By Richard Littlejohn
Created 9:55 PM on 27th December 2010
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/artic ... z19XFnS0c0This is the season for quizzes. So fingers on buzzers, here’s your starter
for ten. In percentage terms, how much electricity do Britain’s 3,150 wind
turbines supply to the National Grid?
Is it: a) five per cent; b) ten per cent; or c) 20 per cent?
Come on, I’m going to have to hurry you. No conferring.
Time’s up. The correct answer is: none of the above. Yesterday afternoon,
the figure was just 1.6 per cent, according to the official website of the
wholesale electricity market.
Over the past three weeks, with demand for power at record levels because
of the freezing weather, there have been days when the contribution of our
forests of wind turbines has been precisely nothing.
It gets better. As the temperature has plummeted, the turbines have had
to be heated to prevent them seizing up. Consequently, they have been
consuming more electricity than they generate.
Even on a good day they rarely work above a quarter of their theoretical
capacity. And in high winds they have to be switched off altogether to
prevent damage.
At best, the combined output of these monstrosities is equal only to that
of a single, medium-sized, gas-fired power station.
To make matters worse, there is no way of storing the electricity generated
on the rare occasions when they are working.
Yet the Government is ploughing ahead with plans to erect 12,500 of these
War Of The Worlds windmills in the sea and across our green and pleasant.
Some of them will be up to three times the size of the present structures.
Every time I drive up to North Norfolk, another crop of turbines has
sprouted from the soil, disfiguring the scenery for miles around.
Swaffham, the picturesque location of Stephen Fry’s TV series Kingdom,
is virtually surrounded. None of them ever seems to be turning. They just
stand there, ominously, like invaders from outer space laying siege to the
town.
Billions of pounds are being wasted on these worse-than-useless blots on
the landscape. We’d be better off spending the money on snow ploughs.
While we’re on the subject of snow, Britain’s most tenacious ‘climate change
denier’ Christopher Booker, occasionally of this parish, has just revealed the
real reason why this country was so ill-prepared for the Arctic weather.
Airports, rail operators and local authorities all subscribe to the Met Office’s
long-term forecasts. And over the past few years, the Met Office has
become evangelical about ‘man-made global warming’.
Every weather forecast is now extruded through the prism of so-called
climate change, even when all evidence points to the fact that the Earth
is actually getting colder.
The Met Office’s predictions are based on a computer model which assumes
ever-rising temperatures — so much so that it forecast that this winter
would be significantly milder than the past two years.
Even though the winters of 2008 and 2009 were ferociously cold, they were
dismissed as ‘random events’. The Met Office put the odds on a third harsh
winter no higher than 20-1.
Those responsible for keeping our transport network running were stupid
enough to swallow this bogus, optimistic forecast, and consequently failed
to make proper provision for the blizzards which duly followed.
This, of course, was the same Met Office which predicted a ‘barbecue
summer’ shortly before Britain was hit by gales and widespread flooding.
For this wildly inaccurate and deliberately skewed service, the
British taxpayer is charged a staggering £200million a year.
Needless to say, the head of the Met Office is not even a weatherman.
He’s a leading ‘climate change activist’ who buys into the propaganda
pumped out by the fanatics at the University of East Anglia’s Climatic
Research Unit (CRU) — exposed for blatantly suppressing evidence which
contradicts their messianic belief in ‘global warming’.
Back in 2000, the CRU’s Dr David Viner told The Independent that winter
snowfalls would soon be a thing of the past. ‘Children just aren’t going to
know what snow is,’ he predicted confidently.
Even when they are proved wrong, the warmists will never admit it.
They simply move the goalposts — which is how global warming morphed
into ‘climate change’.
You can’t argue with them. That’s because ‘climate change’ isn’t a science,
it’s a religion. Sceptics are trashed as heretics. The climate change lobby is
a curious mix of cultists and cynical opportunists. As I write, Sky News is
spotlighting a project on Humberside aimed at brainwashing children into
believing that wind is the fuel of the future.
Call Me Dave bangs on about all the jobs which will be created by the
‘green economy’ — ignoring the fact that almost all Britain’s wind turbines
are built and installed by foreign firms.
The defining characteristic of all fanatics is that they have no sense of the
ridiculous.
According to the BBC, Town Halls across the country have been appealing
to owners of 4x4s to offer lifts to ‘essential staff’ during the cold snap.
These would be the same 4x4s which these very same councils want to ban,
because they cause global warming and kill polar bears.
You couldn’t make it up.
Let them slip and slither their way into work. I shall be saddling up the
SUV and tilting at windmills.
I rather detest the Daily Mail although sometimes I catch Littlejohn online
because of his take on our mess of a Country. Does pose some interesting
questions about the agendas and attitudes of the key decision makers and
advisors.
