Wednesday, May 23, 2007
Thinking Greens Hate Windmills
My co-poster and I share a view of life - odd, tiring, funny - but we disagree about many things, not least the end of civilisation as we know it. There is much clear green water between us on the matter of the environment. But I suspect we agree about the intellectual credentials of your average green. Unthinking greenery has done appalling damage. Greens destroyed life in many of our river when they embraced a cancer scare about nitrate fertilisers and drove famers to use pig slurry instead. Most terrible of all, greens continue to kill millions by their unthinking opposition to DDT. This also involved a cancer scare that led to the substance being banned. Africans were thus condemned to suffer malaria indefinitely. Greens may now kill millions more by opposing nuclear power, soon to be embraced as part of the new energy strategy. Nuclear energy is the ONLY serious option if we are to have any hope of cutting carbon emissions. Windmills etc are mere tinkering. Oil companies love to use such friendly technologies in their ads precisely because they know they represent no threat. But, in fact, if the latest indicators are correct (subscription seems necessary) then nuclear will come too late. Like tidal power and biofuels, it will be one last futile attempt to avert the day when hedge funders become warlords and the few remaining humans eke out a nasty, brutish and short existence in the damp Arctic tundra.
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A blog about, among other things, imaginary ideas - What ifs? and Imagine thats. What if photographs looked nothing like what we see with our eyes? Imagine that the Berlin Wall had never come down. What if we were the punchline of an interminable joke? All contributions welcome.
The oilco' are fine and will be so, Oil has much more important uses other than shifting some git from A to B, or heating him for that matter. But the use of your average green (regardless of how off the wall or downright insane) is his ability to shove into the side, the sharp spur of reality. In this he is likely to be hampered, was he/she/it over-burdened with logic.
ReplyDeleteFor many years people in these islands sneered at the mare nostrum area over water, Dont drink the water, was a catch phrase. Now, in these islands any open water below a certain level is alive with the bacterial run off from human waste. While the groundwater is Londons before the sewer project.
Nuclear is an absolute no brainer, when the population is of any size.
But the science bods need to be set the correct task. Power is not the only requirement.
In the Scottish election the Greens polled 82,584 in the list vote, down from 132,138 - a drop of 38%. This gives them 4% of the popular vote that translated into two seats. Why if the environment is so important? It's because the other parties have jumped on the green debate and squeezed the GP out to a large extent. Of course it's not to the extent of squeezing them out of power because they have formed a coalition with the SNP.
ReplyDeleteThe Big Green Debate (how long before it's turned into some daft mega TV show covering the whole country with presenters cycling everywhere) has become a battleground for big business as well as politicians. The subsidies paid to wind farm developers and the landowners on whose land the turbines are put as disproportionate. Word is the govt. have recognised this and are about to do something about it. However, this is not before wind farms have become the ultimate in gesture politics.
Wind farms are not about saving the planet they are about making money and allowing politicians to say - look at us we really are doing something.
I could go on…we’ve been fighting and still are half a dozen wind farms that have been put up or planned to be put up in the Lammermuir Hills in SE Scotland, one of the few world places left in the area.
Two stories that will perhaps shock and sadden
HERE
HERE
Sorry to have gone on, but I feel passionate about this…
Agree with everything you say about greens (except the nonsense about the forthcoming end of civilisation and the hedge fund warlords) but have to shamefully admit that I find windfarms quite pretty. In moderation.
ReplyDeleteWindmills and solar are fine technologies that will be far more useful than you seem to think.
ReplyDeleteThey generate only a small percentage of power used today simply because they're more expensive than oil, nat. gas, or coal.
However, if there does come a day when oil is very scarce, then we'll just erect a couple million acres worth of windmills and solar panels.
Or at least, we will in America. The common person here is very pragmatic.
...if we are to have any hope of cutting carbon emissions.
Are you perhaps thinking of the "anthropological global warming" nonsense ?
Scientific evidence from ice cores, tree rings, air bubbles trapped in amber, and so forth, establish that carbon levels rise after warming occurs - carbon levels don't cause planet warming.
So cutting carbon emissions from human activity would be rather pointless.
i don't see why we can't replace power stations with chavs on bicycles. Research has shown that chavs can (somehow) survive & indeed thrive in the total absence of nutrition. If we hook a few million chavs up to bike-driven dynamos, that should sort things out.
ReplyDeleteThough the end is indeed nigh, but i won't go into that.
By the way, Mr Appleyard, you have a video of a strange fat man on your blog, presumably as an advert - i'm sure porn would pay as much, and would give me something far more worthwile to contemplate, unless actually the strange fat man was Ron Jeremy's successor, and i was in fact watching porn. A sad day, when a man can watch porn without realising it.
So, apart from consigning millions to their deaths, the Greens are basically on the right track? A bit like our old friends the Communists then?
ReplyDeleteIt's always darkest before the dawn and the Greens are only a couple of years from total collapse, brought on by the implosion of global warming theory.
ReplyDeleteWell done, Bryan. That should set the cat among the pigeons. Although David's comment above is, of course, bollocks.
ReplyDeleteGreens?! Look, I'm still trying to get worked up enough by the apparent sinister threat of Scientologists - there's only so many insignificant minorities a guy can face at any one time.
ReplyDeleteThey are like the goldfinch, you stop and listen before you get on the train to work - any reason, and there is reason, will filter through to your subconscious and colour your worldview.
Anyway, the future never comes, it's not an event you can order a ticket to see. What we need is a continuous programme, flexibilty, research and greater choice.
I find windfarms quite alarming, brit. I suppose they have a certain beauty in form.
ReplyDeletethey're just so fucking big! best admired from a distance, probably.
Unfortunately, nuclear power is such an anathema to the "environmentalists" (aka greens I suppose), that I can't believe it could ever take off for political reasons. But it is the only way to move forward energy-wise without depleting natural resources completely. A paradox.
ReplyDeleteIn the meantime, the greens are discovering that these wind farms are killing loads of birds, bats et al.-- bit of a poser for them, that.
I've heard that these wave power machines will screw up the eco systems around them- that's including the surrounding land. And it could take thousands if not millions of years for it to return to that level again.
ReplyDeleteSaved!
ReplyDeleteNew Scientist report this week - we'll run out of raw materials before global warming goes much further! back to the stone age ...
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