the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
The multiple understandings of wind turbine noise: Reviewing scientific attempts at handling uncertainty
Abstract. The noise from wind turbines has been an issue in the planning and development of wind power for many years, giving rise to both controversies during the deployment of onshore wind farms as well as a significant amount of research by various communities of scientists, or what we treat here as epistemic communities. Despite iterative attempts at fixing the noise issue through investments into technological developments and regulatory determination of allowable decibel noise levels, noise remains a contested and difficult object to find solutions to. In the Co-Green project, we instigated a social science-based study founded in Science & Technology Studies (STS) to look at why and how it is that noise continues to be so controversial. We do this through a narrative literature review of three different epistemic communities – the technical, health-based, and social acceptance literatures – tracing the emergence of the knowledge object of wind turbine noise. We illustrate how noise remains an ‘unruly knowledge object’ that defies stabilisation within and between the three epistemic communities: Instead, noise is understood as fundamentally different things across the three communities, fuelling the controversies over the solutions proposed, where the “fixes” might sometimes not address what was intended. We end by pointing to the potential benefits of more interdisciplinary engagement between epistemic communities and as well as to – in the context of science for policy – probe the potential value of finding ways to translate qualitative research findings into noise (and other) regulations.
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RC1: 'Comment on wes-2024-34', Anonymous Referee #1, 27 Jun 2024
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Overall feedback: The manuscript deals with a very interesting and timely topic of wind turbine noise. Providing a critical, social science view on what is sound and what is noise and how science is involved in production of the phenomenon of noise and how it can be tackled, The MS is written in a way that is accessible to broad readership. In particular, the authors did a good job at positioning themselves in the ‘shoes’ of technical audience and explained very well their approach and how this manuscript could be useful for them.
Your paper as such can help a lot the technical audience to observe the ways in which they tackle the problem of wind turbine sound/noise- in a way you hold a mirror for the- but I believe it is also useful to the policy makers and people involved in legislation as well as management of wind farms. Perhaps you could also mention this audience in your work and conceive recommendations for how this MS is relevant for their work.
Abstract:
Various communities of scientists, here understood as epistemic groups. Maybe mention that these are groups working in different domains and what are these? Divided into single disciplines or how?
Introduction:
You start by arguing that sound becomes ‘politicized noise’. Can you explain what do you mean by this what seems to be a process of politicization
In the line 35 you discuss the controversies and issues around wind turbine sound, perhaps add reference to prior research that discussed it?
You state: “These issues and their implications for wind farm development are typical of those seen in Denmark, and there has been significant funding of ambitious projects to resolve the issue.” Maybe don’t say ambitious projects but make it more specific? Research projects?
You state “ how concepts such as noise are co-produced by the scientific communities that form around them” this is the first time you mention the idea of co-production, maybe good to explain what you mean when you use the concept? Or use a simple term instead.
Would it not be useful to discuss the public perceptions of noise? How they are different from the scientific ( and as you argue multiple) understandings of sound/noise.
Results
Your results are very interesting but mostly describe the state of art in relation to literature and not views expressed by the experts tehmselves. On this point, I wonder what was the role of your interviews in the data analysis as you do not seem to draw directly on this data in your results section. Would quotes from your interviews help to enrich the results and provide expert views?
As a last point of thought, I am wondering how your analysis what noise is would be if you also took into consideration animals?
Citation: https://doi.org/10.5194/wes-2024-34-RC1
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