Trump: the noise from windmills causes cancer

[GMDino]

You know what?  This whole things needs a deeper dive.

Luckily I have a few minutes so let's break down the entire statement the POTUS Donald J Trump made...piece by piece!



Link to the video I will use: https://www.c-span.org/video/?c4789848/trump-windmills-cancer

DJT: "Hillary wanted to put up wind, wind".

Now right away we see Trump at his finest...ready to make a point but already not thinking it through.  Clearly, based on his follow up statements in the same video, he means "Windmills" or (more precisely) Wind turbines.  So he's not off to a great start.


DJT: "If you have a windmill anywhere near your house congratulations your house just went down 75% in value."

Wow!  That's a lot!  Is it true a true statement though? And this IS a statement not attributed to "they say" and with no follow up of "you tell me".


Well this opinion piece says that windmills do lower property values anywhere from 15-55% depending on his source. (linked in the article)

And this piece (from the highly biased "American Wind Energy Association") cites other sources that show no to very little value depreciation.  (linked in the article)

Still neither of those reach the 75% Trump claimed.

However Trump himself claimed the depreciation was 65% a week earlier. 

https://www.cnn.com/2019/03/22/politics/fact-check-trump-wind-turbines-property-value/index.html

Quote:President Donald Trump claimed Wednesday at an Ohio rally that wind turbines significantly decrease property value.

"Put the windmills up and watch the value of your house, if you're in sight of a windmill, watch the value of your house go down by 65%," he told the audience.

So he has already "raised the bar" beyond what research has shown.

The CNN fact check continues:

Quote:A 2016 study published in the Journal of Real Estate Research analyzed "more than 122,000 home sales, between 1998 and 2012, that occurred near (within 10 miles) 41 turbines in densely populated Massachusetts communities."

The study found "no unique impact on the rate of home sales near wind turbines."



The study did find a negative impact on property values near things such as major roads and electricity transmission lines, Ben Hoen, one of the authors of the study and a researcher at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, told CNN.



(It should be noted that the study was funded in part by the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy of the US Department of Energy and the Massachusetts Clean Energy Center.)
Hoen and his colleagues also found that a "majority of those living within a half a mile (from wind turbines) do not believe their property value has been inversely impacted," he told CNN.


This is not to say that individuals cannot or do not see a decrease in property value due to wind turbines -- in fact, many real estate groups have found this to be true in the local areas they service.


For example, one early draft of a study from researchers at the Economics and Financial Studies School of Business Clarkson University found that having a wind turbine on a parcel of land might decrease the value by 65%. However, the study's sample size had only three parcels of land with turbines on them at the time they were sold. The 65% figure "thus may be spurious," the study says.


"There have been individual homes that have been adversely impacted by wind turbines," said Hoen, noting the difference between individual homes and looking at the overall average.


A study from the Department of Environmental and Natural Resource Economics at the University of Rhode Island reviewed over 48,000 single family homes within a 5-mile radius of a wind turbine site, as well as over 3,000 in a 1-mile radius. The study found "no statistically significant negative impacts on house prices" from the turbines. It also found that the negative impact on housing prices could, at most, reach 5.2% -- a far cry from Trump's 65% figure.

"Undoubtedly, if there was evidence for this 65% we would have found it," Hoen told CNN.

Even in Europe (where Trump has fought to keep wind turbines away from his golf courses) the depreciation comes nowhere near even 65%

Quote:In 2013, research from the London School of Economics found a price reduction of 5-6% "for housing with a visible wind farm of average size (11 turbines) within" 1.24 miles. This reduction fell the farther away houses were from the wind farm, coming to less than 1% at "the limit of likely visibility."

RWI Essen found that wind turbines can decrease the property value of single-family homes by 7.1% if they're built 0.6 mile away, but as the distance from the wind turbine increases the effect decreases. A January press release on the study says that when the home's distance from the turbine is increased to 4.97 miles, there is no measurable negative impact on the value. The highest decrease in property value due to wind turbines, the study found, was for long-settled rural areas where the loss could reach 23% for houses within 0.6 mile of the turbine.

Therefore Trump is exaggerating at best and lying at worst by using the highest "possible" number as fact.

Continuing:


DJT: "And they say the noise causes cancer you tell me that."

We've been over the fact that whoever "they" are cannot be determined as no legitimate (or any) source can be found for anyone saying the noise from a wind turbine causes cancer.

There are some possible health concerns associated with windmills.

Quote:Canadian family physicians can expect to see increasing numbers of rural patients reporting adverse effects from exposure to industrial wind turbines (IWTs). People who live or work in close proximity to IWTs have experienced symptoms that include decreased quality of life, annoyance, stress, sleep disturbance, headache, anxiety, depression, and cognitive dysfunction. Some have also felt anger, grief, or a sense of injustice. Suggested causes of symptoms include a combination of wind turbine noise, infrasound, dirty electricity, ground current, and shadow flicker.1 Family physicians should be aware that patients reporting adverse effects from IWTs might experience symptoms that are intense and pervasive and might feel further victimized by a lack of caregiver understanding.

[Author's (me) note: I'm not sure "sense of "anger, grief or a sense of injustice" are "health" concerns compared to headaches and sleep disturbance.]

The rest of the linked article goes on to say the primary reported concern is of the noise being an "annoyance".

And again I welcome anyone to present the study (or theory) that the noise can cause cancer if they can find it.

However devoid of THAT kind of evidence Trump saying "they say" is a lie as no one has said it except him. 

The run off of "you tell me" has zero context to determine what it means at the end of the sentence.  He did not follow it up with either "you tell me if that's true" OR "you tell me if you want a windmill near your home when just the noise causes cancer" therefore it must be ignored for the purpose of determining if Trump believes the statement or not.

Given the first negative statement about property values and the statement after the cancer claim it would appear that Trump is making an argument against wind turbines and therefore his comment on the noise causing cancer is either one he believes himself (claiming he heard it elsewhere when there is no proof of that) or one that he feels free to share whether he believes it or not because it a negative to having wind mills.

DJT: "And of course it's like a graveyard for birds. If you love birds you'd never want to walk under a windmill because it's a very sad, sad sight. "

Now there is no doubt that windmills do kill a lot of birds a year.  And the industry is spending money and making an effort to limit this as much as possible.

So on this point, where getting real numbers is very hard to do, Trump has a legitimate point even if he chose to use hyperbole to make it.

In the end we have three statements from the POTUS aimed at showing how "Bad" windmills are:

Property values drop
Noise from them causes cancer
They kill a lot of birds.

President Trump also has a history of fighting against windmills in both his business life (with his golf course) and as President when he claimed that when the wind stops you lose your electricity.

Most of what Trump says about windmills seems to come from a personal bias rather than any studying he has done on how the operate as evidenced by the fact check linked above concerning what happens when the wind stops.  But he clearly opposes them.  

Therefore his three statements were not asking for proof or verification.  

They were spoken, and intended, to say that windmills are bad for those three reasons.

One statement was at best exaggerated: The studies do not reach his level of percentage and most are significantly lower.
One statement was a lie: no one else said it and no one ever has.
One statement is true, although he again exaggerated a bit to make his point.

I encourage anyone who was bored enough to read this to do their own research to defend the President's statements rather than just play semantics with the two phrases "they say" and "you tell me".  I would welcome any proof otherwise.

(As a heads up a good place to start is with looking at all the times Donald Trump says that "someone" told him something and never names his sources.  A trick he has used his entire public life to put his own ideas out there without having to take blame if they are wrong.)