On Sunday, whilst I was battling the East Coast Mainline in an attempt to get to London to visit family, I missed the depressing report from the Guardian stating that “Worst ever carbon emissions leave climate on the brink”
Last year, a record 30.6 gigatonnes of carbon dioxide poured into the atmosphere, mainly from burning fossil fuel – a rise of 1.6Gt on 2009, according to estimates from the IEA regarded as the gold standard for emissions data.
“I am very worried. This is the worst news on emissions,” Birol told the Guardian. “It is becoming extremely challenging to remain below 2 degrees. The prospect is getting bleaker”
And yet, people have their head in the sand. Epic levels of NIMBYism exists, especially with regard to renewable power sources such as windfarms. The placement of wind farms is hugely controversial as can be seen if you watch BBC2′s Windfarm Wars.
As a keen walker, I follow a number of backpacking and mountaineering blogs; blogs that I respect and enjoy reading. But, without fail, they are anti-windfarm. To take one example, backpackinglight posted recently,
the possibility that shale gasmight provide the US and Europe with a significant new source of hydrocarbons. There does appear to be some controversy about the environmental impact. However, it might save our green and pleasant land from being covered in wind turbines.
That’s right, so against the rather elegant white wind mills are the backpacking community, that is it instead advocating the use of the dangerous and despoiling mining technique known as “fracking“. Presumably because there is no shale gas in the hills and mountains of the UK.
You only have have to travel a short distance in West Lothian to see the human effects on the landscape of mining. It is not pretty. The Bings are the waste product from shale oil mining, and clearly a blot on the landscape a hundred years later. If wind farms turn out to be non-productive, they can be removed and dismantled with very little impact on the countryside. And, “fracking” potentially causes serious damage to the landscape, a drilling operation was suspended in Blackpool recently as it may have caused an Earthquake.
pozorvlak pointed yesterday to a George Monbiot article which “argues that the Green movement should throw its weight behind anti-pylon campaigns in Scotland and Wales”
Pylons are the other big controversy along with wind farms. Without pylons, and particularly the Beauly-Denny power line Scotland’s renewable energy cannot be taken from the remote unpopulated regions to the main areas of energy usage.
I could not put it better than pozorvlak :-
There isn’t a square centimetre of Scotland that hasn’t already been touched by human activity (or that of our domesticated animals). You can call it “wilderness”, but you’d be kidding yourself. I’m certainly not in favour of concreting the whole thing over, but nor am I bothered about a few pylons
I’m not sure what the lovers of the countryside actually want. If renewable energy is not going to be used, without going back to the dark ages when you won’t actually be able to get to the highlands unless you walk, the wilderness of Scotland will be despoiled by climate change. A recent report showed that claimed that “climate change would put “chronic pressure” on the state of public paths in upland and lowland Scotland”
Not to mention the huge impact of climate change across the world.
Thanks for your link to my blog.
Sorry to disappoint you, but my post was not purporting to be pro-shale gas, merely pointing out to readers that, having suggested that there is a coming resource crunch on a previous post, there might be some offsetting factors. I honestly don’t know whether it’s viable or not.
However, I am most certainly against wind farms being sited in the hills. It’s not just the despoliation of the landscapes and views, I just think they are a flawed response and don’t deliver the reliable low carbon electricity that proponents claim. Alan Sloman is more eloquent on this matter than me.
I don’t think this is a NIMBY view. Having been to Dartmoor recently, any wind farm around the edge of the moor would be visible for miles and spoil the character of Dartmoor. If we are going to have wind turbines, let’s build them next to conurbations where they don’t spoil the landscape and needs only short power lines, but I still take the view that wind turbines are not the answer.
It seems to me that the argument that every inch of the UK has been impacted by man and therefore we have carte blanche to do anything we like is misguided. Where do we draw the line? Surely building pylons across a National Park is a step too far. As it happens, I am bothered about a “few pylons” which could be easily rerouted through a less sensitive area.
Sorry to have picked on you Robin, I have seen lots of anti-windfarm stuff on the blogs recently, but yours stood out as it appeared to be saying “look there are no need for windfarms as there is shale gas”. In fact, your comment just now about putting wind farms near conurbations is the most positive windfarm comment I’ve seen.
I guess I just don’t see wind farms as spoiling the view as much as anyone else. From my bedroom window, you can see the highlands, Ben Lomand and Ben Vorlich amougst others. And behind Stirling Castle and the Wallace Monument, you can see a few wind farms, lazily generating electricity.
That is, you can see those things when Grangemouth isn’t despoiling the view by sending clouds into the atmosphere and reducing visibility. If someone said, I’ll take Grangemouth away, but it has to be replaced by a 1000 wind turbines, I would drive them to the site with the last of the oil.
Of course, you shouldn’t put wind farms everywhere, and no one is going to suggest they line the slopes of Ben Nevis with them, but I do think they have to be put somewhere.
And I don’t agree with the efficiency, but I do agree that onshore farms will only be a small part of the equation and wave and off-shore will have a larger role, and that means having to put the pylons somewhere.
Thanks, Paul.
The reason that you will find so much antipathy to wind farms on outdoor blogs is that most bloggers are passionate about leaving behind the modern world and appreciating a landscape where there is little evidence of human intrusion in the form of buildings/structures/roads. That is why Alan Sloman has been passionately objecting to the wind farms in the Monadliath. The planners appear to give little value to undeveloped “wild” land.
While wind turbines are not inherrantly “ugly” in the right context, I don’t think it’s controversial to suggest that they are inappropriate to areas such as the Monadliath, Balmacaan and Cairngorms. The other problem is that once one wind farm is built, it give a precedence for others to be built in the same area. At the moment there are plans to build huge wind farms on both sides of the Great Glen. If one is built, what’s to stop the others? A most wonderful natural feature will be scarred for a generation by the folly of man.
It makes more sense to build turbines near conurbations, except that it is less windy in those locations (leaving aside the evidence that turbines can have side effects detrimental to health i.e. noise, flickering light etc). It would give an opportunity to store the energy in batteries, overcoming one of the major drawbacks of wind energy (i.e. its intermittancy).
However, it is unlikely that wind energy can ever be a serious contributor to our energy needs. You might want to read this letter from some people who are far more qualified than me: http://news.scotsman.com/opinion/Letter-Powerful-case-against-renewables.6758344.jp
Paul,
Like you, I am a Green, a hillwalker and a lover of the countryside. I agree completely; it always disappoints me to note that so much of the outdoor press rights off windfarms as unattractive and seems to pay little attention for the location. Just as you or I would not, I am sure, advocate windfarms (or any other development) without looking at the context, it seems ludicrous for people to take an automatic anti-windfarm stance in all cases.
The outdoor community, whether those working in the industry or simply those who use it, should offer backing to renewable energy projects that are suitably located . These will, after all, help to preserve the scenery that we all love. Too often people feel that they must come down on one side or the other without thinking.
Robin, I think you are saying the same thing but I fear there are many who simply don’t want to see any windfarms, anywhere. At the moment, there seems to be more a of a will to build onshore windfarms than other renewable developments, possibly as landowers can make good money from them, but the fact that they alone will not be enough doesn’t mean we should discount their contribution completely.