CANE - Coalition Against Nuclear Energy South Africa

Source: http://www.wind.appstate.edu/windpower/myths.php

Myth #1: Wind turbines are unusually harmful to birds.

Although birds do infrequently collide with turbines, wind energy poses less of a threat to birds than many other commonplace structures. In fact, the National Audubon Society has stated that it supports the development and use of wind power. Based on numerous studies that have taken place in New York, Oregon, Vermont, Colorado, Wyoming, Minnesota, and California, collision with turbines result in 1-2 bird deaths or less per turbine per year. For comparison, each year at least 60 million birds die in collisions with vehicles; at least 98 million in collisions with buildings and windows; and at least 4 million in collisions with communication towers. Important consideration should be given to placement of wind turbines to ensure that turbines are not located along migratory bird flight paths or the flight paths of threatened or rare species.

Consider the alternatives; bird deaths that result from fossil energy based power production:

• Tall smokestacks- A study at a single Florida coal fired power plant with four smokestacks recorded an estimated 3,000 bird kills in a single night during a fall migration.
• Oil spills at sea - In a single oil shipping accident, - the Exxon Valdez oil spill in Alaska’s Prince William Sound - more than 500,000 migratory birds perished, or about 1,000 times the estimated annual total in California’s wind power plants.
• Additional threats to birds from other energy sources include: mercury emissions from coal fired power plants; global climate change resulting from the combustion of fossil fuels; acid rain resulting from coal fired power plant emissions of SO2 and NOx and; destruction of habitat as a result of mining activities associated with the coal, gas, oil and uranium industries.

Myth #2: Wind turbines are noisy.

Today’s large wind turbines make less noise (about 45 decibels-dB) than the background noise you hear in your own home (50 dB)! According to the American Wind Energy Association (AWEA), today an operating wind farm at a distance of about 750 to 1,000 feet is no noisier than a kitchen refrigerator or a moderately quiet room.

Myth #3: Many wind turbines are necessary for minimal power generation.

Improved technology has enabled far fewer turbines to produce more electricity. The standard output of a turbine grew from .5 mW in 1995 to 1.5 mW in 2003.

Myth #4: Wind turbines are unattractive

In North Carolina, a study to determine public attitudes towards wind energy was recently conducted. The study found that 77.1% of participants who had seen first hand a utility scale turbine said that they liked its appearance. Studies from numerous US states and other countries report that a majority of people think wind turbines are graceful, elegant structures. Many people find turbines to be interesting features in the landscape, enhancing the vista overall. In the UK, the British Wind Energy Association notes that wind farms are popular tourist attractions, with thousands of people each year flocking to visit attractions.

Myth #5: Conventional power sources are less unsightly and environmentally harmful than wind turbines.

Wind turbines cause little damage to the surrounding environments beyond the footprint of the facility and transmissions system and are much less unsightly than conventional power sources.

For comparison, consider the following:

• Conventional power sources require acres and acres of land for unsightly power plants that spew pollutants from smokestacks. In addition to the electric generating facility itself, the plants also require on-site fuel storage facilities and access to cooling water, both of which require additional land.
• Construction of hydropower dams floods riverside lands, permanently eliminating riparian and upland habitat.
• Most generating facilities also produce solid waste by-products of combustion that can be toxic. Solid wastes from power plants are typically dumped into a landfill, another way in which a generating facility impacts land as it extends its environmental footprint beyond the boundaries of the power plant site.
• Mountain top removal strip mining - the process of blasting off entire mountaintops in order to extract thin seams of coal - can strip up to 10 square miles and dump hundreds of millions of waste into as many as 12 valley fills that can be 1,000 feet wide and 1 mile long.
• Conventional power sources rely on the combustion of fossil fuels which are largely responsible for the 78% decrease in visibility from natural levels that has occurred in the southern Appalachian Mountains. In the Great Smokey Mountains National Park, summertime visibility averages only 16 miles, and on many days air pollution reduces the visibility range to less than 5 miles. In this case, one might prefer to see a few turbines on top of a mountain than not be able to see the mountains at all.

Myth #6: Wind power will destroy mountain vistas.

Placement of wind turbines should be restricted so as to not detract from places of important scenic beauty. Potential areas that should be excluded from turbine placement consideration are:

• National Parks
• State Parks
• National Forest lands
• View shed buffers along the Appalachian Trail
• View shed buffer zones along the Blue Ridge Parkway
• Spruce-Fir Forest lands ( one of the most unique and endangered ecosystems in the Appalachian region)

Wind turbines should be located where there are:

• Existing communication towers
• Existing transmission lines
• Other forms of existing structures

Myth #7: Wind power will decrease property values in surrounding areas.

Views of wind turbines will not negatively impact property values. A recent study on the economic impacts of wind power states that, “based on a nation-wide survey conducted of tax assessors in other areas with wind power projects, we found no evidence supporting the claim that views of wind farms decrease property values.” Other studies, conducted in both the US and abroad, have made similar findings.

Myth #8: Wind Energy will negatively affect tourism.

Large turbines have been found more often to be a positive influence on tourism. The British Wind Energy Association notes that wind farms in the UK are popular tourist attractions, with thousands of people each year flocking to visit them. In Australia, the wind farms are highlighted as one of the attractions for visitors amongst other historical and scenic points of interest. A Scottish study found that nine out of ten tourists visiting some of Scotland’s top beauty spots say the presence of wind farms makes no difference to the enjoyment of their holiday, and twice as many people would return to an area because of the presence of a wind farm than would stay away. Yet another survey of more than 300 visitors to Argyll, Scotland found that 91% of visitors said the presence of wind farms in the area made no difference to whether they would return.

Myth #9: North Carolinians don’t support wind power.

North Carolinians are in favor of developing wind power in our state. A recent study on public attitudes towards wind power in Western North Carolina found that Western North Carolinians are favorably disposed toward the development of a wind energy industry in the Appalachian Mountains. They want more of their future electricity derived from renewable sources and less from fossil fuels. The study also found that, by over 2 to 1, western North Carolinians do not believe that ridge top turbines should be prohibited. 3 out of 4 study participants feel that if a ridge top already has existing cell towers, they would not mind adding a wind turbine to the clutter. An even higher ratio believes a person should be allowed to erect a turbine on his/her own property for residential use.

References and Contact Info
This fact sheet was prepared by the North Carolina Wind Energy Working Group, February 2003. For more information contact: Amber Lynn Munger (828) 216 2362 or Michael Shore (828) 254 7359
________________________________________
1″Facts about Wind Energy and Birds,” American Wind Energy Association. http://www.awea.org/pubs/factsheets/WEandBirds.pdf
2 “Avian Collisions with Wind Turbines: A summary of existing studies and comparisons to other sources of avian collision mortality in the United States.” National Wind Coordinating Committee (NWCC) Research Document, 2001. http://www.nationalwind.org/pubs/avian_collisions.pdf
3 “Facts about Wind Energy and Birds,” American Wind Energy Association. http://www.awea.org/pubs/factsheets/WEandBirds.pdf
4 National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) Wind Power Market Update, Feb 2003 at http://www.eere.energy.gov/windpoweringamerica/pdfs/wpa/wpa_update.pdf
5 Grady, D., “Public Attitudes Toward Wind Energy in Western North Carolina: A Systematic Survey.” 2002.
16 From powerscorecard.org: http://www.powerscorecard.org/issue_detail.cfm?issue_id=7
7 “Blueprint for Breathing Easier; Southeast Strategy for Clean Air,” Environmental Defense, 2002. http://www.cleanenergy.org/air/breathingeasier.pdf
8 Grover, S. for EcoNorthwest, “Economic Impacts of Wind Power in Kittitas County.” Portland, OR, 2002.
9 View this study at: http://www.bwea.com/pdf/mori_briefing.pdf
10 Grady, D., “Public Attitudes Toward Wind Energy in Western North Carolina: A Systematic Survey.” 2002.

Source: http://www.wind.appstate.edu/windpower/myths.php

NOW THAT YOU’VE READ THE MYTHS, READ THIS DRIVEL FROM DR KELVIN KEMM (South African Nuclear Physicist)

http://www.engineeringnews.co.za/article.php?a_id=126614

Wind farms more harmful to the environment than power stations

Published: 22 Feb 08 - 0:00

There is a theory in physics called the Chaos Theory.
by Dr Kelvin Kemm

It turns out now that this theory was badly named, because a great deal has been learned since it was first proposed. But we are stuck with the name.

If you watch a lit cigarette lying on an ashtray, you will notice that, in still air conditions, the smoke goes straight up for about 15 cm.

Then what happens is that the smoke breaks up into substantial turbulence. The same effect is seen with water coming out of a tap slowly - it gets turbulent after a relatively short distance.

For many years, this cigarette smoke phenomenon puzzled scientists because it did not match the maths of the time. The turbulence should not have occurred, according to that maths. But it did.

Well, after such thinking by some bright folks, the Chaos Theory was discovered, and it explains the cigarette smoke pattern. Now a considerable amount of work has been done on the theory, and it is amazing how many applications it now has. It even fits certain stock exchange patterns.

The Chaos Theory explains the size and distribution of earthquakes around the world - that seems reasonable. But not so reasonable is that it also indicates personal income distributions around a country, and the resulting effect that this pattern has on the local economy.

One of the factors that comes out of the Chaos Theory is that a very small disturbance, called a perturbation in physics, which happens at the front end of a sequence of events can lead to dramatically different answers at the end.

One writer described a butterfly under a tree, and pointed out that, if the butterfly flapped its wings, it would alter the air pattern, which would then move up through the leaves of the tree. Each leaf would alter the air flow again, and at the top of the tree an air pattern would emerge. The theory says that this air pattern can then slightly alter a gentle wind direction and, some time later, it could rain 1 000 km away, instead of raining at some other place. In other words, a minor front-end perturbation can result in a dramatically different final result.

This whole image of the butterfly flapping its wings has now become quite a poetic image, and many people use it without any idea of where it came from. You hear people saying: “Well, if the butterfly flaps its wings . . .”, and you get a knowing look.

Now to wind energy - it is quite surprising to me that nobody seems to have commented on how wind energy can affect the environment. To my mind, large-scale wind energy can do more to alter the climate than any coal-fired power station.

The wind farms are becoming quite large now. Some of them are pulling megawatts of electricity out of the air. What this means is that the energy pattern of the wind has been altered. We are not talking of one butterfly here, but rather a major alteration in the wind energy pattern.

Think about it - if some wind always blew inland from the sea, usually carrying a significant amount of water vapour, and the wind had a certain energy content then that wind with its water vapour would end up at some place.

Now some wind farmers pitch up and erect a wind farm that extracts some megawatts of power out of that wind. The wind is now weaker. It will not end up in the same place as before. Therefore, it could dump its water vapour in the form of rain, in a completely different place than before.

If one wants to look for some mechanism to alter climate, then this is it. One does not have to wait a hundred years to see the result. Pulling megawatts of energy out of a particular wind pattern will alter that wind and its consequences immediately.

So, if you are looking for some energy extraction method that can result in climate change, then, to my mind, wind farms are far more likely to do so than fossil-fuelled power stations. Give this some thought, folks.

We are talking of butterflies by the billion.

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