Scotland Cuts Down Forest to Make Room for Windmills

Where would you like to begin in counting all the environies in Scotland’s effort to destroy the environment in order to save it?

Scotland has been busily erecting Stonehengian-like multi-story bird terminators — wind turbines — in deferential indulgence to the Green Gods. Now we learn that in addition to killing all manner of birds of prey living in the forests, the independent-minded Scots are killing forests to erect these largest of all virtue signals.

The UK Daily Telegraph reports that nearly “16 million trees have been chopped down on publicly owned land in Scotland to make way for wind farms, an SNP minister had admitted amid a major drive to erect more turbines.” Now before you go worrying your pretty little head about spotted owls and the barred owls that eat them or whatever creature you fancy, this forest-sized mass of trees has been systematically chopped down for years. Indeed, they’ve been cutting down these trees at a rate of 1,700 per day for the past 23 years. This is into the billions of board feet of timber brought down and used hopefully to good purposes, but it’s the Scottish government so who knows.

So let’s do the back-of-the-envelope math here. They’re chopping down trees, reducing the O2 output of that region, because, unless they’ve replaced the study of photosynthesis with another new sex toy exhibit, most school kids remember that trees and green plants produce oxygen. At the same time, the tree chopping also increases the CO2 output. Trees are CO2 sinks. When the trees are processed or burned in a wildfire, they release the CO2.

Think of it as a car filter. The guy at Hunter’s Lube Shop says he’s done the requisite work but, gee, he says, have you thought about changing out your air filter? You look at the air filter he’s holding in his hand, grab it, shake it, and voila it can endure another 3,000 miles. That filter lint has to go somewhere like a garbage can. The garbage can is the atmosphere in this horrible metaphor.

The good news is trees are crops so thankfully Scotland can grow more. A government minister whose name we don’t care about assures us that, “Where woodland is removed in association with development, developers will generally be expected to provide compensatory planting in order to avoid a net loss of woodland….” and “only be permitted where it would achieve significant and clearly defined additional public benefits.” Well, that’s a relief.

Now I am more than today years old and I’m old enough to remember the way we were sold on all of this climate catastrophe stuff back when it was called global warming. We have been assured since before Al Gore discovered global warming and invented the internet that CO2 was the Snidely Whiplash to the earth’s damsel in distress, Nell. But, what have we got here? It turns out that not only have the environmentalists been standing around kicking rocks and whistling the Flower of Scotland hoping nobody notices the tree chopping, but they’re all on board with the program! Which brings to mind a great question one should ask: What windmill company boards are the environmentalists on, anyway?

And here’s another question. Where are all those druid tree screamers I thought Scotland was so famous for?

Wait, these will do.

The Telegraph reports that “Scotland already has turbines theoretically capable of generating 8.4GW of power, well over half the UK’s total, but SNP ministers want to add a further 8-12GW.” So why build more? Glad you asked. It turns out the wind turbines theoretically don’t all work, either.

Texas, the land of black gold, Texas T, showed us how void were the promises of the environmentalists when they suckered the good old boys in Austin into hooking up tin cans and string to wind turbines. And then it froze in the winter of 2021 and the turbines couldn’t chop up birds anymore and people froze and were in blackouts. Not only do windmills not produce energy when the winds don’t blow, but they also don’t work when they’re cold.

Scotland understands this issue, and it brings us to our next environy with their windmills. When it gets cold Scotland has equipped all the windmills with diesel engines to make them chop, chop, chop, and kill the birds.

“Renewable energy generated from wind farms is a key element in Scotland’s response to the climate emergency and the shift towards net zero and the infrastructure on land that we manage generates enough power for 600,000 homes,” said a spokesman for a windmill company. Thank heaven for that.

Question: if a diesel engine powers a windmill to produce electricity, will a diesel-powered electric car outperform a coal-powered electric car?