The Morans of Bruce County

Just finished listening to a CBC radio news report from Bruce County an area here in Ontario. I must say the anti-wind crowd gets more desperate not to see wind turbines every day.

A word of warning, using health concerns to block a project that only affects your visual appeal or property value is an extremely dangerous game to play. We already have issues with drugs that may not work. Workplace safety that is costing tonnes of money through people using it to get back at employers. (That one is a particular pet peeve of mine where the loudest people miss the point of a safety committee)

Don't forget we do have legitimate concerns regarding things like BPA, pandemics(even if the last one was a bust) and antibiotic resistant bacteria! To get back to topic, how about the fact that the world is melting and we are seriously screwed for fresh water in most of the world?

Let's take a look at some of the paraphrased quotes from the report:

Monstrous 2.5 KW generators

Let's see, that sounds like someone concerned more about the size of the generator than any so-called health effects for his constituents. One wonders if he has family related to the folks in Cape Cod? You know the ones, the ones with 10 million dollar homes who might have to see a turbine 5 or more miles away, or perhaps on the other side of an island? Yea, they get none of my respect either.

These are the kind of people who are happy to convert their home to natural gas because it is cheaper for them. Luckilly they don't get their water from above a natural gas fracking site. Actually, the fracking process itself actually does sound like "An air plane constantly taking off." which is the same line you seem to see in a lot of the comments from the unhappy 10%. Wonder if they all read from the same script?

Dalton in his infinite wisdom

Well, this seems the definition of moran to me. The councillor has an axe to grind with those hippy earth loving types. The current provincial government has to look to the future and make Ontario competitive with the world. But just perhaps he is also concerned with the fact that global warming is happening and when his grandchildren ask him why he didn't do anything about it, he wants to have an answer.

Chapter 7 of the charter of rights and freedoms superceeds the province and we created a by-law that basically says "We have to protect the safety and health of our constituents.

Uhhh, yea. The follow up question was telling: "Aren't you afraid that this by-law will require you to police fast-food or cars because they produce smog?" His answer, a very definitive "No! This has proven scientific facts behind it." Riiiight, and smog doesn't hurt anybody and there has been no link between fast food and the harm of heath. Once again, another short sighted politician, much like my favourite Harper, who is doing for today that will screw up tomorrow. I wonder if, before the interview, this question ever occurred to him? Moran, I call him!

Our medical officer found 10% of folks near a local wind installation report effects.

Okay, so, what I suspect is an anecdotal study, finds 10% of people in the area around the wind farm, who are already pissed off because their NIMBY (Thats Not In My BackYard) efforts have not paid off and they got a windmill installed near them. Hmmm, wouldn't every ache and pain be attributable to the windmill?

Let's see if I can find the article. Hmmm, strange, Medical Officer of Health Dr. Hazel Lynn, seems to be an active antagonist to the wind farm, outside of her duties.

Oh, and if you do a google search for "scientific proof of wind farm problems" that site is the first to come up. It is a little confusing so let me make this clear, I checked about half of the "sciencey" type papers there. Anything where the title did not make clear that it was speaking about how to hook this stuff up to the grid and not health effects. This site, who has claim to the top ranking from google, has NO proof of anything bad happening to anyone. Lots of those "It sounds like a jet plane" comments though contained in the many opinion pieces.

I cannot help but be amused. I've lived under a flight path, beside a rock quarry and currently beside the 401. You can't drowned out the noise with a "fountain", yet let me quote one more time from the cape cod:

Described as alternating between the "sound of a hovering jet that never lands" and a pronounced "whooshing" noise during periods of higher winds, Neil Andersen said he wears noise-reducing headphones while in his yard and has installed fountains in his garden to drown out the noise from the turbine.

 These people are truly morans.

Oh, an example of why anecdotal evidence is problematic, last night, again on CBC I was listening to a documentary on Electro Convulsive Therapy. The gentleman from the CMA outlined a case he was involved in, where he had given ECT to a patient. Many years later, this patient was complaining that she couldn't remember her way around the city she grew up in and blamed the ECT. Some memory loss does occur with ECT particularly around the worst times of mental disease but it is not supposed to be a permanent effect. A court case was pending until her file was examined and as it turns out, the memory loss was actually a symptom of her depression. She had reported the exact same thing a few years before the ECT when she had a particularly bad episode.