What Vestas knew, and when

Or how does Professor Chapman reconcile his statements at the senate inquiry into the impacts of wind farms where he was asked if he would be opposed to research into health impacts he said it “would be a wonderful idea” with his strident advocacy depicting those seeking such research as “scaremongering” activists.

Chapman in an SBS radio interview in January this year questions the need for any further research, despite thinking it is a wonderful idea, saying there have been a total of 20 reviews since 2003. Indeed there has; reviews of existing literature but no independent research.

In the same interview he says “the U.S. research was done on wind turbines that were much smaller than what's used today” which renders that research completely irrelevant as per the conclusions of the Moeller Pedersen research.  Chapman by his own statements displays no obvious comprehension of the acoustical properties of wind turbine operation, but pretends to understand the issue.

What is worse though, for someone who parades his ‘health’ credentials while behaving like a dilettante on actual noise issues, Chapman and other ‘health professionals’ display an amazing lack of compassion in their dismissive attitude to people who claim to be suffering debilitating effects from pervasive wind turbine noise.  Considering there has been no government health study demonstrating adverse health impacts – or studies showing there are not – one could be forgiven for thinking health professionals, of all people, would take a precautionary approach as recommended by the National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC). 

Indeed much the same could be said for the convenor of the Climate and Health Alliance (CAHA), Fiona Armstrong who also spoke at the campaign launch.  What due diligence did the CAHA undertake before deciding there was no substance to the concerns of thousands of people around the world who are directly impacted by wind turbines?    As someone representing health professionals did Fiona Armstrong call for independent health studies to settle the noise issue once and for all?  Having endorsed the Vestas campaign to stick to the facts, what is the response of the CAHA to the internal Vestas document acknowledging noise from their turbines impacts some people in rural communities?  

President of the CAHA is Dr Liz Hanna.  It is assumed that Dr Hanna authorised the participation of CAHA at the Vestas launch of its corporate spin campaign.  This immediately puts both Dr Hanna and the CAHA in a position of assisting a turbine manufacturer to deny the adverse health impacts from its product - impacts which it is well aware of and were acknowledged in the 2004 presentation.

There is no evidence any of these health professionals have taken the trouble to interview Annie Gardner, Donald Thomas, Trish Godfrey, Noel Dean, Brian Kermonde, Carl or Samantha Stepnell or dozens of others in Victoria alone to determine the integrity of their claims relating to the effects they have been subjected to from wind turbines. 

Perhaps the health professionals knew they would be confronted with inconvenient truths if they did, which would undermine their confected outrage at the temerity of those who do not genuflect before the turbines of righteousness.

Another speaker at the campaign launch was Simon Holmes à Court, chairman of Hepburn Wind.  Holmes à Court is famous for being the driving force behind the two turbine community owned wind farm near Daylesford Victoria, the first of its kind in Australia.  Holmes à Court has assiduously cultivated the media in numerous feature articles to present as the community minded crusader for wind energy.  He is perhaps infamous for Hepburn Wind repeatedly reneging on a commitment to release noise data from the Daylesford wind farm after a number of nearby residents, including a local doctor started suffering health impacts. 

Uncritical public acceptance of wind industry spin began to change after the 2011 senate inquiry into the impacts of wind farms, chaired by Greens senator Rachel Siewert made the unequivocal recommendation that “the Commonwealth Government initiate as a matter of priority thorough, adequately resourced epidemiological and laboratory studies of possible effects of wind farms on human health.”

After a decade of grass-roots rural community angst from being ridden over roughshod by multi-national energy companies aided by state and federal governments eager to be seen to be ‘doing something’ about climate change, while ignoring the basic human right to enjoy rest and repose in their own home, the issue of health impacts will now get the hearing it deserves.

The Abbott government has announced a health study into the effects of wind farms with the Victorian government pledging $100,000 support.

Environment groups that have supported the wind industry and taken their thirty pieces of silver, ‘health professionals’ who have no expertise in acoustics and no interest in faraway rural communities, but do have an overblown interest in climate health effects, have jumped on the wind energy bandwagon eager to claim the high moral ground despite the human collateral damage.  They instead should have taken the time to look at the noise data and the evidence.  It also would not have hurt to at least speak with the affected families as well.

By allowing themselves to be co-opted as useful idiots to support a so-called ‘noble cause’, where the ends justify the means as well as failing to exhibit a modicum of caution or undertake due diligence, they now find themselves endorsing an industry denying in public what it knows in private to be true.  Good luck with that!