Poor poor Heathcliff

Shakesbear

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I was in Haworth last summer and had tea in a restaurant. The view from the garden was spoilt by a wind turbine thingy. It was not huge but it was very out of place. It seems that the only places these things are going up are in places of out standing natural beauty or places no one would want to visit. The mediocre sites are left alone.
 

blacbird

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To make wind turbines work you need a place with reliable strong wind. This often means areas with canyons or valleys that funnel air movement, and, of course, are rural settings. The latter may be idyllic in aesthetic terms. So, much like any other form of energy generation, there are trade-offs.

Which is not to be considered an expression of complete support for such wind-farm developments, but more of a cautionary comment.

caw
 

gothicangel

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Turbines don't bother me. I grew up in Northumberland [and live back here again] near a turbine farm, and lived and worked in Scotland near another turbine farm.

Give me the choice between a power station or a turbine farm [which is what they are trying to do here in Northumberland] give me the turbines!
 

Priene

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Haworth has the most evil car park in England.
 

crunchyblanket

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I'm with gothicangel on this one...the aesthetics of it don't trouble me. The chance to have cleaner, sustainable energy and, by extension, a more pollution-free future, trumps it for me. Plus, they are a damn sight prettier than power stations and smoke stacks...

Priene, why is it evil? Is there a portal to the Underworld? Does it turn all cars into Skodas?
 

aruna

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Turbines don't bother me. I grew up in Northumberland [and live back here again] near a turbine farm, and lived and worked in Scotland near another turbine farm.

Give me the choice between a power station or a turbine farm [which is what they are trying to do here in Northumberland] give me the turbines!


Same here. I live in Germany which plans to withdraw from nuclear energy, and windfarms are all over the place(as well as solar panels on a high proportion of rooftops). On the drive from Hahn airport to home recently there was hardly a piece of nature without them!
But I don't mind. They are not THAT ugly, and the alternative is much worse. You can still see thorugh them to the green fields beyond, unlike with powerstations.
 

Priene

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Priene, why is it evil? Is there a portal to the Underworld? Does it turn all cars into Skodas?

If you you go overdue by a minute or two, they clamp you. And the surface of Hades itself is better tarmaced than that place. I saw a programme about the owner - he's an utter ****b**k. Haworth itself is actually a bit rubbish once you get there*, although last time I was there I bought two cheapish Rushdie hardbacks, so I guess I can't complain. The pubs are full of signs that say 'Branwell Bronte drank himself insensible in this seat in 1836 and vomited into a coal scuttle now held in the Bronte musuem'.


*although by Bradford standards it's actually lovely
 

Priene

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Same here. I live in Germany which plans to withdraw from nuclear energy, and windfarms are all over the place(as well as solar panels on a high proportion of rooftops). On the drive from Hahn airport to home recently there was hardly a piece of nature without them!
But I don't mind. They are not THAT ugly, and the alternative is much worse. You can still see thorugh them to the green fields beyond, unlike with powerstations.

In East Anglia we simultaneously have campaigns going to protect the landscape from windfarms and to restore our historic windmills. Figure that one out if you can.
 

RichardGarfinkle

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American butting into UK discussion, here, but got to keep up the cultural stereotype of rudeness.

We went driving in upstate New York last summer and drove through a windfarm built amidst mountainous farm country. The turbines were huge and added to the drama of the scene.

If one were writing a Wuthering Heights style book these days (shudder), one could do worse than use the towering man made presences arising above the implacable peaks and the bull roarer clamor of their turning as human greed clutched out to steal the very freedom of the air to feed our insatiable appetites.
 

seun

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If one were writing a Wuthering Heights style book these days (shudder), one could do worse than use the towering man made presences arising above the implacable peaks and the bull roarer clamor of their turning as human greed clutched out to steal the very freedom of the air to feed our insatiable appetites.

Yeah, but where are the car chases and the explosions?
 

Priene

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If one were writing a Wuthering Heights style book these days (shudder), one could do worse than use the towering man made presences arising above the implacable peaks and the bull roarer clamor of their turning as human greed clutched out to steal the very freedom of the air to feed our insatiable appetites.

It's also possible to overstate the isolation of Haworth. It feels isolated up on the moors, but Haworth is only ten miles from Bradford - and these days is really just a suburb - which at the time the book was written was one of the most hypermodern and booming cities in the world. Heathcliff would surely have approved of windfarms, if there was money to be made from them.
 

Ken

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... they're great and all compared to the alternative. Even so, I wouldn't like one or more being situated in a scenic place where I go to relax or appreciate the scenery. My view would always be, "why couldn't they have settled on some other spot?" Maybe that's selfish :-(
 

Priene

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... they're great and all compared to the alternative. Even so, I wouldn't like one or more being situated in a scenic place where I go to relax or appreciate the scenery. My view would always be, "why couldn't they have settled on some other spot?" Maybe that's selfish :-(

The solution in Britain's case is to stick them off-shore, but then people start whining about the seagulls.
 

Ken

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The solution in Britain's case is to stick them off-shore, but then people start whining about the seagulls.

... ah. The birds fly into them, I suppose. I have to confess that I might do some whining, myself, especially if their little, mutilated carcasses began washing ashore :-(
 

Priene

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... ah. The birds fly into them, I suppose. I have to confess that I might do some whining, myself, especially if their little, mutilated carcasses began washing ashore :-(

This is the North Sea we're talking about. Seagull carcasses would help hide the smell of raw sewage.
 

Evaine

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Maybe if the modern wind turbines looked like old East Anglian windmills?
My take on the problem is - when I ask people, they never know where their energy comes from, but there has to be a power station somewhere, and somebody must live next to it. I switched to a company called Good Energy (which has wind farms and solar power as well as biogas) because I wanted to know where my energy came from, and I wanted to know it was clean. Our MP is anti-wind power, so there aren't any turbines round here, but when I go to visit my boyfriend on the outskirts of London I can see turbines from his windows - which is hardly an area of outstanding natural beauty!
 

Priene

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Maybe if the modern wind turbines looked like old East Anglian windmills?

I guess windmills were modern wind turbines once. I was reading an old Victorian writer's journey through (can't for the life of me remember who) and he was complaining about the horrors of the railway and how it had ruined the countryside. Now we think of the railway as something old and comforting and Betjemenesque, but for him it were vile. Which makes me wonder how bad the turbines actually look. I can think of many worse architectural horrors in Yorkshire (I'm looking at you, Middlesbrough) than windfarms.

Plus they stop up pumping some CO2 into the atmosphere, which is a pretty big plus in my book.
 

Alessandra Kelley

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It's also possible to overstate the isolation of Haworth. It feels isolated up on the moors, but Haworth is only ten miles from Bradford - and these days is really just a suburb - which at the time the book was written was one of the most hypermodern and booming cities in the world. Heathcliff would surely have approved of windfarms, if there was money to be made from them.

This is the North Sea we're talking about. Seagull carcasses would help hide the smell of raw sewage.

People get weird and romantickal about isolation in nature. I grew up in the Boston area, and even today you can get primeval-feeling areas within a stone's throw of urban centers out there. But there isn't really such a thing as unspoiled nature, even here.

Take Thoreau, for example. His little I'm-such-a-pioneer-loner cabin by Walden Pond was less than a mile from Main Street of the town of Concord, and he often visited and dined with friends and family during those years. The Fitchburg Railroad went right along the western edge of the pond before Thoreau even got there.

I understand well-off residents of Cape Cod scuttled an offshore wind farm there because they didn't want their view ruined, which is pretty hard on the less well-off residents of Massachusetts who live near pollution-belching power plants.

But even setting that aside, I don't see how wind farms spoil all the natural beauty of a place. I think they're beautiful.
 

aruna

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The solution in Britain's case is to stick them off-shore, but then people start whining about the seagulls.


Oh, death to all seagulls. I lived in Eastbourne. I should know. You can't imagine the relief, moving to Germany and waking up to the song of blackbirds in the morning instead of that horrible screeching all night long!
 

mirandashell

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There are inshore wind turbines in Cornwall and I love them. When I see them I know I'm over the border and my heart lifts.

And like a lot of people have said, they are a heck of a lot better than the alternative.
 

Priene

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Can't believe Aruna just declared war on an entire species...
 

dangerousbill

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In East Anglia we simultaneously have campaigns going to protect the landscape from windfarms and to restore our historic windmills. Figure that one out if you can.

Wait a hundred years and society, now living on fusion power, will be campaigning to keep the wind turbines. They'll be protected by the Historic Trust.

I recall visiting a restored cotton mill near Manchester that was powered by a huge wooden water wheel. The square brick building and water wheel were no doubt considered blights on the landscape 150 years ago. Now the Historic Trust looks after them.