Help Sitemap Home Skip Navigation Contact Us Disability Statement

 
 
Saturday, 6th September 2008 Change Date

Premium Article !

Your account has been frozen. For your available options click the below button.

Options

Premium Article !

To read this article in full you must have registered and have a Premium Content Subscription with the The Scotsman site.

Subscribe

Registered Article !

To read this article in full you must be registered with the site.

Sign In
Register

Bill Jamieson - Don't insult us with call for a national debate on wind farms



Click on thumbnail to view image
Click on thumbnail to view image
Click on thumbnail to view image
Click on thumbnail to view image
Click on thumbnail to view image

WHEN politicians call for a "national debate", it is a sure sign that the most dubious policy is about to be railroaded through, whether we debate it or not.




That is what lies at the heart of the Prime Minister Gordon Brown's portentous declaration yesterday of a "green revolution". Thousands of new wind turbines are set to be built across the UK over the coming decade as part of a £100 billion p...



The full article contains 987 words and appears in The Scotsman newspaper.
Page 1 of 1

  • Last Updated: 26 June 2008 9:20 PM
  • Source: The Scotsman
  • Location: Edinburgh
  • Related Topics: Bill Jamieson
 
1

Richardinho,

27/06/2008 03:12:10
Ok, enough with the number crunching. The issues are these:

What are we going to do when oil runs out (or becomes too prohibitively expensive to extract?

Do you really want the to have a nuclear power station in every city in the world(probably what it would take)?

Is the objection to windfarms really anything other than, 'I don't like the look of them'?

Given these reasons, is it not worth at least giving wind-power the chance to see if it can provide the solution to our energy needs?
2

Unimpressed one,

27/06/2008 08:17:20
The objections to the madness are many. Firstly, the 'climate change' hypothesis is dead. There is no reliable scientific evidence correlating human CO2 emissions with the present state of the global climate. Given that fact, the whole 'tacking climate change' farce is now driven by politicians and eco-loonies. The former want to be seen as 'doing something', the latter are on course to wreck our economy.

As the above article points out, consumers are paying for this debacle because no business would touch it. If the EU has dictated our percentage of renewables generation, then let the EU pay for it.

Worse still, is even if the theory of global warming had been correct, such is the unreliablility of wind, we still need to invest in the same amount of conventional power generation in order to supply backup, so there would be no net savings in emissions.

The whole sorry business is yet another example of what happens when our policy makers follow the green agenda. Future generations will not know whether to loathe us for such idiocy or split their sides laughing at the collective idiocy which, for a while at least, gripped the whole planet
3

Isonomia,

Lenzie 27/06/2008 09:46:23
The only thing we have a choice about is where these bird killers are built.

I'm nationalistic and want our birds chopped up by Scottish windmills!
4

Isonomia,

Lenzie 27/06/2008 09:52:27
Richardinho, "What do we do after oil runs out".

I was at the coal museum the other day, once a year they all went on holiday and they put all their crusts they normally threw away into a big trolley used for the coal.

During the time they were off, the rats that normally infested the mine had no food, and with no alternative they entered the trolley with steep sides from which they could not escape.

At the end of the holiday there was one huge rat!

Basically we are those rats in the trolley, there is only so many crusts left and our aim should be to be the fat rat at the end not all the ones it ate!
5

Hugo of Garven,

27/06/2008 10:36:40
"The cost of electricity generated by nuclear power (including the cost of decommissioning) is 2.3p per KWh; electricity from coal-fired power stations costs 2.5p per KWh, while the cost of electricity generated by onshore wind is 5.4p per KWh."

Where can I see the justification for these figures.
6

Neil,

Glasgow 27/06/2008 10:42:08
Bill's 2.3p cost for nuclear is the Royal Academy of Enginering figure based on Britain's outdated reactors. France has been producing 80% of its power at 1.3p a unit by nuclear for decades. If anything an even newer generation of reactors should cost less. There would certainly be no technical reason justifying them being more.

#1 since it is possible to put more than 1 reactor on a site there would be need, indeed no point, in using new sites.

The objections to windmills are very many more than "merely" that they turn our country into one vast industrial landscape. If you are not perfectly well aware of that & merely unable to answer any of them then you have never read this site before.
7

Rational cynic,

Edinburgh 27/06/2008 13:07:26
#2 Unimpressed one

"... the whole 'tacking climate change' farce is now driven by politicians and eco-loonies"

Sorry, you are completely wrong. Climate change is a real and present threat.

Please do some research and read some of the high quality evidence produced by many, many scientists.

While you're at it, have a read of this website set up by a Professor of Physics at Cambridge University.

Can we live on our own renewables? - http://www.withouthotair.com/

He has done some helpful work to bring facts to the question of how best to meet our future energy needs - wind, coal, nuclear, etc.
8

nabodican,

Rural Scotland 27/06/2008 14:53:45
Quite a good article by Bill Jamieson.
These wind turbines are not an alternative to coal, gas, nuclear, oil or anything else - they are only a very expensive "as well as" which our politicians think are the answer to a the non existent problem called global warming/cooling/clmate change/the price of tatties going up etc.
At over 2000 tonnes of concrete per turbine base and no saving in coal being burned at Longannet or Cockenzie, just where are these emission savings coming from ??
9

Seoras67,

Edinburgh 27/06/2008 16:05:23
No 8 is quite correct. Windfarms are a very expensive and unreliable addition to not replacement for current power generation. No wind, no electrictiy so you still need all the current sources of power.
10

Neil,

Glasgow 27/06/2008 18:37:33
An infinitely greater threat, since anything existential is infinitely greater than zero, is the way media & politicians can propagandise such scare stories even without any evidence, when global temperature is not particularly high & is falling.

Anybody who believes in individaul freedom should be worried about how easily such lies are sold.

 

Comment on this Story

 

In order to post comments you must Register or Sign In

 
 
RSS Feed of this article's comments
Delivery formats: RSS, Atom, Javascript & Email
 
  

 
 


Sister Newspapers:
Press Complaints Commission

This website and its associated newspaper adheres to the Press Complaints Commission’s Code of Practice. If you have a complaint about editorial content which relates to inaccuracy or intrusion, then contact the Editor by clicking here.

If you remain dissatisfied with the response provided then you can contact the PCC by clicking here.