K. Saber says:
"Forget Climate Change, it's Energy Shortages we need to worry about"
Climate change is potentially catastrophic, but the bigger, more pressing danger to society is running out of fossil fuels. Oil has peaked, Natural Gas is very close to peaking and coal will be depleted within 50 years as we use in greater quantities to replace oil and gas depletion.
We need everything we can get our hands on. Nuclear, wind, solar we need it all. To complain that we cannot use wind power because we need to back it up with a base load power generation is like saying we should not use cars because we might need to walk now and again.
And to criticise the Wind Industry because it receives subsidies! The entire energy industry, and that includes Oil and Gas, receives massive subsidies, grants and tax write-off's.
I am not if favour of backing the wrong choices when it comes to energy generation, but I think Wind is a good bet if harnessed correctly and stored efficiently. Think compressed air and pumped water storage for starters
To complain that we cannot use wind power because we need to back it up with a base load power generation is like saying we should not use cars because we might need to walk now and again.
Anything containing basic grammatical errors is extremely difficult to take seriously.
I experience pleasure and pains, and pursue goals in service of them, so I cannot reasonably deny the right of other sentient agents to do the same - Steven Pinker
Has anyone actually read "The Wind Farm Scam"? If so, where do you see his main error?
Dr Etherington appears well respected and as well as this book has written articles on the subject for publication in various journals and has also appeared as an expert on various House of Commons and House of Lords Select Committees.
To be clear, I am very much for wind energy. Our group has recently managed to help get an approval for a new large local (Camelford) wind farm. I just can't be bothered to buy and read the book, so it would be helpful to have comments from someone who has. If you have, can you share your thoughts with us? Thanks
he was a reader in Ecology at a university up to 1990 so I assume its ok for him to still use the title Dr.
there are quite a few other academics out there who seem, from my perspective, to have lost it when it comes to wind farms. Lovelock, Bellamy etc. You expect these guys not to spin half truths, but they do....
He's a known anti-windfarm campaigner, and is "regarded as the intellectual guru of Country Guardian." Their website is here.
Here's a quote from The Guardian newspaper, 7/5/2004:
The anti-wind lobby took off in 1992 with a group called Country Guardian, which was worried by wind power's potential to damage landscape. It strongly denies accusations of having close links with the nuclear industry (its chair is Sir Bernard Ingham, who is a paid lobbyist for British Nuclear Fuels). Its arguments were supported by many conservationists who feared the visual impact on lovely places, but also by old Labourites who supported the unions in Britain's nuclear industry, and others who accurately foresaw that wind power could scupper plans for new nuclear stations.
The Government's thesis that the countryside and upland and coastal Britain is"worth sacrificing to save the planet" is an insult to science, economics and politics. But the greatest insult is to aesthetics.
I experience pleasure and pains, and pursue goals in service of them, so I cannot reasonably deny the right of other sentient agents to do the same - Steven Pinker
Even the synopsis has obvious errors!
