CTV.ca News Staff with a report by CTV medical specialist Avis Favaro and producer Elizabeth St. Philip

More people are coming forward saying they’re experiencing sleep problems, headaches, and heart palpitations caused by living near windmills. Ontario physician Dr. Robert McMurtry told a news conference in Toronto Wednesday that while wind energy may offer a cleaner, more efficient way to generate electricity, those who live near the giant turbines are suffering through serious health problems.

McMurtry, a retired orthopedic surgeon who used to be an assistant deputy minister of the Population and Public Health Branch of Health Canada, decided to look into the health effects of windmills with the help of Carmen Krogh, a retired Alberta pharmacist. Krogh and a group of volunteers distributed questionnaires in areas near wind farms, asking residents to describe whether they have experienced any effects from the turbines.

Of 76 people who responded to their informal survey, 53 reported at least one health complaint. They complained of:
headaches
heart palpitations
hearing problems
stress, anxiety and depression

He reports that one resident had to be admitted to hospital with an acute hypertensive episode. Another experienced atrial fibrillation (abnormal heart rhythm). “There is no question that they are genuinely suffering, and more people are at risk if the rules are not changes substantially,” McMurtry told the committee. Krogh’s survey revealed that most of those who complained of health problems lived within a kilometre of a wind farm, while those further away were less likely to experience health problems.

The turbines don’t appear to affect everyone equally and it is not clear what causes the health problems in some people. Some suspect that the constant, low frequency noise and vibration from the rotating blades may be what cause the problems. But research into the problem is lacking. That’s why McMurtry is calling on governments to conduct a lot more studies into the turbines’ effects on the health of nearby residents.

“There is no epidemiological study that has been conducted that establishes either the safety or harmfulness of industrial wind turbines. In short, there is an absence of evidence,” McMurtry told an Ontario government committee Wednesday. The committee is debating The Green Energy and Green Economy Act, 2009, a bill that would enact standards for renewable energy projects, such as standardized setback requirements for wind farms.

McMurtry told the committee that until there are rigorous epidemiological studies of the health effects of wind turbines, Ontario should not go ahead with any further construction of wind turbines. Wind power advocates contend that studies have been conducted in North America and other parts of the world and they show that residents who live near wind farms have few complaints about them. Sean Whittaker, vice president of the Canadian Wind Energy Association, said these studies “have really come to the same conclusion and that is there is no evidence that wind turbines have an impact on human health.” Whittaker told CTV News that research he has reviewed shows that the percentage of people who approve of wind power increases the closer you get to a wind farm.

Barbara Ashbee is not one of those people. Ashbee lives in the shadow of 11 of the 45 giant wind turbines at the Melanchthon wind farm near Shelburne, Ont., about 100 kilometres northwest of Toronto. At first, she liked the idea of living near a green-energy facility. “I thought it was a great idea for the environment,” she told CTV News. But the day the turbines started running, she and her husband, Denis Lormand, stopped sleeping. “They are so loud we didn’t get any sleep. You can hear them in the bedroom. There is also a hum and vibration that permeates the house,” she says alll that deprivation started to lead to cognitive abilities, she contends.

“My memory now is horrible,” she says. “It’s terrible to go night after night without sleep. We go to bed 7 p.m. because we don’t know what the night will bring.” Her husband also suffers from tinnitus, which causes a constant whining sound in his ears. With more construction at the Melanchthon wind power centre expected to bring the number of turbines at the facility to 133, the couple says they would love to sell their house but can’t. “Between the noise and the vibration, we couldn’t put a For Sale sign here. There’s no way,” says Ashbee. Ashbee says she has no problem with the concept of wind farms, but she says they simply shouldn’t be built near residences. “I thought they were wonderful, but they’re not. There are big problems and they have to get sorted out,” she says. See story here.

Source:Reason.com

Earth Day is past now, but this article is so popular we’re pinning it at the top of the home page today so everyone looking for it can find it. Luckily, we haven’t run out of oil, but we have exhausted our supply of 70s fashion. For the next 24 hours, the media will assault us with tales of imminent disaster that always accompany the annual Earth Day Doom & Gloom Extravaganza. Ignore them. They’ll be wrong. We’re confident in saying that because they’ve always been wrong. And always will be.

Need proof? Here are some of the hilarious, spectacularly wrong predictions made on the occasion of Earth Day 1970.

“We have about five more years at the outside to do something.”
Kenneth Watt, ecologist

“Civilization will end within 15 or 30 years unless immediate action is taken against problems facing mankind.”
George Wald, Harvard Biologist

“We are in an environmental crisis which threatens the survival of this nation, and of the world as a suitable place of human habitation.”
Barry Commoner, Washington University biologist

“Man must stop pollution and conserve his resources, not merely to enhance existence but to save the race from intolerable deterioration and possible extinction.”
New York Times editorial, the day after the first Earth Day

“Population will inevitably and completely outstrip whatever small increases in food supplies we make. The death rate will increase until at least 100-200 million people per year will be starving to death during the next ten years.”
Paul Ehrlich, Stanford University biologist

“By [1975] some experts feel that food shortages will have escalated the present level of world hunger and starvation into famines of unbelievable proportions. Other experts, more optimistic, think the ultimate food-population collision will not occur until the decade of the 1980s.”
Paul Ehrlich, Stanford University biologist

“It is already too late to avoid mass starvation,”
Denis Hayes, chief organizer for Earth Day

“Demographers agree almost unanimously on the following grim timetable: by 1975 widespread famines will begin in India; these will spread by 1990 to include all of India, Pakistan, China and the Near East, Africa. By the year 2000, or conceivably sooner, South and Central America will exist under famine conditions. By the year 2000, thirty years from now, the entire world, with the exception of Western Europe, North America, and Australia, will be in famine.”
Peter Gunter, professor, North Texas State University

“Scientists have solid experimental and theoretical evidence to support…the following predictions: In a decade, urban dwellers will have to wear gas masks to survive air pollution…by 1985 air pollution will have reduced the amount of sunlight reaching earth by one half”
Life Magazine, January 1970

“At the present rate of nitrogen buildup, it’s only a matter of time before light will be filtered out of the atmosphere and none of our land will be usable.”
Kenneth Watt, Ecologist

Stanford’s Paul Ehrlich announces that the sky is falling. “Air pollution…is certainly going to take hundreds of thousands of lives in the next few years alone.”
Paul Ehrlich, Stanford University biologist

“We are prospecting for the very last of our resources and using up the nonrenewable things many times faster than we are finding new ones.”
Martin Litton, Sierra Club director

“By the year 2000, if present trends continue, we will be using up crude oil at such a rate that there won’t be any more crude oil. You’ll drive up to the pump and say, ‘Fill’er up, buddy,’ and he’ll say, ‘I am very sorry, there isn’t any.’”
Kenneth Watt, Ecologist

“Dr. S. Dillon Ripley, secretary of the Smithsonian Institute, believes that in 25 years, somewhere between 75 and 80 percent of all the species of living animals will be extinct.”
Sen. Gaylord Nelson

“The world has been chilling sharply for about twenty years. If present trends continue, the world will be about four degrees colder for the global mean temperature in 1990, but eleven degrees colder in the year 2000. This is about twice what it would take to put us into an ice age.”
Kenneth Watt, Ecologist

Keep these predictions in mind when you hear the same predictions made today. They’ve been making the same predictions for 39 years. And they’re going to continue making them until…well…forever. H/t Marc Morano Climatedepot.com

Here we are, 39 years later and the economy sucks, but the ecology’s fine. In fact this planet is doing a lot better than the planet on which those green lunatics live. Read post here.

By Marc Morano, Climate Depot

Energy Secretary Offers Dire Global Warming Prediction. Speaking at the Summit of the Americas in the Caribbean nation of Trinidad and Tobago, Steven Chu says some islands could disappear if water levels rise as a result of greenhouse-gas induced climate change. - FoxNews.com - April 19, 2009

Caribbean nations face “very, very scary” rises in sea level and intensifying hurricanes, and Florida, Louisiana and even northern California could be overrun with rising water levels due to global warming triggered by carbon-based greenhouse gases, Energy Secretary Steven Chu said Saturday. Conservative climate change skeptics immediately denounced Chu’s assessment of the threat and potential consequences of global warming. “Secretary Chu still seems to believe that computer model predictions decades or 100 years from now are some sort of ‘evidence’ of a looming climate catastrophe, said Marc Morano, executive editor of ClimateDepot.com and former top aide to global warming critic Sen. Jim Inhofe, R-Okla.

“Secretary Chu’s assertions on sea level rise and hurricanes are quite simply being proven wrong by the latest climate data. As the Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute reported in December 12, 2008: There is ‘no evidence for accelerated sea-level rise.’” Morano said hurricane activity levels in both hemispheres of the globe are at 30 year lows and hurricane experts like MIT’s Kerry Emanuel and [NOAA’s] Tom Knutson “are now backing off their previous dire predictions.” He said Chu is out of date on the science and is promoting unverified and alarming predictions that have already been proven contrary. Full Fox News article here.

Sampling of scientific background of the latest sea level and hurricane data:

Sea Level: ‘No evidence for accelerated sea-level rise’ says Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute - December 12, 2008. Excerpt: In an op-ed piece in the December 11 issue of NRC/Handelsblad, Wilco Hazeleger, a senior scientist in the global climate research group at KNMI, writes:  “In the past century the sea level has risen twenty centimeters. There is no evidence for accelerated sea-level rise. It is my opinion that there is no need for drastic measures. It is wise to adopt a flexible, step-by-step adaptation strategy. By all means, let us not respond precipitously.”

U.S. Senate Report on Scientists Counter Computer Model Sea Level Rise Fears - September 26, 2007. Excerpt:  Nearly two dozen prominent scientists from around the world have denounced a recent Associated Press article promoting sea level fears in the year 2100 and beyond based on unproven computer models predictions.

Hurricane/Warming Link: Florida State University: “Global [both Southern and Northern Hemisphere] Tropical Cyclone Activity [still] lowest in 30-years” - Updated April 17, 2009 Ryan N. Maue - Department of Meteorology - COAPS - Florida State University

Hurricane expert reconsiders global warming’s impact - Houston Chronicle - April 12, 2008. Excerpt: One of the most influential scientists behind the theory that global warming has intensified recent hurricane activity says he will reconsider his stand. The hurricane expert, Kerry Emanuel of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, unveiled a novel technique for predicting future hurricane activity this week. The new work suggests that, even in a dramatically warming world, hurricane frequency and intensity may not substantially rise during the next two centuries.

Another Hurricane Expert Reconsiders Warming/Hurricane Link - Associated Press - May 19, 2008. Global warming isn’t to blame for the recent jump in hurricanes in the Atlantic, concludes a study by a prominent federal scientist whose position has shifted on the subject. Not only that, warmer temperatures will actually reduce the number of hurricanes in the Atlantic and those making landfall, research meteorologist Tom Knutson [Note: Research Meteorologist Tom Knutson is with NOAA] reported in a study released Sunday. In the past, Knutson has raised concerns about the effects of climate change on storms. His new paper has the potential to heat up a simmering debate among meteorologists about current and future effects of global warming in the Atlantic. See full post here.