Just an interesting collection of articles for anyone thinking of installing a domestic wind turbines or who thinks that the government is doing the right thing by throwing away millions in grants for these pointless adornments of the gullible (btw, I’m not against “proper” wind turbines)

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/newsnight/2006/11/are_domestic_wind_turbines_an_ecocon.html

http://markbrinkley.blogspot.com/2006/10/rejected-by-windsave.html

http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showthread.html?t=273400

I wonder if this report below will be published if it doesn’t “fit”.

http://www.warwickwindtrials.org.uk/

And it’s not looking as good as I thought for larger turbines:

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/07/03/wind_power_needs_dirty_pricey_gas_backup_report/

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In March 2007, Channel 4 screened a fake/hoax documentary (fokumentary?) called The Great Global Warming Swindle.

And a lot of people fell for it. Unfortunately, some of the more, shall we put it “cerebrally challenged” saw fit to embarrass themselves into using it as an argument.

In the style of Obie from Family Guy: “Well, uh….there’s uhhhh…this man I uhhh…know from the pub and …uhh.. he saw this uhhhh…documentary on … uhhhh … channel ummmm four …. uuuuhhhh … vote Republican!”.

UPDATE: 25th July - Marcus Brigstocke from The Now Show comments on the judgement (more at the bottom of the post)

Well, you get the idea. Anyhoo, they had their asses whipped by the regulator!

From The Times:

A Channel 4 documentary that argued that global warning was a fraud is to be criticised by the media regulator.

On Monday Ofcom is expected to publish a long-awaited report that upholds claims by some of the scientists who appeared in the programme last year that they were misrepresented.

The Great Global Warming Swindle, which aired in March last year, has been accused of downplaying the threat in the public mind. It sparked an outcry among environmentalists and many campaigners argue that the programme has contributed to people believing that the threat is not real.

It is understood that complaints by Carl Wunsch, a climate expert at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, will be upheld

It misrepresented evidence about the threat of global warming and that it rehashed discredited arguments and skewed data and charts to make its arguments stand up. In the closing moments of the program a voiceover from the climate change sceptic Fred Singer claimed that the Chief Scientist of the UK had said that by the end of the century the only habitable place on the planet would be in the Antarctic and that “humanity may survive thanks to some breeding couples who moved to the Antarctic”.

Sir David has never made such a statement. It is thought that Mr Singer confused the comments with those made by the scientist James Lovelock, who infuriated many colleagues in the science community when he publicly questioned global warming.

From The Guardian:

The detail of the ruling is expected to criticise Channel 4 over some aspects of the controversial programme, made by the director Martin Durkin.

The programme was criticised by scientists, who claimed it fundamentally misrepresented the evidence about global warming, that it rehashed discredited old arguments and manipulated data and charts to make its case.

I heard Durkin being interviewed once - what a complete cock! When they put one argument to him, he threw his toys out of the pram and started being abusive.

Here’s the mp3version:

And here it is on Youtube - but I disagree with him about China, though. China is by far the greatest threat and will overtake the USA as the world’s worst polluter (by country and capita) within a year or two.

More:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2007/mar/04/comment.comment

http://cedarlounge.wordpress.com/2007/03/04/swindlewatch-07/

http://www.desmogblog.com/the-great-global-warming-swindle

http://adaisythroughconcrete.blogspot.com/2007/03/ok-now-im-cross.html

Tags: green,marcus-brigstocke,mp3,the-now-show
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From time to time, I get someone saying “all renewables is rubbish, isn’t it?”. The most recent site I got pointed at was:
http://www.greenliving.co.uk/Articles/theeconomiccasef.html

I read that site and hung my head in despair. Now, we all know that small scale wind turbines currently don’t pay for themselves, either in carbon footprint payback or financial terms. Would it be great if there was someone who had found a way of making it work out?! Except, as I was reading through, I couldn’t help thinking “what about this? what about that?”. I was twitching to find the “contact” link, when my questions were answered at the bottom:
http://www.greenliving.co.uk/Articles/theeconomiccasef.html#FAQ

It appears “the economic case” puts aside small things like depreciation, maintenance, replacement of batteries, installation costs, etc etc etc.

So, let’s have a brief look at a summarized version of the Q&A (I have abridged but not edited or changed any words)

Q. You haven’t considered the cost of borrowing money to fund the installation.
A: I didn’t factor in the cost of borrowing as I wanted to keep the article simple.

Q. Do the battery banks not need replacing periodically?
A. This is a complex area whose costs I cannot accurately quantify

Q. [The article] does not deal with storage issues
A. Regarding how electricity is stored, I deliberately kept that side of the article simple because I did not want to obscure the main argument.

Q. Does your calculation include installation costs?
A: No, because these are difficult to quantify.

Q. What would the planned maintenance costs be over 20 years?
A. Difficult to say

Q. Are there any maintenance or insurance costs associated with the turbine?
A. A|l turbines need regular preventative maintenance, [...] I have not included these costs.

Riiiight, so as long as you don’t actually factor in any real-world costs, it works out perfectly!

For those of us trying to make a living out of viable energy (solar thermal etc), these kinds of sites don’t help at all - they just make the whole industry look bad.

BTW - grants paid since inception of scheme:

Not very inspiring.

I also read a book, “How to live Off Grid”. Except, it’s not very “how to”.

I’m afraid I have to agree with this review from Amazon (I’d gone there to write almost precisely the same!)

One of the lesser problems with this book is that the author spends too much time talking about himself instead of the subject. For example he writes in detail about his difficulty in finding parking space when he visits one of the off- grid people. He also brags about getting gadgets for free and talks far too much about his family. He seems to brag about rather than describe his off grid place in Spain. He then says that he can not afford a house in the country in addition to his expensive 2 homes and his van.
The very worst problem is that the book is badly structured, in that the details of how each off grid community works is in a separate chapter to the general description of it and it’s inhabitants. It is hard to flick back and forth between chapters. The quality of writing is not the best.

The only saving grace is a very good tiny section at the beginning about the history of the grid. There is also possibly useful bit in the chapter about planning permission at the end.
There is also the odd thing, that Nick Rosen admits himself, about the irony of him choosing to drive a van to be “off grid”. I was disappointed.

Additionally, there are some glaring typographical and factual errors - weird things seem to happen with random brackets in several places, and p334 - energy saving bulbs do NOT cost £3.50! They are between 40p and 60p each. Well, the Philips ones do, anway.

Good that it is FSC paper though - I have first edition (2007).

I suppose it’s a good try - but it’s embarrassingly obvious that he must have been on “pay per plug” for the Vodafone 3g card :)

Finally, check out this bit of nonsense from the local paper in the letters section:

Image this - school mums are delivering their little darlings to school past eco-friendly homes that have wind turbines.
A typical British mini-tornado blows up and demolishes a wind turbine.
The knife-like blades shoot about as if from a whirling dervish killing or maiming several of those mums.
Come on! Roll out the nuclear future. The people of Reading cannot wait any longer for this.
Sue Doughty, Twyford

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Admittedly, they are straight from the department of the bleedin’ obvious, but in the same week that Gordon Brown pointed out that…

…each household could save £420 a year by not throwing away edible food. Approximately 4.1 million tonnes of food which could be eaten are disposed of each year, the government estimates.

David Cameron said:

…that some people who are poor, fat or addicted to alcohol or drugs have only themselves to blame.

He said that society had been too sensitive in failing to judge the behaviour of others as good or bad, right or wrong, and that it was time for him to speak out against “moral neutrality”.

“We talk about people being ‘at risk of obesity’ instead of talking about people who eat too much and take too little exercise,” he said. “We talk about people being at risk of poverty, or social exclusion: it’s as if these things — obesity, alcohol abuse, drug addiction — are purely external events like a plague or bad weather.

“Of course, circumstances — where you are born, your neighbourhood, your school and the choices your parents make — have a huge impact. But social problems are often the consequence of the choices people make.”

Blimey. Personal responsibility? Whatever next?! Not sure a country infantalised by ZaNu Labour is ready for this kind of thing….

Tags: brown,cameron,food,green,labour,Politics,waste
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I saw a report in today’s (Saturday 13/oct/2007) Times, Mail or Telegraph that Solar Thermal energy takes 208 years to pay back. In fact, ALL of the figures in the report are drastically wrong - the figures and costs quoted are 5-8 times greater than “real world” quotes, and the figure for solar energy is completely incorrect. As member of the Solar Trade Association (STA) , Solar Powered Services abide by the strict ethical guidelines for both marketing and suitability of solar products. I’ve contacted the STA and RICS for explanation, and look forward with interest to see where they go the figures from. Click the image below and you’ll quickly see just how wrong the figures are.

See the Solar Powered Services blog for more information

Tags: green,solar-power,solar-pv
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