Turbine torment

Your report (2 January) that the RSPB’s now cancelled wind turbine at its Loch of Strathbeg nature reserve would, it reckoned, have been unlikely to have had a significant impact on 
protected birds shows either its duplicity or innumeracy, or both.

Its claim to justify the windmill’s installation by its policy of seeking all means of mitigating climate changes caused by CO2 release makes no sense, in view of the negligible impact of wind turbines on greenhouse gas output recently reported from the University of Edinburgh, and on the miniscule CO2 output from Scotland.

In fact, the RSPB clearly just wanted the subsidy money as landowners, since the turbine would certainly have had no beneficial impact at all on climate change. Alternatively, it lacks a sense of proportion in basic arithmetic.

(Dr) Charles Wardrop

Viewlands Road West

Perth