David McCloy (Letters, September 4) is trying a diversionary tactic by using a non sequitur. It is obviously absurd to generate wind power in one location for consumption 800 miles away.
It does not follow that the National Grid is stupid, for two reasons. First, the National Grid already exists. The only consequence of my argument is the question: if it did not, would we now create it? The energy wastage per mile of transmission is now vastly more costly than when the grid was developed and the economic case might have changed.
Secondly, Mr McCloy well knows, but appears none too keen to share his knowledge with readers, that the Scottish grid will require major upgrades if the windfarm virus is allowed to spread unchecked.
The proposal is to have a 137-mile-long line of monster pylons each 42m-65m high (over 200ft in real money) from Beauly to Denny, with another 50-mile line from Beauly to Ullapool to receive the output from Lewis.
I doubt if the 200-mile, 7-shaped scar left by this ugly slash down the face of Scotland will, like the Great Wall of China, be visible from the moon. It certainly will be from the space shuttle. Do not expect this defilement of Scotland’s greatest asset to trouble Mr McCloy, for whom “interfering with scenic beauty” is one of “lesser concerns”.
Not all environmental organisations have, like Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth, betrayed their founding principles. The John Muir Trust, for example, recently joined environmentalist David Bellamy in opposition to windfarms. At a conference last October one speaker described how “current pressures for windfarms amount to the mass industrialisation of wild land”.
For FoE and Greenpeace to support such pollution of the Scottish countryside shows that these “environmentalists” have sold their souls to the Devil. No Scot who loves Scotland should give these sponsors of the windfarms racket a single bawbee.
Thomas McLaughlin, 4 Munro Road, Glasgow.
URL to article: https://www.wind-watch.org/news/2006/09/05/environmentalists-have-sold-out-to-the-devil/