Letter: Park authority should have a veto

10:58am Wednesday 14th May 2008

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Your correspondent Dr Khan is obviously one of those people who believes all the rhetoric put out by the operators. Most of his argument is based on information from the British Wind Energy website, a site somewhat lacking in impartiality.

He uses the operators' statements about how many houses will be supported, without saying how much this is in watts. I can support three houses with a cycle dynamo as long as they only need a few watts each.

For each cubic metre of peat disturbed 55 kilos of CO2 is released - that is one tonne for every 20 cubic metres (Scientific American).

Each turbine requires hundreds of tons of concrete for its base. Cement manufacture is acknowledged as one of the most polluting industries known, add to this the toxic gasses and heavy metals produced during manufacture and the turbines' 'cleanliness' starts to look decidedly grubby.

If wind turbines can be seen from within national park the Lake District National Park Authority should have a veto. It is no different to putting them on top of Scafell.

His statement that climate change is not reversible is utter rubbish. Climate changes have been happening on a regular cycle for millions of years (warming followed by cooling). This is an irrefutable scientific fact. Could he explain why this cycle is any different?

The warming period in the 1200s had a temperature increase three times that predicted for this cycle and there was less than ten per cent of the population than is present today. With all the forest fires around the world, if we stopped all CO2 release for ten years we could not cancel it out.

Ulverston