RE: global warming
May I just come in here and say a bit about wind farms? In my area a new business park is being built and to provide towards the power to run it it has been suggested that a few wind turbines be installed. Well! the reaction from the locals was hysterical! My husband, as part of his job, had to hold meetings in the community to discuss the pros and cons and he could not believe some of the things that were said! People were afraid that they would interfere with their TV reception, that they would be too noisy and that they emitted radiation!!. The biggest complaint would be that they would be an eyesore in the community.
I am sure the same thing was said all those years ago when electricity pylons started to march across the landscape but it still went ahead and was a blot on the landscape, BUT who really 'sees' them today?. They have blended into the background because they are always there.We also KNOW that they emit radiation and are not safe to live close to.
Personally I think wind farms are beautiful. We have stood on the side of the road in Devon and Cornwall and watched fields of these majestic machines turning and there is hardly any noise, less than the whine you get from the street generator plant.
I am sure that people will get just as used to them as they did the pylons, and I know which one I would prefer to live next to!
Love and light
reikiangel
xxx
RE: global warming
Hello Reikiangel,
Some people are such NIMBY's. Wind farms are the future of sustainable energy, and we will have to investigate other forms of renewable energy, too. Unfortunately, solar power is so expensive at the moment that very few people are using it. My belief is that if renewable energy was cheaper than fossil fuel energy, people would not be so 'anti' towards it. The wind turbines that I have seen lend a certain mystery to the landscape, rather than 'blotting' it.
Yes, I believe it was John Betjeman who wrote a poem called 'Pylons' in the 1930's, lamenting their position in the landscape. How attitudes have changed!
Love,
Patsy.
😀
RE: global warming
Well, I'm repeating myself from earlier I think, but I respect the other view yet have my own which is that I like modern windmills. Yes to 'adding a certain mystery to the landscape'. Actually I can think of some beauty spots and landscapes where they would NOT fit in. But as for the more ordinary patch of land, they add something IMO.
Certainly they are not noisy! In Denmark I sometimes park my bike on a sunny day (Danes are also into bikes in a huge way, which keep you fit and emit no pollution) and sit leaning against one of their windmills to read a book. Last time I did this, I think it was switched 'off' - there must be a way of putting their brakes on remotely. Then as I sat there it started up. Now, I was leaning against it, and only heard a minute swooshing and a minute hum, so there is no sound pollution. Presumably no cancer-causing emissions as from pylons either.
Venetian
RE: global warming
I think the worst thing about the windmills are the chemicals that they use when making them. A lot of them are made on the Isle of Wight and I wouldn't want to work in the factory where they make them. Those chemicals pong!
Sweetheart x
RE: global warming
ORIGINAL: venetian
I haven't a clue about weather - oops, sorry - about whether the present warming is due to humanity. But the jury actually does still seem to be out, and intelligently so. Dr. David Bellamy again today in The Daily Mail has almost a page on which he's persuasively saying governments are about to spend trillions of pounds on something nothing to do with us. He has more scientific detail, but in essence he follows the first post on this thread - that small fluctuations, and not so small at all, of temperatures going up and down, up and down, have always been going on just as we now are experiencing.
I'm not on either side. I've just suddenly realised that the media have taken me for a ride, and I didn't stop to question until now. And I find it very ironic that only today the CIA with a budget of untold billions is officially stated to have got everything wrong on Iraq re WMD. I'm just one person who went along and thought everybody knew what they were talking about on global warming. But I know how often majority or popular opinion can be so wrong, so I've pulled up my campaigning horse by the reins to a halt.
Is the global warming scare every bit as true and as real as the CIA's 'intelligence' on Iraq?
ORIGINAL: venetian
Gillyanne weighed in earlier on David Bellamy's opinion, well thought-out in the article we read then, that global warming from human activity was bunk. As for myself, he convinced me into a neutral stance....
I find this interesting beyond the present subject for it goes to show how we can react, Yeah Yeah! to an "expert" one day and then find him quite flawed the next. Always worth bearing in mind.
ORIGINAL: songstress
Well, from my research, knowledge and belief, the Earth is a living, breathing planet. It will undergo many changes...Man is too insignificant to make such a major impact that the planet goes into 'meltdown.' ...Dr Bellamy talks a lot of sense, and I am pleased that you don't believe all that you hear and read about global warming.
With respect to Dr Bellamy, anyone that insists that the human factor is not a significant part of global warming is barmy IMHO. Global warming as I understand is a fact, so the question is whether it is just the regular natural process or whether it is in part caused by human activity. In looking at human activity I think there are two relevant factors - the industrialisation of the last two centuries and the continuing population explosion. So the question is are these two things just coincidental with this current phase of global warming? I think not. By the way the global population is estimated to reach 9 billion by the year 2050 (this deserves a thread on its own).
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/5732657/?GT1=4529
I think the world population hit 1 billion in about 1800, so this would be a 900% increase in 250 years. It seems to me that this kind of overpopulation has got to cause problems, and global warming could well be one of the effects. Re the CIA / Iraq, the difference is that Bush / Blair had their own agenda ie reasons to tell lies, but in this case I don't know what the hidden agenda is said to be.
Dr L