Sierra Club Chickens on Wind Infrasound (deep-six commissioned study)

By Donald Deever -- October 17, 2019

“Please note: Desert Report editors have retracted ‘The Silent Menace’ articles from both the June and September issues; our forthcoming December issue will cover the reasons why.” When the retraction took place during the second week of September, they hadn’t found an official excuse yet that they were comfortable publishing as an explanation….

… the formerly controversial topic of potential infrasound hazards associated with industrial wind turbines had been demonstrated by enough prestigious studies to be harmful beyond any level of doubt. As an environmental tribunal in Ontario, Canada officially explained, the issue was no longer one that questioned the harm but had evolved into a question of the degree of harm that industrial wind turbine–generated infrasound causes.

One of Murphy’s Laws states, “No good deed goes unpunished.” Along those lines, after working without any compensation for months to uncover the most revealing, current scholarly studies, and thought-provoking news reports on the known health hazards associated with infrasound from industrial wind turbines, a two-part series of articles that was written at the Sierra Club’s request was suddenly retracted from one of their club’s magazines.

Moreover, it was announced that the reason would not be revealed until December. This was a shocking outcome, especially considering that the articles had been the idea of the magazine’s editor, who along with a recruited author had painstakingly scrutinized, double-checked, and triple-checked every one of the extensive sources for the two-part article, and had verified not only the legitimacy of the sources, but also authenticated the interpretation of those reports.

While the first part of the series – which delved into the potential health hazards of infrasound on wildlife, house pets, and farm animals – had been considered a completely acceptable report for months, one week after the second part of the series was published online – which focused on the potential human health hazards of wind turbine produced infrasound – both articles immediately became the target of a mysterious set of “editors” (plural) for a publication that had only an editor (singular) prior to the banning of that series.

Apparently, the compilation of too many eye-opening pieces of evidence of infrasound danger in too little word space may have created too much truth for comfort for some of the Sierra Club’s largest money donors, who had purchased their positions as foundation directors, all of whom profit greatly from the promotion of costly and hazardous so-called green energy schemes (see the last portion of this article on how billionaire directors use the Sierra Club as a lobbying front, blatantly exchanging green hype for greenbacks in a well-orchestrated and highly successful scheme to increase their vast corporate profits).

Therefore, not only was the article retracted, but a campaign to discredit the two-part report is also currently underway. As Sir Walter Raleigh once put it, “He who follows too closely on the heels of history is likely to get kicked in the teeth.” The following is an account of the unfolding treachery of the Sierra Club, as documented in the email conversations between the author and the editor of the Desert Report magazine, where the travesty occurred …

Accordingly, this past Thursday, September 19, I received an email from a reader of the Desert Report asking why my two-part article on infrasound has been retracted by the magazine. Since I had not been informed by the editor of the magazine about this issue, I looked up the link for the current September issue of the Desert Report, and sure enough, found that part 2 of that article had been grayed out, and that a large watermark had been pasted over the article stating that it had been “retracted by the editors.”

Immediately, I also checked the first installment in the series that had been published in the June edition of the Desert Report, and found that the article had also been retracted, plus there was the following comment at the top of both parts of the online articles, “Please note: Desert Report editors have retracted “The Silent Menace” articles from both the June and September issues; our forthcoming December issue will cover the reasons why.”

When the retraction took place during the second week of September, they hadn’t found an official excuse yet that they were comfortable publishing as an explanation, and as a later correspondence with the editor, Craig Deutsche, revealed they were grasping at straws to try to fabricate any false excuse – no matter how thinly veiled – that they could purport as a “reason.”

In essence, the article titled, “The Silent Menace: When it comes to wind turbine infrasound, what you can’t hear can hurt you,” appears to have been banned by powers higher up in the Sierra Club, not because there were any erroneous research elements or reporting errors to be found in it, but simply because it offered too much proof, including peer-reviewed journal publications, showing that the formerly controversial topic of potential infrasound hazards associated with industrial wind turbines had been demonstrated by enough prestigious studies to be harmful beyond any level of doubt. As an environmental tribunal in Ontario, Canada officially explained, the issue was no longer one that questioned the harm but had evolved into a question of the degree of harm that industrial wind turbine–generated infrasound causes.

Some of the interesting facts surrounding the banning of the article include the following:

First, this article was not the brainchild of myself as the author. Indeed, I was approached by the editor, Craig Deutsche, back on December 1, 2018, immediately after I had sent out a news story to a large number of publications concerning the demise of the terribly misplaced Crescent Peak Wind Project in Nevada. That article was written shortly after the Department of Interior issued a termination notice to the BLM and Eolus Vind of Sweden, stating in no uncertain terms that not only was the project permanently canceled, but that the BLM was not to allow Eolus Vind to complete their environmental impact studies, nor was the highly supportive BLM office in Las Vegas allowed to assist Eolus in any way.

After the Desert Report received that article on the Crescent Peak Wind Project, editor Craig Deutsche sent the following message to me,

Your article mentioned negative health effects on neighbors from infrasound and adverse effects on electronics up to 20 kilometers away. I’ve heard rumors of these two occurrences but have not been able find someone who is knowledgeable on these subjects (with facts) or to find documents that report these effects. I’ve wanted to report on these in the Desert Report.

Are you the person that I am looking for? Do you know of someone I might contact? Do you have references to studies on these problems? I imagine that you are familiar with the Desert Report as the address listed at the top of your email is very nearly the editorial staff of the publication. Any leads you can provide would be appreciated. Thank you very much.

After sending the editor a half dozen informative links on the topic, Craig Deutsche wrote back with the following request,

Thank you for sending the references on. They have answered a number of my questions and have made me believe that infrasound from turbines do have effects that are important and must be considered. So what is the next step? I probably don’t have time to work through the references (after getting subscription and translations) and become ‘expert’ myself. I am hoping that you might be willing to write on this subject (health effects from proximity to wind turbines) for the Desert Report …

Although the Desert Report is formally sponsored by one of the large environmental organizations [Sierra Club], it attempts to avoid advocacy on specific issues. The hypothesis is that if intelligent people are given correct facts, they will do the right thing. (Not all persons are intelligent, but these are beyond reach no matter what arguments are made.)

The circulation of the Desert Report is about 2500, and among those receiving it are the state legislators in California and Nevada, the congressional representatives from both states, many county supervisors, as well as land managers with federal and state agencies. Obviously it is our/my intention to educate these people and encourage them to be proactive …

Whatever you wish to do, I’ll certainly forward your email to several people I know who are commenting on current wind farm proposals. The good news, of course, is that the Crescent Peak Project has been turned down. I hope you will choose to write; the subject is important. Certainly I will try to answer questions you might have. Do let me know. Thanks, Craig.

Editor Craig Deutsche had wanted me to write the article and deliver it to him by February 1 for the March edition of the Desert Report, but many other assignments at the time delayed the infrasound article project until later. Besides, the amount of research that needed to go into the topic was immense (second only to accomplishing research for my doctoral dissertation). In the end, after months of intensive investigation, the first of the two-part series was published in the June edition of the Desert Report. During that time, I worked closely with the editor of the magazine, clarifying any even slightly questionable sources, separating opinionated logic from fact by checking, double-checking, and triple-checking references, and scrutinizing all interpretations of the scientific studies and news reports that the article series was soundly based upon.

The first half of the series focused on the potentially harmful effects of industrial wind turbine infrasound on animals (wildlife, pets, and farm animals), while the second half of the series took an in depth look at the potentially harmful effects on humans, including a scientific discussion on the highly controversial statement made by President Donald Trump, when the news media blasted him for saying that the noise from wind turbines could cause cancer.

Immediately following the acceptance of part one of the article, and although a rough draft of part two of the article had already been submitted, an even more intensive investigation was launched by myself to verify everything that had previously been written, as well as to search for even more prestigious sources of information on the topic. Through every step of the way, the editor and I corresponded until we both knew that the final product was an article that could stand up in court to any legitimate scrutiny. For instance, on April 22, I sent the editor what I believed to be the final version of the article,prior to the idea of dividing it into two separate articles, due to the fact that it had grown to 4,800 words because of the editor’s continual requests for more and more information on the eye-opening topic.

Finally, two days later, I received the following message from the editor of the Desert Report,

I am very, very impressed with your article. It flows logically and the claims have been documented very well. I might remove a few adjectives (that suggest a bias), and I might have one or two questions, but there is nothing of any substance that needs a change. But now I’ll have to make some decision about the length (4800 words when most articles are 1500 words) … Perhaps your article should be divided into two parts that appear in consecutive issues. I’m sure that there will be people and groups who claim that you are badly misguided, but now the burden of proof rests with them. You’ve presented the evidence of damage from infrasound very solidly. Congratulations.

On April 28, the editor further commented,

“The facts you present are convincing. If a reader decides from these that that the infrasound from turbines is dangerous, then he/she will consider it his/her idea and will defend it.” The editor also discussed the logistics concerning the number of words that the article had grown to in size, “The clean copy with the embedded website URLs is 4500 words. If the reference URLs were put into an online file, the article would still be 4000 words, almost three times longer than most others … Maybe it could be broken into two separate articles (people and animals separately).”

The editor finished by saying, “Thank you for getting this to me early. That gives us time to do it right.” As previously mentioned, this article was definitely done right, but apparently it was done too right.

By the next day, April 29, the editor was so thrilled with the factual aspects of the investigative reporting, he felt inspired to add his own touches to it,

The last paragraph in the shortened article was my conclusion and is in red. It was my addition and may not fit with your views. You are welcome to rewrite it as seems best to you … You stated that you originally favored wind energy production but then changed your mind as you read more. I find that to be impressive. It suggests that your present views really are fact based and are important.

To show how much the editor was involved in the interpretation of the referenced studies, on April 30, I received this comment,

I’ve looked carefully at Infrasound Part 1, and it looks basically fine to me. I’ve made a few small edits. Also, I did check several of the references you gave and have modified your interpretation somewhat. These explanations are in green. Again the first attachment shows everything I’ve done, and the second attachment is a clean version. I’ll start looking at Part 2 next.

Interestingly, later when the articles were retracted, among the three false excuses for doing so included the interpretations that were made by the editor.

Included in the three blatantly fabricated excuses for the retraction was my reference concerning the World Health Organization’s recent report on the harmful effects of noise, which for the first time in history fleetingly hinted at the noise from industrial wind turbines. That particular information was sent to the editor simply as some eye-opening food for thought but was not intended by myself to be a part of the article. Here is how the editor responded to that sharing of knowledge, which he later turned into what appears to be his main excuse for retracting the article,

Thank you for the reference to the report from Health Canada. I was particularly impressed by the conclusions from WHO. These might be the conclusion to the second article … WHO 1999 [97] provides ‘environmental management principles on which government policies, including noise management policies, can be based’: 1) The precautionary principle. In all cases, noise should be reduced to the lowest level achievable in a particular situation. Where there is a reasonable possibility that public health will be damaged, action should be taken to protect public health without awaiting full scientific proof. 2) The polluter pays principle. The full costs associated with noise pollution (including monitoring, management, lowering levels and supervision) should be met by those responsible for the source of noise. 3) The prevention principle. Action should be taken where possible to reduce noise at the source. Land-use planning should be guided by an environmental health impact assessment that considers noise as well as other pollutants.

Responding to the editor’s enthusiasm for the topic, I continued to conduct research on infrasound for part one of the article until May 4, and until May 5 for part two. After those dates, the layout of the first portion of the article was being accomplished, and any other changes were out of my hands. When the part two was sent on May 5, I wrote the following note in my email to the editor,

During an earlier correspondence, you had mentioned possibly writing an ending for Part 2 based on the WHO document information you provided. I have done that but when I saw that the document was from 1999, I did some research to find out what was most current from WHO. What I found was a newsmaking noise recommendation document from WHO that included guidelines on wind turbines for the very first time. I put both those additions at the very end of the article. It definitely made the article a bit too big, so I put all the extra words in red to make it easier for you to cut or keep what you want. Even though it’s a bit lengthy, I basically put it in there because even if it’s edited out, it represents information that I believe you will personally want to know.

By May 30, part one was online. The second part of the series came out around the first of September, and I didn’t hear again from the editor until September 9. At that time, editor Craig Deutsche sent the appreciative message,

Your article on infrasound from wind turbines (part II) is on page eight of the Desert Report that has just gone online. It will be about ten days till printed copies are ready. My computer doesn’t tell me if you are on the circulation list, but you can always be added. (The back page gives instructions.) If you would like me to send you extra printed copies, let me know and let me know your postal address. Thank you again for writing. The subject is important.

It is enlightening to note that the legitimacy of the article was considered to be absolutely fine from May 30 until shortly before September 19, when it appears that someone high up in the Sierra Club intervened and the article was suddenly thrown into disrepute without reason. Questioning the editor about this travesty, I received the following three weak excuses,

After the Desert Report was printed, a number of errors in you article were brought to my attention. “Regarding the wind Falmouth wind turbines you give the following reference: [http://capecodwave.com/falmouth-town-turbines-shut-down-forever-two-neighbors-react/]. It is essentially an anecdotal report from two citizens living near the wind facility. Barry Funfar was clearly upset by the presence, and evidence suggests that their health effects are the result of the turbine. They speak of the excessive noise, but their is nothing in the article to suggest that infrasound is a causative factor other than that it is expected to be present along with the audible sound. He speaks of the bass frequencies as similar to the sound of heavy equipment. He is certainly speaking of an audible effect. This article does not indicate the distance between his house and the closest turbine. It is a moving story, but it is a specific incident and does not provide a direct link, much less proof, that infrasound was responsible for the health effects reported.

To use the Falmouth news article as an excuse to question the legitimacy of the many dozens of reports cited in the research was a blatantly apparent effort to circumvent the truth.

First off, it was not an anecdotal report. It was a recent news story that had to do with only one thing … that the courts recognized the damage that was being done to all the people of Falmouth by the local industrial wind turbine project, and that the legal system, after due diligence and many years of careful legal investigation and fighting, recognized the fact that the project had to be stopped to protect the entire community, not just a couple of people who initiated the lawsuit.

It’s also worth noting that the Falmouth article was mentioned not as absolute proof of infrasound harm but simply as a current example of how the legal system is increasingly siding with the scientific evidence that is out there, which shows that infrasound from industrial wind turbines, when placed too near the vicinity of residences, does seem to contribute to a multitude of adverse health effects for those who are close enough to feel it, whether they hear it all the time or not.

The second bogus excuse cited by the back-pedaling editor was listed as the following,

Regarding the problems with the mink farm in Denmark you reference: https://wcfn.org/2014/06/07/windfarms-1600-miscarriages/ The article acknowledges the damage and that a number of other possible causes (toxins, feed, etc) could not be found. Again circumstantial evidence suggests that the wind turbines were responsible, and it is the low frequency noise that is named. Low frequency includes infrasound but it also somewhat higher frequencies. At a distance of 1000 feet it is reasonable to suggest that audible noise was present but effects of stress from this source were not discussed in the article. Again, this specific incident does not provide a direct link, much less proof, that infrasound was responsible for the health effects reported.

Hearkening back to the previous sincere comments of the editor, prior to any interventions that pressured him to change his stance, it can be clearly seen that his comments – which he had sent to me on April 28 – demonstrated full confidence in the content of the reports,

The facts you present are convincing. If a reader decides from these that the infrasound from turbines is dangerous, then he/she will consider it his/her idea and will defend it.

The news story about the mink farm was mentioned as something to ponder, not a hard and fast fact. In the absence of all other evidence, one could logically surmise that infrasound or possibly dirty electricity was the probable culprit, either of which potentially emanated from the industrial wind turbines that had been recently constructed only 1,000 feet away from the Danish mink farm.

Such a distinction was made in the article and put in there as food for thought, not listed as a sure fire fact as the editor egregiously purports. As can be seen in the article, I couched every suggestion along those lines with words and terms such as “may have,” which is quite a different statement from suggesting it was irrefutable gospel truth.

In reality, the research from my articles offered a variety of types of evidence, some more circumstantial, some based on the logic of observation, and some were scientifically-acquired empirical facts, the preponderance of which would make it difficult for any skeptic to pretend ignorance of the harm that infrasound causes, unless for reasons of personal profit they would refuse to accept the cumulative body of evidence as demonstrating legal proof that infrasound from industrial wind turbine noise does cause adverse health effects.

Nowhere in the article is any portion of evidence cited as the “smoking gun” that provides incontrovertible proof for the subject of the article. Nowhere was there a statement that said, “Ah ha! This proves it all!” Research does not work that way any more than presenting evidence in a court of law works that way.

Research suggests logical conclusions, it does not guarantee them. Even in a criminal court, rarely is there one piece of evidence that is irrefutable. Instead, typically it is the cumulative evidence upon which judgments are logically made beyond a reasonable doubt. To point to just one portion of evidence afterward that has not been proven to be wrong or right is a transparent attempt to put a deceptive spin on the evidence altogether, and such an attack on truth is plainly visible to any reader with even a slightly open mind.

The third and last excuse cited by the editor, in a personal email to myself, makes the following false statement,

The [World Health Organization] WHO report appears at: http://www.euro.who.int/__data/assets/pdf_file/0008/383921/noise-guidelines-eng.pdf. In the section on wind turbines it lists seven health effects which it has considered: 1 Cardiovascular disease; 2) Annoyance; 3) Cognitive impairment; 4) Hearing impairment and tinnitus; 5) Adverse birth outcomes; 6) Quality of life, well-being, and mental health; and 7) Metabolic outcomes. It then goes on to conclude that except for annoyance the study has found no creditable studies, or at best only poor quality studies, that link wind turbines to these results. In the notes which appeared on the Desert Report website you state that “WHO listed the following seven most commonly reported critical health outcomes of exposure to wind turbine noise.” These were not outcomes that were found; they were studied and could not be reliably linked to wind turbines. Infrasound was not referenced at all.

The editor then goes on to contradict himself by saying,

The WHO study did find links between annoyance and wind turbines, and as you also claimed. Regarding the effects of infrasound it states: ’Wind turbines can generate infrasound or lower frequencies of sound than traffic sources. However, few studies relating exposure to such noise from wind turbines to health effects are available. It is also unknown whether lower frequencies of sound generated outdoors are audible indoors, particularly when windows are closed.’ These examples (and others) persuade me that the health effects due to infrasound from wind turbines were not properly presented, and for that reason the two articles were retracted in the Desert Report. As indicated, an explanation will appear in the December issue.”

Note that the editor and WHO both mention that there are “few studies relating exposure to noise from wind turbines to health effects …” In that sentence, they admit that there are a few studies that do so, but they carefully evade mentioning them for fear of readers seeing their legitimacy.

It is obvious that WHO is extremely reluctant to pinpoint industrial wind turbines as a source of any problem, despite the prolific amount of evidence out there, but for the first time in history, WHO had actually hinted the suspicion of infrasound hazards from industrial wind turbine projects, despite their extreme liberal favoring of them.

Also, it’s instructive to realize that I had mentioned the WHO quotes to the editor after I had sent him what I had planned to be the original finished second part of the article, but as earlier correspondence shows from the editor, it was he who decided to include those remarks in the published article.

To make his own act an excuse to question the legitimacy of the entire article could cause one to suspect whether he wanted those thoughts to be published in a preplanned strategy of being able to retract it later, in order to pervert the truth. To quote my own written stance when it comes to the WHO question, I should preface my original writing with the thought that the reason for asserting that WHO was reluctant to be completely forthcoming in their reviews is based on their statement, “As the foregoing overview has shown, very little evidence is available about the adverse health effects of continuous exposure to wind turbine noise.”

While the editor is pretending that he found some inconsistent statement that refutes all the assertions in the article, I am actually the one who wrote that quote. Moreover, my article made it clear that there was a great deal of scientific peer-reviewed evidence that was available (and had been so for a long time) that shows that there are adverse health effects from continuous exposure to industrial wind turbine noise, all of which shows that the Desert Report and WHO now apparently occupy the same bed. Any organization that employs a large number of scientific researchers but claims there is “little evidence” on a topic in which much evidence exists can be clearly seen to be hiding the real evidence.

The question remains, “How could an organization as large and wealthy as the Sierra Club so obviously attempt to hide the truth of a major issue of grave importance to people and the environment with nothing but made-up excuses?” The reasons given for retracting the article are reminiscent of the ridiculous excuses given by an eight-year old who fails to turn in his school homework assignment.

So, how did this happen? The answer is simple: The Sierra Club today boasts approximately 3 million paid members, so the club cannot be said to be owned by any one person, however, it is controlled by a very select few, and those few are billionaires who profit greatly from the work the Sierra Club is doing for them.

For instance, in 2001, billionaire David Gelbaum made two donations to the Sierra Club that reportedly totaled $101.5 million (Wikipedia claims Gelbaum donated $200 million, based on a statement in a New York Times article from 2004, but no further facts could be gathered on that amount for the time being, since Gelbaum makes the majority of his donations anonymously).

Sierra Club’s formerly green efforts seem now to be made in the name of greenbacks as they have traded ecological green for “Federal Reserve Note” green. As previously mentioned, at the top of the list of shrewd investors whose donations appear to have put a stranglehold on the legitimate operations of the Sierra Club is billionaire David Gelbaum, who coincidentally invested $500 million into more than 40 green energy companies, while making the aforementioned record-breaking donations to the Sierra Club.

There is no doubt that Gelbaum’s many business investments profit greatly from the Sierra Club’s Beyond Coal program by using the lobbying efforts and protests of 3 million club members to force the competition out of business.

In 2014, the Energy & Environment Legal Institute (E&E) published a report detailing how 8 out of 18 board members in the Sierra Club Foundation were the owners or operators of large corporations that directly profit from the Beyond Coal campaign.

That particularly contentious Sierra Club campaign represents the club’s most costly investment, and not surprisingly, Beyond Coal presently stands at the forefront of their supposed environmental efforts. Some of the highlights of that E&E report, which spawned similar journalistic investigations all around the country at the time, include the following names of men who use the Sierra Club as a front for their lucrative green energy schemes: Billionaire Nathaniel Simons, who is the creator of a venture fund for highly profitable renewable energy projects, donated $14 million. Roger Sant, co-founder of Applied Energy Services, whose $4 million dollar donation, bought the Sierra Club’s efforts to rabidly champion an expensive carbon tax on businesses, which stands as a scheme that could cripple the country economically, while netting his “service” billions of dollars in return on his investment.

Foundation directors at the top of the Sierra Club hierarchy also include the top executives of such companies as SolarCity, Solaria, and Sun Run corporations, as well as managers of huge financial funds such as Barclays, Boston Common Asset Management, and Walden Capital, all of which specialize in falsely titled “renewable” technologies.

In essence, the Sierra Club can no longer pretend it is the environmental organization that was originally founded by John Muir, but instead has become a lobbying organization whose main goal is to enrich its wealthy donors. As the former president of the Sierra Club, David Brower said, when he resigned from the board in 2000, “The world is burning and all I hear from them is the music of violins.” It would appear that the song they are playing is, “We’re in the Money” from the old Warner Bros. movie, The Gold Diggers of 1933.

[From Petition to Intervene, 28 November 2018, Indiana Utility Regulatory Commission cause 45159, NIPSCO rate changes (part of rate changes involve closing coal plants and then relying on renewable energy): “Sierra Club seeks full intervention in order to ensure that its interests in lower cost and cleaner energy options are fully represented, and to bring to this proceeding its expertise in electric utility matters.” (download)]