Yachting and Boating World forums: Worlds largest windfarm off Lowestoft!!

Personally I think the whole windfarm thing is almost total bollox. Looking at the Scroby Sands windfarm most days, more than half of the windmills seem to be not turning - therefore not effective.
Does anyone know the lifespan of a marine windmill (15-20 years?)
How can they possibly be cost effective enough to recover the building and ongoing maintenance costs.
I would love to see some (factual) figures on the economics of these things.
As for the visual impact, I think a small number or the odd one like at say Lowestoft or Swaffham can be attractive. But to fill the Thames Estuary and the Norfolk Suffolk coast or every windswept hilltop, fell, and moor is not the way to preserve a beautiful coastline/country.

To be honest I don't think we have a way to generate power without further shagging the planet from radioactive waste or other man made pollutants, so we might as well build more coal fired powerstations and invest the money spent on windfarms in scrubber technology for removing sulphur dioxide and possibly even CO2 to keep the carbon footprint idiots happy. (I am all for protecting trees, the "environment" and our biosphere but not in a phoney political way).
The best way we could help the planet recover would be be to make plastic packaging almost illegal in supermarkets and anywhere else for that matter.
You are probably ingesting plastic in fish and meat now, as it is not the bottles and cotton bud sticks you see on the beach you should be worried about, but the ones that were on the beach and are now ground down to dust size and at the bottom of the food chain. And no, not all plastic is inert stuff that just sits there harmlessly.
If you see the book "The World Without Us" by Alan Weisman read it, very scary in a fascinating way.
Having read it, I would be more worried about radioactive, agro-chemical, and petro-chemical pollution than I would be about CO2.
Still, thats politics for you.

I'm off sailing in my plastic boat with plastic sails past the container ships full of cheap crap from China to fill the shelves of B&Q and homebase with more garden furniture and shoddy barbeques etc.

Perhaps the best option is to say sod-it, lets enjoy ourselves and go out with a bang.

Thats it....finished now.....can I have my medication???

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Harwich for the Continent - Frinton For the Incontinent