Royal Aberdeen - "Destroyed Overnight"

[Tony_Muldoon]

Tony,

The worst thing the government can possibly do, if it wants to encourage innovation and development of wind energy is to subsidise the current technology.  Feed in tariffs were a disaster for the industry, enabling money to be made from inefficiency, stifling the need for better technology and providing ammunition for Tom and his fellow sceptics.

Mark
As I understand that's essentially what we still have.  Politicians are so keen to attend international summits where they can declare green targets.  Then they  create a 'market' whereby electricity generators charge all their customers more to subsidise the 'green' electricity that the wind farms produce. So the government can claim success without having another  tax!  Amazing.


James What subsidy did Apple get to produce Mark 1? 

Are these beautiful turbines?
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/property/propertynews/7940897/Strata-tower-in-Elephant-and-Castle-named-ugliest-new-building-of-the-year.html     

I was with you when I first saw them,  considering them beautiful elegant man made objects.  But some time after I visited Tarifa where there are thousands I begfan to change my views on aesthetics.  Then I discovered what a scam they are and my conversion is complete.  They will be seen as the most fatuous relics of an era of excess that offer us nothing but years of blight.

[Niall C]

Jon/James

From what Brian says, the club bought the ground a long time ago but even if they didn't, having even a leasehold interest in the land would be sufficient to be notified. These days, its up to the Council to do the neighbour notification and not the applicant for the planning permission, so it is possible they screwed up but I seriously doubt that as given how political these things are great care would have been taken to make sure everything was down correctly.

I think what is far more likely is that someone at the club is doing a bit of mudslinging. The club have been keen supporters of Trumps development as well as from memory in backing him in objecting to the offshore windfarm. I'll bet when it comes to getting their course in the ratings, they won't be telling any rater not to turn up as their course is now spoiled  .

Niall

[Adrian_Stiff]

Its an opinion if they are pretty or ugly. I personally think ugly I think when you drive through what is beautul Northern England and Scotland they ruin the landscape, but some do think they are gracefull, I think the windmill is and the power station at Princes is not, I think the airport detracts lots at Prestwick too. IMO one on the edge of the course is minging so I think they would ruin a courses rankings and so if a course was no 70 yes it could push it outside.
Solar and wind are at best a 1% yeild on cost, if costs to install can be be reduced to yeild 4% it will be a winner, the subsidy payments are silly but they are European law not UK derivitive so we had to comply.
Councils and posting information to interested parties not getting there is very common, that aside notices should and almost certainly were posted in local newspapers and on/adjacent to the land so there should be no excuse in a whole golf club not reading either the land notices.

[Ronald Montesano]

It's sad that a course ranking might depend on something beyond the course. Ingenue that I am, I don't look beyond the OB stakes (wish they didn't exist). Might that "something" influence the experience? Of course. It's up to the rater to look beyond the "something." Since not all raters think that way (do any?) outside factors will often prove influential.

[Scott Warren]

Adrian,

If a wind turbine outside the golf course is the difference between someone rating a golf course #70 in GB&I and leaving it out of the top 100, should that person be rating golf courses?

[Adrian_Stiff]

Adrian,

If a wind turbine outside the golf course is the difference between someone rating a golf course #70 in GB&I and leaving it out of the top 100, should that person be rating golf courses?

ABSOLUTELY. A great golf course is a combination of a number of things, if  you decide that you cant take into account anything outside of the golf course boundary then you cant give brownie points for those great holes at Pebble Beach..... quite simply a factory down the side of a golf course or an ocean has a big impact on the overall beauty. Its  a pretty v ugly scenario and an opinion if someone finds a wind turbine elegant or minging. Quite clearly Royal Aberdeen are opined that they ming and it will drop them in the ratings.

[Melvyn Morrow]

Visual pollution, see the beauty of these beasties in action.


Will wind farms replace the humble plastic bag as the greatest evil introduced to our environment.  


Optical Porn
 

[Jon Wiggett]

Niall,

the law must have changed since 2009 then as at that time it was definitely the responsibility of the applicant though the applicant could insist on a list of these people from the council. There was also no need to notify tenants, just owners at this time.

Regardless of this if RA do own the land and were not informed then they now have a right to object and insist the planning process be redone. I am pretty sure that this will not have changed as it would have caused uproar.

Jon

ps. James, I think you would might be suprised how many tenants and landowners do not get on that well.

[Brian_Ewen]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=frBR64H2bTw

This is what happened at a great Scottish Golf Course, Royal Aberdeen. The members are apoplectic. Wind Turbines are a huge environmental hazard that are often referred to as monstrosities --- which they are. I won't let this happen to any of my courses, it's a disgrace. Also, wind power is very expensive to build and maintain and very, very inefficient. It is an environmental hazard and everyone knows it.
Donald J. Trump

[Wayne_Kozun]

The shadow of a rotating turbine would certainly be distracting when trying to tee off from the tees shown in that video clip.

[Tony Ristola]

(3) Lovelock mocks the idea modern economies can be powered by wind turbines.

As he puts it, “so-called ‘sustainable development’ … is meaningless drivel … We rushed into renewable energy without any thought. The schemes are largely hopelessly inefficient and unpleasant. I personally can’t stand windmills at any price.”
http://www.torontosun.com/2012/06/22/green-drivel

[Bruce Katona]

How many on the board have ever visited a wind farm? I have.

A professional group I'm associated with was given a tour of the the wind farm (5 masts I believe) located in Atlantic City, NJ.  What an empressive word of architecture and engineering!

As the group I was with was aligned with the "bugs and bunny tree huggers", the 1st question asked was" so how many birds do the props mulch annually?"  The answer was about a dozen, as the birds learn quickly to avoid the blades when spinning quickly.

Are they a blight on the visual landscape?  We each have our own opinion.

As of now, wind energy as really not cost effective, but neither is solar power.  Nuclear power is cost efficient, but the waste generated is ahuge issue.  The 1st personal computers were not better than adding machines, but through tecnologic advancement, product refinement and better manufacturing, look where we are today.

Reliance on fossil fuels needs to me de-emphasized over time.  Through attrition, reliable alternate energy sources will be developed.  They have to be as fossil fuels are not a long term renewable resourse.

[Doug Siebert]

I sure hope Dismal River tears down the windmill by the 17th and especially the one in the 4th fairway.  Even worse than being destroyed overnight, the course was built destroyed!

If there had been a 200 foot smokestack there since the 1890s and it was proposed to tear it down, I'm sure there would be a lot of people up in arms about that.  People hate "unnatural" stuff around courses, until it has been there a requisite number of years.  I imagine by the time I'm too old to swing a club and that windmill has lived its useful life, there will be some people unhappy about its removal or replacement with whatever a wind turbine looks like in 2050.

[Jon Wiggett]

I am surprised at how close the turbine is and am sure the shadow must be somewhat distracting but these sort of turbines will be a big part of the way forward. I would like to see much more hydro/tidal in the mix though.

[Tom Culley]

Those of you who doubt renewable energy sources, are you aware of the Centre For Industrial Progress? It's run by a guy called Alex Epstein and provides some superb arguments for fossil fuels and against renewable sources.

If you search for them on youtube you can also find some great videos of Mr Epstein debating against hippies from the occupy movement... lets just say he tears them a new one

[Anthony Butler]

are only put anywhere due to a misguided belief that Man can somehow control the climate

Tom,

You have been a vocal opponent of  "green" energy here before and are clearly a non-believer in global warming.  I disagree with most of what you have written but simply don't understand this statement.  Is this a reference to your belief that global warming is not a result of man-made climate change?  

As to the rest of it, early steam turbines were inefficient and dangerous.  It's a good thing our forebears didn't apply your logic.  Come to that we wouldn't have cars, trains or planes if they had.  Presumably the transistor and Internet wouldn't have followed, either.

I absolutely believe in the changing climate, it is a fact and will always be a fact. I don't think the case for global warming, certainly to do with Man, is remotely close to being proven. I don't think we have enough data to begin to analyse that, and we certainly don't have enough computing power to model it. The whole global warming theory - and it is only a theory, is based on assumptions and positive feedbacks. There is zero empirical evidence.

We are spending trillions to make absolutely no impact. Man accounts for 3% of CO2 emissions.

We simply don't understand the complex nature of the climate well enough, so correlation is being pinpointed as causation by people hugely financially, ideallgically or politically motivated.

Emissions rose sharply from the 40s to 80s but temperatures fell.

As for wind turbines, they just don't work. We moved away from windmills for a reason!

Maybe you don't understand the 'complex' nature of the climate well enough... I can think of two reasons for this:

1) You are a moron

2) You don't believe that anyone is smarter than you...

The idea put forward by climate deniers that either the science 'doesn't make sense to you' or you are yet to be convinced is just laughable... by that same rationale since you don't understand what's involved in giving someone a heart transplant they should probably stop doing that procedure, right?

[Tiger_Bernhardt]

Have any of you guys looked at what sits next to RA. There is a huge offshore fabrication facility that towers over the back nine. The equipment there is bigger and certainly as unsightly as a wind turbine.

[Jon Wiggett]

Those of you who doubt renewable energy sources, are you aware of the Centre For Industrial Progress? It's run by a guy called Alex Epstein and provides some superb arguments for fossil fuels and against renewable sources.

If you search for them on youtube you can also find some great videos of Mr Epstein debating against hippies from the occupy movement... lets just say he tears them a new one

Tom,

thats all great. but no good when no one can afford it.

[Tim Gerrish]

Good discussion for the most part.  I'd like to take this one step further...   Past the climate discussion please.  Has anyone actually played with a wind turbine near or on the course?  Has it effected play?  Besides the aesthetics, (and I agree with Adrian that what is around the course does impact ratings, heck GD includes it as one of the categories) has it effected the club's operation? 

It seems like many controversial things, some people love them and some people hate them.  Can it be that simple? 

But there are locations that wind turbines are out of place.  The Royal Aberdeen one is surprising.  It must effect play in some way.  The operators could turn it off when the flicker impacts the course.   

[Jack_Marr]

The arguments for and against man-induced global warming are mostly, amongst the public, political, picking and choosing information to support their cause. I'm not 100% sure we are changing the climate, but I'm pretty sure, based on what climatologists say. Unfortunately, the minority of evidence to the contrary is more interesting to the media. The argument is not flawless, but it is pretty convincing.

It is also not true that there is no empirical evidence that we are causing global warming. This is a line that's just learned off and repeated.

A problem with wind farms is that they produce energy when it is not needed, but if there were larger grids, this wouldn't be as much of a problem. They can also store the energy produced at night by pumping water into mountain reservoirs and producing HEP when it is required.

[Jon Wiggett]

One other thing that is not mentioned is that although the turbine might be considered an eyesore is it any worse than other things that bordered the course in the past. Was there not a waste land fill by the course in the not so distant past?

Jon

[Anthony Butler]

Those of you who doubt renewable energy sources, are you aware of the Centre For Industrial Progress? It's run by a guy called Alex Epstein and provides some superb arguments for fossil fuels and against renewable sources.

If you search for them on youtube you can also find some great videos of Mr Epstein debating against hippies from the occupy movement... lets just say he tears them a new one

Tom,

thats all great. but no good when no one can afford it.

Alex Epstein wants to come across as a contrarian, but he can't manage to string together two coherent thoughts needed to present an alternate point of view...

Every legitimate scientific organization in the world agrees that the world will run out of fossil fuels and that the planet is heating up... so the idea that you, "Mr. Dumb Fuck No-Nothing, Get all my ideas from Sean Hannity" still need to be 'convinced' of the science behind this is simply ridiculous.

The only thing up for the debate is whether the first thing will happen quickly enough to prevent the second thing from proceeding to the point that life in Earth as we know it will become unsustainable. We do have massive reserves of natural gas, however, so it's likely our transportation base will move towards being powered in that manner, either directly or through gas-fired electrical plants... this will increase the need for electricity and with the price of solar and wind turbine technology plummeting, I can foresee a time over the next 20 years where every new house built in states like Arizona, Colorado etc will be required to have solar capacity. Of course they would have to get their head out of their rear end long enough to elect someone other than Jan Brewer as their political leader.

As to RA, I'm not sure why the wind turbine was located just 40 yards away from the green... we need to continue to trial new ways of powering our society, otherwise our capacity to innovate might come too late for us as a civilization, but putting this turbine so close to where people live and play is not the right way to proceed.. people are less likely to embrace new ideas for powering our society and saving our environment if the immediate results of these efforts get such a negative response.

Meanwhile we can all enjoy higher beef prices next year because the heat and droughts killed half the corn in the Midwest this summer...

[Brad Isaacs]

You probably shouldn't be eating beef.

[James Boon]

Since my earlier postings on this thread I've done quite a bit more reading on the subject.

I still believe that there is a future for wind turbines and they are certainly part of the solution from a renewable energy perspective, BUT thanks to various subsidies and the rush to hit somewhat arbitrary low carbon targets, we are probably putting up far too many turbines while the technology still needs to be advanced.

Anyway, I recently played at Worksop GC, home to Lee Westwood, and there is a turbine at the adjacent B&Q Distribution warehouse. The warehouse is screened by trees and not seen at all, but the solitary turbine is visible from several parts of the course and the clubhouse. The 13th hole gets closest and is about 500m away at which point the turbine does look rather large, but then as you will have seen I don't have a problem with the aesthetics (in fact I was with a group of architects and engineers and we all agreed that probably due to our professions we all found them generally elegant structures even if we understand that not everyone does (on that subject the Strata Tower is as ugly as they come Tony but that's the building and not just its turbines)). There was no other impact as far as I could tell, though it was a soaking wet day and not one for photographs otherwise I would have took a few.

Cheers,

James

[Anthony Butler]

You probably shouldn't be eating beef.

That was not the Royal "We". That is We as a society... Although you are correct in saying that anyone with climate change concerns should not be eating beef. Every pound on your table adds many more in CO2 to the atmosphere.

My wife had been bugging me about a getting a chicken coop... Of course, then I would have to add all the car trips to the therapist after having raised them from hatchlings just to wring their neck and eat them.