With Thanks to Complete and Utter Zebu

Simon Rose reminded me with this report that if Carlsberg did disingenuous it would probably be the the "green" energy lobby.  In particluar and as Simon demonstrates, the wind power supporters do more than their fair share of manipulation.  Here's some examples from the European Wind Energy Association.  According to this august body the benefits include:

• "Wind power has a light footprint. Its, operation does not produce harmful emissions or any hazardous waste. It does not deplete natural resources, nor does it cause environmental damage, through resource extraction, transport, and waste management.
• In a wind farm the turbines themselves, take up less than 1% of the land area.  Once up and running, existing activities such as agriculture and hiking can continue around them. Farm animals such as cows and sheep are not disturbed.
• Any impacts on the local environment (see below) must be set against the much more serious effects of producing conventional electricity and thereby aggravating the pressures of climate change on the balance of nature."

Okay then let's look at those "benefits". 

• Certainly one turbine has a "light" footprint.  Except you need a lot of them to produce a reasonable amount of power.  True they don't emit any pollutants or gases but unless we re categorize excessive noise as "harmelss emissions" they do present a serious noise hazard.  Indeed the nearest a turbine can be placed to housing is 300m.  Just visulaise that for a minute.  Thats a 300m wide band of valuable land that can't be utilised due to noise.
• The second point is really the first regurgetated.  Loads of space between the turbines but only for deaf cattle and sheep it appears.
• The final point is trite in the extreme.  It assumes that the current methods are "aggravating climate change" which may be true but ignores nuclear energy which in my opnion would be a better method of producing power per M2 occupied.

But this website does not provide a balanced reply to each of its befeficial arguments.  It does do that for the disadvantages though.

• "Wind power’s overall impact on birds, bats, other wildlife and natural habitats is highly site specifi c. In addition, impacts from wind power are extremely low compared with other humanrelated activities. Deaths from birds fl ying into wind turbines represent a small fraction of those caused by other human-related sources such as cats and buildings.  US statistics show 1 billion birds are killed by colliding with buildings each year and up to 80 million by vehicles.  By comparison, it’s estimated that commercial wind turbines in the US cause the direct deaths of only 0.01 – 0.02% of all of the birds killed annually by collisions with man-made structures and activities."

I confess that this one makes me smile.  Apparently we would significantly reduce the amount of birds killed if we get rid of those nasty buildings and cats.  Of course with no buildings there'd be no need for power thus no need for wind turbines.  But the really good bit of the above logic is the stats concerning the percentage of birds killed by wind farms.  Could it just possibly be that there are significantly more square metres of buildings than there are wind turbines in the USA?

In short the wind power lobby is telling porky pies.

Space - The Only Frontier?

Anyway to all those climate change folks I need an answer to the following.

How many Km2 do you need for a wind farm to produce the power of (let's say) Fiddler's Ferry Power Station?

Only it appears to me, that if we were to move over to offshore wind power we'd need to shove an awful lot of concrete and steel into those oceans to the extent that the displacement may well raise the sea levels, just so that we can provide enough power to energise our solar panels in the winter.

Or have I missed my guess here?

Think before pressing send

You know that feeling you get when you've just texted your wife or girlfriend (or both?) and told her in explicit detail exactly what you're going to do her when you get home, then just as you press "send" you realise its gone to your mum's number? Then there's the moment when you've just written a wonderfully bile filled e mail to your boss and instead of pressing "save in drafts" you press "send........................."?

Well I'm guessing a bit here but those extremely clever peeps at the Climate Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia (UEA) may just be having feelings somewhat similar to those I describe above. For it seems that the arguments for Climate Change may not be as compelling as the experts and Al Gore would have us believe. Take a look at this website where a number of e mails between climate change researchers have been hacked and published. It's a fairly extensive library which unfortunately includes examples of manipulation of findings in order to exaggerate the effects of climate change as we understand it to be. We are told that this information is really of little consequence and of course has been taken out of context. Oookay then. This release of information, whether it be out of context or not, is not what governments want to see for if there is contrary evidence to the scaremongering then it may well dent their ability to charge us for the use of our cars, central heating/air conditioning (delete as appropriate) etc. Of course you may call me a cynic but green taxes are not there to reduce consumption, they are there to make easy money for governments. Ergo there is little governmental energy devoted to actual reduction of usage because that would have a negative effect on the tax revenues.

But let us not be one sided or possibly cynical here because of course pumping CO2 and other substances such as unspent hydrocarbons into the atmosphere quite probably does have a bit of a negative effect on our lives. And of course we don't want to end those lives back in mud huts with no electricity but a nice view of the rapidly rising seas. So efficient use of resources may be a better answer than carbon credits (how do they work?) etc.

Some might say that motorsport is one of the worst forms of sport for burning hydrocarbans. It just will never be green. I tend to agree, however before people look towards motorsport for a relief from Climate Change I suggest they look towards the various governments who take our money but instead of making life more efficient, spend it on civil services and quangos, both of which in the UK are too big or too many or both! Surely if that cash was spent on transport systems there'd be a lot less unburnt hydrocarbons in the atmosphere because there'd be less traffic jams and therefore fuel efficiency would rise? And on that subject of course a racing car uses its fuel as efficiently as it can because it does not sit for hours in traffic jams!

So, I have a theory about Climate Change, which as we know can only be determined since records began (in around 1910 I believe) and my theory is this. The climate changes, live with it.