More Windmill woes ...

I see there is a bit of a kerfuffle going on in the "Green energy" lobby at present because the Chancellor and the PM won't give assurances they will continue to subsidise these hugely expensive follies.

I really must look it up, but there is a new technical paper published by Danish scientists and engineers who have identified a new problem with the "wind farms." Put simply, a windmill creates turbulence as it rotates, something we really all should be able to recognise. The big windmills create quite a bit. This is what catches birds out, and these really big blades create some interesting vortices as the wind moves past them and as they rotate - particularly at the tips. Any helicopter pilot or designer will tell you this is one of the more "interesting" features of flying one. Even when the blades are not rotating, they create some interesting turbulence "down wind" as the wind moves round, past or over them.

So why should this be a problem?

Ah, there lies the rub as they say. In a wind farm where you have several rows of these things, the first, upwind row, will operate efficiently. The row behind it loses around 10% of its efficiency and the row behind that, loses more ... Oh dear, so building the damned things in neat rows is not the most efficient way to arrange them. Apparently what you need is to have one long straight row of them. But hold on. The turbulence actually spreads out sideways as well ...

So, all those lovely windmills are probably not operating efficiently even when the wind is blowing within the very narrow operable range. Then, as I mentioned the other day in my post "Yesterday's Challenge" they're very likely generating power when its not needed or simply can't be distributed.

But those nice "Green Power" people don't mind, the government pays them for it anyway ... Or rather, you, the taxpayers, do!

Modern Myths ...

Ever since Dan Brown published The Da Vinci Code, there have been rumours and myths floating round the internet about the "truth" it revealed about Christianity and Christ. Most of this revolves around the statement in the opening pages that the "Priory of Sion" was a society formed in 1099 to "protect" the "secret" that Christ didn't die on the cross and was married with children... The so-called "parchments" supposedly "found" in the Bibliotheque Nationale in Paris aren't parchments at all. They are in fact typed sheets of paper deposited by their author in the 1960s.

The Priory of Sion, rather than being of ancient foundation was, in fact, founded by a gentleman of the name of Pierre Plantard and some friends in 1956 and was originally a "traditionalist" Catholic group. But M. Plantard was a man of imagination and, having come across the equally fictional stories of the Abbe Saunierre, saw an advantage in building an entire "back history" for his secret society. He pillaged Masonic traditions, legends, fictions and, when he ran out of "evidence" invented some.

Enter now some authors who drew on this rather fantastic "heritage" to write a book in 1975 called "The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail" and who sued Dan Brown for Breach of Copyright over the Da Vinci Code. They lost even though the judge conceded their material had been used by Brown.

Who was Plantard and why did he create this mythical history? It seems he had a somewhat dubious past and he also believed fervently that he was the last direct descendent of the Merovingian Kings of France. The Merovingians were supplanted by the Carolingian kings and Emperors in 751 AD and M. Plantard was determined to "restore the Merovingian line" to the "throne of France and Europe." Rather a strange  ambition and belief - but of such are Conspiracy Theories made. I wonder whether he could even have imagined that, thanks to Dan Brown's creative "history" extending the "founding" of this rather small, obscure and almost unheard of secret society into the Crusades and linking them to the Templars, Rosslyn Chapel and Leonardo da Vinci would propel its name into the realms of the Conspiracy Theory?

Probably not, though he would, no doubt, have been pleased by the attention it now gets.

The truth, as ever, is far to prosaic for those who love to find "proof" that everyone else is wrong and conspiring to "cover up" what they would like to believe is true. The "Priory of Sion" is far from ancient and, like a number of other supposedly "ancient" secret societies has a rather more recent set of origins. Its founder was certainly imaginative and extremely creative - but, sadly, probably a very deluded individual - like those who believe the introduction to Brown's book ...

Yesterday's Challenge

Yesterday Josephus posted an interesting challenge, and it's one I am giving some thought to. Trouble is, it needs quite a bit of research to do it justice, so it will be a while before I can pull all of it together with the references I need.

The challenge is to write a refutation of the "benefits" of switching from our present electrical generating plants to "renewable" energy, specifically, energy from wind farms. There are a very large number of things that can and should be used against them, but, as I said, I need to pull together all the facts. Here are some of the issues I think have been buried in the rush to close down nuclear stations, coal fired stations and even the gas and oil ones -

1. Cost. The cost of generating electricity with wind turbines is anything but a straightforward argument. There are a lot of hidden costs in this, far more than in any of the 'old technology' they replace. Apart from the cost of building these things and the cost of extracting the rather expensive metals required for the fancy gearboxes they need, plus the control units and so on, there is a maintenance cost. The 'life' of one of these units is given as 25 years, and then it must be dismantled and replaced.

2. Environmental Impact. This is largely ignored or swept under the carpet, but already, here in Germany, there is a resistance movement building against the building of any more of them. They are noisy, one protester describes it as living next to a perpetually idling helicopter. A recent study of this problem has turned up the fact that it affects a lot more people than originally thought. They vibrate, and animals don't like being near them. Already there are studies reporting that shell fish, bottom feeders and crustaceans are decamping from the offshore wind farm sites. And they are taking a terrible toll on the birds of prey.

3. Distribution of the Power. It isn't simply a matter of connecting these infernal eyesores up to the power grid. The problem is that the National Grid in any given country is configured to supply a permanent load from certain fixed sources and distribute it through a range of sub-stations and transformers to the point of use. Switching off a 'normal' power station leaves a 'hole' in the grid which means that the power has to be shunted into that part from somewhere else. Now project this onto windmills. They don't function all the time, in fact, they can't and if the wind is too strong or to weak, they shut down. To compensate for this you actually need an 'intelligent grid,' one able to detect a weakening of supply from one source and switch to a compensatory over supply somewhere else. It gets even more complex when you add in the variations in power demand between day and night, hot weather and cold, week days and weekends. Add to this the fact that bringing a generator 'on stream' when it is 'out of phase' with the grid is likely to cause a major blackout ... At present, the only way to ensure continuous supply is to keep several coal or gas burning power stations 'spooling' but offline until they are needed.

4. Maintenance. Maintenance is a major issue. It is costly enough when all your turbines and generators are in one or two buildings on the same site, scatter them across the landscape and across large stretches of the ocean and you introduce a whole new range of problems and costs. Recently reported is the fact that all the turbines in the North Sea are suffering from problems of shifting foundations, crumbling concrete and corrosion. To Quote -
"Putting the things offshore may avoid objections from the neighbours, but (Chancellor, beware!) it makes even less sense, because it costs you and me — the taxpayers — double. I have it on good authority from a marine engineer that keeping wind turbines upright in the gravel, tides and storms of the North Sea for 25 years is a near hopeless quest, so the repair bill is going to be horrific and the output disappointing. Already the grouting in the foundations of hundreds of turbines off Kent, Denmark and the Dogger Bank has failed, necessitating costly repairs."
Why should this be so? Easy, the seabed is shingle, mud and not a lot of rock, so the foundations have had to be built on "piles" and the piles are transmitting the vibrations into the mud and shingle. It is now suggested that the maintenance costs are likely to become so exorbitant over the next ten to fifteen years that it will be completely uneconomic to continue generating power from these turbines.

5. Subsidies. At present the electricity generated by these monstrosities is viable only because of massive subsidies. But, here again, the 'transparency' is lacking. the level of subsidy varies from country to country but figures I have recently seen suggest that the real cost per kilowatt from a Wind Turbine is of the order of £1,200 per kW/hour. So tax is subsidising this folly, which means everyone is being forced to pay into the profit Greenpeace among others makes from it. (Greenpeace gets funding from the Wind Turbine lobbies and manufacturers). Figures from the UK's Power Distribution authority shows that wind turbines contributed less than 4% of the power consumed and averaged under 1% per day over the last months of 2011. Hardly an economic situation given the vast amount of money invested in these things.

Greenpeace, WWF and other 'ecology' activist groups have been running a scare scam for years, blaming "Atmospheric CO2 for the "Anthropomorphic Global Warming" which, according to them will cause sea levels to rise by anything from 1 metre this century to over 60 according to one report. The truth is somewhat different. CO2 is a trace gas in the atmosphere. Depending on where you are in the world it can be between 0.2% of the atmosphere you breathe or as high as 0.4% if you live in a large urban city. Plants actually love the stuff, it stimulates growth and makes gardens, crops and forests  flourish. This is why Green House cultivation works so well!

As for it retaining heat in the atmosphere, again, that depends on where and what you measure. Yes, it can cause rapid heating, but in order to demonstrate this effectively in a laboratory you need concentrations above 10% by volume. At that level, guess what, we wouldn't be worried about the warming, but reaching for the breathing apparatus!

Interesting. Even without all the figures to hand, I think I may have qualified for the Spectator's entry criteria ...

History and Perspectives ...

A friend in South Africa is writing a biography of a close family member. She has already discovered that it brings back memories she'd probably rather not recall, like the brutal killing of her father in the presence of her small sister, by a bunch of liquor and hate fueled "freedom fighters" whose only real interest was getting all the valuables and any guns they could find. This was the trade mark of much of the "armed struggle" against the "white oppressors" which saw more of their own people killed for "betrayal" or "collaboration" than all the white victims put together.

Of course, that's not a popular view, certainly under the new regimes or in the liberal western academia which is now writing the "history" of it all. All I can say is that the majority of those writing learned treatises on the subject of the European settlement of Southern Africa, have little or no connection with the families who did live there and even less contact with the realities these people faced.

One author my friend has come across in researching the political background to her family's story put forward the view that, while East Africa was 'settled' by the sons of aristocrats whose only interest was in making money there and who 'gave up and surrendered control' to the locals when it suited them and they could no longer maintain their lifestyles, she paints those who settled in South Africa as "largely illiterate working class ne'er do wells who exploited the blacks and treated them like slaves. We are accused in her book of "dispossessing the Africans of their land, their farms and their culture." She'd obviously only read the anti-white propaganda. The book is stunningly biased, blatantly so in almost every aspect, praising the tribes people in their "resistance" to the "white incursions" and dismissive of everything the European settlers did.

Perhaps one day the real truth will emerge, but sadly, it is unlikely to do so in my lifetime.

New Demographic Study

A new demographic study has produced several surprise findings. The first is that the spread of what is termed "Sub-Replacement Fertility" is far more rapid than previously thought. In essence what this means is that birthrates are falling below "population stability" levels which are where births balance deaths and average life expectancy is long enough for three and even four generation overlaps. This generally means that each woman in the world needs to have 2.1 children. However, increasing numbers of women are choosing to have only one, to start having a family late or to not have any children at all.

While this is generally a "developed world" phenomenon, it isn't necessarily confined to it, and even within it, there are exceptions. The USA being one.

The second finding is that there are an increasing number of "gender imbalances" among the very young. That doesn't mean we are seeing the emergence of what is often refered to as "gender dysphasia" or an increasing number of children who are "Gay," but that the natural "balance" between the sexes is changing. China is the best example, with a rigid "one child" policy, the balance of male to female births has changed dramaitcally in the last 40 years. But China is not alone, right across Asia more and more boys are being born with fewer and fewer girls. This is not confined the Asia either, it is also noted in parts of the Middle East and in Europe.

For China it could be a serious problem. Not only is the population now static, it will soon begin to decline rapidly as both age takes its toll and the falling birth rate increases the tempo. In the west, "gender determination" technology has been subtly at work for some while, and while we still don't see the sort of balance seen in Punjab (126 boys to 100 girls) the western rates are also edging upward.

For the moment a lot of this is concealed by migration, but the authors of this study have identified a trend which seems likely to see the planet's human population fall back a little from the present 7 billion, which, at least in my view, would be no bad thing as it would reduce the strain we place on the world's resources.

A third major finding concerns death rates, and these are showing a sustained and in some places accelerating, increase. With birthrates below the 2.1 for "population stability" (In Europe it stands at 1.4, in China it is around 1.5 and even in parts of Latin America is below 2) which, coupled with the excess of males will impact in time to see a sudden "step" reduction in populace. The return of some diseases once thought to have been eradicated and the arrival of some new ones isn't helping the balance either. Tuberculosis, HIV/AIDS, cardio-vascular disease, drug and alcohol abuse (even in supposedly "dry" countries) are all major contributers together with famine in overpopulated and very dry parts of Africa and, of course, cancer.

The exception is the USA, with its rich mix of populations, the Hispanic section has the highest birthrate, at around 2.7, Afro-Americans at around 2 and the Anglo-Europeans at 1.8 are the exception to the trend even in South America (Average around 2.0) and outstrip Canada at 1.5.

Of course, there are huge implications in these figures. One is that the "growth" economists rely on is not sustainable as the population shrinks. Someone is going to have to rethink that whole concept. Tax income for governments will also shrink as fewer enter the workforce and more retire at the other end. There will have to be a major rethink of a lot of services, provisions and even how jobs are structured, what they are and how they are sustained/supported from incomes. I forsee that many "non-productive" jobs will have to go. If you aren't producing or doing something translatable into cash on the table - it won't be sustainable.

One thing is for certain in all of this, the world's human population is undergoing a major change, what it will look like in 100 years is anybody's guess. It won't look anything like the situation at present seems certain. The good news is surely, that the planet as a whole will benefit, with less strain on water sources, natural forests, the oceans and grasslands, quite a lot of other inhabitants may see their chances of survival improve.

A Demonstration FOR new development?

Yes, that is what happened yesterday in Frankfurt. Ten thousand demonstrators packed into the Römer - the cities ancient market square - to demonstrate FOR the expansion of Frankfurt International Airport...

Given that we've had months of demonstrations demanding fewer flights, less activity and a reduction of the airport, this is a turn-up for the books. I can't imagine it happening in the UK. As soon as anyone tried to organise it the anti's would turn up the heat and scream them off the streets threatening violence and using intimidating tactics. But this one went without a hitch, though the "gegeners" were assembled, a couple of hundred of them, round the Dom chanting "Eenemeenemiste, wir brauchen eine piste; Eenemeenemeck, die menschen müssen weg!" (Translation: Eenymeenyminey, we want to use a piste (ski slope); Eenymeenyheck, the people must all go!") Got to admit, it's a catchy little slogan, but it was out gunned by the assembled workers, trades unions and corporate investors crowding the neighbouring Römerberg who claim the expansion will bring 100,000 jobs to the region.

The interesting things the facts support this.

The problem is that bad planning decisions over the last thirty or forty years have allowed housing estates and villages to be built all around the periphery of the airport and under its flight paths. Fine as long as it was only a few flights a day, but this is an airport that has thirty second intervals between flights landing or taking off - and these planes are a lot bigger than the ones the planners considered. This is one of the problems of the economics of perpetual "growth" in any sector. It has to impact somewhere. Growth means more people, more people means more traffic, more tarmac, more housing, more jobs, more run-off water, more waste ...

Again, there is a different approach to finding a solution here than to what I am used to. The Airport is buying up properties in the worst affected areas and demolishing them, the Local Authorities are paying for the installation of better sound insulation in houses further away. The "gegeners" can't win this one, but at least something is being done to solve their problems.

I have to say that it was certainly novel to see the CEO of Lufthansa, the CEO of the Airport and of another stakeholder in the Airport, plus all the Union bosses (and one of these is currently striking for higher pay for ground staff at the airport) all addressing the protesters and answering their questions as far as possible. When a reporter challenged the Airport CEO demanding to know who had organised the protest and whether his workers were compelled to be there, he invited one of the workers waving a placard to answer it and walked away. The answer was rather forthright and it certainly didn't give the impression the worker considered himself obliged to be there by his boss. He turned out to be one of the striking ground staff!

This has to be the first time I've seen a demonstration FOR change and expansion and it has to be the first time I've seen such an orderly one.

Conspiracy Theorists

A programme on the "Fernseher" recently had me alternating between extreme impatience and outright amazement. It covered a number of "conspiracy theories" currently in vogue on the internet and elsewhere. The majority seem to be fueled by people in the US, though support comes from all over the world. One of the biggest is the whole "Bush bombed the Twin Towers to start a war" theory, which is, as one would expect, extremely popular with the Iranian regime who never lose an opportunity to remind people that the images of the airliners - from umpteen different cameras and people, are all "CIA fakes."

According to the guy they featured the other night, the Pentagon was hit, not by an airliner, but by a missile fired from one of the US Navy's own nuclear submarines. In his view, there was no part of any airliner visible in any photograph and all the pieces recovered, were from a missile. How he worked that one out when the film shown on our TV clearly had large sections of aircraft marked up in the livery of the airline in it, defeats me. But he claimed in an interview that all these pieces were "fakes, planted by the military" to "stir up the people and provoke a war." Yes, I'm sure it was - how else do you stir up a war? And the Pope is the leader of the Protestant Churches ...

I find the mindset that dreams up these theories, then fosters and nurtures them, developing all kinds of "evidence" to support their claim, difficult to grasp. Some of these folk seem to make a complete industry out of "proving" their theory and "confronting the XXXX with the evidence."

Another popular one is the whole "The Moon Landings were faked by Hollywood" theory. It ranges from supposedly professional photographers who claim "there are no shadows on the Moon" to so-called "engineers" who claim it is impossible for the Lunar Lander to have actually safely made the descent and taken off again. Then you have the movie makers who claim to be able to "prove" the films and photos taken on the Moon's surface were "faked" in a laboratory. I did enjoy the clip shown with one of this last class confronting Neil Armstrong on the steps of the Capitol. He had his full camera crew and sound recorders, lighting team and all the hangers-on with him as he charged up the steps shouting "Senator Armstrong! You claim to have walked on the Moon. I say you're a liar, a thief and a fraud. What do you say to that?"

Neil Armstrong turned, shook off the restraining hand of his companion, and slugged the guy, knocking him off his feet. Perfect timing. If only someone would do it to the likes of Michael Moore (Fahrenheit 911) and all the others of that ilk.

The damage these clowns do to the standing of their own nation is incredible, yet, the strange thing is, they claim to be "serving the interests of the people" by "exposing the lies and deceits of ...." Funny thing, I don't recall ever voting for any of them, so how are they serving? Ah, of course, that simple expedient of self delusion and media exposure. Dream up a story wild enough and preferably with a government whose popularity is shaky as its focus, and some folk will believe anything. Never mind the evidence, do I want to believe President G W Bush is an enemy of the world, the people, the country? If yes - then no matter how wild or stupid, the conspiracy theorists must be right.

Another subject touched on was the idea that the Titanic didn't in fact sink. That her owners actually sent the Olympic out with a name change so they could claim the insurance. This ignores the fact that the Olympic was, in fact, slightly smaller and had a number of fairly obvious differences in her appearance. Titanic's other sister, Britannic (Originally Gigantic), would have been a better candidate for the switch since she would have been identical in appearance, but she was still on the slipway when the Titanic sank. Britannic wasn't, in fact, completed until 1915, largely because, after the Titanic sank, she was heavily modified to take into account lessons learned in the sinking. That doesn't stop the conspiracy theorists running the theory though.

This strangely twisted way of thinking seems to permeate a whole range of subjects, from the Moon Landings, through 911 and on out into the world of Climate Change. On the flimsiest of evidence people's integrity, motives and even intelligence are called into question. One of the things I find most depressing is that it is usually the supposedly intelligent younger generation, many at university, who ardently believe all this garbage. It must be some sort of reaction to the discipline of study - or perhaps it stems from the fact their lecturers may be ardent believers themselves in a "greater government conspiracy."

Returning to the Twin Towers, one "investigator" claimed to have found "explosive residues" in the debris - proof in his mind that G W B had had the Towers destroyed by demolition charges. There are any number of perfectly reasonable explanations for his "tests" having given a "positive" result, not least among them being what is called "expectation bias." Others claim the films and photos of airliners striking the Towers are photoshopped and the actual strikes were anything from missiles to F-16s of the USAF "ordered" to attack the Towers by the President himself.

I'm sure every USAF pilot would obey THAT order... Yet, thanks to Michael Moore and his cohorts, this is exactly what Iranians do believe.

Having debunked all the theories included in the TV programme did ask the same question I am pondering. What is it that makes otherwise intelligent people adopt these strange theories? Why are they driven to be so vehemently convinced that they, and they alone, are right?

I think there might be a few doctoral thesis to be had in finding an answer ...