Il est par contre possible d’expliquer ce que sont véritablement ces vapeurs de condensation qui se forment dans le sillage des avions, les contrails, étudiées par les scientifiques depuis les années 1940. “L’air chaud et humide, qui sort des turbines de l’avion, se mélange avec l’air plus froid et plus sec de l’atmosphère. Sous certaines conditions, ce mélange déclenche la condensation de la vapeur d’eau de l’atmosphère en gouttelettes d’eau liquide qui gèlent ensuite quasi-instantanément pour former un nuage de petits cristaux de glace”, explique Olivier Boucher, chercheur (CNRS) au laboratoire de météorologie dynamique.
Wind Noise, Health, & Safety
The denial of deduction and causation is a necessary component in the concrete acceptance of extremely weak hypotheses, such as those underlying homeopathy, anti-vaccination fear-mongering, anti-abortion pseudoscience dating back to the 1950’s, or ‘wind turbine syndrome’.
In the short to medium term the fossil fuel interests and their supporters – both witting and unwitting — are fighting the battle of their corporate lives to preserve the privileged position they’ve held for so long. Largely because of economic and environmental considerations which strongly favour renewables and possibly because of the reactions of local people such as those at Waubra, the anti-wind forces will almost certainly lose in the end, but not before they’ve done a lot of damage to Australia’s attempts to cut emissions and to the wind industry in particular.
The conclusion is that the symptoms reported for people living near wind turbines identified by the WCO survey are not significantly different than those experienced by the general population, i.e. there is no evidence of wind turbines causing adverse health effects.
My paper concluded that the claim was a factoid promoted by wind farm opponents for dramatic, rhetorical impact. The claim sits alongside other contestable claims made by wind farm opponents, including a list of symptoms of Biblical pestilence proportions (currently numbering 236) said to be caused by wind farm exposure, the promotion of non-diseases, claims that wind farms can rock stationary cars 1km away, make people’s lips vibrate 10km away and that they can be heard at up to 100km.
The report stated that ‘some 80,000 ha of national park were destroyed by a wildfire ignited by the turbine debris’ and gave an Australian Broadcasting Commission report as a reference. In fact, the ABC Net site referred to mentions a blaze that “consumed more than 70 hectares” and did not mention wind turbines at all. In fact it was referring to another fire that happened four years after the turbine fire.
With thanks to the long-lasting science Crackpot Index, this Wind Crank Index is intended to provide a simple way to figure out how you should invest your time: helping the person understand more about wind energy or figuring out how to correct the damage they are doing.
Even if Denmark had its own ‘wind turbine syndrome’ organisation, I strongly suspect the phenomenon wouldn’t take hold. The Middelgrunden Wind Farm happens to be half-owned by Middelgrunden Wind Cooperative – 10,000 investors that own 10 of the 20 turbines.
Based on the findings and scientific merit of the available studies, the weight of evidence suggests that when sited properly, wind turbines are not related to adverse health. Stemming from this review, we provide a number of recommended best practices for wind turbine development in the context of human health.
Citizens of Greensburg live so close to wind turbines it is a bit astonishing. The local hospital’s turbine is just across the driveway, only twenty yards or so from the building. The local Best Western provides power for its customers with three wind turbines on its property. In fact, if they were evenly distributed, the combination of the city’s size and the number of wind turbines means that, on average, every house in the city is within a quarter-mile from at least four of them.
