THE GRIFFALO

Okay, so you've got two technologies.

One is about 60 years old and once promised electricity that's "too cheap to meter", but today it's demanding more in the way of massive subsidies than ever; numerous developed ecomonies are turning their backs on this technology because it is far too costly, dangerous and unreliable, and the most famous recent disaster with the technology caused tens of thousands of people to be evacuated, with no sign of them being allowed to return to their homes.

The other is about 20 years old.  Its contribution to our electricity usage is increasing all the time, while its costs are falling.  It does not receive direct tax-payer subsidies but does pump money into local communities while producing zero carbon emissions and no hazardous waste.

Guess which of the two Griff Rhys Jones supports.

With an irony of which the Radio Times magazine is probably unaware, the TV presenter was allowed to spew out an opinion piece of astonishing ignorance just a page or two before the magazine's regular TV commentator had a go at TV presenters who insist on trying their hands at things which they're incapable of doing properly.  Jones took the position of the city-dweller who occasionally visits the countryside and proclaimed that windfarms are something to do with "the hypocrisy of a green tokenism".  Resorting to one of the nimbies' favourite words ("industrial"), he argued - with breathtaking stupidity - that "Randomly deposited industrial wind farms still pop up in a fulfilment of a hectic ambition that won't solve ten per cent of our energy needs."

The grotesquely ignorant "opinion" piece that showed only how little Griff Rhys Jones actually knows went on to become a fully-fledged nimby call to arms.  Apparently, it is more important to Jones that he can look at an unchanged countryside for the remainder of his days than that our children should have any electricity.  What a pompous, selfish, short-sighted fool - or, to put it another way - what a nimby!

If anyone can actually point to a "Randomly deposited industrial wind farm", we'd love to hear about it.  Of course, this dimwitted phrase simply displays the Griffalo's impeccable nimby credentials.  Look at it closely, and you'll realise that it doesn't mean anything.  No windfarm ("industrial" or not) is "randomly deposited", and only a disingenuous idiot would pretend that it was.

While we might have put Griff's insane blather in the Radio Times down to a momentary lapse of reason, his appearance on the BBC's Question Time revealed him for what he really is: a shill for the nuclear industry.

Demonstrating the casual disregard for any form of evidence whatsoever, a member of the Question Time audience asked a question that, in its abject idiocy, was designed to appeal to Griff's newfound opposition to the real world.  Wind power, according to the strange logic of the questioner, is "perceived to have failed".  Well, if you read the Telegraph, then yes, perhaps, it has.  But if you open your eyes and look at what's happening all over the world, the reality is very different.  If Spain can get more than 60% of its electricity from wind power alone on the morning of 19 April, then that's one heck of a failure.

Maybe Griff had bribed the BBC to let this ultra-stupid question through.  It was what he had been waiting for - the only reason for him to be on the Question Time programme in the first place.

Apparently, according to Griff Rhys Jones, Denmark tried wind power and then gave up on it.  He's been reading nimby websites.  Denmark has continued to invest in wind power and is now committed to getting 50% of its electricity from wind by the end of the decade.

Griff not only showed how blindingly ignorant people who only read nimby propaganda are - he went on to claim that Fukushima is completely safe.  Clearly, he hasn't been paying attention.  Look at Fukushima reactor number 4, Griff, and then tell us how safe it is!!!  But playing down the costs, subsidies, hundreds of thousands of years of dangerous waste, unreliability and inherent instability of nuclear power is a vital strand of the nimby argument.  If nuclear is okay (i.e., if we overlook the spiralling costs, the colossal taxpayer subsidies, the problems associated with mining, transporting and disposing of nuclear fuels, the risks of another Chernobyl/Fukushima/Three Mile Island - statistically, very likely - and the almost universal distrust of nuclear power), then there is no need for wind power.

But this requires you to lie - over and over again - to yourself and everybody else, as Griff did on Question Time.  It also requires you to lie about the success of wind power in other countries, as Griff did again by rabitting the insanely inaccurate myth about Denmark's wind industry.

Let's put it simply.  Griff Rhys Jones is evidently incapable of getting his facts right.  Because he wants the countryside to look the way he wants it to, exclusively for him, for the rest of his days (after which, well, bugger it, frankly), he is prepared to parade his ignorance on TV and in print and to take upon himself the nimby mission of spreading lies for purely selfish reasons.

His dementedly foolish and treacherous intervention in a matter of national importance (economically and environmentally) will only be grist to the nimby mill.  Already, the idiot brigade are posting his misjudged and misinformed comments to all and sundry, as if Griff's uninformed views counteract the mass of statistical and scientific evidence which contradicts him.  He might have concluded that there is a constituency out there (less than 10% of the British population, according to all recent polls) which is opposed to wind energy on no reasonable grounds whatsoever.  How about speaking up for the majority, Griff, rather than winding up the evil liars and thugs of nimbydom?  Why not speak up for Britain, rather than scuppering our future?  Why not just state the truth, rather than repeating nimby lies?

How's this for a bit of truth?  The Bavarian Environment Agency is just the latest august body to publish scientific evidence that windfarms do not pose a threat to human health.  Once again, genuine experts (as opposed to the swivel-eyed loons quoted by the nimbies) have revealed the fact that the "infrasound" given out by wind turbines is at such a low level it simply could not impact on human health.  Another long overdue nail in the coffin of the nimbies' pet "Wind Turbine Syndrome" myth.

Meanwhile, as the frauds of FRAWT stand together to save the non-existent eagles of South Warwickshire, a local journalist did the right thing and actually visited a windfarm.  Of course, a Tory councillor made some stupid noises, but as the article shows, once the locals have been weaned off the nimby lies that their neighbours keep pummelling them with, they find that real windfarms are actually rather nice:

http://www.kenilworthweeklynews.co.uk/news/local/wind_farms_eye_catching_or_eyesore_1_3511660

Note also that the Low Spinney windfarm which was visited has been exceeding its predicted electricity output in recent months by a quite remarkable margin: 11,715 MW of electricity generated by the four turbines between October and January, compared with the target of 8,859 MW.  Now tell us that "wind power is perceived to have failed"!!

Or how about this - the UK's largest community-owned windfarm in the naturally beautiful Western Isles (FRAWT please note: there really are eagles in the Western Isles, and real communities, and this one has secured more than £10 million to install its own 3 x 2.3 MW windfarm) is set to return at least £20 million to the local community over the next twenty years.  Very useful in these straitened times, we're sure you'll agree.  When was the last time a nuclear power station ploughed money into its local community without causing any real damage at all?

The insanity of Griff Rhys Jones's blinkered and ignorant contribution to the "debate" about renewable energy in Britan will appeal only to his new nimby friends - a tiny minority of the population.  Even the vast majority of rural residents support more wind energy developments, a slightly higher percentage than in the cities.

Griff - what were you thinking?  If you were thinking at all, that is.  We know that you like the past, including Britain's industrial heritage (oh, am I missing something?  Didn't somebody have to build all that heritage in the first place, while a  few neanderthals fulminated against "indiscriminate barbarity"?).  But you can't live in the past.  Change is the essence of life, and if you insist on opposing it, you only make matters worse for yourself and everybody else.

But then, to quote Einstein - who knew a lot more about science than Griff does - "Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds."

And judging by the Griffalo's recent contributions, minds don't come much more mediocre than Griff Rhys Jones's.