The range of Wind Turbine Syndrome - update

I am a careless young man. In my last post, I left out four wind farms in Victoria: Codrington, Toora, Wonthaggi and Hepburn. I have now included them, in the below screenshot:

Click to enlarge. (Clear lines are rendering error - ignore them)

Of particular note is the revelation that all of Melbourne is now encompassed by the documented effective range of Wind Turbine Syndrome, and is subject to these effects from two separate wind farms:

Considering this, let's take a closer look at the different cities covered by this range, and their respective populations:

Yes, the number of Australians subject to Wind Turbine Syndrome, according to Wind Watch, is 6,320,300. Six million citizens. At the time of writing, the population of Australia is 22,795,392, which means about 28% of Australia's population should be subject to the effects of Wind Turbine Syndrome. 

Using self-reported anecdotes as primary evidence isn't great - you end up with fairly absurd figures, as above. This serves as a brilliant example of how extremely improbable claims are happily put forward as supporting evidence by anti-wind groups.

These are then sold as firm evidence of a catastrophic and concerning health issue. 

As the author of the claim points out, 

"Truly these figures appear subjective, outrageous, and for most, impossible to believe. However, I am reporting my findings that have taken hours and days to determine. I’m not just plucking figures out of the air."

Below is the interactive map - first gadget is for all browsers, and the second will work if you have Google Earth installed on your computer. 

All Browsers (2D map)

Google Earth Plugin (3D map)

Wind Turbine Syndrome - The End Times Are Nigh

Edit 29/10/2012 12:00 - I left out a few wind farms. See here for the updated map

Some may slowly shake their heads at the sheer tonnage of callous irony I pour into my rhetoric. Lay down your weaponry, my friends. I consider all things carefully, devoid of bias. I am a titan of objectivity. 

Let us direct our gaze towards a wonderful article, published by George Papadopoulos, on 'Wind-Watch'. Wind-Watch claims to be  'presenting the facts about industrial wind power'. George writes the following facts, about industrial wind power:

"Where does the problem stop? This is a difficult question to answer. On two occasions when the ILFN [Infrasound-Low Frequency Noise] nuisance was at its worst, I traveled out west. On one occasion I discovered that it appeared to have dissipated at Wee Jasper, 70km away from the closest turbines. 

On another occasion, and by far the worst of all days, the problem had dissipated when arriving at Young about 100km from the closest turbines."

To avoid the effects of infrasound and low-frequency noise emitted by wind turbines, you must travel 100 kilometres away from the wind turbines. If you were to travel 100 kilometres upwards instead of sideways, that officially puts you in space. 

37 kilometres? Not even close, Felix. 

Let us examine this 100 kilometre radius more closely. Taking 25 Australian wind farms, along with their latitude and longitude coordinates, from this website, we can go to this online mapping tool, and get a neat map of the stated effects of Wind Turbine Syndrome across Australia:

Sit down, take a deep breath, and click to enlarge. 

Each wind turbine affects an area of 31,415.93 kilometres squared (slightly larger than Belgium, but just short of Taiwan). There's overlap, of course, but the sum area from all wind farms is 785,398.16 kilometres squared (larger than Spain, but just shy of Turkey). 

The population density of Australia is about 2.9 people per square kilometre. Rural areas have about one third of this - since the areas covered by the wind farms are both rural and urban, let's call it half - 1.4 people per sq km. Let's only take 40% of our covered area as well - to account for overlap. 

According to George's claims, that gives us a total estimated population subjected to Wind Turbine Syndrome to about [1.4] x [314,159], which is ~440,000 people. In reality, it's probably significantly larger, consider it incorporates the following areas: 

- Adelaide
- Half of Port Lincoln
- The entire state of the Australian Capital Territory, including Canberra and all surrounding suburbs (highest population density in Australia)
- Goulbourn
- Mount Gambier
- Macarthur
- Warnambool
- Ballarat
- Leonards Hill 

The Australian parliament is 22.5 kilometres away from the nearest wind farm. One might wonder why this hasn't sparked a national emergency, considering the very governance of the entire nation is at risk. 

Below are some close-ups of the wind turbine syndrome hotspots, and below that is an interactive map of the stated effects of Wind Turbine Syndrome. Bon appetit, et rester à l'intérieur, mes amis.

Adelaide, population: 1,158,259

Australian Capital Territory, population 333,667

Ballarat + Mount Gambier, combined population 118,905

Wind Turbine Syndrome website registered by......mining resources fund?

So, I've maintained a fairly sarcastic tone since the inception of this blog earlier this year, but I feel perhaps it's time to cast away the shackles of ridiculously over-bearing irony. Let's explore one of the key lobby groups that object to wind farm developments in Eastern Australia. 

The Waubra Foundation insists that it is an independent research organisation, bravely cutting through the muck to deliver unfiltered and unbiased medical advice to communities that live around wind farms. It serves as a masthead for the proponents of "Wind Turbine Syndrome" across Australia, and is a primary resource for those objecting to wind developments on health grounds. 

More importantly, its members angrily object to claims that it has any links to vested interests in the coal and mining industries. 

As has already been established, The Waubra Foundation shares a post office box with the Lowell Resources Fund, an investment fund with interests in "Emerging mining and energy companies". Browse to their website, and you get to experience a beautiful montage of open-cut mines, oil-rigs, and occasionally, a picture of some pencils. 

The Lowell Resources Website. Seems independent. 

Sarah Laurie, the 'medical director' of the Waubra Foundation, offered an explanation for that odd post office box coincidence. 

"The Waubra Foundation is not a front for the Landscape Guardians … Peter Mitchell  … has kindly made his mailbox available for the use of the foundation, as we have extremely limited financial resources.”

Unfortunately, their need to share resources with mining investment funds goes further than you might think. Entering the URL of the Waubra Foundation into domain name registry service 'AusRegistry' returns a curious result:

Notice anything familiar? The email address 'susanr@lowell.net.au', when searched for on Google, only shows up on a submission to the parliament written by the Western Plains Landscape Guardians. The URL 'Lowell.net.au' doesn't seem to work, but tracing the domain back to its owner leads to another unsurprising result:

"LOWELL CAPITAL LIMITED" leads to this website - the 'responsible entity' for the Lowell Resources Fund. In this case, the link to a registered mining resources fund is blatant and easily demonstrable. 

Meanwhile, the Waubra Foundation continues to accept tax-deductible donations, as it is classified as a charity. Next time you hear the nervous (yet stern) insistence that the Waubra Foundation is an independent research body, it might be worth bringing up the email address under which the website is registered. 

Diseases that speak English

Can a disease speak a language? Let's look at Wind Turbine Syndrome, to find out. Some, perched in their ivory towers, have suggested that Wind Turbine Syndrome might not be real, because it only seems to manifest in English speaking countries, and that if it were real, you'd see it manifest in all countries that house wind turbines. 

Max Rheese, head of the Australian Environment Foundation and professed Man of Climate Science, delivers to us a splendid metric for measuring the effects of Wind Turbine Syndrome in different countries. He refutes the claim that 'those overseas don't get sick' by stating that it is 'An oft repeated claim that is belied by over 500 community groups world-wide opposed to inappropriately sited wind farms'.

Okay, the claim is more that 'those in countries that do not have English as their official language do not consider Wind Turbine Syndrome to be scientifically plausible, or publicly demand symptoms of the syndrome are prevalent in society'. Let's not get bogged down in the details. 

Considering Rheese's deep love for empiricism and rationality, I took those 500 community groups (well, 484, but let's not get too empirical), assigned their official spoken language into the categories 'English' and 'Non-English', and then listed each country by the number of anti-wind groups. The results, as you can see below, are astounding. 

Klik op de foto 

Wind Turbine Syndrome speaks English. 91% of all the anti-wind groups listed are in English speaking countries. Listed by country and number of opposition groups, the top seven countries all have English as their language. Some latte-sipping snobs might think that this means Wind Turbine Syndrome is an affliction that is communicated through pseudo-scientific scare-mongering, and that is has no basis as a physiological affliction. 

Unfortunately, that is not how science works. Not that stupid 'science' that climate scientists and doctors seem to practice. I mean science. Perhaps infrasound has a fondness for West Germanic twangs. Perhaps it is a fan of English literature. The causal mechanisms are not yet known. But evidence that directly contradicts a hypothesis should not be considered a setback. 

If we waited for scientific evidence before we made a claim, where would be? Living in caves, being socialists, drinking lattes and riding bicycles, that's where we'd be. 

Until we know more, refrain from speaking English near wind farms. According to our data, they seem to ignore you the most if you speak Dutch  - and so, until we meet again, Houden goed, en blijf uit de buurt van nootachtige klimaatscepticus groepen.

Edit - I've been advised that Quebec is not an English - speaking jurisdiction. I'd like to point out that there is an individual in Quebec who speaks English, and thus, we can conclude that English is their primary language.