This Is The Sight That We Will Be Seeing In Years To Come In The UK,

abandoned wind farms,

when government subsidies run out as the electricity windfarms produce is way too expensive windfarms like this one in America will fall into disrepair, the 27-year-old Kamaoa Wind Farm remains a relic of the boom and inglorious bust of America’s so-called ‘wind rush’, the world’s first major experiment in wind energy, if any spot was tailor-made for a wind farm it would surely be here, the gales are so strong and relentless on the tip of South Point Hawaii that trees grow almost horizontally, but on the 100-acre site, where cattle wander past broken ‘Keep Out’ signs, stand the rusting skeletons of scores of wind turbines,


with so many moving parts to worry about, maintaining turbines is expensive, way too expensive when the electricity they could produce is worth so little, ‘so when something broke, you simply didn’t send a repairman because it just didn’t make financial sense,’ Hawaii wind sceptic Andrew Walden, according to the California Energy Commission, the collapse in subsidies stalled the state’s huge wind energy industry for nearly two decades, no one who has driven past one of America’s mega wind farms today can fail to be struck by how few have blades that are turning, even in strong winds,


then of course there is the cost to wildlife, no one noticed until far too late that the 5,000-turbine wind farm at Altamont Pass is on a major migratory path for birds, the National Audubon Society, America’s RSPB, has called it ‘probably the worst site ever chosen for a wind energy project’, an estimated 10,000 birds including up to 80 protected golden eagles, 380 burrowing owls, 300 red-tailed hawks and 330 falcons were being shredded each year in Altamont’s massed banks of turbine blades — to say nothing of thousands of bats — until outraged conservationists sued America’s ‘deadliest’ wind farm four years ago, as a result, it has agreed to grind to a halt for four months every year to avoid causing more carnage during the migration season, I wonder where the electricity for those four months comes from? back to the birds, the problem is so serious that in Minnesota and Oregon, wind farms have drawn national condemnation by applying for an eagle hunting licence as the blades kill so many,


while Hawaii has six abandoned wind farms, most of California’s derelict turbines are only now being removed — decades late — after disgusted local authorities threatened to sue, but if a turbine’s owner had walked away from his investment or gone bankrupt, it was sometimes the hapless farmer or rancher who owned the land who had to foot the huge clean up bill, I hope that the land owners of wind farms in the UK will foot the bill when it is their turn to remove these huge wastes of space,


this is what we in the UK are going to do, Downing Street’s controversial pledge spurred on by EU green targets is to give £400 million-a-year subsidies to wind farms as well as hefty bribes to landowners in order to spur the building of an additional 4,500 turbines, meanwhile in the USA this is what they are going to do, Republicans in Congress want to cut wind energy’s 20-year-old subsidy at the end of the year, why, they ask, should the debt-laden country be giving wind energy companies a 30 per cent tax credit, costing taxpayers nearly $3 billion a year, why indeed.

Why The £250bn Wind Power Industry Could Be The Greatest Scam Of Our Age - And Here Are The Three 'Lies' That Prove It.

no the above was not written by me! but I have believed it for as long as I can remember, wind farms will never produce what they claim, also they will never be anything more than a money maker for the owners, what other industry gets a public subsidy equivalent to 100 or even 200 per cent of the value of what it produces? this is why so many people are now realising that the wind bonanza — almost entirely dominated in Britain by French, German, Spanish and other foreign-owned firms — is one of the greatest scams of our age, to keep our homes warm we were having to import vast amounts of power from nuclear reactors in France, wind turbines are so expensive that Holland recently became the first country in Europe to abandon its EU renewable energy target, announcing that it is to slash its annual subsidy by billions of euros,

first lie, is the pretence that turbines are anything other than ludicrously inefficient, the most glaring dishonesty peddled by the wind industry — and echoed by gullible politicians — is vastly to exaggerate the output of turbines, as they increase in number (the Government wants to see 10,000 more in the next few years) it will, quite farcically, become necessary to build a dozen or more gas-fired power stations, running all the time and emitting CO2, simply to provide instant back-up for when the wind drops, (the people that bang on about wind farms have yet to realise there are windless days, so where do they think the electricity will come from?),

the second great lie about wind power is the pretence that it is not a preposterously expensive way to produce electricity, no one would dream of building wind turbines unless they were guaranteed a huge government subsidy, this comes in the form of the Renewables Obligation Certificate subsidy scheme, paid for through household bills, whereby owners of wind turbines earn an additional £49 for every 'megawatt hour' they produce, and twice that sum for offshore turbines, when a Swedish firm recently opened what is now the world's largest offshore windfarm off the coast of Kent, (notice how gullible we are? the world's largest, no other country would fall for it!), at a cost of £800million, we were told that its 'capacity' was 300 megawatts, enough to provide 'green' power for tens of thousands of homes, what we were not told was that its actual output will average only a mere 80 megawatts, a tenth of that supplied by a gas-fired power station — for which we will all be paying a subsidy of £60million a year, or £1.5billion over the 25-year lifespan of the turbines, money to burn, to appease the tree huggers and greenies I guess is another way of looking at it,

the third great lie of the wind propagandists is that this industry is somehow making a vital contribution to 'saving the planet' by cutting our emissions of CO2, even if you believe that curbing our use of fossil fuels could change the Earth's climate, the CO2 reduction achieved by wind turbines is so insignificant that one large windfarm saves considerably less in a year than is given off over the same period by a single jumbo jet flying daily between Britain and America, then, of course, the construction of the turbines generates enormous CO2 emissions as a result of the mining and smelting of the metals used, the carbon-intensive cement needed for their huge concrete foundations, the building of miles of road often needed to move them to the site, and the releasing of immense quantities of CO2 locked up in the peat bogs where many turbines are built, when you consider, too, those gas-fired power stations wastefully running 24 hours a day just to provide back-up for the intermittency of the wind, any savings will vanish altogether, I have to admit I have reproduced extensively from the article by Christopher Booker, we seem to agree on many issues like this, at last some one else is seeing the expensive truth and is a in a position to bring it to the attention of others, I just hope some one in power will follow Holland's lead.

I Hate To Say 'I told You So',

but wind farms as I have always predicted will come to haunt every home in the UK,

Professor Gordon Hughes, who has produced a study on how wind energy will hit energy costs, has predicted a stark warning for every home in Great Britain, but first his credentials, professor Hughes is one of the UK's leading energy economists and works at the prestigious University of Edinburgh, He was also a senior adviser on energy and environmental policy at the World Bank, so I guess he knows a thing or two, in his stark warning, (remember the mantra of wind farms is to bring Britain's greenhouse gas emissions down), but he believes for all the huge investment in wind farms Britain's greenhouse gas emissions may not even fall!

worse still after not achieving their first goal by 2020 average electricity bills will be around 58 per cent higher - a £320 increase - just because of the flood of wind turbines planned for Britain's coastlines, fields and seas, 'the key problems with current policies for wind power are simple,' he said, 'unless the current Government scales back its commitment to wind power very substantially, its policy will be worse than a mistake, it will be a blunder, the average household electricity bill would increase from £528 per year at 2010 prices to a range from £730 to £840 in 2020,' the report has been published by former Chancellor Lord Lawson's Global Warming Policy Foundation,


backing up Professor Gordon Hughes, Professor Ian Fells, who is Professor of Energy Conversion at Newcastle University and an adviser at the House of Commons and Lords, also said that wind farms are too costly, instead he claims that combined gas cycle plants could produce the same amount of green energy for £13billion – nearly 10 times cheaper than wind power, 'wind energy is the most expensive way of generating renewable electricity,' he said, 'it will also cost jobs, We are already seeing some industrial firms packing up and moving abroad, the increasing price of energy is going to be the next big political problem,'


but here is the real problem with tree huggers and greenies spending your money, it is making them too much money so they and their cronies with their snouts in the trough will never stop gouging for their cash rewards, just a pity we can not be more like America with Hawaii's wind farm project! 

In A Statement That Will Drive Tree Huggers And Greenies To Distraction,

it appears that the modern blot on our ancient landscapes fails to deliver the goods, what am I talking about? wind farms, yet another save the planet con, take the most efficient wind farm in all of the UK, High Volts 2, Country Durham, the largest and most powerful wind farm in Britain, it achieves an efficiency of just 18.7 per cent, Britain's most feeble wind farm is in Blyth Harbour in Northumberland, where the nine turbines lining the East Pier reach a meagre 7.9 per cent of their maximum capacity, another at Chelker reservoir in North Yorkshire operates at only 8.7 per cent of its potential,

why? I hear you all ask, no wind you see, we in the UK pay under the controversial 'Renewable Obligation' scheme, £1billion a year in our fuel bills to subsidise the drive towards renewable energy, but as Professor Jefferson, of London Metropolitan Business School, has said previously: 'We should be putting our money where the wind is and that is quite often not where the development pressure is.' Britain has 2,741 wind turbines spread over 262 sites, but the number is due to soar, with a further 7,000 planned for the next 12 years to meet European targets on cutting greenhouse gas emissions,

many experts have accuse developers of 'grossly exaggerating' the amount of energy they will generate in order to get their hands on subsidies designed to boost the production of green power,

also as important for the tree huggers, how much carbon have we saved? none, because electricity supplied by a combination of gas, coal and nuclear can't be just turned off when the wind blows, obvious really but no one in the green industry mentions this fact, in fact we have put more carbon into the atmosphere making the turbines in the first place! whats the answer? as I have always maintained, pull down the wind farms, return our beautiful views and go nuclear, every time I read about going green it is always a con, in the case of government funded wind farms erected by private companies a very big con.

Two More Have Joined The Wind Farm Farce,

that I have been banging on about for the past few years,

in an outright attack on the terrible waste of money they are, former Tory chancellor Nigel Lawson warns today that the Coalition’s obsession with climate change is damaging Britain’s recovery from recession, Lord Lawson, one of the most respected Tory figures of recent decades, accuses the Prime Minister of risking Britain’s economy to make a ‘symbolic’ point, in a devastating verdict he writes: ‘the Government’s highly damaging decarbonisation policy, enshrined in the absurd Climate Change Act, does not have a leg to stand on, it is intended, at massive cost, to be symbolic: To make good David Cameron’s ambition to make his administration “the greenest government ever”, ‘My dictionary defines green as “unripe, immature, undeveloped”,’

he warns, that plastering Britain with wind farms will push up bills to families and businesses without producing any real benefits, the switch to ‘low-carbon’ energy is expected to add £200 to annual energy bills, ‘this price increase would be economically damaging at the best of times; and these are not the best of times,' he says it is ‘highly uncertain’ that higher carbon emissions will warm the planet to a dangerous extent and warns it is ‘futile folly’ for Britain to act alone when its emissions are two per cent of the global total, that is an interesting fact, even if the fools that believe wind power will prevail at huge costs, the benefits world wide would only be 2%, of course no other country in the world will try to go anywhere near this, as a fact to put our adsurb goals into perspective the annual increase in China’s emissions, is greater than the UK’s total emissions, also the U.S., the second-largest emitter, has made it clear that without China and India on board, there is no prospect of the U.S. signing up to anything, but us Brits will go it alone,

a second writer to join the cause is Richard Littlejohn, who today writes, 'following the revelation that we’re all paying a secret stealth tax to subsidise so-called renewable energy sources, it seems like a good time to check out exactly what we are getting for our money, (he must have read the blog), at midday yesterday, wind power was contributing just 2.2 per cent of all the electricity in the National Grid, the last time I checked the wholesale electricity industry’s official website, at the turn of the year, the figure was 1.6 per cent, during the cold snap the turbines had to be heated to stop them freezing and were actually consuming more electricity than they generated,' yes read that again, the turbines had to be heated to stop them freezing and were actually consuming more electricity than they generated,

'even on a good day, they rarely work above a quarter of their theoretical capacity, and in high winds they have to be turned off altogether to prevent damage, Britain’s 3,426 wind turbines produce no more electricity than a single, medium-sized gas-fired power station, any sane individual would conclude that wind generation is hopelessly inefficient and horribly expensive and stop throwing good money after bad, we are paying for all this through hidden charges which now make up a fifth of all gas and electricity bills, the average household has to fork out an extra £200 a year, Ministers know there would be an outcry if they raised taxes to pay for windmills, so they hide the subsidies in our gas and electricity bills and hope the energy companies get the blame,'

of course there is some good news regarding wind farms, they can some times, when it is windy, produce too much electricity, earlier this year the National Grid was forced to pay £900,000 compensation to the owners of six wind farms which were forced to close down one especially gusty night — because they were producing too much electricity and there was no capacity to store it, for National Grid read you, the bill payer, I just hope for the good of all this wind farm business is scrapped for the folly it is, but I doubt if the greenies and tree huggers will let it, way too much of your money involved.

I Have Always Been Totally Against Wind Farms

because I have yet to see any evidence of them making a worthwhile investment,

unless of course you own a wind farm!, the odds are really stacked in the wind farms owner, even if you do not produce any electricity, payments of £11.1 million was paid over three years to ScottishPower, a Spanish-owned firm, which operates the Whitelee wind farm around 10 miles from Glasgow, in another example of throwing money away, an analysis shows that 10 wind farms have each been paid more than £3 million over the past three years to shut down their turbines, 


the sums given out for non-production of electricity are eye wateringly high, in 2011 the Norwegian owners of the Crystal Rig wind farm in the Scottish Borders had not produced electricity for eight and a half hours so they were paid compensation, how much for the eight and a half hours? I would have thought a few thousand for each hour was excessive, but I was totally wrong, they had been paid £1.2 million for not producing a thing!

among the payments was a total of £7.6 million to RWE Innogy, a German-owned firm, for shutting down the Farr wind farm, 10 miles from Inverness on dozens of occasions, Fred Olsen has received £3.2 million for shutting down its 85-turbine Crystal Rig wind farm over the past three years, now here is the good news for Fred, the main loss from turning off its turbines was a consumer subsidy amounting to around £50, therefore, it was still receiving £64 per megawatt hour more than if it had been generating electricity, so lets read that again, it was still receiving £64 per megawatt hour more than if it had been generating electricity! I still can not understand why the British public do not cry enough and ban these costly farms, just think how much the average household power bills would tumble,

the strange thing I guess is that people really believe they save money, but to see some of the success stories (not), have a look here,

now, where oh where can I buy a wind farm? then sit back to collect my windfall profits for producing nothing!

Yet Another Waste Of Money,

wind farms, but even so the UK is committed to buying another 10,000 of these things over the next decade, to meet Europe’s climate change targets, by 2020, the Government says 30 per cent of all Britain’s electricity will be generated by wind, that's a real laugh! especially when you consider when energy is needed most when it recently got cold, Britain’s wind farms almost ground to a halt during the coldest spells in December, as temperatures plunged below zero and demand for electricity soared, figures reveal that most of the country’s 3,000 wind turbines were virtually still, energy experts say,

during some of the chilliest weather, all of them were working at less than one-hundredth of capacity, producing electricity for fewer than 30,000 homes, there are 3,153 working turbines in 283 wind farms across the UK, capable of generating more than 5.2 gigawatts of electricity – enough to power almost three million homes, the wind industry says, but at best, turbines work at just 30 to 40 per cent of their capacity, and in cold winter snaps, often caused by vast, slow-moving high-pressure systems over Northern Europe, winds drop to almost nothing, wind farms, great for the owners getting subsidies, but for the tax payer paying for them what a waste.

Why Only A Quarter?

why not cut all wind farm subsidies?

because the tree huggers and greenies want to stifle British industry, as Douglas Carswell said: ‘why has it taken so long? a centre-right government should be bringing an end to this, one of the reasons that the economy is not growing is because energy costs are so ridiculously high because of this wind farm scam which is adding hidden surcharges to our bills,’ this has all been brought on by George Osborne who is demanding huge cuts in government aid for wind farms – a step which could kill plans for the construction of hundreds of turbines across the country, the Chancellor has told the Treasury to draw up plans for a reduction of 25 per cent in subsidies for onshore wind farms, but the questions still remains, why only a 25% reduction and why not on off shore wind farms as well?


in February more than 100 Conservative MPs wrote to the Prime Minister to demand cuts to the £400million a year public support for wind farms, I have to say I still do not see why the people of Great Britain have to pay any subsidies to a failed technology that does not work when there is no wind.

I Have To Admit,

I have never been a fan of wind farms, 

above Filson the dog who works on a wind farm in Southern California, photograph Rogue Detection Teams, why am I down on windfarms? without government subsidies and other cash breaks they just do not cut the mustard, take Hawaii with its trade winds one of the windiest places that wind farms could be placed, the record is not very good, did I mention that after 25 years the blades are worn out, but wait for it, they can not be recycled they have to go to landfill! never mind the horrific cost to wildlife, and here is the problem, humans are terrible at finding bats and birds killed by wind turbines, however dogs are great at it, the specific problem of bat deaths at wind turbines first came to biologists’ attention in 2003, when 2,000 bats turned up dead on a West Virginia wind farm, most bat deaths occur during autumn migrations, and that is just the tip of a very huge iceberg when it comes to wildlife deaths by windfarm, on wind farms in the US a patchwork of federal, state, and local regulations might govern how companies have to monitor wildlife deaths, but reporting requirements vary widely. This means that reliable data on deaths are hard to come by, estimates suggest that turbines in North America kill 600,000 to 949,000 bats and 140,000 to 679,000 birds a year, and that is just in North America, strange how the greenies and tree huggers never mention unpleasant side effects like these, for the full low down have a look here, great that dogs can help us, just so sad it is is in finding dead wildlife that we have knowingly killed.

 

I Have Heard Of The Wall Of Sound,

way back in the 1960/70s,

developed by Phil Spector and the Wrecking Crew, but this is the first time I have heard of a Wall Of Wind, photograph © Florida International University, the Wall of Wind is the world’s largest wind simulator, an impressive contraption capable of generating winds of up to 157 miles per hour (70m/s), comparable to those registered during category 5 hurricanes, in order to better protect against the devastating force of hurricanes, you first have to study them and test various materials against the powerful winds they generate. With this idea in mind, engineers at the International Hurricane Research Centre (IHRC) and College of Engineering and Computing (CEC) at Florida State University spent 15 years building and perfecting the Wall of Wind, an impressive installation capable of replicating hurricane-force winds,

the installation consists of a total of 12 giant fans capable of generating winds of up to 70m/s. For reference, a study showed that trees start to break at wind speeds of 42m/s, regardless of age, diameter, or elastic properties, according to the Florida State University website, “the Wall of Wind facility can test to failure full-sized structures such as site-built or manufactured housing and small commercial structures”, if you have time the video is fascinating, the Wall of Wind, amazing!

At Last Some Light At The End Of The Tunnel,

the Thinking About the Affordable report claims that scrapping wind farms would save every Briton almost £550,

a controversial report by KPMG, the accountants and adviser on government energy policy, will this week say that Britain can reach the 2020 target on reducing pollution imposed by the European Union for a third less than predicted, a potential saving of £34 billion,


this summer saw steep price hikes imposed by the “big six” power firms, which drove the average household bill to £1,345, almost double the £740 figure of five years ago,


based on current building costs an 800 megawatt gas-fired power station, capable of producing round-the-clock power for 800,000 homes, will cost about £400m, by contrast, an offshore wind farm with the same capacity that will produce at most a third of the time, due to the wind’s variability, will cost six times that figure, nuclear plants cost a similar amount but do not require the back-up plants that wind farms do, common sense really, as I have always maintained wind farms are costly to install, inefficient, as alternative power sources have to be maintained for the times there is no wind and expensive in the extreme to maintain, but the greenies and tree hugers will still want wind power regardless.

More Of The UK's Money Thrown Away,

as yet again wind farm owners are compensated,

for the second time in a month wind farm owners had a windfall as the National Grid rushed to pay them for not producing electricity, I have always said it, wind farms are a waste of time and money, unless you own one! seven wind farm operators switched off their turbines on Monday night, the National Grid said they were generating too much power, the National Grid paid out almost £3 million to wind farm operators in compensation in mid-September when a dozen wind farms were shut for three nights in a row, just a thought, are other power producers, oil, coal, nuclear paid if they are shut down if there is too much electricity? no I thought not,



the Grid spokesman insisted: 'this is all a normal part of how we balance the electricity transmission system and manage constraints on the network,' and I bet the foreign owned wind farm owners said the equivalent of 'goody-goody, gum drops!'.

It Is A Good Job We Have Oil, Gas And Nuclear Power To Back Us Up,

when the wind farms close down,

in Ardrossan, North Ayrshire, Ardrossan resident Stuart McMahon said the turbine had not been in operation due to the severe weather warning, Mr McMahon, who captured the spectacular fire in photos, added, 'I didn’t hear any explosion or anything, but my wife shouted for me to come down and see the fire', it is not known at the present how much it will cost to repair the  £2million turbine, another crashed to the ground on Wednesday afternoon at Coldingham in Lothian and Borders, although ScottishPower has not blamed the weather for its collapse, Lothian and Borders Police said the turbine ‘suffered brake system failure and had been freewheeling’ in 50mph winds, Scottish and Southern Energy refused to disclose how many of its turbines were affected, but even if it was only two that failed what about the ones that did not?



a spokesman for National Grid said: ‘at lunchtime today, 1,500MW of electricity that was expected to be generated by wind farms in Scotland wasn’t being produced, although we can’t tell if that’s all down to the high winds or wind farms just deciding not to generate, that 1,500MW is enough to supply about one million homes', so with no back up 1,000,000 homes would be without power and the tree huggers and greenies want us to become more dependant on wind farms! just think in the future if their wish is granted and we have wind farms only, on days when we have no wind or too much the UK will just have to close down.

The Influential Committee On Climate Change,

calls on the Government to scale back plans to build thousands of turbines off the coast of Britain, by 2020, the UK will have to generate 30 per cent of its electricity from renewable sources, at huge cost 10,000 new turbines will be built at sea, to meet our European masters orders, (are we the only country to obey them?), by 2030 our masters are calling for 40 per cent of electricity to come from renewables, 40 per cent by nuclear power, 15 per cent from clean coal and gas and less than ten per cent from traditional gas, so sense at last as plans to build them are called into question,

then they go and spoil it all by adding, the report calls for hundreds more wind turbines to be built onshore at a lower cost over the next eight years, the Coalition is planning a massive expansion of wind farms to meet tough EU climate change targets, to meet those targets, the UK would need another 3,600 giant offshore wind turbines, each one capable of producing five megawatts, or enough power for 1,200 homes, another 11,000 turbines would be needed onshore, it estimates that meeting the 2020 renewable energy targets set by the EU will add £50 to the typical household’s electricity bill,

but wait a moment, the official figures quote 3,600 offshore wind turbines supplying power for 1,200 homes each, 4,320,000 homes, plus another,11,000 onshore, but there are 22,539,000 households in England and Wales, so we have at least twice the capcity from wind power alone, but what happens when there is no wind? build new power stations to make up the short fall, so spend twice the money at least just to keep the tree huggers happy!

Could This Be The Beginning,

of a bright new future?

as Energy Minister John Hayes says 'enough is enough’ when speaking of onshore wind farms, I have always maintained that wind farms are a hugely expensive waste of space, just look at the 27-year-old Kamaoa Wind Farm sat on arguably the windiest island in the world, Hawaii, total failure,

He said existing sites and those in the pipeline would be enough to meet green commitments with no need for more, ‘even if a minority of what’s in the system is built we are going to reach our 2020 target, I’m saying enough is enough,’ common sense at last, naturally the greenies and treehuggers known as I believe the Liberal Democrats will moan and wail, but then they are not paying the huge subsidies that wind farm owners collect, speaking of which in a shift in Government policy, ministers announced this summer that the subsidy for onshore wind power generation would be cut by 10 per cent this year,

all of which will delight 100-plus fellow Tory MPs who have urged David Cameron to take a more skeptical approach to onshore wind power, well I hate to say 'I told you so' but I told you so here!

Without Going Into The Obvious Problems Of Wind Farms,

no wind = no generating, 

there is one other problem that few people that raved over them talk about, as wind-farms age their blades will have to be replaced, here is a undeniable, indisputable fact, almost a quarter of a million windmills worldwide will need to be replaced by 2030, new generation rotor blades made of glass or carbon fibre composite material have average lifespans of between 10 and 25 years, at current growth rates by 2034, there will be about 200,000 tonnes of rotor blade composite material produced annually, worldwide, and guess what? wind turbine blades are totally unrecyclable! with one exception they all have to go to landfill sites, strange how the greenies and tree hugers left that fact out when pushing for cheap renewable energy! but hope is on the horizon, some kids can enjoy using them in parks made from the blades, so that's alright then, for further reading on the not talked about problem of windfarms have a look at these publications, GenVind Innovation Consortium / No Tech Magazine / Wind Power Engineering / Wind Power Monthly, there is of course one factory that process the blades, but only one, given the problem I would have thought that every country would have a number of blade reprocessing plants, so I guess there is no profit it or the reprocessing plants have to be state/government subsidised.

There Is Not Much That Griff Rhys Jones says,

that I agree with,

but in one area we share common ground, the actor and comedian Griff Rhys Jones hit out at the ‘hypocrisy’ of wind farms - labelling them ‘green tokenism,’ when speaking to today’s Radio Times, of course he does have an agenda, his home in Holbrook, Suffolk, is near the proposed site of one of the world’s largest offshore wind farms, the huge development off the Suffolk coast would cover 300 square kilometres and include 325 turbines, so I guess he does not want the view spoilt, but at the end of the day wind farms are complete madness when it comes to producing power,


look no further than the failed experiment in Hawaii, or what do you do when a wind farm fails or there is no wind? I have of course been against the folly of wind farms since day one, for a few musings on them have a look here and scroll down for a real eye opener.

Look Out, Look Out, There's A Blade Flying About!

a 14-tonne one! if wind farms are not bad enough at wasting money they are now downright dangerous, Europe's largest wind farm was shut down after a blade snapped off one of the huge turbines, operators said today, all 140 turbines at the Whitelee wind farm on Eaglesham Moor near Glasgow are being inspected by engineers following Friday's incident,

Scottish Power Renewables said mechanical failure or a lightning strike could be to blame for the breakage, which it described as 'highly unusual', well I guess lightning is a fairly unusual phenomena in Scotland if that is to blame,

but here, apart from the reliability problems is the thing for me, it is Europe's largest wind farm, it has 140 huge energy inefficient turbines and supplies? a pitifully small number of homes, just 180,000, oh I forgot, that is if the wind is blowing! please everybody follow what some commentators say is happening in Europe, get rid of wind farms and go nuclear.

Well Said Prince Philip!,

and former Chancellor Lord Lawson,

for repeating what I have been saying for years, yesterday Lord Lawson led the backing for Prince Philip after he branded wind farms ‘absolutely useless’, in a scathing attack, the Duke of Edinburgh said the turbines were ‘completely reliant on subsidies’ and ‘would never work’, sense at last, last night Lord Lawson said the Duke was ‘spot on’ and speaking on behalf of ordinary people in fuel poverty,


now here's the good bit, Philip made the remarks to Esbjorn Wilmar, managing director of Infinergy, which is building offshore turbines around Britain, Mr Wilmar said he introduced himself to the 90-year-old Duke at a reception and suggested he put wind turbines on royal property, 'he said that they were absolutely useless, completely reliant on subsidies and an absolute disgrace, I was surprised by his very frank views,’ he said, when Mr Wilmar tried to argue that onshore turbines are one of the most cost-effective forms of renewable energy, the Duke apparently replied: ‘You don’t believe in fairy tales do you?’


I think if I were Mr. Wilmar I would not approach the Duke on the subject again, it might be a case of 'off with his head!', yesterday Lord Lawson, a former Tory Chancellor and leading climate change sceptic, said: ‘[The Duke] is spot on, He rightly feels strongly about the issue and equally clearly knows what he is talking about, if you tried to devise the most costly and inefficient means of generating electricity imaginable, you would choose wind power – which is also an environmental monstrosity, desecrating ever more of our English landscape',


as if to prove the point of how useless wind farms are, yesterday the Government’s chief energy scientist, Professor David McKay, said that even if just 10 per cent of the country was covered in wind turbines it would only meet a sixth of our energy needs, and of course with no back up alternative, no wind, no power, elementary my dear Watson!

Now Here's A Thing,

Lord Lawson agrees with me!

I have always said it, wind farms are a total waste of time, money and energy, Lord Lawson chairman of the Global Warming Policy Foundation, said: ‘[Wind farms are] absolutely pointless, extremely damaging both for the British economy and for British consumers', it turns out that of the 3,419 turbines, no fewer than 2,276 are either fully or partly owned by companies which are based abroad, why are so many foreign owned? because we give massive grants to companies that build the farms in the UK,

an investigation found that one Danish company owns or part-owns three offshore farms which receive almost £100million a year in subsidies from British consumers, firms from Japan, the U.S., Norway, Sweden, France, Spain, the Netherlands and Germany also own British wind farms, from next year, £523million in subsidies will go to foreign companies, according to the Renewable Energy Foundation think tank, the amount will soar in the next decade as the Government tries to meet carbon-reduction targets,


the good news for the wind farm owners is that they will be paid even if they do not work, £2.6million was handed to 11 wind farm companies last week to stop generating electricity, the National Grid says if the network cannot cope with a surge in production, some firms must stop operating and are compensated, it can not just be me thinking this but why is Great Britain building more of these financially crippling machines?

but some in Britain do make a good case for more of these machines, take the case of the Prime Minister’s father-in-law, Sir Reginald Sheffield, the father of Samantha Cameron, by his own estimate, he already receives almost £350,000 a year for the eight turbines at Bagmoor, which was constructed in 2009, that means he is earning nearly £1,000 every single day on the back of the turbines, no wonder he wants planning permission to build seven more 400ft tall wind-turbines to be erected at Flixborough Grange, nice little earner!



Dr Lee Moroney, of the Renewable Energy Foundation, said: ‘target-driven and generously subsidised growth in the renewables sector was always likely to attract international investors seeking rapid returns and a prompt exit, the real concern is that, having made handsome profits from UK bill-payers, they will move on leaving the UK with subprime or distressed assets', I guess that means the UK consumer still picks up the bill!