Canadians rally against wind power

[FarCenter]

Hundreds of Canadians demonstrated on Tuesday calling for an end to subsidies for wind power, saying noise from colossal turbines is making some people sick and driving down rural property prices.

...

"They're huge power-producing machines that make noise and produce a vibration... that is felt in the inner ear, similar to the bass from a passing car that's playing loud music."

"People can't sleep at night, they get headaches, nauseous and dizzy," she said.

Others lamented premiums paid for wind and solar energy, saying Ontario's feed-in-tariff program, which led to thousands of small rooftop solar installations and large wind farms to pop up across the province, is driving up energy costs.

http://www.france24.com/en/20120403-canadians-rally-against-wind-power

[Joe Shlabotnik]

1. Wind Concerns Ontario may be an astroturf group.

http://bigcitylib.blogspot.ca/2011/12/wind-concerns-ontario-shuts-down-blog.html

McGuinty's green energy plan is under attack from tea party type conservative opportunists, climate change deniers, Nimby-ers, and the power workers union.

[Canuckistanian]

2. Wind Concerns Ontario is almost certainly bogus

They're one of these shadowy groups that seem to have sprung up protesting ANY aspect of climate change or alternate energy funding.

And they seem to POUNCE on any negative report of renewable energy sources. Just try to find the FOUNDERS of any of these types of "grass roots" organizations.
They're hidden behind multiple layers of ownership.

And don't blame power worker's unions. They'll actually have MORE jobs with solar or wind generating stations.

[FarCenter]

5. Reports of the death of NIMBYism greatly exaggerated

Now 25 , Laforet is an opponent of industrial wind development everywhere in Ontario, until — as he explained in a speech to the Empire Club of Canada this week — sufficient study is done on health consequences of turbines.

To date, his group has won a moratorium on offshore wind development.

When Laforet decided on Broadview Ave. to denounce the premier's actions and attitude, he knew he was putting paid to any future he had in the Liberal party.

But what he found was that, when it came to concern about wind turbines, he was hardly alone. He also found that new technologies provided a way to turn dozens of local squawks that might otherwise have been ignored into one very loud, persistent voice.

...

“Wind Concerns Ontario is so much an electronic organization,” he told the Star. “You can't overestimate the power of technology,” especially when it comes to connecting far-flung rural areas facing the same issue.

“Basically, I'm running Wind Concerns Ontario on a laptop, an internet stick and an iPhone.”
http://www.thestar.com/news/article/1002906--reports-of-the-death-of-nimbyism-greatly-exaggerated

Appears to have been at least a former Grit, whatever that is...

[handmaid]

7. Hahaha Wow

LOL.

A Grit is a "Liberal". He used to be President of the Liberal riding. There goes your right wing, tea party theory!

Here is a list of groups currently opposed to wind: http://windwahn.de/index.php/links/linkliste

[SidDithers]

13. ...

Sid

[Marco Bernardi]

18. The founder is me!

Try to find the Founders of WINDWAHN.
It's easy - just click on the link: http://windwahn.de/index.php/impressum

Have you ever tried to find the one behind ENERCON? Have a nice time searching.

[Spazito]

23. It looks like the pouncing has even hit DU!

Sure didn't take long.

[Marco Bernardi]

14. NIMBY?

You know what NIMBY means?
Next Idiot Might Be You!
Every other explanation is incorrect.

[Blue_Tires]

15. Yeah, those "vibration and noise" myths are straight from the RW meme book

[Snake Alchemist]

3. Maine is fairly close to Canada

http://www.onlinesentinel.com/news/protest-opposes-maine-wind-projects_2011-08-25.html

[marmar]

4. Hundreds of paid shills.......

...... there are wind generators over a good bit of southwestern Ontario farmland between Windsor and London, and I've talked to nary a person who doesn't like them.

[handmaid]

6. Hilarious

Are you people living in a little conspiracy cave???

Groups opposing wind in Ontario has been around since 2006. John Laforet isn't even with WCO anymore. Hasn't been since last year.

Typical response. Something you don't understand, you throw mud at, hoping it will stick.

The movement is not right wing, or tea party. It is people from rural communitites whose governing has been handing over to the big wind companies to do as they please. Big Wind is the same companies as Big Oil, in case you didn't know. Suncor, TransAlta, Enbridge, Epcor, etc.

Do your homework. You're all looking rather silly and uneducated.

[MadHound]

8. Speaking of looking silly,

Do some homework yourself. Astroturf groups are not a new political ploy, either in the US, Canada or elsewhere. Dismissing them as some sort of conspiracy theory simply shows your own political ignorance about how things really work in this country.

Oh, and your term "Big Wind" is a laughably pathetic attempt to demonize wind by putting it in the same category as oil. It isn't.

[handmaid]

10. Stop and THINK

It's the SAME companies!

The groups your talking about are not astroturf. That's my point.

[MadHound]

11. The groups I'm talking about

The ones rallying against windpower, are indeed astroturf groups. Worse than that, they appear to be breaking election laws.
http://www.wind-watch.org/news/2012/01/18/ontario-anti-wind-power-group-accused-of-breaking-election-financing-rules/

As far as these energy companies investing in both oil and wind, well, sounds like they are forward thinking corporations And they aren't "Big Oil" by any stretch of the imagination, but rather mid level players at best.

[Marco Bernardi]

17. Why do you know that?

The ones rallying against windpower, are indeed people who know what they are talking about.
They are talking about destroyed lives. They are talking about destroyed nature. They are talking about abandoned houses because they can't live anymore in a wind turbine polluted surrounding.

Like my wife and I do. We are overlooking more than 130 wind turbines from our property in Schleswig-Holstein, the most northern federal land of Germany. We are hearing the wind turbines - the whole area is filled with a deep humming and we feel the turbines. Our bodies are vibrating all the time.

Here is a nice picture of rural Germany:
[link:|

Do you really think people like my wife and me are astroturf groups? Or do we have serious reasons to fight windpower?

[Marco Bernardi]

16. BIG WIND is no demon - it's reality

I live for 17 years beside wind turbines (320m-700m). I get heart rhythm dysfunction and my wife cancer (Follicular Non-Hodgkin lymphoma in the mucosa of the lower body) from the turbines.
Every try to bring the owners to trial failed because the turbines have no owners....

BIG WIND is big business paired with Mafia.

[HiPointDem]

25. Speaking as someone who has friends in the industry, the other poster is correct. Wind

installations are dominated by big corps. Top 10 turbine manufacturers have a 79% market share world wide. Top 5 = 46%.

Top 10 wind turbine manufacturers by annual market share (installed capacity) in 2011 by IHS Inc.:

Denmark Vestas 12.7%
China Sinovel 9.0%
China Goldwind 8.7%
Spain Gamesa 8.0%
Germany Enercon 7.8%
United States GE Wind Energy 7.7%
India Suzlon Group 7.6% (inc Suzlon Energy (India) and REpower (Germany))
China Guodian United Power 7.4%
Denmark/Germany Siemens Wind Power 6.3%
China Ming Yang 3.6%

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wind_turbine_manufacturers

And some of these corps do indeed have oil a/o nuke interests, e.g.:

http://www.enercon.com/power_generation/projects/davis.php
http://www.enercon.com/power_generation/projects/diablo.php
http://www.ge-energy.com/about/oil_and_gas.jsp

[jpak]

12. There is NO peer reviewed published medical evidence for adverse health impacts from wind turbines

Fucking lies and superstition

yup

[FarCenter]

19. There has bee relatively little research on the topic -- but see

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0378595510003126

Responses of the ear to low frequency sounds, infrasound and wind turbines

Infrasonic sounds are generated internally in the body (by respiration, heartbeat, coughing, etc) and by external sources, such as air conditioning systems, inside vehicles, some industrial processes and, now becoming increasingly prevalent, wind turbines. It is widely assumed that infrasound presented at an amplitude below what is audible has no influence on the ear. In this review, we consider possible ways that low frequency sounds, at levels that may or may not be heard, could influence the function of the ear. The inner ear has elaborate mechanisms to attenuate low frequency sound components before they are transmitted to the brain. The auditory portion of the ear, the cochlea, has two types of sensory cells, inner hair cells (IHC) and outer hair cells (OHC), of which the IHC are coupled to the afferent fibers that transmit “hearing” to the brain. The sensory stereocilia (“hairs”) on the IHC are “fluid coupled” to mechanical stimuli, so their responses depend on stimulus velocity and their sensitivity decreases as sound frequency is lowered. In contrast, the OHC are directly coupled to mechanical stimuli, so their input remains greater than for IHC at low frequencies. At very low frequencies the OHC are stimulated by sounds at levels below those that are heard. Although the hair cells in other sensory structures such as the saccule may be tuned to infrasonic frequencies, auditory stimulus coupling to these structures is inefficient so that they are unlikely to be influenced by airborne infrasound. Structures that are involved in endolymph volume regulation are also known to be influenced by infrasound, but their sensitivity is also thought to be low. There are, however, abnormal states in which the ear becomes hypersensitive to infrasound. In most cases, the inner ear’s responses to infrasound can be considered normal, but they could be associated with unfamiliar sensations or subtle changes in physiology. This raises the possibility that exposure to the infrasound component of wind turbine noise could influence the physiology of the ear.

The proposal that turbines be > 2 km from homes is probably a good one until research is done to establish a smaller value.

[jpak]

20. Oh please - there are 240,000 MW of wind power capacity currently installed world wide

Last edited Wed Apr 4, 2012, 05:30 PM - Edit history (1)

Danish citizens have been exposed to the Evil Wind Turbine for nearly 2 decades.

Where are the bodies?

clue

There are none.

yup

[FarCenter]

22. Why should country folk put up with turbines so cities can light then night sky with street lamps?

It would be better to cut power to the cities, which are the real problem.

[jpak]

24. Because "the country folk" make thousands of dollars per year from each turbine on their property

and local "country folk" governments make tens of thousands of dollars each year from those Evil Wind Farms - which reduces property taxes.

In many places, the "country folk" get free electricity too.

and they vote for them.

yup

[Rex]

21. Interesting.

nt