significant percentage of the radar beam and decrease the radar signal power down range of the wind farm, particularly if the wind farm is within a few miles of the radar. Second, the wind farm can reflect energy back to the radar system and this appears as clutter or false reflectivity data. This reflectivity can create false precipitation estimates and disrupt precipitation algorithms used by the radar and other software programs. Finally, wind farms can significantly influence velocity and spectrum width data, which can cause bad data sampling of rotating storms and false storm motions, along with impacting algorithms used by the radar to process this data. Since the wind turbines have motion and produce reflectivity, schemes designed to filter out the clutter do not work properly.”

For full story see WUWT here.

The article provides an explanation of Doppler radar theory and several case histories of wind farms interfering with radar operation and interpretation of signals.  This puts people in danger.

Wind farms result in reduction of data quality.  “Meteorologists have noticed impacts to reflectivity, velocity, storm relative motion, and precipitation estimate data with radar located within 30 nm of a wind farm.”  False signals from wind farms limit the ability of forecasters to provide more accurate warnings, especially during widespread storm events.

See also:

Wind Farms Gone Wild

Wind turbines versus wildlife

Big Wind gets “get out of jail free card” from Obama Administration

The scale problem for solar and wind generation of electricity

Electricity generated by wind power may raise temperatures and costs

Wind farms raise local and regional temperatures

Health Hazards of Wind Turbines

Wind Farms Gone Wild

The Scottish Wild Land Group, a private, non-profit group established to protect and conserve wild land in Scotland, has published several papers about wind farms in their magazine Wild Land News.  This environmental group does not like wind farms. (Download the entire issue of their Wild Land News here.)  I have traveled through much of Scotland before the advent of the wind farm craze.

The Wild Land Group introduces this special issue on wind power with an editorial which includes this statement:

“This is not a narrow plea for wind farms to be located in areas that we consider ‘less wild,’ however. Almost every aspect of wind energy developments across the UK is the subject of fierce controversy.  In considering the justifications for the use of wind power, as the contributors to this magazine do, we have found few that seem genuine and none that is agreed upon. This is not a sound basis on which to pursue policies that affect people’s homes and lives, national and international responses to climate change, billions of pounds of public money, rocketing levels of fuel poverty, and the survival of rare species and environments.”

The issue of wind energy is discussed in 13 articles within the magazine.  Here are some highlights (British spelling retained):

“… it has been apparent for some time that the costs of wind-power, on which the UK’s policies are dependent, are so high that the technology fails to offer the developing world a viable alternative to coal, and because of this our overall climate change policies lack credibility.  Rethinking this position requires governments to admit that little or nothing has been achieved in the last two decades, in spite of vast subsidy expenditure.” – John Constable.

“I’ve recently noticed an interesting phenomenon in the world of environmental communications… If you are associated with the ‘green’ or environmental movement in any way, it automatically seems to follow that you must be a supporter of all forms of renewable energy, including mega-windfarms, because the alternatives (fossil fuels, nuclear power) are unspeakably pernicious. And if you don’t think that wind farms are a good idea, then you can’t be a ‘proper’ environmentalist…wind energy is renewable…but the often-fragile ecosystems associated with the hills and moors colonised by wind farms are not.” – Sharon Blackie.

Clive Hambler discusses the impact of turbines on wild life, especially birds. “Scotland has the best wild terrestrial habitats in the British Isles, and many of the most important ones for global conservation…these sites are threatened by renewable energy schemes!… of course some things kill more birds than turbines – so what, why kill more?”

“The aesthetic objection to wind farms is not about the appearance of wind turbines themselves, as

artifacts, but about the damage they do to priceless landscapes – such as those of Scotland.” – Christine Lovelock

Iain A MacLeod discusses the “wind power question:” ‘What proportion of wind power in the electricity system is appropriate?’ “As someone to whom the quality of the Scottish landscape is deeply important, I find any wind generator to be visually intrusive.  However, if their efficacy were demonstrated beyond reasonable doubt, I would…accept the need for them.  But available information that seeks to justify government policy for wind energy does not persuade me that a ‘beyond reasonable doubt’condition has been achieved.”

Frank Hay discusses a specific project, the Shetland Viking wind farm. “Beyond numbers and statistics, there are very real concerns about the impact the project may have on the health, mental well-being and daily lives of those who live near  –  or even in  –  the windfarm site. Although the community was assured by Viking Energy that a Health Impact Assessment would be carried out, this was abandoned, and is only now being considered, not by the developer itself, but by Shetland

Charitable Trust.”

Jack Ponton: “In summary, the EU, UK and, especially Scottish government renewables policies are a pointless fraud which will neither alleviate climate change nor provide energy security. I have not gone in to how much they are costing consumers, but they are at best an economic nonsense and for

Scotland a potential economic disaster. Nor have I talked about how they poison communities, pitting landowners who expect to collect large sums in rent against other residents whose once quiet surroundings are devastated by turbine noise and who see the value of their homes diminished or even destroyed.  A final comment. The public have been led to believe that so-called “renewable” energy is user friendly and consumes no resources. Anyone who has been forced to live near a turbine will confirm that the first is a straightforward lie. The second is also untrue; wind turbines consume two irreplaceable resources – land and peoples’ lives.”

There are several other articles in this issue.

I find this magazine both amazing and heartening, because it shows that at least one environmental group bases policy on facts and concern for people.

(H/t to John Droz, jr. for making me aware of this publication.)  I took the photo below in the Argyle Forest.

See also:

Wind turbines versus wildlife

Big Wind gets “get out of jail free card” from Obama Administration

Wind turbines versus wildlife

In our quest to find greener sources of energy, what at first seems like a good idea leads to some not-so-green unintended consequences. Such is the case with wind turbines and wind farms.

In an article in The Spectator (a British publication, not the American Spectator), zoologist Clive Hambler notes:

“Wind turbines only last for ‘half as long as previously thought’, according to a new study. But even in their short life spans, those turbines can do a lot of damage. Wind farms are devastating populations of rare birds and bats across the world, driving some to the point of extinction. Most environmentalists just don’t want to know. Because they’re so desperate to believe in renewable energy, they’re in a state of denial. But the evidence suggests that, this century at least, renewables pose a far greater threat to wildlife than climate change.”

“Every year in Spain alone — according to research by the conservation group SEO/Birdlife — between 6 and 18 million birds and bats are killed by wind farms. They kill roughly twice as many bats as birds. This breaks down as approximately 110–330 birds per turbine per year and 200–670 bats per year. And these figures may be conservative if you compare them to statistics published in December 2002 by the California Energy Commission: ‘In a summary of avian impacts at wind turbines by Benner et al (1993) bird deaths per turbine per year were as high as 309 in Germany and 895 in Sweden.’”

This danger to birds and bats is not confined to Europe. An article in the Washington Times by Paul Driessen notes:

“The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) and American Bird Conservancy say wind turbines kill 440,000 bald and golden eagles, hawks, falcons, owls, cranes, egrets, geese and other birds every year in the United States, along with countless insect-eating bats.

“New studies reveal that these appalling estimates are frightfully low and based on misleading or even fraudulent data. The horrific reality is that in the United States alone, “eco-friendly” wind turbines kill an estimated 13 million to 39 million birds and bats every year.”

In the recent “fiscal cliff” negotiations, it seems crony capitalism triumphed over good sense. Lobbying by the wind industry saved its subsidy, the Production Tax Credit, which was set to expire at the end of 2012. The “cliff” deal now extends that subsidy through 2013 thus costing American taxpayers $12 billion, and encouraging use of a very expensive, very unreliable, and to wildlife, a very lethal form of “green” energy production.

See also:

(human) Health Hazards of Wind Turbines

Electricity generated by wind power may raise temperatures and costs

Wind farms raise local and regional temperatures

Thorium, another alternative energy choice

Wind farms raise local and regional temperatures

From the unintended consequences department: A new study, which confirms several previous studies, presents observational evidence that shows “a significant warming trend of up to 0.72 °C per decade, particularly at night-time, over wind farms relative to nearby non-wind-farm regions.”

The paper and abstract:

Zhou, Liming, Yuhong Tian, Somnath Baidya Roy, Chris Thorncroft, Lance F. Bosart and Yuanlong Hu 2012: Impacts of wind farms on land surface temperature. Nature Climate Change. doi:10.1038/nclimate1505

The abstract reads

The wind industry in the United States has experienced a remarkably rapid expansion of capacity in recent years and this fast growth is expected to continue in the future. While converting wind’s kinetic energy into electricity, wind turbines modify surface–atmosphere exchanges and the transfer of energy, momentum, mass and moisture within the atmosphere. These changes, if spatially large enough, may have noticeable impacts on local to regional weather and climate. Here we present observational evidence for such impacts based on analyses of satellite data for the period of 2003–2011 over a region in west-central Texas, where four of the world’s largest wind farms are located. Our results show a significant warming trend of up to 0.72?°C per decade, particularly at night-time, over wind farms relative to nearby non-wind-farm regions. We attribute this warming primarily to wind farms as its spatial pattern and magnitude couples very well with the geographic distribution of wind turbines.

This phenomenon has implications for the surface temperature record in that it tends to bias the readings. Dr. Roger Pielke (University of Colorado) notes that “Because of the redistribution phenomena and the shallow layer affected, observed minimum temperatures are a very poor measure of the accumulation of heat in the atmosphere.” As a consequence, he recommends, “the minimum land surface air temperature should not be used as part of the construction of a global average multi-decadal surface temperature trend.” Pielke maintains that any large-scale land use change such as urbanization and deforestation can have similar results.

I’ve reported a previous study by M.I.T. study that found similar results:

Electricity generated by wind power may raise temperatures and costs

Vertical axis wind turbines may provide more energy on less land

The California Institute of Technology is experimenting with and field testing use of vertical-axis wind turbines. This configuration is said to provide more energy on a smaller footprint.

The technology is explained in this paper:

Dabiri JO (2011) “Potential order-of-magnitude enhancement of wind farm power density via counter-rotating vertical-axis wind turbine arrays,” Journal of Renewable and Sustainable Energy, in press.

The abstract reads:

Modern wind farms comprised of horizontal-axis wind turbines (HAWTs) require significant land resources to separate each wind turbine from the adjacent turbine wakes. This aerodynamic constraint limits the amount of power that can be extracted from a given wind farm footprint. The resulting inefficiency of HAWT farms is currently compensated by using taller wind turbines to access greater wind resources at high altitudes, but this solution comes at the expense of higher engineering costs and greater visual, acoustic, radar and environmental impacts. We investigated the use of counter-rotating vertical-axis wind turbines (VAWTs) in order to achieve higher power output per unit land area than existing wind farms consisting of HAWTs. Full-scale field tests of 10-m tall VAWTs in various counter-rotating configurations were conducted under natural wind conditions during summer 2010. Whereas modern wind farms consisting of HAWTs produce 2 to 3 watts of power per square meter of land area, these field tests indicate that power densities an order of magnitude greater can potentially be achieved by arranging VAWTs in layouts that enable them to extract energy from adjacent wakes and from above the wind farm. Moreover, this improved performance does not require higher individual wind turbine efficiency, only closer wind turbine spacing and a sufficient vertical flux of turbulence kinetic energy from the atmospheric surface layer. The results suggest an alternative approach to wind farming that has the potential to concurrently reduce the cost, size, and environmental impacts of wind farms.

Read the full 34-page paper here.

See video and more references here. Graphic below from CalTech.

See also:

Two 2500-foot solar towers to be built in Arizona

Health Hazards of Wind Turbines

Health Hazards of Wind Turbines

The following is an article from the Doctors for Disaster Preparedness May newsletter.

Wind farms are running into opposition from private property owners throughout the world. And it is not just a problem of blighting the view. Nor are the environmental hazards restricted to the “Cuisinart” effect on migratory birds.

 The most obvious problem is the noise pollution. The upper limit of allowable sound measured 100 ft in front of a locomotive is 98 dB (A), where the “A” refers to sound audible to human beings. The Vestas 1 .8-MW wind turbine generates 95.6 dB (A) 10 m above the ground at the tower, at a wind speed of 4 m/s. At a wind speed >8 m/s, the sound level is 103.5 dB (A) (The Energy Advocate, November 2010).

 According to the British Wind Energy Association, the sound produced by a wind turbine generating electricity, outside of the nearest houses, which are at least 300 m away, is comparable to that of a flowing stream 50 m away or “leaves rustling in a gentle breeze.” Yet the noise is widely reported to be more annoying than that from airplanes, roadways, and railways. This is because the sound from wind turbines has very high levels of low-frequency infrasound inaudible to the human ear, suggests Alec Salt of the Cochlear Fluids Research Laboratory at Washington University in St. Louis. The assumption that humans are unaffected by sounds they can’t hear is incorrect, he states. The outer hair cells of the cochlea are stimulated by low frequency sounds at up. to 40 dB below the level that is heard.

 Infrasound has been used in Sweden in a nonlethal weapon for riot control. The infrasound from air-conditioning systems has been implicated as a cause of sick building syndrome (S.S.). Infrasound affects the vestibular system, causing symptoms resembling seasickness, accompanied by headache, dizziness, and “deep nervous fatigue.” It can affect ocular reflexes, causing nystagmus; spinal reflexes, causing tremors; and autonomic reflexes, causing shortness of breath. In the 1970s, army physiologists carried out studies on how long military personnel could perform their duties under conditions of high levels of infrasound, as in a tank, the engine room of a ship, or a space capsule, but results are secret, writes Claude. Regard of the Naval College & Military School of the Fleet (France).

 The wind turbine syndrome also includes sleep problems, irritability, and depression. The variable audible noise results in frequent awakenings or arousals, which may not be remembered. The disruption of sleep prevents the proper laying down and storage of memory. It is also associated with an increased incidence of obesity, diabetes, hypertension, and heart disease. Arousals during slow wave sleep may trigger parasomnias (sleepwalking, night terrors), reports Dr. Christopher Nanning, an expert in sleep disorders.

 Persons especially vulnerable to wind turbine syndrome include elderly, young children, children with developmental disabilities (especially autism spectrum disorders), and migraine sufferers.

There is also a vibroacoustic disease, which has been studied mostly in aviation workers. Different parts of the body, especially the chest and skull, have differing resonance frequencies’, writes Dr. Nina Pierpont. Air pressure (sound) waves of certain wavelengths resonate within these closed spaces, setting up vibrations to which the body responds by reinforcing soft tissue with extra collagen, which could cause thickening of the pericardium and cardiac valves, fibrosis of the lungs, and proliferation of glial cells in the brain.

 Because of its long wavelength, infrasound is attenuated much less than audible sound, and diffraction by obstacles such as trees and bushes is much reduced. Thus it propagates over much longer distances. It can travel over hills, and is reflected by temperature inversion zones. This explains why the explosion of Mount St. Helens was felt all over the world, and how elephants can communicate with each other over tens of kilometers thanks to the temperature inversion zone that forms between sunset and sunrise.

 Still another problem is shadow flicker, or a strobe effect. Some people lose their balance or experience symptoms of seasickness. Like other flashing lights, the strobe effect can trigger seizures in persons with epilepsy.

 Some people are so severely affected that they abandon their homes. In Germany, real estate agents report a 20% to 30% loss of value for property within sight of wind farms. In some places in the U.S., wind turbines may render nearby property unsalable. A study of the proposed Cape Wind project in Massachusetts concluded that the total property value loss of about $1 .35 billion would exceed the $800 million cost of construction.

 Animals may be even more severely affected by the sound from turbines, especially the low-frequency sounds. The animal kingdom relies upon a wide range of sound frequencies inaudible to humans. Basic survival functions including hunting, self-protection, and reproduction are impaired, and habitat may be abandoned. The irreversible destruction of habitat may be even more serious than collision mortality for birds. Livestock businesses are destroyed: hens stop laying; cattle exhibit aggressive, destructive behavior; sheep have disturbed respiration and reduced feeding. In Taiwan, 400 goats died after eight wind turbines were installed nearby, apparently because they couldn’t sleep.

 Although the wind industry has often stated that “there is no peer-reviewed scientific evidence indicating wind turbines have an adverse effect on human health,” the evidence is indeed accumulating. John Droz, Jr., notes that North Carolina mandates no human health review for a wind project, though the impact on birds is reviewed. He provides a wealth of information at www.WindPowerFacts.info.

 The “dirty” electricity produced by the turbines may also be harmful. The output from the inverters is contaminated with a lot high-frequency transients, which cause “radio wave sickness” symptoms that disappear on leaving the area. Radio, TV, and satellite dish reception is also impaired (Canada Free Press 4/28/09).

 Wind energy has substantially raised the cost of electricity everywhere it is installed. The goal, of course, is to reduce CO2 emissions. But as even the Green Party has recognized, 20,000 turbines in Germany, the world’s leader in total wind energy capacity, have reduced CO2 by not a single gram (Der Spiegel 2/1 1/09). In fact, because of the inefficient use of gas turbines as spinning reserves to cope with the variability of wind-power output, emissions may actually increase (D. White, Renewable Energy Foundation, December 2004). The largest theoretical reduction in CO2 emissions from wind, compared with coal or gas, is 10%, since traditional power stations with 90% of the total capacity of wind must be online at all times to assure continuous power- (Inhaber H. Rénewabre Sustainable Energy Rev 201 1;15:25572562).

 Turbulence from wind turbines, causing vertical mixing of heat in atmospheric layers, might even affect local temperatures and rainfall (Nature 12/23-30/10).

 World investment in ‘clean” energy was $243 billion in 2010, a 630% growth in finance and investments since 2004, according to the Pew Environmental Group (TWTW 6/25/1 1). The U.S. is winning the wind race with China, having installed 8.5 GWe (nameplate) of wind capacity in 2008, versus 4.7 GWe for China. But China is not running that race; it is, instead, installing affordable, dependable energy for the prosperity of its citizens (TWTW 1 1/20/10, http://www.sepp.org). Wind and solar are export industries for China, and they are suffering ‘because the Europeans are running out of mad money,” writes Norman Rogers.

 If the CO2 emissions reduction game doubles the cost of electricity in the U.S., the extra $300 billion is half the cost of Medicare in 2008. It would be a big savings, Rogers suggests, for the government to bribe people to stop building windmills (Amer Thinker5/1/1 1). But it’s all about political power—not human health.

More references on wind turbine’s effect on human health:

Studies on How Infrasound Can Cause Cancer
Some Worthwhile Scientific Studies on Wind Turbine Noise

More on wind turbine’s effect on wildlife:

 Windsmills are killing our birds

 Wind Turbines Spread While Bats Take Beating

 Bats, Birds, and Blades

 See also:

Electricity generated by wind power may raise temperatures and costs