But I think that he was missing the point completely. He failed to
understand that it has become a religion, with its own mantras, and its
high
priests are in fact very vocal at every opportunity, appearing on TV,
radio
and in newspapers just about every day. They have this attitude of 'we're
right so you must be wrong', which is forced down the public's throat
continuously, through the media, and all this legislation which is
depriving
us of 'comfort' items like incandescent light bulbs, and stopping our
waste
bins from being emptied every week, and stopping the local tips from
taking
any rubbish that they don't consider to be recyclable and so on. I think
what we are actually starting to see is a backlash from the public at
having
their lives interfered with continuously, and they see this as a result of
the preachings of the scientists.

But what does that have to do with whether the scientists are right? Science
is not "supposed" to be about what people -- especially the public --
thinks, or would like to think.

It's true that scientists are only slightly less irrational than your
average idiot. That doesn't mean they're wrong, or that it's a bad idea to
use less energy or recycle waste.


Alternative power is fine, as long as it is worth the effort and energy
budget used to produce it. The figures for wind power - at least in this
part of the world - don't bear out the claims which are made for it. Wind
turbines take a lot of manufacturing, shipping, installing and
maintenance,
all of which uses very substantial amounts of energy, and the returns from
them are very small at best. Make no mistake, the erection of windfarms is
about corporate business, as is an awful lot of green technology. Problem
is
that it's gone so far now, that even if it was all proved to be wrong
tomorrow, we wouldn't be able to stop without causing a world-wide
financial
meltdown in the multi-billion dollar industry sector that has grown up
around this dubious 'science' ...

Do you have any hard data on the payback time for wind power that account
for "everything"?