Wind farms aren't just a blight, they're a folly

Telegraph
"For those of us who have travelled to this corner of England since childhood, it is a view that has changed little. However, if developers get their way, in a year or so there will be 16 wind turbines, each of them 415 feet high – taller than St Paul's Cathedral – right across this wild and wonderful landscape. They won't be the first, either. As I saw when I visited last week, wind turbines have sprung up all along the route into Cornwall, like mushrooms on an autumn morning. ......At the weekend, I was speaking to campaigners against the Bodmin Moor scheme who are gearing up for the public inquiry: for them, this is an all-consuming issue. In Wales, there has been uproar over plans for 800 turbines across the Cambrian Mountains. In fact, from the Isle of Wight to northern Scotland, local people are coming together to fight the windmills. .......Landowners love them, because they can make a packet from subsidies and rents for erecting just a few turbines on their property. ......To produce the same amount of electricity as one coal-fired power station, you'd need a wind farm the size of Greater London. And when there is no wind – or even when there is too much – the power produced is minuscule or the turbine has to be switched off while fossil-fuel stations take up the slack. They can be useful in powering a collection of farms, or a small industrial site, but that is about it. ........These turbines produce small amounts of electricity at great cost to the taxpayer and electricity consumer. The money being invested would be far better spent developing nuclear power – especially thorium reactors, which have none of the risks and waste associated with the uranium fission cycle. Thorium is a cheap, clean and safe alternative, and there are plentiful deposits in Cornwall and in Wales. "