There's a raging debate about whether wind farms have an impact on people's health. Stephen Luntz was highly skeptical until he found the answer — elephants!
I FOLLOW THE DEBATE about wind farms pretty closely. This was discussed in my article, entitled: Anti wind farm lobby claims break all laws of physics.
Reading this piece by Ketan Joshi on research into the level of infra-sound produced by wind farms I came across this comment:
'Perhaps it has nothing to do with infra-sound being potentially transmitted through air but via the much more efficient medium of the earth itself. Animals that use infra-sound as a means of communicating over vast distances, do so either through the earth they’re standing on, or the ocean they’re swimming in.'
This was the only comment by an opponent or undecided person that wasn't blindingly stupid or contrary to basic physics.
It started me thinking.
It is indeed true that elephants and whales use infra-sound to communicate over huge distances. They are able to do this because rock and water transmit sound more efficiently than air.
Having evolved this mechanism, both are very good at producing low frequency noise. Probably a lot better than wind turbines which, after all, are designed to produce as little sound frequency as possible — since any energy lost as sound is not going into making electricity.
Whales are not a problem, unless you are trying to sleep under water. Although those submarine hotels might have something to worry about.
But what about elephants? If wind-farms really are a threat to the health of everyone in the vicinity, surely elephants must be too?
I live about 700 metres from Melbourne zoo – as the crow flies – or the infra-sound travels. That is roughly a third of the distance at which I would be entitled to have a wind turbine blocked under Victorian law.
In this zoo are elephants! I have seen them with my own eyes. I’ve even donated used corks for the fundraiser to help them out — what a fool I feel now.
Here are these giant beasts – making low frequency noises too low for us to hear – polluting much of the inner city, causing loss of sleep, headaches and nausea. Not to mention the other hundred plus problems Dr Simon Chapman has documented as being attributed to Wind Turbine Syndrome.
Remember, there is not just one elephant in the zoo, but a whole damn herd of the things!
Our newspapers celebrate when new elephants are born, rather than mourning the creation of a new pollution generating device.* Get them out!
My reduced concentration span started not long after I moved into this house. I thought it was the effects of Facebook. Now I know it is the elephants.
I have a friend who lives in the Commonwealth Games village – the very same suburb – who suffers from severe insomnia. The cause is now obvious. She needs to get out!
I am puzzled, I must say, that no one else seems to have realised this.
House prices in Parkville are some of the highest in Melbourne. Do people not realise they are paying huge amounts of money to be exposed to elephant derived pollution?
Prices are lower in Brunswick and West Brunswick, but they have experienced some of the fastest rises in Victoria in the last decade. Imagine the conspiracy it must take to keep tens of thousands of residents from catching on? Perhaps everyone who does simply disappears?
If you don’t hear from me soon, please conduct inquiries. For your own sake, do it discreetly.
I do wonder why those brave folk at the Waurbra Foundation, and their generous backers at the Institute of Public Affairs have not got behind this.
Are they too scared to take on the all powerful zoo lobby? Don’t they realise that more people live within 2km of the zoo than live within 2km of every large windmill in the country?
I shall be writing to the local MP immediately.
*To be fair the babies probably don’t produce much infra-sound for quite a few years – but when they grow to be horny adolescents, watch out.
This article was originally published on Stephen Luntz's blog Forensics, Fossils and Fruitbats.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Australia License
