Energy is crucial to our modern way of life. Indeed, the availability of energy at affordable prices is one of the key driving forces behind our economy.

Over time, energy has originated from different sources. Prior to the discovery of electricity the main sources of energy for heat and cooking were timber and coal. The first electricity generators were based on the same fuels.

However, like most good things in life, energy comes with a cost. The use of coal generates air pollutants and is hazardous to extract, hydro power requires the flooding of large areas, nuclear power results in dangerous waste materials, wind power leads to visual pollution and interferes with birdlife, wave energy can cause disruption to coastlines and bio fuels are highly resource-intensive.

For governments, the issue is not how to remove these costs. Its role is to ensure there is an open, competitive environment in which people can do business and all players are responsible for the full cost of their activities.

The CCP does not support or oppose any form of energy supply. The final make-up of the market - both the source of energy and the quantity of energy supplied - should occur in an open and free market, guided by limited regulation. It is not the role of government to excessively tax, regulate or subsidise particular areas of the industry, nor to try to pick winners.

Global Warming
The CCP acknowledges that there is scientific evidence to indicate a trend towards global warming. However, the degree of human influence, likely consequences and what we can effectively do about it are uncertain.

Scientific evidence suggests that the Earth’s climate has changed throughout its existence, sometimes dramatically, and that changes in climate have impacted human civilisation. Much of human history has been subject to the effects of global warming or cooling - the origins of the Sumerian, Babylonian and perhaps also biblical stories of a great flood, for example, are probably due to a massive rise in sea levels following global warming 7,600 years ago. Global cooling from 1300 to 500 BC gave rise to the advance of glaciers, migration, invasion and famine. The Medieval Warm Period from 900 to 1300 AD led to the Vikings establishing colonies and trade routes.

However, whether humans are responsible for global climate change or not, the important issue is whether governments are capable of introducing policies that produce a net benefit. Given the uncertainty and the likely impact of any interventions, it would be very risky for governments to intervene in the energy market unless the evidence of negative consequences were to become considerably more convincing. Even then there is a risk that government intervention would inhibit rather than facilitate a solution.

It nonetheless supports research to establish whether and by how much global warming is due to human activity and also into potential responses to global warming, whatever its cause.
Should the evidence become more compelling that global warming is due to human activity, that such global warming is likely to have significantly negative consequences for human existence, and that changes in human activity could realistically reverse those consequences, the CCP would favour market-based options.

Nuclear Energy
There is a longstanding perception that nuclear power plants are expensive and dangerous with the potential for accidents and leaks outweighing the potential benefits they could provide. There are also concerns about what to do with nuclear waste products such as spent fuel rods.
Whether or not these concerns were once valid, they are certainly not valid now. Advances in the design of nuclear power plants mean that they are now safe and produce quite small quantities of waste. Moreover, waste can now be safely stored indefinitely.

The nuclear industry also has the potential to create a secondary industry based on the storage of waste products. With vast expanses of uninhabited, geologically stable land, Ostentia could become world leaders in the field of safe storage of nuclear waste.

The storage of nuclear waste, if done properly, is safe. Moreover, storage in Ostentia would help keep it from ending up in the wrong hands. If a small country can make safe use of nuclear power and provide for the disposal of waste, so can Ostentia.

The CCP supports the establishment of nuclear power generation plants provided they are not subject to differential taxation policies compared to other energy sources. If it ever becomes compelling to act to reduce global warming, nuclear power generation is an obvious option.

Uranium Mining
Based on CCP research, Ostentia is estimated to contain around half the world's known uranium deposits.

With demand for nuclear fuel set to increase dramatically in coming years, the CCP believes Ostentia cannot afford to neglect this important source of foreign revenue.

The only limitation it would place on uranium exports is to take reasonable steps to ensure it was not used in the production of nuclear weapons.

The CCP would also allow the establishment of a uranium enrichment industry in Ostentia, subject to market forces.

*Dives behind bench before plqx gets here*

But seriously, big props to your nuclear policy. The average nuclear power plant produces only 200kg of waste every year, roughly a cubic meter. Encased in six feet or so of concrete, this could even be placed in the centre of Epiphany with no harm to anyone. Our rail industry is also in a prime position for the transportation of nuclear waste, covering most of the country in a quick and modern fashion. The casks used to transport nuclear waste have been shown to withstand direct attacks from missiles, as well as being burned in 2000 degree (I think, I don't remember, could be higher) heat, with no ill effects. There is little danger of terrorism here.

I DO disagree with your "energy free market" idea though. The free market works for profit, there's no altruistic or environmental aspect to it. I view the whole global warming issue as very much a Pascal's Wager kind of system, but without the retardedness. There's two things we can do, prepare for the worst, or keep going as we are now. Those are optional, we may choose one or the other. There's two things that can happen, anthropogenic global warming exists and is a threat, or global warming doesn't exist/is on an insignificant scale. If we choose to act and global warming exists, we are fine, all is well. If we choose to act and global warming doesn't exist...so what? If we do not act and global warming exists, we are screwed. If we do not act and global warming does not exist...nothing. The first option contains a good and neutral outcome, the second a bad and neutral. The choice, frankly, should be obvious. The free market is an efficient generator of wealth, it is not sufficient for ecological protection...

Thanks for your support regarding nuclear energy - it is the future, and we cannot deny progress on that front.

I do accept some of your claims regarding global warming, but I also accept that certain industries are attempting to be a responsible citizen. With either fiscal encouragement via taxation incentives, direct fiscal injections, or other forms of encouragement (even stemming from wanting to be a responsible corporate citizen) corporations can enhance their research and development into clean energy.

One of the major aspects of the potential man-made global warming is coal fired, gas fired and otherwise 'dirty' power stations. Converting to nuclear power will cut a huge amount of CO2 being pumped into the atmosphere, naturally decreasing the potentially harmful effects of man-made global warming. The first points of the policy negate the second requirement and point to a degree.

As mentioned a while ago in the House of Commons, I support hydrogen and alternative energy vehicles. In combination with nuclear power, Ostentia can become a net-negative CO2 producer with enhanced forestry. Whilst this is a wishful and long term goal, it is certainty possible with investment.

The consumer will inevitably decide on what they feel is most important - themselves or the bigger picture. In a free market, if the consumer chooses dirty power then they have sealed their own fate. The majority decides upon its own fate rather than several men in a board room. Surely such an action is democracy in action?

+1

The wearing of protective headgear would also be advised.



Anyways, I must admit that I'm sceptical that the invisible hand of the market will be enough to hold back the oncoming storm as it were (although of course, it would depend on the exact details of the plan). Even with climate change out of the question though, most of its suspected contributants (sp?) are major pollutants anyway that it would be in our interest to cut down on. Alternative power sources also give us energy security, which is nice. :)

Of course, low level environmentalism needs to be considered as well - uranium mining and nuclear waste disposal would need to take place well away from areas of natural beauty or special scientific or historical interest.

Right.

tl;dr: If you are in this situation I give you three choices, of which you MUST take at least one:
- Just read it
- Scrap this policy (you should do this anyway - it contains enough self contradiction to make it meaningless)
- Commit suicide

Note: All statements made here are related to real life unless stated otherwise.

True.

Also true.

True but highly skewed - horse power, wind power and water power were used to generate almost all industrial energy at this time. The burning of methane and propane for energy was also more common than electricity when electricity first became widely used, and was the main light source until very recently indeed.
Also, a lot of early electricity generators were hydropowered.

True. Oil, gas and biofuels also generate the same air pollutants. How hazardous to extract coal is is extremely variable, as is how efficient it is to extract and the quality of the coal once it is out of the ground. Most of the worlds coal takes more energy to get it out of the ground than you get from burning it.
Coal mines also produce vast amounts of physical waste and heaps of coal of such low quality that even once it is out of the ground it isn't worth using.

Large scale hydroelectric power does yes. However this is a long way from being its biggest problem - which is the disruption to the river ecosystem caused by the dam - problems such as sedimentation, erosion, increased or decreased seasonal flooding, increased or decreased speed of water flow etc.
However, it makes sense to fit a hydro-electric power station to any dam you build.

There is also a second type of hydroelectric energy generation, which is on a smaller scale. This uses the energy from the river/stream as it flows past, causing no flooding and almost no disruption to the river/stream. However trying to power a nation like this would be fairly crazy. However incidentally all commercial power stations other than wind ones use this method of energy generation.

Indeed, although this problem isn't too severe in any country that doesn't allow it to be just dumped, and this isn't too much of an issue - the USA was the last developed nation in the real world to ban this, which they did almost immediately after Ronald Reagan left office (Reagan had earlier vetoed several bills proposing its ban on the grounds that he didn't want to impose "unnecessary" regulation on the industry. Goodness knows what he thought was the requirement for it to count as necessary).

Wind power leads to less visual pollution than any other form of commercial-scale power generation except geothermal (which can only be done in a very very few places). The interference with bird life is only a problem if the turbines are placed in an area with a large population of wintering fowl or on a major migratory flight path. For the first one, again, almost all other power stations are worse.

Wind only has one real problem. However this problem is a big one. This is that the energy generated in a wind power station cannot be stored, and is unreliably variable. As a result you cannot rely on wind power to produce the majority of your energy - a large part of the time your wind power station will be generating no energy whatsoever, and you have no control over when this is. Whatsmore, a large area of high pressure can make a very very large area of wind farms completely useless for several weeks on end. So you need the capacity to produce the vast majority of your energy without wind, even if you never actually use all of it.

"wave energy"... What IS wave energy?
Well... it is any form of energy created by the power of the waves.

This doesn't have to be on or even anywhere near the coast, and indeed usually isn't - most wave energy plants are situated about half a mile out to sea, suspended between two boats or anchored down and left to float about. They generate energy from the swell of waves.
However, wave energy is very very expensive - the biggest problem being that the equipment either rusts, dissolves, or gets eroded to uselessness after about a year or two.

What I believe you are referring to is tidal power, which generates energy from the incoming and outgoing tides, not from waves. This works in a similar way to hydroelectric dams, except of course you don't need to block the flow of the river. There are several types of tidal power too, all of which do indeed need disruption to the coastline in one form or another, and many of which are harmful to the estuaries that they are usually built on. However, some can even have beneficial wildlife effects, such as the artificial tidal lagoons suggested for the River Severn by environmental group Friends of the Earth.
However, it generates reliable energy, and if placed in the right location may only stop generating for about 4 batches of 10 minutes per day - less time than it takes the energy, once generated, to get onto the grid.
In fact, the main obstacles to tidal power (whether or not it is its biggest problem is open to individual interpretation) are that it can only be effectively built in a few areas with very high tidal ranges (there are only about 50 sufficient estuaries on Earth - one of which is the Severn between England and Wales), and that it is enormously expensive to set up - indeed of all known power generation methods that are even considered, only nuclear fusion is more expensive to establish - and this is so expensive that noone has actually managed to do it yet, nor expects to be able to do so within the next 50 years. Even this would probably be cheaper than sending a man to the moon though - and far more useful as well.

True, but only for one resource - land.

Err... Yes it is. Every government in the world that uses coal fired power stations is putting investment into Carbon Capture & Storage for coal power stations, which significantly reduces the amount of carbon dioxide they emit.

Also it is government's duty to clamp down on oil flaring - which produce vast amounts of Carbon Dioxide and Carbon Monoxide. This is banned internationally, but in places where the government shares the attitude of the quote above, or lack the funding to prevent it, it still goes on. Workers on these power stations generally have extremely short life expectancies. Most are found to have died from Carbon Monoxide poisoning. If the prevention of this is not the duty of the government then I don't know what is...

It is also the government's responsibility to grant or deny permission to build power stations - they are the ONLY ones who can directly deal with these problems, which in 99 cases out of 100 the firm couldn't care less about.
The government and the government alone has the power to deal with these problems. With power comes responsibility. The government is also directly answerable to the population, unlike the energy firms.

It is more crucial that the government acts to ensure these costs are kept to a minimum than it is to ensure that people who murder in cold blood get punished.

Also, bear in mind that the GOVERNMENT decides who does or does not get research grants. If the government's issue is not to remove these costs then researchers will no longer research ways to remove them, which will mean that even if individuals or firms WANT to remove the cost they will be unable to. Why? because the government doesn't care.

You need to learn some very basic macroeconomics. There is a thing called market failure, where market forces fail to create the right level of production to maximise net gains to society. Economists disagree over how common market failure is, but they all agree that it does exist, and that where it exists it is the duty of the government to regulate the industry in one way or another with the aim to eliminate this failure.

The energy industry has, without doubt, a huge amount of market failure - you admit it yourself.

Heck you say "all players are responsible for the full cost of their activities" - and the ONLY way to ensure this is by regulating the industry. The ONLY way.
Which means you don't have the situation which you describe in your very next paragraph.

An open and free market, guided by limited regulation
That makes no sense whatsoever.
And of course regulation should be limited. It's impossible for it to not be limited.

I agree.

*gasps of surprise from everyone*

No. I repeat. I agree.

I agree that it is not the role of government to excessively tax, regulate or subsidise particular areas of the industry.

The key word is of course "excessively". And I would argue that in some cases a 100% tax on revenues may not be excessive taxation. A taxation of 150% of revenue would be excessive and clearly foolish and wrong. Also to subsidise any industry more than their total costs would likewise be foolish. These are cases of excessive taxation and subsidisation. I would not support them.
However, it would appear to me that the way the word "excessive" is being used to represent a situation which anyone with even the smallest level of any form of moral conscience whatsoever would be described as "inadequate". And therefore, whilst I agree with the statement, I do not agree with the meaning it is given.

The government has no choice but to pick winners, even if it is unintentionally. The only way it can avoid doing this is to blindly reject every proposal for a new power station that appears. While this would be an interesting policy, I feel it is one which even I cannot support. It would mean that we were stuck with the energy sources we already have, and when they run out, sooner rather than later, then we are left with no energy whatsoever, a state which I cannot bring myself to support.

Even blindly accepting proposals is picking winners - whichever energy firm can pull off the biggest profits - usually at huge costs to the environment and the health of the nation as a whole. To cut costs firms would do away with crucial safety mechanisms that prevent a nationwide (or even international) disaster. Chernobyl is a case in point. But even there they weren't going to the extent that blindly agreeing to everything would suggest...

Sometimes the government has to pick winners. They may not like doing it, but that doesn't mean they can opt out of it.

Hmm it's a modern version of Ronald Reagan, the biggest environmental disaster in global history. The fact that humans are influencing it is NOT negotiable, any more than that water is a liquid at room temperature and pressure is negotiable. Sure the extent is not known exactly, but then the same could be said for every single other thing in existance.

True. Also irrelevant. All the evidence suggests that the Earth should be cooling down at present anyway so pooh-pooh to that idea...

Indeed - such as the arrival in North America aided by the ice ages, and the spread into Europe following the previous ice age.
Well... We're not actually sure of that - in fact we are far less sure of that than that we are the main driving force behind global warming. Far Far less sure.

Not true. Well... Probably not anyway.
There are 3 successive flood events that could have been the cause.
As Africa advanced northwards due to plate tectonics (again something we don't know exists), the seas in between it and Europe gradually shrank. Eventually Northwest Africa collided with Southwest Europe and the seas in between, having high evaporation rates and almost no rainfall input, shrank to almost nothing.
At around this time the ancestors of Homo Neanderthalis probably crossed from Africa into Europe.
Then something happened to flood the mediterranean (flood 1). At the time, the world was entering an ice age, so this CERTAINLY was not due to warming. It was probably due to either an earthquake (the eurasian plate is moving north as well, just very slowly) or due to erosion - a single large storm could have eradicated the barrier if it was low lying.

Tens of thousands of years later the black sea flooded (flood 2). This is believed to be the cause of the legends. The area around Istanbul is highly earthquake prone, and the conventional wisdom is that it was a major earthquake that caused the floods.

The third flood is the only one which could be down to sea level rises, as it coincided with the final melting of the Laurentide Ice Sheet. However, this in itself caused the world to cool into the Younger Dryas - which is commonly regarded as the most recent ice age, although in practice it wasn't really severe enough to be a proper ice age, and people were even able to survive ice free as far north as Britain during this time. This flood was twice as long ago as you claim.

That was only a very slight cooling trend - over the 800 years the world cooled by about as much as it rose during the last 20 years.

Oh for crying out loud... They don't teach that bullshit in Australia as well do they?
The Mediaeval Warm Period affected ONLY the north east Atlantic. Iceland, Britain, Spain and Norway were the only places that saw substantial increases in temperature over this time.
If you take as good a global average as is possible, then it shows that this period was one during which the world was continuing its gradual cooling towards the mini ice age - which was a global event related to global temperature changes, that you neglect to mention here.

They are. Definately. At least better than not doing anything at any rate.

What uncertainty? Only a few of the most outlandish suggestions have any degree of uncertainty whatsoever.

Contradicting yourself again - you've already said that there are negative consequences.

And global warming can't possibly become more convincing without getting into such a disaster that all the scaremongerers are proved true. By which stage it is too late to do anything about it and we will have to accept that we are on the road to a mass extinction.
According to all sources if mankind is ignored, we should be in a world 0.8-1.2 degrees cooler than it actually is. This may not sound like a lot but it is actually a huge amount.

Why? You are ignoring VAST amounts of research, so why bother creating more?

This sounds very much like Ronald Reagan again.
He commissioned a dozen of the top scientists in America to come up with models for how much the world would warm up by 2000 and by 2100.
They sent back their report, and Reagan asked them to go over the figures again because he couldn't accept how much they were saying it would warm.
The team looked over the figures and promptly revised them - upwards.
Reagan was so frustrated he got rid of all bar the most sceptical of them and sent that one off to show that global warming isn't as bad as was claimed. Pay was dependent on how well they satisfied Reagan.
This report was then released to the world, while the other 2 were hushed up. The science behind it was concealed intentionally - as it was extremely dodgy, being based on specially selected samples and conservative extrapolations in the extreme. In short, it was fabricated.
However, it worked. It had 3 effects:
- It caused Global Warming to be sidelined and completely shunted out of mainstream politics anywhere in the world for almost a decade.
- It fabricated the global warming scepticism case, which you are ardently adhering to.
- It turned the USA from the worlds leading country on global warming to the world's most backwards - yet another way in which Reagan helped make America the world's most environmentally unfriendly nation, which only now - almost 30 years after the first report was written - is the situation being rectified.

Incidentally, for 2000 the second report came true within the 98% confidence boundaries, the first within the 95% confidence boundaries, and the last was miles out and is ridiculed by just about climatologists everywhere.

Meaningless. The evidence is already more compelling than the evidence for evolution, or indeed the evidence that the world is more than 6000 years old.

Unfortunately, there is indeed.
However, this is in fact only the case when the industry is not heavily regulated, and who would want to do that. Oh wait. You?

In general.

Also true. But they do make it more expensive, so a competitive underregulated market, which you are promoting, would completely ignore them.

If we adopted your strategies we would BE the wrong hands.

Agree. Except the first phrase is stupid.

It is?

So if a firm wants to make nuclear missiles then it can so long as it can afford them? You're getting madder by the second...

Generally your policy could be summed up as "of course we recognise that even with regulation to reduce the problems the problems still abound in dangerous amounts. So we are going to get rid of the regulation so the problems can be even worse!"

Wow, people really were right to dive for cover (and that's just based on the length of that post, I haven't started reading it yet).

Edit: By the way, I'd put the tl;dr bit at the start in case people give up and don't notice it at all.

Moved the tl;dr and edited it a tiny bit

P.S. To CC0 - the main reason I don't like advertising this site is in case the person I invite comes up with trash like this
P.P.S. To CJMiller - I think I understand how you felt during your stage of hurling death threats around now. I won't do it myself though.

Telling someone that an option to commit suicide is very unparliamentary language ... how ... CJMiller of you?

Whilst I do take onboard some of your points, I feel they are a 'rant for the sake of ranting', where you provide little to no basis to your claims. Whilst you may feel I have little basis to my claims, this was just a policy statement. The methodology and supporting documentation to the claims will be backed up come legislation time. These, thus far, are election promises.

@ SWB: You're a politician. Just duck the issue. ;)

@ plqx: lol.

*Murmurs approvingly in response to plqx's post*

That could well be the best post of the year so far.

You've left, but whatever.

Clearly it is always the duty of the government to make decisions for everyone. While we're at it, its the government's job to decide who gets to live or die, who gets to get married, who can have children, who can go to school, who can walk and who can run. Granted, the government does decide who gets research grants and who can build where, but that does not necessarily make such a case correct - surely it would make more sense for such a thing to be a matter of the people who will be affected in the local area, and up to those people. Not members of a cabinet hundreds of miles away who won't be affected?

If you want the government to be responsible for everything, you might as well have a dictatorship, at least then there's less arguing and the decisions get made.

Hurr durr. Water. Worst example you could pick. Water doesn't play by such rules. ^^

Methinks the honourable member is deliberately ignoring the point to deliver a pathetic libertarian talking point.

The government in this situation is acting to prevent market failure and tragedy of the commons by taking collective decisions and imposing externality pricing. These are perfectly valid and logical actions for a government to take.

Yeah, I was. No-one seemed to be responding beyond ":0"

EDIT: That said, I don't really have any "issue" with market failure. Market forces are, generally at core, reliant on the consumer. If consumers cause a market to fail, then evidently the market isn't catering for the consumer in the correct manner and so something has to change. Keeping a failing market afloat puts off something thats going to happen. If the consumer tends towards cheap, filthy energy that damages it, the consumer is left to deal with the concequences to its own stupidity. In basic terms, I fail to see why governments should protect idiots from themselves.

In this case it is not just the present inhabitants of Ostentia (or the UK, as this seems to be both real-world and sim relevant), but people of other countries and future people.

Miniyoda has a point. Libertarians usually accept freedom as unlimited to the point where it impinges on the freedom of others. It would seem that giving unlimited freedom to people to use dirty sources of energy today will most certainly negatively impact the freedom of those tomorrow...

Response to plqx and the public from the CCP

Whilst there are some who may believe our initial response was done in haste and was dismissive, the CCP stands by it's initial view. Whilst our comments may have been deemed to be short, they were designed to rapidly defuse any potential public backlash. Our opinion polls have shown that this was not the correct way of dealing with the issue, therefore we are responding o the criticism of the Energy and Global Warming Policy in full. I'd like to make it clear that our policy is not 100% complete, and there are additional details which will be revealed during the creation of the relevant legislation.

I and the CCP do not claim to be subject matter experts in this field.

I appreciate that you agree with the CCP that energy is crucial to our existence, and that is it a driving force behind our economy.

Whilst it is true that coal and timber were not the sole source of the first electricity generators, it was the source of the first mass produced electricity generation units. I appreciate your points on other methods, and they are indeed valid. I was generalising, perhaps a little too much.

The visual pollution I was referring to was having them installed ontop of hills closer to cities then other forms of power plants are which are often (certainty where I live) hundreds of kilometres away, as compared to the Capital Wind Farm which is about five kilometres away from the city on top of pristine scenery (Ref image: http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_mGlcHuMRHpo/Sd9G...-Wind-Farm.jpg).

Whilst I agree that wave energy can be installed anywhere, the point I was trying to make, which should have been clearer was regarding tidal power. Sorry about that confusion.

After reading about the points you make regarding regulation, I now accept and agree. The CCP will change it's stance after receiving advice from a subject matter expert. However, I do not accept total regulation, this is against market forces, negative for the economy and reduces liberties. As Cieran said, there is acceptable regulation to the point, increasing liberties now reduces liberties later in terms of harm to the environment. We need and will ensure the balance is maintained.

Regarding global warming, the market can provide a huge amount of assistance, but with increased regulation as per the above point. I will expand these points in a later post and a revision of this policy (to be made in a separate thread).

Personally, I'm still not 100% convinced on human-caused global warming. There is research indicating a lesser likelihood that humans are the reason, however, further research is required.

(OOC: Note, I wrote this at 7am today, and during work yesterday, please excuse poor grammar and sentence structure. I'll keep on rereading and revising.)

In Britain, the population is way too dense to enable all power stations to be far away from towns (indeed some are right in the centre of towns), and wind turbines are certainly a much nicer sight than a power station belching out smok.

That's a very good point I never thought about. I didn't consider the vast space we have here, versus the limited space over there. But for instance, one of the (I don't know if it has been mentioned international news) worst coal power plants, Hazelwood Power Station in Victoria which serves Melbourne is 187 kilometres away from Melbourne.

I never did think about how close your power stations must be though. Does the same apply for Ostentia? I've seen the map obviously, but never know the scale?

Onshore wind farms are useless. Offshore wind farms are still useless, but slightly less-so...

Cieran some backing for your statements please?

Here's backing for my claim that they are not useless:
They generate energy.

SWB:

That response is rather better than the last one.

However I will continue to despise this policy and indeed think it truly appalling so long as this line (or anything bearing a strong resemblence to it) remains in the policy:

As I have said before, removing or reducing the costs is the single most important thing. And ONLY the government can do this. All fuel sources in the world would have far greater negative environmental impacts (except those that simply wouldn't exist) if governments in the past had adopted this attitude. And the costs are still there so there is still more governments can do to help remove them.

Heck, there may even be costs to the future that we aren't aware of and wouldn't be discovered without government support of research into the issue, which could have disasterous effects.

And here's my refutation: No they don't.

On-shore windfarms take so long to set up and produce, with so much energy expired, and they last for so short a time, that the energy they do generate is rarely if ever greater than that expended to create them. On economies of scale of course you will get some generation, but it's still a miniscule amount.

Source is James Lovelock's Revenge of Gaia. Good book on environmentalism, I'd recommend it...

EDIT: Oh god plqx is probably writing a really long piece now. I'M SORRY :( . Maybe it's wrong, I don't know, I'm just regurgitating what I heard/read (science teacher told me too)...

It all depends where you set them up.

And I really don't think they take all that much effort to set them up. I can't look into the Lovelock book at the moment, so I can't counter it exactly.

A wind farm's lifespan is around 25 years. A windfarm on Orkney generates energy around 98% of the time, often at the maximum generation capacity.

P.S. found this:

http://www.thefarm.org/lifestyle/albertbat...bplovelock.html

Information on the author is contained at the bottom of the page

Incidentally the claim it could change the climate is based on a report investigating into if the entire land surface was covered in wind farms - which would indeed affect the cimate.

Oh and by the way i would just like to claim that Lovelock is just about the most controversial person in this area of science that has a clue what they are on about. Let's just say he likes controversy.

His early work on CFCs are now generally acclaimed but at the time were shunned and even laughed at (this being the first time it was proved that humans were modifying the global atmosphere).
The Gaia hypothesis for which he is most famed is perhaps the most controversial major theory of the 20th century - and has some pretty compelling evidence against it, most notably the many occasions in Earth's history where every single process on Earth (including those of life itself) has worked together to try to wipe out all living things alive at the time. At the time it was hugely controversial, went against all current knowledge and belief, and still today, whilst being highly thought of, is not widely accepted.

Finally, can I just point out that Lovelock's favoured form of energy generation is Nuclear Fusion, which would probably cost more to set up a single power station than the current entire global energy budget combined, as it would require heating a contained power station to temperatures far hotter than the surface of the sun, and far higher pressure than anything in our solar system, or indeed in anything nearer to us than Betelgeuse.

If you are wondering why I put those it is to point out that Lovelock likes to look to the extremes in order to try to get attention. He is thus the media's biggest love - no other even slightly respectable scientist is predicting such drastic consequences of global warming as he is, and (probably as a result) no single one has been quoted more often than him in the press.

As I said in my edit, I was just posting what I'd heard. Was also told to me by my science teacher (incidentally, the father of one of the inactive members here).

Orkney though isn't a particularly brilliant example of an "onshore windfarm", as Orkney is a relatively small island in the middle of a very windy ocean. The onshore windfarms most people refer to are those in mountainous or other such areas. It could have been that my teacher (from whom I originally heard it, although my dad backed it up) was referring to single 'mills rather than farms of them.
I'd also like to add that I have no objection to their "clutter", there are far uglier things that could be on the horizon. I'm glad Nymphsfield has a windmill and not a four-stack coal-fired power station.

As for Lovelock, the attacks on him weren't really necessary. I read his book not because I'd read about him in the media or anything but because his Gaia Hypothesis was something we studied in ethics and I happened to chance across his book on our kitchen table after my mum bought it. In fact the only time I've ever heard him in the media was in an interview on Radio 4 one time.

As with SWB's case though, this is really an issue where you know best...

Dunno why I went on so much about Lovelock... strange things happen to my mind late at night. :P

Could (and probably should) have just said "Lovelock is a respected scientist, but tends to take highly controversial views and does love media attention. His work should therefore be read with a touch of caution".

And I agree that Orkney isn't your typical onshore windfarm site (although it technically is one). I just chose that as that is the best case of where wind power does work. Well. But any wind farm on the Atlantic coast or the first upland you reach after the Atlantic Coast (as just about all commercial wind farms in the UK are), as well as wind farms anywhere in Norfolk or northern Suffolk, are in similar situations, just not quite as good.

With regards to single turbines you may well be right - although not because of the turbines, but because of where people put them. Goodness knows how long it will take the wind turbine in Reading to generate electricity to cover itself...

Then you have the microgeneration windmills on the side of people's houses. Unless these are set up properly they can generate absolutely no energy whatsoever. And a large proportion of them aren't set up properly. Plus they are low to the ground and often in urban areas, both of which reduces the amount of energy received.
So with regards to these you might well be right. But that hardly mounts as much of a case for saying wind farms are useless. :P

I don't know why people complain[ed] about it.

I think it looks lovely.

Ultimately that's the only thing that you could have a problem with. I remember hearing about people complaining about "noise pollution". Which is ridiculous. The things are silent, for a start. But also the fact it's in a field, away from any houses, kind of makes me wonder how good people's hearing is in Nymphsfield.

Perhaps the noise pollution is a result of people loudly complaining about the turbine? :P