Wind Turbines

All The Latest Scams From The Church of You're Got to be Green

By Graham Moorhouse, with very serious acknowledgement to James Delingpole

Have you noticed that wind turbines are everywhere? I don't just mean despoiling the landscape, butchering bats and birds, vandalising beauty spots and making filthy rich landowners, even more filthy rich at our, the taxpayers’, expense.  No, I do mean everywhere: they turn up on ads on television, especially those of oil companies anxious to convince us that they’re going green; they turn up in children's, including kindergarten children’s, textbooks and projects; they turn up on the side of buses, cornflake packets and ice cream cartons.

If we define religion as a set of beliefs that dictate ones world view, then the new Green movement is a religion. And just as the Catholics Church builds cathedrals, so Greens build wind farms. Just as the Palace of Versailles is a symbol of the once powerful French monarchy, so wind turbines are the symbol of the current power of the Green movement. They are designed to coerce us into becoming devout members of their creed.

For as a means of generating electricity, wind turbines are not just crap, they are crap on very tall stilts. When the wind is blowing hard they have to be shut down, when the wind is gentle (which by perverse fortune is invariably so on the coldest days of the year when power is most needed) they are of course useless. They are in fact less than 30% efficient on average, which makes them even less efficient than electric cars, and that’s saying something.

Because they are so inefficient and unreliable, one has to build a conventional power station, either nuclear or powered by gas, oil or coal, as back up. Now the real kicker is that one cannot close down conventional power stations, so they have to be kept ticking over on standby even on the rare occasion when the wind turbines are producing significant electricity. Kicker number two, power stations are working at their least efficient when they are on stand-by. Thus the contribution to reducing CO2 emissions of wind farms is somewhere between zero and negligible. And we haven’t even touched on the environmental damage: the poisonous rare minerals they deplete, the wildlife they destroy and the countryside they devastate.

And no one mentions safety. There were 128 recorded accidents in 2008, involving nine fatalities and fifteen injuries. There were twenty-five instances of blade failure in 2009. Pieces of blades have been thrown up to 1300 meters. In Germany, pieces of blades have gone through the roofs and walls of nearby buildings. Some authorities are recommending a minimum distance between turbines and occupied buildings of 2 km! This is for public safety, and to help reduce the nuisance of noise and shadow flicker. France has imposed a 500m no-go zone around turbines: so they don't just blight the landscape, they put it out of bounds! There were a further sixteen recorded structural failures in 2009. These are probably less dangerous than blade failures as the debris will presumably land nearer the main structure than the bits from blade failures.

Nor have we touched on the social and economic costs. Like the loss of 3.7 jobs in the real economy for every one job created in the “Green” economy according to figures produced by Verso economics. 

Wind farms are so demonstrably inefficient that absolutely no one would be building them were it not for massive government subsidies paid for by you, the taxpayer; subsidies that are damaging our economy, fuelling inflations and making our homes brutally expensive to heat.

So why are we still building these white elephants, or perhaps I should write, sacred cows?  Easy!  Wind farms, like so many others things foisted on the long suffering consumer by mendacious politicians, such as inflated air fairs (the farting of domestic cattle releases more CO2 than all the world's airlines) and flickering yellow lights that give one headaches, have absolutely nothing to do with science or objective reality, and most certainly nothing to do with common sense. They are just sacred cows, the articles of blind faith of the world’s most powerful new religion, the Church of Environmentalism.  They are living proof of the of G.K. Chesterton's statement that “When you stops believing in God, you don’t believe in nothing, you believe in anything.”

Perhaps you are one of those who have been sucked in by this baloney - like CAFOD (The Catholic Fund for Overseas Development) whose website urges donors "not to drop the ball on climate change". It also urges us to "email Chancellor George Osborne today ahead of important climate change talks in Durham, South Africa later this year". What they want him to do is anyone's guess; perhaps build some more wind farms.

Don't feel to bad about being sucked in, it is very easy to be swept along with what Dr Johnson called "the clamour of the times." When schools, universities, NGOs, churches, newspapers, the BBC, big business and our political elite are all singing from the same hymn sheet - that the world is experiencing catastrophic global warming (sorry: climate change) owing to man made CO2s, and that something must be done now! - it takes a brave man to refuse to be swept along with the current. All those experts can't be wrong ... or can they?

Well they certainly are about wind farms, and once you realise they are lying about wind farms, why should you trust them about the rest of the package: the supposed "consensus", global warming (which has recently mysteriously morphed into "climate change"), the threat to polar bears, rising sea levels or the virtues of renewable energy?

The bottom line is that the whole global warming industry is no more than a giant Ponzi scam, preying on public gullibility, ignorance and guilt, and backed by an array of vested interests from big business to grant hungry scientists to Green campaign groups. As for our political masters, they love it for the grandstanding opportunities it provides, not to mention the perfect excuse for more taxes, more regulations and yet more control over our lives.

Consequently, I have enormous admiration for Cardinal George Pell, the Catholic Archbishop of Sydney, who when criticised by the Anglican church (a community whose only raison d'etre is jumping on passing bandwagons) responded: "Radical environmentalists are more than up to the task of moralising their own agenda and imposing it on people through fear. They don't need church leaders to help them with this, although it is a very effective way of further muting Christian witness. Church leaders in particular should be allergic to nonsense." He added, "I am certainly sceptical about extravagant claims of impending man-made climatic catastrophes. Uncertainties on climate change abound ... my task as a Christian leader is to engage with reality, to contribute to debate on important issues, to open people's minds, and to point out when the emperor is wearing few or no clothes." Amen to that!

It takes courage to take a public stand against a powerful, all-encompassing, incredibly intolerant religion whose aficionados include everyone from Al Would-you-buy-a-used-car-from-this-man Gore, His Highness the tree-hugging Prince of Wales and - God help us! - Pope Benedict XVI himself. The Pope appears to suffer from nice-guy syndrome, a debilitating need to be liked - always dangerous tendency in a Christian leader.

But Cardinal Peel is to be applauded for sticking to his convictions. he has understood, as many religious leaders have woefully failed to understand, (and that includes your CAFOD and the Pontifical Academy of Science) that the Church of Environmentalism is the antithesis of the Christian view of the world and man's place therein. There is a line as straight as an arrow between Luther and environmentalism.  Luther led an assault against the authority of the Church Christ founded. This lead 200 years later to the Masonic inspired French Revolution that dethroned Christ Himself. Another 200 years and we have secular humanism, now God may not even be mentioned in public discourse - but at least man was still held in esteem. Finally, along come the Greens; now man is no longer the pinnacle of creation, but a parasite in Eden, to be culled by contraception, abortion, sterilisation and God alone knows what else. They worship not the living God but Gaia, the primordial Earth-goddess of pagan Greece.

The economist Julian Simon spotted the developing misanthropy in scientific text books. He noted that in the past the description of birds included evaluation of them from the perspective of mankind in general and farmers in particular. A bird that was beneficial to agriculture was more highly valued than one that was detrimental to it. Now Books evaluate humankind from the birds' perspective!

The high priests of the Church of Environmentalism often seek to justify their nonsense by claim that it is in the interest of future generations. Oh really! So why are they at the front of the lobby that seeks to deny us the joys of parenthood? Why are they making energy more expensive and striving to de-industrialise society though punitive legislation. Why are they pushing through legislation that makes it harder for business to prosper and grow? Why are they seeking to deny future generations jobs, security and a better standard of living?

Finally, why when the sun is entering a solar minimum phase (which historically has always heralded cold weather and poor harvest) are they still banging on about global warming?  And why, when there has been no evidence of global warming since 1995 are they still banging on about it?  Simple! They are diabolically inspire misogamists, and global warming (oops climate change) is the perfect excuse to harm the human race by damaging the world economy.

Cardinal Pell is spot on: global warming (oops! climate change) alarmism is the work of the Devil. Welcome to the secular asylum.

Visit the Global Warming Policy Foundation.  The Global Warming Policy Foundation is unique. They are an all-party and non-party think tank and a registered educational charity which, while open-minded on the contested science of global warming, is deeply concerned about the costs and other implications of many of the policies currently being advocated. The Global Warming Policy Foundation was launched by Lord Lawson and Dr Benny Peiser on 23 November 2009 in the House of Lords - in the run-up to the Copenhagen Climate Summit. Whilst they may not share my scepticism, indeed scorn for the Church of Environmentalism, their website does contain a saner and balanced assessment of the issues raised than do most.