The Wizard from Oz

We have always admired the work of Professor Simon Chapman, professor of public health at the University of Sydney.  He has taken a strong stand against tobacco and is now shining a light on the effects of the fear/uncertainty/doubt (FUD) campaign being waged by many wind opponents.

His recent submission to the Australian Senate Inquiry into Renewable Energy (Electricity) sums up his motivation nicely:

I have long had a scholarly interest in risk communication. In particular, I am

interested in significant, high-risk health problems which are under-rated by the

public (eg: smoking), and in low-risk putative health problems which are overrated

by some members of the public causing them to worry, panic and

sometimes express symptoms. It is my view, for reasons set out below, ["below" meaning the balance of his submission] that concerns about the health effects of wind turbines fall into the latter category.

Recently, he published an op ed piece in "The Drum", the Australian Broadcasting Corporation's on-line news channel.  You can find the full edition, including over 400 comments and active links here: http://www.abc.net.au/unleashed/4394656.html

28 NOVEMBER 2012

Fanning fear: the wind farm nocebo effect

SIMON CHAPMAN

Most wind farms around the world have no history of complaints, but the few that do

have seen the local area targeted by external activists who spread panic. Simon Chapman reflects

on the nonsense claims of anti-wind farm activists.

Later today, the Senate will release the report of a committee into a Private Senators' Bill

examining the proposal that wind turbines should not be accredited if the sound emitted

exceeds 10 decibels of the background noise at any time, measured within 22 metres of a

house.

The Bill was proposed by Democratic Labor Party Senator John Madigan and independent

Senator Nick Xenophon. Both have form in expressing opposition to wind farms.

Like Don Quixote who tilted at windmills, Madigan previously claimed (PDF) he was

fighting a "sinister" and "dangerous" industry and Xenophon believes turbines affect brain

activity.

No one following the latest historical example of what is quite plainly technophobic

Luddism has any doubt that the tabling will see a minority report that the proposed

standard be adopted. The bill will be defeated on party lines, with the Greens supporting

the Government. But it has provided a conduit for a Niagara of mostly boilerplate protest

material from the tiny but highly organised opponent groups.

While the bill is purportedly about noise levels in the audible spectrum, the focus of many

fear-laden submissions has been around the sub-audible low-frequency noise - infrasound -

that wind turbines (and pretty much all machines) create. While studies have shown (PDF)

that Australians living near the coast or in cities are constantly subject to far greater 'doses'

of infrasound, apparently the sort emitted by wind turbines has a special flavour that

causes a never-before-seen medical condition.

"Wind turbine syndrome" is a term coined in a self-published book by a US small town

doctor who personally opposed a wind farm proposed near her property. Tellingly, the

term does not appear once among 22 million papers indexed by PubMed, the US National

Library of Medicine's repository of peer reviewed research published in acknowledged

journals.

With now 217 diseases and symptoms claimed to be caused by exposure to the subaudible,

low frequency infrasound emitted by wind turbines - some by as little as a few

minutes exposure - there are undeniable and rhino-in-the-room size clues that complaints

are psychogenic: "communicated" diseases spread by the nocebo effect. This is where

dramatically and repeatedly suggesting to people that something is likely to make you ill,

triggers claims and sometimes symptomatic illness in a minority of people.

Most wind farms around the world and in Australia have no history of complaints, and

most of those which do, have seen the local area targeted by external anti-wind farm

activists who spread panic and tell frightened locals to report anything they might

experience to their doctor. The activist groups even provide symptom menus to assist

residents.

Wind farms have existed in Western Australia for nearly 20 years, yet no company

operating over there has ever received a health complaint. Significantly, there are no antiwind

farm group operating in the state.

By contrast, here's a case study of how complaints can get going on the east coast.

In early October 2010, residents of Leonards Hill in central Victoria were encouraged to

attend a presentation in Evansford, given by an unregistered doctor, Sarah Laurie, who has

become Australia's high priestess of wind farm anxiety. Laurie believes (PDF)that

turbulence from wind turbines can "perceptibly rock stationary cars even further than a

kilometre away from the nearest wind turbine" and told a meeting (PDF) in 2011 that

spending a night near wind turbines can cause "just about everybody ...every five or ten

minutes needing to go to the toilet."

In the same week, the Australian Environment Foundation, a deceptively named climate

change denialist group, arranged a protest meeting at the opening ceremony for the

beginning of works on a two turbine, 2,000 shareholder community-owned wind farm at

Leonards Hill, near Daylesford. Banners with "Wind farms make me sick" were prepared

and some 50 people (mostly out of towners) attended the protest, which was reported in

the local press.

In November, Laurie was reported in local newspaper The Advocate as saying "If I were

living right there I would be very concerned. I would be beside myself..." Scary stuff.

In early December 2010, the president of the Landscape Guardians told the Australian

"I've been on medication for the last five years just fighting this." The wind farm had not

even opened but the president was already worried sick.

In mid August 2011, the Ballarat Courier reported that Leonards Hill received its first

health complaint from a 57-year-old woman with sleep problems. She described the sound

of the two turbines, half a kilometre away, as at times "like a jet engine". (Like hundreds

of thousands of Sydney residents, I've lived right under the Sydney fight path for 22 years,

and I've spent time around wind farms. The comparison is nothing less than ludicrous).

The next day, the Landscape Guardians president went public as the second health

complainant about the wind farm.

Those who study the dynamics of psychogenic illness place the communication of scary

information front and centre of this psychogenic/nocebo process. Early next year, a leading

international psychology journal will publish findings of a study that will add important

new evidence to this debate.

The study took healthy volunteers and exposed some to information from the internet

designed to prime them to expect that infrasound from wind farms could make them

experience symptoms. They labelled this group the "high expectations" group. Another

group were not exposed to such information (the "low expectations" group). Both groups

were then exposed in a laboratory to both real and "sham" (fake) infrasound. The high

expectation group reported a significant increase in symptoms during both exposure

sessions, while there was no increase in symptoms reported in the low expectation group.

In Canada an anti-wind farm group took a wind company to a local tribunal, with a

cavalcade of complainants emotionally detailing their health problems. The tribunal agreed

with the wind company that the medical records of all complainants going back a decade

should be presented. These would reveal how many of the victims had a prior history of

the problems they now complained about. The case then collapsed, with the complainants

protesting that this was too onerous a requirement.

All social groups, workplaces and organisations have individuals with reputations for

whinging and negativity. So perhaps unsurprisingly, a recent British study found that

"negative orientated personality" traits predicted unexplained non-specific symptoms

among residents near a wind farm, and not actual noise.

Ten years ago, the media was full of anxiety that mobile telephone towers would bring

down plagues of diseases on those around them. Local governments passed nonsensical

regulations allowing towers on factory roofs, but nowhere near sporting fields, schools or

even nursing homes (where most residents had highly limited life expectancy anyway).

The predicted epidemics of brain cancer never happened, there are more mobile phones

than Australian residents and the anxiety disappeared.

Todays's expected report will contain the equivalent nonsense about wind farms. It will

make interesting reading 10 years from now.

Simon Chapman is professor of public health at the University of Sydney. He tweets

@simonchapman6. View his full profile here.

© 2012 ABC

Industrial strength dog whistle

A dog whistle  is a signal that ordinary humans can't sense because its frequency is above normal hearing.  It's also a signal used in political campaigns to denote subtle messages being transmitted to bigoted voters.

In the wind turbine news arena, the term "industrial" is the dog whistle of wind opponents.  "Industrial" is never used in scientific literature although it's being introduced into the faux scientific literature.

Where did the term "industrial" originate as an adjective for wind turbines?  Was it the Press?  Or the scientific community?

No.

It was the result of a series of focus groups financed by one of the Koch brothers as part of his opposition to a proposed offshore wind project near Cape Cod.

According to E&E Publishing, September 24, 2007, in an article regarding the Industrial Wind Action Group (IWA):

Money matters

One of the biggest and best-funded wind-power opponents is a NIMBY group, the Alliance to Protect Nantucket Sound, which was founded in 2001 to oppose Cape Wind, a 130-turbine project to be sited about five miles off Cape Cod.

In 2005, the latest year for which figures are available, the alliance took in almost $3.3 million in donations, including $1.1 million from oil magnate Bill Koch, the founder and president of the Oxbow Group, a holding company focused on energy development. The alliance employs four lobbying firms, spends about a third of its take on legal fees, pays its president $114,000, and just opened an office in Washington to lobby during the federal review process.

Freelance journalist Wendy Williams, co-author of a book about the Cape Wind fight, said IWA's focus on the word "industrial" was drawn from the Nantucket Sound alliance. "The phrase 'industrial' was the direct result of focus groups," she said. "It frightened people who thought they lived in a pristine environment."

Frightened.  Just another component of the Fear/Uncertainty/Doubt campaign being waged by the wind opponents in Ontario.

FUD in Listowel

The following letter was submitted by Gary Zavitz on February 12 as a Letter to the Editor of the Listowel Banner.  It was in response to this editorial and this editorial that documented the witch hunt that is going on in the area, seemingly aided by the Banner.  As of this date, the Letter has not been published.

Referring to the Feb 8 article in the Listowel Banner, it was discouraging to read of the events at the North Perth council meeting last week where a wind energy person was invited to speak to local council, yet was met with verbal and physical abuse, resulting in him being hurried out the door. How ridiculous and narrow-minded it was not to have heard the speaker out on his point. Agree or disagree, it was an opportunity missed not to have set the stage for an important community debate on wind energy facts, rather than the same old fear, uncertainty and rhetorical doubt pandered by those opposed to this form of renewable energy.

It should be recognized that Ontario is in the midst of updating its ancient electricity system and will need a variety of robust power sources. This will include clean wind energy, which can be planned, built, managed and serviced by local talent, a net-new source of income for the local economy, not to mention tax revenue.  The debt retirement charge we pay on our power bill – an unfunded liability currently at $13.4 billion which does nothing to build new electricity capacity - is not the result of solar and wind, but cost overruns in big ticket projects dating back a few decades.

My group, Friends of Wind Ontario understands that wind energy is relatively new to most Canadians. The subject matter and resulting community impact can be complex and that questions and concerns must be addressed with verifiable facts. We are like all Canadians who abide by the rules of democratic government and believe in the fundamental right of citizens to be informed and to have the opportunity to express their opinions with respect to any local developments, regardless of their views. We recognize that dialogue around the important issue of our local and regional energy future must be based on respect for all opinions and no one should be fearful of others when addressing this important topic.

Thousands of farmers and rural landowners and dozens of municipalities in Ontario are actively participating in wind energy and other renewable energy projects. The resulting jobs will be a boon to the local economy, especially for my area, hit hard by a downturn in manufacturing and having one of the highest levels of unemployment in Canada. I live just west of London and within a few years, the family house where my family has lived for over a century will be mere minutes from a planned wind farm. I am consulting regularly with the local councils and the developer on this project and can confidently say I have little concern if any, on these plans as the project moves forward.