environmentally friendly wind power?

Interesting extract from an article by Matt Ridley published in the Australian of 17th August 2013 titled "Just Tell the Fracking Truth". Originally published in The Times so it applies more directly to the UK than Aus.

"Now it appears that the Diocese of Blackburn has circulated a leaflet about how fracking "has lured landowners to sign leases to drill on their land" and that it could cause lasting harm to "God's glorious Creation". Hang on, bishop. Did you say the same about wind power? Let's run a quick comparison.

Luring landowners with money: wind farms pay up to 100,000 per turbine to landowners and most of that comes from additions to ordinary people's electricity bills. What has the Church to say about that?

Spoiling God's glorious creation: as Clive Hambler, of Oxford University, has documented, each year between 6 million and 18 million birds and bats are killed in Spain alone by wind turbines, including rare griffon vultures, 400 of which were killed in a year, and even rarer Egyptian vultures. In Tasmania wedge-tailed eagles are in danger of extinction because of wind turbines. Norwegian wind farms kill ten white-tailed eagles each year. German turbines kill 200,000 bats a year, many of which have migrated hundreds of miles.

The wind industry, which is immune from prosecution for wildlife crime, counters that far more birds are killed by cars and cats, and likes to point to a spurious calculation that if the climate gets very warm and habitats change then the oil industry could one day be said to have killed off many birds. But when was the last time your cat brought home an imperial eagle or needle-tailed swift?

Wind turbines are not only far more conspicuous than gas drilling rigs, they cover vastly more area. Only 10ha of oil or gas drilling pads can produce more energy than the entire British wind industry. Which does the greatest harm to God's glorious creation, bishop?

Wind provides about 1 per cent of our total energy. Last weekend I drove from Caithness to Northumberland. View after view was spoilt by the spinning monsters: alongside the Pentland Firth, above Dornoch, in the Monadhliaths, in the Lammermuirs, in the Cheviots, on Simonside. I was looking at maybe one tenth of 1 per cent of all our energy production and an even smaller impact on carbon emissions. Trivial benefit; vast cost.

You don't need to lie to criticise wind power on environmental grounds. The truth is shocking enough."