More from James Lovelock

This is a painting my father did in the 1960's, of the view just outside our house (and his laboratory). The hill is Marleycombe Down, the village Bowerchalke, I am the girl, and the man in the tractor is Bob Deverill, who lived down in one of the cottages at Knowle Farm. We used to take atmospheric turbidity measurements a few yards from this spot (old fashioned science!)

He talks about England as it used to be, and renewables (a mixture of ideology and business) in these clips from the Today Programme:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/today/hi/today/newsid_8594000/8594561.stm

"Fudging data is a sin against science"

Having been a part of the family business back in the 1970's (helping with measurements and data processing) I can definitely endorse this article by Leo Hickman in the Guardian today

The excitement of science is about discovery, not about looking to confirm an expected view, and that is one of the strongest messages that I picked up from my father from my earliest childhood.

Posted by Christine Lovelock

Costing the earth

To be fair to the BBC, Costing the Earth on Radio Four today was interesting and even-handed, pointing out some of the pitfalls of microgeneration. After listening to it, you would certainly think twice before shelling out £30,00 or more on a wind turbine....

Listen again here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00rdxm5/Costing_the_Earth_Turbines_in_the_Back_Garden/

Orkney Wind Power

From the Biased BBC blog, (well worth reading), this quote concerning a BBC programme on wind power in Orkney.

"It's one long commercial for the joys of "renewables", an ode to the importance of us all buckling down and accepting these bird-chopping, landscape-defacing monstrosities. Notice that the one thing missing from the article is the "s" word, the elephant in the room: subsidy."

To read the rest, go to:

http://biased-bbc.blogspot.com/2010/03/pie-in-sky.html

Nuclear and wind

The EUReferundum blog has a posting today that spells out so clearly what an impossible position our politicians have put us in, if we care about the future of our country and its energy supplies, which are crucial to this.

The two main parties both advocate nuclear and wind, and the third seems to be pro-wind and anti-nuclear. They have all swallowed the wind spin, and want to spend, spend, spend (despite the fact that we are badly in debt) in order to meet the pointless EU targets that Tony Blair signed Britain up to before he left office.

On this issue, the only party that is worth voting for is UKIP, and yet to do so risks giving the Election to Labour, the party that signed us up to these European targets, and gave our freedom away by refusing to give us a Referendum on the Lisbon Treaty.

EUReferendum have some other good postings on wind and nuclear as well...

http://eureferendum.blogspot.com/2010/03/bloweth-wind.html

includes mention of the RSPB, who support many wind farm applications (but how can you believe that they are unbiased after reading Christopher Booker's article in which he points out that that "The RSPB receives £10 from the wind-farm builder Scottish & Southern Energy for every customer signing up for electricity under its “RSPB Energy” scheme. "

http://eureferendum.blogspot.com/2010/03/addition-to-vocabulary.html...

about small nuclear reactors, suitable for towns, exceptionally safe, and able to deal with peak load requirements as well as base load.

Stewart Brand in The New Scientist

Environmentalist Stewart Brand and The Whole Earth Catalog once advocated wind turbines, now, talking to Liz Else in the New Scientist he advocates nuclear power. Below is a short quote from the article, to read more click on this link to The New Scientist article.

"To get a gigawatt capacity of electricity takes 250 square miles of wind farm. Holy smokes! And the wind farm is not on all the time so you're buying French nuclear energy or burning a hell of a lot of natural gas to make up the gap."

Treasured landscapes sacrificed for little gain.

"The first detailed study of Britain’s onshore wind farms suggests some treasured landscapes may have been blighted for only small gains in green energy. "

Thanks to a campaigner from Scotland for sending us the link to the article in The Sunday Times from which the above quote was taken:

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article7069938.ece

The article also links to this one:

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/leading_article/article7069806.ece

They confirm what we have been saying all along.

Whether it is Oswaldtwistle Moor, Fullabrook Down, Nant y Moch, the Isle of Lewis, the Kansas Flint Hills, or the Bald Hills Wetland Reserve in Australia, our precious landscapes are being destroyed so that politicians can look as if they are doing something and developers can get rich. Any "Green" who supports this scam should think again. Stop the subsidies, say no to EU and other meaningless targets, and save our landscapes!

Something to cheer the "socially unacceptable" during Cheltenham week

This might be a little tongue in cheek but it was amusing to read in the Telegraph that not only only was racehorse Kauto Star recognised (in a recent survey) by more people than Lib Dem leader Nick Clegg, but in the recognition stakes, his arch rival Denman polled ahead of Ed Miliband...

Nick Clegg and Ed Miliband - who said people who protest against wind turbines should be deemed "socially unacceptable" - are both big fans of wind power. Horses on the other hand nearly always have the sense to see at once that wind turbines are indeed monstrous intrusions on our landscapes.

Eagles and wind turbines

Thanks to Christopher Booker for highlighting this issue in the Sunday Telegraph.

As he says in the article, "The RSPB receives £10 from the wind-farm builder Scottish & Southern Energy for every customer signing up for electricity under its “RSPB Energy” scheme."

Read more here

James Lovelock

Thanks to my father for spelling out yet again what it is we should we should be doing.

Charles Clover in an article on the Sunday Times online writes as follows (the quote below is from his article):

"How should we be spending our money to prevent possible disaster? In Britain, says Lovelock, we need sea walls and more nuclear power. Heretical stuff, when you consider the vast amount that Europe plans to spend on wind turbines.

Fullabrook Down Wind Power Station

This photo was taken on Saturday from Burland Lane on the Fullabrook Down hills. You can see that some work on the wind farm has started, and the lines of raised earth and posts mark a turbine position. Dartmoor was visible in the distance (unfortunately not as visible in the photograph which was taken facing into the sun).
It was a most beautiful day, and - with the contractors gone for the moment - the hills were peaceful and silent, save for the sound of birdsong, and the bleating of lambs and ewes in the distance. I took a bus out to Milltown and then walked for several hours along the small roads that link hamlets such as Patsford and Whitehall. There was so little traffic that until I came back to the outskirts of Barnstaple I was passed by no more than two cars. This is indeed one of the quietest areas of North Devon, and its rare tranquility should have been treasured, not marked down for destruction.

You can see photographs from more walks around the area here.

More on Wind Turbine Noise

The Brewing Tempest over Wind - Robert Bryce, Wall Street Journal

Denmark, and the Emperor's Turbine Blades

If only Hans Christian Anderson were alive today, he would retell his story, but this time the spin would be in the turning of the blades.

There is a lot to like about Denmark, but its environmental record is not the way it has been spun by the wind industry.
Read this Copenhagen Post article to learn more

Biased BBC today

"The Environment Agency - which, from its support of windfarms should actually be known as the Environment-wrecking agency - has a new fantasy"...read more on the Biased BBC blog

Christopher Booker keeps reminding us that the lights are going out

As the General Election comes closer, anyone who understands how crucial energy policy is to our future as a nation must despair of all the three main parties.

Christopher Booker spells it out clearly in The Sunday Telegraph.

A must-read article!

And by the way, he focuses on the two main parties, but from a truly environmental point of view, the Liberal Democrats would probably be the worst option of all, being the most pro-European, anti nuclear party of the three.

Turbine Noise and WindConf 2010

Article in the Telegraph:

And more here from www.wind-watch.org

www.wind-watch.org has a Youtube channel

Go to this link to see it...
some good videos, and eerie turbine noises

Decision day for Oswaldtwistle Moor

Photograph by artist Catherine Kaufman

The proposal to put a windfarm on this beautiful Lancashire moor will be voted on at a special meeting open to all Hyndburn councillors at Accrington Town Hall on March 2. Read more about this on the www.accringtonobserver.co.uk website.
You can also get more information on the campaign website, www.stoposwaldtwistlewindfarm.co.uk