Wednesday 13 March 2013
Please Help Save Scotland
The Germans are arguing and it's not about the EU or immigration. In June 2011 Angela Merkel's government launched a new energy policy which was prompted by the Fukushima nuclear power plant catastrophe in Japan.
Now the German environmental movements, the Green Party and the conservative Christian Democrats, are at loggerheads. Many environmentalists want to see the expansion of renewable energies at any price but there is now a conflict because those who have been feeling increasingly uncomfortable with the way things are going have decided they can keep quiet no longer.
What has happened is that the environmentalists role has changed from fighting road and rail projects to protecting birds and rare frog species. Now they are forced to defend massive high-voltage power lines while being careful not to scare off their core environmentalist clientele, (those providing the basic funding).
A senior German politician claimed that investors in renewable energies were being 'serially harassed by the low-level regional nature-conservation authorities' and the state government wasn't helping to combat this.
According to the Speigel wind energy's fast growth has ended in Europe and nearly every country that subsidises renewable energy has been tinkering with changes or rewriting regulation.
At the moment the Scottish government continues to permit turbines to be built all over the beautiful Scottish scenery. Soon the scenery on a journey from Perth to Edinburgh will include turbines for most of the trip and planning departments continue to approve applications very frequently.
I had no problem with small wind farms being built to aid small communities or a few major projects which would provide energy to the cities but do we want our famous and loved scenery to be blighted by turbines at every turn in the road? I say no and concur with Rhona Weir's opinion. Rhona Weir is the widow of Tom Weir and is a great champion of the Scottish landscape. You can hear an interview with her and windwiseradio here.
The petition to save our countryside is here and the deadline for signatures is this Friday, the 15 March. I would ask you to contribute by adding your signature if you agree with Rhona Weir.
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14 comments:
Scotland can save itself.
It simply needs to withdraw the massive subsidies paid by each of its electricity-users to the owners of the Subsidy Farms.
Perhaps I am being cynical but I think Mr. Salmond's calculations are based on two premises
1. Selling overpriced "renewable" electricity South of the Border when the wind blows free to enable power companies to meet their "renewables obligation"
and
2. Buying cheap conventionally produced electricity from the same source when the wind just doesn't blow (as it sometimes doesn't - even in Scotland!
O dear! I'm beginning to sound like an English nationalist!
The whole monstrous fraud depends on the acceptance of legal compulsion from the EU, based on the theory of global warming which just hasn't been happening - as even the head fakir of the IPCC, the railway engineer Rajendra Pachauri admits.
I never thought I would ever see as big a misdirection of resources as the EU's Common Agricultural Policy (see earlier article) but the Climate Change Scam dwarfs it utterly - and the ambition is for it to be global.
The primary 'scam' Scotland needs to solve is the one that emanates from Westminster.
I'm not sure about wind power, I mean, I'm not sure its the ogre its made out to be.
I know there is a green tax on top of domestic energy bills (its subsidised by the bill payer again from central taxation.)
But all power generation is subsidised, the nuclear subsidy alone is huge, and we had the fossil fuel levy on hydro-carbon based power generation to subsidise nuclear at the front end. (The clean up at Sellafield has topped £67 billion apparently, dwarfing anything spent on wind farms, and that's just one station...)
I don't mind wind farms, as long as they don't go mental with them (covering the Isle of Lewis is a terrible idea as is putting pylons any where near Cairngorm National Park.)
I don't believe in global warming, I think its nonsense but we do need to look at different ways of generating power, these wind farms are the first generation of the method with I assume more efficient systems growing from them.
I would say, removing hydrocarbon based derivatives from futures trading would do more to drop the price of gas and oil. If we accept new methods of power generation have to be subsidised, then we'll end up paying for in some shape or form.
I suppose what I'm saying is, I' can't sign the petition without knowing what alternative is being offered.
Of the ‘change.org’ petition …
Like Don Quixote, tilting at windmills it is a romantic, heroic, idealistic but futile gesture.
“Do you see over yonder, friend Sancho, thirty or forty hulking giants? I intend to do battle with them and slay them.”
I genuinely wish them well.
Of the Scottish Government …
There are none so blind as those who will not see
I cold have seen the point of alternative energy systems if they had been brought in properly and with
a little sanity, but with the lies of AGW ,and the considerable miss understanding of the subject by the authorities,we were bounced into a situation which will put us back in the 17th century.But the planet is not getting warmer,its getting oh, so slightly cooler. http://joannenova.com.au/2013/03/has-the-world-started-cooling-hints-from-4-of-5-global-temperature-sets-say-it-might-have/
And the extra co2 from whatever source is helping the greening of the planet.Its a plant food, remember. So we have excessive energy taxes, carbon taxes ,wind turbine taxes, over the top fuel taxes, and why? Because it gets the treasury a lot of our cash and all on the back of a scam. There are a lot of people with influence taking a lot of our money with this one, have a look at Greenpeace and WWF and other similar operations.
And remember people, Governments are far quicker at increasing taxes than reducing them. And decisions on our electricity supplies have been taken based on information that was presented to people to make decisions on, and the information was biased, misguided,and in some cases, deceptive. But we are only now finding out the truth.
Please sign the petition.
Signed.
@Pa Broon: it's not the subsidy per se, it's the facts that:
1. They ruin the lanscape (I live almost within sight of the planned monstrosities at Straiton, believe me it's enough to make you weep).
2. They do NOT generate useful power - a third or a quarter of what they claim, and unpredictably: useless for base load, useless for following load, useless for peak load. Just useless.
3. They do NOT reduce emissions. By the time you've included the building of them, the servicing of them, the foundations (and their removal), the roads you need, and the damage to the peat, the carbon payback time is longer than the life of the machine.
Oh, and our rich landowners and London bankers have enough of my money already (and yours), they don't need any more on the back of this scam.
Indeed that's part of it Joe.
Indeed it is a massive fraud Edward.
Well we'll see in 2014 won't we Crinkly?
Therein lies the problem pa_broon. Planning departments are permitting them to be erected anywhere. Like you I don't mind them but covering the whole of our countryside with them is destroying a wonderful landscape.
I wish them well too JRB.
Well said Apogee.
Thanks WY and also thanks for the explanation for pa_broon.
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