Trump Says Wind Turbines Cause Cancer. 99% Of Iowans Disagree

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President Trump Says Wind Turbines Cause Cancer. 99% of Iowans Disagree

 Time Mon, Aug 12 12:40 PM EDT 

 

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Since the early days of his administration, Donald Trump has sought to use his presidency to slow the country’s transition to clean energy, blocking key environmental regulations and lending his support to the fossil fuel industry whenever he can.

But his distaste for wind power has been particularly strong. He’s frequently called wind turbines “ugly” and dismissed them as a blight on local communities. In April he said that “the noise” from the turbines “causes cancer,” a false claim dismissed by the American Cancer Society.

In Iowa, a key presidential state where the wind industry is thriving, only 1% of registered voters agree with Trump that wind turbines cause cancer, according to a new poll from Yale and George Mason universities. The poll, shared exclusively with TIME, shows that 84% know that wind power doesn’t cause cancer while 15% say they don’t know for sure.

The finding represent just one example of the challenge Trump faces with environmental issues in the lead up to the 2020 election: Americans understand the science of climate change and polling shows that they support many of the solutions to stop it that Trump has panned.

Renewable energy sources like wind and solar rank at the top of that list. Even in many places Trump won, like Iowa, clean energy sources enjoy bipartisan support. The industry creates jobs and supports the tax base. Some landowners even receive payments for leasing their land. More than three quarters of Iowans say they would support requiring local utility companies to get 100% of their electricity from renewable sources by 2050, according to the poll. Majorities all said they thought that such a transition would have a positive impact on the state’s economy, electricity costs and rural communities. The survey of 519 Iowa registered voters has a margin of error of 4.6 percentage points.

“Republican, Democrat doesn’t matter, they all support wind energy because it’s economic,” says Tom Kiernan, CEO of the American Wind Energy Association, from the Iowa State Fair. “We’re helping rural America.”

Trump has responded subtly to those pressures. After spending the first years of his presidency primarily talking about deregulation whenever the environment was discussed, Trump delivered a speech in July that the White House billed as an opportunity to highlight his environmental accomplishments. Throughout the speech Trump and a slew of high-ranking officials insisted that the administration was up to good work on the environment that failed to receive mich attention. “We’re doing a very tough job and not everybody knows it,” said Trump.

But convincing the public will require more than a speech and Trump has yet to offer much of substance to support his claims. On wind energy specifically, the administration continues to set up roadblocks that have slowed its development, including stalling a project off the coast of Massachusetts last week. And, more broadly, Trump has shown no signs of slowing his deregulatory agenda that has targeted climate regulations.

On the ground in Iowa this past weekend, as Democrats vied for primary voters at the Iowa State Fair, the state Republican Party displayed a banner branding the Green New Deal the “Green Real Steal,” saying the proposal to create a vast mobilization to fight climate change endorsed by some progressive Democrats would cost Iowa farmers.

The threat of environmental regulation has helped Republicans win Iowa and other states like it in the past, but the polling suggests that the GOP may need to do more than just slam Democratic proposals if climate change continues to capture the attention of voters into general election season next year.

 

https://www.yahoo.com/news/president-trump-says-wind-turbines-164039569.html

 

GO RV, then BV

[coorslite21]

There is always a ying for a yang in the world of written material......oh snap.....Isn't there a Yang running in the 2020 primaries?....   CL

 

Anyhow.....

 

 

 

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Guest Column: ‘Wind Turbine Cancer’ – Is President Donald Trump Crazy? Maybe Not.

 Written by Isaac Orr

 in Energy, Environment

 on April 18, 2019

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The following article is a guest column by Kristi Rosenquist, a Grassroots Citizen Activist in Minnesota:

When President Trump said, “The noise [from wind turbines] causes cancer,” the reactions were immediate. Iowa Senator Chuck Grassley called Trump’s statement “idiotic.”  Democratic Presidential candidate and Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders mocked Trump in a Bernie 2020 video – standing alongside a road in Iowa with wind turbines in the background. And, no discussion of wind energy, no matter how minor, would be complete without the comparison to “dirty coal:” “A power source that does cause many health problems, including cancer, is coal, an extremely dirty fuel…,” Said Jonathan Chait of New York Magazine.

Thousands of rural residents with direct knowledge and experience with wind turbines had a different response.  Rural Iowa resident Janna Swanson, President of the Coalition for Rural Property Rights, expressed what I saw as the most common reaction – matching my initial reaction – in her responsepublished in the StarTribune (but not in the Des Moines Register to which she also submitted).

“If President Trump said that industrial wind turbines cause cancer, that is unfortunate, because it downplays the real negative impacts that do come with living next to or within an industrial wind installation.

Rural residents the world over have complained of headache, vertigo, dizziness, sleeplessness, chest tightness and tinnitus from [wind] turbines being sited too close to their homes. In contracts wind companies … freely admit that turbines can …“cause or emit noise, vibration, air turbulence, wake, and electromagnetic and frequency interference.”

On further reflection, I think Trump was only partially wrong by using one very important word – “cause.” What turbine noise does most consistently “cause” in rural communities across the globe is sleep deprivation.  What does sleep deprivation cause?

“…The extensive and longstanding peer reviewed published clinical research detail the known interconnections and associations betweenchronic sleep deprivation, … [and] immune suppression resulting in increased …malignancies (cancers)….  [Observation of these] health problems worsening with exposure to wind turbine noise is not surprising to clinicians …when they understand the way infrasound and low frequency noise ….are known to affect health….” Testimony to the Appeals Tribunal of the State of Victoria, Australia by Dr. Sarah Laurie, MD. 

Getting enough sleep is important for overall health and may be related to cancer risk:

“From a biological perspective, there are a lot of good reasons for us to suspect that insufficient sleep, chronic sleep debt or short sleep duration could have an impact on the development of cancer….” Amanda Phipps, an epidemiologist and researcher at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle quoted inU.S. News and World Report. 

The Minnesota Department of Health (MDH) has been quite clear and consistent in their statements to the Minnesota Public Utilities Commission (PUC) about wind turbine noise and health. In turn, the PUC has been quite consistent in ignoring MDH’s advice as they issue “certificates of need” and “site permits” to industrial wind complexes in Minnesota.

“…It is unknown whether reported health impacts are direct health effects or indirect stress impacts from annoyance and/or lack of sleep resulting from turbine noise….” “…Health impacts from wind turbine projects should be acknowledged, and provision should be made to mitigate these effects for residents within and near proposed project areas.” (PUC Document ID: 20176-132804-03; pages 59-61)

“…Low frequency [wind turbine] noise is primarily a problem …in …homes, especially at night.” “The most common complaints are sleeplessness and headache.” “The Minnesota nighttime standard …appears to underweight penetration of low frequency noise into dwellings.” The PUC should “…evaluate the low frequency noise component.” Public Health Impacts of Wind Turbines 5/22/2009. 

In 2016, when I and other citizens met with MDH Commission Ed Ehlinger to discuss the negative health impacts of wind turbines, one of the other citizens said that the wind industry acts a lot like ‘Big Tobacco.’ Both the tobacco industry (in the past) and the wind industry deny their product causes any health problems thereby forcing sick people to individually attempt the very expensive and very high legal bar of proving “medical causation.”  Ehlinger agreed that’s “a good comparison.”

I asked Ehlinger, “How many reports of people sick from wind turbines do you need to receive at MDH before you are obligated to act?”  He responded, “I’m never obligated to act unless forced to do so by the Governor or the legislature.”  I notice that Ehlinger was forced to resign when he failed to act on thousands of reports of neglect and abuse in Minnesota care facilities.

I can’t find a clear distinction between Senator Grassley’s position on industrial wind energy and that contained in Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s Green New Deal – their stated motivations are different, but their policy proposals look similar. August 7, 2018 was a busy day for Grassley with two Townhall meetings that both featured discussion of Iowans opposed to wind energy, and a private photo-op with Alliant Energy and the American Wind Energy Association to receive AWEA’s ‘Wind Champion Award.’

I notice they didn’t hold the Wind Champion Award ceremony at Alliant’s Bent Tree Wind project – where Alliant had just finalized the buy-out of Minnesotan’s homes that are no-longer inhabitable due to wind turbine noise. Bernie and Cheryl Hagen are just one sample of people who;s home was bought by Alliant energy after years of sleep deprivation and low-frequency noise after the Bent Tree Wind facility began operation (MN PUC docket ID 08-573).

Bernie Sanders apparently failed to notice the significant wide-spread hatred of wind turbines in rural Vermont that resulted in a significant noise limitation in Vermont’s wind turbine siting rules in 2017.

Mark me ‘Safe from coal cancer,” Jonathan Chait. I’m not a coal miner. The only coal cancer I’m aware of might be from coal miners without sufficient respiratory protection. I thought “black lung” was a thing of the past? Union of Concerned Scientists claim coal plants cause cancer through emitting arsenic that gets into drinking water in concentrations high enough to cause cancer….  I think if that claim had any medically provable credibility, one of the well-funded faux-environmental coal-hate groups would already have successfully sued a coal-fired power plant that “caused” arsenic cancer.

Perhaps Grassley, Sanders, and Chait believe that rural residents are suffering from a “global hallucination event.” The Minnesota Legislative Energy Commission held a hearing on wind energy and health.  I asked expert witness Dr. Mariana Alves-Pereira what she thought about wind developers’ repeated assertions to the Minnesota Public Utilities Commission that their turbines don’t cause the health problems that people report.  Dr. Alves-Pereira said, “Unless everybody’s going through a collective hallucination around the world, I don’t see how that statement can be upheld scientifically.” (Oct. 19, 2017 audio; Dr. Alves Pereira testimony starts at 23 minutes)

I think Sherri Lange, CEO of the North American Platform Against Wind Power, sums this up beautifully:

Do stress and lack of sleep contribute to the development of cancer? Yes. Does wind turbine noise raise stress levels and interrupt sleep? Yes.

 

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WINDWIND ENERGYCLIMATE CHANGEGREEN ENERGYTURBINECANCERHEALTHPROBLEMSSLEEPDEPRIVATIONMINNESOTA PUBLIC UTILITIES COMMISSION

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