Agreed - if your motive for going back that far is the environment then you're unlikely to be taking flights.

(Flying to Nepal and backpacking independantly is very affordable when compared with a typical holiday in the Med, so I don't think it's always the kind of luxury you suggest.)

I mean luxury as in "something that is an indulgence rather than a necessity" rather than "wealth as evidenced by sumptuous living".

I saw some comments above regards the decommissioning of wind turbines. My beloved Kaim Hill in North Ayrshire is now under threat from a windfarm. According to the Planning Application the turbines will be decommissioned after 25 years and the site reseeded (shame about the heather and peat bogs that were there originally) i.e. the site will not be re-used. Does this mean global warming will no longer be a problem in 25 years time? I think not!

Much that I will be pleased that the turbines will one day be gone, and hopefully I will still be fit enough to get up the hill, this does show that windfarms are not a long term solution to our energy needs and it is financial greed, not global warming that is driving their construction.

So is the life span of wind turbines only 25 years? Who pays for the decommissioning, the tax payer? I suppose it doesn't really matter as my life span will have expired by then in anycase and I'll have no tax burden.

"So is the life span of wind turbines only 25 years?".......hillwalker

Only? It's not often you can buy something that lasts 25 years. The windturburbines have to be decommissioned at the owners expense - as is the case with most things. (Where does this taxpayer pays idea come from? It's always cropping up).

"According to the Planning Application the turbines will be decommissioned after 25 years and the site reseeded .... i.e. the site will not be re-used.".......Stephen

I believe the plan has to include decommissioning so that we aren't left with a landscape full of delapidated windfarms, but don't count on it not being reused. (Sorry about the double negatives). They might be replaced or rebuilt. As you suggest, global warming will probably not have gone away, and windturbines might still be seen by those in authority as a good thing. On the other hand we might have moved to offshore wind, wave power or nuclear and you can have your hill back.

John

Digging up Kaim Hill's peat and releasing the carbon in there for some concrete roads and some wind turbines doesnt seem like such a good carbon-balanced deal to me... Sticking wind turbines on a blanket bog is illogical, surely....

"Digging up Kaim Hill's peat and releasing the carbon in there for some concrete roads and some wind turbines doesnt seem like such a good carbon-balanced deal to me".....Mike

I don't know Mike. We can only know that if we know the amount of carbon released and the amount of carbon saved. Do you have any figures?

John

No, it doesn't make sense to destroy peat bog and such land is supposed to be protected by EU law. Sadly, wind farm companies are experts at getting around such laws. "Natural Power Ltd", the consultants behind the proposed wind farm on Kaim Hill, say in their Environmental Statement, that the site has already been modified by grazing and drainage, thereby implying that it is OK to cause further damage.

Natural Power also says that "the recreational amenity of the area surrounding the proposal is not classed as important". Excuse me, but how is the Scottish Parliament going to prevent Scotland from being the "sick man of Europe", if it allows such places as Kaim Hill to be destroyed?! Kaim Hill provides an excellent introduction to hill walking. Despite its small size Kaim Hill has a real wild feel to it and has inspired me, and no doubt others, to go on to do bigger things.

As for carbon dioxide emissions saved or released, I have asked Natural Power to provide me with figures for their development on Kaim Hill. However they have been unable to do so and just give vague statements saying the proposal "would be a valuable contribution to achievement of the relevant policy objectives and the 2020 Scottish Executive renewables target."

I don't have any numbers specifically about Kaim Hill, but peat country in general has been storing up vast quantities of carbon in N Europe since the climate cooled after a warm spell following the last glaciation - about 6000 to 7000 years 6 or 7 metres depth of peat over a square kilometre is a lot of carbon. One set of figures quoted from material provided by Natural England says that the amount of carbon stored in peat bogs in the Pennines is equivalent to the carbon stored in all of the woodland in the UK and France added together - so placing wind turbines on an area of blanket bog would be the woodland equivalent of doing the same in a substantial area of forest. Would you want to do it in Rothiemurchus, for instance? This is just as valuable as an environment.
All it basically needs is a cool, wet climate to allow the growth of sphagnum moss which is the basic building block of peat.Obviously, in order to keep doing its job, it needs to be retained and destroying it for 25 years worth of electricity as against potentially thousands of years of carbon storage (till the next glaciation), on the face of it anyway, doesnt seem to be the right way to go. Although, it might be possible to restart the process in a particular area, I'm assuming that once its gone, its gone.

Here's an article which goes through the CO2 payback calculations including damage to peat bog. If I understand the worked example correctly, CO2 payback time for Whinash would have been 3.5 years.

www.windaction.org/documents/7753

The CO2 released from the degrading peat is surprisingly large - pity this peat/carbon couldn't be used in a useful way. Doesn't anybody burn peat anymore?

Whilst searching for details of carbon content of peat bog I also came across articles that say that some of the UK's peat bog is degrading because of pollution*, and I wonder if temperature rises will see peat bogs drying out and degrading anyway?

John

*http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/6502239.stm

"What evidence there is suggests that in Scotland, bogs are still absorbing carbon from the atmosphere, while those close to England's traditional industrial heartlands have been turned by centuries of sulphur and heavy metal pollution into net sources of CO2.

In the Trust's High Peak Estate in England's Peak District, scientists found that 1,350 hectares of degraded bog were releasing 37,000 tonnes of carbon per year - equivalent, it calculates, to the annual emissions of 18,000 cars."