When it comes to wind farms, rhetoric is just a lot of hot air

Have you noticed how the highly-paid image makers that infest the communications world of today soften language to blur the edges of whatever it is they are trying to sell us?

I've just heard one of this country's top establishment scientists – in the first of a prestigious series of lectures he's giving – refer to "windmills". He was actually talking about those giant industrial metallic structures which are actually wind turbines.

They couldn't be more different in appearance or effect. Take the rare wooden or brick windmills in East Anglia – open air museum pieces – and compare them with the single turbine which looms over the centre of the unpretentious little town of Swaffham in East Anglia.

It has had the appeal of its new fine historic buildings in the centre virtually obliterated by the jumbo-sized turbine in its small business park.

Far from inspiring people as the wind-turbine industry claims, the creeping blight of these industrial "farms" (another soft designation) on the very edge of National Parks, in Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty (one again threatened by planning applications here locally) and close to ancient villages strikes a chill. So what if many opponents belong to that vilified gang classed as nimby's (not in my back yard).

As one of the many long-term members of the Cotswold Protection Group who regard the label as a compliment.

Equally many of us now know too much about the true amount of electricity generated and carbon emissions saved behind the exaggerated claims of puffed-up entrepreneurs, not to mention the reality behind their claimed 'green' credentials which ignore the effect of the installation of essential infrastructure and extensive links to the National Grid. We know for example that dozens – and in the near future with the grandiose plans for the roll-out of wind farms adding 6,000 turbines countrywide over the next 10 years, undoubtedly hundreds of families will have their homes made unsaleable as well as unliveable because of the health effects of having windfarms imposed on them in close proximity. But the victims are at last fighting back.

One family is involved in a trail-blazing legal action claiming £380,000 compensation for the lost value of the unsaleable Lincolnshire farmhouse they've had to move out of because of the 320-foot-high turbine erected within half a mile. They are taking action against the three companies involved and the landowner.

Driven out by the effects of the 66 decibel pulsed humming from the turbines which made sleep impossible, they personally know of 15 other families suffering in the same way.

Another desperate family has already made legal history by winning their action and £15,000 in damages because the vendors of the property they bought kept secret plans for a nearby windfarm of turbines almost 400ft tall (small now by current standards with the spread of 600ft monsters).

Two recent pieces of research by scientists pinpoint the abnormal stimulation of the inner ear caused by the low frequency noise emitted by the turbines.

The infrasounds inaudible in the normal way but powerful because it can be heard by our bones. It can cause an increased heart rate, chest tightness, fear and a primitive compulsion to escape, for some adults living within two kilometres of turbines.

Children, too, can suffer from symptoms ranging from nightmares to a last effect on their cognitive development.

A two-kilometre protection zone around homes and workplaces is now being applied to new turbine developments elsewhere in Europe in acknowledgement of these health effects.

A report by a panel of independent experts, commissioned by the American Wind Energy Association and published this year, found that the fluctuating "swishing" of the turbines' blades stopped them sleeping. Vertigo, raised blood pressure and depression are other symptoms reported.

Government subsidies made wind farms attractive to a new breed of entrepreneurs, also providing a green fig-leaf to ministers in the last regime who neglected research into the far more effective tidal power. And the consumer?

Two other crucial aspects were never publicly addressed by the industry: the first is safety. Turbine rotors weighing up to 10 tonnes, when hit by metal fatigue, have travelled over 400 metres.

Then there are the birds. Surveys in the US and more recently in Spain show turbines on a migration route such birds into the blades. The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds has fought wind farm applications on the island of Lewis and near Inveraray in Scotland to protect the golden eagle. Bats are also frequent victims.

The wind turbine industry disputes much of all this, but just refuting it is not enough.

The usual claim that "there is no evidence" ignores the fact that, like genetically modified food, the fluoridation of our water, huge incinerators and low-level microwaves, those in authority with a vested interest resist initiating any research.