I know this hasn’t anything to do with GW but, I have feet.
Are they cold?
Mine are
Very cold start to the winter. At least seems that way.
yeah they’re cold.
Its nice in Western Australia so your theories are all shithouse.
even my theory that WA got bombed in the war and the queen couldn’t afford to admit the military failure so everyone who thinks they live in Perth is really living on a compound in dubbo and continually sprayed with the prisoner style drug cocktails so they think there’s a beach?
Is it mushie season?
Is it mushie season?
I wouldn’t know. I’m camped just down wind of dubbo hoping for a pink mist to blow over. I know what you are thinking and yes I have put together a 20ft contraption of red rooster straws so that I can breathe in the mist at the height it is likely to pas over my position. we can’t expect it to come roiling across the fields like 2005 when when they told the “west australians” that Jebediah was going on hiatus.
Company brief on the health stuff (infigenenergy)
“Some people claim that infrasound may affect health even at an inaudible level. It has been suggested that infrasound can be detected by mechanisms other than hearing, such as touch, vibration and effects on the vestibular system. However, the available evidence does not support claims that inaudible sounds can have direct physiological effects. Physiological effects on humans have only been detected at levels that are easily audible.”
Seems to be a discrepancy in the guide lines about what is an acceptable level over distance and what might actually cause problems. Being in the hearing threshold, as measured using the standard weighted methods (freq-db) is used, but there a few papers (http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0378595510003126 for one), which suggest inaudible sounds can still have an annoyance factor and potentially health issues.
I see no consensus in the science personally, but I didnt look at too much. I wouldn’t want to live near one.
I don’t think people are scorning that they are sick, and absolutely anyone who is sick needs attention and diagnosis. It cuts both ways though. For all the people out there that are dismissing that turbines could be the cause, there are also lobbiests the that are making puppets out of them as well.
I find that really, really, really hard to believe. Sound has been around for a while. Vibrations have been around for a while. Tools to measure them have been around a while. There are seismographs (which record in the sub-100Hz range) which have been running for a century, measuring for earthquakes.The real hard scientific work just has not been done. and it is hard, as it involves so many unknowns and crosses over medicine and engineering and probably many other things. The best research into infra-sound was done by the Soviets apparently as they were trying to develop a weapon and the Yanks probably did it as well but it is still a big secret.there's no scientific consensus?If a wind farm is exceeding industrial noise standards, it's a big problem and badly needs to be fixed, but on the plus side it should be easily provable. Industrial and background noise is a well-known problem in a range of industries, and there are established means of redress. A windfarm that exceeds industrial noise limits should be shut down until it can operate legally, just like any other industry.But as for the broader panic and claims about about ‘wind farm syndrome’ where there’s all these poorly documented claims of all manner of bizarre illnesses from deafness to chronic fatigue to cattle miscarriages being caused by wind farms/low frequency infrasound/whatever, well, that’s been pretty thoroughly disproven again and again and again. I don’t have the exact numbers at my fingers, but I do know that
- the great majority of claims of disorders caused by wind farms have no proposed physiological mechanism of action, much less a scientifically tested and proved one
- statistically, reports of windfarm syndrome seem to be a trailing indicator, but they don’t trail the building of windfarms, they trail the campaigning of anti-windfarm activists
- reports of windfarm syndrome are pretty much unknown among non-english speaking people - especially those into whose language anti-windfarm material has not yet been translated.
- Windfarm syndrome is basically unknown in those people who are getting paid to have windfarms on their property.
- sufferers of Windfarm Syndrome have been interviewed and tested, and have claimed to detect disturbing/sickening infrasound/low-frequency vibration from windfarms even when the turbines have been deactivated for maintenence.
- The effects of Windfarm Syndrome have never been associated with any other source of low-frequency sound or air vibration, and nobody has ever been able to satisfactorily explain what is so special about windfarms that they cause it while other sound sources don’t
- In Australia especially, reports of windfarm syndrome track the activities of the Waubra Foundation, a supposedly ‘grass-roots’ anti-windfarm campaign group that actually used the same PO box address as a fossil fuel lobby group until they got caught out a couple of years ago and changed it in a hurry.
There’s been inquiry after investigation after report about this, by all sorts of different people. They consistently find that there is no evidence linking windfarms to any health effects at all, but of course some people see this as the Big Wind Conspiracy At Work Covering Up The Truth. Pfft. From everything I’ve read, a more likely explanation that better fits the evidence, is that people are worrying themselves sick about windfarms, with the assistance of scaremongering rubbish from the fossil fuel lobby and other anti-windfarm activists. People who don’t worry, either because they’ve done their own research prior to allowing turbines on their land, or because they haven’t yet been exposed to (or have ignored) the more hysterical anti-windfarm material out there, don’t get sick. Stress-related illness is a very real thing. Psychosomatic illness is a very real thing. Industrial-noise related hearing problems etc, yeah, they’re very real too. Windfarm-related illness … is probably not.
Yep HM, continue to believe what is written in the media…
The research is inconclusive, even the NHMRC say that more research is needed, and it must be independent as most done is funded by either side with their vested interests.
The facts are that people are becoming sick once turbines are built near them. The way you and others ridicule them, call them liars, allege they are just after money and have a closed mind is contemptible. I don’t know why, and I don’t really care if it is wind turbine or voodoo illness, but it is real, I have seen it.
I have no vested interest other than caring about the wellbeing of those affected, and calling out those like you who just want to write people off.
When I was Mayor, we tried to get our local University to do a research project into actually measuring the sounds and vibrations. One difficulty with this was that there were no instruments available that could actually measure the noise, so they would have to develop and build them.
Instead of this being a public health question, it becomes this defence of renewable energy and anyone like me is labelled a coal-lover or a climate change sceptic. The issue divides communities and not actually always over money, but over rights. The Wind Industry are clever (like the Miners) and use this division to further their case.
I am not actually asking you guys to believe that Windfarm Syndrome exists, because I am unsure, but to have a little compassion for people like the old couple I know in rural Victoria who live 517 metres from a 150 meter wind turbine, have no options to leave and no-one to fight for them. They really don’t like anyone anymore and trust no-one, except their Doctor. They just want their lives back, and the Windfarm Company should just buy their property and let them get on with life.
Low frequency noise travels easier than high freq through apertures. If we’re talking from two things basically in the open that’s not going to make much difference.
Recording sound (at whatever level) and filtering out all the noise, to just get the underlying, constant wind turbine sound is a piece of ■■■■ with today’s computers and software.
Are you sure you’re not getting your wires crossed? Are you sure you’re not being told “we can’t measure any appreciable sound/vibration from the generators”, rather than “we don’t have any tools to measure sound/vibration” ??
Infrasound is below 20Hz, and very difficult to measure. Definitely a University type research project, and that is part of the problem. There are microphones available to measure down to less than 0.1 Hz, but this type of work is not your standard sound engineer stuff.
In any case, it is not measuring noise or vibration, it is finding why people get sick.that is the challenge, and I don’t care if it is a physical complaint like their Doctor says or a psychological one. I just want others to recognize that there are sick people out there who deserve compassion and not scorn.
Did some reading, this paper out of Adelaide in 2013 is interesting. Here is an interesting point, considering how modern the paper is:
https://mecheng.adelaide.edu.au/aaa/affiliates/flow-and-noise/docs/Doolan_WindEnergyPaper_Final.pdf
It is well-accepted that the dB(A) scale is not a reliable indicator of low-frequency noise
annoyance. Especially important is the link between personal and social moderating factors
and annoyance. It’s conceivable that some complaints concerning wind farm noise are due to
low-frequency noise and are compounded by the particular personal and social situations
faced by rural communities surrounding wind farms. It is also conceivable that noise levels
may comply with existing environmental noise guidelines based on the dB(A) scale yet still
cause annoyance due to the uniqueness of low-frequency noise problems. ,however, there is
very little information (level, spectral balance, temporal qualities, etc) regarding lowfrequency
noise in people’s homes affected by wind turbines. Yet this information is essential
to diagnose if there really is a problem and if there is, develop ways of fixing it.
Done all that testing according to the 1993 NZ Standards that apply. Yep that’s right, we don’t even have our own Standards and we don’t use the latest ones from NZ in any case.
And the EPA refuse to be involved, WorkSafe say it is not a work related issue, so they don’t get involved. The Wind Industry employ all the acoustic experts and any that work for victims are black balled by the industry.
And Ben, Australia has higher incidence of issues because we have the biggest turbines. I visited many in Germany built right over a house and they look huge, but are about 60 to 80 meters high, vs the ones in my region at 150 meters. And the houses in Germany were all made of stone with double glazed windows. I hear though that the movement against them in Europe us now growing.
Measuring noise is very difficult, as most sounds are higher frequency like a car, or fridge or air compressor. The lower frequency travels differently or so all the acoustic engineers say.
And FS, you can of course disagree with me, but I do know more about this than most, and the ironic part is we have a wind turbine on the roof at my office, and I love it. So I an not anti wind energy generation, just hate these large multinational corporations who use our own money to screw us over. And I feel sorry for their puppets like rhe greens and friends off the earth, who get funded by this industry.
In my view, all power generation should be in public hands
Wind turbines, Tone is offering half a mill to anyone who can prove him right.
Not sure if this is suitable in this thread or not…
U.S. Manufacturing costs are almost as low as China’s, and that’s a very big deal
http://fortune.com/2015/06/26/fracking-manufacturing-costs/
Why has fracking not produced the same effects here? It’s always puzzled me why we live so close to fracking areas but there’s been no change to our energy prices. Wouldn’t it make sense to utilise these resources locally to encourage more growth through lower energy prices … instead of just selling it?
Don’t get me started on fracking, but to answer your question, you answered it, the majority of fracking done here is by overseas country, we could have more local companies do more but the areas most likely also happen to be prime farm land
Plus when was the last time Australian energy providers past on any significant savings to the customer
Global warming: World sweats over July breaking warmest month record, 2015 hottest year so far
Updated about an hour ago
PHOTO: NOAA said many countries and the world’s oceans experienced heatwaves in July. (ABC News)
MAP: Australia
Australians may be surprised to hear July was the warmest month ever on record worldwide and 2015 has been so far the hottest year.
This lady part
Abbott government extends renewable energy investment ban to solar power Clean Energy Finance Corporation banned from investing in small-scale solar projects in move industry claims is ‘revenge politics’ that will strangle the sectorOne-third of the current funding of the Clean Energy Finance Corporation goes to solar projects, the majority of which are small-scale projects. The Coalition’s directive bans investing in rooftop panels that generate up to 100 kilowatts of power. Photograph: Tim
A directive banning the Clean Energy Finance Corporation (CEFC) from investing in existing wind technology will also apply to small-scale solar projects, a move that will effectively throttle the industry, the Australian Solar Council said.The federal government on Sunday confirmed that the $10bn CEFC will no longer invest in wind power, instead focussing on “emerging technologies”.
“It is our policy to abolish the Clean Energy Finance Corporation because we think that if the projects stack up economically, there’s no reason why they can’t be supported in the usual way,” Abbott told reporters in Darwin. “But while the CEFC exists, what we believe it should be doing is investing in new and emerging technologies – certainly not existing windfarms.
“This is a government which supports renewables, but obviously we want to support renewables at the same time as reducing the upward pressure on power prices,” the prime minister said. “We want to keep power prices as low as possible, consistent with a strong renewables sector.”
But it has emerged the government’s investment directive also applies to small-scale solar technology like rooftop panels that generate up to 100 kilowatts of power.
One-third of the current funding of the CEFC goes to solar projects, the majority of which are small-scale projects.
Scrapping funding for these projects would impact low-income households and renters and public housing users who cannot afford or do not otherwise have access to their own panels, head of the Australian Solar Council, John Grimes, told Guardian Australia.
“To say this is about lowering the costs of power is cynical in the extreme,” Grimes said. “What they’re doing with this is the precise opposite.”
He argued the move was payback for the solar industry’s successful campaign to keep small-scale solar power in the renewable energy target (RET).
“This certainly smells like revenge politics,” Grimes said, adding it was the government’s “backdoor” way of strangling solar power.
The environment minister, Greg Hunt, threw his support behind the industry as recently as Sunday morning.
“I’ve been repeatedly critical of the CEFC investing taxpayer funds in projects such as existing windfarms, rather than focusing on solar and emerging technologies,” he tweeted. “Our policy is to abolish the CEFC but in the meantime it should focus on solar and emerging technologies as was originally intended.”
The Coalition had secured the Senate crossbench’s support for the inclusion of wood waste in the RET in exchange for the provision of a new windfarm commissioner who would look into claims of the negative health impacts of turbines.
While the move to crack down on wind power has been welcomed by some, Grimes warned that the crossbench is still very much “committed to a solar future” and will feel as though their agreement with the government has “been absolutely violated”.
The Senate has twice voted down government legislation to scrap the CEFC, making it a trigger for a future double dissolution.
“The government is effectively blood-letting the CEFC since its attempts to abolish it have been fruitless,” the shadow environment minister, Mark Butler, said. “Tony Abbott is broadening his assault on renewable energy technologies, putting thousands of Australian jobs and billions of dollars in investment at even further risk.
“This is the most blatant example of Tony Abbott’s lack of vision for Australia’s future. The whole world is moving towards clean energy and Tony Abbott is scrambling to take Australia in the opposite direction,” Butler said.
The acting Greens leader, Scott Ludlam, told Guardian Australia the move is akin to a “protection racket” to try and ensure the viability of the coal and gas sectors.
He said the move was “designed to knock off” the very successful renewables industry by ensuring that the CEFC is not financially viable.
“By knocking off wind and solar, the only thing that you leave there is the high-risk stuff,” he said. “They’re trying to make it as difficult as possible for the CEFC.”