Sunday 30 January 2011

Goodbye ecosystem, hello FOE.

The Great Green Hope, power from garden ornaments, turns out to be more polluting than those coal fired power stations they keep trying to sabotage. Of course, that's okay because they aren't polluting here.

Instead they are killing Chinese people.

The Greens, and Righteous as a whole, don't like the Chinese. China scoffs at smoking bans, global warming and all the rest of it. The Righteous can't set the government against the tobacco companies, booze producers, factories, power generators or any other business in China because the government runs them all. They aren't about to destroy their own profits and there is no point taxing a business that's run on taxes. You know, if you could take out the considerable State oppression, there's something to be said for China's way of doing things. Unfortunately, nobody has ever managed to operate socialism without the vicious parts.

So it should come as no surprise to find that the devastation caused by neodymium mining, that essential component of Windy Miller's bird slicing machine, does not bother those alleged 'Friends of the Earth' one bit. With friends like those, the Earth needs no enemies.

Massive concrete blocks below each ornamental windmill to keep it upright. All that steel etc. in its construction. Maintenance requirements involve tarmac roads across the countryside so diesel-powered trucks can reach each one of these ridiculous monstrosities, and take a look at what Friends of the Earth's insistence on these things has done to the part of Earth the Chinese live on. Are they shamefaced? Are they apologising to the planet? Are they renaming themselves 'Destroyers of the Earth'?

Of course not.

Friends of the Earth opposes the Arctic being ruined by oil extraction, but when it comes to damaging Scotland’s wilderness with concrete and hundreds of miles of roads, they say wind energy is worth it as the impact of climate change has to be faced.

People live in Scotland. People live in China. Nobody lives at the North Pole apart from Santa and since he's overweight, smokes, and drinks copious quantities of sherry while driving a sleigh, no Righteous group is remotely interested in saving him. So in order to save a place where nobody lives and where there isn't even land under the ice, Friends of the Earth propose to utterly destroy the landscape of Scotland while pulverising the landscape of China with something so deadly it's going to have a longer lasting effect than Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Eventually it will get into rivers and then the sea, where it will make that BP oil spill look like a discarded Mars bar wrapper.

For the children? Let's see them explain that to those Chinese familes whose children died in that lake of poison.

Al the Oily Fish wants to get 80% of Scotland's energy from these killer windmills. That will mean putting up so many of the things it'll be impossible to land at a Scottish airport without having your undercarriage circumcised on the way in. It will mean a Scottish countryside transformed from peaceful glens into concrete and tarmac interspersed with whirring blades, and the whole lot covered in wild bird puree. If there is one goup more mindless than Friends of the Earth, it must surely be politicians.

You know, there's been no wind at all here for quite some time. In fact I would say there have been no more than ten windy days since the beginning of November. If Oily Al wants 80% generation in winter from his ecodisaster machinery he is going to need so many he won't have room for voters.

So his dream might be realised. Scotland completely covered with bird mashers might provide 80% of the electricity required by the Scottish parliament. There won't be anyone else here.

There won't be quite as many in China either. But then, the destruction of the human race has always been top of the Green agenda.

24 comments:

Anonymous said...

Once again your prophesies have come true, Leggy. Much as you said was inevitable, each little single-issue Righteous group is gradually approaching the point whereby soon there’s going to be a collision. So zealous are they about their individual little religions that they’ve started to do what all religions do – try and insist that theirs, and only theirs, is the important one.

So now we see the eco-zealots beginning to tread on the toes of the anti-racism zealots. Because whichever way you look at it, the Greens’ casual dismissal of the threat posed to millions of Chinese people in the quest for their ultimate, ideal, pollution-free world is racism, plain and simple. No doubt all the eco-buddies out there would be horrified to think of themselves that way – I expect they see themselves as massively inclusive and racially right-on – but then that’s what religion does, isn’t it? Makes its adherents wilfully blind to the damage they do by offering the excuse of the dazzlingly wonderful solutions that “their” religion offers to all mankind. It’s religion’s equivalent of “collateral damage,” I guess.

But collide they will, and not before time. I can’t wait!

Anonymous said...

I have posted the following on the Guardian site in connection with an article there which says that the 'Warmists' are experiencing a problem in that the media have lost interest in Global Warming. The article suggests that interest in the subject could be awakened if the economic consequences were emphasised.


""Let us suppose, FOR A MOMENT, that global warming is a natural effect and that CO2 in the atmosphere is not relevant. If that were true, then it would not matter that we go on emitting CO2 as regards the Earth's temperature, and so there would be no point in stopping burning fossil fuels, because THE ONLY consequence of burning fossil fuels, of any importance, is CO2. Lumps of carbon (soot) fall to the ground and become part of the 'carboniferous' land. We must always remember that 'heat' is just oscillation of atoms - once the source of the heat ceases to exist, the atoms stop oscillating; that is, there is no STORED heat in the atmosphere.

We would then have a situation where the Earth is warming and consequences will ensue. What consequences? What economic consequences?

Surely, for the time being, the powers-that-be should be concentrating upon how to alleviate the consequences of global warming. Economic planning should follow upon the assumption that global warming will continue and cannot be stopped, always having in mind that global warming may not continue.

Climatologist should stick to what they know. They should not engage in politics, industry, dire economic projections that they are not equipped to pronounce upon.

It is a matter of fact, as revealed by Climategate, that the following events occurred:

1. There was an attempt to 'hide the decline'.
2. That dissent was not to be tolerated.
3. That the original data was 'lost'.
4. That the data upon which projections are based is being kept secret.

Finally, as compared with the actual facts, the importance of the reporting of global warming by journalists is irrelevant.""

In other words, at this time, it really does not matter whether or not mankind is contributing to global warming. What is important is to plan to alleviate the consequences of global warming (if, in fact, global warming is a fact).

The consequence of this thought is that the rush to build windmills is premature. Bearing in mind that climatologists know nothing about physics, geology, biology or anything other than climate, why should anyone accept their word as regards the consequences?

One of the things that I have observed of the past couple of years is that the supporters of things like Global Warming get in first, and are well prepared in advance. Most people do not notice what is going on at all.

It takes quite a long time for opposition to emerge, a little at a time. But when the Gov start imposing taxes on flights and financing the building of windmills, and increasing the cost of energy, ordinary people start to take notice. Only then does opposition appear.

It is sad, when you think about it, that this process seemingly must occur. How much better would it have been had Gov brought the whole matter into the public domain, without propaganda, long before they decided that Global Warming was an imminent disaster?

Anonymous said...

I'm right on the South coast yards from the sea and guess what? No wind here and apart from the occasional day that's pretty well normal. In fact it was November since we have had any decent winds.
Someone somewhere is talking a lot of bollocks.
By the way, did you see the article on BBC news today? The Government is losing £10 million A DAY from tax on fags as smuggling has reached a new high. Just think, if they lower the tax they could reap the benefits, but that will never happen.

Dick Puddlecote said...

One of the little Ps and I tried flying a mini kite on Saturday. It's small and incredibly light like a butterfly, yet the thing simply wouldn't fly due to the lack of a strong enough breeze. You couldn't generate enough energy to fuel a clock radio on that.

d said...

Yet more at it,using meat to get in sly green propaganda.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/foodanddrink/8291649/Cutting-down-on-meat-could-save-200-on-average-food-bill.html.
That is the same WWF that the IPPC got their phony glacier melting figures from.Liars all of 'em
Yet even MORE dictating how you must live and that fop Cameuron will thoughtlessly back it.

microdave said...

Glad to see you've linked to this article LI. The Mail comes in for a lot of flack, but this article should be compulsory reading in every household in the country.

@ junican - here are few quotes from The Green Agenda. If you had any doubts that this is one gigantic scam these should convince you.

"We need to get some broad based support, to capture the public's imagination... So we have to offer up scary scenarios, make simplified, dramatic statements and make little mention of any doubts. Each of us has to decide what the right balance is between being effective and being honest."
- Prof. Stephen Schneider,
Stanford Professor of Climatology,
lead author of many IPCC reports

"We've got to ride this global warming issue. Even if the theory of global warming is wrong, we will be doing the right thing in terms of economic and environmental policy."
- Timothy Wirth,
President of the UN Foundation

"No matter if the science of global warming is all phony... climate change provides the greatest opportunity to bring about justice and equality in the world."
- Christine Stewart,
former Canadian Minister of the Environment

“The data doesn't matter. We're not basing our recommendations on the data. We're basing them on the climate models.”
- Prof. Chris Folland,
Hadley Centre for Climate Prediction and Research

Plenty more here:http://green-agenda.com/

Weekend Yachtsman said...

I still want to know what Neodymium has to do with windmills.

Aren't they just big machines like any other generator (just much more expensive and most of the time don't work, but so what?)

I mean, it seems so exotic.

Why?

Anonymous said...

A couple of years ago someone on R4 denounced windmills as a scam because, given our weather, they can't even hope to generate enough energy.

The man who makes money from their construction disputed this (and farmers also rather like them).

Jay

Derek said...

Weekend Yachtsman, go read the bloody article for chrissake! The one in the Mail. The stuff is used to make the magnets that go into wind turbines.

Dave H. said...

"...circumcised on the way in. It will mean a Scottish countryside transformed from peaceful glens"

OMG. The dangers of skimming through. At first glance, I honestly misread that as:

'circumcised...transformed from peaceful glans'

microdave said...

"I still want to know what Neodymium has to do with windmills."

It's used to make the magnets much stronger, and so get more power from smaller generators - or rather it would if the wind was blowing hard enough!

Most new designs have permanent magnet alternators, and use inverter technology to convert the variable output to the required mains frequency.

Beware of Geeks bearing GIFs said...

As I've said on my blog many a time, windmills are expensive follies due to the paradox of the greater penetration into the National Grid, the more standby gas fired (fossil fuelled) power stations are required for when the wind doesn't blow.

Load balancing power stations (normally nuclear) do not need them, windmills cannot be base load due to their unavailability and peak power windmills will most certainly have to be backed up by gas fired.

Sticking unpredictable wind farms into the National Grid causes all sorts of surges for the operators so they generally take them offline (as EOn Germany discovered).

And as for selling the surplus wind generated power on the spot market? Nobody wants it unless they can guarantee a price and a rock solid guarantee that it will be available when the time demands it.

The sooner the voting public and our bovine elite can be educated, the better and we can say goodbye to all this ridiculous nonsense.

wv cring - like cringe but with all the associated government induced apathy

Anonymous said...

When we join the Euro grid we can get as much electricity as we need from French nuclear reactors and when its windy they can have our excess windpower to pay them back. As the Fench already own most of the generators in England , this should be easy to arrange. What's wrong with all of you , just think of the bigger picture , when the power required by Europe can be supplied by a single electricity supplier we are that much closer to a single entity.

dak said...

Neodymium (Nd) is one of the "rare earths" - not really so rare but uncommon. If you've never played with rare earth magnets you would not believe just how strong they can be.

Incidentally, Nd is a harvestable by-product of the Thorium Molten Salt nuclear reactor type that the Chinese have just announced will become their Next Big Thing. Thorium is also plentiful, and can even be found in the fly-ash from coal power stations, so it's almost looking as if someone in China is actually thinking about planned power generation. Wish we had him here.

Incidentally LR, you may be interested in the latest post at tpdrsl.org.

BilloTheWisp said...

MicroDave,
The existing generation of wind turbines use doubly fed induction generators. These are heavy and require excruciatingly complex and failure prone gearboxes. This type of generator is great at high revs but is crap at low speeds... hence the complex gearbox. Newer Neodymium based generators have simplified gearboxes. This makes the thing less unreliable, cheaper and lighter.

But the output is still dismal.

The energy in the wind is the energy in the wind.

Whatever generator you use, you cannot change that.

Anonymous said...

I would be interested to know (because I haven't seen it described in this way) what the power output from one windmill, working at full capacity, would be. But not in terms of gigawatts - rather in terms of how many average houses (at peak demand) it would power.

This may seem to be very simplistic, but I have a more serious point.

Let us suppose that there was a deliberate policy to have enough windmills to achieve 'coverage' of the power needs of every house (at peak demand) in the UK (gave or take a few). We already know how many houses there are in the UK, and therefore it would be a simple calculation to work out how many windmills would be required. That would give us an actual physical number to start with. The beauty of this idea is that the number arrived at in this way would be fixed, since the number of houses in the UK is inelastic over quite a long period of time.

(We are not considering, at the moment, industrial and commercial demand, but it would not be difficult to express that demand in terms of a number of houses.)

One could then move on and consider the consequences of windmills working at, say, half of full capacity. How many windmills would be required then?

I would really like to know how many houses one windmill would power. I could find the number of houses in the UK myself. I could then work out the number of windmills required.

Now...here is the important point. How would the people react if they found out that the number required, simply to power houses alone, was, say, 200 000 windmills? What would our countryside look like? What would our seascapes look like? How much wildlife would be decimated?

You see...I have feeling that these calculations have already been done (probably by an arms-length quango in order to avoid FOI enquiries) and are secret. In the same way that the Tobacco Control agenda is gradually being introduced, so is the Global Warming agenda.

But I can also see reasons that the Gov should go along with wind power. Suppose that a terrorist act hit a nuclear power station so badly that the grid had to close down? Who do you think would receive the power provided by the windmills?

Do you know.......I would not be upset if the Gov said that it would build, say, 20 000 windmills in order to ensure supply to essential services in the event of serious trouble. I could see the sense of that. But knowingly to hide this intention under the blanket of Global Warming is dishonest.

Beware of Geeks bearing GIFs said...

Anon @ 21:10: "When we join the Euro grid we can get as much electricity as we need from French nuclear reactors and when its windy they can have our excess windpower to pay them back."

I assume you mean like real world examples such as Denmark, the leading light in adopting wind power, that sells the surplus from its wind farms on the spot market at no profit because there’s no market for it?

You really must start and think about what you are posting rather than simply regurgitating what you have heard. It may make you feel important that you have something slightly controversial to say that you copied from a website, and indeed it may tick lots of your socialist leaning angst boxes, but when it is totally and utterly misguided, you end up looking a little bit silly on a public website - good job you went as anonymous, eh?

Please spend a little more time reading about this and stop parroting popular green rhetoric, because eventually, when this whole AGW/eco lunacy becomes too costly and embarrassing for most governments, you are going to be feeling very sheepish for supporting the things you have written.

I apologise LegIron for getting a little heated under the collar on your great blog, but for goodness sake, one must make a stand against bovine scribbling at times.

Oh and by the way, China has at least 400 years worth of coal reserves at current consumption. They are not going to stop building coal fired power stations regardless of how many lentil soups you offer as a sacrifice to your Gaia.

Leg-iron said...

dak - that's the theme tune here ;)

Here in Aberdeen, most buildings are granite. Plenty of thorium around.

Leg-iron said...

Beware of geeks - no apology necessary. What those who insist on foreign dependencies forget is that when, as must happen one day, there is a shortage or a diplomatic bust-up, the foreign supplies will simply stop.

Junican - I don't know the output either, but maximum output will be no use. What you'd need would be the average output over the years they've been up so far.

If that output was worth shouting about, someone would be shouting about it. Nobody is.

microdave said...

"What you'd need would be the average output over the years they've been up so far."

This site should help:
http://www.ref.org.uk/roc-generators/index.php

If you click on "Search" and then filter by country, technology group and code, and put in a location, you can see exactly what various windfarms have been doing. The last column (Annual Load Factor) is what you're interested in.

dak said...

Sorry, I should have realised that you would have seen the video before me, this being your specialist subject. Good song, though.

Clever of you to realise that LR should have been LI - I think I have a Diocletian keyboard too.

In Aberdeen, with all that granite can you not just suck the radon out of the air and power something with that? Here in South Lanarkshire we're surrounded by hundreds of those damn wind turbines.

Anonymous said...

Am I losing my mind?

Someone will have to check my maths in what follows.

I have done some digging about regarding the power output of wind turbines.

Here is a copy of a piece of information which I have found:

“”By 2008, Matilda was the world’s most productive wind turbine, having generated 61.4 GWh of energy by the end of its life.
But by the end of March 2010, this record had been broken four times over, by four of the eight turbines at Rønland in NW Denmark, pushing Mathilda into fifth place. And they’re still generating: by the start of June 2010, each had generated 63.2 GWh of energy; and they have another 12 years of life ahead of them, having been connected in January 2003.””
So, each of the four turbines in the second para has generated 63 gigawatt hours of electricity in the five years from Jan 2003. We will take one of them.
The period from Jan 2003 to Mar 2010 is 2650 days.
63 gigawatt hours is 63 000 megawatt hours.
63 000 divided by 2650 = 24. So the turbine produced 24 megawatt hours each day
Is that right?
Now.....my electricity bills tell me that I have used about 8 000 megawatt hours in the last year.
8 000 divided by 365 (days) = 22. So I have been using 22 megawatt hours per day.
Is that right?
The wind turbine produces 24 MWh per day and I use 22 MWh per day. So my needs use up almost all the power from one wind turbine.

I SURELY MUST HAVE MADE A MISTAKE! That cannot be right, surely? Will some one else please look at the source below and tell me that I am reading it correctly?

http://www.energynumbers.info/surpassing-matilda-record-breaking-danish-wind-turbines

Well, I have just checked another site, and the figures are correct – in fact a commenter on another site also noticed that the power output was very small.
The number of dwellings in England alone is almost 23 000 000.......

Also observe from that para that the life expectancy of a turbine is about 18 years. The turbine called Mathilda was demolished after 15 years.

What on Earth is going on?

I must do some more digging to see how much power newer wind turnbines generate.

Anonymous said...

Junican, I think you have read your bill incorrectly. Elect costs consumer about 12p per kilowatt hr. Typical quarterly bill around £60, giving order of 480 kw hours a quarter or 5 to 6 kwhrs per day.

Anonymous said...

Thank heaven! I knew there was something wrong - just couldn't see it. I came across a statement that electric meters count megawatts.
Still, event a thousand homes from a champion windmill is not a lot.

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