“A windmill in every spare space nationwide would not,and could not meet our requirments for power,the sooner we start building nuclear power stations the better,or pehaps we should rely on Russia for our supplies.”

“J Brown.

Unfortunately your 'facts' are contradicted by information that the wind industry itself provides and by research sponsored by the government.

There are planning applications all over the country for turbines that are much closer than 600m to houses.

To pick one random example: E.ON's 'West Ancroft' scheme, at 556m.

At an adjacent site, the Secretary of State agreed with a Planning Inspector in turning down an appeal because the turbines, on the appellant's own figures, would have broken noise thresholds:

"The Secretary of State takes the view that the significant potential for noise limits to be breached at Moorsyde weighs against the appeal irrespective of any concerns about monitoring and enforcement of this condition."
The nearest housing was over 700m from the proposed turbines.

Jane and Julian Davis, who have been forced to move from their house by windfarm noise, have now had their loss of amenity and loss in value of their home acknowledged by a Valuation Tribunal which lowered their Council Tax banding in recognition of: "Significant detrimental effect"; "Nuisance real, not imagined"; "Potential sale price affected".

The insurers of their currently unsaleable property are funding their case at the High Court to get this noise nuisance stopped.

Their house is 930m from the nearest turbine.

The night time noise limit of 43dB(A) for turbines contravenes the recent WHO Night Noise Guiderlines for Europe (September, 2009) and their guidelines Community Noise (1999).

The Noise Act (1996) states:
"The permitted level of noise which may be emitted during night hours from an offending dwelling or from offending premises shall be¿
(a) where the underlying level of noise does not exceed 24 dB, 34 dB".

So, if an Environmental Health Officer measures the noise from your neighbours at 35dB(A) in a quiet rural area at night action will be taken against the offender.

Unless you are a turbine operator of course - they are exempt!

Environmental Protection UK said of the last government's proposal to
¿restrict¿ noise levels from turbines to 45 decibels that: "it flies in the face of the advice of experienced specialist practitioners in environmental health and acoustics, and recent World Health Organisation Guidelines published on night time noise and health... Nuisance research shows that at the noise levels proposed they are 98% likely to cause complaints."

Finally, Hayes Mackenzie Partnership also found that the current limits are too high. Their 2006 report recommended lowering the limits to 38dB(A) and 33dB(A) where there were likely to be problems with amplitude modulation. These findings were 'edited out' of the final report by civil servants.

Your costs on nuclear are complete garbage.

The most authoritative comparative costings by by Parsons Brinckerhoff, a company involved in wind engineering, estimates nuclear generation costs to be 6-8 pence per kilowatt hour (p/KWh), including decommissioning and waste disposal, compared to 15-21 p/KWh for offshore wind.
According to PB, onshore wind costs of 8-11 p/KWh are competitive with gas at 6-11 p/KWh.
They do not add in the huge grid strengthening costs necessitated by wind power stations. ('Powering the Nation', 2010 update).

Denmark is in a huge tizz at the moment because Sweden has OK'd 10 new nuclear power stations.

The headline in Jyllands -Posten was ¿Wind turbines threatened by atomic power¿ with the header "New atomic power stations in Finland and Sweden are poison for the Danish wind industry, but good for electricity prices."

Lars Aagaard, Director of Danish Energy, was quoted as saying: "10 new atomic power stations will produce a surplus of electricity equivalent in size to Denmark¿s entire yearly consumption. That will cause the electricity price to fall - and smash the market for sustainable energy. The result may be that we either have to cut back on our ambitions for susta”

“Some facts: A car travelling at 40mph at a distance of 100m is 10 times as noisy as a wind farm at 350 metres. Wind farms are now sited at least 600 metres from any residence. The noise issue is blown out of all proportion (excuse the deliberate pun) by the anti-green lobby. Poll after poll has shown that more than 80% of people like the look of wind turbines. Please, don't buy into all the myths and hype spread by the anti-wind lobby. Vist a wind farm and you will discover that you cannot hear anything when you are 600 metres away, but you will hear the birds and you will hear the nearby roads.

According to the UK Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA) it will cost at least £30 billion over the next decade to clean up the nuclear power station sites of Dounreay, Sizewell A, Hinkley Point A and Dungeness A. When you factor this into the equation then wind power suddenly becomes a lot cheaper than nuclear.

Wind is a free and clean renewable energy resource that can be harnessed indefinitely. Let's take all the facts into account and have a balanced discussion.”

“Some facts: A car travelling at 40mph at a distance of 100m is 10 times as noisy as a wind farm at 350 metres. Wind farms are now sited at least 600 metres from any residence. The noise issue is blown out of all proportion (excuse the deliberate pun) by the anti-green lobby. Poll after poll has shown that more than 80% of people like the look of wind turbines. Please, don't buy into all the myths and hype spread by the anti-wind lobby. Vist a wind farm and you will discover that you cannot hear anything when you are 600 metres away, but you will hear the birds and you will hear the nearby roads.

According to the UK Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA) it will cost at least £30 billion over the next decade to clean up the nuclear power station sites of Dounreay, Sizewell A, Hinkley Point A and Dungeness A. When you factor this into the equation then wind power suddenly becomes a lot cheaper than nuclear.

Wind is a free and clean renewable energy resource that can be harnessed indefinitely. Let's take all the facts into account and have a balanced discussion.”

“Apologies, I meant Phillip not 'Bob'.”

“Further to what Bob says, the coalition government have, they tell us, now abolished the Regional Spatial Strategy framework.

The RSS system was the primary instrument of Nu-Labor's Kommisariat - regional 'Government Offices' and unelected regional assemblies - in taking planning out of local control.

Previously a Labour Government Minister could actually say that: "The general principle and rule is that the Government have no power to prevent applications from coming forward. That is critical. Furthermore, the Government may intervene in the plan-making process if they consider that the constraints being proposed by local authorities are too great or are poorly justified. The policy also states that local planning authorities should not identify generalised locations for development based, for example, on mean wind speeds because technological developments might mean that additional sites become suitable." (Shahid Malik (PUS, DCLG).

In other words, everything was 'developer led' rather than planned or locally decided.

We are now told that local planning authorities can set their own separation distances and capacity limits for wind development. I understand that Lincolnshire County Council are currently in the process of fornmulating separation distances for turbines.

Let us see whether this is true.

Lobby your councillors and tell them the good news: the Government says you can now actually do what your constituents are telling you: stop the threat to communities and treasured landscapes by carpet-bagging speculative developers.”

“You folks don't know it but our government climate website shows that the combined average land & sea yearly temperature hasn't increased in 13 years. This is not widely publicized data because there are so many businesses and politicians who are cleaning up in the global warming business.”

“What you folks in UK don't know is that our government climate website shows that the average combined land and sea temperature for each year hasn't risen for the past 13 years. This is not a widely publicized figure because too many businesses and politicians are cleaning up in the global warming business.”

“It is a scandal that our elected representatives are more interested in promoting the development of wind farms than they are in protecting their citizens from the destructive effects of noise from inappropriately sited wind turbines.

There should be a minimum distance between wind turbines and people's homes, as is the case in most other countries, where the welfare of the citizens is of more importance than developer's profits and trying to meet unachievable government targets.”

“Contrary to what Greg Barker says there is every reason to believe that ETSU-R-97 is not acceptable.

When it was introduced turbines were 30-60m high.

The Noise Working Group that originated ETSU recommended revision within two years, with reviews at regular intervals to accord with changes in wind turbine technology.

In 12 years nothing has happened despite both turbines and arrays being dramatically larger than those on which ETSU was based.

Nor has ETSU-R-97 been revised to recognise that World Health Organisation Guidelines for Community Noise (1999) have been materially updated.

There is also now a body of evidence from epidemiologists and clinicians around the world which clearly shows that turbine noise can be injurious to health.

Finally, Hayes Mackenzie were complicit in the removal of recommendations in a report they produced on the 'amplitude modulation' noise problem with some wind arrays.

This originally recommended a reduction in current noise thresholds before civil servants 'edited' it.

No wonder that an editorial in the Noise Bulletin stated: "Only when the public can trust the Government and wind farm developers on noise issues will there be a chance that the public will accept them without a fight ...".”