One of the many unacknowledged problems with having a fuckwit as president is the frequency with which logical folks have to hip-check less-than-logical folks about really stupid stuff. Take, for example, this recent adventure in Trumpian fuckwittery:
“[T]hey say the noise [of wind turbines] causes cancer.”
It’s blatantly and profoundly stupid, right? But in an effort to be fair to Comrade Trump, some folks — even intelligent folks — might ask if there’s any basis in reality for the claim. Here’s a non-Barr summary of a conversation I had this morning:
Friend: I dunno, maybe the deep thrum of a wind farm can maybe possibly cause some form of cancer? Maybe?
Me: Nope.
Friend: I mean, if noise at a certain frequency can make your head explode, then why can’t it also cause cancer?
Me: What? I mean, what?
Friend: Sound at a specific frequency can make your head explode. You know…like glass.
Me: No it can’t.
Friend: I think it can.
Me: I’m pretty sure it can’t.
Friend: Pretty sure?
Me: Fuck you, it can’t. It just can’t.
Friend: Pretty sure?
So I — and I can’t believe I’m actually writing this — checked. And hey, I was right. It turns out a dry skull does have some acoustic vulnerabilities, mostly between the 9 and 12 kHz frequencies. But even prolonged exposure to concentrated sound in that range will, at most, cause a dry skull to vibrate a bit.
But here’s the problem: we’re not walking around with dry skulls. We’ve got them encased in layers of soft, soggy tissue and muscle. It’s like wrapping your head in a thick coat of bacon. That’s not all; inside that skull is a thickish fluid, and floating in that fluid is a hefty wad of squishy brains. All of that wet material would act as an acoustic dampener and would prevent your skull from shattering and your head exploding.
The low-frequency infrasound of a turbine farm might give you a headache, but it’s not going to give you cancer. And sound can’t make your head explode. Listening to Comrade Trump speak might make you wish your head would explode. But sorry, nope, ain’t gonna happen.
gregfallis.com 
At some point, I’m expecting the media to survey scientists to see what percentage believe that the noise from wind turbines causes cancer.
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Can sound cause cancer — not an interesting question. Can sound make your head explode — yeah, I’ll check that out. I’d bet if you asked scientists which question they’d investigate, it would be exploding heads all the way down.
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One would hope that the inside of a skull has a hefty wad of brains, but this conversation suggests that at least half the skulls involved does not.
Fully half. Not at least half. ;)
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I really don’t mind if folks are asking stupid questions, like “Wait, can sound from any source cause cancer?” because asking stupid questions is the first step toward being not stupid. What I DO mind is folks hearing Comrade Trump say stupid stuff and thinking “Well, that must be true.” Which is several steps toward remaining stupid.
Sometimes you don’t know if a question is stupid or not until you ask it and look for an answer. Also? Folks who say “There’s no such thing as a stupid question” have never heard some of the really stupid questions I’ve heard.
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Have we hit a new low? Oh probably not. The fact that you actually had that conversation gives me little hope.
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Asking questions is almost always a good thing, even if the question is “Can the sound of turbine farms encourage some of the body’s cells to divide without stopping and spread into surrounding tissues?”. The question itself isn’t entirely stupid; it’s mostly made stupid by the person who stated it as an argument against wind energy. But when you consider the alleged sonic weapons that may have been deployed against US embassies in Cuba and China, it gets a tad more difficult to dismiss the effects of sound frequency on the human body.
So I’m glad some folks are asking the question instead of just accept the sounds that are emitted by Comrade Trump (which have a profound adverse effect on my personal health).
Also, exploding heads. C’mon, no way I could avoid looking into that.
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Speaking as a sound professional of forty years experience, I can tell you that you can, technically, explode a head with sound. Really, really, really, really, really, REALLY loud sound. The kind of sound that it is almost – but not quite – impossible for humans to make. Caveat: that sound will also explode everything else in the vicinity (including wind turbines).
You can read the oranges of Trumps belief that wind turbines will give you cancer in my article here:
http://www.tetherdcow.com/windmills-of-their-minds-2/
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That’s…good to know? But really, if you can’t just target individual heads, then it takes all the fun out of it.
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Sadly, this is true.
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I had to deboggle myself too, and found this article from The Atlantic from two years ago documenting the conspiracy theory.
https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2017/06/wind-turbine-syndrome/530694/
Chemtrail level stuff, basically.
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Thanks for that link. And double thanks for doing research that’s FAR more useful than whether or not sound can make a human head explode.
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I have lived near wind farms for YEARS. No headaches, no problems at all. Just lots of lovely white windmills on all the hills.
Complaining about their noise is like complaining about the noise of the wind.
If we’re going to complain about noise pollution causing problems, let’s talk about people living in cities near expressways & all that noise. OH BUT THAT’S NOT A PROBLEM IS IT.
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The biggest problem I have with wind farms is that when I encounter them, I want to slow down and watch them. There’s something almost hypnotic about them. They seem to be moving so slowly, but then you look at the tips of the blades and they’re moving SO fast.
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I agree that Trump and his cronies are mental idiots and I am all for wind turbines, and renewable energy, but here’s the thing: my husband’s twin brother was just diagnosed with ALS. (yeah, it sucks to be him) Funny thing is he’s a veteran, the VA told him they treat a lot of it. It has a high incidence among vets, and he couldn’t have better insurance. They will pay for everything, they have services he doesn’t even imagine he will need. He served in an aircraft carrier during Vietnam. They can’t explain the high incidence of ALS among vets, I guess it could be toxic fumes from jets (?) Who knows.
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Military personnel often come into contact with or deal with stuff that most civilians don’t. If he served on an aircraft carrier during VietNam he likely encountered everything from asbestos on the ship to toxic lubricants on aircraft decks to carcinogenic paint on some military vehicles and aircraft to who knows what. That’s beyond all the weird physical and emotional stressors you deal with daily in the military. I don’t know a single veteran who isn’t beat all to hell in some way — physically, emotionally, or spiritually. It’s part of the gig.
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