Where is the historical statistical evidence that wind turbines lead to CO2 reduction ?

In reply to #2 by Jumped Up Chimpanzee: See Professor Gordon Hughes of Edinburgh University article, " Why is wind power so expensive " p 27 21.5 GW of Combined Cycle Gas Turbine power stations would cost £13 billion and reliably produce the electricity that all the planned £130 billion worth of wind turbines in U.K would.

How can Britain afford to throw away £117 billion in times of austerity ? How can we justify taking money from the poorest and giving it to the often richer landowners ? Turbines will make our electricity less competitively priced and tend to result in industry moving to countries which do not impose CO2 regulations. Will we be happy if we lose British industry & see a brain drain to U.S.A. China, India, Brazil ? We need to look at the CO2 emitted in the production of stuff we buy from China - as pointed out by David Mackay of DECC, " Sustainable Energy without the hot air ".

Also the wind industry has no evidence that wind turbines on the National Grids lead to a significant reduction in CO2. In fact the published results of Eirgrid 2004 and E.ON Netz 2005 conclude that turbines are one of the most expensive, uneconomic ways to reduce CO2. Too many turbines on the grid cause instability and reduce the efficiency of conventional power stations. Poland and Czech republic are threatening to block transmission from Germany due to power surges on German grid due to turbines

Maybe some one would like to post links to historical case studies which prove a significant reduction in CO2 from wind turbines on the national grids ? Not just models. Where is the evidence that we are not being conned by wind turbine salesmen? But in any case there was no need to live with the threat of black outs. We could have started building new gas and nuclear plants 10 years ago to be online now.

I recommend the speech given by Mr Rupert Soames given to Holyrood 12th Nov 2010. Mr Soames is chief of Aggreko generators which provides emergency power world wide, ( Aggreko is a FTSE 100 ). My summary of what he said is that Scottish government energy policy was heading for the rocks and that they need to build new gas and nuclear power stations and reduce the number of wind turbines planned , otherwise there will be an increased risk of blackouts after 2015. Mr Soames recently pointed out that there is now 9000 MW of wind turbines but on calm days the actual output can be 20 MW.

I wonder what people who religiously ban fossil fuels will say if there are black outs, especially if it turns out to happen over a number of years before new conventional stations come online ? We need smart solutions to reduce CO2 emissions not ruinous policies based on fantasies which end in anarchy. Check out Dieter Helms, " The carbon crunch ", Master Resource - energy blog , Val Martin of European platform against wind turbines , C, Le Pair , Eirgrid report 2004 , E.ON Netz 2005 , MEP Struan Stevenson , John Constable of Renewable Energy Foundation , Ruth Lea of Civitas