Wind Turbine “noise” No Biggie for Germans. Why?
May 6, 2013
If wind turbines were as “bad” for you as windbaggers in the US would like you to believe, there should be a lot of body bags piling up in places like Germany, Denmark, and, well, Iowa – places that have large penetration by wind generated electricity. Or at least, one would think, there’d be an increased incidence in the headaches-to leukemia-to-herpes complex of symptoms that the looney right has identified as part of “wind turbine syndrome”. But of course, there is not.
Why?
The answer of course, is, that Germany does not have the highly funded, focused and professional anti-wind disinformation machine that has been launched here in the US.
We know who they are, we have their memos and strategy.
A network of ultra-conservative groups is ramping up an offensive on multiple fronts to turn the American public against wind farms and Barack Obama‘s energy agenda.
A number of rightwing organisations, including Americans for Prosperity, which is funded by the billionaire Koch brothers, are attacking Obama for his support for solar and wind power. The American Legislative Exchange Council (Alec), which also has financial links to the Kochs, has drafted bills to overturn state laws promoting wind energy.
Now a confidential strategy memo seen by the Guardian advises using “subversion” to build a national movement of wind farm protesters.
The strategy proposal was prepared by a fellow of the American Tradition Institute (ATI) – although the thinktank has formally disavowed the project.
The proposal was discussed at a meeting of self-styled ‘wind warriors’ from across the country in Washington DC last February.
Among the action items included in the memo:
Cause subversion in message of industry so that it effectively becomes so bad no one wants to admit in public they are for it (much like wind has done to coal, by turning green to black and clean to dirty)
Setup a dummy business that will go into communities considering wind development, proposing to build 400 foot billboards.
The message is also repeated in Wash Times, WSJ, Fox and other sources.
Public opinion must begin to change in what should appear as a “groundswell” among grass roots.
So, next time you see or hear about one of these “grassroots” groups “concerned” about the effects of wind energy, remember that the template for this “movement” was created in right wing think tanks fueled by the Koch brothers and other fossil fuel friendly funders. A small, elite group of right wing operatives control the message and the strategy, while many if not most of the of those who are active locally may well be simply paranoid-and-misinformed-but-otherwise innocent tea party loons who are so far down the chain, they don’t even know who is writing their script.
Climate Denial Crock of the Week 
May 7, 2013 at 6:51 pm
I don’t get how people can complain about Windmills but shrug-off the toxic wastelands created by developing tar-sands oil as “progress” and “good economics.”
May 8, 2013 at 12:56 am
Steeples from the city that believe anything because it has the word green in it!
May 10, 2013 at 2:54 pm
Steeples? We apparently have hit some kind of windbagger nerve plexus.
I like it.
May 8, 2013 at 1:00 am
The nonsensical Guardian “conspiracy” story was answered a long time ago.
http://www.treehugger.com/environmental-policy/when-anti-clean-energy-conspiracy-isnt.html
May 8, 2013 at 1:12 am
Please give me the contact information for these billionaires maybe they will keep the Industrial wind turbines from causing
1. Deforestation on our ridges and mountains
2. Displacement of the wildlife
3. Killing our birds of prey (Eagles to name one)
4. Bats( they eat insects it’s called Eco balance)
5. Disturb the bedrock and dries up Aquifers that supply water to our streams, creeks underground spring and wells)
People choose to live in the country to get away from the city noise and pollution.
Where do you get the air you breath?
Where do you live? Please stay there!
Where does food come from!
IWT’S ONLY PRODUCE 1.58% of all the energy in the U.S and they still have to be connected to an existing power grid. There are thousands and thousands how many would it take to make a difference. The only people that make money are the greedy owners of the company’s and some land owners if the IWT’S PRODUCE AND ARE NOT ABANDONED AS MANY ARE. RESEARCH. SAD WHEN THE CHILDREN ARE SPOUTING PROPAGANDA. INDOCTRINATION. STAY IN THE CITY
May 9, 2013 at 9:03 am
stowe261,
What reputable research do you have for your claims?
Links required for each claim!
No newspaper articles!
No denialist crap!
What is an ‘IWT’?
While you’re at it:
Does mountaintop removal cause deforestation?
Does mountaintop removal cause damage to watercourses?
Does coal-burning cause deforestation?
Does coal burning cause loss of CAPS-LOCK mania?
May 9, 2013 at 12:54 pm
“reputable research”? surely you jest. this is a windbagger we’re dealing with.
May 8, 2013 at 1:18 am
Hmmm, I thought it was wind versus “FF” interests.
But look at the fossil and nuclear heavy interests populating the board of AWEA:
http://www.awea.org/learnabout/aboutawea/bod.cfm
And it seems to me it was Enron that rekindled the wind game in the US, purely for humanitarian reasons…right?
Of course Florida Power and Light/NextEra is doing well with wind subsidies. They received enough benefit to essentially pay no income tax. But they were able to build the US’ largest fossil fuel generating plant in the Everglades.
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2012/dec/26/obamas-wind-production-tax-credit-swindle/?page=all
Now, does anyone want to share with me the current figures on the price-per-unit-of-emissions avoided by adding wind to current generation portfolios versus replacing coal with CCGT or nuclear? I mean, should not the cheapest and quickest means of reducing those horrendous coal emissions be employed as quickly as possible for the sake of the planet? Or do we just build wind for the feel good component?
Or is the real reason we build 500′ tall wind turbines 1,000 feet from people’s homes is to placate the anti-coal, gas and nuclear NIMBYs?
And of course, despite this author’s partisan rant, many people from the enviro-left have valid concerns about renewable energy policy as well, from wind to solar to biomass:
UC Berkeley prof Ozzie Zehner http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JJ9-jYfpwfw
Michael Moore producer Jeff Gibbs: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jeff-gibbs/post_4087_b_2073600.html
And even AGW believer and MIT economist Dr. Paul Joskow understands what Mr. Sinclair does not: wind is a high priced/low value proposition due to it’s non-dispatchable nature:
http://cadmus.eui.eu/bitstream/handle/1814/18239/RSCAS_2011_45.pdf?sequence=1
And wasn’t it the “right wing Koch Brothers funded Sierra Club that first branded wind turbines “Cuisinarts of the Air”?
“Here is the full story eloquently as told on page 450 by Paul Gipe in his 1995 book, Wind Energy Comes of Age (New York: John Wiley & Sons):
At the height of the Gorman [California] hearing, an old man took the podium. Suddenly the television news crews switched on their Klieg lights. Something was afoot. They had been alerted that a suitably newsworthy ‘sound bite’ was on its way. Tension in the room mounted. The old man proceeded to lovingly describe the beauty of his racing pigeons, their speed and grace, how they had become a part of his family, and then with perfect timing and dramatic flair, pleaded with the planning commission to protect his pigeons from “the Cuisinarts of the air.”
The arrow went straight home, sending up a roar from the audience. A new image had been created and the cameras flashed it across the country. Although often credited to staging by Cerrell and Associates, the term was conceived by the Sierra Club. The club’s Los Angeles area representative, Bob Hattoy, later bragged to a Washington lobbyist that he coined the infamous expression. Hattoy knew how to turn a phrase. He brought the 1992 Democratic national convention and a television audience of millions to tears with his story of contracting AIDs. Wind energy had made one powerful enemy”-Paul Gipe
May 8, 2013 at 1:34 am
Looks like the Teabagger patrol as been through on their down vote marching orders.
May 8, 2013 at 5:26 am
Judging by the number of down votes on even innocuous comments, it’s not clear that they even know how to read.
May 8, 2013 at 9:41 am
Only a couple more down votes and I’ll be in the lead. I wonder if I can down vote myself for the prestige of being the most hated commenter by the manufactured grass roots movement?
May 8, 2013 at 6:42 am
lol MorinMoss…
I wrote an article yesterday on Wind Farms because a lamentable piece of tripe that the Aussie ABC posted on line. I don’t want to get drawn into the argument as I allowed myself with fluoride.
Anyway, another blogger linked me to his article and in it I found a link to a data base of supposed symptoms due to exposure to wind farms and if I hadn’t read it, I’d think you were making it up. Here’s the link;
Click to access WindfarmDiseases.pdf
Seriously; herpes, advanced aging, cataracts, breast pain, low libido… I mean, how mental do you have to be to think wind turbines can give you herpes or cataracts etc?!?!
Of all the crazy crackpot theories, this surely out does all of them, but for the one person I once came by whom insisted that UV radiation doesn’t cause skin cancer, but rather bathing in fluoridated water.
Age of enlightenment my foot!
May 8, 2013 at 7:35 am
I noticed two glaring omissions: Hypochondria and chronic bull-shitting.
May 8, 2013 at 9:05 am
How on Earth did I miss that? They should’ve topped the list!
May 9, 2013 at 6:31 pm
Why does this sound like the list of ailments that preceded the angry town folk burning the old woman as a witch.
It appears that the age of superstition hasn’t left.
May 8, 2013 at 2:56 pm
Looking at the sudden increase in downvotes, I think this post hit a nerve and attracted the attention of the flying monkeys.
Their pensions are probably dependent on fossil fuel, which would explain their Luddism. Pathetic really.
May 9, 2013 at 1:34 pm
[…] do I have your attention? Apparently so, after the rash of negative votes on recent blog postings, looks like I’m on the Koch Brother’s […]
May 9, 2013 at 3:23 pm
I guess this woman at the end of this clip from Age of Stupid must feel very proud of herself. No doubt she will be famous among her family and friends too.
This opposition from clean energy from wind farms is indeed a hallmark of stupidity in our age of stupid.