Wind farms on our coastline - love 'em or loathe 'em?

[Guest]

[Roz]

For ages I've been frowning at the lovely folks in Norway for having something like 99% of their electricity generated from renewable energy (hydroelectric)... but all is not lost - we have our own option , lots of homes in Cyprus have photovoltaic cells on the roof... so what can we do with our climate and topography - use rain to power our laptops ?

In the UK we have promised to make something like 10% of our Energy by 2010. (Not sure about those figures, but it's something like that). So if you visit the coast of Wales (North Hoyle) and squint out to sea you will see a "wind farm" - a series of turbines in the distance. Each innocuous looking turbine can apparently make enough power for 1300 homes... that's stonking when you look how simple it is!

They aren't limited to the coastline - anyone driving around the M25 will see one just North West of London - basically the UK has just been dabbling in wind as an energy source popping a few here and there... and compared with burning up fossil fuels I have to say I would much prefer it, but apparently the UK population hates them... so let's make a Shack poll - (don't be shy if you aren't in the UK ) - do they bother you - would you mind more being put around the coastline? I admit that you will lose the natural feel of the coastline itself, but let's be honest, man has already influenced the coast, the sea level, and these are so off-shore I think really it's a small price to pay.
 
Here's an artsy touchy feely pic in case you aren't sure what they look like:



The point is we can't have our cake and eat it - we can't moan about climate change and not do anything about it - we have to make some sacrifices and I really don't think this is a big one. What do you think?

[Morningangel-Iola]

Yay I'm the first to vote lol. I actually think they are quite elegant and do a good job, apparently there are some near me on the Thames estuary.

[Nienna]

I've seen wind turbines when I've driven through Cumbria on my way north into Scotland and I love them. I'm not too sure how much I'd like them if I was living close to one (or more of them) as I've been told they make a bit of a racket, but the ones in Cumbria are really elegant!
Dunno what the sheepies make of 'em tho ....

[blackcat20]

I think they look kinda cool, but there are other things to take into consideration...I worked on a species of threatened bat last year, and the government thinks its a great idea to put the turbines on top of the bat cave in line with their feeding ground. Some studies have shown that bats seem to be drawn to them, resulting in many deaths. Where they have been placed along the great ocean rd in Victoria, they are also in the habitat of a very endangered species of parrot. So its great that we are trying to come up with renewable energy, but it seems to be at the expense of other things like endangered native species 

[Sharon]

I love them    There is a huge one that I can see from the top of my road.  It is on a piece of disused wasteland so I don't think it disturbs anyone and as it is soooo big I have heard rumours it can provided electricity for half of Dagenham.

One question though.  Why don't they put more in the sea?  Is it just a maintenance issue?  It just seems to me that as an island the one thing we have loads of is sea.  I also thought they were looking into more ways of using wave power to generate usable energy but this seems to have died a death.