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  • Academic Simon Chapman finds no evidence that wind turbines cause vibroacoustic disease

     

    Academic Simon Chapman finds no evidence that wind turbines cause vibroacoustic disease

    Updated 29 minutes ago

    A leading Australian academic says there is no credible evidence to support the theory that wind turbines cause disease.

    Professor Simon Chapman is the lead author of a paper examining a condition known as vibroacoustic disease, which some people say causes adverse medical conditions for people living or working with 10 kilometres of wind turbines.

    The study, published in the Australian and New Zealand Journal of Public Health, examined 35 research papers on vibroacoustic disease, and found that all but one had a first author from the same research group.

    Professor Chapman says the claim that wind turbines cause the disease is based on a single case study of a 12-year-old boy with memory and attention problems at school.

    He says the condition has received virtually no scientific recognition beyond the group of Portuguese researchers who coined the term.

     

    “The connection has been made from a conference presentation made in Europe some years ago and based on the study of just one person, a young boy whose only symptom was having difficulties at school,” he said.

    “Claims which have been made by anti-wind turbine groups that vibroacoustic disease is caused by wind turbines mysteriously turn out to not even have a single research paper looking at that connection.”

    Professor Chapman says the connection between wind turbines and the disease has gone viral online, but the original study has received virtually no scientific recognition.

    “I think it’s a highly interesting example of motivated science that has simply got out there as a factoid off the leash and is now being repeated by interest groups who are opposed to wind turbines,” he said.

    Action groups say serious medical conditions identified

    But industrial wind action groups say the disease is not a fabrication.

    An Australian group called the Waubra Foundation says the medical conditions identified by people living or working near wind turbines include high blood pressure, sleeping difficulties, depression, and the worsening of existing medical conditions such as diabetes, migraines, tinnitus, and post-traumatic stress disorder.

    The foundation says more than 20 Australian families have abandoned their homes because of serious ill health experienced since turbines commenced operating near their homes.

    Gary Goland from the group Noise Watch Australia says more research needs to be done.

    “I’m a medical researcher involved with physiology for the last 30 years and basically it’s a complex area,” he said.

    “You need to look at the elements that do make the connection and a direct connection and one that is measurable to get a better understanding of what biological effects are happening.

    “To say that there are no health effects of low frequency noise or other noise doesn’t line up with the many publications that are in many journals for a long time indicating that there are health effects.”

    In 2012, clean energy made up 13.5 per cent of the electricity market, with energy derived from the wind powering the equivalent of 1 million homes.

    A senate inquiry report in 2011 recommended more studies be done on the noise impacts of turbines.

    Topics: diseases-and-disorders, health, wind-energy, alternative-energy, environment, australia

    First posted 1 hour 24 minutes ago

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  • Severe Thunderstorms Will Increase In Frequency As A Result Of Climate Change, Research Finds

    Severe Thunderstorms Will Increase In Frequency As A Result Of Climate Change, Research Finds

    Posted: 04 Jun 2013 02:25 PM PDT

    Severe thunderstorms may increase in frequency as a result of the changing atmospheric conditions that will accompany climate change, new research has found. The recent research and analysis has revealed that the conditions which favor the development of severe thunderstorms will become much more common in the coming years.

    Image Credit: Thunderstorms As Seen From Space via Wikimedia Commons
    Image Credit: Thunderstorms As Seen From Space via Wikimedia Commons

    The severe thunderstorms of the near-future will feature stronger winds than we are accustomed to, but, according to the new analysis, tornado numbers should about stay the same. There is some uncertainty with regards to tornadoes though, we’ll likely just have to wait and see…

    “Climate model simulations suggest that on average, as the surface temperature and moisture increases the conditions for thunderstorms becomes more frequent. Climate change decreases temperature difference between the poles and the equator. This leads to a decrease in vertical wind shear, which is a major factor determining what type of severe weather occurs. These expectations are supported by a majority of the climate model simulations that have looked at the variables.”

     

    However, the risks of tornadoes and hail “are still open to many questions. The small scale of severe thunderstorms makes it difficult to deal with them with global models. The estimations of their occurrence in the future climate is based on the occurrence of their favorable environments in climate model simulations.”

    “According to latest research the intensity of tornadoes will not increase, therefore incidents like in Oklahoma are not expected to be more frequent than today,” said Harold Brooks, who is one of the most well-known researchers of severe thunderstorms from National Severe Storms Laboratory, USA. “Most of the research on severe thunderstorms and tornadoes in climate change has focused on the USA and it is unclear how well the lessons learned there apply to the rest of the world.”

    Most severe weather incidents in Finland are caused by phenomena related to thunderstorms such as lightning, strong wind gusts, hail and tornadoes. On average one person is killed every second year because of a lightning strike. Thunderstorms can cause also severe damage to the property because of falling trees and strong winds. On average, about 14 cases of tornadoes are reported in Finland annually. Most of them are quite weak but also some significant cases have been reported in history.

    “As climate models are being developed, we are beginning to get more accurate information about the impacts of climate change to severe weather incidents in areas like Finland,” says meteorologist Pauli Jokinen from Finnish Meteorological Institute.

    While “extreme” weather (as compared to what we are used to) is nothing to sneer at, it doesn’t truly compare to the other likely effects of climate change — diminishing agricultural productivity, water scarcity in many regions, large-scale migrations and the spread of disease that often accompanies them, and possible large-scale war/social breakdown.

    Severe Thunderstorms Will Increase In Frequency As A Result Of Climate Change, Research Finds was originally posted on: PlanetSave. To read more from Planetsave, join thousands of others and subscribe to our free RSS feed, follow us on Facebook (also free), follow us on Twitter, or just visit our homepage.

  • Methane leaks could negate climate benefits of US natural gas boom: report

    Methane leaks could negate climate benefits of US natural gas boom: report

    Reduction in carbon emissions triggered by America’s shift from coal to gas is being offset by a sharp rise in methane

    Shale Gas : A natural gas wellhead near Montrose, Pennsylvania,

    There is also a growing body of evidence that the release of methane gas from well sites and pipelines is far higher than previously thought. Photograph: Daniel Acker/Getty Images

    Methane leaks could undo the climate change benefits of America’s natural gas boom, a new report said on Tuesday.

    The report, produced by the Centre for Climate and Energy Solutions (C2ES), said America’s shift from coal to gas had produced important climate gains.

    Carbon dioxide emissions fell last year to their lowest point since 1994, according to the Department of Energy. Energy-related carbon dioxide emissions were 12% below 2005 levels.

    But the report said those reductions were not enough, on their own, to escape the most catastrophic consequences of climate change.

    They were also being offset by a sharp rise in methane, the most powerful greenhouse gas on a human timescale, that was being released into the atmosphere at well sites, compressor stations and along pipelines.

    Methane is up to 105 times more potent than carbon dioxide as a greenhouse gas on a 20-year timescale.

    “We have to deal with the methane emissions – whether they are large, which I think is unlikely, or whether they are small,” said Eileen Claussen, president of C2ES, a Washington DC thinktank.

    “Natural gas is a big benefit right now, and you can see it in our emissions. But it doesn’t mean that left to our own natural devices it would be a great thing in 2050 because it wouldn’t be – unless you did some form of carbon capture.”

    Claussen was also concerned that cheap natural gas would crowd out wind and solar energy.

    America’s gas boom has posed one of the most divisive in-house issues for environmental groups. The availability of cheap natural gas has retired a number of old, and highly polluting coal-fired powered plants. Natural gas emits half as much carbon dioxide as coal when used to make electricity.

    Some 29% of America’s electricity came from natural gas last year – compared to just 14% a decade ago, the report said. But it comes at a high cost to the local environment, because of the risks to air and water quality posed by hydraulic fracturing.

    There is also a growing body of evidence that the release of methane gas from well sites and pipelines is far higher than previously thought.

    Methane is a far more powerful gas than carbon dioxide, even though it does not persist in the atmosphere for a shorter period.

    The report said natural gas could help wean America off coal and oil. But natural gas was still a fossil fuel, and was not a long-term substitute, it noted. “Substitution of natural gas for other fossil fuels cannot be the sole basis for long-term US efforts to address climate change because natural gas is a fossil fuel and its combustion emits greenhouse gases,” the report said.

    America would have to move towards zero-carbon energy, such as wind, solar and nuclear energy, the report said. The report also urged development of carbon capture technologies.

    It said more research was needed to measure greenhouse gas emissions from methane along the entire natural gas production chain.

    The report adds to growing evidence of the down sides of America’s natural gas boom – beyond the widely reported contamination of local wells by chemicals used in the process of hydraulic fracturing or “fracking”.

    Now a consensus seems to be slowly emerging that methane emissions have to be taken into account when assessing the real climate benefits of the switch to natural gas.

    Dr Michael Webber, the University of Texas researcher who oversaw the report, said natural gas remained a net gain for the climate. “I am hoping that the takeaway is that natural gas is a step in the right direction – but not the final step,” he said.

    Others argued that more ambition was required.

    “It is very much setting the bar too low just comparing it to coal,” said James Bradbury, an analyst at the World Resources Institute. “Half as much carbon dioxide compared to coal is a big improvement, but is it good enough to get us to where we need to go in terms of climate? The answer is no.”

    And some environmentalists and scientists have dismissed the possibility of any climate gains for natural gas because of methane leaks. Anthony Ingraffea, a Cornell University engineer and co-author of one of the first studies flagging up methane leaks from natural gas, said it was a mistake to incorporate natural gas into a climate change plan.

    “It is a wash. It is not enough of a benefit to spend hundreds of millions of dollars to expand natural gas when that money could be put to use in deployment of renewables,” he said.

  • China’s cities: push for ‘green’ centres creates suburban ‘cancer villages’

    China’s cities: push for ‘green’ centres creates suburban ‘cancer villages’

    Cities shunt polluting plants to areas where damage is less visible as proof linking cancer rates to pollution remains elusive

    chinese cities

    Rapid development of China’s cities has coincided with the promotion of urban sustainability while factories are moved to remote areas where their environmental impact is less visible. Photograph: Lu Guang/Greenpeace

    In most Chinese cities, the environmental cost of rapid development is obvious: unbreathable air and undrinkable water. Less obvious is the cost of cleaning them up.

    Since the late 1990s, the “National model city for environmental protection programme” has accredited at least 76 cities nationwide as exemplars of urban sustainability, based on criteria including clean air, rubbish-free streets and ample public parks.

    Yet China is also home to hundreds of cancer villages, and a US-based academic has spent years drawing a link between the two. “I think a majority of model cities also have cancer villages, one or two or three of them,” said Lee Liu, a geography professor at the University of Central Missouri.

    Liu argued in a recent book that China’s quest for green cities has created cancer villages on their fringes, as ambitious municipal governments shunt factories to areas where their environmental impact is less visible.

    But scientific proof linking disease rates with factory pollution is elusive: “How can you prove that a dirty factory caused your cancer? You can’t,” Liu said. “So the link is indirect. But if you map it, you see clusters around these cities.”

  • Report questions economic benefit of shale gas extraction

    5 June 2013, 12.06am EST

    Report questions economic benefit of shale gas extraction

    Australia may have over 1000 trillion cubic feet in undiscovered shale gas resource but the enormous cost of infrastructure needed to extract it may outweigh its economic benefit unless shale gas prices rise, a new report has found. Shale gas, which is buried further below the surface of the ground…

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    A hydraulic fracturing drill rig in Pennsylvania. Fracking involves injecting huge amounts of water, sand, and chemicals at high pressure thousands of feet beneath the earth’s surface to extract reserves of natural gas. EPA/JIM LO SCALZO

    Australia may have over 1000 trillion cubic feet in undiscovered shale gas resource but the enormous cost of infrastructure needed to extract it may outweigh its economic benefit unless shale gas prices rise, a new report has found.

    Shale gas, which is buried further below the surface of the ground than coal seam gas, is abundant in the United States and in Australia, and is extracted using similar techniques, including fracking.

    The new report, written by the Australian Council of Learned Academies, is part of Securing Australia’s Future, a series of research programs selected by the Prime Ministers Science, Engineering and Innovation Council and the Chief Scientist.

    The study looked at shale gas and resources, technology, monitoring, infrastructure, human and environmental impacts, issues communication, regulatory systems, economic impacts, lessons learned from the coal seam gas industry, and impacts on greenhouse gas reduction targets.

    Not a cheap gas

    The report found that shale gas production costs in Australia are likely to be significantly higher than those in North America.

    “Shale gas will not be cheap gas in most circumstances. It will require a relatively high price to make it profitable to produce,” the report said.

    In Australia, shale gas will require a price of the order of $6 to $9 a gigajoule to make its production and transport profitable, the report said.

    “By comparison, the wholesale gas price for long-term contracts of gas for the domestic market in eastern Australia is around $4 per gigajoule while current eastern Australia domestic wholesale prices are about $6 per gigajoule,” the report said.

    “Based on these estimates, development of Australian shale gas marketed on the east coast is unlikely to occur until domestic and international netback prices (around $10 per gigajoule) are equalised.”

    Dr Vaughan Beck, one of the authors of the report and a fellow of the Australian Academy of Technological Sciences and Engineering, said developers would also have to allow for the extra cost of transmission and processing of the product.

    “So it’s not currently economical in Australia, in general terms,” he said.

    Road and pipeline networks in North America are more developed than in Australia and the cost of developing such infrastructure would need to be factored in, the report said.

    Social licence

    The report said it was crucial for shale gas developers to gain community support to operate and may involve negotiating agreements with indigenous land owners.

    “In order to develop effective relationships with communities potentially impacted by shale gas developments, it will be necessary to have open dialogue, respect and transparency,” the report said.

    Water and environment

    More water may be needed for shale gas fracking than is used for coal seam gas extraction, the report said, warning that “contamination of freshwater aquifers can occur due to accidental leakage of brines or chemically-modified fluids during shale gas drilling or production; through well failure; via leakage along faults; or by diffusion through over-pressured seals.”

    “The petroleum industry has experience in managing these issues and remediating them, but in a relatively new shale gas industry, unanticipated problems may arise and it is important to have best practice in place, to minimise the possibility of this risk,” the report said.

    Using shale gas in gas turbines to produce electricity creates 20% more greenhouse gas emissions than conventional gas but between 50% and 75% of the emissions of black coal, the report found.

    “Some people have raised the question ‘Why extract shale gas? Why not spend the money on cleaner renewable energy?’ But that is not a question that was in the terms of reference of this Review,” the report said.

    Uncertainty

    Vlado Vivoda, a shale gas expert and Research Fellow at Griffith University said the report was timely but said he thought it was unlikely gas prices will rise.

    “If massive volumes of US shale gas enters the international market as liquid natural gas (LNG) over the next decade (and mainly gets imported by Asian countries), this may challenge the prevailing LNG pricing structure in Asia, where LNG price is indexed to crude oil,” he said.

    “This, in fact, may be a crucial development which may affect the prospects for Australian shale gas, which is more expensive than North American shale gas.”

    Dr Vivoda said that given the high infrastructure costs and uncertainty about LNG prices in the region “it will be risky for investors to enter into this game.”

    Alarm bells

    Colin Hunt, Honorary Fellow in Economics at University of Queensland said the report was a comprehensive outline of the risk and benefits of shale gas extraction in Australia.

    “Alarm bells will be set ringing because of the Australian experience with the way that companies have conducted environmental impact assessments for their coal seam gas and coal mining projects. Best practice in controlling the volume of water use from aquifers, contamination of aquifers with produced water and fracking chemicals is advocated in the report,” he said.

    “However, it is worrying that a recent survey found that most environmental impact assessments were deficient in their analysis of how a project would contribute to cumulative environmental impacts of water use and disposal associated with gas and coal mining.”

    Dr Hunt also warned of habitat fragmentation and biodiversity risks presented by the development of shale gas infrastructure.

  • Accelerating Ice Sheet Melt Is Raising Sea Levels, Says New Study Accurately Reported By Wall Street Journal

    Accelerating Ice Sheet Melt Is Raising Sea Levels, Says New Study Accurately Reported By Wall Street Journal

    By Joe Romm on Jun 3, 2013 at 5:31 pm

    Sea level rise last century versus the last two decades via Jet Propulsion Lab.

    Is it big news that “Rising Sea Level Tied to Faster Melt,” as the Wall Street Journal reported today?

    Back in 2011, JPL researchers concluded that polar ice sheet mass loss is speeding up, threatening a 1 foot sea level rise by 2050. Last year, the most comprehensive analysis of all observational data found that Greenland ice sheet melt is up nearly five-fold since mid-1990s.

    Changes in global sea level due to ice sheet melting since 1992. Credit: NASA via NBC.

    But I think it qualifies as news when the Wall Street Journal actually does an original piece on one of the more worrisome threats from global warming — and gets it right.

    Indeed the Wall Street Journal reporters and editorial page editors are kind of like Edward Norton and Brad Pitt (respectively) in Fight Club (spoiler alert) raging a schizophrenic war with one another (literally). The WSJ editors set the first rule of global warming fight club — don’t talk about the threat of manmade global warming (see Not The Onion: Wall Street Journal Hits ‘Rock Bottom’ With Inane Op-Ed Urging ‘More Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide’)

    The more sane half of the WSJ reported on a new study in Nature Geoscience, whose abstract explains:

    … we conclude that most of the change in ocean mass is caused by the melting of polar ice sheets and mountain glaciers. This contribution of ice melt is larger than previous estimates, but agrees with reports of accelerated ice melt in recent years.

    Here is how a rogue reporter at the WSJ covered it:

    Accelerated melting of polar ice sheets and mountain glaciers was the driving factor behind a rise in the global sea level of 16.8 millimeters, or about two-thirds of an inch, between 2005 and 2011, according to a study published Sunday in Nature Geoscience.

    The findings are consistent with observed longer-term trends, but the study encompasses only a few years of observations, limiting its conclusions, scientists said. The study, funded by the National Science Foundation and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, does resolve long-standing discrepancies that arose from different methods of measuring sea levels.

    Scientists want to establish how much of the sea-level change relates to increased melt water, and how much relates to the water expanding as it warms up. Previous calculations indicated that melting might contribute about half of the increase. The latest study concludes that for the period 2005-2011 the contribution was closer to 75%.

    “There was an increase in the melting rate in Greenland starting in 2005 and that is probably the underlying story why” a larger quantity of melt water has poured into the oceans in recent years, said Clark R. Wilson, geophysicist at the University of Texas at Austin and co-author of the study.

    Can’t argue with any of that — unless, of course, you are a denier writing for the WSJ who sees only benefits from more carbon pollution.

    By the way, you may have noticed that seas only rose about 2.4 millimeters a year from 2005 to 2011. The study picked an endpoint that corresponds to a dip in sea level rise that NASA explained in late 2011 (see “It Rained So Hard the Oceans Fell“).

    The short-term dip certainly drew the attention of the climate science deniers, who said absurd things like “The fact that CO2 levels have been higher in the last 5 years that have the lowest rate of rise than the years with lower CO2 levels is a strong indicator that the claims of CO2 are grossly exaggerated.”

    Needless to say, the dramatic rebound in sea level rise has not gotten similar attention. See
    Has The Rate Of Sea Level Rise Tripled Since 2011?”

    Related Post:

    • Wall Street Journal: “More Droughts, Floods, Extreme Weather Expected With Warming Climate”