To Leigh Ewbank, Friends of the Earth, Melbourne.
Dear Leigh,
We note the flurry of press releases and posts about the junk science recently produced by your friend, the well-known wind industry advocate Simon Chapman, and also your displeasure at Premier Denis Napthine’s statements about retaining the 2km buffer distance for new wind developments.
So, we would like to ask you and FOE the following questions.
1. Have you or Friends of the Earth ever received any financial or material support from the wind industry or governments promoting renewable energy? YES or NO is fine.
2. Could you enlighten the taxpayers who read the STT website where you funding comes from and how it was actually spent?
3. Could you explain the massive jump in funding from $80,000 some ten years ago to $800,000 now? Did any of it come directly or indirectly from the wind industry?
4. Are you receiving money from Friends of the Earth or are you a volunteer?
5. Do you support urgent multidisciplinary research, inside the homes of sick people living near wind developments, just as the Federal Senate inquiry recommended in June 2011?
6. Do you understand the difference in value between research conducted by those with expertise in acoustics and clinical medicine who directly research and engage with these sick people, (research such as that conducted by Shepherd, Moller, Nissenbaum, Thorne, Doolan, Schomer, Rand, Ambrose, Pierpont, Harry and Iser) as opposed to those like Chapman and the Auckland university which do not directly investigate sick people.
Read our earlier posts on Sonia Trist, Jan Hetherington, Melissa Ware and David Mortimer. These are real people, being made sick by living near turbines.
7. Do you think it is okay for Sonia Trist to have to live like this, in order to protect construction jobs for Victorian workers? How many workers come from overseas, Leigh? How many Australian workers are there on wind projects? Do they work in their local areas? We hear directly from the workers in rural areas that the companies prefer a fly-in fly-out workforce and there are lots of overseas workers.
Have you ever spoken to a worker who was employed on an Australian wind farm? We have.
8. Do you accept that as wind turbines increase in size, they generate more low frequency noise? (Moller & Pedersen, peer reviewed published research from Denmark, 2011).
9. Do you therefore accept that as turbines increase in size there will need to be greater separation distances needed between turbines and residents because of the known damaging health effects of low frequency noise, described by Professor Leventhall in 2003 in his literature review for DEFRA on low frequency noise?
10. Do you support an evidence-based solution to this ongoing problem with respect to siting of wind turbines?
11. Do you accept that population noise impact surveys, asking people directly what their experiences are with respect to parameters such as sleep, and using internationally validated tools such as the Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index are essential in order to make evidence-based decisions about setback distances for any industrial facility which emits acoustic pollution?
12. Do you accept that if sleep deprivation is being reported out to 10km from the 3MW turbines then 2km as a setback distance is inadequate to protect the long-term health of the neighbours?
13. Do you accept that David and Alida Mortimer, the turbine hosts who receive money for their wind turbines, are indeed getting sick, and accurately reporting their symptoms, or do you assert that they are lying about their symptoms?
14. Do you support the need for industry independent assessment of the full spectrum of noise and vibration pollution at coal mines, coal seam gas operations and gas fired power stations, as we do, and as the Waubra Foundation has been advocating for almost a year?
15. Do you support the need for wind industry independent assessment of noise pollution at wind turbine developments?
Did you know members of coal and CSG affected communities are puzzled about your organisation’s lack of interest in the noise and vibration problems they are having? They too are being driven from their homes and cannot sleep.
16.Do you and your extended family live anywhere near a large industrial wind turbine?
How about some prolonged stays in some of the abandoned homes, Leigh, and bring all your family along?
Trish Godfrey’s former home, now owned by Acciona would be a good one. They haven’t rented it out yet, some three years after buying it, we hear.
We can’t understand why, because they continued to assert there were no problems and that Trish was bought out because she didn’t like the look of the turbines.
But when you are asleep you can’t see turbines, so that doesn’t quite make sense to us.
How does the nocebo effect happen when people are asleep, Leigh? And besides, you probably like the look of them, so it wouldn’t be an issue for you, awake or asleep.
Or would you like to ignore the above questions and just admit you are just another gun-for-hire lobbyist with no respect for truth and no respect for human rights?
Have a look at this link while you are reading this.
OECD Watch is an international network of civil society organisations from across the world promoting corporate accountability and responsibility.
I’m sure you know it. Friends of the Earth features in it regularly, taking action worldwide against corrupt companies.
Have a look at the OECD Watch quarterly update for November 2012. Scroll down to case two.
Europe’s largest renewable energy company, Statkraft is currently in the process of building a 360-turbine wind establishment in the municipality of Jämtland, Sweden, all to be located on the traditional lands of the indigenous reindeer herding collective of Jijnjevaerie Saami village.
Much of these lands are sensitive migration routes and winter herding pastures. If the project goes ahead as planned, it will severely restrict the community’s possibility to pursue reindeer husbandry, which is the basis of the community’s economic and cultural survival. This would force Jijnjevaerie village members to abandon their herding practices and would forcefully dislocate them from the environment that provides them with their cultural identity.
The complaint alleges that Statkraft has failed to meaningfully engage with the Saami village and that the consultations that have taken place have been flawed. The complaint further alleges that Statkraft has failed to take adequate steps to prevent adverse impacts from the farm.
Doesn’t this sound familiar, Leigh? Haven’t you heard the same allegations for hundreds of Australians about wind farm developers?
So here’s our last two questions.
17. Have you ever suffered prolonged sleep deprivation? Do you have, in your tiny little world, any idea what it’s like, for months and months on end, to have your sleep severely curtailed?
And lastly …
17. How do you lie straight in bed at night?
It’s a serious question. We’d really like to know.
STOP THESE THINGS 
I just googled our mate Leigh.
He has just started a business called ‘Rentaconcretegreenie’. Seems its all the rage in the concrete jungle to hire deadshit ‘I’ve never actually planted a tree in my life but think I know how to save the planet’ gullible (or ignorant, take your pick) greenies to bang on about stuff they know nothing about in the name of the environment, with no idea about the green pollution and damage they are creating to that very same environment……….great business plan Leigh, yeah, you’ve got a bright future……….did you read the SMH today? Energy retailers see no future in you and your useless industry.
Time to polish up that CV me thinks………..and best put ‘Rentaconcretegreenie’ down to experience……..
Perhaps Ramblank thinks of himself as a top gun or mind for hire. Doesn’t matter much, because both in both cases, he will continue to fire blanks.
Perhaps the Worshipful Company of Turbine Lovers (known as the WCOTL) are excited to have recruited him as a novice spear chucker. He has, after all, accepted without curiosity or concern research works, faulted or not, from the Worshipful Company itself and from its il Papa, a modest and hard working Public Health reseacher.
A researcher who unselfishly sqanders his public sourced funding to be able to teach the public the medical and acoustic benefits of living with turbines and thereby improving our national landscapes and country peoples’ health and well being.
The requirements to become a member of the WCOTL are many, but the most important is that a novice must, in all things, act on the fundamental tenet that “the end always justifies the means,” A truth that has fortified many and literally stunning, regimes.
A word of advice: go hard you WCOTL Warriors, as time is not your ally. Draw tighter on your remaining scraps of reputation, votes and the apparent pleasure of witnessing the painful struggles of the nimby peasants skewered by these deviishly designed turbines of torture.
The angels of reason, independent and proper research, ridicule and scorn are at your door.
fiends of the earth got very angry at a few locals who continued to harass them about their funding a few years ago. Mr Ben and Cam were not happy at all when they were constantly exposed as paid wind industry spokespeople.
This is a common practice in the wind industry as it gives them more credible support (until they are caught and it all goes bad) of paying a environmental group to shout out for you. Its also very dishonest and proves that rent a greenie is very much alive and well.
I believe Leigh Ewbañk will not answer these questions, if he does there is a good chance they won’t be answerd thuthfully.
It makes me sick that these so called “environmentalist” don’t see how much environmental destruction is caused by the IWTs.
I thought they were the ones who supposedly advocate to protect unindustrialized pristine wildlife areas. I thought they were against habitat loss and for the birds and bats etc. This is exactly where they put turbines….in sparcely populated areas where a few fortunate nature loving people chose to live.
Constucting turbines will likely result in increased rural sprall as people move further out, to get away from these Industrialized Wind Factories, Ultimately resulting in more habitat destruction.
A pro IWT environmentalist is an oxymoron.
Turbines are not people friendly, animal friendly or eco friendly. They are political kickback friendly.