I've grown to love them.

I suppose you are happy to see an area heavily dependent on tourism being turned into an industrial landscape? Have a look at what is being built, what has consent, what is in line for consent, and they are still scoping for more in the Kyle of Sutherland and surrounding areas.

I'm in favour of transferring from fossil fuels to renewable energy, and if we really can't do it any other way than with wind farms then I support them, but with an absolute howl of pain. On the scale that we deploy them, they DO dominate a landscape, and my soul was in that. It fucking hurts.

Maybe we could satisfy some of the people who complain about turbines being ugly by redesigning them. We could make each of the four blades perfectly straight, going off at a 90 degree angle half way down. Just a thought.

Have recently walked the Monsal Trail in the Peak District, an old railway line that in its day wound up John Ruskin something rotten!!

Clifton Suspension Bridge is beautiful. That can't have generated many complaints, surely?

Originally, I think the Clifton suspension bridge should have featured a lot of golden bling. Egyptian style was very fashionable then and there should have been a sphinx for each tower. But the money ran out. So what we see now is there bare engineering and it is better for it in my opinion.

So many people don't like change. It would be interesting to know what the Clifton part of Bristol was like before it was built to see the comparison. It would have had the advantage of making travel across the valley possible, so might not have had so many complaints as another construction🤔

Yes, anytime there is something done that obscures a view, regardless of how useful they might be, it will create issues with someone. NIMBY may be a modern term but realistically it existed forever. I am sure someone complained about aqueducts in Rome back in the past.

"Look, I'm chuffed to have clean water brought right to my door, Lucius, but I don't want to have to look at the bleedin' eyesore that got it 'ere, do I?"

Yep! Exactly.

Bleedin' Romans, coming along ruining the view of some rocks.

I'm sure the good burghers of Delft and Haarlem used to look out of their windows and curse those damned windmills

Dat kun je toch niet met elkaar vergelijken?

Do they have to be white? If it's green energy ...

interestingengineering.com/science/why-...

Who knew!

Back in the Middle Ages, they built a whacking great cathedral right in the middle of the city where I live. Completely out of scale with the buildings around it. Bloody outrage, should never have got planning permission.

The Pylons crossing the country are one of the worst

For me, it's the scarring of the countryside by open pit mines (or even the closed pits), quarries, etc. which FAR outwiegh the ugliness of wind turbines. I find the turbines quite slick and elegant to view. What did these people think about the original windmills?

I've seen quite a few old pits been turned into nature reserves and draw in a lot of rare and interesting creatures. They look far nicer now than when they were working. Just by the bye.

Absolutely. Remember coal mines and pit head winding gear across northern England and southern Scotland. Oh and the hundreds of folk killed in mines, including my gt grandad.

I went to Delabole in Cornwall in the early 1990s when is had the distinction of hosting the very first commercial windfarm in the UK. There was a even a gift shop and visitor centre, such was the novelty value.

Fusion But indeed, wind turbines are about the best of the rest.

The next generation wind farms should please these types as they are less Imposing but of course it's never about aesthetics is it?

Because Trump made negative comments about Wind Energy it is not necessary to waste breath on it. The man is ill-informed and definitely not a neutral observer. Ignore him!

Money.

I remember a parliamentary debate in 1999 about the supposed eyesore of a Ferris wheel that was going to be built on the south bank

I live audibly near a motorway. I wish I lived audibly near a windmill.

Give them the following options 1. Coal powered plant in their neighbourhood 2. Nuclear powered plant in their neighbourhood 3. Windmills. 4. Switch off the grid to their neighbourhood.

We have an anti solar farm protest group forming in my local area. We have been asked to join. NO ! They just built one about 3/4 of a mile down my lovely lane. It's barely visible. We will be the first species to die out as result of mental illness.

Also, they're majestic, gorgeous in fact

There's a few around where I'm holidaying in Northumberland, but although I've seen them, I couldn't say exactly where they are as where the Scots Pine trees are.

Big Oil have been more successful in promoting their ideology than Big Ferry

when I was young we had these inflatable tower gasometers to store town gas ... everywhere

I recall reading gasometers polluted the land they stood on, adding to the financial and environmental cost.

They all did together with the gas works, the contamination is still a problem with tarmac made from the tar. Under some roads

It was thinking of the removal of gasometers which made me worry much less about wind turbines in landscapes. When they're no longer needed, they'll go, and at most a few decades later it will be as though they had never been.

Well the ferryman union was quite powerful in the 1800's...🤔

Yes, both canals and railways had to contend with nimby landowners! Lots of odd kinks in routes where they had to avoid spoiling Lord XYZ's view

I feel bad that our friends in the UK have to spend this week listening in person to our bloated, demented, Pol Potbelly bloviate about wind turbines and other assorted stuff and nonsense. He really should be in a straight jacket.

Some people are just scared of change

Now, I'm no Biblical scholar, but after having to look at them for a week as they circled, I'm guessing 'fucking eyesore' may have been one of the factors in the whole Jericho wall destruction thing... 🤷

2 points old chap; 1 - BIRDS AREN'T REAL!!! 3 - THE CONCRETE MAN!!! "Love to the family!" X

I'm actually not sure what he's saying because of the double negative.

what en eyesore!!

*an

A modern day equivalent of the Luddites. Only most of these modern day Luddites are driven by right wing media!!!

i am fortunate to live near quite a few wind turbines and i find them serene. We have had them a long time and it must be around 25 yrs or so i would see them as i drove home, but beautiful and a marker that my journey was nearly at an end

"Not liking the look of" wind turbines is a cultural construct. Some people fear and loathe change, and wind turbines are a manifest icon of the change they fear. I think they're very beautiful for the inverse reason. As soon as a more elegant idea wins over them... I'll like the look of that.

People of a certain age: Wind turbines are an eyesore. Same people of a certain age: we should go to Holland to look at all the windmills….

The Dutch don't seem to mind them.

Lots of people (including Maupassant, for example) vehemently protested the building of the Eiffel tower for aesthetic reasons. Maupassant famously dined in the restaurant in the tower, since it was the only one from which one couldn't see the tower!

The plug 🔌 provides

It’s the UK and English problem with anything more recent than probably c1900 -I’m all in favour of good modern design. I don’t want to live in a pastiche of the C19

But lets not forget, a lot of people "pissed off" with wind turbines are simply in the pay of the fossil fuel industry

Agree wholeheartedly with the the sentiment of this, just one questionable thing... Fission or fusion?,environmentally there's huge difference between the two.

Yes! I cannot understand the view that they're ugly. As "man-made installations" go, I think they're quite pretty.

They are a triumph !

Actually they did. There are loads of places where ornate tunnel entrances, lakes, artificial hills and crenellated walls were built , even whole railways hidden or moved, so that the local 19th century landowner couldn’t see the trains going past their stately homes

We live in a generation that has forgotten smog and coal fired chimneys belching toxins and Carcinogens into our Urban streets. The greener alternatives are a damn sight prettier, a) because you can see them through the clean air & b) because they don’t stink with trails of choking smoke

Perhaps we could use a covered stadium to recreate the great smog of 1952 and shut a few of the loudest protestors in their for 24 hours…

I remember the buildings in my town being cleaned and has a child I didn't like the clean masonry. The rocks in the peaks above Sheffield are soot covered, after decades upon decades of rain washing them 😬

They’re all just tilting at windmills.

In 200 years time people will be nostalgic for wind farms and solar arrays.

I am not in charge of renewable energy in Scotland. If I were, I know where I would be building wind farms….

Well there's already one off Drumpf's golf course near Aberdeen. And why he's still bitching about them.

One at the end of each fairway?

If we were meant to cross gorges god would’ve given us wings etc

Well you know if you kill a Bald Eagle you get 5 yrs in prison and they kill hundreds of Bald Eagles every year and no one does a thing! 🫣

🤣🤣🤣

Have they ever explored painting the windmills perhaps a pale blue/grey instead of stark white? Surely they could find a colour or colours that blends with the surroundings. Perhaps these could be a danger to birds, i have never come across a discussion.

type in to any search engine "why are wind turbines white?' for several answers.

Apparently Brunel did a lot of the surveying for the London to Bristol railway line himself at night as people were angry about these horrible trains cutting through farmland.

Windy Miller gets unwarranted stick.

I love windmills! I love driving by and seeing those big white seagull wings swooping atop their giant masts. I love the human engineering of it all, knowing that they're just spinning and, miraculously, providing energy.

I think Prof Alice Roberts summed it up quite well….

I don’t find wind farms objectionable or pylons come to that, but would just note that you need pylons to connect the power from the turbines to the grid …

I was looking forward to wonderful views of the Chilterns from HS2, but apparently it will be mostly underground. (Plus it no longer comes anywhere near me, even if I'm lucky to live long enough for any part of it to be running)

I think your average Tory or Reform ‘windmill wanker’ doesn’t like anything that looks vaguely like progress.

There is undoubtedly a lot of platinum plated gold in HS2, and undoubtedly, it has suffered from pathetically weak control, but undoubtedly, the biggest cause of runaway costs is buying off the nimbys.

Funny how no one ever suggested that we should get cheaper electric when we constantly had a cloud of smoke and steam. Not to mention PFA dust.

Wordsworth was against the railways. People were according to my old man television aerials, till most people had them. The same was said about satellite dishes.

Growing up in north west surrounded by chimneys, mines, cooling towers and glorious mountains of coal tips with a grandad ex miner suffering from Pneumoconiosis why I find wind turbines more attractive I’ll never know.

Wind turbines are beautiful, majestic pieces of modern engineering in my view.

All those new fangled wind powered flour mills must have been seen as a terrible eyesore on the landscape. May be should get rid of the remaining ones.

I vividly remember my parents taking us to a wind farm in the mid-90s when there were less of them around, and us all being amazed at how elegant they are. Also remember jumping over the shadows that the sails made on the floor. Can’t have that kind of fun in more traditional power stations.

I’ll also add that they once also took us to Dungeness power station- and we all decided it was the most boring day out ever 🤣

bsky.app/profile/prof...

Bloody Romans…👀

Power stations next to coal fields in working class communities are one thing but put a wind mill next to a golf course... Problems like this are not new, the 18th & 19th century opposition to canal & railway building by land owners was legend and fills Hansard.

leicestershirecollections.org.uk/exhibitions/...

Someone on the council planning committee was obviously pocketing plenty of dodgy denarii to get the plans for that approved.

Refineries could at least have had the decency to be refined!

Yeah that Clifton suspension bridge. Total monstrosity.

They’re only unattractive because not generating cash for big business. The only people denying climate change are those that are financially backed by oil companies and those that read/ follow RW media. # more wind farms please

Absolutely this - anybody who has used grid electricity but never lived close to a generation plant or even a pylon really should not be allowed to have a view on this matter. By comparison, wind turbines are beautiful sculptures harvesting nature at little cost.

Round here we had petitions against the removal of our coal-fired cooling towers: once resented, a generation and a half later they were much-loved local landmarks.

I want you to help or spread my campaign. We need your support more than ever. We are suffering from hunger and thirst and we need shelter because there are 10 people inside the tent and the owner of the tent wants it and wants to get us out of it. tinyurl.com/FadiAfnan

New technology could be just around the corner www.thebrighterside.news/post/new-bla...

Never heard of these before so looked it up on Google and there they are, manufactured by a company called Vortex. No doubt AI will figure in the design and bring improvements but proves there is no substitute for the ingenuity of man.

Progress upsets the establishment at first. Everytime. People don't like change, even change for the better.

James Clarkson, Typically bowling into a debate, in typically casual laddish style, but offering nothing of substance. Arguably, Brunel built structures that served to sell the Victorian dream more than engineering solutions that encompassed both engineering solution and environmental impact

And don’t get me started on them bloody now fangled wheels 🛞

Sellafield is infinitely more fugly than some nice wind turbines rotating- in fact the turbines are actually relaxing as you watch them turn. Whereas what entertainment does Sizewell provide the person walking past - it’s a big block of something doing nothing

O'Brien challenges my brain everyday with interesting new topics , I am 74, thank you !