Attitude and Auralisation - The Virtualisation of Wind Farm Sound

If you’re looking for immediate confusion, the science of sound is a fantastic place to start. Some part of my brain seems to immediately shut down when confronted with the tricky task of trying to quantify the subjective experience of sound. It’s in this foggy field that most wind developers find themselves standing, when attempting to inform communities about the acoustic impact of wind turbines.

I was at Clean Energy Week last week, and I had a chance to experience a neat new tool developed by Arup, in conjunction with Hydro Tasmania, that seems to circumvent the need to communicate the complex (logarithms, what even are they) science of acoustic engineering.

On Thursday morning, I sat amongst six Genelec 8030A speakers, and one (beautiful) Genelec 7060B subwoofer, in front of a screen that displayed recorded video of a wind turbine (Genelec manufacture professional studio-grade speaker systems). The engineers had arrived much earlier the day before, and calibrated the device to account for the room. The speakers also cover most of the low-frequency range of wind farm sound as well – down to 40 hertz.

The simulation began at two kilometres away, in high-wind conditions. The wind turbine was quite literally inaudible to me – listening closely for the characteristic whoosh of the blades, I really couldn't detect anything. The interesting part is the background noise – when you’re listening extremely closely for wind turbine noise, there are times when the background noise can actually seem to mimic that whoosh, and you start questioning your own perception. But when the engineer flicked the background noise off, there was complete, utter silence.

The acousticians used a 'Head-Related Transfer Function' to adapt the experience for use with headphones instead of speakers - not as accurate, but still pretty close.

Moving closer to the wind farm, you can slowly start teasing apart the signal from the noise. The sound of the turbine is just audible at around one kilometre, but it’s very much mixed in against the background noise. Right up against the machine at 100 metres, the sound of the rotor is clearly audible, and you can actually hear some of the cooling gear in the nacelle. The sound at that distance isn't offensive, but it’s certainly perceptible (100 metres also happens to be distance at which Greens MLC Mark Parnell camped out under a wind turbine).

So, did I get any sleep camping under turbines at Waterloo Windfarm? Yes, until tent blew down! It's windy here. @KevCorduroy #saparli
— Mark Parnell MLC (@MarkParnellMLC) May 28, 2013

Because the experience is a mixture of real and simulated sound, the engineers can present a variety of wind conditions and locations – we were inside a bedroom with the window open, with the window closed, and at varying wind speeds. From my time on site at wind farms, I can testify that the representation is astonishingly accurate. The engineer behind the device informs me they hope to have the science behind the tool reviewed by another acoustics firm, some time soon.

It’s an established truth that experiences are more memorable than numbers. When was the last time you decided that a light was bright by measuring its luminosity? You didn’t – you looked at it through your own trusted (and well-tested) machinery of perception. I suspect it’s very much the same with the experience of sound. If we’re told of a decibel output, it’s not really that memorable. But if we can experience an accurate representation of wind farm noise ourselves, it sticks with us.

Visiting a wind farm is great, and you get to experience it first hand, but you’re limited to one wind speed, and one wind direction. This ‘Auralisation’ tool seems to be able to accurately represent a variety of conditions, and I think the engineers at Arup deserve some credit for the rigour they've put into the science behind it.

The Lamentable Tale of the Anachronistic Wind Turbine

Today, Graham Lloyd, Environment Editor at The Australian, published an article [paywalled], warning us of the dangers of low-frequency noise from wind turbines. The turbine referenced is now non-existent. A fluttering, ethereal afterthought - an irrelevant whimsy.

Lloyd instances a report as an example of the threat wind turbines pose to the human race:

"A Proposed Metric for Assessing the Potential of Community Annoyance from Wind Turbine Low Frequency Noise Emissions"

"Our experience with the low-frequency noise emissions from a single, 2-MW MOD-I wind turbine demonstrated that, under the right circumstances, it was possible to cause annoyance within homes in the surrounding community with relatively low levels of LF-range acoustic noise."

Sounds convincing, right? The MOD-I wind turbine was a downwind NASA prototype, built in 1978, and removed in 1981. The paper itself was published in 1987. This is 26 years ago (before the internet was commercially available, and around the time Microsoft Windows was released). From the Wiki page:

"Low-frequency noise from the heavy truss tower blocking the wind to the downwind rotor caused problems to residences located close by"

The wind hits the tower first, and then the blades. This is an old wind turbine. This is not the same as a newer wind turbine.

Modern wind turbines are upwind, rather than downwind, and as such, don't have the same characteristic problem cause by the tower being in front of the rotor.

There are no downwind wind turbines in Australia.

The South Australian EPA recently released a comparative report on low-frequency noise emissions from modern, upwind turbines, unmentioned by Lloyd in his article:

"Overall, this study demonstrates that low frequency noise levels near wind farms are no  greater than levels in urban areas or at comparable rural residences away from wind  farms. Organised shutdowns of the wind farms also found that the contribution of the Bluff  Wind Farm to low frequency noise levels at Location 8 was negligible, while there may  have been a relatively small contribution of low frequency noise levels from the Clements  Gap Wind Farm at frequencies of 100Hz and above"

Lloyd does elaborate that instancing a 26 year old report referring to a prototype, nonexistent wind turbine that was never installed in Australia isn't quite right:

'Clean Energy Council policy director Russell Marsh said the study was not relevant to modern turbines. "This is the equivalent of taking a study about Ataris and applying it to the latest iPads," Mr Marsh said.'

So why report a decades-old piece of research on a prototype wind turbine like it's breaking news? It's a technique Lloyd has used before. Have a look at these sentences from an article published in April 2012:

"Village resident Neil Daws is concerned his chickens have been laying eggs with no yolks. Ironically called wind eggs, the yolkless eggs can be explained without wind turbines.
But together with a spike in sheep deformities, also not necessarily connected to wind, reports of erratic behaviour by farm dogs and an exodus of residents complaining of ill health, Waterloo is a case study of the emotional conflict being wrought by the rollout of industrial wind power."

By simply presenting two completely irrelevant facts in close proximity, Lloyd lets the reader assume the two are linked. You can literally do this with anything you want. You're limited only by your imagination:

"Physicians found in 1702 that drilling a hole into someone's skull to remove evil spirits was largely unsuccessful. This revelation shows that modern neurosurgery is extremely dangerous" 

So where did Lloyd get this 26-year-old scoop?

"Yeah, the government and industry knew all about this shit in the 1980s.  It’s now 2013, and the  government and industry are still pretending they don’t know about this shit. Are you angry, yet?"

Oh yes, it's our old, profane, hyperbolic friends, windturbinesyndrome.com, attempting to stimulate rage by distributing outdated research on prototype machines. Lloyd claims:

"The research was sent by an American acoustics expert to Australian wind health campaigners and has now been published internationally."

Well, no, it was already published internationally. See here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here....you get the idea. It's an old piece of research, that's been mindlessly re-hashed by anti-wind groups and picked up by Lloyd with motivated glee.

In the absence of evidence of any harm from wind turbines, awkwardly and unashamadely shoe-horning irrelevant, outdated research into contemporary media is, presumably, the last resort for both bile-flecked clipart-ridden blogs like WTS.com and one of Australia's biggest news outlets.

'The Skeptic' Article Extract + Full References

So, the lovely people down at The Skeptic Magazine were nice enough to publish a hefty piece I did on Wind Turbine Syndrome, causal gaps and the demarcation of science. I've posted an extract below, but you can read the whole thing by buying the June edition of The Skeptic. 

Below the extract is a list of references I used for the article, for your joyous perusal. 

Hugs, 
Ketan 

--------------------------------------------------------------------------

Five years ago, Calvin Luther Martin hated the wind industry. ‘Hate’ in the palpable sense – a frothing, unchecked revulsion that cannot be feigned. He remarked, in 2009:

“The wind sharks fabricate their own [evidence], using whorish little companies to perform noise measurements and do environmental impact studies…Companies often consisting of four guys with sweaty balls and BS degrees from nondescript bullshit state colleges.”

Martin stated that he had been ‘fighting the wind bastards well over 4 years’ – which would place the commencement of his activism in late 2005. Incidentally, his wife Nina Pierpont, an NYU-trained paediatrician (with a PhD in ornithology), put out the following advertisement in early 2006: 

“Dr. Pierpont is asking anyone living near wind turbines and suffering ill health effects of whatever sort which he/she suspects are a result of the wind turbines -- asking these people to contact her”

With these words, Pierpont placed a flag firmly in the venerated soil of pseudoscientific endeavour. Pierpont uses the term ‘Wind Turbine Syndrome’ in the advert, and specifically requests to hear from individuals who have attributed their ill-health to wind turbines. From the very inception of ‘Wind Turbine Syndrome’, the conclusion was scratched deeply in stone. Pierpoint wrote soon after her study was released:

“I never set out to prove that wind turbines cause Wind Turbine Syndrome. This was already obvious. Instead, I chose to study and document the observations made by people who had already figured it out and proved it on their own.”

This ambitious, unashamed inversion of the scientific method is a major characteristic of her legacy. Pierpont claimed in her 2006 advert that her work ‘will be published in a leading clinical medical journal sometime within the next 12 months’. 88 months later, her work is yet to be published in any peer-reviewed journal. Instead, she chose to self-publish – you can buy the book from her website for the princely sum of $18 AUD, plus shipping and postage. The New South Wales Department of Health was unreserved in its criticism of Pierpont’s study:

“This 'study' is not a rigorous epidemiological study; it is a case series of 10 families drawn from a wide range of locations……This work has not been properly peer reviewed. Nor has it been published in the peer-reviewed literature. The findings are not scientifically valid, with major methodological flaws stemming from the poor design of the study."

With the inception of ‘wind turbine syndrome’, Pierpont and Martin found a viable alternative to profane hyperbole and impassioned vilification. And with a conclusion etched firmly in stone, Pierpont simply had to nominate a cause.

References

Information on Aspartame safety

http://theconversation.com/sweet-news-no-evidence-that-artificial-sweetener-aspartames-bad-for-you-12608

Calvin Luther Martin’s thoughts on wind energy

http://www.aweo.org/Martin.html

Pierpont’s remarks on her research

http://www.windturbinesyndrome.com/2012/wind-turbine-syndrome-a-twenty-minute-crash-course/?var=wts

Pierpont’s original call for subjects

http://we-oppose-windfarms.tripod.com/id20.html

The article in The Independent, covering Pierpont’s research:

http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/green-living/are-wind-farms-a-health-risk-us-scientist-identifies-wind-turbine-syndrome-1766254.html

Todd et al’s research into substrate-borne vibration

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0304394008011130

Todd et al’s response to Pierpont’s appropriation of their work

http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/letters/iiosi-letters-emails--online-postings-9-august-2009-1769575.html

Interesting piece from Four Corners on wind energy, including quotes from Sarah Laurie

http://www.abc.net.au/4corners/content/2011/s3277568.htm

The Laplace Principle - Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence

http://books.google.com.au/books?id=6xdk111WDScC&lpg=PA345&vq=laplace&pg=PA344&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q=laplace&f=false

Long document by Laurie, opposing NSW Collector wind farm, including statement about Pierpont’s PhD in Ornithology:

http://docs.wind-watch.org/Laurie-Collector.pdf

ABC report on South Australian EPA study, including interview with Sarah Laurie

http://www.abc.net.au/pm/content/2013/s3682930.htm

Background Briefing story on King Island wind farm, and interviews with Laurie

http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/backgroundbriefing/2013-05-26/4705822

ABC Lacks Balance in its Coverage of the Flying Spaghetti Monster

Though the ABC has a dedicated readership, unhappy consumers of Auntie's content have begun expressing their distaste at the broadcaster's lack of balance around the origins of the universe.

I'm no expert on astronomy, but neither are professional astrophysicists employed at the International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research (ICRAR). For some reason, the ABC saw fit to interview the scientists for a story about a dying supernova:

"During the big bang, it was mainly hydrogen and helium that was created. Now, life consists of more heavier elements and those are synthesised in stars and through these explosion where that material gets recycled."
- "Professor" Staveley-Smith

Did the story feature comment from a independent expert, someone who wasn't taken in by the ABC's groupthink on the 'big bang' theory? No. As it turns out, the science of who created the universe is far from resolved - there is a growing body of evidence that it was created by a creature known as the 'Flying Spaghetti Monster' (FSM). An expert on science states:

"I and many others around the world are of the strong belief that the universe was created by a Flying Spaghetti Monster. It was He who created all that we see and all that we feel."

The evidence that the FSM created the universe is insurmountable, yet, the ABC choose to ignore mentioning Him in stories about astrophysics and the universe. The ABC provides this picture of what is known as 'cosmic background radiation':

Actually, if the ABC wasn't biased, they would have noticed the following pattern in the cosmic background radiation in the universe:

Unfortunately, this is what happens when you talk to 'scientists' rather than independent unbiased experts. For some reason the ABC continues to ignore the science of the FSM, despite section four of its editorial policies requiring:

"- a balance that follows the weight of evidence; (ignore this - KJ)
- fair treatment;
- open-mindedness

So, where's the open-mindedness at the ABC? Has the Flying Spaghetti Monster been treated fairly? I'm not the only one to have been intelligent enough to point out that deferring to professional scientists indicates extremely biased group-think. The Australian published an opinion piece pointing out that the ABC has failed to cover the views of unbiased, independent science experts (such as Lord Monckton) on the urban myth of climate change:

"It's been more than three years since former ABC chairman Maurice Newman pointed out the broadcaster had a groupthink problem with its climate change coverage. It seems the ABC managing director has done nothing in those three years to address this."

The ABC seems to be ignoring the expert theory that 97% of climate scientists are engaged in a worldwide conspiracy to install a New World Order and perform mind control on the human population. But, it gets worse: the ABC has failed to address one of the main tenets of the FSM - that the number of pirates is correlated to rising global temperatures:

Will we ever be able to trust the ABC? Not until they start interviewing people who haven't been brainwashed by 'science'. Until then, the truth of the Flying Spaghetti Monster and the Global Warming Mind Control Conspiracy will remain ignored by the biased ABC. rAmen.