Article by Jonathan Leake and Harry Byford The Sunday Times www.timesonline.co.uk 13 December 2009

Civil servants have suppressed warnings that wind turbines can generate noise damaging people's health for several square miles around.

The guidance from consultants indicated that the sound level permitted from spinning blades and gearboxes had been set so high - 43 decibels - that local people could be disturbed whenever the wind blew hard. The noise was also thought likely to disrupt sleep.

The report said the best way to protect locals was to cut the maximum permitted noise to 38 decibels, or 33 decibels if the machines created discernible "beating" noises as they spun.

It has now emerged that officials removed the warnings from the draft report in 2006 by Hayes McKenzie Partnership (HMP), the consultants. The final version made no mention of them.

Article by www.thisisdevon.co.uk 11 January 2010

Just before Christmas I could not believe the "front" of a wind farm supporter whose letter condemned an objector for using misleading statistics when arguing against wind farms.

The wind industry is founded on highly-spun, misleading statistics.

For example the "number of homes" figures developers love conveniently omit to mention that homes account for only 29 per cent of electricity use.

Until the Advertising Standards Agency was persuaded that it was not possible to selectively replace electricity that would have been generated in a coal-fired power station, developers claimed carbon offsets double what is now allowed.

But because of the intermittent, highly variable nature of the electricity produced by wind farms, high carbon costs are incurred in keeping the grid stable. Fossil-fuelled power stations have to be turned up and down rapidly which, a retired power engineer told me, "is like driving a steam train around the M25 in rush hour". These costs are never accounted for.