Nothing simple or cheap about the ‘friction, energy and violence’ of wind power

The answer lies in the word: mill, from the Latin word, molinun, grind. Its essence is friction, energy and violence, as in the word maelstrom. It was probably the Persians who first realised the potential of wind as a way of creating friction to grind grain. But what appeared simple was actually complex, involving the redirection of horizontal energy about a vertical axis, requiring cogs and gears, hence more friction. Friction generates heat, as countless passengers in the Lockheed Constellation airliner of the 1940s and ‘50’s could briefly attest, as they  watched one or other of the four Wright Cyclone engines in the wing catch fire, before the fire spread: Not so much fuel as friction, to be followed by vertical descent and hideous death. 

Green ideologists boast of the simplicity and cheapness of “wind”, whereas there is nothing simple or cheap about redirecting a powerful vector about a 90-degree axis.  Hence the bankruptcies that usually follow the much-hailed opening of countless windfarms across the world. Where there are no bankruptcies and closures, one can usually detect the putrefying carcass also known as state subsidy. So,  if you want to understand the true meaning of energy-poverty and mid-winter megadeath, go 100 per cent green.

The national great flag-carrier of wind-energy is Denmark, with huge turbines in the coastal lagoons along its western shores. There are two other aspects to Denmark that ventophiles should note. The first is that despite having the most promising location for wind-power in Europe and perhaps the world, Denmark is a net importer of energy, via complex interlinks with the UK, Finland, Estonia, Sweden and Norway. Secondly,  along with the supercharge that the Copenhagen government imposes on electricity usage as a sort of state sanctimony, Denmark has the highest energy costs in Europe. Not exactly a recipe for national prosperity. 

But then wind never is, not least because, like the Wright Cyclone engines of the Constellation, friction-filled wind-turbines catch fire easily. What do you do then? Not much: maybe with a very long fork you might make some toast. Otherwise say farewell to the $4 million (€3.4 million) that was spent on it, because that’s the installation-cost of the average land-based electricity-generating windmill. At sea, you can probably double the cost, at least. Oh yes, and maintenance, insurance and legal costs on land will certainly be over $1,000 (€855) a week, which you have to earn from that vain assembly of vanes before you start repaying the mortgage on the mast. At sea, who knows: So is that the Third Great Secret of Fatima?

Indeed, the supernatural and the religious are very much the territory that we are now in, which in politico-secular terms is also known as Marxism. And what better fusion of the two strains of that communist creed than Mao and Miliband, as represented  by the Buzzard oil platform off the Scottish coast! This is a confusing story, as all stories about Marxist triumphs usually are, but here goes. In essence, the UK’s Marxist Energy Secretary (I know, I know, the quintessential oxymoron) Ed Miliband has been trying to get the China National Off-Shore Oil Company to  invest in and run the Green Volt windfarm to power the Buzzard oil platform off Scotland’s North Sea coast. 

In short, in terms of pollution, Buzzard is a bit of a bastard, putting Miliband in a bit of a bind, because his own preference (being a bit of a Marxist) is probably to close everything down and revert to the Stone Age. However, his electors in Doncaster and the people of Scotland probably have strong feelings about being reduced to wearing rabbit-fur g-strings like Raquel Welsh, meanwhile enduring chilblains, rickets and beriberi, followed by famine and megadeaths, preferably in the Chinese style. 

The Chinese Communists have told the British Communist that they have no faith in his Green Volt wind-fart, oops, sorry, windfarm, in Scottish waters, not least because anything called Green Volt probably consumes more electricity that it generates. I append a statement from one of Green Volt owners, Vårgrønn, if only here to display my supreme mastery of Norwegian hieroglyphics (and quite the high point, I assure you, of my long journalistic career.) 

“Green Volt is on track to be developed as the largest commercial-scale floating off-shore windfarm in the world, providing clean power to thousands of homes across the UK.”

Of course, an installation at sea is “on track”: I only wonder that Vårgrønn (yes!) did not say that it is getting “off the ground”. Moreover, if you travelled back sixty-five years and could read Chinese, you’d find similar wording about The Great Leap Forward (though probably – and tragically – lacking the å and the ø.) This majestic triumph resulted in between 20 and 55 million deaths. This an even greater death toll than achieved by the Scottish Nationalist First Minister Nicola Sturgeon, but probably because she was not allowed long enough in office (during Sturgeon’s regime, Scotland was the only country in Europe in which life expectancy shortened). However, these words are a mere aside in a column that is about the futility of wind as a means of powering a nation rather than, as in Sturgeon’s case, of governing by it.

Underlying all this is the Great Attenborough Fallacy, namely that mankind is destroying the planet by our production of greenhouse gases, and all we have to do is quote a bit of Bob Dylan. Well, as a philosophical assessment of the human condition, Blowin’ in the Wind has all the insight and wisdom that you might expect from a sulky, vapid 14-year-old, and equally so as means of escaping from what we are assured are the lethal perils of global warming. No doubt the planet is getting warmer: Merely doing “something” (ie, anything) about it is dangerously childish.

Even the Chinese Communists, who are dab hands at killing people – 100 million people so far and counting – have baulked at the cost of the Green Volt project. Well, that’s a start.  A pound to a penny that a  cost/risk/benefit analysis of all the Green Projects designed to save the planet would show that almost none of them has done anything of the kind. They are, for the most part, a form of juju to make us feel good that we are placating Gaia and other gods, which is largely what the Aztecs did as they sacrificed their young, and Sturgeon’s ancestors did in Shakespeare’s time, as they  burnt thousands of witches alive. 

Same principle. Sooner or later, same outcome.

Kevin Myers is an Irish journalist, author and broadcaster. He has reported on the wars in Northern Ireland, where he worked throughout the 1970s, Beirut and Bosnia.