Archive for November 20th, 2012

James Delingpole — Big Wind: The most corrupt and corrupting industry in the world

James Delingpole – The Telegraph — November 19, 2012

There’s an excellent article in the Copenhagen Post which I’m going to reprint here in full. It’s by a retired high court judge called Peter Rørdam. I’m reprinting it because apart from the place names, every last detail applies to the UK wind industry too. And – from what I’ve seen personally – the Australian one. And the US and Canadian ones as well.

The reason the industry is so corrupt is quite simply that without the lies it tells as a matter of course and without the cosy stitch-ups it arranges with regulators and politicians at taxpayers’ expense, it simply would not exist. Take the noise regulations which are currently the subject of an enquiry by the Institute of Acoustics. The reason these noise regulations so badly need re-examining is that the original parameters for noise limits were set by people working for the wind industry with a vested interest in making it as easy as possible for wind farms to be built in as many places as possible. They make no allowance whatsoever for the damage to human health now known to be caused by Low Frequency Noise which – hey guess, what? – isn’t even measured by the tame acoustics experts who work on behalf of the wind developers because the system has been rigged so they don’t have to.

It’s entirely possible that this corrupt system will continue to be rigged with the connivance of politicians. A report in today’s Telegraph suggests that the green activists who staff DECC may have fixed in advance the results of a new enquiry by the Institute of Acoustics by setting it worthless parameters.

Richard Perkins, Vice President of the Institute of Acoustics and chairman of the working group looking at the guidance, insisted the new guidance would tighten up the rules so that only wind farms in the right places are given planning permission.

He said current noise levels are a matter for the Government, and were outside the working group’s terms of reference.

In other words, it looks like this enquiry has been asked to overlook the very area which it should be studying most closely.

If this sounds like the kind of shabby behaviour you’d more closely associate with communist states and third world kleptocracies than sophisticated Western economies, think again. It’s rife across the Western world, as this article by a former Danish high court judge illustrates.

It’s a widely held conception that Denmark is one of the world’s least corrupt countries. The message is always warmly received, but this isn’t the same as saying that Denmark is free of corruption.

I’m not qualified to speak about corruption in general, but there is one area in which I do have an in-depth knowledge: wind power – which is an industry that has managed to thoroughly corrupt the political system.

The law approving construction of a test centre of large land-based wind turbines near the Jutland town of Østerild was forced through parliament despite warnings about the effects it would have on the natural environment in the area and its impact on residents. The bill was able to make its way through parliament thanks to a complete manipulation of the facts – both by keeping some information under wraps, and by directly misinforming people.

But it wasn’t parliament that was misled. Members of parliament that voted for the law were fully aware of the truth, yet they turned a blind eye so the law could be passed. It was, in fact, voters who were tricked into thinking that they had been told the whole truth.

The only thing that matters for wind turbine makers is money. You can wonder why law makers would play along with their game, but as soon as they threatened to move jobs abroad they did as they were told.

Laying out all the details of this sitation would require more space than is available here, but for those that read Danish, Peter Skeel Hjort’s book ‘Besat af wind’ (Obsessed by the wind) provides a harrowing look into of the industry and the political system.

Collaboration between the industry and lawmakers didn’t stop with the approval of the test centre. Since then, there has been a flood of complaints from people who were unfortunate enough to find themselves living next to large land-based wind turbines elsewhere. The effects, which are well documented, can cause illness and render properties uninhabitable. Their complaints, however, are normally rejected by the authorities, who maintain that living close to wind turbines is not associated with any detrimental effects.

On October 9, Berlingske newspaper published an article by three Aalborg University scientists, who proved that the official noise calculations are wrong, and that the manipulated figures tone down the problems associated with living near a wind turbine. The authorities have done nothing to show that they have scientific evidence to base their claims on. Their only reaction has been to say that the Aalborg University study is wrong, because it does not jibe with the wind power industry’s own findings. We heard this most recently from the environment minister, Ida Auken, who is either being led around by the nose of the people whose interests she’s looking out for, or – as was the case with her predecessor – she is taking part in the misinformation.

It’s worth noting that the compensation homeowners living near wind turbines are given to make up for lost property value is based the falsified noise calculations – which means that people are, in fact, being cheated out of the full amount they are actually owed.

Corruption is defined as moral decay, and that is precisely what we are witnessing here. The fear that Denmark could lose jobs and the near religious obsession with wind power has made politicians deaf and blind to objections to wind as a source of energy, and led them to take part in the industry’s fraud. The environmental and human impacts of what they are doing appear to have no effect on them.

It only adds to the embarrassment is that instead of hiring people, the wind industry is eliminating jobs in Denmark. Meanwhile, little has happened at the Østerild test centre. Parliament rushed to approve the establishment of Østerild, because the industry told them it was vital that they could have seven large wind turbines standing in a row. Østerild was chosen because it had the physical characteristics the industry needed. Today, one turbine stands, and it remains to be seen how many more will be built.

There are a lot of people who have plenty to be ashamed of, but we shouldn’t expect that to change much. Moral scruples aren’t what we most associate with Danish politicians.

 

The Myth of Denmark as a Corruption-free Country