Wind Concerns Ontario | Comprehending the Climate Crisis: Everything You Need to Know about Global Warming and How to Stop It

If I were to propose a new product for the marketplace to be used for human consumption, it would need to be rigourously assessed to confirm its safety first. If I described my new product as having the following properties, what do you think would be its chances of getting approved?

—it’s addictive, not just habit-forming
—it’s known to cause or aggravate the following health conditions: heart disease, oral cancer, lung cancer, esophageal cancer, bladder cancer, emphysema, chronic bronchitis, asthma, and low birth weights in children
—all of these occur when the product is used exactly as intended, not just when abused in excess. In addition, non-users who are exposed to it secondarily are also at increased risk for these same diseases

It’s no secret I’m describing cigarettes. Simply put, cigarettes have no redeeming features. My patients who smoke describe that it relaxes them, but that’s misleading. What they’re truly experiencing is going through nicotine withdrawal when they feel that relaxing effect, essentially getting their next “fix.” Nicotine is a stimulant, not a sedative. Anyone who’s addicted to a substance suffers when they go without it too long.

It’s fair to say that if cigarettes were introduced today, they’d never stand a chance of being approved for public use. But since they’ve been around for centuries, we’re stuck with them for now. There’s a certain degree of regulation (e.g. kids aren’t supposed to smoke them), but despite the jobs associated with the tobacco industry and the taxes generated from the sale of cigarettes, none of that will ever compensate for the costs to society in health care alone with so much death and disease that they cause. New products introduced into society are forced to prove their safety before they’re approved, even though other products out there are clearly unhealthy for us.

We face something similar with wind turbines. This weekend my family and I drove to Priceville, Ontario to get our new puppy. (You don’t know where Priceville is, you say? Well, it’s just on the other side of Flesherton!) On the way driving through Grey County, I was amazed at the number of signs protesting wind turbines. Most farms we drove by had signs on their properties urging people to “Say No to Wind Turbines.” They often had other comments too like “Foul Wind” and “Say Yes to Turbines, Say No to Visitors.” They all listed a website at the bottom of the signs for Wind Concerns Ontario.

I checked out the website when I got home. It’s amazing to see how many references they have listing how bad wind turbines are for society. I wanted to check some of the information out and given that I have some expertise in health care as a physician, I clicked on the health tab on the website’s home page to see what was listed there.

There were a number of categories for health concerns listed including noise, mental health, stress, and sleep disturbance. I checked out the first six links I could click on that were meant to elaborate on these topics and was surprised to see that none of them worked. They all had “Error 404 – page not found” errors. The next two links worked but both went to the same slide show and without the words of the speaker to go along with the slides, it didn’t provide much useful information.

The next ten references were to articles in a peer-reviewed journal, the Bulletin of Science, Technology & Society (August 2011 31 issue). In fact, every one of them referenced this particular issue. As someone well-versed in science, I can tell you that having some variety in scientific references is a much more robust way to support an argument rather than having everything coming from one particular issue of one particular publication. But I guess they have to get their sources where they can and this particular journal does it for them. (According to the webpage, it seems the current issue is from December 2011. I don’t know if that means they’re on hiatus or only publish intermittently. I’d never heard of this journal before so I’m not sure.)

There may well be some health concerns with wind turbines, and I appreciate that further study will be helpful to elaborate those further. But can they really argue that the health concerns from using fossil fuels aren’t a problem? (Later this week I’ll have a blog post dedicated to this very topic, so stay tuned.)

Even if we ignored global warming and the future climate crisis we’re destined to experience if we continue with business-as-usual, do they not realize that smog, pollution, acid rain, and ozone depletion create havoc with our environment and our health? Many of the diseases caused or aggravated by these problems are cardiovascular so as a cardiologist, perhaps I’m more sensitive to the issue than other physicians might be.

The health concerns about wind turbines are on par with the health concerns about any new product being introduced into the market today. They’re like a new pharmaceutical agent that could prevent heart attacks and strokes. But if that new agent leads to an increase in liver cancer, for example—even a small one—it might not make it to market. It’s often a forest-for-the-trees situation.

I started out this post by describing how cigarettes would never be approved for use if introduced into society today, but because they’ve been around for centuries, they’ve gotten away with it. Fossil fuels are like cigarettes in our society. Long-entrenched, they’ve been in use for hundreds of years. So despite the known health concerns with fossil fuels, they’re too much a part of our civilization to do away with very easily.

I guarantee you if both wind energy and fossil fuels were being introduced today, wind energy would win out over fossil fuels. Fossil fuels have the advantage of having been introduced long before regulations would ever explore their risks, or anyone ever expressed safety concerns associated with them. And now it’s too late to do so, and yet safer options like wind turbines will have a lot of people protesting against them.

These protestors simply can’t see the forest for the trees. It’s a fact those who argue against wind energy conveniently forget.

“We’re in a giant car heading towards a brick wall and everyone’s arguing over where they’re going to sit.”
—David Suzuki

I’m proud to be Canadian. That doesn’t always mean that I’m proud of everything Canada does. But one thing it got right was David Suzuki. Although from Japanese heritage, this man is third-generation Canadian. He’s an academic with a PhD in zoology from the University of Chicago he obtained more than fifty years ago. He’s a science broadcaster, host of the long-running CBC program “The Nature of Things.” And he’s a long-time activist regarding global warming and climate change.

His efforts at educating people about climate change and global warming stem from the fact that he’s a scientist. He may not have received his PhD in climate science, but as someone who understands the principles of hypothesis, the scientific method, experimentation and interpretation of data, and publication in peer-reviewed journals, he has more than enough expertise to be qualified to speak to the issue.

One of the problems in science today is how compartmentalized it has become. Certainly in medicine we see it all the time. As an example, I’m a doctor who specialized in internal medicine and then subspecialized in cardiology. Although I stopped there, I could have gone ever further and pursued, say, electrophysiology which is the study of rhythm disorders. Beyond that, I could have decided to dedicate myself to only pacemakers and defibrillators, or ablation techniques, or rhythm medications.

The problem with learning more and more about less and less is that eventually you know everything about nothing. Since climate science is complex, I believe someone who has a broader understanding of science will often have a better appreciation of the big picture than someone who understands only the atmospheric aspects of it, or the hydrospheric, or geospheric. Dr. Suzuki’s background in zoology obviously gives him particular expertise in topics relating to the animal world, but he has a much more holistic understanding of climate change than a sub-sub-specialist ever could. People often think of the word “holistic” and its connection to an alternative branch of medicine, but its true meaning is simply characterized as “comprehension of the parts of something as intimately interconnected and explicable only by reference to the whole.” That’s climate change and global warming, through and through.

Dr. Suzuki has understood the science behind global warming and has been warning about its dangers for decades. Like many others who understand science, he considers the evidence for global warming and its connection to human activities to be irrefutable. He is also quick to point out that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change assembled more than 2500 scientists from over 130 countries, coming to the conclusion that most of the global warming observed in the last half-century is due to human activities rather than other factors. (This is where phrases like “the vast majority of climate scientists around the world” comes from.) Indeed, every national academy of science around the world believes that we are the main culprit for climate change, but the skeptics and deniers do a good job of growing seeds of doubt in the media.

There has even been a smear campaign against Dr. Suzuki himself; to be fair, he has garnered his own fair share of controversy, mostly borne out of frustration that progress moves too slowly toward the solutions we need. Real change requires government participation and that just hasn’t occurred enough for Suzuki’s satisfaction. (Or, indeed, for anyone’s satisfaction who believes in what the science is telling us and appreciates what we need to accomplish to stave off a global crisis in the generations to come.)

He’s also frustrated because too many people argue that global warming isn’t real. There is no doubt that climate change-deniers and skeptics are out there in full force with a goal of delaying any action on climate change. Frustrating because so many of those on that side of the “debate” don’t understand the science—the main reason I wrote my book and maintain a blog on the subject. The science tends to get published in scientific journals but those aren’t easily accessible to the general public, requiring good public speakers like Dr. Suzuki to spread the message around. The skeptics and deniers typically get their information from sources that come from a well-organized campaign intent on spreading disinformation and they target the media, the general public, and policy makers rather than publish in any peer-reviewed mainstream scientific journals. Sadly, these groups are too often funded by the coal and oil industry or other groups with a vested interest in maintaining business as usual, rather than looking to develop renewable sources of energy.

As part of his personal mission, Dr. Suzuki established The David Suzuki Foundation in 1990. Its mission is to “protect the diversity of nature and our quality of life, now and for the future. Our vision is that within a generation, Canadians act on the understanding that we are all interconnected and interdependent with nature.” (In the interests of full disclosure, I would like to point out that I was very honoured when asked to write a guest blog for one of the many blogs on the David Suzuki Foundation website, this one entitled Docs Talk. A joint effort with the Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment, it’s dedicated to promoting knowledge and understanding about the impact of environment on health. As a cardiologist, I was invited to write about the impacts of global warming on heart health in particular. Never one to resist a good play on words, its title is “The heart of the matter on climate change.”)

Dr. Suzuki stepped down from his Foundation’s board last fall when he openly endorsed the Ontario liberal party’s platform on green energy. Because his Foundation is considered a charitable organization, it is forbidden to endorse any political party or its policies. (Not surprisingly, the complaint that led to him stepping down came from Wind Concerns Ontario, a citizens’ group dedicated to opposing the use of wind turbines. They have since changed their name to “Ontario Wind Resistance.”) Since everyone has to play by the rules, he did the right thing and separated himself from his Foundation so they can carry on with their important work, while he can continue with his important work.

Dr. Suzuki is a real hero. Not only for Canada, but for the whole world. Generations to come will be able to look back on his achievements and realize how how important he was in the efforts we made to save our planet from ourselves, and for our future.