UPDATE: Josh adds a cartoon and writes:
An extraordinary quote from a Scottish Wind Farm Landowner.
But with recent news that wind farms have been paid a secret £13 million compensation to shut down over the last few months it is no wonder all those in the industry are hearing the clink of cash above the roar of the turbines.
If you are wondering what a wind turbine sounds like and what a blight it can be watch this short video.
If, like me, you love birds then you might find this video a bit too sad.But this will cheer you up a bit … and this one.
=============================
FROM EPAW:
Tricks are used to allow wind farms too close to habitations
In an email replying to the European Platform against Windfarms (EPAW), world-leading specialist in low-frequency sound Professor Henrik Moller of Aalborg University denounces the improper acoustic measurements carried out by Danish authorities. As a result, he says, the new regulations for wind farm noise are not in line with industrial noise standards.
According to EPAW, this effectively constitutes discrimination against wind farm neighbors, which now have less protection than other citizens – in Denmark, but also in those countries that may take their cues from the small kingdom.
Henrik Moller and his team of acousticians have been consulted by DEPA, the Danish Environmental Protection Agency. But their recommendations have been ignored: “We had many objections to the proposal, but none of these were accommodated in the final version” (1). Answering a question from EPAW, the Professor explains how the new regulations will not effectively enforce the 20 dB(A) limit of low-frequency noise levels regarding wind farms, but that this limit is indeed being applied to other industries (2). Notes Mark Duchamp, of EPAW: “In reality, this is a case of double standards.”
In his email to EPAW dated Feb. 5, 2012, Professor Moller wrote: “All these errors sum up to probably not far from 10 dB, which means that the limit is suddenly not 20 but rather 30 dB(A). But the rules are claimed to give the same protection as for industrial sources, which is simply not true.” His letter is reproduced below (2).
“At low frequencies,” continues the Professor, “the perceived intensity, the loudness, increases more steeply above threshold than at higher frequencies. This means that when the level is a few decibels above the 20 dB limit, the consequences are more severe, than if a limit for higher frequencies is exceeded by the same amount. Few people would probably accept 25 dB(A) in their home at night and hardly anyone would accept 30 dB(A).”
Adds Duchamp: “It would appear that the Danish authorities have been cooking the figures to accommodate the wind industry. Years ago, governments were protecting tobacco companies; today, they absolve wind farms of all sins and help them commit more.”
The North-American Platform against Windpower (NA-PAW) joins EPAW in denouncing these manipulations which threaten wind farm neighbors within and beyond Denmark’s frontiers. EPAW and NA-PAW in turn are joined by the Waubra Foundation, Australia’s best known organization investigating the serious health issues affecting wind farm neighbors.
References:
(1) – Quote from the Aalborg University web page on the new wind turbine noise regulations:
http://www.es.aau.dk/sections/acoustics/press/new-danish-regulations-for-wind-turbine-noise/
(2) – Email of February 5, 2012 from Professor Henrik Moller to EPAW:
Dear Mark Duchamp
The Danish 20 dB(A) limit for low-frequency noise cannot be compared to normal noise limits because
- it is an indoor limit and not an outdoor limit like usual limits for wind turbine noise
- the limit applies to the limited frequency range of 10-160 Hz – only frequencies in that range are included – the level of the full frequency range may be higher
Without an acoustical background, it may be difficult to understand how much 20 dB(A) 10-160 Hz noise is, but the limit is the same as for industrial noise in Denmark, and it is in the same order of magnitude as the limits in most other countries that have low-frequency limits (the limit may be defined in completely different ways). Most people will easily hear a noise at that level, and some will find it annoying, in particular if it goes on round the clock.
At low frequencies, the perceived intensity, the loudness, increases more steeply above threshold than at higher frequencies. This means that when the level is a few decibels above the 20 dB limit, the consequences are more severe, than if a limit for higher frequencies is exceeded by the same amount. Few people would probably accept 25 dB(A) in their home at night and hardly anyone would accept 30 dB(A). Therefore, measurements must be accurate.
In the new Danish statutory order for wind turbines, the noise is not measured but calculated. This need not be a problem, if the calculations are correct. But they are not.
The main problem is the sound insulation used to obtain indoor levels. The statutory order gives values to be used in the calculation, and these values are based on measurements in 26 Danish houses. Unfortunately, wrong measurements.
Sound at low frequencies varies a lot in a room, and according to the Danish rules for industrial noise, the level should – briefly explained – be measured, where the annoyed person finds it loudest. The sound insulation must be measured the same way in order to be applicable for calculations of indoor levels from the outdoor level. But it was not. The indoor measurement positions were simply chosen randomly and not selected for the high level. Thus the obtained values of sound insulation are too high – by several decibels.
Furthermore, statistical sound insulation values were chosen (from the wrong data) so that 33% of the houses have poorer sound insulation, meaning that the limit may be exceeded in 33% of the cases.
And finally, the calculated values may exceed the limit by a 2 dB uncertainty value. Measured levels from industrial sources are not allowed to exceed the limit.
All these errors sum up to probably not far from 10 dB, which means that the limit is suddenly not 20 but rather 30 dB(A). But the rules are claimed to give the same protection as for industrial sources, which is simply not true.
I hope this helps your understanding.
Sincerely,
Henrik Møller
—
Henrik Møller
Professor
Section of Acoustics, Department of Electronic Systems
Aalborg University
Fredrik Bajers Vej 7 B5
DK-9220 Aalborg Ø, Denmark
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I like this video better: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cZkAP-CQlhA&feature=related
I agree with the author on the issue of the pulsing noise being the source of the problem. Jet skiis are extremely annoying on the water because they whine in time with the waves. Boats with a similar noise level are not nearly as annoying, because the noise is constant and easily ignored.
JohnWho says:
February 10, 2012 at 12:50 pm
I don’t have the links to them, but I’m sure we see this in the ClimateGate emails.
I’m skeptical of your claim 🙂
It’s obvious that “Joules” is playing the man. The wrong one, even.
Ignore the obvious time-waster.
There’s always a reason that we should be concerned about 0.005% of the total mortality rate among birds. Especially when—especially for raptors— the primary mortality rate comes from loss of habitat, not the “bird choppers”.
And there’s always a reason that study after study that confirms that buildings are the leading cause of direct bird mortality, occurring at about 10,000 times the rate of “bird mortality”, should all be dismissed as “biased” in favor of well-repeated memes about “bird choppers”.
Believe the data that confirms our beliefs. That’s the way to do it.
Carrick,
Most raptors are not killed by buildings. Smaller birds like sparrows tend to fly into windows because it looks to them like an opening. Raptors fly high looking for prey or carrion.
And your argument also fails IMHO because you’re saying it’s OK to add another bird killer to the environment.
fred bergle:
Yes I agree here too. Constant level sound is much easier to tune out, and when you are trying to address annoyance level using A-weighing of low-frequency sound is an especially bad way to go about assessing it. Another example is traffic noise… constant roar is easier to tune out and less disruptive than living by a major interchange where you hear occasional truck “jake braking” noises.
In any case, there is another more serious problem for wind farms, which is the blades shed turbulence, which produces infrasound that interacts with structures, causing them to shake at their characteristic frequencies. This is very non-stationary noise, typically having a power spectrum S(f) between f^-5/3 to f^-7/3 [S(f) = constant is stationary noise], and even a 25 dB A level could be extremely aggravating.
There’s also the issue of acoustic structural intensification—yes that’s a real term, it deals with how the building “breaths” at its characteristic frequencies in response to the infrasound, so that you can have much higher levels interior to the building at those frequencies than exterior to it.
The problem here is that you don’t sensate infrasound, but it can still (potentially) cause nausea and even equilibrium issues. I would consider complaints of this sort at least plausible and needing to be properly characterized. No funding for it, unfortunately, that only goes for subsidizing the industry I suppose.
Smokey: As plainly as I can say it: wind farms do not add an ecologically significant increase in the mortality rate of birds, not even raptors, nor even bats.
If you want to address loss of raptor population, look at habitat loss and then illegal hunting in about that order. If you want to look at a success story in that department, look at the restoration of the bald eagle population in the United States. Removing wind farms played no role in that.
(Or another example, the wets lands projects in the Southern US and migratory birds.)
Carrick,
You avoided my point completely. You’re still saying that it’s OK to add another bird killer to the environment.
Smokey, actually your the one who completely missed the point here: “Another bird killer to the environment” is only relevant… if it’s relevant. I’m sure we can come up with all sorts of things that have 0.005% effect on bird population… and plenty that have a larger effect, such as overuse of pesticides, needless destruction of bird habitat, release of unwanted cats, etc etc etc.
So yes, in the greater scheme of things, it’s simply not a relevant source of bird mortality. There always is a decision that gets made between ecological consequences and economic “necessity”, whether it’s the wind farm, or the housing development that springs up beside it.
Carrick says:
February 10, 2012 at 10:54 am
Josh: Mind you I had no idea wind turbines killed quite so many birds – that’s appalling.
Uh yeah. 0.01% of all human caused bird deaths. Appalling is the word I’d use… for the argument that this is even microscopically significant.
Yep, that’s a >really gigantic number compared e.g. to glass windows in buildings.
——————————————————
Gross figures about bird deaths are meaningless. As I have said on wuwt before, it matters not a jot if 10 million pigeons a year fly into office blocks. But if 100 raptors (which are at no risk from office blocks) a year are shredded by a wind ‘farm’ it can have significant effects on their numbers. Unlike pigeons, they are small populations in particular regions, with slow reproductive rates.
As for the quasi arguments about property rights, they might make sense if windmills actually paid their way. Government subsidies and planning exemptions that facilitate windmills are the antithesis of property rights.
And, many thanks to posters above who have explained the scientific basis for the ‘doof doof’ factor.
Carrick, the problem is not the killing of birds, it’s that windmills are useless AND kill birds AND bug people. So why wastefully kill birds and torture people?
Buildings 550 million
Power lines 130 milllion
Cats 100 million
Automobiles 80 milllions
Pesticides 67 million
Communication towers 4.5 mlilion
Wind turbines 28.5 thousand
Simpleton here, no need to say it, but these figures do not add up. Not in their present form. It seems to my simple mind that the comparisons are skewed. The proper proportions would be evidenced if we knew how many buildings are responsible for 550 million bird deaths. The same way that knowing how many wind towers were responsible for those 28.5 thousand birds. Since there are millions of buildings on earth, divide that by how many birds killed, would give us a simple Average of Birds Killed Per Building vs. Average of Birds killed per Wind Tower. I would bet that the numbers would then tell a different story.
But again, my simple mind obviously errs in thinking that this kind oif accuracy would be acceptable.
Yeah, it’s such a non-issue that the American Bird Conservatory has a whole page devoted to bird deaths from windmills, and the numbers THEY’RE quoting at 500 mil for cats eating, and 440,000 for Windmills. They also note the especially outsized effect windfarms can have on specific birds, and ask for people to sign a petition forcing wind farms to basically be made more bird friendly… BECAUSE IT IS A PROBLEM. BTW, that’s nearly half the claimed estimate they made for birds dying due to glass strikes (1 million a year).
There’s no weighting for scarcity or commonality in your numbers (or these numbers) since there’s a hell of a lot more windows than windmills, it’s apparent that a windmill on average kills likely hundreds of times more birds per year than any given house or office building. If the green dream of windmills providing a huge percentage of our power were realized (a pipe dream of it’s own) the numbers would probably be catastrophically higher.
Furthermore, we have the information provided about relative wind power availability for your statistic (2003 – 6000 MW) versus now with 41,000 more (total of 47,000 MW)
At 28.5k with 6k MW Windpower we were killing 4.75 birds a year per MW. At 47,000 MW and killing 440,000 a year, we’re now under 10 birds per MW installed. So as we increase the number of windmills, we’re killing more birds per windmill. In 2008 we had 1084 GW of production capacity in the US, so if 20% of installed capacity was Windmills we’d have just over 216 GW of Wind power (assuming 100% efficiency… IT IS TO LAUGH!) That comes out to 216,000 MW. Each MW kills 10 birds. We’d have a birdy armageddon with 2,160,000 dead birds a year… more than twice what the ABC suggests are dying to windows.
I am thinking it will not be long before the odd Don Quixote starts tilting at a few of these windmills. They are probably an easier quest than the one he embarked on.
A proposd offshore wind farm in the south of England is claimed to produce 700 MW.
As I write, *all* the windmills in the UK are currently producing 422 MW.
Something doesn’t compute….
Admittedly, the 700MW figure is an average. But very often the total UK wind output falls to very low levels. If the Government continues its fantasy policy, and wind becomes a major part of our energy mix we’re going to have big, big problems.
All these ridiculous subsidy farms will achieve is cripplingly expensive electricity and regular power cuts.
And, to rub salt into the wound, the whole scam is based on science that is clearly wrong and quite possibly fraudulent.
Chris
Incidentally, do these ‘wind farms’ actually have any real animal farm nearby?
I wonder how the vibration and noise would affect the productivity of an animal farm.
What a case study that would make?
Carrick,
You have a talent for answering questions not asked. Here’s another one you can avoid:
The Condor population is only about 100 free flying birds. That’s total. In the world [and all are in the Peoples’ Eco-Green Soviet of Sustainable California]. Giant wind turbines are being planned for their current habitat and range. Those 100 birds [wingspan 9 feet] are part of your .005%.
Question: Which should take priority, condors or windmills?
Probably slightly off tiopic, but anecdotal accounts of settlers on the prairies tell of people (women especially) going mad because of the unceasing wind. Is it possible that the source of the “madness” was due to the low frequencey noise of the wind in the 10 – 160 hz range. Particularly in the near 10hz range the efects are felt more physically rather than auraly. Perhaps something similar is going on here.
Carrick Talmadge says:
February 10, 2012 at 9:03 pm
“So yes, in the greater scheme of things, it’s simply not a relevant source of bird mortality.”
Oil companies will be interested to hear about the double standards applied by wind power proponents.
I was brought up in the country. My homes over the last thirty years have been in some pretty remote locations. I sleep like a baby on prop driven aircraft and on large ferries. The other side of that coin is that it is quite impossible for me to sleep in a room with any item of electrical equipment on standby. How green can you get. Nobody else hears what I am on about, they stand motionless without a whisper and try to hear it, no joy.
35db are they crazy?
it’s like saying townies have to live with it, impose it on everyone.
Junkies can handle a shot of methadone, prescribe it for everyone.
The upside is the industry is not sustainable and will die. It is merely a political expedient to try to quickly fill the energy gap until something more long term comes along. It is a failure of long term strategic planing at a political level which has brought this situation about, hence the political will to throw money at the problem to cover up their failings. If someone gets rich in the process that’s another invite to dinner or a pre-christmas shoot.
Like I said this is a property rights issue and I have to be consistent. If it’s legal for your neighbor to put a windmill or a feedlot on his land then its his call not yours and taking away his legitimate use of his land after the fact is unfair and something I cannot support it lest I become an enabler for the same government to later restrict my right to use my land for any legal purpose I might choose.
It is a very slippery slope once you begin to turn to the government to take away the rights of your neighbors. If his rights can be taken away then so too can yours. That is what is happening here. This is what most of you are advocating.
You people are free to rationalize all you want, of course, but it’s transparently hypocritical to any obective observer that you are employing a double standard. I hate double standards and always will.
Windmills, etc. are very bad feng shui. They ruin the energy of the surrounding land.
Any pseudo-liberal should be quite terrified.
Joules Verne said @ur momisugly February 11, 2012 at 7:26 am
I’m not going to “speak for most of us”, but yes, it’s a property rights issue. Libertarianism is freedom to do anything except infringe the rights of others. Introducing windmills infringes the rights of neighbors to the “quiet” enjoyment of their homes. Being forced to purchase a home miles from where you work and being unable to sell, or let your family home is definitely an infringement of basic rights.
Note that I put quiet in quotes because we have far too many townies who move to the “peace and quiet” of the countryside only to discover that the air is filled with the sound of tractors, cattle, irrigation pumps, shooting of vermin as well as smells such as cattle shit, compost-making etc.Those who don’t like it usually leave after a year, or two, but my God some can make life miserable for everyone else until they do.
Joules Verne said on: February 11, 2012 at 7:26 am
Aside from the fact mentioned by “The Pompous Git” that the windmills infringe on the the neighbours’ enjoyment of their own properties, the windmill wouldn’t even exist if the neighbours’ money hadn’t been stolen to pay for it, by having a portion of their income confiscated and used to pay for the windmill, or maybe through being forced to source a portion of their electricity from this unwanted, unreliable, extremely expensive power source. The first case is outright theft, and the second is indirect theft through precluding people from entering into a free market transaction to buy their electricity from a source of their choosing. Either way, it is theft to pay for a scam based on fraudulent science.
I just don’t think there’s a property rights argument when:
(a) Your windmill infringes on your neighbours’ property rights by forcing noise pollution on them.
(b) Your windmill’s existence depends on the theft of your neighbours’ property.