Reading an article on E&T about wind farms causing stress and sleep loss and I can't understand why people complain about the noise and yet there are hundreds of thousands of people living much closer to main railway lines and major motorways etc? Surely they generate more noise than a windfarm? I live close to a windfarm (you can see the turbines from my bedroom window) and they're not that noisy?
I think the interesting line here is "But the prospect of a sleepless night was generally an “indirect” link caused by the frustration evoked from having a loud wind farm in your community, it added."
I live in Cornwall, and a very vocal section of the population here do not like wind turbines, and similarly do not like solar farms. It is phenomenally hard to tell if their stated objections are actually their real objections. I don't know whether there has been research into this, I hope so, and if there has that would make a very interesting article.
We have just seen in the US that large sections of the community are reacting against "liberals forcing climate change down their throats" (amongst many, many other comparable issues). It is more important than ever to understand the deep seated reasons why people do not want these types of technology introduced, and what can be done about it.
We are living near a brand new wind farm of 8 units In France and to be truthful the only noise we hear is the swish of the rotating blades it is very soothing I find, but then living with tinnitus it creates a noise that helps.
The technology that has gone into these units seems to makes them more acceptable and the humming of the machinery inside can only be heard just a few metres away, the most annoying part is the flashing lights which one of the 8 stays white at night instead of changing to red.
It is a choice between wind ,wave & solar power against coal,gas,oil or Nuclear none of the last 4 would we like on our doorstep or even down the road from us
Coal stations are inherently dirty create noise and causes fracking to be thought about and used to get coal and traffic up and down the road,
gas and oil need wells to extract them pipes to supply them or massive storage facilities on site and again create noise less than the coal station but still noise and traffic up and down the road.
Nuclear stations are clean still create some noise but are perceived by many people to be a risk to life no-matter how safe they are reported to be and of course traffic up and down the road
One of the better solutions is the solar power farms which have the disadvantage of only work in daylight hours but are clean quiet and the latest units can produce surprisingly a good supply of power even on dull days
My neighbours get stressed if they have to park their cars more than 10ft from their front doors, so I'm not suprised that people get stressed by wind farms when they are bothered by such trivial matters.
I do agree that we'd all sleep better and be less stressed if there were no wind farms, or in fact no infrastructure to generate power at all. Then we'd have no electricity to charge our mobile phones, no trains to take us to work and no light polution - we could just sit at home all day reading detective novels by candlelight. I can see the appeal ;-)
Andy, thats an interesting link from the Independant and for once the actual paper isn't behind a paywall. It has all the usual maybe, possibly and large uncertainties. What I found interesting was the initial assumption that the previous ice age cycle have been caused by CO2, this did not appear to be justified. If you start with this assumption and then try to calculate the CO2 sensitivity you will automaticaly end up with a higher value than if you include other influences on the temperature such as variations the Earth's orbital path (Milankovich Cycles).
