From Benny Peiser at The GWPF:
In a sane world, no one would dream of building power sources whose cost is 22 times greater than that of vastly more efficient competitors. But the Government feels compelled to do just this because it sees it as the only way to meet our commitment to the EU that within nine years Britain must generate nearly a third of its electricity from “renewable” sources, six times more than we do at present. Madness is far too polite a word. –-Christopher Booker, The Sunday Telegraph, 21 August 2011
They are among the nation’s wealthiest aristocrats, whose families have protected the British landscape for centuries. Until now that is. For increasing numbers of the nobility – among them dukes and even a cousin of the Queen – are being tempted by tens of millions of pounds offered by developers. —Robert Mendick and Edward Malnick, The Sunday Telegraph, 21 August 2011
In the course of the 25-year lifespan of the wind farm at Fallago Rig it could net the Duke anywhere between £18 million and £62.5 million. One industry expert estimated Fallago Rig could generate about £875 million income over the next quarter of a century for the Duke and his commercial partner North British Windpower. —Robert Mendick and Edward Malnick, The Sunday Telegraph, 21 August 2011
The level of subsidy available to landowners to put up these turbines is out of all proportion to the public benefit derived from them and the temptation to ruin what is usually outstanding landscapes is overwhelming. It is a crime against the landscape. –Sir Simon Jenkins, National Trust, The Sunday Telegraph, 21 August 2011
Green taxes will make up more than a third of the price of electricity by the end of the decade, pushing up prices to new highs by 2020. Figures from Utilyx, the energy consultants and traders, forecast a 58pc rise in the cost of power by 2020, largely driven by the impending avalanche of green taxes due to come into force over the next 10 years. –Rowena Mason, The Sunday Telegraph, 21 August 2011
If Energy Secretary Chris Huhne has his way, Britons will be forced to subsidise renewable energy by approximately £100billion in the next 20 years. Electricity prices are likely to double as a direct result. The Government has to force energy companies to make electricity bills fully transparent so that the ever-increasing level of hidden green taxes are clearly listed for families and households. –-Benny Peiser, Daily Mail, 8 July 2011
Energy firms have been asked to clearly explain how they calculate bills after concerns were raised that customers may have been overcharged after price rises. —Totally Money, 20 August 2011
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Those on limited incomes will be hit the hardest with this strategy and the elderly will be the most effected. If you do not have compassion and respect for your elders, don’t expect two experience those qualities from others when you are in their shoes.
Vince Causey:
“…..labour party MP after MP would be rising in the house to attack the Tory led coalition. ”
The Labour party do not seem able to reach the conclusion that their policies are most damaging to the economic prospects of their own voter base. Presumably because the other two main parties are going along with the policy as well. Also because of a certain vulnerability to automatically and uncritically adopt Green/Enviro/EU supported causes.
Gordon Brown (ex-prime minister) described sceptics as ‘flat-earthers’. Ed Milliband (ex-environment minister) stated that anyone who questions the CAGW notion is to be treated as ‘dangerous’. With attiudes like that it will take a monumental effort to shift their stance.
Of course, the Con/Lib, Yeo/Huhn position is just as hard to shift as well.
Laurie Bowen says: “Not making any excuses for anyone . . . but, I happen to believe wind energy has it place.”
Yes, Laurie, it does. In Little America, Antarctica, there is a wind-powered generator that feeds batteries. However, they also have diesel generators. Why is that? Well, the batteries are used to power electronics, and the diesel generators are used to create heat and light. If you didn’t have the diesel generators, the batteries would freeze and there would be no power for the electronics. So you are right, there is a place for wind-powered generators, but without storage batteries you cannot control the power that comes from them, and batteries require a lot of care and pampering to work well.
Wil says: August 22, 2011 at 12:41 pm
Personally speaking, I have NO sympathy for the Brits or their EU cousins (They’re no cousins!!). None what so ever. If the majority of those people re-elect those dead beats they elect election after election then they’re getting exactly what they paid for.
Totally agree. The public get the politicians they deserve. They voted for a bunch of hypocriticy fox-hunting eco-nutters and they got David Cameron and his snot rag.
Unfortunately, that’s not the whole story! The real power behind the throne are the civil servants. We don’t vote for the civil servants, we can’t change the civil servants, and the civil servants are the same scientifically illiterate bunch of morons that run the BBC. Indeed, in a real sense the politicians are just a discardable veneer to the civil service and the politicians are just there to take the blame for all the many gaffs of the civil servants who’ll advise the politicians that global warming is true and then expect the politicians take the blame when it is found it is a load of BS.
This appears to violate the basic tenent of socilaism, taking from the poor to give to the rich. Of course that is what really happens with socialism. is it not?
I’ve just returned from a visit to the UK, and I am glad to be back in sane, stable, Australia, where we don’t have any of this sort of nonsense.
What?
Oh.
We’re doomed.
Sorry to politicize your website Anthony, but this subject IS political. The best thing about what is happening in Great Britain is it serves as a great example of what happens if we let the liberal/progressive democrats and idiot rino Republicans have their way here in the USA. These idiots are hell bent on destroying our economy with their “green” agenda, and all of us have to do our best to stop them through the ballot box. Anyone who believes in AGW or “CO2 is evil” has to be defeated in the 2012 elections.
The social and economic damage being wrought by the windmills and solar panels of the renewable energy scam is becoming increasingly clear. But one legacy of wind farms that does not seem to be well recognised is the huge 600 tonne concrete foundation blocks and the assocaited gravel road network that will remain at the end of their short 20 – 25 year service life. When AGW madness eventually runs it’s course, the steel skeletons of the windmills might be dismantled, but the man made monoliths and roads will remain forever, an unhealed scar on a once beautiful landscape.
This would be an appropriate cartoon.
Its title, The Alternative Energy Revolution.
http://xkcd.com/556/
Economics aside, I dont see why people dont like the appearance of windmills. That said, if landowners are getting paid all out of proportion to the economic value of the turbines, good on ’em. It’s rare that actual taxpayers get any of their own money back rather than being redistributed to layabouts and parasites.
I live in Dallas and it has been over 105 for many days this summer.
When the temperature is that high it is BECAUSE there is no wind.
Wind seems to be 1 or 2 mph or even zero almost every day. What good is a windmill if you have to build duplicate power plants for when you need it most ?
Bruce Rogers says: August 22, 2011 at 12:54 pm
[So how well do these things work when coated in snow and freezing rain?]
Like this…
The fault is exactly that: The people are being charged – under false premises of CAGW and “green hyperbola” and enviro-fears – for needless very expensive machines that waste their money.
Sure … If I take the money from 6 people to give to 2 people, I have “employed” two people. And impoverished 6 six, and are wasting the work of two, who now see the “gubmint” as the owner to whom they owe allegiance and their loyalty and their votes. But those two people are busy: One digging a hole, and one filling it back up. then the gubmint buys the labor of two more people (enslaving 6 more with new taxes) to plant bushes and water the some new grass over the hole that didn’t need to be dug in the first place. But the gubmint then pays for three bureacrats to administer the program for the first two to dig the ditches …. And borrows money from you and your 12 children to pay for two more bureaucrats (one on-site and one inspector) to monitor who bought the bushes to plant over the new holes ….
Christopher Booker is the only journalist to talk any sense in the UK national press with regard to AGW and the massive, unnecessary cost to reduce our 0.10% “carbon footprint” which will bring our economy to it’s knees. He deserves an OBE or preferably a Knighthood!!
@tallbloke says August 22, 2011 at 1:24 pm
Wrong target. The BBC is by far the primary evil in our midst and should be just as worrying to those outside the UK as those within who are forced to pay for it via the disgusting license fee racket.
Bruce Rogers says:
August 22, 2011 at 12:54 pm
So how well do these things work when coated in snow and freezing rain?
They are absolutely BRILLIANT in snow and freezing rain!! They collect the snow and freezing rain as ice on their blades and then ‘throw’ long chunks of ice more than half a mile with a startlingly high terminal velocity!
Of course if it gets really cold the oil freezes and there is an expensive grinding noise as the gearbox self-destructs.
“If the majority of those people re-elect those dead beats they elect election after election then they’re getting exactly what they paid for – green eco-nazis.”
But they don’t.
If I remember correctly, Blair’s Labour governments got around 20% of the available votes, and the last election was a vote for ‘none of the above’ but they got a government anyway. I don’t believe even Thatcher managed to get 50% of the votes cast, let alone 50% of the available votes.
A large part of the problem is Britain’s antiquated electoral system where in most constituencies one party has a majority large enough that all other votes are simply worthless; where I used to live no matter how I voted I knew that the Tories would win. The only voters the politicians really care about are a million or two in constituencies which could switch party.
Not all the world is going crazy, not even all of Europe.
Near all the lunatic countries is THE one blessedly sane country in the world.
Turkey.
Does everything right. Grows manufacturing, keeps bankers under firm control, maintains its culture.
Latest evidence of sanity:
http://marketplace.publicradio.org/display/web/2011/08/22/am-turkey-moves-forward-with-nuclear-energy-plans-/
Who is John Gault?
The jig is up: redistribution, green taxes, all for a few, paid by all. British politicians from Labour or Conservatives have been bought by Big Green. Milliband or Cameron, same tune!
Now Now, Everyone !
Remember the vision, don’t lose focus and be sure to retain the inspirational vision of a united ‘Green’ world sitting in the darkness around the wind turbines, holding hands and singing Kumbayah….. The dream will soon be realised !
Unfortunately, I’ll be moving to China due to company off-shoring, so please send me an email when the wind blows and share your joyous stories of those winter moonlit evenings watching the frost gently settling on the doona as you prepare to sleep.
May the Gaia always be with you !
‘Stephen Wilde says:
August 22, 2011 at 2:09 pm
I was amused to find that all this had been predicted some 150 years ago by a chap called de Tocqueville.’
It’s much worse than that. The people demand that their votes are bought with their grandchildren’s money (on both sides of The Pond). The politicians, who want to stay in business, merely comply.
@Franklyn Durilla Road Pickens didn’t “get smart” – he intended to use wind turbines to secure the real prize which was the right-of-way / eminent domain to build a pipeline so that his company Mesa Water could drain and sell even more water from the Oglala aquifer to Dallas residents.
In the US cats kill over 1,000 birds everyday, many of them endangered. Just imagine if a wind farm were doing this.
genomega1, how many birds die everyday, many of them endangered, because they got just old?
Derek Sorenson:
It’s npower. I was buying for 9p/kWh on signonline21, but a price rise of 7% has taken that up to 9.6p. Just like all the other companies though, npower are terrible. Four months ago I asked them what percentage of my annual bill goes on the government’s renewables scheme. Four months later they gave me half an answer – after giving me answers to questions I never posed! I’m still waiting for a full answer – and there are three complaints lodged with the company over it.