LOOK! GROWTH!!

Renewable energy generation in the UK has soared to new record levels.  During the first quarter of this year, more than 11% of our electricity was wind, solar and hydro-electric.

Over the past two years, onshore wind energy generation has climbed by 51% (offshore, 50%).  Overall, renewable energy output increased by 33% last year.

This all helped the "green" economy in the UK achieve a growth in real terms of 2.3% in 2010/11, reaching some £122 billion, or about 8% of GDP.

Hang on a minute - what's that?  Growth?  In the UK economy?  GROWTH?  GREEN GROWTH??

You do have too ask yourself what kind of Chancellor of the Exchequer makes anti-green speeches on behalf of his more lunatic backbenchers, claiming that "green" policies and economic growth are incompatible.  After all, the "green" economy is one of the few sectors that actually is growing, bringing money into the economy, boosting GDP, while everything else this government is doing is slowing the economy down and costing us squillions.

Business leaders are calling on the government to get its act together where renewables and sustainability are concerned.  Too many prejudices among the Telegraph readers in the Tory Party (and their Daily Mail reading wives) are seeking to wreck this one growth area.  The rest of the world is pressing ahead with renewables; we're sit around squabbling about them.  Blame Delingpole, and his fellow delusionists.  But the fault really lies with Cameron and Osborne and their insane pandering to the insane right-wing fringe.

It's just like the moronic claims that renewables are the cause of rocketing domestic energy bills.  Check out this graphic.  The thin green line at the bottom represents the Renewables Obligation Certificates - the levy charged to electricity providers to help create a level playing field for renewables.  Not subsidies (only idiots call them government subsidies - an idiot like George Osborne).  And wind power accounts for only a fraction of the full ROC payments, and so only about a third of that thin green line is actually windfarms.  The rise in household bills is entirely - as you can see below - the cause of wholesale gas prices:

Now, do you still think that windfarms are the cause of increases in your annual household energy bill?  If so, you're probably a supporter of the Conservative Party and you're foursquare behind the Chancellor's attack on the only part of the UK's economy that is really growing while giving us an abundance of clean, green, remarkably inexpensive electricity.

And you're a traitor to your country, a betrayer of your own grandchildren, and the enemy of everything that's good and just and true.

TWITSTORM

It's no wonder that some people think windfarms are "noisy".  They probably think everything is noisy, such is the constant drone of background idiocy in their heads.

For a perfect example of all that's wrong with the "debate" (ha ha!) about wind energy and renewables in the UK, you need only click on this link:

http://conservativehome.blogs.com/platform/2012/06/adam-bruce-contrary-to-popular-opinion-wind-energy-cuts-electricity-bills-and-boosts-economic-growth.html

Yes, it's the ConservativeHome blog - the voice of the Tory Party talking to itself, or what happens when you let the lunatics take over the asylum newsletter.  But in this instance, the post is written by a chap who happens to be both a former Conservative parliamentary candidate AND a man with a great deal of knowledge and experience in the wind power industry.

Adam Bruce, for it is he, explains pretty carefully in his post how wind power actually lowers the wholesale costs of electricity, citing evidence from Europe, the USA and Ireland.  As he points out, we would be able to see how well wind is doing in this regard if it weren't for the fact that our energy market in the UK is fantastically opaque.  Even so, being remarkably cheap - what with wind being a free and abundant resource, and all that - wind energy helps to counteract the escalating costs of gas and coal-powered generation.

The problem, of course, is "subsidies".  The anti-wind brigade shriek their heads off about subsidies all the time.  Not the REAL subsidies, you understand, because they go to nuclear and fossil fuels.  But the so-called "subsidies" which electricity companies pay to all renewables.  For onshore wind, that currently works out at somewhere between 1 and 2 p per household energy bill per day.

The world outside the Tory Party has woken up to the alarming fact that the fossil fuel industry receives enormous subsidies from governments all around the world.  Hence yesterday's groundbreaking "Twitterstorm", aimed at persuading governments to stop subsidising the very industry which has caused the terrifying problems we face as a result of climate change.

The world inside the Tory Party thinks that "subsidies" only go to renewables, and that climate change regulation is the only thing holding back the UK economy.  But then, they're morons.

Adam Bruce's post is sensible, factually accurate, and a fair and balanced riposte to those barking Tories who (thanks to disreputable propaganda merchants like REF and GWPF) actually do believe that wind power doesn't work and is simply some sort of giant conspiracy to fleece us of our hard-earned cash.  What he writes is true.  While lobbyists for nuclear and fossil fuels continually lie about the costs and "intermittency" of wind power, the reality is that wind is cheaper than practically all the alternatives and makes a real, positive difference to gross domestic product.

But then, you only have to skim through the comments after Bruce's piece to realise that many right-wingers respond with spittle-flecked fury to the facts.

The goons who chose to comment on Adam Bruce's honest and decent piece are liars to a man (and woman).  They quote the very propagandists who spread the anti-wind lies in the first place.  They pretend that they "haven't got the time" to debunk Bruce's flagrantly partisan post ("Well, he would say that, wouldn't he?" - amazing how many Tories have heard of Mandy Rice-Davies!) which, in truth, means that they're simply not capable of debunking it because it's true.  But they still hurl insults at Bruce, rather like a bunch of caged gorillas flinging their own excrement, because they can't handle the truth.

There is a battle for the soul of our nation going on at the moment, concurrent with the battle to protect the planet for future generations.  Read the comments after Adam Bruce's post and you'll see how the enemy behaves - like yer typical Nazi, in fact, with nothing but angry lies and abuse.  To call them twits is too kind, for they are misguided, evil cretins who react with violence to anything that challenges their warped, deluded, fanatically stupid beliefs.

Yesterday, the conscientious world created a Twitterstorm, calling on governments to end fossil fuels subsidies.  But on the ConservativeHome blog, the party faithless simply whipped up a Twitstorm when somebody told the truth about wind energy.

1 - 25 - 80

A mixed bag of facts and figures for you today, folks.

Last week, County Councillors in Donegal voted overwhelmingly to reject a proposed 1km exclusion zone around windfarms.  This just a few days after an English County Council had taken the banal and brainless decision to try and stop all future windfarm developments in the County of Lincolnshire.

The hysterical claims from the nasty nimbies that windfarms "destroy" the supposedly "unspoilt" landscape apparently holds true for Lincolnshire, but not for County Donegal.  On the whole, we're inclined to suggest that the Donegal landscape is considerably more "unspoilt" than the Lincolnshire equivalent, but then, Lincolnshire County Council is Tory dominated and therefore, it would appear, inclined to believe all manner of nonsense.

The Donegal councillors voted by 13 votes to three to reject the proposed 1km buffer zone between turbines and dwellings - and so yet another foolish and misguided attempt to impose an arbitrary minimum setback distance has been defeated by democracy.  If only the Tory dupes of Lincolnshire CC knew what democracy was.

For that matter, if only Britain's Chancellor of the Exchequer, George Osborne, was capable of sorting fact from fiction.

Having presented one of the most shambolic and controversial budgets ever back in March, Bullingdon George is trying to win over his loonier backbenchers by demanding a 25% cut in the "subsidies" to wind power.  It is difficult for a non-Daily Mail-reader to understand quite what he hopes to achieve by doing this.  It wouldn't save the government or the consumer any money at all.  Rather, it would mean everyone paying more for their electricity while the government spectacularly fails to meet its legally-binding commitments to cut CO2 emissions.  Osborne's proposed cut would do untold harm to the growing renewables sector, but he has made it clear that he has no intention of cutting any of the massive subsidies to nuclear and fossil fuels.  Even though a report just published by the Centre for Economics and Business Research indicates that the income generated by a healthy wind industry could wipe out most of the UK's current trade deficit by 2030, as well as creating an annual 1% uplift in GDP and nearly a quarter of a million jobs.  Makes you wonder, doesn't it?

The only conceivable motive for the Chancellor's dimwitted proposal is that it will play jolly well with the swivel-eyed racists of UKIP and the barking Tories out in the Shires.  We might think of it as a sort of Lawson manoeuvre - utterly misguided and counterproductive, but good news for right-wing maniacs.

If you'd like to send George Osborne a message explaining why his anti-wind proposals are so stupid, please feel free:

http://www.actionforrenewables.org/campaigns/speak-out/george-osborne-dont-kill-wind?dm_i=B1C,U2RZ,2IVESE,2GTBL,1

Just to show how bizarre and out-of-touch with reality Osborne's cretinous proposal is, he made it on the same weekend that the Independent newspaper published the results of the latest ComRes survey, which showed that the vast majority of Britons want MORE wind energy.  The most interesting result in this survey is that no less than 80% of people aged 18 to 44 are in favour of windfarms.

That's right: EIGHTY PER CENT!  Four out of every five young adults want more wind power in this country.  By way of contrast, only 59% of Britons aged 45 and over want more windfarms.  That's still a pretty decisive majority, of course, but the difference is telling.

Basically, those who are more concerned about the future are in favour of wind energy.  Those who are more concerned about the view from the window of their retirement home also want wind energy, but perhaps not quite as much as the younger generation does.

All the same, George Osborne's proposed catastrophic emasculation of the wind energy industry is clearly the exact opposite of what the vast majority of young Britons want.

The kind of person who does want Osborne's insane cut to windfarm "subsidies" has recently been demonstrating their satanic credentials.  The Diocese of Exeter had submitted planning applications for six small agricultural wind turbines, two in each of the parishes of East Anstey, Chittlehampton and Black Torrington.  But after a campaign of abuse and aggression from a small number of people - many of them from outside the area - the Bishop of Exeter has regretfully withdrawn the applications.

In a letter read out to congregations in his diocese, the Bishop complained that he and his clergy had been subjected to "hostility and in some cases, outright verbal abuse" by a few protesters who "resorted to abusive and bullying tactics".  The churchmen received "very unpleasant letters" and, when they appeared at public meetings to discuss the proposals, were "shouted down and called liars".

The Bishop of Exeter has therefore had the unedifying experience of finding out what the tiny anti-windfarm fringe is like: vicious, aggressive, thuggish, dishonest, abusive, and wildly unrepresentative of the country as a whole.  Nimbies like that are selfish and deluded and out of control.  They have no care for the countryside and clearly no respect for anybody - not even the Anglican clergy.  They are, in effect, George Osborne's stormtroopers, the ugly, zealous fascists of Little England.

The Bishop of Exeter joins the fragrant Kate Humble as being yet another conscientious figure targetted for abuse by the anti-wind Nazis.  They can take some comfort from a quality report published yesterday, which dispels several of the nimbies' favourite myths.  It's worth a look:

http://www2.lse.ac.uk/GranthamInstitute/Media/Releases/2012/MR110612-review-evidence-about-onshore-wind-power.aspx

Will the nimbies take any notice, though?  Unlikely.  They don't do facts.

EVER SO HUMBLE

Just days after Griff Rhys Jones spewed out his fatuous and uninformed "thoughts" about wind power (and nuclear energy) in the BBC's Radio Times magazine and on Question Time, another TV presenter has put the case for wind.

Kate Humble, formerly a presenter on the BBC's Springwatch, was appearing at the Hay Literature Festival this past week. During the course of the discussion, Kate Humble remarked that "People don't like wind farms, but the fact is that we need to have alternative sources of energy and wind farms are one of them."

Okay, so the first part of her statement was untrue.  There's no real evidence that "People don't like wind farms", apart, that is, from the tiny minority of deluded anti-green, anti-renewables, anti-wind fanatics.  But she's right about the need for "alternative sources of energy" and onshore wind being the cheapest, quickest and one of the most effective and efficient of these (it also receives a pittance in "subsidies", compared with conventional sources like fossil fuels and nuclear).

Brilliantly, Kate Humble made it clear that the countryside doesn't exist solely for the rich and the flaccid middle class oafs who think that our rural landscape is "unspoilt".  She hit out at the conversion of barns into "executive homes" for the kind of selfish cretin who doesn't like windfarms where they might be able to see them and the creation of "mega farms".  She acknowledged that there "needs to be development and it needs to be sustainable."

In stark contrast to Griff Rhys Jones, Ms Humble insisted that "we cannot just live in a chocolate box countryside.  It has to support itself, it has to work and it has to have relevance in today's world.  It cannot be pickled."

Griff Rhys Jones earned plaudits from the miserable minority of anti-wind fascists with his belief that the countryside should be pickled.  The difference between him and Kate Humble being that he, Griff, occasionally walks, drives or rides through the countryside, and so his idea is only of a place to be looked at.  Kate Humble, meanwhile, lives and works in the country - she left Springwatch to concentrate on her farm in Monmouthshire and making science documentaries (yes: science - the thing that the right-wing climate change denying loons of Nimbydom hate).  She studies the countryside and presents programmes about the countryside - not as a thing to be looked at now and then but as a place where things have to work.

Naturally, by showing that she knows what she's on about, Ms Humble has been attacked by the sort of Telegraph-reading maniac who thinks that they're still living in the 19th Century.  The sort who refers to the "Green Climate Police", as if more or less every scientist in the world isn't worrying themselves sick at the consequences of our ignorance and insanity.  The sort who insists, in the face of all the evidence, that windfarms "don't work".  Morons, basically.

Remember the statistics.  Put 100 people together in a room.  Just three of them will be out-and-out raving anti-wind loonies.  Seven will be mildly disapproving of windfarms.  Four will admit that they just don't know.  The rest - 88 out of the 100 - will be okay with windfarms, either totally in favour or not really bothered.

(It is the latter bunch at whom the nasty nimby direct their filthy lies about windfarms, hoping to turn equanimity into enmity by misleading these people with absolute gibberish and sickeningly silly scare-stories.  But still, it's only the 3% of Britons who are fanatically opposed to cheap, clean, green electricity generation who are behind these outbreaks of insanity, plus maybe one or two of those who just don't want anything happening nearby.)

The simple fact is, Kate Humble is right.  Like her onetime co-presenter Bill Oddie, who supports windfarms (nimbies lie, as always, about the threat to birds; a real bird expert like Oddie knows that there is no such threat, except from the ravages of climate change), she can see things as they are and understands what is both necessary and desirable for us all.

Griff Rhys Jones can only see things as he would want them to be.  Which is not how they are.  And not how the vast majority of Britons want them to be.

Well done, Kate, for speaking up properly for the countryside, and its needs, and the people who live and work in it (not those plastic souls who build "executive homes" and attack anything that's real in the country, but those who genuinely care for our land and the environment).  We need more knowledgeable people like you to speak out against the ignorance and the prejudices of the Griff Rhys Jones lobby.

And we're sorry for the ineffably stupid comments made on the Telegraph website by those who don't like what you have to say.  But then, they're only a tiny minority of Griffalos.  The real people of Britain are right behind you.

WIND TURBINE SYNDROME DOES NOT EXIST

Anyone under attack from the vicious zombies of Nimbyland would do well to cast their eyes over this post from the excellent Climate Spectator blog:

http://www.climatespectator.com.au/commentary/wind-turbine-syndrome-mass-hysteria-21st-century

As the post points out, the utterly nonexistent "Wind Turbine Syndrome" is just the latest in a long line of foolish health scares promoted by idiots and frauds.  Check out the quote from the British Medical Journal in 1889, which examined the horrific consequences of using a telephone.  Or the belief that the "education of women" caused something called neurasthenia, which also didn't exist.

If you actually look at the so-called physicians who are working furiously to scare people with their lies about "Wind Turbine Syndrome", you'll soon see that they're a pretty shoddy bunch.  One is a disgraced academic who was caught out publishing lies for the tobacco industry.  The main peddler of the "Wind Turbine Syndrome" myth in Australia is an unregistered doctor - "unregistered" presumably meaning that she's not very good.  The term "Wind Turbine Syndrome" was invented by an American paediatrician with no experience in acoustics, but whose husband happened to be an active campaigner against wind energy.  Said paediatrician could not find anyone willing to publish her useless "research". 

Here in the UK, the British Medical Journal (see above) made the mistake of publishing a very poorly referenced piece by one of the latest "Wind Turbine Syndrome" fanatics, the retired director of a sleep laboratory who - guess what? - has himself fought proposals for a windfarm close to his home.  He wrote his first silly "report" on the mythical adverse health affects of windfarms at the behest of another anti-windfarm group ... and so the nimby echo chamber booms on, making no sense whatsoever except to itself.

As the blogpost cited above shows, the deranged proponents of "Wind Turbine Syndrome" - and yes, they are deranged - like to claim that windfarms cause up to 125 different diseases and behavioral problems, and counting.  Yes, folks: those harmless devices are somehow achieving more than a bad case of nuclear fallout.  And yet - funny this - the so-called symptoms of the We-Just-Made-It-Up thing called "Wind Turbine Syndrome" always seem to vanish when money is on offer.

Nimby idiots like to claim that the effects of "Wind Turbine Syndrome" (copyright: the fossil fuel industry) are instantaneous.  Indeed, they often start before a windfarm is even operational (how can that be?).  And yet ... the first "case" was recorded in Britain in 2003.  That was twelve years after the first windfarm started operating in Britain.  So it took the fascist fringe a full twelve years to dream up a "syndrome" connected with windfarms.  Not all that instantaneous after all!

And how interesting to note that when the alleged sufferers of "Wind Turbine Syndrome" are required to release their medical records, their case collapses.  Pre-existing disorders, anyone?  Certainly, all those interviewed (over the phone) by the inventor of "Wind Turbine Syndrome" had pre-existing medical conditions.  The fabricated "Wind Turbine Syndrome" was created as a completely bogus health scare in order to attack green industry, exploiting the pre-existing conditions of twenty-or-so people in a thoroughly despicable attempt to frighten and mislead.

The real problem is not the invention of a wholly imaginary "syndrome" but the virulence with which thoroughly dishonest nimby groups demand that their neighbours all believe in it.  Because, as Francis Bacon said of infections nearly 400 years ago, "if you fear them, you call them upon you."

So when one of your nasty nimby neighbours tells you that windfarms cause any one of the 125 symptoms currently classed as "Wind Turbine Syndrome" - including symptoms you may already have - they're not warning you.  They're telling you to get sick.  They're trying to trick you into believing that you feel unwell, even before the turbine blades start turning, because - in their mentally ill world - they'll consider that some kind of victory.

The simple fact is, there is no such thing as "Wind Turbine Syndrome", outside of the heads of the evil nutters who keep going on about it.  No reputable scientific or public health institution in the world has accepted its existence.  Out of 21 million research papers in the US National Library of Medicine, not one recognises "Wind Turbine Syndrome".

It is a totally made-up "disease".  Made-up by fools and frauds.  To scare you. 

That's how low the nimbies are.

THREE PER CENT

Back in April, the results of an Ipsos MORI poll were published.

More than 1,000 people were surveyed.  The question they were asked was simple:

"To what extent are you in favour of or opposed to the use of wind power in the UK?"

See?  Nice and simple.

The nimbies hate this sort of survey, because it just asks a simple question.  If they had their own way, the anti-wind fascists would seek to skew the questions (e.g., "Given that windfarms eat babies, cause global warming and provide homes for immigrants, how much would you like to see one built in your living room?") or to manipulate the results - which was how VVASP managed to turn a minority of local residents opposed to the proposed Lenchwick Windfarm into an "overwhelming" majority.  Basically, as usual, they lied.  And then Karen Lumley MP repeated their lies at the Wychavon District Council planning meeting.  But then, Karen Lumley doesn't really get it, does she?

Back to the April poll.  As we've seen, the question was pretty straightforward.  And here are the results:

TO WHAT EXTENT ARE YOU IN FAVOUR OF OR OPPOSED TO THE USE OF WIND POWER IN THE UK?

Strongly in favour - 28%
Tend to favour - 38%
Neither favour nor oppose - 22%
Tend to oppose - 5%
Strongly oppose - 3%
Don't know - 4%

Let's look at those figures in more detail.

The total of the 1,000+ Britons polled who were broadly or strongly in favour of wind power was 66% - or roughly two-thirds of the population.

The total who were broadly or strongly opposed was 8% - or less than one-tenth of the population.

More people didn't know what they thought than were strongly opposed.

The number of Britons who neither favour nor oppose wind power was nearly three times the number who are opposed to it.

The number of Britons who do favour wind power was more than eight times the number opposed.

Now, our local group of nimby liars and nutters played about with the results of parish council surveys in order to get the result they wanted (a completely fictional "75%" against), and one of the ways they did that was to discount everyone who didn't express an opinion.

But let's be realistic.  If you're not opposed to wind power, then you're not opposed.  You may not be especially keen on windfarms, but you don't really have a problem with them.

So, if we add the "don't care very much either way" respondents to the number who were fairly or strongly in favour of wind power in the UK, we get the grand total of 88%.

We'll leave the "Don't know's" out of it, for now.

What this means is that, while just EIGHT PER CENT of the population are either mildly or massively opposed to wind power in the UK, EIGHTY-EIGHT PER CENT are strongly in favour, broadly in favour or just not particularly bothered.

This means that TEN TIMES AS MANY BRITONS ARE IN FAVOUR, OR CERTAINLY NOT OPPOSED TO, WIND POWER AS ARE AGAINST IT.

When we look at the real, out-and-out fanatics - the brainwashed nimby brigade who see it as their duty to spread clueless lies about windfarms in order to "protect" an already spoiled landscape - they amount to a grand total of ...

Wait for it ...

THREE PER CENT OF THE UK POPULATION!!!

Now, let's take the 2010 figures for the British population, which stood at just over 62 million.  Less than two million of those are "Strongly opposed to wind power in the UK".  About 3 million "Tend to oppose" wind power.  So, almost five million Britons aren't very happy about the idea of wind power.  While 57 million Britons like it or don't have a problem with it.

So, why oh why oh why do we only ever hear from the hugely unrepresentative, dishonest, noisy, thuggish loudmouths of the Three Per Cent?

And why has our idiot Chancellor suddenly made it his mission to destroy the wind industry in the UK by slashing what are laughably called "subsidies" - actually, ROC payments made by energy companies - to wind by a crippling 25%?  The industry is ready and prepared for a proposed 10% cut in the ROC payments, because improved technology and increasing deployment mean that the costs of generating wind energy are coming down.  But in a sop to the swivel-eyed lunatics on the government's backbenches - the dishonest cretins who have got it into their thick, echoing skulls that wind power is some sort of "scam" - George "Desperate" Osborne is thinking of destroying one of the only growth industries in the country.

When nearly 90% of the British population are strongly in favour of, broadly in favour of or totally unfazed by windfarms!

Of course, Osborne is playing to the extreme right-wing - the same sort of unpatriotic maniac who is happy to see the UK's economy blitzed on ideological grounds, and who never takes the slightest bit of interest in what's happening in the rest of the world.  Everywhere, from Mexico to Morocco, huge windfarms are springing up as the world recognises the need to wean itself off dirty fossil fuels and expensive, dangerous and unreliable nuclear.  Everywhere, that is, except in Britain - where a bunch of fanatics are playing King Cnut with our futures, like the brainless drones they are!

Want some fun facts?  In the first three months of 2012, the amount of electricity generated by wind in the UK was up by a massive 46.8% on the same period last year.

Only a third of the UK's 340 windfarms are based in England - where almost all the anti-wind lunacy originates.

Remember, only THREE PER CENT of the British population is "Strongly opposed to wind power in the UK".

So let's hear a bit of truth about wind, from time to time, from the Mail and the Telegraph, please - or are they exclusively the mouthpieces of the demented and selfish 3%?

THE DELINGPOLE DELUSION

Look at where all the atrociously inaccurate and misleading stories about windfarms keep coming from and you'll notice a trend.

Fox News in the US, for example, constantly peddles ludicrous lies about wind power:

http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2012/05/31/492467/myths-and-facts-about-wind-power-debunking-foxs-abysmal-wind-coverage/?mobile=nc

Why?  Well, presumably for much the same reason that the discredited Heartland Institute, a fanatically right-wing "lobby" group, seeks to malign and demonise anyone who believes in climate change.  Because some businesses - mentioning no names - are making so much money out of heavily-subsidised fossil fuels that they have a commercial interest in attacking climate science.

Here in the UK, we have cretins like Derek Clark, UKIP MEP for Leicestershire, spouting idiotic anti-windfarm lies.  Of course, the besuited racists of UKIP don't believe in either climate change or renewable energy - but then, they don't believe in sexual equality, either.  They're the sort of people who would not only have been unable to domesticate fire, but would have campaigned angrily against doing so as a dangerous shift to the left.  They are the Jeremy Clarksons of British politics: empty-headed bar-room bores sounding off about things they don't understand.

Clark refuses to get his facts right about wind power, even when those facts have been clearly pointed out to him.  He claims that the Swinford Wind Farm in Leicestershire was "opposed by thousands of people" (oh, really?) and that windfarms are a "massive confidence trick" because they "only turn out any electric power for 30 per cent of the time and not on full power for more than a fraction of that."  This is typical nimby gibberish, as far removed from reality as the rest of Derek Clark's grotesque party is.

And then there's the soi-disant Renewable Energy Foundation (REF), which exists solely to publish lies about windfarms.  They published a pamphlet claiming that government policies designed to encourage the development of renewable energy would destroy thousands of jobs.  What was so odd about this pamphlet is that it flew in the face of all the available research.  A report published by various UN agencies and trades unions indicates that shifting to a greener economy could generate up to 60 million additional jobs worldwide over the next two decades.

Indeed, renewables are about the only growth area in the European economy right now.  In 2010, the wind industry directly and indirectly contributed 32.43 billion euros to the EU's GDP and accounted for 3.59 billion euros in tax payments, while saving the EU 5.71 billion in additional fuel costs.  It also accounted for 135,863 jobs across Europe in 2010.  In the UK alone, the wind industry contributed over half a billion pounds to the economy last year and supported thousands of jobs.  No wonder the financial sector is going cool on nuclear - way too expensive and unreliable - and getting very excited about renewables.

So, either John Constable of REF knows something that nobody else in the world knows when he claims that renewables cost jobs ... or he's a liar.

The godfather of British anti-windfarm nutcases, though, is the inimitable Delingpole, a frothy-mouthed merchant of right-wing insanity on demand.  Like his fellow climate "sceptic", the deranged Lord Monckton, Delingpole has no scientific qualifications whatsoever.  This means that he is ideally suited to keep hurling his own excrement at the global scientific consensus, which has been studying masses of evidence for years, and insisting that he alone is right and 98% of the world's scientists are wrong.  He has even claimed that "the more scientifically illiterate you are, the more you believe in 'climate change'."  This, let's remember, is a man with NO SCIENTIFIC CREDENTIALS AT ALL calling almost every scientist in the world "scientifically illiterate"!  Or, if you prefer, misquoting the findings of a Yale University report, because - like every nimby on planet Earth - misrepresenting the evidence is all that Delingpole is good for.

Delingpole doesn't just unleash his demented diatribes against climate scientists.  He's got a thing about windfarms, too.  Strangely, the two things - climate change denial and anti-windfarm vitriol - go hand in hand, like racism and homophobia.

In one of his latest assaults on sanity, Delingpole went so far as to say "I would rather a child of mine went into business manufacturing land mines (which at least have a valid defensive pupose) than got involved in the wind farm industry."

The thought of Delingpole having children is enough to make one queasy.  And, if windfarms really were the subsidy-sucking money pots that Delingpole likes to pretend they are, he would surely be impressed to find that his spawn had found such a lucrative occupation.  But Delingpole is certifiably insane, as any competent psychiatrist would be able to prove in five minutes flat.  If he started barking at the moon, it would be seen as a sign that he was on the road to recovery.  And so he vomits his thoughtless, knee-jerk anti-windfarm buffoonery all over the Telegraph whenever the editor pays him to.

Still, when you look at the other "celebrities" on Delingpole's side of the "argument" - Griff Rhys Jones, Louise Mensch, David Bellamy, Donald Trump - you have to accept that they, too, are probably much more in favour of a thriving and heavily subsidised land mine industry than inexpensive, clean green energy.  Because they're all a few plates short of a full service.

Look back at this list of the infamous, the insanitary and the terminally insane.  Notice anything about them?  Anything they might have in common?

No?  Okay, we'll try again.

What links Fox News, the Heartland Institute, UKIP, REF, Monckton, Lawson and Delingpole, as well as the ugly company they all keep?

They are all fanatical right-wing maniacs.  Their pronouncements about wind energy are blissfully unencumbered by facts and are inspired purely by prejudice and extremist ideology.  They all have their reasons for telling blatant lies about windfarms, over and over and over again, but they're not exactly good reasons.  They are based solely on hate, greed, and a warped view of the world.

As recent polls have shown, less than 10% of the UK's population is absolutely opposed to wind power.  Presumably, they are the very far-right fantasists who lap up Delingpole's weird drivel and believe everything that the crazies of UKIP and the propagandists of REF tell them.  A tiny lunatic fringe of swivel-eyed conspiracy theorists and neo-fascists.

Hardly the sort of people we want dictating our energy policy over the next few decades, wouldn't you agree?