Ecclesiastical judge tells church: Let there be Wi-Fi Messages to Norfolk's churches won't just be heaven sent in future, they'll also be wireless broadband signals after a judge ruled against objectors' Wi-Fi health fears. The Wispire project, a plan to attach Wi-Fi kit to churches to provide wireless broadband, sent radiation-fearing objectors running to a consistory court to …
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How ironic it would be if -in 30 years time- our attitude towards filling the airwaves with electromagnetic noise is met with the same 'how did they not realise?' incredulity that we treat tobacco adverts of the 50s.
There's no evidence that it's 'bad', aside from a few people seemingly being very susceptible, but then; we are a capitalist gadget-happy information-craving society which doesn't really care to investigate in much detail the down-sides of our wireless data bliss.
I wonder in the future if people will try to 'quit' Wi-Fi or limit themselves to 1MB a day, while those already pure impose wide-scale Wi-Fi bans and social pressure; complaining about the health effects of 'passive Wi-Fi'.
By far, the most EM you receive is from holding that little microwave transmitter right next to your head. It dwarfs the dose you get from masts, even if you're stood under one.
The closer the mast, the less power the phone has to use. One bar of signal means the phone is transmitting on full-blast - not desirable. Five-by-five signal means lowest-power transmissions and the greatest safety.
It's not the masts which are the problem. The lack of masts is the problem.
> It's not the masts which are the problem. The lack of masts is the problem.
Radiation risk from mobiles is nothing to do with the lack of masts because there is no problem. Full stop.
Microwave radiation has a million times too little power to break atomic bonds (the only way radiation can cause cancer). The most it can do is cause a little warming and the human circulatory system is very good at removing heat from all parts of the body.
I haven't been in wireless for over 10 years, but my recollection is that your phone always pumps out the full ~2W when it's trying to establish a connection with a mast. It doesn't just know that there's a mast there. It stops shouting when the mast responds. Having more masts wouldn't make a difference.
Let us take up a collection for these poor, accursed people, and buy a nice island somewhere far from the powerlines, cell tower, TV stations, and WiFi of the modern world. Let us offer to move these people to this island of tranquility, that they may be assured their precious bodily fluids aren't being contaminated by that awful radio-ations.
Once these overly sensitive people are all safely ensconced within their Nu Utopia, with "no lights no phone no motorcars", we can allow them to enjoy their new life. Oh sure, they will tire of darkness at sunset (but think of this like this: you are no longer being exposed to the output of an unshielded fusion reactor!), and may complain about the darkness.
We can then assist them by providing a light in the darkness - preferably something about 20MT yield.
I'd suggest using Bikini Atoll for the relocation.
Wouldn't you be bombarded from every direction by wifi just walking to your local chippy?
Then you'd have cellular frequencies (and power) on top of that.
Adding a church into the mix can't make a huge difference can it?
(Actually even in the countryside there are lots of signals)
" In this case the views and reports produced by the objectors from many different sources were not available for cross examination or evaluation.
The court, therefore, had to decide which evidence it preferred. The court concluded that it preferred that of the live evidence of experts in their field, whose testimony the court was able to examine and evaluate, and went on to accept."
Oh, not the god botherers but the way that Wiffy is a conduit of the devil.
I managed to get out of Norfolk before the `fear` of all things new set in, things like light bulbs that go off and on with the flick of a small switch or mobile phones and the wheel.
I can only hope that the dangerous Wifi will keep these people locked away in thier houses in fear of thier lives so they never have a chance to spout any more rubbish!
This relates to WiFi, but the arguments are the same as for mobile phone masts. In fact the WiFi signal is likely to be much lower power -- tens of watts would probably be more than enough.
On the other hand, we don't hold our laptops to our ears most of the time, and one supposes that the ESUK members don't own laptops with WiFi anyway. So any new WiFi signal is adding to the background level. We might say it is perfectly safe, and not adding appreciably, but we can not say it does not add.
The case of mobile phone masts is far more clear cut, and since I wrote a blog piece recently on the subject, complete with maths, allow me to include a link: http://www.soronlin.org.uk/mobile-phones
that WiFi power output will never exceed a certain value.
number of channels x maximum power output of a device connected to these channels. Even if you have 200 devices connected to the same AP, they can still only talk one at a time on a given wavelength- so the overall maximum power is no different for 200 taking turns than it is for 1 talking all the time.
So with 13 channels and a 0.1W maximum output (figures plucked from a quick google search; may be bullturds- but your 'tens of watts' thing would lead to phone batteries lasting minutes rather than hours!), that gives a massive... 1.3W of power added to the background noise- if you were fully saturating every frequency that can be used by WiFi. Which is less than one mobile phone that's struggling for signal, and a tiny fraction of what the human body puts out as heat (a significant proportion of which will be radiated or absorbed by surrounding materials and re-radiated later as Infrared !!!RADIATION!!!). There's probably more EM being generated by the church power cables.
> but your 'tens of watts' thing would lead to phone batteries lasting minutes rather than hours!
You are assuming the device on the church must have the same power output as a phone WiFi signal. That is not the case, and for this application, where the signal has to go a mile or two, the signal level used by a phone is probably not sufficient even if it is line of sight.
If all they were doing is putting a normal WiFi router on top of the church, there would not need to be any permissions sought. So I think it is more likely that this uses significantly more power than is allowed in normal unlicensed WiFi devices.
But as I said, tens of watts, not the two kilowatts that some mobile phone masts can put out. Because they don't have to multiplex hundreds of channels.
But whether it's 1 watt or 30 watts, it's a long way away from anyone. If the nearest house is 100m away, even 30watts would only be equivalent to a 3 milliwatt transmitter one metre away.
Errr... did I read a diferent article?
Why is everyone assuming its the churches (who are getting paid) and their congregations who are opposing this... I guess you also assume the land owners who get paid for the 3G masts who object to those as well...
The article clearly states it was Charity Electro-sensitivity UK (ESUK) along with others who were opposing this in a ecclesiastical court and speculation could just as easily be that the "others" are home owners who have no affiliation to the church but live nearby.
Why would the assembled commentards bother actually reading the story and obtaining evidence for their unwarranted attack on the churchgoers of Norfolk? It never ceases to amaze me how ready people are to attack the church or churchgoers without any recourse to the facts for not basing their beliefs on the facts before them. Perhaps faith is good enough for Reg readers but not the "God botherers".
While the objectors are stupid, I don't really understand why anyone would want this. I'm not religious, but isn't most of the point of church that you take some time to get away from worldly concerns and contemplate spiritual ones? It seems to me that available wifi would invite the world into the pews. Like leaving your cell on in a movie theater, or when you're on vacation. WTF?
I think you miss the point.
In rural Norfolk, and in other rural areas around the British Isles, Churches (with towers / spires) tend to be the tallest buildings around, and therefore make ideal ready made towers for good signal propagation to outlying villages and farms. A lot of these places do not have broadband available over copper / fibre, so WiFi is the only option.
This isn't about providing WiFi for churchgoers, but for residents who otherwise would not get any Internet at all.
Our WiFi
Which art in chapel
Cisco be thy name
Thy standards be
802.11g
Broadcast at 2.4GHz
Give us this day our IP address
And forgive us our porn downloads
As we forgive outages in communications
And lead us not unto malware
For now comes the distributed
Denial of service
For ever and ever
Reboot.
Allow me to clear this up a bit, if you will...
From what I gather, it's not so you can browse the web while attending, it's for communities that don't have broadband access available, then they could have an antenna at home and connect to the church's WIFI and get access. The church is for the height only... for coverage.
Thank you !
Syldra
...to be derived from watching a bunch of smug, self-satisfied tossers happily decrying the irrationality of churchgoers supposedly blocking the Wispire project when in fact it's the Christians (the Anglican Diocese of Norwich, FFS) trying to get it installed for the benefit of the surrounding community while a SECULAR organization (ESUK) tries to stop them...
I love a bit of sky fairy bashing as much as the next (rational) bloke but please lay off the church in this case, they are doing what they (in theory) are supposed to do e.g. looking after the welfare of parishoners. As for ESUK, well as far as I'm concerned the jury is still out. I have never seen any reliable evidence of sensitivity to wireless radiation but given the relative newness of some of the frequencies being used I am loathe to dismiss it out of hand. Deep inside I really believe they are a bunch of hypochondriacs but I am happy to be proved wrong.
Like the one where they said it was going to be on by this timetable..
1st week: On: mon, wed, fri, sun.
2nd week: on continuously
3rd week: off
4th week: On: mon, wed, fri, sun.
5th week: off
6th week: On: mon-tues, fri-sat.
A number of people reported strange effects during these times, and felt much better during the 3rd week.. of course, phones were banned during the experiment - its a BLIND test!
THE TESTERS LIED...... :) :) the transmitters were NEVER switched on until the 3rd week! during the 3rd week, they were switched as for 1st week then 4th week was on continuously, then off for the rest.. :)
Just shows the power of paranoia.. :)
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