ABC Wind "Victims" Rebuked as Wind's Winning Streak Rolls On

Wind's winning streak continues in Massachusetts this week with three big victories - including a particularly embarrassing loss for a self-proclaimed victim of "wind turbine syndrome" whose cause had been promoted by Fox and ABC.

First, a federal judge not only ruled in favor of Cape Wind against Bill Koch's front group, he told it to knock off the frivolous lawsuits:

A federal judge has dismissed a lawsuit challenging what could become the first offshore wind farm in the United States, ruling that the constitution prohibits the opponents from suing the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.

The plaintiffs — the Town of Barnstable, three local businesses and an ad-hoc opposition group — sued the state in January, saying it illegally pushed electric utility NStar to buy power from the planned Cape Wind farm, the Boston Globe reported. NStar has agreed to buy 27.5 percent of the project’s power.

Judge Richard Stearns of the District Court for Massachusetts dismissed the case Friday and sharply criticized Cape Wind’s opponents for repeatedly bringing lawsuits against it after they lose in court.

Just down the road in Fairhaven this week, a judge ruled the town's wind turbines are perfectly legal, dealing a blow to the local "WindWise" group that promotes wind turbine hypochondria:

A Bristol County Superior Court judge has found in favor of the town of Fairhaven and Fairhaven Wind in the latest lawsuit brought by wind turbine opponents.

And now the real eye-roller. Last October, an ABC News report gave an extremely long, very credulous account of the story of Sue and Edward Hobart. The Falmouth homeowners claimed a wind turbine more than 5 football fields away caused a wide range of mysterious health problems, even though Sue Hobart later admitted that she had suffered from ringing in her ears for "quite a while," but claimed it had gotten worse "since the turbines." The Hobarts filed a six-figure lawsuit against the turbine manufacturer, claiming the turbine hurt the value of their home.

Fox and other conservative outlets immediately seized on the Hobarts' claims to attack wind energy. It went viral with wind hypochondriacs - the original ABCnews.com article has over 1,000 comments, including tales of wind turbines causing instantaneous fainting.

But this week, Falmouth ruled against the Hobarts' claims and in the process revealed something not mentioned in any previous reporting:

The Falmouth Zoning Board of Appeals declined to call a privately owned wind turbine a nuisance Thursday night, saying that claims of detrimental health effects because of its operation were insufficient.

The turbine at 82 Technology Park Drive in East Falmouth is owned by Notus Clean Energy LLC. Ed and Sue Hobart, formerly of 476 Blacksmith Shop Road, complained last year about the turbine's noise and the subsequent effects on their health. Building Commissioner Eladio Gore found the turbine did not constitute a nuisance, and the Hobarts appealed his ruling to the zoning board.

Zoning Administrator Sari Budrow said the four members of the board who participated in the discussion Thursday night, which was the conclusion of a hearing that began in March, unanimously found the health complaints were not persuasive.

The Hobarts have sold their house and argued the loss they took on the sale was a direct result of the turbine; however, other factors, including mold and radon on the property, also were found to be at work, Budrow said the board determined.

Mold and radon are both very real health threats, unlike easily disproven health claims related to wind turbines. Why didn't the original ABC article investigate whether the Hobarts' health claims were caused by mold or radon? The article never even mentioned them - the words "mold" and "radon" never appear.

Did the Hobarts withhold information about the mold and radon on their property? Or did ABC choose to withhold it for some other reason? In either case, ABC didn't tell viewers the whole story.

ABC should consider retracting its original report. At the very least, it should run an update and explain why viewers didn't hear about mold and radon in the first report.

Judge Rules Falmouth Wind Turbines Cause "Dental Injuries"

Barnstable County Superior Court Judge Christopher Muse has declared wind turbines cause dental injuries:

Neil and Elizabeth Andersen, who live about a quarter of a mile from the turbines, said they caused "continuous insomnia, headaches, psychological disturbances, dental injuries, and other forms of malaise" they had not suffered prior to the turbines’ construction.

"The court finds the Andersens claims that they did not experience such symptoms prior to the construction and operation of the turbines, and that that each day of operation produces further injury, to be credible," the judge wrote.

Continued operation of the turbines at previous levels put residents at risk of "irreparable physical and psychological harm," he judge wrote.

Let's break down the ways Judge Muse is ignoring reality:

• What exactly causes these problems? Wind turbine opponents don't have an answer - that's why they throw out dozens of discombobulated theories (sound! infrasound! air pressure! shadows! electromagnetism!) in hopes you might find one plausible. Meanwhile, a comprehensive independent assessment of all available research showed no basis for the litany of conditions blamed on "wind turbine syndrome."
• Why are so many people immune from "wind turbine syndrome"? Why do a few people say they feel sick in so many different ways, while so many of their neighbors - and even children in the same household of "syndrome" sufferers - feel great? Judge Muse doesn't have an answer, but science does. Research shows it's a communicated disease: People who expect to feel sick do, while those who don't expect to get sick don't. Turning off the turbines won't cure that - turning off Fox will.
• Why do wind turbines only make people sick at night? Why don't they make people sick during the day? Either Judge Muse is leaving people at great risk of illness during the day, or he's admitting his own logic doesn't hold water.

A judge willing to create his own reality is the last hope for Falmouth's wind turbine opponents, whose neighbors don't believe their increasingly absurd claims. In April, voters at a town meeting declined to have a referendum on tearing down the turbines. Town officials decided to have the referendum anyway, so in May voters rejected tearing down the turbines by a 2-to-1 margin.

If you live in Falmouth, join the hundreds of residents who support the wind turbines. And no matter where you live, like Friends of Falmouth Wind on Facebook.

Massachusetts Voters Keep Rejecting Wind Turbine Restrictions

It's happened again, this time in Plymouth. Once again, an effort to limit wind turbines was put before voters, citing hazy "health" concerns, and once again clean energy has won in a landslide.

The Plymouth Town Meeting on Saturday rejected a de facto ban on new wind turbines:

If approved, this article would have limited the construction of wind turbines to two overlay districts – one at the Camelot Industrial Park, the other along Commerce Way – and would have modified the required setbacks and the total height allowed. Opponents of the article suggested that if it were approved no additional wind turbines could be located in town.

Town Meeting Rep. Simon Thomas, part owner of the Camelot Wind turbine, said that Plymouth was already the toughest place in New England to try and get a permit for a new turbine.

The article would've required a two-thirds supermajority to pass, but didn't even come close to a simple majority, losing 49-68. The clear defeat for turbine opponents comes just weeks after the Plymouth Zoning Board rejected Stop & Shop's request to build a wind turbine, citing the dangers of an I think I might be able to hear it pandemic and don't forget deadly shadows.

The Plymouth vote comes on the heels of similar election results over the last few months in the nearby towns of Fairhaven and Falmouth. Falmouth elected officials put a plan to tear down the town's wind turbines before voters, who rejected it by a nearly 2-to-1 margin. And in Fairhaven, voters chose a pro-reality candidate for Board of Health over an turbine hysteria candidate, also by a nearly 2-to-1 margin.

While elected officials keep trying to pander to the vocal handful of wind hypochondriacs who show up to complain at meetings, Massachusetts voters continue to strongly support local wind energy projects. How many times to do they have to send that message at the ballot box before it sinks in?

Wind Turbines Raised My Cholesterol!

Yes, a Falmouth resident actually said that:

Ford said his cholesterol has “gone wild” since Wind I started operating, and he was prescribed blood pressure medication for the first time.

Again, I'm sure he truly believes that. But it's not a basis for creating sound public policy.

Wind Turbines Have No Impact on Nearby Home Values, New Study Confirms

Wind turbine opponents do not like looking at wind turbines. But in the face of strong public support for non-polluting, locally-produced clean energy, that's not an effective argument, so they make outrageous claims about health impacts and property values.

Study after study has proven claims about health impacts are false, and now a new study confirms nearby wind turbines have no impact on property values:

Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) analyzed more than 50,000 home sales near 67 wind facilities in 27 counties across nine U.S. states, yet was unable to uncover any impacts to nearby home property values.

“This is the second of two major studies we have conducted on this topic and in both studies [using two different datasets] we find no statistical evidence that operating wind turbines have had any measureable impact on home sales prices,” says Ben Hoen, the lead author of the new report. [...]

“Although there have been claims of significant property value impacts near operating wind turbines that regularly surface in the press or in local communities, strong evidence to support those claims has failed to materialize in all of the major U.S. studies conducted thus far”, says Hoen. “Moreover, our findings comport with the large set of studies that have investigated other potentially similar disamenities, such as high voltage transmission lines, land fills, and noisy roads, which suggest that widespread impacts from wind turbines would be either relatively small or non-existent.”

Distant wind turbines are at most a minor inconvenience, something you might not pick as part of your new home in a perfect world, but one that wouldn't deter you from buying a home in the real world.

Look at Falmouth, Fox's favorite example of the WIND MENACE - home prices are up in the last year. And they're flat in other places with wind turbines like Fairhaven, Hull, Kingston and Scituate, a far cry from the outrageous claims of home price decimation made by clean energy opponents.

Don't Back Down to Cape Cod Anti-Wind Bullies

Longtime Cape Wind opponent Peter Kenney has an op-ed in today's New Bedford Standard Times attacking me personally. It's part of a broader strategy by wind opponents to bully clean energy supporters into silence. Will Massachusetts leaders stand up for reasoned debate, or give into scare tactics?

What was my crime in Kenney's eyes? Daring to point out that Bill Koch, a billionaire Cape Cod estate owner and heir to a polluting energy fortune, is blocking New Bedford clean energy jobs by bankrolling Cape Wind opposition.

I'm only the latest person Kenney has targeted for personal attacks. "Mr. Kenney has a history of not being able to disagree respectfully," Yarmouth Planning Board Chairman Erik Tolley said last year.

What's bizarre is that in Kenney's op-ed, he claims I refused to take his call. I talked to him on April 23 for two minutes. Here's my annotation of the phone record:

It was a short call. He immediately launched into berating me for supporting Cape Wind and accused me of taking bribes not to say anything bad about Cape Wind. I asked why he was calling since it didn't exactly sound like there was much room to win him over. We said goodbye. That was it.

It's not just Kenney - across Cape Cod in Falmouth, wind opponents are using similar bullying tactics. "As town meeting members spoke, turbine abutters Neil Andersen and Colin Murphy sat in the back of the auditorium, quietly heckling speakers at times," Sean Teehan reported in the Cape Cod Times last month.

Falmouth has already voted against dismantling its turbines, but the anti-wind crowd has forced yet another vote on May 24. With Fox on their side, you have to wonder: Will the anti-wind folks will just keep forcing votes until they get their way?

More broadly, Massachusetts elected officials and news organizations need to decide how we'll determine our shared energy future. Will we have a reasoned, fact-based dialogue and move forward together? Or will we let the loudest, harshest and most frequently raised voices dominate debate and shout down anyone who disagrees with them?

If you stand with clean energy, sign up and register your support at Cape Wind Now.