Sunday, December 24, 2006
"One of the Craziest Fantasies of our Age?"
The BBC Fails to go on Air by Wind Power
Christopher Booker
The Telegraph, UK
Dec. 24, 2006
Besotted as the BBC is by wind turbines, BBC South last Monday chose to celebrate the go-ahead given to the world's largest windfarm in the Thames Estuary with a special broadcast from Green Park, Reading, where millions of motorists each year see the 2 megawatt (MW) turbine erected by Ecotricity next to the M4. The BBC excitably announced that its programme would be powered entirely by electricity from the turbine. Bang on cue – no wind. The BBC had to fall back on a nasty CO2-emitting emergency generator.
The symbolism was perfect. One of the many drawbacks to turbines that the BBC seems incapable of grasping is that much of the time there isn't enough wind to make them work. The Ofgen figures for every windfarm in Britain, recently published by the Renewable Energy Foundation on its website, show that the Reading turbine last year generated only 16 per cent of its "installed capacity".
This is why the BBC (and pretty well everyone else) got it hopelessly wrong when they reported that the two windfarms planned to cover more than 100 square miles of the Thames Estuary. at a cost of £2 billion. will generate 1,300MW, "enough to power a third of the homes in London". They will do nothing of the kind. That is their maximum theoretical output, if they were working all the time. In fact, thanks to the vagaries of the wind, they will be lucky if they generate a third of that, very unreliably and unpredictably.
A single nuclear reactor can generate more than 1,000MW, all the time. The giant Drax coal-fired station in Yorkshire generates 4,000MW, far more than will be produced by all the turbines the Government wants to see dominating thousands of square miles of Britain's countryside. And, most ridiculous of all, turbines are so unreliable that we will have to build a dozen new conventional power stations, emitting CO2, just to provide constant back-up for when the wind decides not to blow.
When will the BBC realise that this is one of the craziest fantasies of our age? Perhaps not until it has to close down all its broadcasts because there aren't enough emergency generators to keep them going.
Christopher Booker
The Telegraph, UK
Dec. 24, 2006
Besotted as the BBC is by wind turbines, BBC South last Monday chose to celebrate the go-ahead given to the world's largest windfarm in the Thames Estuary with a special broadcast from Green Park, Reading, where millions of motorists each year see the 2 megawatt (MW) turbine erected by Ecotricity next to the M4. The BBC excitably announced that its programme would be powered entirely by electricity from the turbine. Bang on cue – no wind. The BBC had to fall back on a nasty CO2-emitting emergency generator.
The symbolism was perfect. One of the many drawbacks to turbines that the BBC seems incapable of grasping is that much of the time there isn't enough wind to make them work. The Ofgen figures for every windfarm in Britain, recently published by the Renewable Energy Foundation on its website, show that the Reading turbine last year generated only 16 per cent of its "installed capacity".
This is why the BBC (and pretty well everyone else) got it hopelessly wrong when they reported that the two windfarms planned to cover more than 100 square miles of the Thames Estuary. at a cost of £2 billion. will generate 1,300MW, "enough to power a third of the homes in London". They will do nothing of the kind. That is their maximum theoretical output, if they were working all the time. In fact, thanks to the vagaries of the wind, they will be lucky if they generate a third of that, very unreliably and unpredictably.
A single nuclear reactor can generate more than 1,000MW, all the time. The giant Drax coal-fired station in Yorkshire generates 4,000MW, far more than will be produced by all the turbines the Government wants to see dominating thousands of square miles of Britain's countryside. And, most ridiculous of all, turbines are so unreliable that we will have to build a dozen new conventional power stations, emitting CO2, just to provide constant back-up for when the wind decides not to blow.
When will the BBC realise that this is one of the craziest fantasies of our age? Perhaps not until it has to close down all its broadcasts because there aren't enough emergency generators to keep them going.
Saturday, December 09, 2006
Download “A Skeptic's Guide to Debunking Global Warming"
Washington D.C. - Senator James Inhofe (R-Okla.), the outgoing Chairman of Environment & Public Works Committee, is pleased to announce the public release of the Senate Committee published booklet entitled “A Skeptic’s Guide to Debunking Global Warming Alarmism. Hot & Cold Media Spin Cycle: A Challenge To Journalists who Cover Global Warming.”
Click here to download the "Skeptic's Guide"
The color glossy 64 page booklet -- previously was only available in hardcopy to the media and policy makers -- includes speeches, graphs, press releases and scientific articles refuting catastrophe climate fears presented by the media, the United Nations, Hollywood and former Vice President turned-foreign-lobbyist Al Gore.
The ‘Skeptic’s Guide’, which has received recognition by the LA Times and Congressional Quarterly, is now available free for international distribution on the Senate Environmental & Public Works Web site
The book, which features web links to all supporting documentation, also serves as a handbook to identify the major players in media bias when it comes to poor climate science reporting. The guide presents a reporter’s virtual who’s-who’s of embarrassing and one-sided media coverage, with a focus on such reporters as CBS News “60 Minutes” Scott Pelley, ABC News reporter Bill Blakemore, CNN’s Miles O’Brien, and former NBC Newsman Tom Brokaw.
Senator Inhofe’s “Skeptic’s Guide” also includes hard hitting critiques of the New York Times, Time Magazine, Newsweek, Associated Press, Reuters, the LA Times, the Chicago Tribune, and the Washington Post.
Senator Inhofe has challenged the media in a series of speeches and hearings to stop the unfounded hype.
“The American people are fed up with the media for promoting the idea that former Vice President Al Gore represents the scientific “consensus” that SUV’s and the modern American way of life have somehow created a 'climate emergency' that only United Nations bureaucrats and wealthy Hollywood liberals can solve,” Senator Inhofe said in October.
Skepticism that human C02 emissions are creating a “climate catastrophe” has grown in recent times. In September, renowned French geophysicists and Socialist Party member Claude Allegre, converted from a believer in manmade catastrophic global warming to a climate skeptic. This latest defector from the global warming camp caps a year in which numerous scientific studies have bolstered the claims of climate skeptics.
Scientific studies that debunk the dire predictions of human-caused global warming have continued to accumulate and many believe the new science is shattering the media-promoted scientific “consensus” on climate alarmism.
