Newark Advertiser reader letters: Is it the madness of crowds?

We have often been told that offshore wind is cheap but the claim of “cheap” only comes from the fact the wind is near constant and free in offshore shallow-water wind fields such as those owned by the King.

However, in a marine saltwater environment, the costs of harvesting that “free” wind energy to make electricity is far, far from cheap.

In America, even though the Biden administration has provided billions of dollars in subsidies, the offshore wind industry has suffered a wave of project delays, missed production targets and a public backlash in the last year.

Against this background, Ed Miliband still intends to construct a whole series of offshore wind farms.

Net Zero Watch has warned that Labour’s new plans for the electricity system means that consumers will face years of rising bills.

Floating offshore wind is probably the most expensive form of electricity ever to be deployed on a commercial basis in the UK!

As a veteran observer of ‘the climate’, I ask myself, how did this descent into hysteria happen? How were people so easily persuaded that there is a ‘climate emergency’ and the only remedy was to transition our electricity generation to wind and solar?

This mania has developed for decades against mounting evidence that it is totally unfounded, and I wonder why has the mania been confined mainly to the English-speaking countries?

How can it be that all this has happened at the same time, and amongst the same groups, that believe in the equally mad and evidence free ideas and policies now proliferating about sex, gender and race?

The words in the title of Douglas Murray’s book ‘The Madness of Crowds’ might be a good description of the situation but maybe I am just getting too old!

— Robert Sheppard, Beckingham