Windmill Madness

An Industrial scale wind turbine !

 Misinformation is rife from the foaming mouth brigade when it comes to wind turbines. They give people epilepsy, make bats explode, decapitate people, explode, don't work and on and on it goes. These same 'issues' with sometimes a small grain of truth don't tend to arise in Europe where most countries get more renewable energy installed where the laws of physics obviously work differently. Here's one such letter from Dr David Hill who's standing as an Independent at the next election. Interestingly he's anti nuclear as well. My response follows (but it's not quite as long)

 Windmill madness

I HOPE that Clr Andrew Cooper and all those who believe in wind power took notice of Look North’s recent exposé which showed that over the past two months wind turbines have provided virtually no electricity.

Added to this, international studies have determined over the years that, on average, these monstrosities at their maximum only work 23% of the time.

When we consider that international research also determined that these white elephants need completely replacing in less than 20 years from being built (wear-out of components is high), we the taxpayers will have to pay out billions again over the next 20 years to simply keep them going.

This strategy devised by the former Labour government and continued now by the present coalition government is sheer madness.

It is also remarkable that the so-called wise men of Whitehall, who advise government, are proposing to commit £10bn to the construction of a single nuclear power station.

This new station will have major nuclear waste problems in the years to come, most probably costing the taxpayers again another £10bn to get rid of it, and will only provide at the best, 5% of our future electricity needs.

For in this respect, a scheme put forward to government for a hydro-electric scheme that would cut shipping costs substantially, has the same cost but will provide the UK with 10% of its electricity needs in perpetuity.

This would have been clean energy with no toxic waste and would have lasted forever once built with very little maintenance at all.

Are we crazy in this country and just like throwing taxpayers’ money away as though it was going out of fashion?

It certainly seems that way to me or is it there are some very powerful lobby groups doing very nicely indeed out of this old codswallop?

The Green Party should be backing this hydro scheme, not stupid wind turbines that have a bottomless pit and appetite for continual finance.

Our town planners and Kirklees councillors should take note of all these facts when giving the ‘green’ light to these schemes, as they invariably do!

But I have to say that I was happy to see that at least David Brown’s is getting some work out of this stupidity (Examiner, January 8).

For if politicians are so stupid to see wind as the Holy Grail, at least Huddersfield is getting something out of it.

A sane world? I think not when it comes to spending our hard-earned tax.

It’s about time our central and local government politicians started to do a bit of their own research for all our long-term sakes.

Dr David Hill

Prospective Independent candidate, Golcar

Dr David Hill highlights the Look North ‘expose’ on the recent lull in windpower and on that basis says windpower is a waste of money.  The reality is that the UK  produces one of the lowest percentages of its energy from renewable sources of any country in Europe. Only Malta and Luxembourg produce a lower proportion of their energy from renewables. So if you don’t have a lot of wind turbines, onshore or offshore, in the first place it is hardly surprising that the potential to produce electricity from wind is limited. The truth is that we have one of the highest and most predictable wind resources in Europe particularly offshore but have been very tardy in investing in it compared with other countries.

Dr Hill goes on to say that the Green Party should be supporting hydro power schemes. Actually the Green Party does support large scale hydro and I don’t know why he believes we don’t. Hydro projects can store energy to be released at times of high demand. The truth is that we need a mix of energy sources renewable and non renewable hopefully using the developing carbon capture and storage technologies. Crucially though we need to be wasting less energy and using it more efficiently in the first place.


Councillor Andrew Cooper