Articles Tagged "Windfarms"
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Thursday, November 15th 2012, 7:45 AM EST
George Osborne is leading a concerted push to dismantle the Government’s commitment to wind farms and other forms of green energy, his father-in-law has revealed.
Lord Howell, a former Foreign Office minister, was filmed in an undercover sting by environmental group Greenpeace claiming that the Chancellor is ‘putting pressure’ on David Cameron who ‘does not understand the issue’.
Environmental campaigners have been alarmed by an apparent hardening of Government policy, with Energy Minister John Hayes and Environment Secretary Owen Paterson among the anti-wind farm figures appointed in September’s reshuffle.
Click source to read FULL report from Jason Groves
views 2,716
Sunday, November 4th 2012, 12:34 PM EST
Effects of industrial wind turbine noise on sleep and health
Michael A Nissenbaum1, Jeffery J Aramini2, Christopher D Hanning3
1 Northern Maine Medical Center, Fort Kent, Maine, USA
2 Intelligent Health Solutions, Guelph, Ontario, Canada
3 University Hospitals of Leicester NHS Trust, Leicester, United Kingdom
Abstract
Industrial wind turbines (IWTs) are a new source of noise in previously quiet rural environments. Environmental noise is a public health concern, of which sleep disruption is a major factor. To compare sleep and general health outcomes between participants living close to IWTs and those living further away from them, participants living between 375 and 1400 m (n = 38) and 3.3 and 6.6 km (n = 41) from IWTs were enrolled in a stratified cross-sectional study involving two rural sites. Validated questionnaires were used to collect information on sleep quality (Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index - PSQI), daytime sleepiness (Epworth Sleepiness Score - ESS), and general health (SF36v2), together with psychiatric disorders, attitude, and demographics.
Descriptive and multivariate analyses were performed to investigate the effect of the main exposure variable of interest (distance to the nearest IWT) on various health outcome measures. Participants living within 1.4 km of an IWT had worse sleep, were sleepier during the day, and had worse SF36 Mental Component Scores compared to those living further than 1.4 km away. Significant dose-response relationships between PSQI, ESS, SF36 Mental Component Score, and log-distance to the nearest IWT were identified after controlling for gender, age, and household clustering. The adverse event reports of sleep disturbance and ill health by those living close to IWTs are supported.
views 3,088
Saturday, November 3rd 2012, 6:41 PM EDT
On two of the most important issues of our time, a stifling consensus is beginning to break up
"Enough is enough”: blazoned over the front pages of two national newspapers, that was the verdict on wind farms from energy minister John Hayes last week. But it could just have well been spoken about Britain and the EU, by any of those 53 Tory MPs who inflicted a humiliation on David Cameron over his wish to accept a limited increase in the Brussels budget.
Both episodes caused a furore, but what was significant was that each marked the cracking apart of a suffocating all-party consensus which has imprisoned our politics for far too long. Even a year ago, it would have been unthinkable that so many Tory rebels would be willing to defeat the Government over the EU – or that a minister would question the plans to cover our countryside with wind farms. For years our politics has been frozen in a claustrophobic unanimity, whereby all parties agreed that we must not question our loyalty to the EU – or the need to “fight climate change” by suicidally distorting our energy policy in favour of those absurd windmills. But on each issue, those who spoke out last week were aware that their actions were viewed with sympathy even in the highest reaches of government.
Mr Cameron may secretly be pleased that this rebellion will help him strike a Thatcher-like pose, “defending Britain’s interests” against demands for a further huge increase in the spending of the Brussels Monster – as his EU colleagues head for a new treaty which will more than ever marginalise the British as second-class “European citizens”.
views 11,295
Thursday, November 1st 2012, 10:59 AM EDT
An anti-wind farm candidate has withdrawn from the Corby by-election campaign claiming he has achieved all his aims.
Journalist James Delingpole said he had run the "shortest and most successful election campaign of all time".
Green MP Caroline Lucas accused him of putting out "unscientific statements" as they debated green policies and renewable energy sources.
Click source for MUST SEE VIDEO LINK at the BBC
Updated below with transcript
views 19,668
Thursday, November 1st 2012, 10:47 AM EDT
#PM says it was time for a debate about future of technology
#Lib Dems say they now want energy removed from John Hayes portfolio
The Coalition was in turmoil last night over the future of onshore wind power, as furious Liberal Democrats demanded the new Tory energy minister is stripped of responsibility for renewable energy.
Lib Dem Energy Secretary Ed Davey reacted with consternation after John Hayes, a sceptic on wind farms, told the Daily Mail that Britain has had ‘enough’ of turbines ‘peppered’ across the country.
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Wednesday, October 31st 2012, 5:55 PM EDT
The case for winds farms is all but lost, as the Tories inject a welcome dose of reality into the debate
Have I just broken the record for the shortest and most successful election campaign in the history of politics? Well that’s one way of looking at my incredibly brief walk-on role in the Corby by-election. A month ago I announced that I was standing – as the anti-wind farm candidate. And now I’m announcing my withdrawal. Why? Because as far as I’m concerned, my battle to save the British countryside from one of the ugliest and most pointless outbreaks of vandalism in our history has now been all but won.
The good news came yesterday in the form of some very forthright words from John Hayes, the Coalition’s new minister at the Department of Energy and Climate Change. “We can no longer have wind turbines imposed on communities. I can’t single-handedly build a new Jerusalem but I can protect our green and pleasant land,” he stirringly declared, adding: “I’m saying enough is enough.”
Rumour has it that the minister – a robust, old-school, churchgoing Tory – had intended to go even further. At a conference in Glasgow staged by Renewable UK on Tuesday evening, Hayes had apparently intended to declare a moratorium on all future onshore wind farm projects – on the grounds that Britain has already met its wind energy targets. Unfortunately, his fervently green departmental boss, Lib Dem Ed Davey, got to see the speech beforehand and vetoed it. Yesterday, a clearly furious Davey slapped him down again by declaring that there had been absolutely no change in Coalition policy on wind.
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Wednesday, October 31st 2012, 5:29 PM EDT
The significance of yesterday’s shock announce-ment by our Energy Minister John Hayes that the Government plans to put a firm limit on the building of any more onshore windfarms is hard to exaggerate.
On the face of it, this promises to be the beginning of an end to one of the greatest and most dangerous political delusions of our time.
For years now, the plan to cover hundreds of square miles of the British countryside with ever more wind turbines has been the centrepiece of Britain’s energy policy — and one supported by all three major political parties.
Back in 2008, when Prime Minister Gordon Brown announced his wish to see the country spend £100 billion on windfarms, the only response from the Tory leader David Cameron was to say that he should have done it sooner.
It was the only way, they all agreed, Britain could meet our commitment to the EU that, by 2020, we must produce nearly a third of our electricity from ‘renewables’ — with the largest part provided by tens of thousands more wind turbines.
Yet now, out of the blue, has come this announcement by the Coalition Energy Minister that from now on there is to be a moratorium on building onshore turbines other than those for which consent has already been given.
views 12,968
Wednesday, October 31st 2012, 9:50 AM EDT
Coalition row erupts with Lib Dem Energy Secretary slapping down Tory minister who declared 'enough is enough' on onshore wind farms
#Onshore wind farms give other renewable energy sources a bad name, Energy Minister John Hayes tells the Daily Mail
#Existing and planned sites are enough to meet environmental goals
#Research into effects on house prices, noise levels and military radars has been commissioned, said Mr Hayes
#Comments spark a furious coalition row, with Lib Dem Energy Secretary Ed Davey insisting 'I'm in charge'
A furious coalition row erupted today after a junior Tory minister declared that the relentless march of onshore wind farms is at an end.
Insisting ‘enough is enough’, energy minister John Hayes said turbines had been ‘peppered around the country’ with little or no regard for local opinion.
He said existing sites and those in the pipeline would be enough to meet green commitments with no need for more.
‘Even if a minority of what’s in the system is built we are going to reach our 2020 target,’ he said. ‘I’m saying enough is enough.’
views 4,786
Monday, October 22nd 2012, 2:00 AM EDT
Two months ago my family and I finally moved out of the Big City and into paradise – a pretty rented cottage on a 2,500-acre estate in Northamptonshire with lakes, Capability Brown parkland, a 12th Century church, a ruined Elizabethan haunted house, an 18th Century walled garden and an ancient bluebell wood teeming with badgers, bats, deer and rare birds.
But what we didn’t know was that there was a snake in the garden: a planning application for an ugly 140ft wind turbine on the hill overlooking our new idyll.
The first I heard of it was when a woman called Sue accosted me at the Fawsley village fayre. ‘We’re so glad you’re here,’ she said. ‘Now you can help lead our fight against the wind turbine!’
Flattering though this was, I had to explain that I’m a troublemaker not an organiser. Sure, I could help out with an angry article, but if she wanted a leader she’d have to look elsewhere. Run a campaign? I can scarcely run a bath.
Click source to read FULL report from James Delingpole
views 5,482
Saturday, October 20th 2012, 4:36 PM EDT
David Cameron's promise to control energy bills runs counter to the Government's own 'green' policies
Last week, I returned from a visit to India – which last July suffered the most extensive power cut in history, affecting 600 million people – to find our own energy policy in a worse shambles than ever. Provoked by soaring energy bills, which have recently risen by a further 13 per cent, David Cameron again displayed his astonishing naivety in such matters by promising to force energy companies to charge only the lowest prices for their gas and electricity – just when even Ofgem has been warning us that we too face the prospect of massive power cuts, thanks to the imminent closure of so many of our power stations.
It is more than five years since I began warning here that Britain’s lights were in danger of going out, thanks to the lunacy of successive governments in shutting their eyes to this crisis. Yet Mr Cameron’s only response is to indulge in a political gimmick prompting almost universal howls of derision, and serving only to show that he knows even less about the real world of energy than his technically illiterate Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change, Ed Davey.
What Mr Cameron clearly hasn’t realised is that the main reason why our energy companies need to charge us ever more for electricity lies in his own Government’s deluded policies. He and his colleagues prattle on about how, over the next eight years, we need to spend £100 billion on building 30,000 useless, unreliable and grotesquely subsidised wind turbines. They want to see billions more spent on giant pylons and interconnectors, to carry power from the remote onshore and offshore wind farms where it is generated to the places where it is needed. Then, as even Mr Davey has finally admitted, further billions will need to be spent on new gas-fired power stations – not only to fill the gap left by all the coal-fired and nuclear plants that are due to close, but also to provide ever more expensive, “carbon”-emitting back-up for the times when the wind drops and our turbines are scarcely functioning.
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