Open Letter from Rory Young in today's Oban Times

[NickB]

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Just received some information which quite clearly states that the request from the MOD is for all the turbines to be fitted with '25 candela omni-directional red lighting or infrared lighting with an optimised flash pattern of 60 flashes per minute of 200ms to 500ms duration at the highest practical point'

The good news is that the option of infrared lighting is given. The MOD just recently approved Infrared (IR) Aircraft Warning Lights. These show up in the night vision goggles worn by the pilots but are invisible to the naked eye.

I trust that in the unlikely event of planning permission being granted it will be conditional on the warning lights being infrared rather than in the visual wavelengths.

[MonaLott]

Lights or no lights, this proposal needs extinguished. Just to say too that my questionnaire arrived this morning (Sat 3rd).

[Pentlandpirate]

I'm intrigued what Charles Hendry, Minister of State for the Department of Energy and Climate Change, thinks about wind farms, nuclear energy and climate change. I thought it worth sending him a letter to tell him about this special corner of Scotland and why I think this wind farm proposal should be refused. He might just have some influence. I'm curious to know if we share the same philosophy on these subjects as we were at the same small school together with the same teachers at a time when the concept of climate change didn't even exist.

[NickB]

I'm curious to know if we share the same philosophy on these subjects as we were at the same small school together with the same teachers at a time when the concept of climate change didn't even exist.

I find it is unlikely that he would have been appointed to his current position if he shared your views on climate change, don't you? Still, good to get in touch - perhaps he will change your mind on the issue.

[Pentlandpirate]

Haha! But am I wrong to say that most of the policies in place were caused by a Labour Government which signed us into so many EU treaties and directives, including those on carbon emissions and 'green' energy targets? Now that we have a largely Conservative government in Westminster, and it is a Conservative minister who has been given the reins in that department, it is possible he has different views on energy and climate matters than his Labour predecessor. In fact, one might suggest that the discussion to reduce subsidies for windfarms, and the review of permitted distance from turbine to housing may be because his thinking was shaped by Mr Ogle - Geography and Mr Blencowe - Physics as mine was in the same classes!

[NickB]

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Well PP, it's certainly a fascinating theory that current government policy on climate change is being shaped primarily by your old geography and physics teachers . . . do let us know how you get on with that one.

[Pentlandpirate]

It sure has got to come from somewhere!

[Pentlandpirate]

IN DM today:

A rush to green energy by spending billions covering much of the countryside with wind turbines would be an expensive blunder, a damning study has found.

Professor Gordon Hughes of Edinburgh University said the massive programme will cost consumers £120billion by 2020 through higher bills. This is almost ten times more than the £13billion it would cost to generate the same amount of electricity from efficient gas-fired power stations, according to the leading energy and environment economist.

Supporters of wind power insist the key benefit is that it allows a huge reduction in CO2 emissions, in line with EU obligations. This is challenged in the study, which suggests the switch to wind will actually deliver only a tiny reduction.

The report is published by the Global Warming Policy Foundation, a think-tank devoted to challenging conventional wisdom about climate change. GWPF’s chairman is the former Tory Chancellor Lord Lawson and its findings are backed by Lib Dem peer Emma Nicholson.

Professor Hughes said families are being forced to subsidise wind farms through their bills. Meanwhile business energy costs are also being driven up, so harming their profits and ability to invest and grow.

Lib Dem peer Emma Nicholson said she was concerned over the huge subsidies the biggest landowners will receive, paid for by ordinary families. By contrast around a dozen landowners who allow wind farms to be erected on their property are to share an £850million subsidy windfall.

A wind turbine generating £150,000 of electricity a year is eligible for ‘monstrous subsidies’ of £250,000 a year. Professor Hughes warned: ‘Unless the Government scales back its commitments to wind power very substantially, its policy will be worse than a mistake, it will be a blunder.’

Wind farm support stems from a pledge in the 2008 Climate Change Act for a 34 per cent reduction in CO2 emissions. However, Professor Hughes insists figures show opting for wind power rather than building efficient gas-fired power stations will – at best – reduce emissions by 2.8 per cent.

He said the figure is so low because any investment in wind farms will have to be backed up with the building of gas turbine power stations to ensure the lights stay on when there is no wind.

Professor Hughes said: ‘There is nothing inherently good or bad about investing in renewable energy and green technology. The key problems with current policies for wind power are simple. They require a huge commitment of investment to a technology that is not very green but which is very expensive and inflexible.’

Baroness Nicholson joined the attack, saying: ‘A dozen of the biggest landowners will between them receive almost £850million in subsidies, a huge amount paid by ordinary families through hidden taxes on their electricity bills. ‘I am immensely unhappy wind power has attracted such monstrous subsidies. I am particularly unhappy because the facts have been hidden from the consumer who will have to pay the bill for this folly.’

[NickB]

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GWPF are funded by the fossil fuel industry. President is Nigel Lawson. Lord Lawson's links to Europe's colossal coal polluter - so no conflict of interests there

The report quoted is wildly out of touch with all other estimates of the cost of windpower. In fact, most studies show onshore wind achieving grid parity with coal and nuclear around 2016 - 2017. I have no doubt that better minds than mine are analysing this report as we speak, and I do not expect its conclusions to survive unscathed for long. Previous reports - such as the one originally commissioned by KPMG that formed the basis of a Panorama programme in November that the BBC later had to apologise for - have presented similar findings that have subsequently been comprehensively rejected.

Do you believe everything you read in the Daily Mail?

[Pentlandpirate]

I have no doubt that better minds than mine are analysing this report as we speak

So what are you suggesting about Professor Gordon Hughes of Edinburgh University?

[NickB]

I have no doubt that better minds than mine are analysing this report as we speak

So what are you suggesting about Professor Gordon Hughes of Edinburgh University?

I am suggesting that it is conceivable that he has produced a report where the costs are based on a set of premises and assumptions that have been chosen to fit in with the GWPF's political agenda and produce the desired result. This is only surmise on my part at the moment, but I rather suspect analysis will bear this out. Have a look at the Scottish government's Draft Electricity Generation Policy Statement to get a slightly different picture. (A little more difficult to read admittedly because it hasn't been 'interpreted' to suit a reading age of ten by the Daily Mail).

People pushing a certain position in the energy debate often seek out the numbers that show their chosen path in the best light. For example, supporters of renewable energy have tended to take the position that over the next decade gas prices are going to go up - making renewables relatively less expensive - and energy efficiency measures are going to work - bringing down bills by reducing energy consumption. On the other hand, advocates against renewable energy say shale gas will bring gas prices down, renewable energy costs will stay high, and energy efficiency measures aren't going to work at all.

Pirate, let's get some cards on the table here - do you believe that global warming is happening and that anthropogenic CO2 emissions are most probably the major driver of this warming?

[longshanks]

Yipee !
Back to the good old days on here.........a scrap about Global Warming appears to be brewing.
I'll alert the old crew and join in myself when it starts to warm up.

CO2 Shanks (carbon neutral by choice)

[longshanks]

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GWPF are funded by the fossil fuel industry.

You cannot produce a shred of evidence to back that statement can you.

NuclearShanks (cleaner by choice)

[NickB]

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GWPF are funded by the fossil fuel industry.

You cannot produce a shred of evidence to back that statement can you.

Not as such, no. An FOI request for the GWPF to reveal their seed funding was turned down. GWPF refuse to reveal their funding source, but it is a matter of record the vast bulk of their funding comes not from membership fees but from anonymous donors. Lord Lawson has strong links with the fossil fuel industry though . . . one could presume that Lawson's income from the fossil fuel industry allows him to give his time freely to runing the GWPF, so in that sense fossil fuel funding is helping to pay for its operations.

Ho hum. I'm bored with this discussion already.

[longshanks]

If were going to have a debate about global warming lets at least try to do it with facts as the basis, not extremely tenuous wishful thinking from the notoriously left wing Manchester Guardian.

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GWPF are funded by the fossil fuel industry.

You cannot produce a shred of evidence to back that statement can you.

Not as such, no. An FOI request for the GWPF to reveal their seed funding was turned down. GWPF refuse to reveal their funding source, but it is a matter of record the vast bulk of their funding comes not from membership fees but from anonymous donors. Lord Lawson has strong links with the fossil fuel industry though . . . one could presume that Lawson's income from the fossil fuel industry allows him to give his time freely to runing the GWPF, so in that sense fossil fuel funding is helping to pay for its operations.

Ho hum. I'm bored with this discussion already.

You quite correctly admited that you cannot produce a shred of evidence to confirm that the GWPF is funded by the fossil fuel industry but try to imply it is because Lawson happens to be Chairman of both the GWPF and CET.
CET is a multinational business consultancy with thousands of clients around the world including BP, Heinz, Nestle, Vodafone, Kodak, Sara Lee, Dixons and Smith-Kline Beecham. One client happens to be a coal fired power station in Poland. (The Guardian story) Come on !
Lawson is also a nonexecutive director of dozens of other companies.
To make the leap to "one could presume that Lawson's income from the fossil fuel industry allows him to give his time freely to runing the GWPF, so in that sense fossil fuel funding is helping to pay for its operations" I think implies a total desparation.
Lawson's income comes from many different sources. None, as matter of public record, from the fossil fuel industry. A financial company which he chairs achieves a tiny proportion of its turnover from a coal power station.

Already this is starting to feel like the great debates of a few years ago.

No editing of my post now !

Nigel Shanks (Latvian by choice)

[Pentlandpirate]

Pirate, let's get some cards on the table here - do you believe that global warming is happening and that anthropogenic CO2 emissions are most probably the major driver of this warming?

Put simply, no I don't

[NickB]

Pirate, let's get some cards on the table here - do you believe that global warming is happening and that anthropogenic CO2 emissions are most probably the major driver of this warming?

Put simply, no I don't

Fine, so long as we know.

[spiderman]

Professor Hughes of Embra Uni appears to be fundamentally an economist. The issue of climate change is scientific, however, and there are no national science foundations and indeed no respected international scientific organisations which do not believe that man's activities have changed the global climate. The basics are unequivocal, e.g. that atmospheric carbon dioxide absorbs the infrared radiation emitted by the planet, and so, in my view, PP is aligning himself with the world of antiscience, vested interest and/or lunacy! As to Prof Hughes's opinions about the economic folly of subsidised windfarms, who could reasonably disagree with him? Everyone knows too that sometimes the wind blows and sometimes it disnae so what damn good can that be to providing baseload power? Useless and expensive. Me? I was created by nuclear forces and more of that's what we really need - low on CO2 and huge in power. Little problem with radwaste disposal, safe new reactor designs - bring them on! KAPPOOOW!!

[Husker Doo]

When Mr Young gets his planning you`ll all be packing up and leaving in convoy, it will be like the Grapes of Wrath.

[DonnieC]

Last time I looked Seil was an island surrounded by fast flowing tidal streams, as are the other islands and mainland Argyll with a 5-6 hour tidal difference between the east and west coasts of the Kintyre peninsula.

Surely a clever Scottish inventor could come up with a scheme and system to harness what is a constant and predictable source of energy.

Sure, there will be onshore installations but the same clever mind can melt these sensitively into the landscape - the majority of the workings being well underwater and out of sight.

Also, out of the trawlling and fishing grounds of fishermen.

Too simple??