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The upper of these pictures is
the original visualisation. The lower picture is a reconstruction
of that visualisation - taken after the wind turbine was erected.
If you analyse the upper picture more thoroughly,
you'll notice a number of things, that might lead your thoughts
in the direction of misguidance and manipulation. Most people who
see these visualisations - the lower picture too - would say that
the wind turbine doesn't look very big, and that it would have little
visual impact in the area. Nobody could tell if this wind turbine
is 100 or 400 feet tall.
Fraud number one: - The photographer who took the
upper picture was on his knees. That way the bushes in the foreground
are 'lifted' relative to the wind turbine - thus the turbine will
appear smaller.
We did a little experiment. We told our photographer
not to try to imitate the exact picture taken by the visualisation
company. Instead we asked him to take the picture, which in the
camera's lens would leave the landscape in the same proportions
as to the human eye. No zoom - no wide angle.
Fraud number two: - When taking a picture from the
exact same position, without any zoom or wide-angle, the wind turbine
looks like this in a picture:
But photographer who made the original
visualisation picture had yet another trick up his sleeve.
The wind turbine is located more than a kilometer
away in the above pictures. But you cannot sense the true size of
the turbine.
We asked our photographer to step back 50 paces
from where the original visualisation was taken - and he produced
this picture:
Now you get a sense that we are
dealing with a wind turbine of a considerable size. Remember, there
is more than one kilometer - more than 3,000 feet - to the wind
mill from this location.
Fraud number three - The photographer of the original
visualisation pictures is deliberatly using certain techniques to
make the wind turbine appear smaller and less significant than what
it is in reality. A picture taken just 50 paces away produced an
entirely different picture.
The major problem with this scam is that the visualisation
pictures where counted heavily in the local council's decision to
allow the erection of the wind turbine. But as you can see, the
visualisation is not only completely useless, it is manipulative
and completely misleading.
Here is a picture taken another half kilometer away
from the corner of the farm, where the orginal visualisation was
produced. This is what people in the area really see.
Try and compare this photo with the original visualisation
picture.
We say - a decent visualisation would look more like
this:
Had the visualisation
photographs been anywhere near the reality of things, the giant
wind turbine at Brejl would never have been erected. Now it is just
another example of how scams and half-truths are okay in the name
of the environment.
As a matter of interest, the wind turbine is
owned by the chairman of the local planning commission, who had
little problem dealing with protests from residents or political
oponents. The windmill is erected in THE spot in Denmark, where
the wind blows the least (1/4 of the amount of wind by the sea)
- but it is still good business for the owner, who is guaranteed
millions by the government's subsidies and tax reductions over the
entire life span of the wind turbine. It is not important whether
the wind blows or not. A month after it was erected, the local planning
commission allowed the owner (the chairman) to sell his neighbouring
farm and yet still keep the wind turbine. He will now be able to
move to a sunny coast in Spain, live on the money from the wind
turbine and leave Brejl and the surrounding landscape polluted by
his giant one-armed bandit.
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