You’ve got to hand it to the BBC. They won’t give up one some things – and especially their relentless advocacy of AGW. No matter what the facts, they will twist them. Take this item, on wind power on Orkney. It’s one long commercial for the joys of “renewables”, an ode to the importance of us all buckling down and accepting these bird-chopping, landscape-defacing monstrosities. Notice that the one thing missing from the article is the “s” word, the elephant in the room: subsidy. The author recounts how the community will benefit by £200,000 a year from their new toy, but he fails to spell out that without the government’s huge subsidies for wind power, wind turbines would be prohibitively expensive. Notice, too, that there is no mention of another vital issue – that the wind is so unreliable as a source of power that no matter how much propaganda is spread about the benefits,it will never, ever, be able to provide anything but a small fraction of our overall power needs. But eh,ho, it’s a nice patronising story about country folk doing nice greenie things. And that’s all that matters to the BBC.
PIE IN THE SKY…
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The BBC’s Jeremy Cooke writes: “It was the community itself which raised the £1.5m to pay for the turbine, through a combination of bank loans and grants.”
Or put another way: “Westray’s turbine cost £1.6 million, with £761,000 coming from the Big Lottery Fund and the rest from community funds and a loan from the sustainable bank, Triodos.”
I notice Scabby Logan called Guido Fawkes “A conservative leaning blogger” today. The BBC don’t give up do they? I guess its an improvement on the skinny poisoned dwarf Nikki Campbell the Queen of day time radio calling Guido a fascist.
Wouldn’t it be wonderful if the BBC was forced to run ALL its transmitters from windpower only. The thought of the BBC being off the air when the wind doesn’t blow, is quite refreshing.
The BBC is supposed to educate us but inconvenient facts are never on the syllabus when it comes to the corporation’s pet obsessions such as eco-mania.
The corporation is doing us a favour really. Too much information facts and we might become confused and fail to grasp the essential truth they are eager we should know.
Got to give it to the beeb their timing is purfect !lol :-[ =
Europe’s largest windfarm was shut down after a blade snapped off one of the huge turbines, operators said today.
All 140 turbines at the Whitelee windfarm on Eaglesham Moor near Glasgow are being inspected by engineers following Friday’s incident!.
Daily mail 23rd March .
And today I report – http://notasheepmaybeagoat.blogspot.com/2010/03/and-still-power-generation-claims-of.html – that for the last 24 hours this was the breakdown of power generation by type of power source:
Gas – 52.3%
Coal – 24.3%
Nuclear – 19.8%
Pumped Storage – 1.2%
Wind – 1.1%
Non pumped storage Hydro – 0.7%
Interconnect – 0.6%
That 1.1% is 12,206MWh; I wonder what the claimed capacity of UK Wind Farms is?
ChrisM reports in my comments that “Current capacity is 4122 MW with another 10,000 MW under construction”. If this is true then wind farms were running at around 12.3% over the period I examined; impressive!
I noticed that the BBC didn’t mention the campaign in Dundee to try and stop the building of new turbines on the banks of the River Tay which will block the view of local residents.
The SNP in Scotland are pro windmills and green issues in general and plan to build 600 pylons across the most spectacular scenery in Europe delivering the power from Highland ‘windfarms’ and ‘wave power generators’ to central Scotland. These pylons will be four times as tall as standard pylons and will cross the newly designated ‘ Cairngorm national park ‘ and dwarf Stirling castle and other beautiful areas. The SNP ‘hope’ that power companies will bury some cables but won’t force them to ( nice). At 6 times the cost they won’t be buried.
This all leaves a dilemma for Pravda North Britain. Like all media in Scotland they are anti SNP. With the BBC’s pro Green agenda all windfarms etc have to be mentioned without ever giving the SNP the credit. A careful task but they have the resources and agenda to do it.
I like this part:
“That means that, perhaps uniquely, the project is wholly owned by the community”
By “community,” I take it he means the community of taxpayers as a whole, who, after all, had money extracted from their pockets to pay for it.
No? Oh well.
They believe we have deep pockets. They might be right. But for how long will we be willing to dip into them, for the lousy broadcasting we’re currently forced to pay for?
Interesting concept of “profit”: “profit” in this case is apparently the surplus accruing to the “owners” of this eyesore after the taxpayer has ploughed a permanent annual subsidy. Very nice for the “community” who have actually put in f*** all of the construction/connection expense. Very nice also for Enercon who will, I’m sure, made a killing on this one. Remember too – before you go shopping – that Marks & Sparks has a hand in this travesty of capitalist enterprise. BTW I cannot find anywhere a comprehensive cash flow statement concerning this project. God forbid that the BBC should find out or, worse, tell the punters the financial reality of what happened here. In the same way, I suspect the reality of today’s budget will also be hidden by the BBC until one of the paper MSM (or a blogger) strips out Darling’s PR crapola.
………..and there are billions of pounds of subsidy being taxed from us on all this nonsense, with the electricity supply companies being forced to buy any of the output at a fancy high price.
I have had dealings with similar projects at work. Basically the govt/EU actually the taxpayer of course will throw money at any “community” alternative energy project. The project which is usually run by various persons usually on benefits (and hoping to stay that way) has to raise money to buy a hopelessly uneconomic wind turbine or solar cells to provide electrical power for a community garden or community centre. Raising funds doesn’t mean bake sales or anything like that but just means they have to fill in a form. If the form contains the correct buzz words they are handed either £20K or £40K. The last one I saw spent the cash on solar cells which produced barely enough electricity for them to a boil a kettle !
The trouble with the BBC is they are in denial and are too quick to hug a tree, know next to nothing of the real issues and do not think about what’s best.
The trouble with Biased BBC posters is they are in denial and are too quick to put us ever more at the beck and call of the islamo fascists who have the oil and the (ex?) communists who have the gas and uranium.
Go blissfully on and let your kids and grandkids get the begging bowl out in Riyadh, Tehran, Moscow and Astana.
Sad really.
kitty shaw
“The trouble with Biased BBC posters . .” You’re wrong here. The problem I (and I think most of the other B-BBC commenters) have is the refusal of the BBC to inform its listeners/viewers about the reality of the costs and benefits of all sources of energy and, particularly, the “alternative” energy sources. Further the BBC refuses to admit any point of view that argues for conventional home-grown (ie coal-fired) power and, more to the point, that carbon capture is a chimera. The use of natural gas or LPG as a source of electrical generation is short-sighted because – as you say – this plays into the hands of crazed Islamists and (ex) Communists. Our main source of power should be nuclear: a proven and reliable (and, what’s more, safe) technology. It’s salutary that Chernobil (which is alwways wheeled out in these discussions) was a crap design constructed badly by a corrupt administration. The “choice” (on which the BBC refuses to allow any debate) is between pie-in-the-sky “clean”, incredibly uneconomic, renewables and reliable, cost-effective technologies. Ironically, concentrating on wind etc energy will drive us into the arms of Russia and the Middle East because they will be the major sources of quick-fix energy material (ie gas and oil) to make up the massive shortfall caused by the closing down of existing coal-fired power stations and the delay inn building nuclear ones. Of course, I may be wrong (I doubt it) but this is a discussion I’ve never heard on the BBC.
Actually I would agree that nuclear must play the majority role in producing our energy.
Though I am concerned that though there are resources of this in Canada and Australia much of the world’s resouce is in Russia and Kazakhstan.
However we should definitely not be reliant upon one energy source alone, as disruption in that as a source is then devastating (as Commisar Chavez is finding out), for whatever reason, whether natural disaster, enemy intervention or labour and economic issues.
We do still have a lot of coal in this nation, but due to the early closure of many of the pits it is now prohibitive to get it out.
Oil and gas are as you say putting our future in the hands of the crazies.
That then leaves ‘tree hugging’ options. HEP is limited for this country. Solar is all the more so. It is not wrong to seek some production by wind, but it needs to be limited to where the wind is at its most efficient and even then a big step up in the efficiency of technology is needful. At least the wind itself is free and ours. Obviously we need to look at tidal options, however much people bleat about the fish and seabirds, it will take work to get it efficient enough but again the tide is at least ours.
It is essential that we have a domestic resource of energy to retain our long term future independance, you never get that from the BBC though, I mean ever, they only ever go on their eco moon dance so they always miss it. Perhaps it would suit them to have us in up beyond our ears to Tehran, Baghdad, Moscow, Bogota and
Riyadh.