Wednesday 29 February 2012

What happens when a greenie reporter visits an offshore windfarm?

"So grand, so gentle"
"There is nothing more modern and impressive than these turbines"

This is what happens when a warmist newspaper - in this case the Guardian - sends one of its most ardent believers in the cult of global warming on assignment to an offshore windfarm:

The towers that rise so slenderly from the sparkling icy sea look from this boat like monuments to optimism, common sense and human daring.
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The structures themselves have the panache of Thomas Telford's 1826 suspension bridge across the Menai Straits, or Isambard Kingdom Brunel's Great Britain, launched in 1843 and the world's first propeller-driven ocean-going iron ship.
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But out at the windfarm, there is the spectacle of a new industrial revolution with a difference. While the great achievements of 18th- and 19th-century British engineering filled the air with carbon and laid the foundatns of man-made global warming, this is a benign revolution.

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There is nothing more modern and impressive than these turbines. As we sail through the middle of the farm, they recede in regular rows across the sun-silvered water.
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A Victorian, steampunk version would surely have gothic trimmings, or be painted in stripes like old lighthouses. Perhaps in future, there will be retro-turbines that emulate such traditional nautical structures.
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The Thanet shore is being brought to life by winds that once filled the sails of sloops and brigs and now drive these machines, so grand, so gentle.

Read the entire article here

Hopefully the Guardian reporter already has recovered from his delusional trance.

Having returned to the real world he could take a look at the reality of wind power in UK (as reported earlier by his own newspaper):

Opposition to wind power in rural Wales is said to be "total", with communities threatening peaceful direct action and at least 20 groups fighting plans for 870 of the largest turbines in Powys alone.
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Glyn Davies, the Conservative MP for Montgomeryshire, was heavily criticised last year for backing a Welsh anti-pylons direct action group. He said the entire region was now "up in arms" against the pylon and turbine plans. "They will industrialise the uplands with wind turbines and desecrate our valleys with hideous cables and pylons. The scale is almost impossible to comprehend," he said.
National Grid says it will need to erect a 15-mile row of Britain's biggest pylons to connect a huge offshore windfarm off Anglesey to the grid, as well as a second nuclear reactor at Wylfa. Another line of pylons will be needed to Trawsfynydd.
"No one knows the full implications of these developments or what they will do to tourism. The opposition is total and very impressive," said Welshpool campaigner Richard Jones. "I was broadly in favour of wind power until I saw the scale of the pylon developments."

Read the entire article here

The government and energy industry have quietly shelved plans for windfarms equivalent to four large traditional coal and nuclear power stations, amid growing public and political anger over the cost and sight of the turbines.
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Responding to the latest cost figures, Chris Heaton-Harris, the Tory MP who co-ordinated the letter to David Cameron, said: "The more the true full cost of wind energy is exposed the more you have to ask why we continue to back such an expensive and intermittent source of energy. All this money ends up coming from consumers at the end of the day and this raises the question: how many people will be forced into fuel poverty because we continue with such a high level of direct and indirect subsidy to the wind industry?"

Read the entire article here

(imagey by wiki)

2 comments:

A K Haart said...

In a way the Guardian piece is quite revealing. It's an unreal poetic dreamworld where physics and economics don't apply.

A child's world in many ways.

MostlyHarmless said...

Once upon a time I read the Guardian daily. Once upon a time it was a newspaper. Once upon a time I was informed and entertained and stimulated by the excellent and incisive journalism that gave it a reputation worldwide. Now we see it justifying Gleick's actions, championing "renewable energy" while wearing rose-tinted specs., claiming that wind turbines don't kill birds, and calling all those who don't chant its monotonous mantra "deniers". Now I wouldn't wipe my backside with it - I'd need to buy a copy first. I'm more likely to win the Lottery, and as I don't but tickets and never have done, that won't happen any time soon.