Clean Energy Misinformation a Public Health Menace

We have a mental health crisis in the US, and perhaps globally, owing in part to the addictive and seductive nature of social media, and the fossil fuel industry’s long term global misinformation campaign aimed at destroying trust in science, using the most sophisticated means of communication, and algorhythms that know us better than we know ourselves.
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In the case of windfarms, health complaints have tended to cluster in geographical areas where there has been targeted negative publicity about wind turbines, or where people are accessing negative health information about windfarms. This indicates that these clustered outbreaks are ‘contagious’, spreading via communication.

Field research indicates that the more worried individuals are about the health effects of an environmental exposure, the more likely they are to report symptoms, even when no health risk is posed. As discussed in Chapter 4, a field study conducted in Germany revealed that residents’ concern about the health effects of proximity to mobile phone base stations adversely affected their sleep quality, while exposure to electromagnetic fields itself had no such negative impact.

Simon Chapman –Wind Turbine Syndrome: A Communicated Disease

Port Huron Times Herald, Michigan:

During a meeting to discuss potential new regulations on solar plants and energy facilities, residents of St. Clair County brought many of the same concerns they’ve expressed for months.

There were concerns about the noise level such facilities would generate, the negative impact on housing prices, and any negative health impacts, both physical and psychological, of living near such facilities.

The St. Clair County Health Department held a meeting Wednesday allowing public input on a new set of proposed regulations. The entire meeting was devoted exclusively to public input, and county officials made no decision on whether to enact the proposed regulations.

Solar plants did find some support at Monday’s meeting, as Peter Sinclair, of Midland, said he had been following the rollout of solar, wind and other energy facilities in Michigan. He argued solar and wind was the best way to meet the energy demands brought on by the increasing use of data centers and artificial intelligence without increase energy prices.

The mast majority of speakers at the meeting, however, either condemned solar and wind energy facilities entirely, or said they didn’t feel the regulations went far enough.

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At issue here is that the Public Health Director of St Clair County, Michigan, is a quack.
Dr Remington Nevins has made a name for himself, and developed a cult following among the local Q-anon and MAGA set. Using his position of public trust, he launders fossil fuel misinformation about clean energy to a vulnerable local audience. He has promulgated a series of additional regulatory hurdles for clean energy developers in the county, which most likely will not stand up to legal challenge. But he’s hurting a lot of people.

Ignorance and conspiracy theories can be dangerous as the Covid pandemic showed us. Low information citizens will skip vaccinations, quaff horse dewormer and drink bleach if their trusted messengers instruct them to – hundreds of thousands did so, and died lonely, painful, and avoidable ICU deaths because of misinformation and disinformation.
In the transition to clean energy, the stakes are much higher, because the health of the planet itself is on the line.

One of the speakers at the above mentioned meeting, Ashley Richardson, a self identified Physicians Assistant, unveiled a litany of health afflictions she says her patients are having just thinking about the solar field, (which has not even been permitted, much less built, at this time) – proof she says, of the “..detrimental health effects that the proposal and the conflict, of this project being placed in our area has already generated.”
Ms Richardson showed no awareness that she was confirming the purely psychological nature of purported health concerns.

Ashley Richardson:

I would like to personally attest to the detrimental health effects that the proposal and the conflict, of this project being placed in our area has already generated.

I would also like to attest to the fact that this is a vulnerable population that will be directly affected in irreversible ways. I have had elderly patients come in that live directly in the area that will be influenced. I have had veterans who have honorably served our country. Who have many health issues, including mental health issues that live in the area that will be directly, directly affected by this project.

And it’s devastating. I’m already seeing increased levels of anxiety, depression, high blood pressure, insomnia. I’m already making medication adjustments for these issues. Just at the mayor, you know, proposal of these projects coming in and affecting our community. And I would like to testify to that. These people are coming in and speaking to me. Their their hands are shaking.

Their voices are shaking. I mean, the physical effects are already noticeable. They’re having, detached shoes. They can’t eat. They’re losing their appetite. They’re having, their irritable bowel syndrome flare up. So these are real health issues that are a major concern.

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Some advice. If you are having anxiety, depression, high blood pressure, insomnia, and irritable bowel over solar panels that have not been built yet, your problems might not be with solar panels.
A compassionate therapist and the right medications are your best course.

Desmogblog:

The researchers from the University of Auckland in New Zealand wanted to find out if simply exposing people to warnings that turbines might make you ill was enough to cause them to report typical symptoms such as headaches and nausea.

Using 54 people, the researchers showed half the group five minutes of footage of people complaining that wind farms had made them ill. Some of the footage was taken from this Australian Broadcasting Corporation report (watch it here) into “Waubra disease” where residents were filmed complaining about a wind farm at Waubra in Victoria. Footage was also taken from this CTV Network report from Canada about a wind farm in Ontario.

This group was called the “high expectancy group” because the information they were given had led them to expect they might experience certain symptoms if exposed to infrasound. The other half of the group was shown interviews with experts stating that the science showed infrasound could not directly cause health problems.

The researchers then told each person they were going to be exposed to two 10-minute periods of infrasound in a special acoustic room when, in fact, for one of those periods they would be exposed to no sound at all, or “sham infrasound” as the researchers describe it.  So what happened?

The response from the “high expectancy” group was to report that the “infrasound” had caused them to experience more symptoms which were more intense. This was the case whether they were exposed to sham infrasound or genuine infrasound. The report explains that “the number of symptoms reported and the intensity of the symptom experienced during listening sessions were not affected by exposure to infrasound but were influenced by expectancy group allocation.”

In the low expectancy group, the infrasound and sham infrasound had little to no effect. In other words, the study found that if a person is told that wind turbines will make them ill then they are likely to report symptoms, regardless of whether they are exposed to infrasound or not.

Clearly, this points the finger at anti-wind farm campaigns as a potential cause of people’s symptoms, rather than “infrasound” from turbines. The research added: “The importance of findings in this study is that symptom expectations were created by viewing TV material readily available on the Internet, indicating the potential for such expectations to be created outside of the laboratory in real-world settings.”