Mr. Dick Bowdler:

We really should be setting a noise limit relative to background noise levels and should not have the lower levels. At night, for example, a lower limit of 43 decibels might be set, but the level of background noise in an area might be less than 30. That means that the noise level from the turbines could be up to 15 decibels higher than the level of background noise. When one refers to decibel levels, people's eyes will often glaze over because the concept is hard to grasp, but if I say any increase of ten decibels is a doubling of loudness levels, 15 decibels is about three times as loud. That means that in some situations the noise levels of turbines could easily be three times as loud as the background noise level, which is why people are complaining.