Following a July investigation by environmental correspondent Sandi Keane , a network analysis of links between the principal voices involved in demonising wind farms in Australia has been circulating in recent weeks.

The network diagram shows connections between some of the principal individuals who have been vocal in opposing wind farm development in Australia, several organisations that are at the forefront of the opposition, the Institute of Public Affairs and its love-child the Australian Environment Foundation and the Victorian Liberal Party.

In August, the Baillieu government announced it would be amending legislation to require all wind turbines to be sited further than two kilometres from any residence.  The push is now on to get the NSW O’Farrell government do the same thing. The decision effectively guts the wind industry’s immediate prospects of further development in Victoria with wind industry insiders predicting that money will rush into South Australia, where already 21% of the state’s energy is sourced from wind.

(Click on the image for the full, readable version)

At the base of the diagram are various wind farms that have been targeted by those opposed and the connections with protest meetings that have been held in recent years. The often cosy relationships are never better illustrated than by looking at the links between the Waubra Foundation, the Australian Landscape Guardians  and Victorian mining investor Peter Mitchell. Mitchell has uranium and coal seam gas interests and has spent a lifetime in the fossil fuel extraction industry.

Mitchell is the Waubra Foundation’s founding chairman and at least until February 2011, was also chairman of the Australian Landscape Guardians’ Science and Economics Committee.

The Waubra Foundation, the Landscape Guardians and Mitchell’s investment company Lowell Capital all have the same post office box, yet the “medical director” of the foundation, Sarah Laurie, wrote recently on a blog: “The Waubra Foundation is not a front for the Landscape Guardians … Peter Mitchell  … has kindly made his mailbox available for the use of the foundation, as we have extremely limited financial resources.”

Things must be tough: a post office box costs about 50 cents a day.

Amazingly, the Waubra Foundation website states that Laurie has an MD (research) degree from Flinders University. She does not: she has bachelor’s degrees in medicine from Flinders, but is unregistered to practice as a doctor. An MD is a postgraduate degree awarded to accomplished researchers for a body of published work.

One of Waubra Foundation’s  governing principles states: “At all times to establish and maintain complete independence from government, industry and advocacy groups for or against wind turbines.” Its chairman Peter Mitchell is a strident opponent to the Stockyard Hill wind farm (which borders his weekender). Sarah Laurie ties herself in knots claiming that she doesn’t oppose the proposed Crystal Brook wind farm in her backyard, yet she’s devoted the past 15 months to fighting wind farms.

Fellow director Tony Hodgson is a founder of Friends of Collector, a protest organisation in the mould of the Landscape Guardians, he’s working hard to scuttle a wind farm adjacent to his weekender. Director Kathy Russell opposes the Mount Pollock wind farm in her backyard and is vice-president of the Australian Landscape Guardians, vice-president of the Victorian Landscape Guardians, spokeswoman for the Western Plains, Mount Pollock Landscape Guardians and the Barrabool Hills Landscape Guardians. The Landscape Guardians appears to have more office positions than members.

A front group bereft of credibility, we might wonder how the Waubra Foundation garnered the support of Michael Wooldridge (federal health minister under Howard) to also sit on their board. Wooldridge opposes the proposed Bald Hills wind farm, which borders his family’s farming interests in Gippsland.  The Bald Hills project was almost scuttled by the Guardian’s heartfelt concern for the orange-bellied parrot.

A ban was overturned when it was shown that the whole wind farm might endanger one theoretical parrot every 667 years.

Having found limited success using protected species to prevent wind farms, the anti-windies settled on a new weapon, a manufactured health crisis. But last month, international journal Environmental Health Review published a review of all evidence about the proposition that wind farms cause health problems in those exposed. Like at least four other previous reviews, this latest review concluded:

“While it is acknowledged that noise from wind turbines can be annoying to some and associated with some reported health effects (e.g. sleep disturbance) … given that annoyance appears to be more strongly related to visual cues and attitude than to noise itself, self reported health effects of people living near wind turbines are more likely attributed to physical manifestation from an annoyed state than from wind turbines themselves. In other words, it appears that it is the change in the environment that is associated with reported health effects and not a turbine-specific variable like audible noise or infrasound.

“Regardless of its cause, a certain level of annoyance in a population can be expected (as with any number of projects that change the local environment) and the acceptable level is a policy decision to be made by elected officials and their government representatives where the benefits of wind power are weighted against their cons.”

So people who are annoyed or affected by wind farms are those who basically don’t like them and find the sight and sound of them upsetting, in much the same way that some people object to traffic, aircraft or street noise while others are indifferent to it. The idea that in themselves, they are intrinsically toxic to those exposed, has poor support in the scientific research literature.

The anti-wind farm movement regards such conclusions as profanity but has had a hard time getting the scientific community to take them seriously. For example,  look up “wind turbine syndrome” (a new “disease” invented by a US general practitioner) in PubMed , and you’ll find zero entries. And if you look up “vibroacoustic disease“, the name for a new disease caused by inaudible, invisible sound waves put out by evil wind turbines, you’ll find papers by staff at a minor Lisbon university where the authors all repeatedly cite each other’s papers, but few others ever do.

Australia’s commitment to renewable energy faces formidable opposition from interests who think climate change is  “crap” and who will be affected by the carbon tax.  China, India, the US, Canada and many European nations are storming ahead with wind energy development. If flakey arguments about wind farms being harmful are not exposed, Australia will be tying one hand behind its back on the path to a greener economy.

*Tomorrow: the eight papers that the anti-wind farm lobby describe as “groundbreaking” —  pity about the “peer review” …