Logical fallacies are everywhere. Flick open the newspaper and hear the latest assertion from your politician-of-choice, and you’ll see one being used to advocate a course of action, framed in something that sounds popular, but doesn’t really make a lot of sense, once you look closer. They’re usually swirled with little portions of truth. . . Sometimes, we see fallacies in their purest form; devoid of any truth. This happened recently when a group named the ‘World Council For Nature’ issued an urgent, graphic press release:
Wind Noise, Health, & Safety
Half of respondents to national survey would welcome a new wind farm within five miles of their home
In an interview last September with CBC News, Studzienny said he refused treatment to certain councillors on M’Chigeeng and Little Current councils because he is opposed to wind turbines and was unhappy with councillors who voted in favour of them on McLean’s Mountain.
The crash of a small Piper aircraft destroyed in an April 27 accident when it crossed paths with the blade of a wind turbine near Highmore is only the second of its kind reported in the database. Last month’s accident is under investigation by the NTSB, a federal group that investigates all aircraft incidents.
A small airplane heading back to South Dakota after a Texas cattle sale crashed into a wind farm in foggy weather, killing the pilot and three passengers.
The urgent need for rapid decarbonisation of our electricity system means we have to research, build, test and deploy a raft of new technologies, all in a short time period. As new technology collides with human nature, myth and misinformation take hold. Fighting back against this means looking closely at the cultural and cognitive drivers that lead to people rejecting science.
Recently, the Australian Medical Association (AMA) released a comprehensive position statement on the curiously invulnerable issue of ‘wind turbine syndrome’. One phrase from the statement caught my eye, because it goes slightly further than other institutions (like the Victorian Department of Health, the National Health and Medical Research Council, or New South Wales Health), in that it mentions the impact of misinformation:
The available Australian and international evidence does not support the view that the infrasound or low frequency sound generated by wind farms, as they are currently regulated in Australia, causes adverse health effects on populations residing in their vicinity. The infrasound and low frequency sound generated by modern wind farms in Australia is well below the level where known health effects occur, and there is no accepted physiological mechanism where sub-audible infrasound could cause health effects.
Natural News isn’t an easy website to browse. If you’re conscious of the impact of the anti-vaccination movement, the content on the website quickly goes from mildly-entertaining weirdness to real, dangerous quackery almost instantaneously. Their Facebook page has 1 million subscribers.
Australia’s peak health research body has again found there is no reliable evidence that windfarms harm human health, but the Abbott government is promising to commission further “comprehensive” research into possible links.
