Adam Lea (288)
“What can you do […] if the local authority planners are going to keep rejecting [renewables] in case someone can see it whilst walking their dog?”
Send a small cheque to the person with the dog. The number of reported negative health impacts and the complaints about the loss of the esthetic values seems to be orders of magnitude lower in places where the whole community benefits, even in a symbolic amount, than in places like Canada, where the farmer on whose land the turbine is placed is handsomely rewarded and his neighbors are not. For these neighbours, each turn of the turbine reminds them they their neighbour gets richer and they don’t. are you surprised that they feel that their view is spoiled and that they start noticing negative psychological and health impacts – envy is a powerful source of stress and any prolonged stress may lead to actual diseases.
Additional mechanism leading to the health issues is avoiding of the cognitive dissonance – we don’t like to think about ourselves as envious, so we will listen carefully into into our body until we find something actually wrong, Internet-diagnose ourselves with pages reporting health problems they link to turbines, and then reinforce all these via psychosomatic feedbacks until we are actually feeling worse.
The phenomenon was studied on an example of whiplash – in Scandinavia where whiplash was well compensated by car insurance, the rates of recorded whiplash and, more importantly, the length of the recovery from it – were much higher than in comparable country that didn’t pay for whiplash (Lithuania?). It was not only the matter of fake claims – many people did actually feel worse for longer – if you are getting a handsome pay – you don’t want to think about yourself as a scammer, so you listen to your body intently in search of any pain and if you look long enough you would find it. You may also be stiffening your body in anticipation of the pain, which may affect blood circulation and the recovery.
So of you want to build new renewables – you need community buy-in. In places where the entire community benefits – the opposition and most of the reported negative effects – mostly disappear – each turn of the turbine now puts a bit of money into your pocket too …
All this may sound cynical, but there is element of fairness underlying it
– I don’t think it is fair that only an owner of the land gets compensated and his neighbours are nor. And lack of fairness is bad to everyone – obviously to the neighbours, but also to the land owners as they have to face the hostility of their own community.
Piotr
Scott Stroughsays
@ 294 Hank,
Thanks for the link. I would like to point out though: This study was on land dominated by invasive annual non-native grasses Avena barbata and Avena fatua.(wild oats) These are cool season C3 annuals and while many of results they found might be somewhat similar to a restored perennial grassland, some certainly are not. For example the N fertilization treatment is likely similar, but native warm season C4 perennial grasses and their symbiotic AMF respond to heat and elevated CO2 dramatically different. They made a few guesses as to why certain of their results were at variance with expected results, but I did not see where they acknowledged this important factor. Even cool season perennials have larger root mass and AMF colonization, but warm season perennial root mass and AMF is much much larger and responds to elevated temps & CO2 positively. (a stabilizing feedback to AGW)
Adam Lea (288)
“What can you do […] if the local authority planners are going to keep rejecting [renewables] in case someone can see it whilst walking their dog?”
Send a small cheque to the person with the dog. The number of reported negative health impacts and the complaints about the loss of the esthetic values seems to be orders of magnitude lower in places where the whole community benefits, even in a symbolic amount, than in places like Canada, where the farmer on whose land the turbine is placed is handsomely rewarded and his neighbors are not. For these neighbours, each turn of the turbine reminds them they their neighbour gets richer and they don’t. are you surprised that they feel that their view is spoiled and that they start noticing negative psychological and health impacts – envy is a powerful source of stress and any prolonged stress may lead to actual diseases.
Additional mechanism leading to the health issues is avoiding of the cognitive dissonance – we don’t like to think about ourselves as envious, so we will listen carefully into into our body until we find something actually wrong, Internet-diagnose ourselves with pages reporting health problems they link to turbines, and then reinforce all these via psychosomatic feedbacks until we are actually feeling worse.
The phenomenon was studied on an example of whiplash – in Scandinavia where whiplash was well compensated by car insurance, the rates of recorded whiplash and, more importantly, the length of the recovery from it – were much higher than in comparable country that didn’t pay for whiplash (Lithuania?). It was not only the matter of fake claims – many people did actually feel worse for longer – if you are getting a handsome pay – you don’t want to think about yourself as a scammer, so you listen to your body intently in search of any pain and if you look long enough you would find it. You may also be stiffening your body in anticipation of the pain, which may affect blood circulation and the recovery.
So of you want to build new renewables – you need community buy-in. In places where the entire community benefits – the opposition and most of the reported negative effects – mostly disappear – each turn of the turbine now puts a bit of money into your pocket too …
All this may sound cynical, but there is element of fairness underlying it
– I don’t think it is fair that only an owner of the land gets compensated and his neighbours are nor. And lack of fairness is bad to everyone – obviously to the neighbours, but also to the land owners as they have to face the hostility of their own community.
Piotr
@ 294 Hank,
Thanks for the link. I would like to point out though: This study was on land dominated by invasive annual non-native grasses Avena barbata and Avena fatua.(wild oats) These are cool season C3 annuals and while many of results they found might be somewhat similar to a restored perennial grassland, some certainly are not. For example the N fertilization treatment is likely similar, but native warm season C4 perennial grasses and their symbiotic AMF respond to heat and elevated CO2 dramatically different. They made a few guesses as to why certain of their results were at variance with expected results, but I did not see where they acknowledged this important factor. Even cool season perennials have larger root mass and AMF colonization, but warm season perennial root mass and AMF is much much larger and responds to elevated temps & CO2 positively. (a stabilizing feedback to AGW)