Articles by
Mike Barnard
Vertical Axis Wind Turbines: Great In 1890, Also-rans In 2014
By
Mike Barnard
Vertical axis wind turbines (VAWT) continue to get attention, press and R&D funding. Antagonists of mainstream wind generation continually point at them as if they were a superior technology. People perpetually re-invent them and believe that they have found something new and exciting. However, they are undeserving of any significant attention, are an inferior technology and definitely aren’t new. Outside of a couple of niches, they are more of a distraction from deployment of effective utility-scale, horizontal axis wind turbines (HAWT) than anything else.
Calling Anti-Renewables Campaigners NIMBYs Is Often Inaccurate And Always
By
Mike Barnard
NIMBY — Not In My Back Yard — is a nice crisp acronym and gets bandied about a lot when discussing opposition to wind energy and other renewables. But it is inadequate as a categorization of the various people fighting against broader penetration of renewables in energy grids worldwide.
Wind energy health concerns fail the test of law, repeatedly
By
Mike Barnard
Since 1998 there have been 45 hearings held under rules of legal evidence in at least five English-speaking countries and four types of courts regarding wind energy, noise and health. Forty-four assessed the evidence and found no potential for harm to human health, and the sole outlier is an instructive but unique case.
Vertical axis wind turbines aren’t replacing horizontal axis offshore turbines
By
Mike Barnard
Over the past few months, an interesting wrinkle on the vertical-axis-wind-turbines-are-better mythology has surfaced: that they are superior offshore and that many countries are investing heavily in offshore VAWTs. Over the course of several discussions, numerous named countries and companies were thrown at me, always without links or documents proving assertions. A little digging found a different story each time than the one being touted by offshore VAWT advocates.
Anti-wind Experts: a species that is actually endangered by wind energy
By
Mike Barnard
Over the past five years, a few anti-wind campaigners with credentials unrelated to wind energy and its purported effects on humans have attempted to bootstrap themselves into the role of expert witnesses on a variety of subjects that they are not qualified to speak about in civil suits, Environmental Review Tribunals in Canada and Environment, Resources and Development proceedings in Australia. They haven’t fared well. This post details the failures to gain expert status and have evidence admitted of the following non-expert ‘experts’:
Property Values? Evidence is that if wind farms do impact them, it’s positively.
By
Mike Barnard
These are real fears of unreal things. They are strongly promoted by anti-wind advocacy groups. It is strongly arguable that anti-wind advocates drive down property prices in the run up to wind farms becoming operational just as they are creating the psychogenic health hysteria, “Wind Turbine Syndrome.:”
Ontario Tribunal dismisses health scares and health scarers
By
Mike Barnard
Eric Gillespie, anti-wind lawyer, received a great amount more of legal fees to fail yet again in this extensive appeal. You would think that the people who keep paying him would eventually realize that they are giving money to a lawyer whose track record is terrible.
Sky Windpower’s high-altitude wind generation system will likely fail to launch
By
Mike Barnard
Sky Windpower’s proposed high-altitude wind generation solution raises major concerns. . .
Google’s Makani airborne wind generator flies a bit lower when you look at it closely
By
Mike Barnard
Makani has a long way to go before operation of an offshore wind farm of these devices is shown to be cheaper per unit of electricity than an equivalent HAWT farm. . . And they still have to get aviation authorities to agree that long, invisible, carbon-fibre, electrified tethers buzzing along at 130-140 kph are acceptable, or the entire solution won’t work at all.
VAD: Vibro Acoustic Disease or Venal Arrogant Distortion?
By
Mike Barnard
For several years, a Portuguese research group has been touting the horrors of something they termed “vibroacoustic disease” or VAD, claiming that this was a physiological affliction due to extended exposure to infrasound. In recent years, they’ve been making the claim that wind turbines can cause this affliction.
Wind turbines are sonic weapons if feathers are speeding trucks
By
Mike Barnard
As each of anti-wind types’ arguments get shot down in flames, they usually resort to more and more outlandish claims. One of the most outlandish is that research on sonic or acoustic weapons is somehow pertinent to wind turbines and the health impacts that people claim that they cause.
Have five minutes? Correct anti-wind myths in articles and comments
By
Mike Barnard
Have you read an article or comment thread online that contains anti-wind myths and disinformation but didn’t have the resources at your fingertips to counter the spin? This post is intended to let you create factual, solid, referenced comments debunking disinformation in five minutes or less in the areas of Health, Environment, Smart Grid and Action.
