I see the BBC has been shilling for the folly of the construction of hundreds of massive wind farms around the UK this morning. This follows the news that the final section of Europe’s largest onshore wind farm is coming on stream as plans are under way to expand it. The £300m Whitelee development on Eaglesham Moor, in East Renfrewshire, is made up of 140 massive turbines.
Vested interests and the eco-loons consider the defacing of our wonderful British coastline a small price to be paid to help reduce those pesky carbon emissions and their mythical relation to climate change and I heard it said this morning that an area equivalent to the size of Wales would need to be converted to Wind farms if we are to hit Government targets in terms of renewable energy. It is a disgrace that the BBC does not provide equal space for those who believe that Wind farm technology is far from appropriate, far from being environmentally constructive and far from being efficient. This is not science, this is propaganda.
Read Watts Up With That 18.05.09
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/05/18/glasgow-looking-to-freeze-in-the-dark/
for more comment on this wind-farm (or in winter, no-wind farm)
Blimey, the quote in the piece by a David McKay of Cambridge university actually states that we’ll need to radically expand nuclear power in order to get off fossil fuels.
I thought this was an unsayable for the majority of the environmental lobby who are more interested in reversing capitalism than managing the risk of man made climate change…
If all the drug taking liberals threw away their passports and refused to fly to their drug havens in Goa (very popular with beeboids I hear) or their Hollywood mansions that would save billions of tons of CO2 a year.
The utopian, ‘greenie’ self-deceived BBC ignores the negative evidence about wind farms, which Christopher Booker and others have exposed, e.g.:
‘Telegraph’:
“Windfarms: One of the great deceptions of our time”
[Extract]:
“The total power generated by all the 2,300 turbines so far built in Britain, is less than that contributed by a single medium-size conventional power station.
By Christopher Booker (13 Sep 2008)
“I long had no particular views on wind farms one way or the other. But six years ago, when I first seriously looked at what they actually contribute to our energy needs and our environment, I had a profound shock. It was clear that the craze for wind energy had become one of the greatest self-deceptions of our time.
“Far from being ‘free’, wind is one of the most expensive ways of generating electricity yet devised. Without an almost 100 per cent subsidy, unwittingly paid by all of us through our electricity bills, no one would dream of building giant wind turbines in Britain, because their cost is not remotely competitive.” (Christopher Booker.)
The BBC ran an item earlier in the week about the siting of windfarms on moor land. It seems that much of this land contains large peat deposits. During wind farm construction much of the peat is dug up and releases huge amounts of C02. Kind of defeats the object of wind farms dont’t ya think?
The windfarms will be an expensive disaster and it will cost us all dearly, they kill rare birds by the hundred with birds of prey at grater risk, if only a dozen golden eagles are killed then it will be a disaster for the species and its the same with the sea eagle and osprey.
The RSPB have been bribed and bought off and the BBC is keeping all the negative points about windfarms a secret.
Its so tragic that the billions of pounds thrown away on windfarms could have bought us the coal and nuclear mix we need.
The stupid fools are so ready to waste the wealth of the nation on a dogma driven pie in the sky dream it obvious to anyone that they are rubbish and will end up on the scrapyard floor within a decade.
Vested interests and the eco-loons consider the defacing of our wonderful British coastline a small price to be paid to help reduce those pesky carbon emissions They need to fit a windmill in their minds — there’s plenty of room in all that empty space.
Here’s a few facts that the Green Shirts at the BBC never lets itself be disturbed by…
Land usage needed to generate 1000 MEGAWATTS
Nuclear powered plant: 2.6 sq. miles
Coal powered plant: 3.6 sq. miles
Wind blights on LAND: 300 sq. miles
Good job the UK is so frackin’ huge.
Oh — what the Green Shirts never mention is that to run a national grid, one needs CONSTANT generation of electricity.
As the only wind that you can count on comes from politicians and eco-loons, that means there HAS TO BE a back-up source of power generation.
So far — there’s only three you can count on: coal, gas and nuclear powered generation
On and the windmill on top the heads of eco-loons.
And what about the murder of all those birds as they’re sliced by giant rotating blades. Happy with that eco-loons?
Oh — and waht about the fact that not only can’t the giant death blades be deployed during a mild breeze — they can’t be used in high winds either. Have to be stopped so they don’t break away and decapitate some passing cow, sheep or farmer.
Oh — when are the people of this country going to rise up and hang these bums from — hey– useless wind turbines blades.
That’s a mob show I’d pay good money to see.
Jack Bauer,
I just love your way with words sir, spot on and to the point as usual, enough to make any passing beeboid drone sit up and notice eh?
Cassie K.
David Vance,
The area required to hold all those turbines is much, much worse than you think. The article you linked to has this:
David MacKay, professor of natural philosophy at the University of Cambridge’s department of physics, said Whitelee was a step towards targets to cut carbon emissions, but warned it was only a start.
He said: “To achieve the government target of a complete decarbonisation of our electricity supply system by 2030 we need to be talking about a 100-fold increase in wind farms in Britain and perhaps as much as a five-fold increase in nuclear power. This one farm takes up 55 square kilometers. Multiply that a hundred times. 5500 square kilometers is about 40% of the area of Northern Ireland, I think. And that’s just ramping up this one farm 100-fold. According to BWEA, there are 2434 operational turbines in the UK. Add these 140 at Eaglesham Moore, then multiply by 100, and you get a quarter of a million of the things all over the landscape. Granted, a percentage of these will be offshore, like the project off the coast of Devon.
But think about it: these turbines seem to require the real estate of African elephants on game preserves. If a mere 140 of them need 55 sq. km, then ultimately you’ll need more than 600,000 sq. km.
Last time I checked, the UK was only about 242,000 square km. Just how many do you think will be put out to sea? Since they can’t go very far out, they’d have to build a ring of the damn things around the British Isles so thick you’ll be able to see it from orbit. Where will they all go?
Utter madness, mindlessly and breathlessly peddled by your official state broadcaster.
I wish we could drop the term “wind farms”. These things are power stations (not that they produce much power), major pieces of industrial plant built in the middle of some of our finest countryside. The green loons would have a fit if nuclear power stations were built in these places, but four hundred foot high wind turbines are all right apparently. The only thing these turbines really farm is the subsidy we are forced to pay for them to be built and run.
Jack Bauer
David Preiser
Both excellent posts and spot on !
Some of the most beautiful places here in Scotland are being desecrated by thes damn things and all to no purpose whatsoever, but a lot of people are making money out of this nonsense.
On the Chris Evans show last night (ok so Richard Allison was standing in for Evans), in their business slot with ‘Foxy’ they interviewed some chap from Scottish Power. He was telling us how wonderful this new windfarm would be.
Of course he failed to admit, and indeed was not challenged, that Scottish Power probably received squillions in taxpayers money. ‘Foxy’ could have asked ‘Now that we know how much MP’s expenses are costing the taxpayer, how much does it cost the taxpayer to build a windfarm? Would Scottish Power have built such a farm if it wasnt for taxpayers’ money?’ She didnt ask I dont think.
Also, said Scottish Power man revealed that the windfarm would provide enough power to 180000 homes in the Glasgow area. He failed to mention that this would happen at the optimum time (ie right amount of wind)!
Grant,
Look at this map, and imagine all those dots multiplied 100-fold. And according to the academic the BBC sought out, even that won’t be enough and you still need to increase nuclear power output by a factor of at least four.
And here’s one more thought:
Let’s assume that the environmentals and the Government’s “Renewable Energy Strategy”are at least partially successful with this racket, and they’ve managed to force however many tens of thousands of the things on you all so that 15% of all the UK’s energy comes from wind turbines. This has to be both on and off-shore, of course.
If one of the big ones provides something like enough power for 1400 household for a year, what happens when some nutjob – or group of nutjobs – wants to take them out? Once that much of the nation’s power relies on these things, they’ll become a target. Who’s going to guard them all? Is it even possible?
Somebody in the States said that companies there are set up simply to collect the subsidy that a wind farm will receive after 5 years of operation. Now the gear boxes in these windmills are supposed to last at least twenty years but under the current system the subsidy recipients can laugh all the way to the bank after 5 years without giving a t***.
Oh for a latter day Don Quixote!
Thanks Cass and Grant — appreciate it.
One thing I didn’t quite make clear — for every 1000 MegaWatts of power supplied to the National Grid from Wind Frauds, there has to be a “converntional” source of 1000 MW on permanent stand-by, to kick in when the output of the Wind Frauds drops.
That just the inconvenient truth of how power generation works.
Maybe the plan is to build giant batteries to store wind.
Jack Bauer,
I didn’t know that. That makes it all even more insane. By 2020 most of Britain will be covered in wind turbines and nuclear power plants, and you’ll all be forced to live amongst them in tents.
I saw a story about local planners threatening court action against an old lady who painted her Grade 2 house a more cheerful colour. They will likely harass her to the bitter end.
And I believe you need planning permission for any satellite dish over 1 metre in diameter.
Meanwhile these monstrous wind machines are allowed to blight ever more of our countryside.
And as has been said here – they are a totally uneconomic “solution”.
You should live where I do – these turbines multiply overnight. Now every single hill is covered by the damn things.
How can these “greenies” condone planting these things on ancient peat bogs? Call that environmentally friendly?
That is the trouble with this so called “MMGW” and its advocates – they would rather destroy the environment than admit that they are wrong. Its gone too far for them to back out.
The problem is that the almost all UK MPs have no background in science ( or anything much else ) so are totally unable to assess the claims made by the windfarm lobby.
They really don’t realise that the nuclear option is the only one which can cope with the massive energy gap which the UK is facing.
It sticks in my throat to say it, but the French government is not so stupid !
The wind farm was being mocked on by Ken Bruce on Radio 2.
He was reading out listeners’ letters. They were along the lines of: “Ken, has your presence been requested in Scotland, to ensure a constant supply of wind”
The public know that they are a white elephant, but they buy green votes, which Gordon desperately needs.
Another salient fact (AFAIK) is that even if you accept that CO2 is a problem, the UK’s contribution is a mere 2% of the world total, equivalent to a single year of China’s increase.
The whole thing appears to be a product of parasite sector corruption, pure and simple.
The Eaglesham Moor development is a BBC pet fetish. That prize twat Hardeep Singh Koli was vapouring on about in on The One Show a couple of months ago (complete with accompanying report and dismissive “it was just a bit of dull moorland when I was growing up in Glesca but now it’s going to save the world” twattery. Bet the curlews didn’t think it was dull before).
I saw that piece, a very insightful and hard hitting piece of journalism it was too, in the finest traditions of the BBC. I feel so privilged to be forced to help pay for it all. He reckoned that the “wind farm” could be a tourist attraction, on the basis of talking to a couple of cranks who found it attractive. However, when every bloody hill has got a forest of wind turbines, I doubt this one will be anything special. Shame.