CBC Doc Zone: Wind Rush
Thursday February 7, 2013 AT 9:00 PM on CBC-TV
Saturday February 9 at 11 pm ET on CBC News Network
About the Episode
Driving by a wind farm, looking at the rural houses, it’s easy to be skeptical about the talk of wind turbines making people sick. We’re told that wind turbines are good and green. So how could those people living by them have an issue?
But there is a problem—and it’s there because some governments and wind companies didn’t do their homework before installing megawatt after megawatt of huge industrial machines. And as a result there are people living among the turbines who are suffering.
In the new documentary film WIND RUSH, produced for CBC Doc Zone by Toronto’s 90th Parallel Productions, the battleground for the pro and anti wind forces is southern Ontario. The government there pledged to wean the province off coal fired generation plants and replace them with green wind energy.
But as soon as the turbines went up in places like Wolf Island, Amaranth and Bruce County, people realized they could hear them. Sometimes it was like a whisper, but other times it sounded more like a jet taking off.
And then it got worse.
New turbines started coming in at two and three times the size of the old ones. And they were even louder. It led to chronic sleeplessness for many people living close by—and that can lead to diabetes, depression and heart disease. Others were affected in their inner ears by low-level sounds that set off their equilibrium. Doctors started seeing patient after patient complaining of the same sets of symptoms. And then people started to realize that no one had done any significant human health studies before giving the green light to the turbine farms.
WIND RUSH takes viewers to southwestern Alberta, where wind has been an energy staple for more than twenty years. There is plenty of room for humans and windmills to coexist—a stark contrast to Ontario, where the same prairie technology was installed in a dramatically different landscape. The film then moves to Denmark, a country long considered the poster-child for the wind energy movement. But as WIND RUSH reveals, the relationship between the Danes and turbines has soured.
WIND RUSH talks to people on either side of the turbine divide, and then turns to scientists to try and determine what has gone wrong. In the next several years the turbines will double in size again—bigger, louder and more powerful. But without sufficient research have the people who live among the wind farms been forgotten?
Thank God for these people…I hope no one tries to stop this from being aired…
The point about sound increase with increasing unit sizes is very important.
Ontario’s setback is 550 m independent of unit size. That is absolutely absurd.
Note some of the recent offers / contracts are for up to $50,000 per turbine per year to the landowner. Jam the 3Mw+ biggies in, before the rules change.
Offshore units, of 10Mw or more, will radiate huge sound, at very low frequencies, which will propogate very far, particularly over open water.
You may want to post some info on NextEra from this article: http://greencorruption.blogspot.com/2013/01/big-wind-energy-subsidies-hurricane-of.html?m=1
Lewis Hay chairman and chief executive officer of NextEra Energy, Inc.: Part of President Obamas Multi-millionaire, Billionaire Jobs Council Club Lewis Lew Hay, III is executive chairman of NextEra Energy, Inc., and it is estimated by Forbes, that CEO Hay earns nearly $10 million in total compensation from NextEra. Despite the fact that Hay was actually a major political contributor to Sen. John McCain in 2008, he quickly learned which side his power company could generate the title of the “Third Largest Recipient of DOE Risky Loans.” Hay too joined wealthy Democratic donors on Obamas Jobs Council in 2011, along with the other two I have tackled in this series, Spreading the Wealth to Obamas Ultra-Rich Job Council Jobs Czar, Jeffrey Immelt CEO of General Electric has raked in $3 billion and counting, meanwhile John Doerr, along with his climate buddy” Al Gore’s, VC firm Kleiner Perkins is tied to at least $10 billion of stimulus funds. Both General Electric and Doerr were key contributors to what went into the 2009 Stimulus.In my opening, I had stated that NextEra Energys Green Money was at least $2.3 billion, but thats just from the Department of Energys (DOE) 1703 Loan Guarantee Program, of which I recorded in another green energy, crony corruption post last summer. Well revisit the DOE and Big Wind, but for now there is more you should know about NextEraNextEra Energy, Inc. is one of the oldest, third largest, and arguably one of the most solid power companies in the world, with 2011 revenues [that] totaled more than $15.3 billion. And NextEra Energy Inc. has two primary subsidiaries: Florida Power & Light is the third largest electricity producer in the US (about which a September 2009 report states: it’s a political dynamo, making millions in political contributions and lobbying assiduously to achieve its goals). NextEra Energy Resources is the largest generator of energy from sun and wind resources in North America. The company also has the third largest fleet (8) of nuclear powered electricity generating plants in the United States. NextEra: Biggest User of the Wind Energy Production Tax Credit As a follower of NextEra, I found a fascinating analysis by John Fund of the National Review Online which states, Begun 20 years ago to spur the construction of wind-energy facilities that could compete with conventional fossil-fuel power plants, the tax credit [PTC] gives wind an advantage over all other energy producers. But it has mostly benefited conventional nuclear and fossil-fuel-fired electricity producers. The biggest user of the tax credit is Florida-based NextEra Energy, the nations eighth-largest power producer. Through skillful manipulation of the credits, NextEra from 2005 to 2009 ‘paid just $88 million in taxes on earnings of nearly $7 billion,’ Businessweek reports. Thats a tax rate of just 1.25 percent over that period, when the statutory rate is 35 percent.
Date: Wed, 23 Jan 2013 15:25:00 +0000 To: rpforz@hotmail.com
Re-posting links from Parker Gallant. http://freewco.blogspot.ca/2013/01/huh-weird-strange-ostrander-wind.html and here: http://freewco.blogspot.ca/2013/01/solar-power-spokesperson-makes-case-for.html
Renewable energy, wind & solar, have little to do with electric power production and everything to do with keeping the ever increasing numbers of those “feeding “off from the renewable energy scam supplied with more and more money.
Just as in a Ponzi scheme this has to keep growing to keep paying off those with anykind of financial interests and/or jobs in renewable energy. This includes those who don’t have a direct financial interests as well like journalists but still make a living off from these scams by promoting them.
This is what the general public is still unaware of.
At the top of the renewable energy money “food chain” are the billionaries, followed by the multi-millionaries and so on down the line.
Then throw in the cronyism, back room deals, etc. along with this and a witches brew has been created.
I encourage people to look at the Greenpeace Vision for the Planet -s documented by Donna Laframboise:
So why do we have Green Organizations and politicians pushing wind turbines?
http://nofrakkingconsensus.com/2013/01/22/greenpeaces-vision-for-america-unemployed-broke-miserable/
The day before Barack Obama officially began his second term as president of the United States, Greenpeace had a message for him. It consists of a five-point plan.
Point one is that Obama should permanently forbid the construction of the Keystone Pipeline. Translation: turn your back on thousands of well-paying, shovel-ready jobs at a time when more than 12 million Americans are out of work.
Point two involves “the expansion of clean, safe renewable energy.” Translation: support the most expensive kinds of energy so that increasing numbers of people step back in time and start relying on firewood to keep warm.
But it’s point three that’s the real doozy: “Make carbon unaffordable.”
What Greenpeace really means is that carbon dioxide emissions should be made unaffordable. But that translates to: make almost everything we humans do unaffordable.
Okay — hopefully you went to the link and read the story. You know that the CBC documentary has to say. Now, can you tell me why we have wind turbines, possibly the least effective method of power generation ever conceived???
Something to think about
Just a further note…
Sierra Club Executive Director embarrasses himself on Piers Morgan — but he will be believed even though what he says is all untrue..
http://www.cnn.com/video/#/video/bestoftv/2013/01/24/pmt-climate-change-marc-morano-michael-brune.cnn
This is how it is done. This is why we waste money on Wind Turbines. Green Activists spouting Scio-Trash as Truth…
Wind Turbines will keep the world safe — right — BS!
I see Rob shared part of my Green Corruption latest blog (research) “Big Wind Energy Subsidies: A Hurricane of Carnage, Cronyism and Corruption” / thanks Rob…
http://greencorruption.blogspot.com/2013/01/big-wind-energy-subsidies-hurricane-of.html#.UQCaXq5HKRk