Part 1 of a multipart series investigating an unlikely coalition dedicated to the demise of wind power in the United States.
American Legislative Exchange Commision (ALEC) member and current Republican Wisconsin State Senator, Frank Lasee, along with a handful of his Brown County constituents have been working hard to have the eight wind turbines at Shirley Park, a little south of Green Bay, removed. The constituents, who formed the curiously titled Brown County Citizens for Responsible Wind Energy (BCCRWE) are upset by the presence of the turbines in their figurative back-yard.
Thier strategy, which has failed several times in Australia and Europe over the years, has been to claim that wind energy is inherently bad for your health. Lasee published a press release, chiding the local Public Services Commissioners for their intransigence in investigating his constituents claims of Wind Turbine Syndrome (WTS)...
PSC’s failure to protect kids and their puppies in their own homes is a tragedy. Wisconsin families are suffering but the PSC doesn’t seem to care.[1]
The press release gave the Public Services Commision little choice but to compel the Health Board to investigate. The Health Board declared WTS a 'Public Health Hazard' and has until the end of this year to determine exactly what that means for not only the Shirley Park Wind Farm, but the future of Wind technology in the state of Wisconsin.
Wind Turbine Syndrome is not a medically recognized condition, rather, it is a lay-term that describes a group of symptoms that nominally include insomnia, headaches and nausea[1]. Proponents of WTS allege these symptoms are caused by the transmission of infrasound (air movement at too low a frequency for the human ear to hear) which occurs when a turbine blade passes the tower to which it is fixed.
While it is true that some older turbines do create a pulse of infrasound, the peer-reviewed research has established that the measured levels are too low to constitute a health hazard. Modern turbines, which point downwind, to not exhibit any appreciable infrasound [2].
However, there is a preponderance of anecdotal and self-reported occurrences of the symptoms - as well as studies conducted by scientists with vested interests that maintain that WTS exists.
The term Wind Turbine Syndrome was coined by Dr. Nina Pierpoint, the wife of a prominent anti-wind energy activist, who self-published a book of anecdotal second-hand accounts from a number of friends and colleagues who were all living near a newly constructed and highly unwelcome wind-farm (she spoke on the phone to a number of other people who had contacted her via e-mail). Pierpoint presented her stories as an academic paper which was not unsurprisingly ignored by the scientific press (Pierpoint is still selling her book on line at $18 a pop but no longer offers any interviews or comment on her 'findings'). [3]
Prior to Pierpoint's book in 2009 which was seized upon by parties interested in the demise of the fledgling wind farm industry, the same symptom cluster had a less flattering title of NIMBY syndrome [4].
The first victims of NIMBY syndrome were identified in Australia by an anti-renewables AstroTurf organization called The Waubra Foundation [5] which was - and still is run by a coal seam owner . The Waubra Foundation were the first ones to exploit and formalize the anecdotal stories and present them as a real illness [6]. Local citizens who did not like the idea of the expansion of the number of turbines in their neighbourhood, suddenly and uniformly started displaying a set of symptoms that conveniently could not be verified or measured through medical examination or any existing diagnostic tool.
The ploy, although ultimately unsuccessful - in that its existence could not be confirmed, has proven useful in other countries such as Denmark and the UK as a delaying tactic and a way of sowing fear and paranoia in the local populace [7].
Consequently it was no surprise when Frank Labee, a State Senator of Wisconsin, which in recent years under Governor Scott Walker's tenure, has become an experiment for creating the perfect oligarchy, cited an acedemic paper from The Society for Wind Vigilance (an anti-wind energy organization)[8] which reported on a study on turbines at Mars Hill and Vinalhaven in Maine [9].
The paper presented to the Wisconsin State Legislature as proof of the existence of Wind Turbine Syndrome was written by a radiologist in Maine in his spare time. In line with the organization's raison d'être, the radiologist dutifully delivered the goods.
Next: The Citizens of Brown County, ALEC, Americans for Prosperity, Bats, Eagles, Cats and The Heartland Institute