Welcome to the Highlands

Welcome to the Highlands, the land of  sparkling Burns, The Heather hughed Glens, High Mountains where the Eagles soar, a land of Deer and Salmon, Kilts and Pipes. The Corbetts, the Grahams and the Monros. A place to revitalise the Spirit and the Soul. This is a land of proud people, people that will give any man the time of day.

But today a certain sadness pervades all. In a desperate drive for fame our politicians have sold Scotland and its wild places to the lowest bidder. The march of the wind factories is heard in the Glens. Tourism for Scotland is dead. Our way of life crushed beneath the greed of mostly foreign adventurers and aided by our Government and Planners.

This is the opportunity for all you to have your say and perhaps we will save something for our children.

The first great requisite of motive power is; that it shall be wholly at our command, to be exerted when, and where, and in what degree we desire.The wind, for instance, as a direct motive power, is wholly inapplicable to a system of machine labour, for during a calm season the whole business of the country would be thrown out of gear.

William Stanley Jevons (1865)

“God never made an ugly landscape. All that sun shines on is beautiful, so long as it is wild.”

— John Muir

“Thousands of tired, nerve-shaken, over-civilized people are beginning to find out that going to the mountains is going home; that wildness is necessity; that mountain parks and reservations are useful not only as fountains of timber and irrigating rivers, but as fountains of life.”

— John Muir

Hydro Grants

After 80 years of Hydro SSE renewables is offering Community Benefit to those impacted by Hydro. With the new substations not before time. However the devil is in the detail and despite a promise of £10million over 54 hydro plants it will be spread over five years. Which is £37k per community. Of course that is not how it will work with some getting largesse and some getting nought.

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When does science become political dogma?

Science is never decided. That is the whole point of science that it continually evolves. Otherwise everything would stand still. No new cures in medicine, no new AI in computers(probably one we could do without) I found an old sheet from the early days of Climate Change dogma. You know, the ones that all the Politicians bought in to. Of course Net Zero and all the other buzz words are based on political dogma and not science. ‘Scientists’ and Universities may have signed up to it because that is where the money and the grants are. Guarantee of research projects and funding. That is their staff of life! IPCC made an industry of it and all those involved benefitted financially. Remember Al Gore and carbon trading. Sea level is rising and we are all going to drown. And then he builds a condominium on the beach. Even he didn’t believe. It was and always has been about money and multi million dollar bonuses and it is no different today. Just the bonuses have got bigger.

A sense of the absurd

Shortly after I reported that the renewables company RWE operate the largest lignite(brown coal) open caste mine in North Rhine-Westphalia region in Germany and will do so until at least 2030; their purchase of new plant suggests that they may plan to continue well past 2030; we read that the largest high quality coal open caste mine in Wales at Ffos Y Fran, Merthyr, has closed despite millions of tons of coal still remaining on the surface. Not only the largest but the last sizeable UK Coal Mining operation. This is not an old worked out surface mine but a mere youngster of eighteen years with a bright future ahead of it. Neither was it high quality farmland but planned regeneration of a derelict landscape of burnt out cars, fly tipping and the remnants of the underground mining past. The reason is not commercial or the wish of the operators; one hundred men have lost well paid jobs in an area with little alternative employment; but simply because the Welsh Government will not give them planning permission to continue mining. So what is happening to those vast reserves of coal. They are being covered up to prevent people coming on site and stealing them. £millions are being spent to make millions of tons of high quality coal inaccessible. At the same time millions of tons of coal are imported from far away around the world to support our remaining coal fired power stations and steel works. A sense of the absurd lurks in the corridors of power both in Wales, Holyrood and Westminster that defies logic. Carbon savings(disputable) in the UK are but an ant on an elephants back in world terms and simply moving the mining to another country and then adding the carbon footprint of importing coal on ships makes a mockery of any Net Zero claims. CO2 is the staff of life needed for photosynthesis for growing crops and food. Digging up peat for wind farms, haul roads and for the OHLs undoes any good perceived of carbon capture and the myriad of schemes of the ranks of carbon bunnies now employed by local and national government. A footnote is that the mine operators are now awaiting planning approval for the forthcoming restoration work with the bulk of the equipment parked up and the drivers laid off. You could not make it up. The point I make here is that energy produced close to demand makes far more sense than renewables in the Highlands and off our coasts without the destructive infrastructure that goes with it. Energy density of coal and gas is good, Energy density of intermittent wind is poor. The high cost of imported steel(no doubt from China) whilst exporting the carbon costs to other countries, the carbon cost of all the concrete and transport surely vastly outweigh the perceived advantage of cancelling coal production in Wales. Common sense seems sadly lacking in the groupthink of renewables and the targets of Net Zero. Truth is the world has enough coal for many generations as it does with oil for the foreseeable future. So why are we pursuing an expensive and unproven dream which is simply not deliverable in any meaningful way. Modern technologies are cleaner and more efficient than those of past decades. Adapt to them and we can all benefit without destroying those areas we hold dear. And at a fraction of the costs.

What’s in a name?

June 2024 – and something rather strange is happening. All over the Highlands and way south SSE is changing the names of it’s substations. Some of these new names are non sequitors and some vaguely connected. Here is a list for starters,

Fasnakyle – Bingally

Stonehaven – Hurley

New Deer 2 – Greens

Tealing – Emmock (derives from a Scots word meaning Ant.)

Blackhillock 2 – Coachford

Loch Buidhe(Bonar Bridge) – Carnaig

To be identified – Whitehall

There are more and we will list those as they are advised to us.

Potentially there has been talk of changing the name of Fenallen to Beauly and include Wester Balblair too. They both have a very negative reputation.

One does wonder why, and with Fasnakyle SSEN claimed it was a response to local opinion. That would probably be one of the only times SSEN has reacted positively to any consultation. Do we smell a R>>

Seeing as Carn Bingally is possibly some distant from the new substation I think it would be apposite to take such claims with a shovel full of salt. SSEN Maps are universally rubbish. The map below is courtesy of WalkLakes

Could it be as they move to planning applications they wish to obfuscate and restrict the numbers of objections due to locals thinking this is someone else’s substation. Perhaps that is the cynic in me but experience has sadly showed us in the past that such shenanigans are common in the modern electricity industry! And is there any evidence? The existing hashtags won’t work or previous searches obsolete. Design or accident?

Even in darkest hours humour is a tonic!

Many thanks to Josh https://http://www.cartoonsbyjosh.com

And from another wise old owl!

Electricity or Diesel – the motive power of the future

Our government, lead like donkeys, have followed a one horse race for electric power and heating. However there is another horse in town and I think it will be coming up on the outside soon whilst the government’s horse falls at the first gate. And let’s be clear it is the EU that is leading this field. First a few facts. Peak oil has not passed contrary to what some say but is slated for 2030 but in the way of things as the dates have moved forward driven by new technology for deeper drilling, better extraction and new areas in seas which have until now been uneconomical we are likely not to reach peak oil for decades to come. The problem is as population expands and nominally third world countries become wealthier the demand for petro chemicals increases. But what about this new kid in town, the horse coming up on the outside. For that we must ask is diesel dead. Well not yet as HVO, hydrogenated vegetable oils, made from rapeseed, used cooking oils from chips shops and factories, wood pulp and other bi products is a drop in fuel for both diesel engines and heating oil. Last year Ollie Harrison drove a Class Combine Harvester from John ‘O Groats to Lands End on HVO and did so without any issues and raised a lot of money for charity. But yet again the UK is lagging behind as Rotterdam, Finland, Spain and Italy are leading the charge and we have to import all our HVO fuel. Now taking into account that modern diesel engines are cleaner and more efficient than petrol and have the required energy density the future for the combustion engine looks sound. What better way than to supplement our petro chemical industry with a fuel derivative of a percentage of waste products and a cropping element which is sustainable. Presently HVO which is nominally more expensive is taxed as fossil fuels. Why not bite the bullet and reduce fuel tax to bring the cost of HVO in line with petro chemicals. You know it makes sense. After all electric energy for cars is virtually tax free and contributes nothing to the cost of road maintenance. Also the love affair with electric cars is waning fast as cost, residuals, range anxiety and fires concern buyers of both new and second hand EVs. Where is the level playing field or has the electricity industry got the government by the short and curlies to the exclusion of common sense. What of hydrogen I hear you say. Beloved of the renewables industry as it needs large amounts of electric power to manufacture and therefor big profits for electricity. It is difficult to transport and expensive to store operating at high pressure and low temperatures. Unless costs can be reduced it will have a limited market. Unlike HVO which can simply be transported and stored using existing infrastructure, hydrogen would need a completely new and expensive storage and transport facilities. Doable but at what cost.

The Truth about Battery storage (BESS) by Bill Fraser

Battery Energy Storage Systems (BESS) applications often suggest that the applicant is either technically incompetent, or doesn’t want you to know how big the proposed BESS will be. Giving the size of a BESS in megawatts (MW) is nonsensical. MW is a measurement of the rate at which electricity can flow into or out of the BESS. (Like the size of the pipe connected to a water tank). It tells you nothing about the SIZE of the BESS. (The size of the water tank). For the size of a BESS, you need to know the number of hours for which the BESS will be able to produce electricity at the quoted rate. This is measured in megawatt-hours (MWh). A few other facts may be useful. One hazard associated with BESS is the potential for “Thermal Runaway” (TR). This occurs when an internal failure results in a chemical interaction commencing inside the battery. Unlike a fire, it does not require a supply of oxygen to continue. It therefore cannot be extinguished using existing firefighting techniques, which all work by seeking to deprive a fire of oxygen. The only emergency response currently available in the event of TR is to try to cool it using copious amounts of water to stop it spreading. The smoke and fumes given off during TR, and the run-off from the cooling water are both extremely toxic. The TR will continue until the chemical interaction between the materials inside the battery is complete, which may take several days. Spontaneous re-combustion can occur for a significant time after it seems to have gone out, It’s useful to have an idea of how big the conflagration resulting from a BESS TR could be. In energy terms, 40KWh of electricity is equivalent to around 2-1/2 gallons of petrol. So TR in a BESS would be the equivalent of setting fire to around10 tons (!) of petrol for every 100MWh of the BESS’s size! (Except, of course, you can extinguish 10 tons of petrol, but you can’t extinguish a TR). So you want to be pretty careful where you go putting BESS’s!!!

Is this really the legacy what want to leave to our children?

It make you want to weep. From our decking you can look up to the north west and see an upbroken line of hills. We often see groups of Red Deer on the very top. If you are lucky you see Golden Eagles quartering the ridge looking for a snack. Most days you see Red Kite and often a wide variety of other species including Heron and Osprey to name but two. Total silence except the call of a curlew or the mewing of a buzzard. However this little pleasure is time limited because SSEN intend to site a row of 400Kv towers right across this vista, probably this side of the hill from their original drawing or possibly just over the ridge with towers and wires in clear sight. And the likes of Greg Clarke think this entirely acceptable. We already host three 132Kv towers on our land to the south with one close to the house. These carry the power from the Affric-Beauly Hydro scheme. The Beauly Denny is in clear sight to the south of Ruttle Wood. Aigas Dam producing Hydro power is only 100yd from our southern border with Kilmorack Dam only a mile down the road. Both dams are to have new very much enlarged substations and every time we leave the area we pass the notorious Wester Balblair Transmission Hub or whatever they call it this week. We can’t help but feel we have done our bit to support renewables with the local Affric-Beauly hydro scheme producing some 168.4mw installed capacity with an annual output of 852 Million Kwhr. That is enough power for 878,350 homes for a year. Well if wind farms quote ridiculous statistics of homes supplied we will provide accurate ones!

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Let us be honest. This is commercial exploitation. The energy providers say nothing about cutting usage but much about electric cars, electric hungry air source heat pump, electric mountain bikes and even more electric based consumerism. They work hard to decry log burning heating and seek to destroy gas as cooking and heating fuel. Why? Because this is about forcing the populace to transfer their energy needs to electricity to the benefit of one industry. The only thing green in this is pure envy and greed.

There are many before us that have suffered from Wind Farms, the Beauly Buzz, pylons, haul roads built over peat bogs and much much more. People now live with shadow flicker in houses they are unable to give away let alone sell. We have fought wind farms and won but this time we are fighting a religion. The religion of Net Zero and we all know religious beliefs are the most difficult to overturn. No zealot can brook dissent. Wars have been fought on religious beliefs. Truth is this will collapse as it surely must. A lie cannot last forever. When that lie is exposed though we will still have £billions of infrastructure polluting the Highlands and no way to turn back the clock. The Highlands will resemble a scrap yard. Remember when we were told wind farms had to be decommissioned by year 25. They could not be built without subsidy and our politicians(remember Ed Davey before he was a Sir, Secretary of State for Energy & Climate Change in February 2012 in the coalition government) could not give them all they wanted fast enough, The beginning of the Climate Emergency. The carbon savings that Scotland and the UK can make in world terms are the equivalent of an ant on an elephants back. And that before we can prove that Carbon and CO2 are a pollutant and there is plenty of proof that they are not. They are in fact the bedrock of life through photosynthesis. But China, Russia and India haven’t bought into the religion. They are still building coal fired power stations at the rate of one a week(or is it a month-at that rate immaterial) So what is the EU and the UK planning to do about that. Impose a Carbon Tax on all imports from these countries, Yes the Politicians response is to raise a tax that we will all pay in higher prices. Politicians of whatever hew don’t change. If it Moves, Tax it. If it Keeps Moving, Regulate it. And if it Stops Moving, Subsidize it.

Debunking the Climate Change Hoax

By Doug Brodie

An interesting read and not without a lot of research, Debunking the Climate Change Hoax

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Idealism versus Political realism.

I have recently had call to write to our Deputy First Minister and the comment have been well received by those following Social Media. Now this all centred around an Energy and Tourism Conference that she fronted in Inverness. Truth is it has probably been agreed with her predecessor but seeing as this is her constituency I consider that it was unwise to become dragged into this particular forum as it was used indirectly as a platform for the Field group of companies to launch their ‘attack’ on the Highlands for a plethora of Battery schemes(BESS) as they were partners in this conference. The reaction to Kate Forbes has been totally negative. Perhaps a more astute player would have handed the baton to another and dodged the negative publicity. Perhaps she is still a bit politically naïve or was this aimed at re-aligning her support of renewables to the party policies.

And therein brings us to modern Politics and especially Scottish Politics. There are two sorts of politicians. One the idealist and one the career politicians with ambitions for Cabinet and the big pay cheques. Regrettably many idealists are like the Borg. They get assimilated by the Party. They become part of the Collective. This starts on day one when they enter Parliament with high ideals and ambitions to change politics to the better. First they find a PA who is war weary and well versed in political realism. They will direct the new MSP’s diary, will tell them when to vote,  which committees may be available, when to eat and probably even when to defecate. The new MSP will be allowed their one moment of independent glory with their first speech. Then the whips will close in. The SNP have developed that into a fine art but Nationalist Politics from history have a well-earned and unfortunate reputation for that. They will tell them when to vote and what to say. It is a brave man or woman that challenges their writ. Part of this is the allocation to committees which in reality is in the hands of the whips. A safe pair of hands can look forward to a good committee in an area that interests them and ultimately the career path to the Cabinet. Now alongside what is an unrelenting workload the interest of the constituents slowly get flooded out with Parliamentary responsibilities. More and more are dealt with by staff rather than your MSP. The Standard letter. And then what I will call the step to oblivion. Appointment to the cabinet albeit in a minor roll to start. Therein lies Cabinet responsibility which in fact means that you must tow the line on ALL cabinet decisions however much they may go against constituent’s interests. Running along side this is the role of the Lobbyists. A Politician is one of the few jobs in the UK that needs no qualification or experience. A waste operative(binman) has more qualifications. Lobbyists on the other hand are very articulate and personable individuals, normally graduates, with a whole phalanx of skilled and capable staff in the wings. They are employed on their ability to influence politicians be they from big business or national charities. So our Politician has lost their idealism in the face of reality and has been assimilated into the Collective (the Party). However much they might wish to stand alone only the true maverick will and for them it will be a lonely place and a limited future. They will now listen more to their colleagues, secretaries and lobbyists than to those who voted them in. Ok they may walk the walk and talk the talk in the constituency but as soon as they step into the confines of Holyrood, or in similar vein Westminster, they are again part of the Collective and their views are that of the Party.

There are many that will challenge my view of modern politics and politicians and I will agree this is a broad brush approach but had more open discourse been allowed we can only wonder whether the disastrous record from Ferries to Scottish NHS to Schools to Marine parks to new National Parks to the Deposit Return Scheme to Independence and so many more would have been so allowed to fester as it has. I will concur that this mostly relates to the SNP and Green parties and Conservative and Labour are less restrictive in the management of MSPs but then they re not in power and to hold power may well prove as controlling as the Nationalists. Certainly Westminster has proven less accommodating to individual thoughts but then many mavericks exist down there and it has a far longer history than Holyrood.

What has this to do with Renewables? Simply that the current policy of the SNP in Holyrood is to sacrifice the whole of Scotland to an industrialised landscape owned by mostly foreign corporate investors and hedge funds with income and profits exiting Scotland to the overall cost of landscape and local residents in some wild and unrealistic vision that Scotland will lead the world in Renewables, when in fact we lag behind nearly every other country in Europe if not the rest of the developed world. And when it all goes pear shaped they have the temerity to blame Westminster even when all planning is a devolved issue, Energy Consents is a Scottish body and the power of approval rests with Scottish Ministers.

The Economics of Wind

First under Ed Davey and the Lib-Dem coalition we had Rocs, or Renewable Obligation Certificates. This was a method of subsidy to wind farms which would otherwise be unviable to build or at least that is what the developers promoted. In due time phalanxes of wind factories were pushed through by the Scottish Government via their Energy Consents unit. The name says it all. Politics in the South were very different and eventually the will of the people (and the back benchers) prevailed and wind farms moved offshore. In time Rocs lost popularity and were canned to be replaced by Contracts for Difference (Cfds) which was subsidy by another name. Whilst Rocs loaded the cost on the consumer and the consumer woke up to the inequities of that, Cfds grave a guaranteed minimum price to offshore with the cost hidden from the consumer. We still carried on paying it. As the Wind Farm band wagon reasserts itself on the back of the new 400Kv OHLs we do question their viability. If they could not originally be built without subsidy why do we see dozens of new applications now. Move forward to 2024 and we have a new kid in town. The new OHLs transiting the country and relieving the bottleneck that has for so long limited transmission of power from the distant north and offshore to the rest of the UK. Well that is what we have been told but truth is the rest of the UK could not use all the proposed wind power and the real ambition is to sell the power into the rest of Europe. Will they actually want it? Only at heavily discounted prices aka the Scandinavian model and I wonder who will balance the cost/return equation. Power has become the latest financial market with traders sitting in front of their screens trading £millions by the minute. Or will be if and when the new OHLs get built and the new wind farms get approved. Sitting in this mess is the proposal for a large development of pumped hydro and the BESS (Battery Energy Storage Systems). Now that raises issues on two fronts. Pumped Hydro relied on free or at least cheap as chips coal fired overnight energy to pump the water back up to the holding reservoirs as coal fired power stations cannot just turn off like gas or nuclear or wind. Some fed by nuclear in the day as surplus ‘free’ power was available. Now the economics of today are questionable as wind has a guaranteed price either through Rocs for old wind or Cfds for new. Without cheap power to refill the reservoirs the system relies on extreme traded prices to balance the books. Now we move to BESS. Storage or Scam? In reality the cost of building these systems, some £20 million each, let alone to dangers of fire and toxic release questions the whole ethos of storage. It just does not stack up. But herein lies the truth. These are not for storage of power but for trading electricity hour by hour, minute by minute. Buy in power when renewables are producing a surplus at a fixed figure and as soon as the wind dies and the sun goes in sell at a margin. Problem is for the Grid that when you need back up or balancing power there is no guarantee that there will be anything in the tank. This is why BESS has attracted the worst type of carpetbagger and energy traders and should be dropped right now. If this was about energy storage SSEN, Scottish Power and National Grid would have built these in their new substations from day one. Instead we get some dubious players showing their hands and our Councillors and MSPs/MPs fawn like love sick youngsters before them. Where is the critical thinking? Where is knowledge and common sense. List in the cloud of multi billionaires and lobbyists wining and dining our political masters no doubt. Greed is the new Green and we, the PBI, are to be it’s casualties. The collateral damage that trashes landscapes, devalues homes and destroys our ‘mental well being’. That phrase so loved by woke Westminster and the Biased Broadcasting Corporation. I have not even touched on solar or anaerobic digesters and that we will leave to another post.

Will an election change things. Only for the worse I fear. The left has always seen Rural UK as expendable. I see little change there. One final nail in the coffin of energy ambition. The electricity web was built with war fresh in minds and any leg was expendable. Energy was secure. Now we have single OHL or undersea connectors down one line or two at most and war moving to drones and missiles. How easy to disable our whole energy network with one simple drone and looking to the unrest in Sweden the concerns could be internal as much as external. We saw in local elections the growth of the Islamic Party masquerading as Greens. Of note that the regulatory body refused the Islamic Party political status so they seem to have taken over the Greens in many areas. Is this a concern for the General Election and how will that effect the stability of the Country? It is noticeable that the latest player in BESS, Field, is funded and controlled by Asian finance. Not suggesting a political element but we, as a country, may be sleep walking into a minefield.

And then they came two by two

I find it impossible to write about wind farms now, not that there isn’t much to write but because there is so much. We have Scottish Government, The Highland Council, Westminster, National Grid, Ofgem, the new Energy Infrastructure Tsar(sorry Commissioner), The New Energy Act 2023 which is in the Lords right now and everyone of them bowing to their God head Net Zero. As with the likes of the Taliban there is no appeasing the Net Zero zealots. So where does that leave the ‘little’ people. That is a good question. I think the Covid pandemic empowered Politicians and even more so Civil servants to ride roughshod over basic law and basic humanity. Like all religions in history the end justifies the means.

So where do we go from here. The Guardian, that left wing guardian, last week suggested that the Pylons were the next big area of conflict with Net Zero. Reality is dawning in the corridors of power but not on a moral front but a financial one. Simply said we cannot afford Net Zero. The Elizabeth Line(Crossrail), HS2, the 500% increase in electricity distribution infrastructure, myriad of 200m wind farms all reliant on subsidy(often in the form of constraint payments), the farce of electric cars and lack of charging facilities which that Industry now reliant of subsidy(the electricity industry) expects HMG to magically find a few more £billions for. We basically bankrupted the UK over Covid and the bank has run dry. You cannot continue to borrow money at this rate or the pound will have no value. At the present time the National Debt is £2.5 trillion which equates to £38,000 for every man, woman and child in the United Kingdom. Repayment on that debt is £9.8 billion per annum. With that in mind can the UK afford the £ billions of extra infrastructure of the electricity network, presently estimated between £381 billion and £1.4 trillion(the last figure offset by savings[?] of £1.1 trillion). On our experience with all major projects we would suggest this as a optimistic forecast. If our coffers were overflowing and migration was under control this might just be about doable. In our present position – Nah!

So the Councils tinker with 20mph zones, the Mayor of London has his Ulez which is a proverbial lead balloon. We promote EV which we can’t really afford and drop like the proverbial stone in value as they drive off the forecourt. No one seems to have the balls to stand up and say NO! This is madness.

The PM has reacted to Net Zero and cars but there is an elephant in the room that no one has mentioned. As EV ownership reaches a critical mass, not only is fuel tax revenue or the reduction of it going to become an issue, but the profitability of petrol and diesels forecourts will mean a large reduction in petrol station throughout the land and especially in remote rural areas, those for which EVs are least suitable. Those advocating road charging will be rubbing their hand in glee and we can fail to realise that this new technology will cost far more to the car driver and push many of the poorer in our communities away from personal transport. The Old and the Poor will be those that suffer a drastic reduction in their quality of life and their mental wellbeing trapped within 25 minute cities. Not the High Tech ones of planners dreams but the ghettoes of the poor and disenfranchised.

So that is why I am effectively lost for words, shuddering at every wind farm proposition, despondent at every pylon line, angry at every lie from the energy industry, staggered by the arrogance of politicians, planners and corporate bodies that demand to over-ride local democracy and planning law and weeping for the desecration of our land either for an EU wet dream of every country having a Hi Speed rail link (TEN-T) which for the UK is the vanity project we call HS2 or the planned desecration of the Highland of Scotland, and in reality parts of East Anglia, to provide excessive levels of power to London and the SE of England to power their EVs, I-pads, air source heat pumps and the plethora of things that a 21st century urbanite cannot do without and the surpluses to be sold to other EU countries that have seen the light and rolled back on their Net Zero ambitions. That is assuming anyone wants to buy our excess electricity. As technology changes and alternatives such as SMRs become available the UK may have three white elephants blighting our landscape. A dysfunctional and uneconomic HS2 which goes from nowhere to nowhere, a million rusting and disused wind turbines and a string of un wanted and in fact not needed towers and pylons destroying our Scottish, and East Anglian,Tourist Industries.

Oh and whilst about it why not destroy farming for solar farms, re-wilding and tree planting so that those urbanites, tired of city life, that move to the Country and price locals from the housing market don’t have to endure the flatulence of cows and the crow of the Cockerel and don’t have to endure abuse from those rural types when their dogs attack sheep and they leave the gates open after their country ramble. Much better for the Politicians to force all from farming and grow our beef in a factory. Even if it costs five times as much!

Understanding the future

For those not immediately in their path they may be able to live with the pylons but not the expansion of wind farms to cover every hill and not the substations and battery storage that trails in the pylons wake. Just look at the applications currently swamping Highland Council. Windfarms around every corner and three battery storage proposals in the Wester Balblair/Strathglass area alone. This truly is carpet bagger territory. This is the bit the London Intelligentsia don’t get. And living with does not relate to enjoying or being happy with. It is a step don’t the road against mental wellbeing. A wide open vista feeds the soul. An industrial complex does the opposite. And think on this Countryfile viewers, this 400Kv line is only the start. As more windfarms, onshore and off, are approved that 400Kv line will be too small and a second and even third line will join it. By 2050 on these proposals the Highland will be simply a part time(when the wind blows) wind factory and only those too poor to move will remain trapped in it’s embrace. The second clearances are only just around the corner unless we can stop this before it starts! And one day reliable 24/7/365 energy will take over, possibly SMRs, and this infrastructure and desecration will be redundant.

And Just let them burn. The future of battery storage

I was amazed to discover that despite every tom, dick and harry being consultees for any Battery Storage facility, which have a record of catching fire, the SFRS(Scottish Fire and Rescue Service) are not consultees and whereas with a building they would be involved at the warrant stage, health and safety aspects for energy facilities are the responsibility of the design engineers and ultimately if something were to happen HSE. Talk about shutting the door after the horse has bolted. In all fairness the planning officers have been trying to get ScotGov to address this shortfall but so far to no avail. What has this to do with the 400Kv Pylon line. Succinctly the result of the construction of the pylon line is a green light for the carpetbaggers of wind farms, solar farms and battery storage. I took note of the fact that Health and safety are the responsibility of the design engineers and from that we must assume that it is the same with SSEN and the Pylon Line. Mines have the Inspector of Mines, the nuclear industry has the Nuclear Energy Authority, Ships are answerable to the HMCG. Even Prisons have an Inspectorate. It would seem that the electricity industry does not. Seeing the proliferation of renewables and the explosion(SIC) of substations is it not time the electricity industry has an independent assessment authority. There is a Regulator(Ofgem) but according to their website their duty is to deliver a Net Zero economy and keep prices affordable. And one could never say they are independent as they are very much in bed with the transmission companies and National Grid ESO. This truly re-enforces the concern of CB4PC that there is no critical oversight. No one to say do we actually need this.

All reactions:

16Lyndsey Ward, Angus Farquhar and 14 others

SSEN are environmentally green?

SSEN use Gas insulated transformers in their substations the gas is sulphur hexafluoride (SF6). It is a man made gas, a greenhouse gas. Here is a snippet from the National Grid website …

‘SF6 is one of the most potent greenhouse gases we know. Its high atmospheric stability and ability to trap infrared radiation means it’s far more potent at warming the earth’s atmosphere than CO2 over longer periods of time.

In fact, it’s estimated that, over a 100-year period, SF6 is 23,500 times more effective at trapping infrared radiation than CO21, meaning that 1 kg of SF6 has the same impact as 23,500 kg of CO2. Once in the atmosphere, it has an atmospheric lifetime of 3,200 years, which means it can accumulate without degrading for millennia to come.’

On top of that is the tens of thousands of tons of concrete and steel required to deliver the pylons which they ssem so keen to inflict on the populace. Green? I think not!

The new expansion

Well I think everyone is aware of SSEN expansion with literally hundreds of miles of 400Kv overhead lines in the mix let alone the substations at Keith and Fenallen which will cover the area of 29 football pitches. Have no misunderstanding that a new generation of wind farms will follow. Already we know of SSE Renewables touting for Fairburn Extension which will be 14 turbines at 200m blade tip height. And that is just the start. Now I can’t fight every single application but there is a new web site CommunitiesB4PowerCompanies https://www.communitiesb4powercompanies.co.uk/ which need your support and yes! your donations. This is not only a Highland problem but nation wide from east Anglia to Wales, From John O’Groats to London, even as far as Somerset. Remember that competition to design new towers. They have some down there which area. proving very noisy and b. are now built in China as the original manufacturer went out of business. Probably waiting for Ofgen to make their minds up. A sad fact of some much UK manufacture waiting for government contracts. This new website will identify the problems we all face. There is little doubt that the SNP and Greens intend the next Highland Clearances. We see on the west coast the attack on the local fishing industry. For every man that works on a boat there are a further twenty on shore. No fishing industry, no support structure. Similar on the East Coast where the Tourist Industry supports literally thousands of jobs. Destroy the vistas of the Highlands and you destroy Tourism. As hotels, B&Bs and holiday cottages empty so to do those in the support industries find their livelihoods dwindle. And make no bones, this is not just the march of the towers across the Highland and the Moray coast, it is all the additional wind farms onshore and indeed off. Just look at the figures that Ofgem and the Scottish Government quote. The Western Isles will become a desert. Probably that is why the SNP have not been upset with the ferry fiasco. They know no one will need them in a few years time. No fishing, no tourism and thousands of wind turbines cloaking the islands. The attraction for the SNP is a method for funding their independence. Mind you look at all else they have done and one can be assured this would fail too.

Is the CPRE for for purpose or a mouthpiece for Political ambitions?

THE IMPACT OF WIND ENERGY ON WILDIFE AND THE ENVIRONMENT Papers from the Berlin Seminar

I apologise if I start at the end but I think that is a good place to see where you are going to:

Concluding remarks
Hilmar Freiherr von Münchhausen, German Wildlife Foundation
This paper, produced by the Global Warming Policy Foundation and the German Wildlife Foundation, takes a Europe-wide look at the conflict between wind energy and nature conservation. In many European countries, people are opposing wind energy projects that are destroying wildlife habitats. We need to be aware that all energy sources have a negative impact on the environment and nature. It is therefore all the more important to generate reliable scientific results about these impacts. The German PROGRESS study, which reviews the effects of wind energy on bird life, shows the great effort and difficulty involved in collecting meaningful data. The study is so valuable because it provides scientifically sound quantitative results. This is of the utmost importance for a fact-based political discussion. In particular, the consequences of wind turbines in forests are serious for many types of wildlife. We observe with great concern the massive expansion of wind power in Germany’s forest areas. The lack of public consultation in the planning of wind energy projects are shown by the examples from Ireland. It is worrisome when valuable landscapes are given official protection, yet those protections become completely ineffective where the construction of wind turbines is concerned. It is rather alarming that there is collusion between the wind industry and actors in the planning and approval process. As a financially independent advocate of nature conservation and species conservation, the German Wildlife Foundation is implacably committed to the protection of wildlife and its habitats. At the same time, we are working on the subject of wind energy with the same vigour as we do in the field of forestry, agriculture or hunting. An open and constructive debate on the consequences that wind energy can have on wildlife – from insects to black storks to wildcats – is more than overdue. It is important to make people aware of the conflicts affecting nature conservation and ultimately to educate policy makers. The German Wildlife Foundation regards wind energy as an important contributor to the energy mix of the future. Its further expansion in Germany, Europe and also worldwide, however, should not be promoted at any price. For Germany, at least for the construction of wind turbines in the forest, we demand a moratorium. This would allow us to reconsider the future course of action and, on the basis of scientific findings and national and European nature conservation laws, to adopt a far-sighted course in line with the precautionary principle that is enshrined in environmental policy. We thank everyone who contributed to this paper. May its contents find their way into the social and political decision-making process so as to guide the future of wind energy in Germany and Europe.

The Report that is the forerunner to these comments is contained in this link We would congratulate the Global Warming Policy Foundation and The German Wildlife Foundation for producing this. It makes somewhat sobering reading and does much to re-enforce views that we have held for some time often based on anecdotal evidence. This provides the bones that hold the whole body of evidence together.

Net Zero – A Green Light to the Wind Industry?

It would seem that May’s Net Zero speech has been seen as a green light to the Wind Farm Developers. These recent applications are massive or extensions to extensions for already massive wind farms. They are certain they are pushing on an open door and with Boris’ urban credentials I fear that they may be right. London’s electric future will be ‘financed’ by Scotland wild lands.

The concern is the sudden level of Section 36 applications lodged with the Scottish Energy Consents Unit. A while back I thought that the removal of subsidy would dull the enthusiasm of the renewable carpet baggers although profits were still there to be made. One speech by a discredited Prime Minister on the way out mixed with a crazy and orchestrated Climate Disaster message more often seen in 4th rate American afternoon TV programs has opened a Pandora’s Box of opportunity for the wind industry. To attain even a small percentage of May’s ambition would mean re-introduction of subsidy and an explosion of renewable energy tied to massive battery banks. That the end of result would be a disaster for the UK and it’s industry is simply ignored by the Politicians who are smarting from the opprobrium lauded on them by the general public after there gross mis-handling of Brexit. That an orchestrated promotion of Climate Extinction has been seen by the Political Classes as a bandwagon they can jump on and win support from The People is simply dishonest when leadership should be the order of the day. Decades ago the UN’s IPCC promised Climate Disaster so we may well ask why has’t it arrived yet? Of course good science and honest reporting give the lie to the mis-information promoted by the Climate Chaos kings and queens. And therein lies a problem. Until we have some honesty the carpet baggers of the wind industry, the Climate conference enthusiasts, Smart Meter evangelists and every other snake oil salesman/woman will be promoting their self interest. Be it Elon Musk and his electric transport future or Boris and his bikes, we are all in for a bumpy ride. And that throws up a concern. The Political future: neither Boris or Hunt fill me with any hope of a sensible discussion on our future energy needs. Lobbyists and charlatans will be knocking on No.10’s door which will be forever open to a quick fix and a sound bite. I am not sure how the subsidies will be re-introduced but in one way or another they very probably will and you can bet your bottom dollar that it will be the consumer that pays. In Scotland the green light will shine forth for the wind industry and I don’t think anywhere is safe. Second, third and forth extensions will be nodded through, Wild land will be seen as a great opportunity and every hill and glen will be faced with an attack by the carpet baggers. Long term the intermittency of wind will fail us and the alternatives of fracking and nuclear will become the only game in town with massive wind farms rusting and bankrupt every which way we look. The true and real Armageddon. And Climate will just go on being the climate and weather events will go on being weather events, be they the one hundred years flood or the scorching summers of our childhood or just a normal rainy and cold winter.

Although it’s been melting for 20 years, the Jakobshavn Glacier in West Greenland – famous for producing the iceberg that sank the Titanic – has now started growing again.

A Geologist’s opinion!

Educated opinions challenge the Political Dogma of Climate and yet we hear far too few of them. The Political Dogma fuelled by the fanatiscm and religious fervour of The Extinction Rebellion Faith will create a growth of wind energy the likes of which we have yet to see. SSE quotes an expenditure requirement of £2.2 billion on infrastructure requirements in the far North to deliver renewable energy to the Central Belt. The majority from new wind farms unidentified and lauded to supply the growth of electric cars. Unless the truth is heard and the lies de-bunked we will be faced with an Armageddon of renewable energy far beyond our worst fears. 

25 SIMPLE BULLET POINTS PROVING CO2 DOES NOT CAUSE GLOBAL WARMING: BY A GEOLOGIST FOR A CHANGE (DR ROGER HIGGS)

JUNE 10, 2019 CAP ALLON

Dr Roger Higgs, Geoclastica Ltd, Technical Note 2019-11, 6th April 2019, on ResearchGate (LINK HERE)

We urgently need to expose the ‘CO2 = pollutant’ fallacy being forced upon your children, grandchildren, nephews and nieces by schools, universities, governments and mainstream media worldwide, and to denounce it in scrupulously truthful terms easily understood by the public, including those youngsters themselves.

Here are the 25 bullet points proving CO2’s innocence:

1) Geologists know climate change unrelated to atmospheric CO2 occurred throughout Earth’s 4.5-billion-year history. Yet the IPCC (United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) has no geologists among the hundreds of appointed authors of its Fifth Assessment Report of 2014 and its Sixth Report due in 2022 (see my Technical Note 2019-10). Thus IPCC incredibly lacks both geological input and long-term perspective.

2) IPCC’s very existence relies on public belief in manmade or ‘anthropogenic’ global warming (AGW) by CO2 emissions. Moreover its appointed authors, mostly government and university researchers, are nearly all biased by strong vested interests in AGW, i.e. reputations (publications, lectures) & continuance of salaries & research grants. Similarly, major universities have abandoned their scientific impartiality & integrity by hosting research institutes mandated to confirm & act on AGW, e.g. Grantham Institute (Imperial College), Tyndall Centre.

3) The often-repeated ‘97% consensus among scientists that global warming is man’s fault’ (CO2 emissions) is untrue. It refers in fact to surveys of just a relatively small group of ‘climate scientists’ (a fairly new type of scientist, with strong incentives for bias; see Bullets 2 & 15), moreover only those who are ‘actively publishing’.

4) ‘Climate change denier’ & ‘global warming denier’ are despicable & dishonest terms for ‘AGW doubters’. No educated person disputes global warming, as thermometers measured 1°C rise from 1850 to 2016 (with pauses).

5) The ‘Greenhouse Hypothesis’, on which IPCC’s belief in AGW is based, is that atmospheric gases trap heat. But this old (19th century) notion is merely an idea, not a hypothesis, because it is untestable, impossible to prove in a laboratory as no experimental container can imitate Earth’s uncontained, well-mixed atmosphere.

6) IPCC computer models are so full of assumptions as to be extremely unreliable, e.g. forecast warming for 1995 to 2015 turned out to be 2-3 times too high ! A likely reason is that the greenhouse idea is nonsense, as explained in recent publications by several scientists. See Bullet 19 for an equally drastic failure of IPCC models. See also: https://www.wnd.com/2017/07/study-blows-greenhouse-theory-out-of-the-water/ and https://principia-scientific.org/r-i-p-greenhouse-gas-theory-1980-2018/

7) For about 75% of the last 550 million years, CO2 was 2 to 15 times higher than now. Evolution flourished, CO2 enabling plant photosynthesis, the basis of all life. Extinction events due to overheating by CO2 are unknown. !!

8) Through the last 12,000 years (our current Holocene interglacial period), CO2 was a mere 250 to 290 ppm (parts per million), near plant-starvation level, until about 1850 when industrial CO2 emissions began, making CO2 climb steeply. Nevertheless CO2 today it is still only 412ppm, i.e. under half of one-tenth of 1% of our atmosphere

9) Until man began adding CO2 about 1850, warming (determined from ‘proxies’ like tree rings) since the 1600AD Little Ice Age peak was accompanied by slowly rising CO2 (measured in ice cores). A simple explanation is CO2 release by ocean water, whose CO2-holding capacity decreases upon warming.

10) Supporting this sign that CO2 is a consequence, not cause, of global warming, a published study of 1980-2011 measurements showed that changes in warming rate precede changes in CO2’s growth rate, by about a year.

11) Since the 1850 start of man’s additions, CO2’s rise has generally accelerated, without reversals. In stark contrast, the post-1850 to present-day continuance of warming out of the Little Ice Age was interrupted by frequent small coolings of 1-3 years (some relatable to ‘volcanic winters’), plus two 30-year coolings (1878 to 1910, 1944 to 1976), and the famous 1998 to 2013 ‘global-warming pause’ or ‘hiatus’ (Wiki).

12) This unsteady modern warming instead resembles the unsteady rise of the sun’s magnetic output from 1901 toward a rare solar ‘Grand Maximum’ peaking in 1991, the first in 1700 years !

13) Modern warming reached a peak in February 2016. Since then, Earth has cooled for 3 years (now April 2019).

14) The ‘Svensmark Theory’ says increased solar magnetic flux warms Earth by deflecting cosmic rays, thus reducing cloudiness, allowing more of the sun’s warmth to heat the land and ocean instead of being reflected. In support, a NASA study of satellite data spanning 32 years (1979-2011) showed decreasing cloud cover.

15) Vociferous IPCC-involved climate scientist Dr Stefan Rahmstorf (Wiki) of the German government’s Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, recipient of a US$1 million personal research grant from a private foundation, wrongly said in his 2008 article ‘Anthropogenic Climate Change’: “there is no viable alternative … [to CO2 as driver of modern warming from 1940 to 2005 because] … different authors agree that solar activity did not significantly increase” during that period. Yet nine years earlier, in 1999, famous physicist Dr Michael Lockwood (Wiki; FRS) wrote, in ‘A Doubling of the Sun’s Coronal Magnetic Field During the Past 100 Years’, published in prestigious Nature journal: “the total magnetic flux leaving the Sun has risen by a factor of 1.4 since 1964” and 2.3 since 1901 !! See for yourselves the striking overall 1964-91 climb in solar-magnetic output, recorded by the strong overall fall in detected neutrons (proportional to cosmic rays), in graph 3 here: https://cosmicrays.oulu.fi

16) Lockwood showed averaged solar magnetic flux increased 230% from 1901 to 1995, i.e. more than doubled ! The final peak value was 5 times the starting minimum value ! Bullets 17 & 18 likewise back Svensmark’s theory…

17) … after the previous solar Grand Maximum (4th century, long before industrial CO2), in the next decades Earth warmed to near or above today’s temperature. Then ‘sawtooth’ cooling proceeded, through the Dark Ages and ‘Medieval Warm Period’, into the Little Ice Age, paralleling a 1,000-year unsteady solar decline; and …

18) … before that, between 8000 and 2000BC, Earth was occasionally warmer than today for hundreds if not thousands of years, as shown by tree rings, shrunken glaciers, etc.. Then unsteady cooling from 3000BC into the Little Ice Age paralleled unsteady solar decline following the Holocene’s ‘super-Grand’ Maximum near 3000BC.

19) This 4,500-year cooling contradicts IPCC computer models that instead predict warming by the simultaneous (slow) rise in CO2. This is the ‘The Holocene Temperature Conundrum’ of Liu et al. (2014). See also Bullet 6.

20) Embarrassingly for AGW promoters, the 8000-2000BC warm interval (Bullet 18) was already, ironically, named the ‘Holocene Climatic Optimum’, before today’s CO2/AGW hysteria began. The warmth probably benefitted human social development. Indeed, it was cold episodes, bringing drought and famine, that ended civilisations.

21) Cross-correlating post-1880 graphs of solar-magnetic flux versus Earth’s temperature suggests a 25-year time-lag, such that the 2016 peak temperature corresponds to the 1991 solar peak. The lag is probably due to the ocean’s high thermal inertia due to its enormous volume and high heat capacity, hence slow response to warming.

22) IPCC, ignoring the possibility of such a time-lag, claims that simultaneous global warming (until 2016) and solar weakening (since 1991) must mean that warming is driven by CO2 !

23) The last interglacial period about 100,000 years ago was warmer than our Holocene interglacial. Humans and polar bears survived ! CO2 was then about 275ppm, i.e. lower than now (Bullet 8).

24) The simultaneous rise of temperature & CO2 is a ‘spurious correlation’. Warming’s real cause was a solar build-up to a rare Grand Maximum, which man’s industrialisation accompanied by chance. So IPCC demonising CO2 as a ‘pollutant’ is a colossal blunder, costing trillions of dollars in needless & ineffectual efforts to reduce it.

25) Global cooling now in progress since February 2016 can be predicted to last at least 28 years (i.e. to 2044), matching the sun’s 28-year decline from 1991 to today, and allowing for the 25-year time-lag (Bullet 21).
Inescapable conclusion: the IPCC is wrong − the sun, not CO2, drove modern global warming.

By DR ROGER HIGGS (http://www.geoclastica.com + https://www.researchgate.net)

Contact: rogerhiggs@hotmail.com for literature sources for any of the aforementioned ‘Inconvenient Facts’

Grand Solar Minimum + Pole Shift