I agree entirely. Many of us have gone through the same learning process.

Dr Phillip Bratby
Devon
(a retired scientist and energy consultant)

Communities and Politicians Should Welcome This Contribution

Thank goodness for this timely contribution. As a professional engineer and academic I was recently faced with the task of educating myself and fellow villagers on the numerous issues surrounding industrial wind turbines. We needed to rapidly acquire and assimilate the information on turbine capital costs, electrical output, revenue streams, subsidies (including the Alice-in-Wonderland ‘renewables obligation certificates’), health issues (particularly noise) and claimed contributions to carbon-reduction.

All this was required to counter the ‘steamroller’ tactics of developer and lobby groups, both apparently determined to despoil the new South Downs National Park landscape and (as it transpired) to charge us for the privilege! We spent many weeks collating information, then promulgating to residents and planning authorities and at public inquiry. Dr. Etherington’s monograph would have dramatically eased and speeded our learning experience.

Etherington’s book will surely come to be recognised as the immediate source of reference for communities such as ours when faced with proposals for industrial wind turbine farms. From painful experience our community now knows that they are indeed a ‘scam’.

Hopefully ‘The Wind Farm Scam’ will also be required reading for all MPs in the 2010 intake; particularly so for ministers who thus far have failed spectacularly to grasp the scientific and environmental issues which John Etherington so adeptly assembles and analyses.

It is no exaggeration to say that none of our legislators (with the honourable exception of Lord Lawson) has thus far grasped the futility of wind turbine economics. If appropriate early action is taken to modify current policies it would save our nation tens of billions of pounds that we can ill afford – and all this with no harm to the environment!

We all owe Dr. Etherington a debt of gratitude for his timely publication – let us not waste the opportunity to revise our strategy.

Dr. Tony Parker
East Sussex, UK

This CEPOS report exposes the reality behind what politicians, wind developers and the ‘green’ movement have been feeding the British public. Ed Miliband and CPRE leaders need to read it cover to cover.

Far from being the ‘success story’ claimed, alleged CO2 reduction and other ‘benefits’ are fiction. Yet another plank attempting to support the rickety wind structure has been blown away. Time for a reality check and government focus on proper, baseload, energy generation before it’s too late.

http://www.wind-watch.org/docviewer.php?doc=Windenergy-thecaseofDenmark-final11-09-09.pdf

There is rapidly growing public awareness that destroying precious rural England (indeed, all of Britain), with ruinously expensive political virility symbols that don’t work, is unforgivably daft. The CPRE’s role as a defender of our countryside is critically compromised by aligning with the great wind scam.

Daily Mail, Thurs 10/9/09.

Energy Earthquake

Christopher Booker sounds a warning on future power cuts [Mail], and the first tremors of this energy earthquake are already toppling employment in the UK.

Wylfa nuclear power station in North Wales, for example, will soon close, and the imminent removal of its constant electricity supply is forcing the closure of Anglesey Aluminium, N Wales’s largest employer and a huge creator of local wealth. The green organisations have untruthfully persuaded gullible politicians that wind power and other renewables could replace conventional and nuclear power stations, creating a fool’s paradise and blocking any attempt to bridge this energy gap.

Dr John Etherington

Things have certainly changed in nuclear energy generation. Waste from fast breeders isn’t the issue it once was. As in one of my earlier posting links, Prof James Lovelock would welcome some waste buried in his back garden to provide warmth for free! Temperatures are reported to have been declining for the last 12 years. Strange that – if there honestly is a direct correlation between rising CO2 concentrations and rising temperatures.

“A costed plan for energy”! what a novel idea for comrade Miliband to think about … and bury in his back garden. Agreed – the great wind scam does show politicians in an odd light – but they never admit being wrong. And it doesn’t get much more wrong than trying to con us into believing intermittent wind can deliver essential baseload energy; that it won’t create fuel poverty; and that it has the slightest chance of reducing CO2 levels. But turbines are most certainly an in-your-face reminder that government is doing something … pity it’s the wrong something. Spin made manifest.

Christopher Booker in a recent article pointed out that “The 2,300 turbines so far built in Britain supply barely 1 per cent of our power, less than a single medium-sized conventional power station.” Even Ed Miliband should be capable of working out the significance of that.

Turbine related mishaps seem quite commonplace. And if we have 40 times the present number to reach the preposterous 40% renewables target ‘aspiration’, there will be many more injuries in the UK. For a 72 page database of accidents, including numerous fatalities, up to the end of last year – visit http://www.wind-watch.org/documents/wp-content/uploads/fullaccidents.pdf That might possibly be considered an unavoidable trade off if turbines didn’t ‘cost the earth’ and needed permanent conventional power station backup for the majority of time they don’t generate adequately.

As for ‘clean coal’, the additional cost implications of cleansing are known – also that the technology doesn’t yet exist and may never materialise. Another good reason for nuclear which, as Prof Lovelock points out, is not a panacea … just the only sensible short to medium term solution available to us if we want our lights to switch on, and our economy not to collapse. Warmist Miliband needs to work on that and stop insulting protesters against wind stupidity who are capable of joined up thinking.

Three further points.
1 I agree that wind turbines can fail but all forms of energy production have caused accidents. One report shows thay Hydro is worst of all and we all know that coal kills miners and so on. I have seen no figures that wind is as dangerous as other forms of power production – we should always try and compare things rather than just say no. The anti wind case is strong without exaggerations.
2 The cost of energy production for cars using wind has been ascertained in Denmark. In simple terms the cost, untaxed, is equivalent to the taxed cost in UK.
3 WE should all be aware of the dangers of “Clean” coal. I understand that to produce electricity from “clean” coal takes 43% more coal per unit produced to use than normal production. This makes clean coal seem a bad idea – think of the mining damage and the use of chemicals to remove the sulphur etc.

David Clarke CPRE N Yorks

Have sourced a link to the book. Hope it will be useful for Ed Miliband who is so busy and who took time to reply to my concerns

Posted as a community member

If he does, I invite him, or his department on his behalf, to purchase and to read this new bokk, to digest its contents and will then see the folly of crusading wind farm developments.

‘Wind Farm Scam’

by Dr. John Etherington – former Reader in Ecology, Thomas Huxley Medallist at the Royal College of Science and former co-editor of the Journal of Ecology

I would’nt mind betting he will not reply!!!!!!!!

Regards,

Ron Williams

You can in Co Durham

wind-farm.co.uk is worth a visit
It is not practical to put ten years research on this blog, ten years on a daily basis and with only 3 weeks respite,one to climb Kinabalu and two to climb Kilimanjaro

Ed Miliband kindly answered my concerns in a four page letter a few months ago and I must thank him for that Sadly his advisors got it wrong so who advises the advisors?