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A very inconvenient truth — 17 Comments

  1. David Bellamy has been telling us for years that we are heading into a natural cycle of maybe 25 cold years but vested interest groups and fashionable greens have kept him out of the limelight. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kuYEJTtbG94 
    Thar’s money in them there globally warmed hills!!!

  2. Not just David Bellamy!  It seems now that we are experiencing democratic science.  It not the truth than counts but the number of people who believe it.

  3. I feel cold already just reading that link.
    Guess I’ll just stay in Tunisia – it’s a balmy 30 degrees today.

  4. Will us smokers still have to go outside to smoke in the snow and ice – My poor smoke damaged chest won’t be up for it

  5. Mossy – There ya go now.  Just read this site any time you want to cool down a bit.

    Dessiegee – Don’t worry.  By then the Great Smoking Scare will have been proven to be the load of junk science that it is.

  6. Its just another excuse for a new raft of taxes to screw us with invented by the Wealthiest People on the Planet who control all of the Governments.

  7. Yup.  A new recycling tax to pay for the demolition of all those fucking windmills!

  8. TT – Haha!  Saw that on YouTube.  Thought of you…………

    Ian – There you go now.  Just remember to keep those snow chains in the car for all your summer driving.

  9. In the 70s scientists sounded alarm bells about a mini ice age.  Then they changed their mind to warble gloaming and now scientists are back to telling us its a mini ice age again.  Is this a cyclic phenomena specific to scientists or are they all just suffering from CLS (Chicken Licken Syndrome)?  Or could it be they are just watching which way the political wind blows?

  10. Jedrzej – Very easily.  They are ugly, and spoil manys the skyline.  They are as unreliable as bedamned.  What the hell is industry supposed to do on a calm day?

    Sean – That was the time they wanted to spread coal dust on the polar caps to absorb heat!!  Scientists will swing whichever way will bring in the most money.

  11. Grandad – I’m sorry, but I can’t believe that you are against one of the cleanest, if not the cleanest energy source based on your personal taste. I for example find them beautiful, but I’m fully aware that this argument has a zero value in discussion, so does the one about their uglyness.
    Are the windmills uglier than this?
    http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_RLAiIu23kKE/THSKWNkFyvI/AAAAAAAAEns/DBSKhnXTN48/s1600/Lasengmiao+Power+Plant.jpg
    or this?
    http://bi.gazeta.pl/im/7/6429/z6429327X,Kopalnia-odkrywkowa-i-elektrownia-w-tle–Belchatow.jpg
    Cause this is how most of power production looks now. I really prefer to see things like that:
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Sund_mpazdziora.JPG
    As for calm days – days are never calm all over Europe and the reality in energetics is that a lot of power travels all around the place. Anyway, noone tries to prove that our energetic security should be based on windmills, but they are by themselves a fantastic measure to produce, say a quarter or more of energy we need. Being against it based on your personal landscape views is nothing less then middle-ages kind of opinion.
    Now you know I like you and your blog, but this whole post is so bad it just shouldn’t happen. Sorry (and sorry for being so humourlessly serious.)

  12. Ouch!  Several points there –

    I have several objections to windmills, the primary one being that they are recognised as being a very inefficient form of power.  I grant you that the wind is usually blowing somewhere in Europe, but no country could possibly have the capacity to shoulder its own requirements plus the requirements of another.  The only way that windmills can possibly even have a chance of working is to use them in conjunction with pumped storage stations.  In that case, on windy days, excess generation would be used to pump water from a lower lake to an upper one.  On calm days, power can then be generated by using hydro-generation by reversing the flow between the lakes.  Such a station does exist in Wicklow but you would need many more to power an entire country.

    I am afraid I do find windmills ugly.  If there was just one windfarm I would probably find that visually impressive, but it is the sheer number of windfarms that makes them ugly.  By their nature they have to be on high ground and therefore visible from far off, and unlike other methods of power generation, they cannot be concealed.  Last summer, I spent a couple of weeks in West Cork which is renowned for its scenery, yet it was difficult to find a decent view that wasn’t spoiled by a windfarm.  And can anyone explain to me why I have never seen a farm with all windmills operating?  Most of the mills always seem to be idle?

    You linked to a couple [three] photos, and I think your choice of photo is a little extreme?  We have many power stations in this country and none of them looks like that!  I agree that the photo of the windfarm is attractive and I would have no problem with that farm, provided it wasn’t replicated on every damned hilltop in the country.

    I am more than a little baffled by the current obsession with windfarms.  Wind is notoriously unreliable [it’s almost a dead calm as I write this!]  Why the hell can’t they put their cash into researching tidal power?  That at least is 100% reliable.

    In return for your links, have a look at this.  😉

    P.S.  No need to apologise.  Your comment was a fair one so why should I object?

  13. GD, I generally agree with you that windmills are not a solution – but I think they are part of the solution and should be still developed.
    In terms of whether windmills spoil the landscape or not we just have to sign the letter of disagreement 🙂 I am lucky enough to be in West Cork very often, see the turbines all the time and like them. Of course, I would prefer huge farms in the middle of the ocean, we agree here. Also, think about that: they are relatively easy to dismantle, so when in the future we find our magic new sources of energy, we can get rid of them in no time.
    As for photos choice – of course one would always use the images which support his point, you wouldn’t expect me to use ones from energy providers’ liflets? But they were not in any case extreme. Ireland does not produce coal, nor oil, so what you could see here in your country is only the last link of the chain. Now, in Poland we have plenty of coal mines, some of them open-pit mines (my second linked photo is a Polish one) and believe me, you wouldn’t like to live anywhere in 50km radius to them. Or more.
    Touche with your link 🙂 Mind, I never said I am against nuclear power. I think it is a necessary evil at the time. I just got angry with you dissing the windmills, that’s it – let me summarize: they are clean, they are getting more and more reliable, they will be easier to get rid of in the future then say nuclear or coal plants.
    One last remark: don’t you think it is rather embarassing for humanity that the only way of energy storage we know is to pump water up and keep it there? I always thought it sad.

  14. When I say that wind power is unreliable, I don’t mean the wind generators break down a lot; I mean that the wind itself is unreliable.  When seeking a power source for an entire country you have to have something that is constant and reliable; something that is guaranteed to be there no matter what the time of day or night or season of the year.  That neatly eliminates hydro power [we do have droughts], wind power [we often have calm days] and wave power [we do occasionally have calm seas.  The only source of power that I can think of that is 100% reliable and 100% predictable is tidal power.  Why the hell aren’t they researching that?  Is it that wind generators just make a political statement to show the world how “green” we are?

    I like Turlough hill pumped station. It may seem awkward pumping water up and down a hill but it works and it works very well.  The main thing though that I like about it is that it is totally invisible.  It’s bang in the middle of one of Ireland’s tourist hot spots and I can guarantee that the vast majority of people don’t even know it’s there!

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