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Wind power is vital ok ! - - - For the profits of the wind power developers and the Jobsworths such as Prof Bebbington, as for Bebbington being independent !!!!!!! Windpower is nothing but a money making scam which the people of Scotland do not want yet are paying dearly for. The sooner this windfarm madness stops, the better for all of us except the jobsworths and the wind power developers.

It would be interesting to have some positive comment from nabodican - do you have any proposals for sustainable energy in the decades ahead? Or maybe you reckon that the whole climate change/peak oil situation is also one great scam

"It would be interesting to have some positive comment from nabodican " Certainly : Continue with Coal, Nuclear & Hydro power, but replace the coal and nuclear with new power stations. Then start on a massive marine based electricity generating programme with a ring main circling the whole of the UK. This will get rid of the need for the likes of the Beauly Denny line. Yes the whole climate change issue is a scam because it is not man made. However I do believe in cleaning up our act, particularly with the likes of waste disposal. Regarding oil, we are taking more out of the ground than ever and we have only scratched the surface of the offshore reserves. WINDFARMS ARE A MONEY MAKING SCAM !!!!

Why do we need a "Scotland, Sustainable Development Commission" in the first place?

Clive B - "Or maybe you reckon that the whole climate change/peak oil situation is also one great scam" The existence of a problem - such as peak oil, or climate change, does not necessarily mean that a solution is at our disposal. Real world data indicate that wind energy will make no contribution to either oil shortages or our changing climate. With respect to the latter, no available technology is capable of mitigating climate change. I am not sure whether Prof Bebington will "drop in" to this thread, however his claim that "The Sustainable Development Commission's attitude to wind power (Letters, May 2) is based on thorough analysis of all data over several years" is risible. The original SDC report was criticised for containing basic mathematical errors (airbrushed out of the November 2005 revision). See Oxford Energy - Wind Power in the Uk - Has the SDC Got it Right, by Malcolm Keay: "Confidence in the Report’s understanding is not enhanced by a mistake on p11 where the SDC says “Assuming a wind power [capacity factor] of 30%, 9,500MW of installed wind capacity will produce around 31,500 GWH of energy”. The true figure is around 25,000GWh. Given that not all the calculations in the Report can be so readily checked, there may well be other mistakes"

Will07 - [italic]"The existence of a problem - such as peak oil, or climate change, does not necessarily mean that a solution is at our disposal. Real world data indicate that wind energy will make no contribution to either oil shortages or our changing climate. With respect to the latter, no available technology is capable of mitigating climate change".[/italic] I think that the view of the IPCC, given its weight of expertise, should be accepted; as I see the whole climate is in a delicate state of balance between colossal forces and the rapidly increasing scale of mans use of carbon is now beginning to upset that balance. The danger comes from positive feedback (or tipping points) which can drive the climate to extremes, making it an inhospitable spot for human existence. Theres no magic wand to provide a worldwide solution nor any one technology that will do the job. In the UK wind should be a major part of the answer; when it begins to contribute a lot more than it does at present energy storage will be needed to cope with intermittency.

...............the "Coincident Null Theorem" blowa the Prof's argument out of the water.............cl early the man has been paid to write this rubbish

Surely Prof Beddington is joking about accurate wind forecasting. Check out the BBC five day forecast for your postcode. They change daily and are still inaccurate . German experience has demonstrated a variation of over 30% in under an hour. Large thermal stations can not respond that quickly without wasting some energy. The result is that the facility for quick start up of the hydro electric stations is used to balance the grid and as more wind farms are added than new hydro the grid can not be run so efficiently, meaning that more co2 per unit is then produced unless you increase the nuclear capability

auld fermer - five day ahead forecasting is not really relevant to managing the grid; five hours ahead is more to the point. And forecasting on those timescales really is pretty good. Yes, on occasions it isn't, and yes, there may be inefficiencies on those occasions. But such unusual occurrences should not be quoted as though they happen all the time. If you were offered a car that did double the miles-per-gallon 363 days of the year, but half for the other two, you'd take it and not moan about the two days that were not optimal. Or perhaps you'd take it and still moan (I confess, I probably would, but hopefully you get my point). German variation of 30% in under an hour..... Not a problem if that's what you were expecting. Nor if you were expecting 25% and got 30%; that's only 5% different from your plans. People quote these variations, but it's the variation from what you were expecting that matters.

In response to JustSomeGuy, 5 hours is not enough to safely shut down some furnaces, without damage to their lining. I have personal experience of requiring accurate wind forecasting less than 6 hours ahead (to put the canopy on a sheep shelter ) and the BBC was very poor at that degree of precision. Since wind power increases with the cube of the wind speed and is greatly affected by local terrain, the output of wind farms, which the grid is obliged to take, is a variable and relatively unknown quantity who's back up has to be able to repond on the same timescale Coal powered power stations cannot do that without venting steam from time to time.