There is no doubt that Australia has to include renewables into our energy mix going forward. The problem is, the much touted Wind Turbines, are falling short of their anticipated benefits, and indeed given the harm they are causing, may not be suitable to be considered in this mix. The unrealistic urgency which appears to be driven as much by money as it is by climate consciousness is causing contracts to be signed before due diligence has been performed. Politics and profits appear to be taking precedent over health and safety.

One would assume the requirements of each method we use for alternative energy to coal must at least pass the following basic tests.

1. Safe to people’s health
2. Safe for the environment
3. Provide affordable stand alone energy ( ie without relying on ongoing subsidies)
4. Provide reliable energy
5. Have a small carbon footprint.

So lets review the Wind Turbines score care

As at the end of 2017 there were 85 wind farms in Australia, totalling 4,816 MW in capacity.

Below is a collection of videos, documents, and articles published from various sources questioning all of the above.

As you read this collection remember the entire rationale for wind turbines is to stop global warming by reducing the amount of CO2 being returned to the atmosphere from the burning of fossil fuels.

There are complaints regarding negative health from WHO, USA and 6 Australian farms across Vic, NSW and SA. The environment is also under siege. From 1,000’s of birds and bats,  bushfires, toxic radio waste lakes  and  rusted out turbine relics.

Their effectiveness and affordability without government rebate is also  a serious question that needs looking into.

We are also seeing blatant discrimination out of Ontario where Syncrude fined $2.75M for 31 bird deaths (but windmills get a pass)!!

The question is, Why are we allowing our Government to implement these ridiculous alternatives when they fail every test.

Someone is making a lot of money.

It reminds us of Hitler’s quote “

“The great masses of the people will more easily fall victims to a big lie than to a small one.” 

We are being lied to on a monumental scale.

It must stop.

1.Be safe to people’s health

In Australia we currently have multiple communities, states apart, experiencing the same health isues. The common denominator is Wind Farms.

Bald Hills Wind Farm – Victoria

52 turbines

Victorian Vengeance: Neighbours Launch $Multi-Million Noise Nuisance Law Suit Against Wind Farm Operator & Local Council
The community surrounding the Bald Hills wind farm, built by a Japanese developer, Mitsui and Co, have been tortured by incessant turbine generated low-frequency noise and infrasound since March 2015, when its 52, 2 MW Senvion MM92 turbines spun into action.

Neighbours started complaining to the developer about noise straightaway.

But, as is their wont, the developer and its goons simply rejected the mounting complaints and carried on regardless. As we explain below, that callousness will soon come back to bite them. Bald Hills 1. Full Story 

and again

Gippsland wind farm adversely affecting residents, independent report says

• The report followed the lodging of a nuisance complaint by a local resident under the Public Health and Wellbeing Act
• The Supreme Court ordered the council to commission the independent report
• South Gippsland Shire Council is demanding clarity from the State Government

Mr Tamlin said the council was trying work out the implications of the report and wanted the Victorian Government to provide clarity on the issue.

He said local councils could effectively be sidelined from the approval process for a wind energy plant, via the relevant planning act, but then have to deal with the fallout if there was a complaint under the Public Health and Wellbeing Act.

“The wind farm has a planning permit, under the Planning and Environment Act, to operate and is compliant with its noise standards,” Mr Tamlin said.

However, he said the consultants’ report had found noise nuisance for two surrounding residents, causing a conflict between the two relevant pieces of legislation.

“Then council finds itself in the middle and what’s worse, our residents find themselves in a situation which should never have occurred,” Mr Tamlin said.

“This is something the Victorian Government needs to resolve, for the sake of the renewable energy sector and all those involved in the establishment of wind farms.”

The report comes in the same week that Premier Daniel Andrews revealed the Government had signed contracts with six solar and wind farms,

Bald Hills 2 Full Story 

 

 

 

 

Waterloo, South Australia

37 Turbines
Yokeless eggs? State EFA denies the presence of Infrasound

More videos
Follow up Today Tonight report 2012 Waterloo can be viewed here 
Sunrise report 2013 Waterloo view here

 

Robertstown, South Australia

Energy Australia scraps wind farm project at Robertstown, South Australia 2014

 

Waubra Wind Farm – Victoria

Waubra’s own wind farm is one of the largest in Australia, with 128 turbines on the properties of 37 farmers.
The turbines on the farms throughout Waubra belong to the Spanish renewable energy giant Acciona, which pays farmers about $7,000 a year, indexed to inflation, for every wind turbine they are allowed to build and manage.

“As soon as they got going, they started affecting my wife and six months down the track they started affecting me,” he said.”[The noise] is morning and night — it’s 24 hours a day — and you don’t have control over it. You can’t just turn them off.”

Mr Stepnell, 46, said he and his wife started experiencing headaches and ringing in their ears, which they attributed to a wind turbine 800 metres from their home.

They eventually took the extraordinary decision to build another house at the other end of their farm.

But the Australian Medical Association’s Victorian president, Dr Lorraine Barker, said that anxiety over being near wind turbines can cause symptoms of its own.  “There is no indication that infrasound, for instance, could induce the symptoms … [but] anxiety certainly can,” Dr Barker said. Waubra Full Story

 

Bodangora Wind Farm, NSW

Communities Divided.

Once again much of the conflict is between landowners who have the opportunity to earn guaranteed income from the installation of turbines and those living within the impact range who suffer ill health from them.
However there are landowners who have wind turbines that are also speaking about about the health effects.

 

Community division over Bodangora Wind Farm

Lal Lal Wind Farm, Victoria

Turbines found to be non-compliant

The Lal Lal Wind Farm, Ballarat was sold to Macquarie Capital by WestWind Energy last in 2017

After the sale, Macquarie Capital voluntarily had predictive noise levels at turbines re-tested by Adelaide-based company Sonus.

The testing, which was scrutinised by an EPA-approved auditor, found 19 of the 60 turbines were not compliant.
The Lal Lal Wind Farm will now have to change when turbines are turned on and off in certain windy conditions. “In essence it means the turbines will not generate as much income for Macquarie,” Mr Dyer said.
The Victorian Government has changed the rules around the testing of wind turbine noise at all new wind farm developments.

Standards relating to wind turbine noise vary from state to state.

Victoria’s wind farm industry is rapidly growing with 20 operating farms, 11 undergoing construction and 12 more at the developmental stages.
Full Story

 

World Health Organisation guidelines make the future of wind farms increasingly fraught as excessive noise is a health risk

WHO Europe chief Zsuzsanna Jakab said “more than a nuisance, excessive noise is a health risk — contributing to cardiovascular diseases, for example.”
This is exactly what multiple researchers have been saying about wind farms and wind turbines but to date they have been routinely ridiculed or ignored.
This is the first time WHO has made recommendations regarding wind turbines.

The Organisation highlighted that a lack of quality research had made the task more difficult.

Read the full WHO noise guidelines 2018

Full Story WHO guidelines make the future of wind farms increasingly fraught The Australian

 

 

 

 

 

Adelaide:Flinders University’s five-year study looks into wind farms’ effects on health

A study on wind farm noise, being conducted at Flinders University in Adelaide, is setting out to find out just how the noise from wind turbines affects people’s health. Full Story 

STUDY IN THE USA

Dr. Nina Pierpont of Malone, N.Y., testified before the New York State Legislature Energy Committee on March 7. A 68-KB pdf of her testimony is available at aweo.org. Here is an excerpt from Dr Pierpoint.

Three doctors that I know of are studying the Wind Turbine Syndrome: myself, one in England, and one in Australia. We note the same sets of symptoms. The symptoms start when local turbines go into operation and resolve when the turbines are off or when the person is out of the area. The symptoms include:

1. Sleep problems: noise or physical sensations of pulsation or pressure make it hard to go to sleep and cause frequent awakening.

2. Headaches which are increased in frequency or severity.

3. Dizziness, unsteadiness, and nausea.

4. Exhaustion, anxiety, anger, irritability, and depression.

5. Problems with concentration and learning.

6. Tinnitus (ringing in the ears).

Not everyone near turbines has these symptoms. This does not mean people are making them up; it means there are differences among people in susceptibility. These differences are known as risk factors. Defining risk factors and the proportion of people who get symptoms is the role of epidemiologic studies. These studies are under way. Chronic sleep disturbance is the most common symptom. Exhaustion, mood problems, and problems with concentration and learning are natural outcomes of poor sleep.

Sensitivity to low frequency vibration is a risk factor. Contrary to assertions of the wind industry, some people feel disturbing amounts of vibration or pulsation from wind turbines, and can count in their bodies, especially their chests, the beats of the blades passing the towers, even when they can’t hear or see them. Sensitivity to low frequency vibration in the body or ears is highly variable in people, and hence poorly understood and the subject of much debate.

 

Should we not be calling on all STATE GOVERNMENTS  to HALT new contacts until the health implications are reviewed, the installation and operational requirements  for
1. the health studies have been carried out and
2. The different Government departments have worked out who is responsible for exposing all these rural communities to this health risk.
3. The installation and operational guidelines for the wind farms be clarified.

 

2. Safe for the Environment?

Birds sliced up in their hundreds daily by the blades, bats whose lungs explode due to the change in air pressure, fire hazards, toxic waste lakes, abandoned turbines left to rust because maintenance costs are prohibitive, all of this  leaving landscapes scarred for life.

5 Wind Turbines which Failed (Enviromental friendly?) Engineering World
Published on 17 Nov 2016

Wind-Farms cause horrific environmental destruction. Tens of millions of birds and bats are killed every year by these wildlife mincers.

Australia’s Infigen wind turbines sets the NSW tableland on fire.

Investors in Infigen include Keshik Capital, the Singapore-based hedge fund of Mr Turnbull’s son Alex Turnbull alongside major investor The Children’s Investment Fund Management, which owns about 32 per cent of the company.
As time goes on it is proving that Wind Turbines are a disaster for the Environment and Australia wants to keep pushing ahead?

On 17 January 2017, wind farm operator Infigen sparked a blaze that ripped across the southern Tablelands of NSW and destroyed 3,400 hectares (8,400 acres), hundreds of sheep and cattle, sheds and at least one home. STT first reported on it on 25 January: Wind Power Setting the World on Fire: Infigen Sparks Devastating NSW Bushfire

The losses suffered by neighbours are in the tens of $millions. A class-action was launched in May 2017 in which those neighbours are chasing Australia’s most notorious wind power outfit for more than $20 million in loss and damage: Neighbours Sue Wind Power Operator – Infigen – for $20m Damages Caused by Devastating Wind Farm Fire

 

 

Country Fire Authority have their say

The inherent fire danger that Wind Turbines pose has prompted the Country Fire Authority to produce the following document.

Emergency Management Guidelines for Wind Energy Facilities

With Australia bracing itself each year for fires it is incomprehensible that approval has been given for these wind turbines as they are another ignition source that adds to the anxiety experienced in rural Australia on “bad days”, like 17 January 2017. In Australia, wind turbines have so far been responsible for at least four serious bush fires:

• Ten Mile Lagoon in Western Australia in the mid-1990s;
• Lake Bonney, Millicent (SA) in January 2006;
• Cathedral Rocks Wind Farm, Port Lincoln (SA) in February 2009; and
• Starfish Hill (SA) in November 2010 (see this link for more detail).

For more on wind turbine initiated bushfires in Australia, see here and here.

 

 

 

Wind Turbines: Lucky to last 10 Years

“Put bluntly, wind turbines onshore and offshore still cost too much and wear out far too quickly to offer the developing world a realistic alternative to coal.”

Dr Gordon Hughes is a Professor of Economics at the University of Edinburgh and a while back produced this cracking study which destroyed yet another wind industry myth about the longevity of their giant fans: windfarm peformance UK hughes.19.12.12.

Instead of the much touted 25 years, the output from modern turbines starts to drop significantly after about 8 – and they’re well and truly ready for the scrapheap by the time they hit their teens. Here’s a story on Dr Hughe’s findings

14,000 Abondoned wind turbines litter the USA

California has something like 14,000 giant fans that have been abandoned – erected in the late 1980s they lasted less than 20 years – most were clapped-out by 1998 – before the enormous cost of maintaining them saw them left to rust:

The towering symbols of a fading religion, over 14,000 wind turbines, abandoned, rusting, slowly decaying. When it is time to clean up after a failed idea, no green environmentalists are to be found. Full report

 

 

Toxic Waste-the shocking environmental damage they don’t want you to see

A visit to the artificial lake in Baotou in Inner Mongolia – the dumping ground for radioactive, toxic waste from the city’s rare earth mineral refineries, will have you questioning the environmental value of wind turbines. The byproduct of creating materials used in the permanent magnets for  the wind turbine towers.

 

Baotou toxic lake, China

 

They are being put in places that are environmentally NOT Practical

HUMAN STUPIDITY KNOWS NO LIMITS

The entire rational for wind turbines is to stop global warming by reducing the amount of Co2 being returned to the atmosphere from the burning of fossil fuels.

Full Article

 

Blatant Discrimination in Ontario

Syncrude fined $2.75M for 31 bird deaths (but windmills get a pass)

3. Provide energy at a reasonable cost

Perpetually Pathetic Pair: Wind & Solar Require Subsidies From Now Until Kingdom Come

Warm fuzzy emotion is no substitute for the laws of physics and economics.

Wind and solar have had the best part of 20 years to demonstrate their purported ‘virtues’ as meaningful power generation sources. They’ve demonstrated that they are meaningful subsidy generation sources, and community wreckers, but not much else.

In additon to all this But here are other factors which could add to the woes of wind turbines being able to deliver anything near what has been promised

Curtailment warning

In May 2018 the Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO) warned that output from existing and planned wind and solar projects in north-western Victoria would have a high risk of their output being curtailed because of the limited capacity of the power transmission lines in the region. For more information read the RenewEconomy articles

 

 

 

WIND TURBINE SCORE CARD

 

Safe to people’s health 

Safe for the environment 

Provide affordable stand alone energy 

Provide reliable energy 

Have a small carbon footprint 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Acknowledgement of Nation
We acknowledge the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples who have lived here since the Dreamtime.

We acknowledge the explorers and pioneers and their descendants who planted the British flag and Christian values on this continent, creating the Australian nation.

We acknowledge the Federal Commonwealth of Australia, created by the nation, under the Crown, to guard the liberty of ALL our citizens.

And we acknowledge those ‘New Australians’, who came here for a better future, and made this nation strong and prosperous.