Terahertz

With the overwhelming amount of negative and partisan 10%er mailouts, it’s easy to forget that they can actually be used constructively to help rebuild trust in politicians.

Exhibit A is NDP MP Megan Leslie who used her 10%ers to notify constituents about an art gallery display that she put on in her constituency office.

Exhibit B (below) is my own MP Joyce Murray, who used a flier to remind constituents about the importance of the Paralympic Games and to recognize Abraham Rogatnick, who recently passed away but is remembered as “father of Vancouver’s contemporary arts scene, architect, professor, mentor, intellectual, philanthropist, actor, author, and friend.”

Now, Ms. Murray did include a comment form which I filled out with concerns about either Bill C-311 or the HST (I don’t remember), but she did reply to me at last with her stance on the NDPs Climate Change Accountability Act:

Dear Mr. Bushfield:

Thank you for your correspondence concerning Bill C-311, an act to ensure Canada assumes its responsibilities in preventing dangerous climate change.

I have chosen to support Bill C-311 as it serves as a symbol for change. It signals that Canada is prepared to take strong action on the critical issue of climate change.

Unfortunately, I was not able to be in Ottawa during the vote to extend debate on this legislation. As the representative for Amateur Sport and the Olympics, I had a responsibility to be present in Athens, Greece, to receive the torch for the 2010 Olympic Games in Vancouver.

The Liberal Party of Canada has always been committed to combating climate change and creating a sustainable, low-carbon economy. It was a Liberal government that negotiated and signed the Kyoto Protocol, and ratified it in 2005, despite Conservative opposition. Under the previous Liberal governments significant funds were dedicated to reducing greenhouse gas emissions, partnerships were negotiated with the provinces, industry and the public to seek their cooperation, and emissions began to decline by 2005.

That being said, those Liberal members that voted to extend the Bill C-311 hearings at the Environment Committee are worried that it is an incomplete bill.  They also believe that realistic medium and long-term emissions targets will be set internationally at a United Nations conference culminating in Copenhagen this December.

The climate change crisis is the most urgent ecological and human concern of our generation and the subject of my own Masters Degree thesis almost eighteen years ago.

I have attached to this e-mail a recent speech given by Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff which lays out the Liberal platform regarding the environment and climate change.

Best regards,

Joyce Murray
Member of Parliament
Vancouver Quadra

That speech is available here. He sets 1990 as a base year, but in a quick skim I don’t know how much he wants to cut emissions below that level (remember that many are calling for as much as 45% reductions below 1990 level, Canada’s aiming for 3% currently with no effort planned). I should also point out that those Liberals who worried about the “incompleteness” of the bill had no trouble passing the exact same version last year. Nevertheless, the bill is through committee and set to be passed third reading in the New Year (and then hopefully through the Senate this time before any elections).

There will be at least one Albertan in Copenhagen fighting for real reductions in emissions from world leaders, and she’s posting her daily updates to a website for you to follow.

This is great for Linda Duncan and it comes on the heels of the news that Bill C-311 has finally passed the committee that the majority of Liberals needlessly sent it to a few months ago.

Copied below is her most recent e-newsletter that outlines the work she has been doing in Edmonton-Strathcona that may have been unnoticed compared to some who would seek to upstage her. Note how this is neither a wasteful 10%er nor a hyper-partisan attack ad.

December 2009

Newsletter from Linda Duncan, M.P.

Dear Friends,

As the holidays are almost upon us I wish to take this opportunity to wish you all the best of the season and share a few highlights from my work on the Hill. It may be an understatement to say it has been a very hectic Fall Session. We have celebrated some successes, but also some frustrations in our efforts to address the dual challenges Canada faces taking action for the economy and for the planet. I have provided brief updates on just some of some of our initiatives. We are doing our best to help you track my efforts and those of my colleagues in the federal New Democrat caucus through my web site www.lindaduncan.ndp.ca and my newsletters.

Climate Change and Environment

As the NDP Environment Critic, I have been fighting to get our bill, Bill C-311, An Act to ensure Canada assumes its responsibilities in preventing dangerous climate change to the final vote in the House of Commons before Copenhagen. Bill 311 would impose binding science-based targets for reduction of greenhouse gases and hold the government publicly accountable for taking concrete measures to comply.

Regrettably, 67 of 77 Liberals voted with the Conservatives to delay the final vote leaving the Bill languishing in Standing Committee hearings. (Testimony of the witnesses can be accessed via my website.)  As a result the only message from Parliament to the international negotiation tables will be the same regressive position of the Harper government.  Most other nations now view Canada as an impediment to success rather than a leader for change.  Rajendra Pachauri, head of United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, has said, “In the last couple of years, I’m afraid, Canada has not been seen as sitting at the table. I think Canada should be doing much more.” But the pressure on Canada mounts and I will continue to dialogue with other governments.

In December, I will be going to Copenhagen for the talks.  I will be posting a daily report on my website www.climatecountdown.ca. I encourage you to contact me with your views and actions so that we may post them.

I recently introduced a private member’s bill to establish a Canadian Environmental Bill of Rights, Bill C-469, which outlines the Government of Canada’s obligations to protect our rights to a healthy and ecologically balanced environment.  If you would like a copy, please contact my office:  780-495-8404.

Fair, Sustainable Trade

The Government’s indifference to the environment is also apparent in their international policies.  In June, for example, we debated the Canada-Peru trade agreement.  In my speech, I said, “Instead of strengthening the environmental provisions of our trade agreements, we are moving to water them down further. Despite the weaknesses of the North American Agreement on Environmental Cooperation, NAAEC, recommendation after recommendation to strengthen that agreement went in the opposite direction. The government has chosen to further downgrade any responsibilities for environmental protection either on this country or on the countries with which it signs trade agreements.”  You can find the rest of this speech and others at www.lindaduncan.ndp.ca/news.

In November, we again debated the Canada-Colombia Free Trade Deal and I noted:  “Every time we raise concerns about the government’s failure to act on environmental protection measures and climate change, it speaks of balance, and yet this agreement and the side agreement on the environment has severely pared back any environmental conditions as found in the agreement that we have with Mexico and the United States.”

Pensions

We tabled a series of bills and motions to implement a comprehensive plan designed to place Canada’s retirement income system on a more secure and equitable footing. A number of the motions received all party support. Many of the bills are in Committee.

Some of those measures include:

· Eliminating seniors’ poverty by increasing the income-tested Guaranteed Income Supplement (GIS) by $700 million a year. Since the majority of poor seniors are women, this is also the equitable thing to do. We will pay for this by cancelling $700 million from the Conservative’s next planned corporate tax cut, due in January.

· Working with the provinces to phase-in a doubling of CPP benefits (from about $11,000/yr. to almost $22,000/yr.), thus giving Canadians the chance to save in the least expensive, most secure, inflation-proof, retirement savings vehicle. Cost? An additional 2.5% of wages (matched by employers.

· Security for workplace pension plans through (a) a mandatory national pension insurance plan, paid for by pension plan sponsors and guaranteeing pension pay-outs of up to $2,500/month, and (b) a national facility, managed (with provincial agreement) by the CPP Investment Board, to adopt pension plans of failed companies and continue them on a going-concern basis to take advantage of market conditions and maximize pay-outs.

· A public National Pensions Summit, with representation from all interested parties -federal/provincial/territorial governments, employers, workers, seniors and experts – to consider these and other proposals for addressing the national pensions crisis.

Child care

Twenty years ago, on November 24, the Leader of Canada’s New Democrats, Ed Broadbent, sounded the alarm bell on the tragedy of child poverty in Canada. Since then, New Democrats have been pushing for action.  Tony Martin, M.P. for Sault Ste Marie, campaigned to bring the House of Commons HUMA Committee poverty hearings to Edmonton.  They took place on December 3 and my office worked with anti-poverty groups across the city to make sure they had the chance to testify.

Quality child care is a vital part of ensuring get a good start in life.  Olivia Chow has reintroduced our Early Learning and Child Care Act and you can find out more at her website www.oliviachow.ca. 

Employment insurance

One of the major failures in the current economic crisis is that we have not properly protected all those who were thrown out of work.  New Democrat bills and motions have sought to enable more unemployed Canadians to get Employment Insurance coverage and to get it sooner. www.chrischarlton.ca/news/labour.

Protection for consumers

My colleague Brian Masse scored a major victory when a motion fully supporting the goals of his Right-to-Repair Bill (C-273) passed unanimously in the House of Commons.  Brian’s bill dealt with the issue of on board diagnostic capabilities, which are contained in approximately 59 per cent of vehicles on the road in Canada. The use of computer control units is essential for proper vehicle maintenance. Difficulty in obtaining this equipment from vehicle manufacturers has created significant consumer concern and competitive barriers. Bill C-273 resolves these issues and guarantees a level playing field.  Canadians will be able to choose whether to have maintenance done by a manufacturer’s official dealer or an independent repair shop.

Jim Maloway, New Democrat M.P. for Elmwood-Transcona, was less fortunate in his attempt to bring in a bill of rights for airline passengers.  The Bloc Quebecois joined the Conservatives in trying to defeat his bill.  The Edmonton Journal ran an editorial on this on November 25.  In Don’t ground passenger rights, the Journal noted: “The facts are that Bill C-310 is a perfectly reasonable piece of legislation patterned after the European Union’s passenger bill of rights, which has been in force for five years without a hitch.”

Similarly, the Government has failed to act on the motion put forward by New Democrat consumer affairs critic, Glenn Thibeault, calling for comprehensive credit card legislation.  Glenn’s motion was passed by a majority of M.P.s, but the Finance Minister’s response of voluntary regulations have completely failed to protect consumers and small and medium-sized businesses.

Post-secondary education

Like many of you, I am deeply concerned that the financial problems being experienced by the University of Alberta and other post-secondary institutions will mean even higher fees for students, who are already struggling financially.  It is very difficult to find time to study properly when you have to take on two or three part time jobs.  According to the 2009 Statistics Canada report on university tuition fees released this morning average tuition fees for undergraduate students rose this year by 3.6 per cent despite the Consumer Price Index (CPI) dropping 0.8 per cent. Graduate students fared worse, facing an increase of close to 5 per cent.

Niki Ashton, New Democrat post-secondary critic is proposing a Post-Secondary Education Act. Similar to the Canada Health Act, it will guarantee that every federal dollar spent on PSE goes towards building an accessible high-quality post-secondary education system across the country.  I welcome input from students on how high tuition fees are affecting their education.  Please contact me:  DuncaL1@parl.gc.ca.

Justice

We have been overwhelmed this fall responding to a litany of “crime” bills mostly tabled as private member bills by Conservative back benchers. This practice has the very undemocratic result of reducing opportunity for debate. In most cases, no factual basis is offered for the measure. There appears to be a clear policy of reducing judicial discretion. We have agreed to send some of the bills to Committee in hope of improvement and in other instances opposed the reform as unnecessary. We have made constant requests for more resources to prevent crime through increased support to police, RCMP, prosecutors and community prevention programs. I based my vote to maintain the gun registry on the advice of Edmonton’s police chief and officers across Canada who believe it remains a valuable crime intervention tool.

In the riding

I attended the Edmonton Federation of 2009 Volunteer Recognition Gala on November 13^th.   Volunteers from Ottewell, McKernan, Argyll, Empire Park and Bonnie Doon were all recognized as heroes of their communities for their extraordinary contributions.

In early November, Strathcona Community League received a plaque from the Edmonton Historical Board.

There have been a wide variety of other events in our riding, from Remembrance Day in the Butterdome to Make Poverty History in the University Quad, which was once again a tribute to the dedication and idealism of the young people who organized it.

I would like to thank McKernan, Queen Alexandra, Hazeldean and Mill Creek Schools, who all invited me to come and read to them during Read-In Week. I was pleased to speak to classes both at University of Alberta and King’s University College.  I would also like to congratulate the students at King’s who organized, with Amnesty International, a rally about Omar Khadr.

Our arts community continues to flourish, with excellent plays at local theatres this fall.  I was very pleased to see that Maria Dunn was nominated for Solo Artist of the Year at the Canadian Folk Music Awards.

Please contact my office with questions, requests and concerns.  You can also visit my websites:

www.lindaduncan.ndp.ca

www.climatecountdown.ca

You can also join me on Facebook or follow me on Twitter.

As it is the time of year when we tend to do extra shopping, I would like to encourage you to support our local businesses! I wish you and your families all the very best for the holiday season and the New Year.

 

Linda Duncan, M.P.

Edmonton-Strathcona

10049 81 Ave

Edmonton, AB, T6E 1W7

780-495-8404

Almost two years ago the naysayers were coming out:

To launch a carbon tax now in the face of a potential recession would be foolhardy. Those gouged by it would be forced to cut spending on other goods and services, aggravating the slowdown and triggering further unemployment.

While I don’t like Gordon Campbell and his party, and Carole James attack of the tax was very misguided, you have to admit the tax hasn’t crippled BC. BCs GDP hasn’t dropped any more than the rest of Canada, and it looks like BC will actually be doing quite reasonably next year.

Now, the actual environmental effects of this tax may take a while to see, but it is good to point out that you can have both an economy and an environmental platform.

It’s also worth noting that some of the arguments against the HST (that it will slow spending) were the same as those against the Carbon Tax, and I’ll agree that they’re likely alarmist arguments. But I still oppose the HST since it fails to do anything for the people of BC and Ontario. Since tax cuts are just being straight shifted to large businesses, and is costing every Canadian $200 ($6 billion in handouts from Ottawa) before the tax is even in place. Further, the tax comes with a load of strings, limiting the ability of BC and Ontario to exempt products from the tax in the future. While harmonization may make sense, using it as a method of tax structure shifting is wrong.

Because denying evolution is the fundamental basis for evolution isn’t enough for some, it seems the climate change denialists are ramping up to an all out war.

Now, I’m not talking about such violent wars as the “war on Christmas” or “militant atheism,” but an actual, increasingly illegal and violent effort to attack, discredit and threaten real scientists.

The first big break the villains had was their release of hacked emails from the Climate Research Group of East Anglia University. Ignore the fact that these emails contain little more than the honest concerns and relays of human beings, it gave denialists the belief that they’d uncovered the Truth^TM what they’d always known – that anthropogenic climate change is an international plot to make Al Gore the supreme leader of a new Communist dictatorship.

These denialists come in every form, some are ardent atheists that I share some common ground, others are Christian. Almost all tend to also believe in lazy-fairy capitalism though.

On a Facebook post about how Canada could actually be doing something to save the environment right now had the coalition actually achieved government a year ago I got these gems:

how is it possible to NOT be skeptical over climate change when it has recently become apparent that there is no pure science on this? The data have been manipulated and in some cases, completely fabricated. The "scientists" conducting these studies do not do so in the interest of gaining knowledge, but because they have an agenda.
I’m not saying that it’s all bullshit, but I am saying that it is irresponsible of the government to act on bad information, especially when doing so will cost taxpayers a metric shitload of money, and some people their jobs. [emphasis added]

I don’t believe in global warming with the data available at the moment and neither do most people. Thats why its been changed to "climate change". Ian, as a scientist or soon to be one, you should be appalled over the disgrace that has fallen over some of the scientific community. This is a disgrace to the "peer-reviewed" procedure. After all, what’s the point if your peer holds the same political and cultural agenda and is willing to cross scientific barriers to see it through.[Refuting links added]

If the emails really discredit all science accumulated over the past thirty years on climate change, then show me how and where they say that. Otherwise shut the fuck up.

But I guess stealing emails wasn’t enough.

Now, the University of Victoria is being broken into and sketchy “technicians” are wandering the halls at the Canadian Centre for Climate Modeling and Analysis. These are actual criminal acts.

I like this comparison of the increasing violence:

Unless we’re prepared to rewrite history so that the real villains of Watergate were the Democrats for having a hotel room worth breaking into.

I’m really worried about this conflict though.

In the evolution vs. creationism conflict, you have overwhelming evidence dogmatic ignorance.

In this debate though, you have overwhelming evidence, except now the dogmatic ignorance has big oil funding behind it.

Don’t even pick up The Epoch Times.

The Georgia Straight has raised the Skeptic North ire a few times now with credulous anti-vax and homeopathic articles, but the average edition of the Straight contains one credulous article and a bunch of left-wing bias, all buried after about 5 pages of pure ads.

The Epoch Times meanwhile, which is available nationwide for free, online, and for paid subscribers, takes the credulity cake with their latest edition.

2012, LHC destroying the Earth, evolution and global warming are myths.

That’s right, over half of their “science and environment” page is dedicated to anti- or pseudoscientific rubbish.

And this from a paper that looks and feels like a real newspaper. Of course CanWest has a history of anti-evolution and anti-global warming stances, so perhaps The Times is just trying to catch up through mimicry.

So let’s do quick dissections of the crap that prompted me to write this piece:

From the LHC article:

After a year’s delay, scientists at the world’s biggest accelerator have restarted an experiment to recreate "Big Bang" conditions that had sparked suggestions the Earth would be sucked in by millions of black holes.

Yes, there are “suggestions,” but not by any real scientists. The rest of the article also totally ignored this fact. Nothing like using juicy lies to hook readers into your article.

The entire 2012 article mentions how the movie loosely mentions a few prophecies then delves into them without a single interview or fact check:

On the winter solstice of 2012, the sun will align with the dark rift of the Milky Way …Only in the last five years have scientists discovered that there is indeed a black hole in the center of our galaxy. [“…” in original]

Black holes again! Those things are scary! Too bad that one is a whopping 25,000 light years from the centre. Given Newton’s handy discovery of gravity being proportional to 1 over the square of the distance, that means that we’re not going to start plummeting to the centre of the galaxy regardless of how the galaxy turns. In fact, if you read that “dark rift” horseshit right, you could assume that we’d see slightly less mass between us and the big, bad black hole, and the gravitational force would actually be less in 2012 (to a crude approximation). Earth has been in the Milky Way for 4.5 billion years, and will continue to sit here for another 5 billion or so until the sun eats us up (or ejects us from the solar system).

Einstein affirmed Charles Hapgood’s theory of Earth crust displacement, that the Earth’s shifting crust will cause the north south poles to shift toward the equator. Recent research by geologists Adam Maloof and Galen Halverson proves that a polar shift has happened before, at least twice in the distant past.
Is this just a coincidence or are these prophetically accurate warnings?

Yes, it is a coincidence. I like how Einstein is trotted out for no reason other than to make the “polar shift” idea sound credible. Einstein corresponded with lots of people and he was “electrified” by Hapgood’s ideas of polar shifts, which has since been replaced by the widely accepted plate tectonic theory. “Pole” shifts still

It’s nice that they trot out the geologists, since Maloof wrote an explanation for National Geographic of how polar shifts will not result in 2012 like catastophes:

it would take 1-100 million years to accomplish a 50 degree pole shift. In other words, although pole shifting may seem rapid to a geologist, it would still be imperceptible to human generations and even to whole civilizations.

…

Pole shifting is a fascinating and important process in geological history, but will have nothing to do with the Mayans or with 2012.

Great research their Epoch Times. They end with this dire warning though:

But one fact remains certain—if indeed the poles were to shift and worldwide havoc were to ensue, the sight of tsunamis ripping apart cities, earthquakes splitting through supermarkets, meteors spewing from volcanic eruptions, and massive floods … will not be entertaining at all. This is, after all, a story about humans trying to survive what simply cannot be survived.

That fact is not certain. That is a distortion, a lie, and bad reporting.

Next they challenge the notion that CO2 is causing global warming, implying that no research has been done in climatology in 53 years!

While looking at some old copies of Life magazine in an antique store in the spring of 2008, I came across a very interesting article from August 1956 about the fear of global warming. It reviewed many possible causes for the phenomenon, including increased levels of CO2. There seems to be nothing new today that goes beyond this 1956 article.

Perhaps don’t read Life magazine for science then? The “journalist” then trots some discredited crap about sun cycles, the belief the world has been cooling for 4 years (not exactly the definition of climate…), this lie:

During the late 1960s and 70s, the press, the public and many “scientists” were worried about global cooling and the return of an ice age.

Well, perhaps not a lie, since he did put scare quote around scientists, a review of the literature proves that this was more a public misperception than what real scientists (note the lack of quotes) believed.

Then there’s this:

What about greenhouse gases? As noted in the Scientific American of July 2004, atmospheric methane gas remains in minuscule concentrations of only about 1.7 ppm, CO2 is roughly 220 times as concentrated at the planet’s surface (although, still at a very low 0.038 percent), while water vapour is a whopping 6,000 times as plentiful. Surely, the sun’s effect on atmospheric water vapour plays a much stronger role in global temperature variation than does CO2.

Just 1.7 ppm for methane, 374 ppm for CO2 but 10000 ppm water! Wow those are crazy numbers! Too bad they’re fucking meaningless to climate change.

Yes, water does affect global temperatures, but it’s really hard to change atmospheric concentrations of water, whereas to change CO2 and methane requires simply burning crap constantly since the middle of the nineteenth century. In fact, in the past 5 years, CO2 concentration has increased by 3% alone, and by 25% in the past century. The fact is we do not live in the same climate as we did 100 years ago.

Unfortunately this was only Part 1, with the second part promising to discuss “melting glaciers and ice sheets, long-term weather forecasting, and political support for CO2 reduction.” I somehow doubt real science will be reported.

Finally, the evolution article follows Carl Wener (no, not the German watercolourist, this one has a doctorate in medicine), the seemingly sole winner of the Norman D Jones Science Award, who later went on to preach biblical creationism (not mentioned in the “science” article).

Werner doubts evolution because the “laws of chemistry would preclude life from forming by itself.” After a fun “life-long adventure” (it obviously didn’t last a lifetime since he’s still around to talk about it, maybe he needs to keep searching), he decided there was no evidence for evolution and now makes up lies against science.

The entire article is an advertisement for the creationists book “The Grand Experiment” and finishes with these quotes from Werner,

“Basically what I read in the college textbook was in contradiction to what I was finding out in the field when we did the interviews with the scientists. So there was great disparity between what was written and what the reality was,” Werner said.
“There’s a lack of candor in the universities on this one topic. It is kind of a closed topic. Scientists are unwilling to discuss it openly because of fear of repercussion.”

Scientists are always investigating evolution. How about read a real book on evolution, learn that we know a lot more than just fossils (which we have lots), and stop shouting persecution when you’re just wrong.

Usually when a newspaper tries to present creationism, it’s usually a point-counterpoint that results in a draw, with a real scientist at least getting interviewed. Epoch Times, you fail even the basic test.

I’ll end with this note: The main readership of The Epoch Times are Chinese populations (seeing as how the paper was founded by Falun Gong members and routinely attacks the atrocious human rights record of the Chinese Communist Party), meanwhile, nearly all North American skeptics groups are predominantly white, middle-class males(even in Vancouver where nearly 20% of the population is Chinese). While some attention has been paid to the gender discrepancy, race has been an even greater taboo.

If we want to grow as a movement, we need to take action to diversify beyond our limited appeal. Clearly there’s credulity in other cultures, but there’s also skeptics. We’re more alike than we are different and we only limit our potential by not reaching out to skeptics of other cultures.

In response to my MP Joyce Murray’s recent press release slamming the Harper Conservatives on climate inaction, I sent her the following:

Dear Joyce Murray,

I appreciate your statement challenging the Harper Conservatives on their inaction on climate change, however your own record in parliament is not much better. Can you please explain why you weren’t present for the vote to postpone Bill C-311, the Climate Change Accountability Act, and why a number of your caucus members sided with inaction and postponed the bill, which the Liberals NDP and Bloc passed in the last parliament.

For your words to have meaning, they need to be backed with action. Without the passage of Bill C-311, we have no stance before the Copenhagen talks. We all knew the Conservatives were against action, but when the time came to stand against them and stand up for the environment, where were you, and where was the Liberal Party?

Sincerely,

Ian Bushfield

A concerned constituent.

I wrote a while back about “Wind Concerns Ontario,” the NIMBYist anti-wind turbine group run by ex-Ontario Liberal staffer John Laforet and their connection to the dubious pseudo-science of “wind turbine syndrome.”

Well, now they’ve upped their crap level by republishing an article straight from the climate change denialist (and creationist columnist for the Calgary Herald) Lorne Gunter.

Gunter comments on the recent “climategate” scandal of supposed “cooked data” and claims again that the world’s been cooling for years now. This is crap since the top 11 warmest years on record have been in the past 13. Never mind the fact the whole scandal is overblown and doesn’t actually discredit any real science that’s been done by countless climatologists working the world over.

So WCO: You’re not Progressive, you’re demonstrably anti-science, and you are setting this country back. It’s time to stop now.

Next thing you know we’ll see Laforet endorsing Harper and Prentice’s attempts to derail the Copenhagen talks. Perhaps he’ll even join the Blogging Tories since his denialism and anti-environmentalism will fit right in.

Now, countdown till the Defenders of the TruthTM return.

Update: My countdown lasted only an hour. Also, see this website for a great dissection of the so-called scandal (h/t Brian D.).

Any time you attack a conspiracy, the Defenders of the Truth^TM always seem to crawl from the woodwork to smack you down with further gibberish and then scream of censorship.

So let’s look at MAnderson and AAW’s comments on my post “Wind Concerns Ontario, and the sun doesn’t?”

MAnderson:

Funny you should mention Wikipedia. Is this your master source of information you turn to in order to give validity to a subject?

My goodness. Give your head a shake. This is Wikipedia we’re talking about!

There has been a long standing battle with Wiki to get a balanced view on the subject. They immediately delete anything that offends their paridigm. [sic] One moderator even said “But this might hurt the wind industry” as his basis for removing the information. They are blinded by ideology (much like yourself) and refuse to allow anything to do with WTS on their site.

When the words “paradigm,” “blinded by ideology” and un-sourced quotes (remember, Wikipedia talk pages maintain most debates on the issues) are trotted out, you likely have one of two options:

A. Wikipedia is clearly biased against the Truth^TM and won’t accept their articles without scholarly sources.
B. They have no scientific backing and are therefore not notable enough to even be worth mentioning.

Perhaps they might be able to get an article over at Conservapedia (which just so unfortunately is having server issues right now).

Why did I go first to Wikipedia? Maybe because while their information isn’t always the most thorough, it is generally unbiased, and a relatively high quality of encyclopedia (as good as real encyclopedias). Suffice it to say, if you’re not in Wikipedia, you’re not that important.

You didn’t mention the survey led by Dr. McMurtry, former Dean of Medicine at the University of Western Ontario. You didn’t mention the work done by Dr’s in the UK, Australia and the US. You didn’t mention that reports of these same symptoms are being reported by hundreds of people in Australia, Japan and the US. No, you chose to do what most who are confronted with this information do, attack Dr. Pierpont personally.

Of course I didn’t mention those studies! I don’t have the references to all your random articles. They aren’t listed by Ms. Pierpont on her website, and they aren’t linked to anywhere on your own WCO website. Who’s suppressing information now?

As far as I can tell from a quick Google Scholar search, shows only Ms. Pierpont showing up for “wind turbine syndrome,” a clear call that her views aren’t even narrowly accepted. You can find a pdf of a draft of her book this way though.

Unfortunately, I can’t find Dr. McMurtry’s paper (note: the survey link that’s buried on WCO’s website takes you to this 404 page), perhaps you could enlighten me with a real reference, as well as some others so I may be as privileged to the Truth^TM as you are.

After my spam filter ate most of MAnderson’s posts (which I recovered after awakening this morning), he flipped out and posted this friendly response:

Censoring my information, are you? I’m no longer allowed to post here? Obviously your need to be “right” outweighs your compassion to people.

Yep, I’m officially as evil as Wikipedia. Don’t disagree with my obscure science/atheism/political blog or I’ll delete your comment! I get all of a few dozen readers and I’ll be damned before they see a competing view.

Or maybe you just overposted or something, I don’t know what happened, my SpamKarma plugin ate them, and I made it spit them out. I’ve left worse comments online then yours MAnderson.

Then my favourite comment from AAW:

Bat Lungs are Exploding because of Wind Turbines…..do you think bats do this intentionally to create alarm to the NIMBY’ist position? Get real.

No link, no mention of a study, just a bunch of capitalized words that resemble a sentence. I have to assume it’s in reference to this University of Calgary study, which proposes the following explanation (which have no relation to claims of “infrasound” or noise levels) and solutions:

The movement of wind-turbine blades creates a vortex of lower air pressure around the blade tips similar to the vortex at the tip of aeroplane wings. Others have suggested that this could be lethal to bats, but until now no-one had carried out necropsies to verify the theory.
…
One solution could be to increase the minimum wind speed needed to set the blades in motion. Most bats are more active in low wind.

So remember my conclusion?

Some sceptics admit it’s likely if the low frequency noise disrupts your sleep there’s some cause for concern, but agree that it shouldn’t be that hard to just limit turbines to a radius of a few kilometres from residences.

Move wind turbines and people apart and no problem. WCO seems to find the only justifiable response to be to ban all wind turbines (of course they offer no mission statement on their website, and just vague attacks on “industrial wind power”). Now that’s reasonable.

So what does a real scientific paper have to say about wind turbine’s and health?

Abstract from: E. Pedersen et. al., “Response to noise from modern wind farms in The Netherlands,” J. Accoust. Soc. Am. 126 (2) pp. 634-643, August 2009.

The increasing number and size of wind farms call for more data on human response to wind turbine noise, so that a generalized dose-response relationship can be modeled and possible adverse health effects avoided. This paper reports the results of a 2007 field study in The Netherlands with 725 respondents. A dose-response relationship between calculated A-weighted sound pressure levels and reported perception and annoyance was found. Wind turbine noise was more annoying than transportation noise or industrial noise at comparable levels, possibly due to specific sound properties such as a “swishing” quality, temporal variability, and lack of nighttime abatement. High turbine visibility enhances negative response, and having wind turbines visible from the dwelling significantly increased the risk of annoyance. Annoyance was strongly correlated with a negative attitude toward the visual impact of wind turbines on the landscape. The study further demonstrates that people who benefit economically from wind turbines have a significantly decreased risk of annoyance, despite exposure to similar sound levels. Response to wind turbine noise was similar to that found in Sweden so the dose-response relationship should be generalizable.

Even from just the abstract, we see a lot of the annoyance is a psychological result of NIMBYism. If you don’t like wind turbines, they’re likely to bother you more and you’re likely to get more sick when you’re stressed.

I wonder if the first people to live near airports or roads got as annoyed and as sick. What if in 30 years when there’s wind turbines everywhere no one cares anymore?

Finally, this is for MAnderson:

There’s a new Coalition in Ontario, no not a political, NDP-Con / Con-Lib / Con-Bloc / Lib-NDP-Bloc type, instead it’s:

…a province wide coalition of thirty-three grassroots organizations in twenty-one counties and the City of Toronto that seeks to raise awareness about the impacts of industrial wind power facilities on health, the environment, the economy and the quality of life.

And it goes by the name of Wind Concerns Ontario.

Chaired by former-Liberal Blogger John Laforet, this group is getting press for opposing the Government of Ontario’s attempt to put those dastardly green wind turbines across the province.

Laforet and his coalition have clearly read “Wind Turbine Syndrome” by Dr. Nina Pierpont. Note, this is a book, not a scientific paper. I’d come across this website months ago, but dismissed it too out of hand to even blog.

So what is WTS?

Don’t look to Wikipedia, because it doesn’t even get notability for its own page. Hell, even the “Environmental effects of wind power” page doesn’t mention it. It even says on the talk page:

Health effects

Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Health effects of wind power was today closed as “delete”, but much of the material immediately re-appeared in this article at Environmental effects of wind power#Health effects (see [1]) so the questionable content hasn’t been deleted at all. As I say, the article is to be deleted, not merged, so I am removing the merged content. Johnfos (talk) 21:21, 15 August 2009 (UTC)

I agree, the closing rationale of the deletion discussion was that “While some articles do not need peer reviewed sources, those, that deal with scientific issues, such as health, do. If this is to be a serious article, it needs relevant basis. If those are found, the article should be written again. Until then, no article is better.” Hence, the contents of that article should not have been copied by their creator to appear in this article – rst20xx (talk) 23:30, 20 August 2009 (UTC)

WTS is claimed to be a set of symptoms experienced by a select few who live near wind turbines. The research is thin and not widely accepted.

Some sceptics admit it’s likely if the low frequency noise disrupts your sleep there’s some cause for concern, but agree that it shouldn’t be that hard to just limit turbines to a radius of a few kilometres from residences.

Nevertheless, the media loves to overstate the results of Dr. Peirpont’s “research” which greatly fails the test of scientific legitimacy.

Greyhound says it can’t afford Northern Manitoba or Ontario to continue doing business, so it’s pulling out, leaving many rural communities stranded.

Seeing as Greyhound is a Texas based company, perhaps the most economically stimulating solution (to our economy) would be (rather than bailing out foreign interests which would save 20-100 jobs of drivers and station managers)  to invest in a public transit option.

In fact, there’s a few options here.

The governments could opt to buy out Greyhound’s business in the provinces, thereby providing public busing between the towns and cities (the major city bus routes would also have to be bought up to afford the smaller routes). This would be the fastest and cheapest solution, but maintains a dirty diesel fleet of buses.  It’s worth noting that in this first option since Canada Post is already delivering mail daily to these communities, the parcels could be carried along with the buses, saving a trip to each location (and lessening the environmental impact since buses are likely marginally worse than the Canada Post trucks).

A better option might be to pay Greyhound to run the lines while the governments invest in a large-scale commuter rail project, thereby creating hundreds to thousands of jobs (something “Canada’s Economic Action Plan” seems to have been failing to do) across the country. The rail system could even be expanded to cover the entire country.

Of course, both of these options being far too interventionist by nature will likely give way to the Friedmanite Third Way of saying screw the small communities that aren’t profitable and let them pay for gas to get to town.

Although, perhaps with an NDP government, Manitoba may actually be able to make some real changes here (they supposedly already demand that Greyhound service all routes or none).