Apparently, there's a little man in Norfolk. And he's feeling very pleased with himself. He made the front page of a national newspaper or two. Why? Because he managed to stop a windfarm.
The freakishly insane Daily Mail certainly trumpeted the triumph of this little man. "Villagers scored a major victory over the wind farm and green lobby yesterday", it smirked.
Rendered into accurate English, what the frothy-mouthed propagandists at the Mail meant was: "A few selfish loons drove another nail into the coffin of inexpensive, clean, renewable energy and Britain's future energy security, ensuring that everybody's electricity bills will be higher. But hey, they got to protect their precious views!"
The fact that a windfarm proposal has been defeated isn't really news, because the majority are overcome by the witless opposition of a few local liars and hypocrites. What made the Hemsby case different was that a High Court judge ruled that the scenery mattered more than renewable energy. Blissfully unconscious of the pun, the Mail described it as a "landmark" ruling, and quoted a local landscape gardener (that most essential of occupations) as saying "It is overdevelopment, you can't cover the hills and dales in turbines." An odd remark. The proposed windfarm was in the Norfolk Broads, where hills and dales are hard to find.
So, the only reason that "the little man" was celebrated in the Daily Mail's loopy article was because of this "landmark" ruling. Folks, you can forget all that gibberish about bats and birds, horses and house prices, phantom noise and flying ice! All you need to do to stop a windfarm is invent some hills and dales where there aren't any and set out to protect them at any cost!!
The landscape has become the battleground for renewables in Britain. With CPRE spouting nimby gibberish and the National Trust appealing to the courts over a decision to site a windfarm where it might mildly upset visitors to a country house (left unfinished more than four hundred years ago), and coming hard on the heels of Griff Rhys Jones's moronic outburst about how we must laminate our landscape so that it looks all nice and no one is ever allowed to do anything, the High Court ruling has established the rules from now on.
You want to mitigate the worst effects of climate change? You want to reduce pollution and carbon emissions? You want cheap, clean, green energy, so that your children and grandchildren can enjoy the benefits of electricity?
WELL YOU CAN'T HAVE IT!!!
Because a little man doesn't want his view spoilt - you know, that view of the hills and dales which aren't there.
It's different in other countries. In Australia, for example, the battleground is the entirely mythical and non-existent "Wind Turbine Syndrome". Even though a host of scientific studies have concluded that infrasound from wind turbines simply isn't capable of affecting human beings, the faux "Wind Turbine Syndrome" argument drags on. Indeed, wind industry experts in Oz are now pointing out that there is no "debate" over the existent or non-existence of "Wind Turbine Syndrome" (let's face it, we'd know by now if it really did exist, outside the fetid minds of a few anti-wind nimbies), but only a raging "argument" based on falsehoods and foolish stories in the press.
Part of the problem is that the press itself is dying. The days of the print media appear to be numbered, and in its death-throes it is going bonkers. What else could account for the sickening nonsense that right-wing rags like the Mail and Telegraph continually spew about "the wind farm and green lobby", making out that the very people who are trying to guarantee the UK and the rest of the world a clean, safe and secure energy future are some kind of weird fringe. It doesn't bother the idiot journalists who work for these papers that the vast majority of Britons - even in rural areas - want to see more wind power. They're writing for an increasingly tiny minority of little men.
New media have a very different outlook - which is why Sky TV's offices in London are now powered by their very own wind turbine.
But in the mad, mad world of the right-wing hack, windfarms are part of some socialist conspiracy. Hurrah for the little man! Down with the future!!
Well, sorry to rain on their parade, but as this article - written by actual experts, not the private school-educated monkeys of Fleet Street - shows, the cost of wind power is expected to drop 12% by 2016:
http://news.windturbines.net/asia-wind-power-energy-news/south-asia/pakistan/cost-of-wind-power-expected-to-drop-12-by-2016
There will be a prize for anyone who can name another major form of electricity generation which is likely to go down in price over the next four years. Nuclear? Don't make us laugh. Gas? Coal? It's only the massive subsidies paid to fossil fuels that are keeping the prices as high as they already are. Even without direct government subsidies, windfarms are already cost-competitive with those heavily subsidised conventional sources, which themselves are only getting more expensive.
So, thanks to the little man of Norfolk, you can now rest assured that the famous hills and dales of the Norfolk Broads will be spared a windfarm - and you'll be paying more for your electricity.
(While we've been compiling this post, a very interesting document has been emailed to us from America. Resolving Community Concerns over Local Wind Power Development in Utah looks like it has much to tell us about how communities can be rightly reassured, rather than grossly misled by their most nasty residents into opposing something that's good for everybody. It's an impressive piece which, with the authors' permission, we might try to make available by email. But evidently, there are ways of overcoming the little man's misguided opposition to wind power developments and depriving the Daily Mail of another misbegotten headline - so what's not to like?)
Thursday, 31 May 2012
Wednesday, 30 May 2012
THE NIMBY PARADOX
We'll start this post by kicking away one of the nimbies' favourite lies.
Anti-wind fanatics are fond of claiming that wind power is "too expensive". They never actually qualify this claim - i.e., they never explain in what way wind is "too expensive", or is "too expensive" compared with what. It's just one of their blanket myths, like the one about wind turbines being "noisy". The mere fact that these dunces have made these claims means that, as far as they're concerned, they must be true.
A whole raft of recent studies have proven the opposite. Wind power isn't "too expensive" because it's cheaper than the conventional alternatives.
The monthly journal Nature Climate Change has published a study by ETH-Zurich's Department of Management, Technology and Economics which shows the extent to which "fossil fuel subsidies can negatively affect the competitiveness of renewable-energy technologies". In other words, it's not renewables that are expensive - it's the colossal subsidies offered to fossil fuels which skew the market.
What the researchers discovered was that, in all the countries studied (including Brazil, Egypt and India), "with one franc or dollar of funding, you can produce more electricity ... if the money is invested in wind power plants."
Just a month ago, the Michigan Public Service Commission produced a report which showed that wind power and electricity from other renewables was close to one-third cheaper than electricity produced by a new coal-fired plant. AND - the costs of wind power and other renewables are COMING DOWN!!
Yet another report has shown that adding more wind power to the grid could reduce wholesale electricity market prices in the Midwestern states of America by more than 25% by 2020.
Even the UK government has admitted that investment in wind power will lead to a net saving on household energy bills. This link explains more: http://blog.ewea.org/2012/05/uk-government-forecast-that-renewables-will-reduce-electricity-bills/
So, all in all, when a nimby tells you that wind power is "too expensive", you know that they're talking absolutely garbage.
But why do they do it? Why do these nimby scumbags constantly, repeatedly, incessantly LIE about wind power? Why?
Well, a few clues have been provided by some more recent research into the associated issue of climate change and, in particular, climate scepticism (or denial).
You might think that those who don't believe in climate change, or don't believe that it is man-made, even though the global scientific consensus has proven that it is, must be scientific morons. The answer, then, would be better science education. If people were capable of understanding how science works, they'd be less likely to ignore or challenge what every climate scientist has been saying for years.
You'd think that, wouldn't you? But you'd be wrong. It turns out that climate change denial has got nothing to do with a lack of scientific training and everything to do with cultural values - or, as the Yale University scientists who published the latest report might say, it's a matter of "cognitive dissonance" rather than "scientific illiteracy".
Basically, there are two types of person. The "egalitarian" type recognises the problem that human activities have created, and advocates joint action to curb carbon emissions. The "hierarchical" type is more of an individualist and doesn't want to admit that his or her behaviour has contributed to a global crisis. What is more, the "hierarchical" type rejects the very notion of communal action as something vaguely "socialist". And so that type refuses to believe in man-made climate change because it doesn't suit their selfish, me-first view of the world. Even if they do believe in man-made climate change, they refuse to do anything about it because it doesn't really affect them.
The difference, then, is between the democratic types who have no problem is seeing what is happening and think that we really ought to be doing something about it at every level, and the autocratic type who doesn't want to be forced to do anything about it at all. Even those who have a sure grasp of science can deny the evidence when it doesn't agree with their cultural perspective.
The "argument" about climate science, then, has got nothing whatever to do with science. It's about whether you believe in collective action or whether you're a rampant individualist. Which explains the ghastly and insane attempts of Lord "I have no scientific qualification" Monckton and his grubby friend, Lord "You will only believe what I want you to believe" Lawson, to mislead everybody with their climate lies.
Anti-windfarm campaigners are "hierarchical" individualists. They don't see why the view from their bathroom windows should be in any way affected by the far-off presence of a windfarm. No - put the damn' things somewhere else. Or, better still, abandon all wind power (because, let's face it, when you've lied your head off about one windfarm, you kind of have to lie about them all). Never, never, never, never, never!! No one - but NO ONE - is allowed to provide the cheapest form of electricity, nice and clean, with minimal harm to the environment, no hazardous emissions or waste, and the benefit of energy security for the next generation and financial benefits for the local community - NO!!! NO ONE is allowed to do that if I MIGHT BE ABLE TO SEE IT!!!
Yes, it really is as mindless as that.
But here's the paradox. In order to get other people to back their insanely reckless and selfish anti-windfarm campaigns, these nutters have to pose as the defenders of their community. That is, rampant, egotistical right-wing individualists have to PRETEND to be community-minded egalitarian conservationsists. And that is why they lie. Because to get real people on their side - the sort who really do care for their communities and believe in collective action - they have to whip up fear, panic and hysteria by telling loud and stupid lies about windfarms.
There's a good example of this currently in the Scottish Borders, where a typical nimby menace is at work. Never having given a thought to renewables until a windfarm was proposed nearby, this nimby fool did what the worst kind of nimby does - instantly set himself up as a world expert on wind energy.
Like yer typical nimby, this bozo attacks everybody if they don't support his blinkered and wildly misinformed views. Indeed, anyone who expresses any form of support for wind power, whether it be a local council officer who can find no grounds to oppose the development or a local resident who can spot the benefits of a wind turbine or two, becomes a target for his Blimpish ravings. A surprising number of objections lodged with the local council have come from him alone, masquerading as various "preservation" bodies. Almost singlehandedly, he has set out to fight these perfectly sensible developments, come what may.
He has deployed his knowledge of engineering in order to "prove" that windfarms don't work. Only the kind of engineering he understands doesn't cover windfarms, and he wrecked his own arguments by pointing out that the windfarms which already exist in his region produce nine times as much electricity as his region needs. So, they don't, and can't, work, but they also work so well that we don't need any more of them. Anyone who can advance both of those arguments IN THE SAME SUBMISSION is clearly insane.
This is what makes the paranoid claims of the nimbies that "communities" feel powerless in the face of giant greedy global windpower conglomerates such a joke. For a start, some 68% of country-dwellers want to see more windfarms and turbines. The percentage of Britons who are opposed to wind energy under any circumstances is less than 10%! The "communities" which bleat that they cannot fight the wind industry don't exist!! They are, in fact, a minority of bigoted, brainwashed, lying wretches who do more harm to their own communities than any windfarm ever has or will.
They are the sort who will drag their communities into their boorishly selfish stance by spreading lies, myths and scare-stories. They don't actually believe in community - that's an egalitarian principle - but they will USE their communities in any way they see fit, just as long as they get to fight their evil fight against reality.
They're the ones who will tell you that there is no such thing as climate change, or that mankind isn't causing climate change, or that we cannot do anything about it because of the Chinese. They will also tell you that wind power is "too expensive" ... while the costs of nuclear continue to spiral upwards, and subsidies for fossil fuels hide their real costs, and wind is pretty much unique in being both clean and cheap and in getting cheaper.
The nimby maniacs are lying to you. They don't care about their community. They just believe that they can be absolved from any responsibility for their actions, now and in the past, and that they should not have to play any part whatsoever in mitigating the effects of their selfishness. They would rather the rest of us starved, burned or died of thirst, than that their petty-minded little world be disrupted in the slightest degree.
So when you join their fight on the basis of the lies they told you, at least you now know that you're fighting against your own best interests, and those of your country and your kids, in order to satisfy a small bunch of sociopathic liars. Good move. We hope you feel proud.
Anti-wind fanatics are fond of claiming that wind power is "too expensive". They never actually qualify this claim - i.e., they never explain in what way wind is "too expensive", or is "too expensive" compared with what. It's just one of their blanket myths, like the one about wind turbines being "noisy". The mere fact that these dunces have made these claims means that, as far as they're concerned, they must be true.
A whole raft of recent studies have proven the opposite. Wind power isn't "too expensive" because it's cheaper than the conventional alternatives.
The monthly journal Nature Climate Change has published a study by ETH-Zurich's Department of Management, Technology and Economics which shows the extent to which "fossil fuel subsidies can negatively affect the competitiveness of renewable-energy technologies". In other words, it's not renewables that are expensive - it's the colossal subsidies offered to fossil fuels which skew the market.
What the researchers discovered was that, in all the countries studied (including Brazil, Egypt and India), "with one franc or dollar of funding, you can produce more electricity ... if the money is invested in wind power plants."
Just a month ago, the Michigan Public Service Commission produced a report which showed that wind power and electricity from other renewables was close to one-third cheaper than electricity produced by a new coal-fired plant. AND - the costs of wind power and other renewables are COMING DOWN!!
Yet another report has shown that adding more wind power to the grid could reduce wholesale electricity market prices in the Midwestern states of America by more than 25% by 2020.
Even the UK government has admitted that investment in wind power will lead to a net saving on household energy bills. This link explains more: http://blog.ewea.org/2012/05/uk-government-forecast-that-renewables-will-reduce-electricity-bills/
So, all in all, when a nimby tells you that wind power is "too expensive", you know that they're talking absolutely garbage.
But why do they do it? Why do these nimby scumbags constantly, repeatedly, incessantly LIE about wind power? Why?
Well, a few clues have been provided by some more recent research into the associated issue of climate change and, in particular, climate scepticism (or denial).
You might think that those who don't believe in climate change, or don't believe that it is man-made, even though the global scientific consensus has proven that it is, must be scientific morons. The answer, then, would be better science education. If people were capable of understanding how science works, they'd be less likely to ignore or challenge what every climate scientist has been saying for years.
You'd think that, wouldn't you? But you'd be wrong. It turns out that climate change denial has got nothing to do with a lack of scientific training and everything to do with cultural values - or, as the Yale University scientists who published the latest report might say, it's a matter of "cognitive dissonance" rather than "scientific illiteracy".
Basically, there are two types of person. The "egalitarian" type recognises the problem that human activities have created, and advocates joint action to curb carbon emissions. The "hierarchical" type is more of an individualist and doesn't want to admit that his or her behaviour has contributed to a global crisis. What is more, the "hierarchical" type rejects the very notion of communal action as something vaguely "socialist". And so that type refuses to believe in man-made climate change because it doesn't suit their selfish, me-first view of the world. Even if they do believe in man-made climate change, they refuse to do anything about it because it doesn't really affect them.
The difference, then, is between the democratic types who have no problem is seeing what is happening and think that we really ought to be doing something about it at every level, and the autocratic type who doesn't want to be forced to do anything about it at all. Even those who have a sure grasp of science can deny the evidence when it doesn't agree with their cultural perspective.
The "argument" about climate science, then, has got nothing whatever to do with science. It's about whether you believe in collective action or whether you're a rampant individualist. Which explains the ghastly and insane attempts of Lord "I have no scientific qualification" Monckton and his grubby friend, Lord "You will only believe what I want you to believe" Lawson, to mislead everybody with their climate lies.
Anti-windfarm campaigners are "hierarchical" individualists. They don't see why the view from their bathroom windows should be in any way affected by the far-off presence of a windfarm. No - put the damn' things somewhere else. Or, better still, abandon all wind power (because, let's face it, when you've lied your head off about one windfarm, you kind of have to lie about them all). Never, never, never, never, never!! No one - but NO ONE - is allowed to provide the cheapest form of electricity, nice and clean, with minimal harm to the environment, no hazardous emissions or waste, and the benefit of energy security for the next generation and financial benefits for the local community - NO!!! NO ONE is allowed to do that if I MIGHT BE ABLE TO SEE IT!!!
Yes, it really is as mindless as that.
But here's the paradox. In order to get other people to back their insanely reckless and selfish anti-windfarm campaigns, these nutters have to pose as the defenders of their community. That is, rampant, egotistical right-wing individualists have to PRETEND to be community-minded egalitarian conservationsists. And that is why they lie. Because to get real people on their side - the sort who really do care for their communities and believe in collective action - they have to whip up fear, panic and hysteria by telling loud and stupid lies about windfarms.
There's a good example of this currently in the Scottish Borders, where a typical nimby menace is at work. Never having given a thought to renewables until a windfarm was proposed nearby, this nimby fool did what the worst kind of nimby does - instantly set himself up as a world expert on wind energy.
Like yer typical nimby, this bozo attacks everybody if they don't support his blinkered and wildly misinformed views. Indeed, anyone who expresses any form of support for wind power, whether it be a local council officer who can find no grounds to oppose the development or a local resident who can spot the benefits of a wind turbine or two, becomes a target for his Blimpish ravings. A surprising number of objections lodged with the local council have come from him alone, masquerading as various "preservation" bodies. Almost singlehandedly, he has set out to fight these perfectly sensible developments, come what may.
He has deployed his knowledge of engineering in order to "prove" that windfarms don't work. Only the kind of engineering he understands doesn't cover windfarms, and he wrecked his own arguments by pointing out that the windfarms which already exist in his region produce nine times as much electricity as his region needs. So, they don't, and can't, work, but they also work so well that we don't need any more of them. Anyone who can advance both of those arguments IN THE SAME SUBMISSION is clearly insane.
This is what makes the paranoid claims of the nimbies that "communities" feel powerless in the face of giant greedy global windpower conglomerates such a joke. For a start, some 68% of country-dwellers want to see more windfarms and turbines. The percentage of Britons who are opposed to wind energy under any circumstances is less than 10%! The "communities" which bleat that they cannot fight the wind industry don't exist!! They are, in fact, a minority of bigoted, brainwashed, lying wretches who do more harm to their own communities than any windfarm ever has or will.
They are the sort who will drag their communities into their boorishly selfish stance by spreading lies, myths and scare-stories. They don't actually believe in community - that's an egalitarian principle - but they will USE their communities in any way they see fit, just as long as they get to fight their evil fight against reality.
They're the ones who will tell you that there is no such thing as climate change, or that mankind isn't causing climate change, or that we cannot do anything about it because of the Chinese. They will also tell you that wind power is "too expensive" ... while the costs of nuclear continue to spiral upwards, and subsidies for fossil fuels hide their real costs, and wind is pretty much unique in being both clean and cheap and in getting cheaper.
The nimby maniacs are lying to you. They don't care about their community. They just believe that they can be absolved from any responsibility for their actions, now and in the past, and that they should not have to play any part whatsoever in mitigating the effects of their selfishness. They would rather the rest of us starved, burned or died of thirst, than that their petty-minded little world be disrupted in the slightest degree.
So when you join their fight on the basis of the lies they told you, at least you now know that you're fighting against your own best interests, and those of your country and your kids, in order to satisfy a small bunch of sociopathic liars. Good move. We hope you feel proud.
Saturday, 26 May 2012
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.
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.
Tuesday, 22 May 2012
A FRAWT ISSUE
A few days ago, EDF had to shut down one of the two reactors at its Torness nuclear power station in Scotland for safety reasons. The French company somehow neglected to mention this fact in public. The reactor will not go back online until safety checks and maintenance work have been carried out.
Sadly, a culture of secrecy is, and always has been, part and parcel of the nuclear industry. People very seldom get to hear about it when a nuclear reactor is suddenly shut down - and often remains shut down for weeks or months on end. Oh no - we just continually hear from those who haven't yet woken up from the fifty-year old nuclear dream that nuclear is "cheap", "clean" and "reliable". In reality, it is none of those things. But, while other power companies have been dropping nuclear like a hot rock, EDF has had its people camped out in Whitehall, trying to pressurise the government into reneging on its pledge not to offer new nuclear the massive public subsidies it has always relied on.
The latest? EDF is saying it will try to extend the life of the existing nuclear power stations. Like Torness, which is actually quite a recent one (it came online in May 1988). So we can look forward to even more sudden shutdowns of nuclear reactors, with neither the companies nor the government telling us it's happened.
And they say that wind power is unreliable!! And it's "totally dependent on subsidies"!! The kind of idiot who makes those remarks clearly isn't really living on planet Earth.
One of the newest batches of nimby fools who claim to have made their home on planet Earth but really occupy a small corner of cloud-cuckoo-land call themselves FRAWT. They're based in the Vale of Feldon, South Warwickshire, close to the proposed site of five turbines. Naturally, without having the foggiest idea what they're on about, they're opposed to the turbines.
Why? Because they live in "Shakespeare Country"! Actually, they don't. Shakespeare's country was Arden, on the other side of the River Avon. Just because Shakespeare travelled through an area doesn't make it "Shakespeare Country". And besides, who are these ignorant drones to suggest that Shakespeare would have been opposed to wind turbines? Or that a landscape loosely connected with William Shakespeare should be preserved exactly as it is in the early 21st century (nearly four hundred years after Shakespeare's death) with no development of any kind whatsoever, except for the ungainly houses built by people who've just moved to the area and are now trying to stop anything else from happening.
The FRAWT website is yer typical nimby whinge - the usual mindless guff about bats' lungs exploding near turbines (has that ever happened in the UK? No.) There is a reference to a "paper" published by Dr Carl V. Phillips about the quote-serious health problems-unquote connected with wind turbines, but no mention of the fact that Dr Carl V. Phillips was dismissed from his university post for publishing lies on behalf of the tobacco industry (the same tricks deployed by the tobacco industry in the past are now used by climate sceptic and anti-renewables groups in order to mislead people over issues that are much more serious than smoking).
One very interesting deviation from the truth on the FRAWT website concerns house prices. In the past, nimby groups like the woefully dishonest and aggressive VVASP misquoted a 2007 RICS-sponsored study of windfarms and house prices in order to give the false impression that a windfarm can knock 54% off the value of your home. But that lie will no longer fly, because the report actually revealed that there was no evidence of windfarms impacting on house prices. So how have FRAWT dealt with this hiccup?
FRAWT have the audacity (and dishonesty) to make the claim that the 2007 report, commissioned by the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors and carried out by academics from Salford University, "has been shown to be flawed by many". That is not true. However, FRAWT also claims to have a "library of correspondence from estate agents" and others which, surprise-surprise, supports their prejudices, even though ABSOLUTELY NO EVIDENCE EXISTS FROM ANYWHERE to show that windfarms harm the local propert market - except where the nimbies are causing trouble and driving prospective buyers away!
So - in the weird and whacky world of FRAWT ("Next-door to Shakespeare Country"), the scientific approach to evidence gathering is "flawed". Unsupported anecdotal evidence is the new "fact".
No surprise, either, to find that, according to the liars of FRAWT, the government's established guidelines on windfarms and noise - ETSU-R-97 - is also "a thoroughly flawed document". Do we reckon they've been talking to the Incredible Stigwood, who never fails to object to a windfarm and hates ETSU-R-97 because it works and contradicts all his bonkers theories? Maybe. More likely, FRAWT are throwing their astonishing lack of expertise into the ring, making claims they can't back up about things they simply don't understand. Or, as we call it in the field, LYING.
Like their LIE about "Most countries (except the UK)" having a "2KM 'set-back' distance from houses". Absolute drivel. Totally wrong. Another stinking nimby lie. Probably raided from the dishonest websites of a dozen other identikit nimby groups. They all trade lies.
It would be worth mentioning the rising global costs of imported fossil fuels, the soaring costs of new nuclear, and the tendency of nuclear reactors to be shutdown without a moment's notice. That might offset their thoroughly misleading chart about the relative "efficiency" of wind power. Indeed, the very fact that they dare to refer to "efficiency" in such a context just goes to show what a bunch of ignorant duffers they are.
Or we could point to the many national surveys which have consistently shown that the clear majority of Britons support wind power. 41% of those polled recently by YouGov are even interested in generating their own renewable energy. That means that about four times as many people want their own wind turbines or solar panels than are opposed to all wind turbines full-stop. 71% of consumers are worried that MORE THAN FIFTY PER CENT OF THE FOSSIL FUELS USED TO GENERATE OUR ELECTRICITY ARE IMPORTED FROM OVERSEAS. That includes nuclear material - which is a fossil fuel - and explains why our energy bills are rising (the liars at FRAWT are trying, as usual, to blame the fuel bill rises on renewables: yet more evidence of how thick/deluded/dishonest they are). If we as a nation want to be more self-sufficient in energy terms, we have no choice but to cut back on polluting coal, expensive gas, and expensive, dangerous and unreliable nuclear.
After all, if Spain can now get up to 60% of its electricity from wind power, why can't we? Given that we import more fuel than the rest of Europe, where every citizen is currently paying more than 700 euros for fuel imports, why can't we harness the abundance of wind and wave power that is all around us and save ourselves a packet?
Why should we in the UK miss out on the long term economic growth that is being stimulated by renewables everywhere? Just because a few selfish fools who happen to live several miles from Shakespeare Country don't want a few turbines in the area? Why must our economy shrink, our fuel bills rise, our energy security be sacrificed and our lights go out just to pander to a tiny minority of proven liars? Why must we let these idiots pretend that there isn't a climate crisis happening RIGHT NOW, just because they're stupid enough to think they own the view of somewhere that's Not Quite Shakespeare Country?
Shall we let you in on an open secret? Nimby maniacs like the frauds of FRAWT know absolutely nothing at all about windfarms. They were offered the chance to be taken on a visit to the Low Spinney windfarm in Leicestershire. But they refused to go. Why?
Because if they found out what a genuine working windfarm is actually like, they could NEVER justify their blinkered, ridiculous, deceitful, misguided opposition to such a perfectly reasonable, harmless, beneficial and vital development. To maintain the poisonous fictions they have been ramming down their neighbour's throats and hurling, sputum-flecked, at their local councillors, the FRAWT fools have no choice but to preserve their blissless ignorance. If they had gone on the Low Spinney visit, all they would have heard was their fellow passengers wondering what all the fuss was about.
The only option for the head-in-the-sand, right-wing bilge-spouting nimby is enforced ignorance, it seems. As their atrocious websites repeatedly prove. Perish the thought that a diehard nimby of the FRAWT variety would ever consent to visit a windfarm while normal people are around. What good could that possibly do for their outrageously self-serving bigotry?
So - another group of nimby nobheads to add to the list. The wind blows, but nimbies just suck. FRAWT has joined the nimby Hall of Infamy, traitors to their nation and their planet (Earth, that is, not the bizarre planet Pseudo that the FRAWTSTERS are their like inhabit).
Sadly, a culture of secrecy is, and always has been, part and parcel of the nuclear industry. People very seldom get to hear about it when a nuclear reactor is suddenly shut down - and often remains shut down for weeks or months on end. Oh no - we just continually hear from those who haven't yet woken up from the fifty-year old nuclear dream that nuclear is "cheap", "clean" and "reliable". In reality, it is none of those things. But, while other power companies have been dropping nuclear like a hot rock, EDF has had its people camped out in Whitehall, trying to pressurise the government into reneging on its pledge not to offer new nuclear the massive public subsidies it has always relied on.
The latest? EDF is saying it will try to extend the life of the existing nuclear power stations. Like Torness, which is actually quite a recent one (it came online in May 1988). So we can look forward to even more sudden shutdowns of nuclear reactors, with neither the companies nor the government telling us it's happened.
And they say that wind power is unreliable!! And it's "totally dependent on subsidies"!! The kind of idiot who makes those remarks clearly isn't really living on planet Earth.
One of the newest batches of nimby fools who claim to have made their home on planet Earth but really occupy a small corner of cloud-cuckoo-land call themselves FRAWT. They're based in the Vale of Feldon, South Warwickshire, close to the proposed site of five turbines. Naturally, without having the foggiest idea what they're on about, they're opposed to the turbines.
Why? Because they live in "Shakespeare Country"! Actually, they don't. Shakespeare's country was Arden, on the other side of the River Avon. Just because Shakespeare travelled through an area doesn't make it "Shakespeare Country". And besides, who are these ignorant drones to suggest that Shakespeare would have been opposed to wind turbines? Or that a landscape loosely connected with William Shakespeare should be preserved exactly as it is in the early 21st century (nearly four hundred years after Shakespeare's death) with no development of any kind whatsoever, except for the ungainly houses built by people who've just moved to the area and are now trying to stop anything else from happening.
The FRAWT website is yer typical nimby whinge - the usual mindless guff about bats' lungs exploding near turbines (has that ever happened in the UK? No.) There is a reference to a "paper" published by Dr Carl V. Phillips about the quote-serious health problems-unquote connected with wind turbines, but no mention of the fact that Dr Carl V. Phillips was dismissed from his university post for publishing lies on behalf of the tobacco industry (the same tricks deployed by the tobacco industry in the past are now used by climate sceptic and anti-renewables groups in order to mislead people over issues that are much more serious than smoking).
One very interesting deviation from the truth on the FRAWT website concerns house prices. In the past, nimby groups like the woefully dishonest and aggressive VVASP misquoted a 2007 RICS-sponsored study of windfarms and house prices in order to give the false impression that a windfarm can knock 54% off the value of your home. But that lie will no longer fly, because the report actually revealed that there was no evidence of windfarms impacting on house prices. So how have FRAWT dealt with this hiccup?
FRAWT have the audacity (and dishonesty) to make the claim that the 2007 report, commissioned by the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors and carried out by academics from Salford University, "has been shown to be flawed by many". That is not true. However, FRAWT also claims to have a "library of correspondence from estate agents" and others which, surprise-surprise, supports their prejudices, even though ABSOLUTELY NO EVIDENCE EXISTS FROM ANYWHERE to show that windfarms harm the local propert market - except where the nimbies are causing trouble and driving prospective buyers away!
So - in the weird and whacky world of FRAWT ("Next-door to Shakespeare Country"), the scientific approach to evidence gathering is "flawed". Unsupported anecdotal evidence is the new "fact".
No surprise, either, to find that, according to the liars of FRAWT, the government's established guidelines on windfarms and noise - ETSU-R-97 - is also "a thoroughly flawed document". Do we reckon they've been talking to the Incredible Stigwood, who never fails to object to a windfarm and hates ETSU-R-97 because it works and contradicts all his bonkers theories? Maybe. More likely, FRAWT are throwing their astonishing lack of expertise into the ring, making claims they can't back up about things they simply don't understand. Or, as we call it in the field, LYING.
Like their LIE about "Most countries (except the UK)" having a "2KM 'set-back' distance from houses". Absolute drivel. Totally wrong. Another stinking nimby lie. Probably raided from the dishonest websites of a dozen other identikit nimby groups. They all trade lies.
It would be worth mentioning the rising global costs of imported fossil fuels, the soaring costs of new nuclear, and the tendency of nuclear reactors to be shutdown without a moment's notice. That might offset their thoroughly misleading chart about the relative "efficiency" of wind power. Indeed, the very fact that they dare to refer to "efficiency" in such a context just goes to show what a bunch of ignorant duffers they are.
Or we could point to the many national surveys which have consistently shown that the clear majority of Britons support wind power. 41% of those polled recently by YouGov are even interested in generating their own renewable energy. That means that about four times as many people want their own wind turbines or solar panels than are opposed to all wind turbines full-stop. 71% of consumers are worried that MORE THAN FIFTY PER CENT OF THE FOSSIL FUELS USED TO GENERATE OUR ELECTRICITY ARE IMPORTED FROM OVERSEAS. That includes nuclear material - which is a fossil fuel - and explains why our energy bills are rising (the liars at FRAWT are trying, as usual, to blame the fuel bill rises on renewables: yet more evidence of how thick/deluded/dishonest they are). If we as a nation want to be more self-sufficient in energy terms, we have no choice but to cut back on polluting coal, expensive gas, and expensive, dangerous and unreliable nuclear.
After all, if Spain can now get up to 60% of its electricity from wind power, why can't we? Given that we import more fuel than the rest of Europe, where every citizen is currently paying more than 700 euros for fuel imports, why can't we harness the abundance of wind and wave power that is all around us and save ourselves a packet?
Why should we in the UK miss out on the long term economic growth that is being stimulated by renewables everywhere? Just because a few selfish fools who happen to live several miles from Shakespeare Country don't want a few turbines in the area? Why must our economy shrink, our fuel bills rise, our energy security be sacrificed and our lights go out just to pander to a tiny minority of proven liars? Why must we let these idiots pretend that there isn't a climate crisis happening RIGHT NOW, just because they're stupid enough to think they own the view of somewhere that's Not Quite Shakespeare Country?
Shall we let you in on an open secret? Nimby maniacs like the frauds of FRAWT know absolutely nothing at all about windfarms. They were offered the chance to be taken on a visit to the Low Spinney windfarm in Leicestershire. But they refused to go. Why?
Because if they found out what a genuine working windfarm is actually like, they could NEVER justify their blinkered, ridiculous, deceitful, misguided opposition to such a perfectly reasonable, harmless, beneficial and vital development. To maintain the poisonous fictions they have been ramming down their neighbour's throats and hurling, sputum-flecked, at their local councillors, the FRAWT fools have no choice but to preserve their blissless ignorance. If they had gone on the Low Spinney visit, all they would have heard was their fellow passengers wondering what all the fuss was about.
The only option for the head-in-the-sand, right-wing bilge-spouting nimby is enforced ignorance, it seems. As their atrocious websites repeatedly prove. Perish the thought that a diehard nimby of the FRAWT variety would ever consent to visit a windfarm while normal people are around. What good could that possibly do for their outrageously self-serving bigotry?
So - another group of nimby nobheads to add to the list. The wind blows, but nimbies just suck. FRAWT has joined the nimby Hall of Infamy, traitors to their nation and their planet (Earth, that is, not the bizarre planet Pseudo that the FRAWTSTERS are their like inhabit).
Thursday, 17 May 2012
A GOOD INVESTMENT
In these times of economic uncertainty, it's reassuring to know that renewables are bucking the trend.
The accountancy firm KPMG seems to have recovered from its little embarrassment recently, when it somehow allowed some raging anti-renewables zombies to write a report, which the firm then had to disown when it was leaked up - where else? - the Daily Torygraph.
KMPG have now announced that private equity investors and infrastructure funds are gearing up for big investments in renewables, with more than 70% of the 500 senior executives polled indicating that they were particularly attracted to hydro-electric, onshore wind and solar PV investments, seeing them as safe havens for long term money.
Given that we now know that Britain's onshore windfarms were worth £548 million to the UK economy last year, supported 8,600 jobs and brought millions of pounds to their local communities while achieving record levels of electricity generation with no hazardous waste or emissions, it can only be good news that serious investors are beginning to recognise the long term financial (as well as environmental) benefits of wind power.
Let's compare that with the unhappy state of the nuclear industry. Even the most nuclear-friendly of the companies lined up to realise the coalition government's weird dream of ten new nuclear facilities is losing its bottle: EDF has delayed work on its Hinkley Point site, although it has already bulldozed hundreds of acres and various sites of historical and scientific interest in preparation for a plant it doesn't even have planning permission for yet. So, when some duffus at CPRE pipes up about the "bullying" behaviour of wind power companies (a case of nimby projection, if ever there was one), we should point out who the real bullies are: 1) the nimbies, 2) nuclear power companies.
Anyway, the consensus is building - nuclear power is just too expensive. Private investors are leaving it in droves. RWEnpower, EON UK and Scottish and Southern Electricity have already pulled out of the nuclear power plans. GDFSuez and Centrica have been dropping heavy hints that they will too. EDF is pressurising the UK government for massive levels of financial support, above and beyond what nuclear already receives.
Again, we find the anti-wind nimbies talking absolute rot and deliberately misleading themselves and everybody else about subsidies. Wind power doesn't get subsidies. It gets a top-up from the utility companies, which amounted last year to less than £5 of the average annual energy bill - or roughly 2p per day for the average household.
If the nuclear power companies were to persuade the government to subsidise the colossal costs of building, maintaining and operating the proposed ten new power stations, it would cost the taxpayer about £12 billion a year for the next thirty years (another interesting point: nimbies mock wind turbines for having an optimum operational lifespan of 25 years. What's the lifespan of a nuclear power station? 30-40 years. Ever get the feeling you've been had?).
These massive subsidies - on the same scale as what we pay for policing every year - would not mean cheaper electricity for the consumer. Indeed, one of the big problems nuclear has is that fifty years ago it was promising "electricity too cheap to meter". Now, it can only try to sell us electricity that's too expensive to generate. The City wants nothing to do with nuclear, and countries all over the world are abandoning it as a ludicrously expensive, dangerous, unreliable nightmare.
Another anomaly, then: most nimbies, we're sure you'll agree, belong to the economically liberal, free-market-loving right-wing of politics. They slam the so-called subsidies for wind power as a terrible kind of socialism, conveniently forgetting the massive, real subsidies paid by the taxpayer to the fossil fuels and nuclear industries. The more hard-of-thinking nimbies protest that wind energy firms are "motivated solely by profit" - which is a pretty odd argument, when you come to think about it. After all, aren't gas companies, nuclear operators and coal-fired power stations motivated pretty much entirely by profit?
But the fact is that now, the market is speaking. And its message is very clear indeed. Nuclear (without monumental government subsidies) is a bad investment. No hope of any kind of return for years, and a bit embarrassing when you have to let the taxpayer cover the costs of decommissioning or any horrendous nuclear accident. Renewables, however, are a very good investment. Even with the so-called subsidies (ROC) for wind power falling, wind guarantees a healthy return from day one. Once the nimbies have done with their preposterous posturing and sick campaigns of lies and misinformation, a windfarm can be safely installed relatively quickly, and be generating power for the grid in next to no time and at relatively little cost.
Does this mean that our nimby friends will suddenly lose their affection for the free market? Or will they finally have to confess that, like everything else in their lives, they'll impose it on others but oppose it themselves?
Want to hear the voice of business on this issue? Check out this BBC video of Dragon's Den stalwart, Deborah Meaden:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-17812242
Meanwhile, two more bits of good news.
When a complete idiot on a Berkshire council proposed a fanatically stupid anti-windfarm motion, which included the thoroughly braindead nimby claim that wind turbines "just do not work", Maidenhead Friends of the Earth got to hear about it. They emailed this useful factsheet - http://www.foe.co.uk/resource/factsheets/wind_power_your_questions.pdf - to every councillor. Presented with some genuine information, as opposed to the usual slagheap of fatuous nimby lies, the councillors narrowly defeated the insane motion. Well done, Maidenhead Friends of the Earth!!
And in Spain last month, wind power broke a new record, generating 317 gigawatt hours of electricity on 18 April. The following morning, wind power alone was responsible for covering 61.06% of Spain's electricity demand.
Amazing what you can do when you shut the nimbies up and get on with a sensible and beneficial investment!
The accountancy firm KPMG seems to have recovered from its little embarrassment recently, when it somehow allowed some raging anti-renewables zombies to write a report, which the firm then had to disown when it was leaked up - where else? - the Daily Torygraph.
KMPG have now announced that private equity investors and infrastructure funds are gearing up for big investments in renewables, with more than 70% of the 500 senior executives polled indicating that they were particularly attracted to hydro-electric, onshore wind and solar PV investments, seeing them as safe havens for long term money.
Given that we now know that Britain's onshore windfarms were worth £548 million to the UK economy last year, supported 8,600 jobs and brought millions of pounds to their local communities while achieving record levels of electricity generation with no hazardous waste or emissions, it can only be good news that serious investors are beginning to recognise the long term financial (as well as environmental) benefits of wind power.
Let's compare that with the unhappy state of the nuclear industry. Even the most nuclear-friendly of the companies lined up to realise the coalition government's weird dream of ten new nuclear facilities is losing its bottle: EDF has delayed work on its Hinkley Point site, although it has already bulldozed hundreds of acres and various sites of historical and scientific interest in preparation for a plant it doesn't even have planning permission for yet. So, when some duffus at CPRE pipes up about the "bullying" behaviour of wind power companies (a case of nimby projection, if ever there was one), we should point out who the real bullies are: 1) the nimbies, 2) nuclear power companies.
Anyway, the consensus is building - nuclear power is just too expensive. Private investors are leaving it in droves. RWEnpower, EON UK and Scottish and Southern Electricity have already pulled out of the nuclear power plans. GDFSuez and Centrica have been dropping heavy hints that they will too. EDF is pressurising the UK government for massive levels of financial support, above and beyond what nuclear already receives.
Again, we find the anti-wind nimbies talking absolute rot and deliberately misleading themselves and everybody else about subsidies. Wind power doesn't get subsidies. It gets a top-up from the utility companies, which amounted last year to less than £5 of the average annual energy bill - or roughly 2p per day for the average household.
If the nuclear power companies were to persuade the government to subsidise the colossal costs of building, maintaining and operating the proposed ten new power stations, it would cost the taxpayer about £12 billion a year for the next thirty years (another interesting point: nimbies mock wind turbines for having an optimum operational lifespan of 25 years. What's the lifespan of a nuclear power station? 30-40 years. Ever get the feeling you've been had?).
These massive subsidies - on the same scale as what we pay for policing every year - would not mean cheaper electricity for the consumer. Indeed, one of the big problems nuclear has is that fifty years ago it was promising "electricity too cheap to meter". Now, it can only try to sell us electricity that's too expensive to generate. The City wants nothing to do with nuclear, and countries all over the world are abandoning it as a ludicrously expensive, dangerous, unreliable nightmare.
Another anomaly, then: most nimbies, we're sure you'll agree, belong to the economically liberal, free-market-loving right-wing of politics. They slam the so-called subsidies for wind power as a terrible kind of socialism, conveniently forgetting the massive, real subsidies paid by the taxpayer to the fossil fuels and nuclear industries. The more hard-of-thinking nimbies protest that wind energy firms are "motivated solely by profit" - which is a pretty odd argument, when you come to think about it. After all, aren't gas companies, nuclear operators and coal-fired power stations motivated pretty much entirely by profit?
But the fact is that now, the market is speaking. And its message is very clear indeed. Nuclear (without monumental government subsidies) is a bad investment. No hope of any kind of return for years, and a bit embarrassing when you have to let the taxpayer cover the costs of decommissioning or any horrendous nuclear accident. Renewables, however, are a very good investment. Even with the so-called subsidies (ROC) for wind power falling, wind guarantees a healthy return from day one. Once the nimbies have done with their preposterous posturing and sick campaigns of lies and misinformation, a windfarm can be safely installed relatively quickly, and be generating power for the grid in next to no time and at relatively little cost.
Does this mean that our nimby friends will suddenly lose their affection for the free market? Or will they finally have to confess that, like everything else in their lives, they'll impose it on others but oppose it themselves?
Want to hear the voice of business on this issue? Check out this BBC video of Dragon's Den stalwart, Deborah Meaden:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-17812242
Meanwhile, two more bits of good news.
When a complete idiot on a Berkshire council proposed a fanatically stupid anti-windfarm motion, which included the thoroughly braindead nimby claim that wind turbines "just do not work", Maidenhead Friends of the Earth got to hear about it. They emailed this useful factsheet - http://www.foe.co.uk/resource/factsheets/wind_power_your_questions.pdf - to every councillor. Presented with some genuine information, as opposed to the usual slagheap of fatuous nimby lies, the councillors narrowly defeated the insane motion. Well done, Maidenhead Friends of the Earth!!
And in Spain last month, wind power broke a new record, generating 317 gigawatt hours of electricity on 18 April. The following morning, wind power alone was responsible for covering 61.06% of Spain's electricity demand.
Amazing what you can do when you shut the nimbies up and get on with a sensible and beneficial investment!
Wednesday, 9 May 2012
UNCLEAR FALLOUT
Only last week, Tim Yeo, the Conservative chair of the Commons energy committee and the Renewable Energy Association, told the UK Energy Summit (organised by The Economist) that there could be no further delays on taking vital decisions needed to build windfarms (oh, and nuclear plants).
He argued that dithering ministers and weak civil servants were risking the lights going out in Britain. Unless the government got to grips with the issue, the UK could fail to attract the £200 billion of new investment needed to upgrade old energy infrastructure.
Just a couple of days later, the Department for Energy and Climate Change released a report, comissioned by the DECC and RenewableUK, which revealed that onshore windfarms brought £548 million into the UK's economy and supported almost 9,000 jobs in 2011. The report also revealed that each megawatt of installed onshore wind energy capacity contributes £700,000 to the UK's gross domestic product. More than £100,000 of that stays in the Local Authority area.
Fantastic news - and that amazing contribution to both jobs and the economy, local and national, from wind power is set to grow over the next few years, reaching about £780 million (and 11,600 jobs) by 2020. Best of all, a significant amount of the economic benefit stays local! So, whenever a nimby dimwit tells you that windfarms bring no local benefits, ignore them: they're either lying, or stupid, or both.
But Tim Yeo was right. The coalition government has been dragging its feet rather over the crucial matter of securing future energy security while reducing our carbon emissions. The government is committed to keeping energy prices to the consumer down. It has also insisted that there will be no public subsidies available for nuclear (apart from the "hidden" subsidies we already know about). Unfortunately, the Reuters news agency has just reported that "UK Nuclear Build Requires Taxpayer Rescue". The Times reported on Monday that French nuclear conglomerate EDF has raised the projected cost of building a new power station from £4.5 to £7 billion. A City analyst has stated that, "If the cost figures are true, new nuclear plants in the UK are not commercially viable."
We've pointed this out before. As Japan has shut down the last of its 54 reactors (and the UN demands action on the terrifyingly dangerous state of the Fukushima Daiichi Reactor No. 4 - you thought you'd heard the last of Fukushima? Well, you haven't), and France and the United States have admitted that nuclear does not make financial sense, the new figures released for the UK indicate that nuclear will be the most expensive form of electricity generation available - more expensive, even, than offshore wind.
Amazing! The nimby idiots who have done so much to hold Britain back love to shriek and shout that wind energy is entirely dependent on "subsidies" (although they can't actually explain what these "subsidies" are) and that onshore wind is "too expensive". In fact, nuclear is entirely dependent on subsidies - REAL subsidies - and is way too expensive. And another thing. Wind power doesn't leave you with 100,000 years worth of hazardous waste to worry about. Doesn't poison the land and the ocean, either (nuclear does).
So - Tim Yeo: right about wind, in that the government really does have to do something about the Nazis on its backbenches who like to spout lies about wind power; not so right, it seems, about new nuclear, which will only go ahead if the British taxpayer agrees to underwrite the costs. Want the most expensive electricity going? No? Then you have to accept wind, which is - or very soon will be - the cheapest.
But last week saw the local elections, and a drubbing for the Conservatives and their Liberal Democrat coalition partners. And, whaddya know, the maniacs of the hard-right immediately starting banging their drum and throwing their toys out of the pram.
With so many polls and surveys indicating that the clear majority of Britons support wind power (more, surprisingly, in country areas than in the cities), and with the government's own figures showing the huge contribution made to our ailing economy and jobs market by wind power, you'd like to think that anyone who cares at all about Britain would say, "Heaven's above! We must have more wind! It's so clean, so cheap, so quick to implement, so cost-competitive, so low-carbon, so good for jobs and investment, doesn't scare the horses and tourists, and if anything tends to have a positive effect on the local property market, as well as bringing money into the local economy, and it doesn't kill birds. What could be better? It's a win-win no-brainer! Bring on the windfarms!"
Tory backbenchers, however, don't care about Britain. They want to stop all this "green" nonsense in its tracks. They're following the woeful lead established by UKIP - an openly racist, sexist, homophobic, far-right political party: basically, the BNP in smarter suits. Nutters who think that the Conservative Party is "too liberal" have a nasty habit of voting UKIP, just to show what nutters they are.
UKIP is the natural home of the sort of right-wing thug who opposes wind energy on "principle". UKIP harbours loonies, like the UKIP representative who actually said that fossil fuels are "renewable" (yes, it's true: Steve Reed really does believe that "oil-wells do refill"), who believe that Global Warming is a con designed (by the EU, of course) to enslave us all, and that "Taking energy from winds and tides irreversibly enervates the weather system and slows the rotation of the Earth." (quotes taken from the Yorkshire Post, 5 August 2004).
Incredible. It's almost impossible to believe that anybody could be that daft. But UKIP and its followers are. If you hear anything along the lines of "Global Warming is just a conspiracy invented by legions of careerists hungry for UN- and EU-grants", or that windfarms stop the Earth from turning, or that fossil fuels are actually the real renewables, then you've got a UKIP lunatic in your midst.
And it's not just in the UK that the far-right are trying to combat, not climate change itself, but the very notion of climate change. In America, well-funded conservative think-tanks are pulling every string they can in order to spread confusion and misunderstanding about climate science. Check out this link:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2012/may/08/conservative-thinktanks-obama-energy-plans
On either side of the Atlantic, then, we see a similar pattern: the extreme right-wing, be that the Tea Party, UKIP, or 101 oddballs on the Tory backbenches, are determined to deprive the majority of what is urgently required and devoutly to be wished - clean, green, inexpensive, renewable energy. In order to persuade the majority that they don't want this desirable and necessary future, they must spread vile and vicious lies. All this, for what? The oil industry. The nuclear industry. The fanatical, crazy ideas of right-wing fanatics.
This just shows why CPRE were so wildly off-target when they claimed (amidst the familiar welter of falsehoods about windfarms) that "communities" feel threatened by wind energy developers. No evidence has yet come to light of a wind energy developer threatening anybody. The people who do all the threatening are the deranged, demented, self-centred, misinformed and thuggish nimby monsters. Not the community (many of whom will be all in favour of wind power) but a loud-mouthed, unprincipled, egotistical few. The very people, in fact, who are a danger to their community, because they insist on putting their own interests ahead of everybody else's, and are happy to lie their heads off to their neighbours if it will terrify them into voting against their own best interests.
Get a grip, CPRE! Ask yourselves this: how many mainstream political parties in the UK are anti-wind, anti-renewables, anti-green? And then ask yourselves - who are the people in your midst who are forcing YOU to adopt an obstructive and misjudged opposition to wind energy in Britain? Is it the UKIP types, perchance? A small, and actually quite mental, minority who routinely spout gibberish about things they don't understand? The tin-pot little dictators of Middle England? Probably.
Normal people do not oppose wind power. Only the crazed fanatics of the far-right do.
The worry is that the Conservative Party, under pressure from its more doo-lally backbenchers, will try to attract the UKIP vote by lurching to the far right. It'll lead to electoral oblivion, but it will also be bad for Britain. Bad for the economy, bad for jobs ... in short, a short-cut to the lights going out.
David Cameron promised "the greenest government ever". We're still waiting - and if the nastier members of the nasty party have any say in the matter, it won't happen.
And so the vast majority of Britons will be let down, betrayed, sold short, just to appease the maniacs of the right-wing press and the Nazi nutters in our midst. Rather like those local authorities who cave in to pressure from the nimby cretins and thereby make sure that they, and everybody else, loses out.
He argued that dithering ministers and weak civil servants were risking the lights going out in Britain. Unless the government got to grips with the issue, the UK could fail to attract the £200 billion of new investment needed to upgrade old energy infrastructure.
Just a couple of days later, the Department for Energy and Climate Change released a report, comissioned by the DECC and RenewableUK, which revealed that onshore windfarms brought £548 million into the UK's economy and supported almost 9,000 jobs in 2011. The report also revealed that each megawatt of installed onshore wind energy capacity contributes £700,000 to the UK's gross domestic product. More than £100,000 of that stays in the Local Authority area.
Fantastic news - and that amazing contribution to both jobs and the economy, local and national, from wind power is set to grow over the next few years, reaching about £780 million (and 11,600 jobs) by 2020. Best of all, a significant amount of the economic benefit stays local! So, whenever a nimby dimwit tells you that windfarms bring no local benefits, ignore them: they're either lying, or stupid, or both.
But Tim Yeo was right. The coalition government has been dragging its feet rather over the crucial matter of securing future energy security while reducing our carbon emissions. The government is committed to keeping energy prices to the consumer down. It has also insisted that there will be no public subsidies available for nuclear (apart from the "hidden" subsidies we already know about). Unfortunately, the Reuters news agency has just reported that "UK Nuclear Build Requires Taxpayer Rescue". The Times reported on Monday that French nuclear conglomerate EDF has raised the projected cost of building a new power station from £4.5 to £7 billion. A City analyst has stated that, "If the cost figures are true, new nuclear plants in the UK are not commercially viable."
We've pointed this out before. As Japan has shut down the last of its 54 reactors (and the UN demands action on the terrifyingly dangerous state of the Fukushima Daiichi Reactor No. 4 - you thought you'd heard the last of Fukushima? Well, you haven't), and France and the United States have admitted that nuclear does not make financial sense, the new figures released for the UK indicate that nuclear will be the most expensive form of electricity generation available - more expensive, even, than offshore wind.
Amazing! The nimby idiots who have done so much to hold Britain back love to shriek and shout that wind energy is entirely dependent on "subsidies" (although they can't actually explain what these "subsidies" are) and that onshore wind is "too expensive". In fact, nuclear is entirely dependent on subsidies - REAL subsidies - and is way too expensive. And another thing. Wind power doesn't leave you with 100,000 years worth of hazardous waste to worry about. Doesn't poison the land and the ocean, either (nuclear does).
So - Tim Yeo: right about wind, in that the government really does have to do something about the Nazis on its backbenches who like to spout lies about wind power; not so right, it seems, about new nuclear, which will only go ahead if the British taxpayer agrees to underwrite the costs. Want the most expensive electricity going? No? Then you have to accept wind, which is - or very soon will be - the cheapest.
But last week saw the local elections, and a drubbing for the Conservatives and their Liberal Democrat coalition partners. And, whaddya know, the maniacs of the hard-right immediately starting banging their drum and throwing their toys out of the pram.
With so many polls and surveys indicating that the clear majority of Britons support wind power (more, surprisingly, in country areas than in the cities), and with the government's own figures showing the huge contribution made to our ailing economy and jobs market by wind power, you'd like to think that anyone who cares at all about Britain would say, "Heaven's above! We must have more wind! It's so clean, so cheap, so quick to implement, so cost-competitive, so low-carbon, so good for jobs and investment, doesn't scare the horses and tourists, and if anything tends to have a positive effect on the local property market, as well as bringing money into the local economy, and it doesn't kill birds. What could be better? It's a win-win no-brainer! Bring on the windfarms!"
Tory backbenchers, however, don't care about Britain. They want to stop all this "green" nonsense in its tracks. They're following the woeful lead established by UKIP - an openly racist, sexist, homophobic, far-right political party: basically, the BNP in smarter suits. Nutters who think that the Conservative Party is "too liberal" have a nasty habit of voting UKIP, just to show what nutters they are.
UKIP is the natural home of the sort of right-wing thug who opposes wind energy on "principle". UKIP harbours loonies, like the UKIP representative who actually said that fossil fuels are "renewable" (yes, it's true: Steve Reed really does believe that "oil-wells do refill"), who believe that Global Warming is a con designed (by the EU, of course) to enslave us all, and that "Taking energy from winds and tides irreversibly enervates the weather system and slows the rotation of the Earth." (quotes taken from the Yorkshire Post, 5 August 2004).
Incredible. It's almost impossible to believe that anybody could be that daft. But UKIP and its followers are. If you hear anything along the lines of "Global Warming is just a conspiracy invented by legions of careerists hungry for UN- and EU-grants", or that windfarms stop the Earth from turning, or that fossil fuels are actually the real renewables, then you've got a UKIP lunatic in your midst.
And it's not just in the UK that the far-right are trying to combat, not climate change itself, but the very notion of climate change. In America, well-funded conservative think-tanks are pulling every string they can in order to spread confusion and misunderstanding about climate science. Check out this link:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2012/may/08/conservative-thinktanks-obama-energy-plans
On either side of the Atlantic, then, we see a similar pattern: the extreme right-wing, be that the Tea Party, UKIP, or 101 oddballs on the Tory backbenches, are determined to deprive the majority of what is urgently required and devoutly to be wished - clean, green, inexpensive, renewable energy. In order to persuade the majority that they don't want this desirable and necessary future, they must spread vile and vicious lies. All this, for what? The oil industry. The nuclear industry. The fanatical, crazy ideas of right-wing fanatics.
This just shows why CPRE were so wildly off-target when they claimed (amidst the familiar welter of falsehoods about windfarms) that "communities" feel threatened by wind energy developers. No evidence has yet come to light of a wind energy developer threatening anybody. The people who do all the threatening are the deranged, demented, self-centred, misinformed and thuggish nimby monsters. Not the community (many of whom will be all in favour of wind power) but a loud-mouthed, unprincipled, egotistical few. The very people, in fact, who are a danger to their community, because they insist on putting their own interests ahead of everybody else's, and are happy to lie their heads off to their neighbours if it will terrify them into voting against their own best interests.
Get a grip, CPRE! Ask yourselves this: how many mainstream political parties in the UK are anti-wind, anti-renewables, anti-green? And then ask yourselves - who are the people in your midst who are forcing YOU to adopt an obstructive and misjudged opposition to wind energy in Britain? Is it the UKIP types, perchance? A small, and actually quite mental, minority who routinely spout gibberish about things they don't understand? The tin-pot little dictators of Middle England? Probably.
Normal people do not oppose wind power. Only the crazed fanatics of the far-right do.
The worry is that the Conservative Party, under pressure from its more doo-lally backbenchers, will try to attract the UKIP vote by lurching to the far right. It'll lead to electoral oblivion, but it will also be bad for Britain. Bad for the economy, bad for jobs ... in short, a short-cut to the lights going out.
David Cameron promised "the greenest government ever". We're still waiting - and if the nastier members of the nasty party have any say in the matter, it won't happen.
And so the vast majority of Britons will be let down, betrayed, sold short, just to appease the maniacs of the right-wing press and the Nazi nutters in our midst. Rather like those local authorities who cave in to pressure from the nimby cretins and thereby make sure that they, and everybody else, loses out.
Wednesday, 2 May 2012
THE LIE OF THE LAND
Here's the problem: a tiny, unrepresentative, undemocratic minority of extremists are actively seeking to subvert Britain's energy policy, to overturn the vital, international drive towards sustainability (in the UK, at least), to see Britain falling behind the rest of the world in the growing green economy, to create more pollution, more greenhouse gas emissions, to force up energy bills and to deny our children the right to a clean environment and low-cost green energy. Why are they doing this?
Because they're fanatics.
Their current targets are those national organisations which have so far been, if not actively in favour of wind energy developments, at least relatively open-minded about them. So, keep an eye on the British Horse Society, which has been pretty sensible where windfarms are concerned. Idiots who haven't ridden a horse in years routinely object to windfarm proposals on the shabby grounds that they might scare the horses (how - if windfarms are as "noisy" as the nimbies like to make out? Do they really expect us to believe that these "noisy" windfarms deliberately go quiet when a horse is approaching, only to start making a noise and sending "shadow flicker" - a phenomenon that no nimby seems, or tries, to understand - just when the horse is at its most vulnerable? Is that what the numbskulls think?).
The British Horse Society has so far been pretty good at pointing out that many people ride horses near windfarms without courting disaster. The first real windfarm in Britain was built by a stud-farm, and those horses all survived. That particular windfarm in Cornwall has now been upgraded (the locals voted for larger new turbines to replace the existing ones). It would surely be more realistic of the horse brigade to worry more about things that pose a genuine threat to horses - like the Grand National - rather than making up a load of horse-sh*t about windfarms. But, sadly, the British Horse Society is coming under pressure, it would seem, from its more intolerant, aggressive, Daily Mail reader types, and might be forced by that vicious minority to start making stupid anti-windfarm statements before long.
That, certainly, is what has happened at CPRE (Campaign to Protect Rural England). Previously very sensible on the matter of windfarms - recognising, for example, that the real threat to the English countryside is posed by climate change - CPRE has had a collective fit and allowed the harrumphing brigade of mindless nimbies in its midst to run riot.
In a press release, CPRE demanded that the government publish a wind energy strategy, dictating precisely how many wind turbines there will be in England and where they will be built. The CPRE press release is a masterclass in nimby gibberish.
They have a "tranquillity map of England". Possibly, one of the silliest maps ever created. And, drawing an inference that no rational person could draw, CPRE are claiming that windfarms will jeopardise the "tranquillity" that CPRE has gone to the trouble of mapping (incidentally, has anyone got any idea how CPRE mapped England's "tranquillity"? Was there even a trace of science involved?)
Given the strict noise conditions imposed on windfarms, and the requirement of windfarm operators to ensure that their turbines barely exceed the level of ordinary background noise - and that at the nearest residential amenity to the windfarm - it is quite obvious that someone at CPRE has got their knickers in a twist over nothing, here. In fact, if you want to preserve the elusive "tranquillity" of the English countryside, you'd be best advised to support many more windfarms. Where a windfarm is built, you won't get a major housing development, for example (which would be considerably noisier than a windfarm).
As if to show that CPRE is talking out of its corporate bottom - and doing so in the strangulated tones of a nimby idiot - the press release bends over backwards to present wind turbines as an "industrial" thing. This is a favourite trick of the nimby Nazis. Imagine how they'd react if something genuinely industrial was proposed!! But by misusing language in order to promote the illusion that windfarms are "industrial" and a threat to the "tranquillity" of rural England, CPRE are letting their nimby slip show. Or, to put it another way, they have thrown objectivity, science, rationality and the national need out of the window. They decided to go down the deadend road of nimby nonsense by fantasising about an England in which every rural area is "tranquil" - no farming going on, we hope to God, 'cos it's bloody noisy and pretty filthy too - and all landscapes are "unspoilt" (yeah, as if) and renewable energy projects are "industrial".
You'd have to be bonkers to believe any of that. Nimbies do, because they're bonkers. But we have a right to expect better of CPRE. We also have a right to expect that those who claim to run such organisations should restrain the swivel-eyed nimby liars rather than pander to their looney-tunes ideas.
Here's where CPRE leap right off the deep end into nimby paranoia: "Communities feel increasingly powerless in the face of speculative applications from big, well-funded developers, and this risks undermining public support for the measures needed to tackle climate change."
Shall we number the idiocies in that brief statement? Yes, let's. So, working backwards:
1) Nimbies don't give a damn about climate change. These are the same nutters who complained about recycling and moaned about longlife, low-energy lightbulbs; the same boneheads who kicked up a stink about different coloured wheelie-bins. They will happily delude themselves into believing that climate change isn't happening, if it means they can avoid personally having to do anything about it. Most nimbies are right-wing nutters with a poor grasp of reality, and to them "climate change" is some vague socialist conspiracy. They couldn't care less about climate change or doing anything about it.
2) CPRE seem to be saying that, in order not to undermine public support for the measures to tackle climate change, we should avoid taking any measures to tackle climate change, such as approving windfarms. After all, it's easy to support something which we know will never happen and won't demand anything at all from us - any wild-eyed nimby whacko can do that! Besides which, the public - it has been shown time and time again - tend to approve of windfarms when they've got used to them, which happens pretty quickly when one has been built (the only exceptions being those hardened, sclerotic, myopic terrors who insist that they were right about wind turbines all along, even when everybody else has admitted that they're actually okay, or those poor fools duped by their nimby neighbours into believing that they can really hear a distant windfarm, when they can't). But CPRE seems to be saying that the best way to maintain public support for anti-climate change measures is not to implement any of those measures. Which is pretty mad.
3) How many windfarm developers go in for "speculative" planning applications? Does CPRE really think that windfarm developers treat it as some sort of game? It takes YEARS to process a planning application for a windfarm. There are dozens of hoops to be jumped through, all manner of surveys, studies, consultations. It's an expensive, time-consuming activity. CPRE has proven that it has stopped listening to common sense and is now only listening to the barking nimbies if it thinks that windfarm developers happily waste their time and everybody else's with "speculative" planning applications.
4) Not all windfarm developers are "big" and "well-funded". Many are relatively small, community-funded enterprises. CPRE presumably doesn't like these either. Why? Because CPRE has not thought things through. It has just leapt willy-nilly on the nimby bandwagon and will be contradicting itself for evermore, or until it wakes out of its nimby coma.
5) Considerably less than half of all windfarms proposed in England receive planning consent, and that often after a planning inquiry and various foolish legal manoeuvres by the cretins of Middle Earth (sorry, Middle England). The idea that "communities" are powerless in the face of windfarm developers is a nimby myth, pure and simple. Many, many cases have come to light of aggressive, dishonest and misinformed nimby campaigns causing havoc with the planning system and holding Britain back. The real people who are powerless in all this are the supporters of wind energy who refuse to stoop to the depths to which the nimbies are only too happy to stoop. The supporters of wind power get bullied and threatened and abused by the vicious nimby crew - the very nimbies who claim to feel "powerless". Sorry, but CPRE have completely lost the plot if they think that the seriously delusional, thuggish and mendacious types who drive nimby campaigns are "powerless" in any way; in fact, CPRE has fallen prey to the very self-serving propaganda issued by the nimbies themselves.
6) "Communities" are not the issue here. The problem tends to be newcomers to a rural area, and a handful of retired bigots, who band together to fight anything and everything. Sometimes, it happens to be a windfarm proposal that falls foul of these extremists. But it can be anything. These terrorists whip up as much frenzy, fear and loathing as they can, splitting and harming their communities in the process. If CPRE were honest, they'd leave "communities" out of this. But they've fallen for another of the nimby lies - that the "community" is against something (which it doesn't understand, and has been repeatedly lied to about by the hoodlums in their midst). In fact, the real community stands to gain - economically and environmentally - from having a windfarm nearby, and the community proper is usually not-all-that-bothered about having one. It is the crazed despots of the nimby movement, and them alone, who cause all the trouble, and they do not represent the real community, no matter how much they like to convince themselves that they do.
Here's some proof. A recent Ipsos Mori poll found that 68% of rural residents want more wind power. That's more than the city-dwellers, 66% of whom want more wind energy. It's close, but the difference is also telling. It shows that more than two-thirds of people living in rural England want to see more windfarms. So what the flock are CPRE on about, with their gibberish about "communities"? Most people living in the countryside support wind power. Only a demented few are actively opposed to it.
Does CPRE only represent the demented few, now? The newcomers, who moved to an "exclusive" rural area and won't allow anyone to do anything there, anymore, ever again? The Telegraph-reading twits and Daily Mail monsters? The sort who complain about sheep and church bells ruining their new-found rural "tranquillity"? The selfish, deluded, right-wing maniac brigade? Is that who CPRE now represents?
It comes to something when Charles, Prince of Wales, expresses support for wind power (in a new film, Harmony: A New Way of Looking at Our World, screened at the Sundance Film Festival), while a body like CPRE sides with a self-serving nutcase like Donald Trump. Prince Charles provided the narration for the film Harmony. He praises Germany for leading the way in wind energy technology and says:
I recently flew over the German countryside where ancient buildings and castles now merge into a new landscape dotted with solar panels and wind turbines. I certainly support the commitment to working with nature's freely-given forms and clean energy.
So, too, do the clear majority (9 out of 10, in the case of all renewables) of English people. The same proportion of English folk and Scots - roughly 7 out of 10 - support wind energy. They have realised that the "new landscape" described by Prince Charles in Germany is the landscape of the future. Ancient buildings and castles belong to it, too.
Unless you're the daffy old CPRE, which has had a collective breakdown and thinks that the only things allowed in the landscape are ancient buildings and castles. You know - the very sort of thing yer average nimby thinks. Once they've built their own monstrosity in the midst of the "unspoilt" countryside, that is.
Because they're fanatics.
Their current targets are those national organisations which have so far been, if not actively in favour of wind energy developments, at least relatively open-minded about them. So, keep an eye on the British Horse Society, which has been pretty sensible where windfarms are concerned. Idiots who haven't ridden a horse in years routinely object to windfarm proposals on the shabby grounds that they might scare the horses (how - if windfarms are as "noisy" as the nimbies like to make out? Do they really expect us to believe that these "noisy" windfarms deliberately go quiet when a horse is approaching, only to start making a noise and sending "shadow flicker" - a phenomenon that no nimby seems, or tries, to understand - just when the horse is at its most vulnerable? Is that what the numbskulls think?).
The British Horse Society has so far been pretty good at pointing out that many people ride horses near windfarms without courting disaster. The first real windfarm in Britain was built by a stud-farm, and those horses all survived. That particular windfarm in Cornwall has now been upgraded (the locals voted for larger new turbines to replace the existing ones). It would surely be more realistic of the horse brigade to worry more about things that pose a genuine threat to horses - like the Grand National - rather than making up a load of horse-sh*t about windfarms. But, sadly, the British Horse Society is coming under pressure, it would seem, from its more intolerant, aggressive, Daily Mail reader types, and might be forced by that vicious minority to start making stupid anti-windfarm statements before long.
That, certainly, is what has happened at CPRE (Campaign to Protect Rural England). Previously very sensible on the matter of windfarms - recognising, for example, that the real threat to the English countryside is posed by climate change - CPRE has had a collective fit and allowed the harrumphing brigade of mindless nimbies in its midst to run riot.
In a press release, CPRE demanded that the government publish a wind energy strategy, dictating precisely how many wind turbines there will be in England and where they will be built. The CPRE press release is a masterclass in nimby gibberish.
They have a "tranquillity map of England". Possibly, one of the silliest maps ever created. And, drawing an inference that no rational person could draw, CPRE are claiming that windfarms will jeopardise the "tranquillity" that CPRE has gone to the trouble of mapping (incidentally, has anyone got any idea how CPRE mapped England's "tranquillity"? Was there even a trace of science involved?)
Given the strict noise conditions imposed on windfarms, and the requirement of windfarm operators to ensure that their turbines barely exceed the level of ordinary background noise - and that at the nearest residential amenity to the windfarm - it is quite obvious that someone at CPRE has got their knickers in a twist over nothing, here. In fact, if you want to preserve the elusive "tranquillity" of the English countryside, you'd be best advised to support many more windfarms. Where a windfarm is built, you won't get a major housing development, for example (which would be considerably noisier than a windfarm).
As if to show that CPRE is talking out of its corporate bottom - and doing so in the strangulated tones of a nimby idiot - the press release bends over backwards to present wind turbines as an "industrial" thing. This is a favourite trick of the nimby Nazis. Imagine how they'd react if something genuinely industrial was proposed!! But by misusing language in order to promote the illusion that windfarms are "industrial" and a threat to the "tranquillity" of rural England, CPRE are letting their nimby slip show. Or, to put it another way, they have thrown objectivity, science, rationality and the national need out of the window. They decided to go down the deadend road of nimby nonsense by fantasising about an England in which every rural area is "tranquil" - no farming going on, we hope to God, 'cos it's bloody noisy and pretty filthy too - and all landscapes are "unspoilt" (yeah, as if) and renewable energy projects are "industrial".
You'd have to be bonkers to believe any of that. Nimbies do, because they're bonkers. But we have a right to expect better of CPRE. We also have a right to expect that those who claim to run such organisations should restrain the swivel-eyed nimby liars rather than pander to their looney-tunes ideas.
Here's where CPRE leap right off the deep end into nimby paranoia: "Communities feel increasingly powerless in the face of speculative applications from big, well-funded developers, and this risks undermining public support for the measures needed to tackle climate change."
Shall we number the idiocies in that brief statement? Yes, let's. So, working backwards:
1) Nimbies don't give a damn about climate change. These are the same nutters who complained about recycling and moaned about longlife, low-energy lightbulbs; the same boneheads who kicked up a stink about different coloured wheelie-bins. They will happily delude themselves into believing that climate change isn't happening, if it means they can avoid personally having to do anything about it. Most nimbies are right-wing nutters with a poor grasp of reality, and to them "climate change" is some vague socialist conspiracy. They couldn't care less about climate change or doing anything about it.
2) CPRE seem to be saying that, in order not to undermine public support for the measures to tackle climate change, we should avoid taking any measures to tackle climate change, such as approving windfarms. After all, it's easy to support something which we know will never happen and won't demand anything at all from us - any wild-eyed nimby whacko can do that! Besides which, the public - it has been shown time and time again - tend to approve of windfarms when they've got used to them, which happens pretty quickly when one has been built (the only exceptions being those hardened, sclerotic, myopic terrors who insist that they were right about wind turbines all along, even when everybody else has admitted that they're actually okay, or those poor fools duped by their nimby neighbours into believing that they can really hear a distant windfarm, when they can't). But CPRE seems to be saying that the best way to maintain public support for anti-climate change measures is not to implement any of those measures. Which is pretty mad.
3) How many windfarm developers go in for "speculative" planning applications? Does CPRE really think that windfarm developers treat it as some sort of game? It takes YEARS to process a planning application for a windfarm. There are dozens of hoops to be jumped through, all manner of surveys, studies, consultations. It's an expensive, time-consuming activity. CPRE has proven that it has stopped listening to common sense and is now only listening to the barking nimbies if it thinks that windfarm developers happily waste their time and everybody else's with "speculative" planning applications.
4) Not all windfarm developers are "big" and "well-funded". Many are relatively small, community-funded enterprises. CPRE presumably doesn't like these either. Why? Because CPRE has not thought things through. It has just leapt willy-nilly on the nimby bandwagon and will be contradicting itself for evermore, or until it wakes out of its nimby coma.
5) Considerably less than half of all windfarms proposed in England receive planning consent, and that often after a planning inquiry and various foolish legal manoeuvres by the cretins of Middle Earth (sorry, Middle England). The idea that "communities" are powerless in the face of windfarm developers is a nimby myth, pure and simple. Many, many cases have come to light of aggressive, dishonest and misinformed nimby campaigns causing havoc with the planning system and holding Britain back. The real people who are powerless in all this are the supporters of wind energy who refuse to stoop to the depths to which the nimbies are only too happy to stoop. The supporters of wind power get bullied and threatened and abused by the vicious nimby crew - the very nimbies who claim to feel "powerless". Sorry, but CPRE have completely lost the plot if they think that the seriously delusional, thuggish and mendacious types who drive nimby campaigns are "powerless" in any way; in fact, CPRE has fallen prey to the very self-serving propaganda issued by the nimbies themselves.
6) "Communities" are not the issue here. The problem tends to be newcomers to a rural area, and a handful of retired bigots, who band together to fight anything and everything. Sometimes, it happens to be a windfarm proposal that falls foul of these extremists. But it can be anything. These terrorists whip up as much frenzy, fear and loathing as they can, splitting and harming their communities in the process. If CPRE were honest, they'd leave "communities" out of this. But they've fallen for another of the nimby lies - that the "community" is against something (which it doesn't understand, and has been repeatedly lied to about by the hoodlums in their midst). In fact, the real community stands to gain - economically and environmentally - from having a windfarm nearby, and the community proper is usually not-all-that-bothered about having one. It is the crazed despots of the nimby movement, and them alone, who cause all the trouble, and they do not represent the real community, no matter how much they like to convince themselves that they do.
Here's some proof. A recent Ipsos Mori poll found that 68% of rural residents want more wind power. That's more than the city-dwellers, 66% of whom want more wind energy. It's close, but the difference is also telling. It shows that more than two-thirds of people living in rural England want to see more windfarms. So what the flock are CPRE on about, with their gibberish about "communities"? Most people living in the countryside support wind power. Only a demented few are actively opposed to it.
Does CPRE only represent the demented few, now? The newcomers, who moved to an "exclusive" rural area and won't allow anyone to do anything there, anymore, ever again? The Telegraph-reading twits and Daily Mail monsters? The sort who complain about sheep and church bells ruining their new-found rural "tranquillity"? The selfish, deluded, right-wing maniac brigade? Is that who CPRE now represents?
It comes to something when Charles, Prince of Wales, expresses support for wind power (in a new film, Harmony: A New Way of Looking at Our World, screened at the Sundance Film Festival), while a body like CPRE sides with a self-serving nutcase like Donald Trump. Prince Charles provided the narration for the film Harmony. He praises Germany for leading the way in wind energy technology and says:
I recently flew over the German countryside where ancient buildings and castles now merge into a new landscape dotted with solar panels and wind turbines. I certainly support the commitment to working with nature's freely-given forms and clean energy.
So, too, do the clear majority (9 out of 10, in the case of all renewables) of English people. The same proportion of English folk and Scots - roughly 7 out of 10 - support wind energy. They have realised that the "new landscape" described by Prince Charles in Germany is the landscape of the future. Ancient buildings and castles belong to it, too.
Unless you're the daffy old CPRE, which has had a collective breakdown and thinks that the only things allowed in the landscape are ancient buildings and castles. You know - the very sort of thing yer average nimby thinks. Once they've built their own monstrosity in the midst of the "unspoilt" countryside, that is.
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