If we are to spurn the nuclear option, or indeed if we are to embrace it, we must do so only once we have taken all aspects into account. Rigour and honesty is required, too. We must accept the relevance of the subsidies that wind power receives, and the low carbon nature of nuclear energy.

IT is time for UK governments to take a serious look at how we manage the seas. The current position is shambolic.......The sea is particularly important to Wales because she has a disproportionately long and beautiful coastline and also has a disproportionately high dependency on the tourism industry.

Were he to point the finger at the burning of millions of tonnes of hydrocarbons every day by aircraft worldwide, he might be nearer the mark.

Energy minister Malcolm Wicks says that the latest review will uphold the diversity of supply sources and help households become more fuel-efficient

While these claims provide amusement for most of us, the worry is that those in power tend to be the only ones who believe them.

SIR - As a keen bird watcher, I am a regular visitor to the Knowstone area and was alarmed at the proposal to put up massive wind turbines in the Batsworthy Cross area. The area is totally unsuitable for such a development. Has anyone considered how dangerous these structures would be to drivers on the busy A361? They would be an extremely hazardous distraction at such very close proximity.

The proposal, outlined to me in a letter from Scottish Power, suggests the wind farm is to be replaced with 10 new turbines that would reach an overall height in excess of 125 metres (currently 49 metres) with wingspans of 80 metres (currently 32 metres) - higher than Nelson's Column with a wingspan larger than a Boeing 747. I would suggest that this is hardly an overhaul but more a major redevelopment of current wind energy output in Cornwall. The proposed redevelopment of the wind farm will also be enlarged from its current site to include the erection of turbines along the St Newlyn East Downs and through to Fiddlers Green - a doubling of the current area of the countryside used and I suspect a development that must cause some concern to the residents of Fiddlers Green.

By excluding from council business any councillor who can be considered to have a "prejudicial interest", the code is now being widely used to silence councillors who wish to speak on behalf of the communities they represent.

If wind energy was the one practical and affordable answer to global warming then I would grit my teeth at the loss of the countryside and accept it. But I know that they are no answer to global warming in northern Europe. The Germans who have invested more than anyone in this form of energy are finding, according to newspaper Der Spiegel, that despite more than 17,000 wind turbines across Germany the nation is now emitting more CO2 than before it built them.

Time to wake up people.

The CO2 hysteria is absurd, considering the minute contribution made by human beings. Of course the climate is changing - it always has done, hence the thriving vineyards of Northumberland in the 12th century and the Thames frozen three feet deep in the 19th - but human activity is largely irrelevant. The world's climate is controlled by solar activity, by variations in the earth's rotation and orbit, by external factors in space and, terrestrially, by clouds and volcanic activity. If the Canutes of the IPCC imagine they can control those elements, they are even more infatuated than they appear.

The machines will totally dominate the landscape for four or five miles around, will be visible up to twenty miles away and will seriously affect the ambience and spirituality of St. Peter’s on the Wall which is the oldest church of its type in the world

It is openly acknowledged that wind power is not viable without the substantial economic assistance which we pay for through higher taxes and electricity bills, that it is the least green of all the low-emission technologies, with significantly higher lifetime CO2 release than hydro, tidal and nuclear, and that it can never provide a significant and reliable part of our ongoing power demand. It does not "provide power for hundreds of thousands of homes"; it provides power for industrial companies in the south for commercial carbon trading.

Last Wednesday, two days before our Climate Change Secretary, Ed Miliband, told us that motorists could help save the planet by changing more quickly to a lower gear, his underling Lord Hunt made one of the most absurd claims that can ever have been uttered by a British minister. Solemnly reported by the media, he said that by 2020 he hopes to see thousands more wind turbines round Britain's coasts, capable of producing '25 gigawatts (GW)" of electricity, enough to meet "more than a quarter of the UK's electricity needs".

Some will say that this is a false choice and that we can do without nuclear or fossil fuel burning. But the technologies that everyone hopes will deliver large quantities of renewable power - wave, tidal, offshore wind - are still years away from being proven to reliably deliver large quantities of power. The other less-polluting sources of power - clean coal and gas with carbon capture and storage - are not even at the demonstration stage yet. Even if these technologies do turn out to work in a technical sense, they have still to be shown to be economic. As last week's row about ScottishPower's electricity prices shows, people expect their electricity to be both reliable and cheap. The party manifestos are full of admirable talk about turning Scotland into Europe's green energy power house, how we can be much more energy efficient and how we can turn our homes into little power stations with rooftop turbines, solar panels, etc. None of this answers the really critical question: can enough of this be delivered quickly enough to close the energy gap which looms in 2015? I have yet to see convincing evidence that it can.

ROBIN Ball (Letters, August 5) has been a victim of the wind-energy deceivers. Those sails in Germany were not producing any energy at all.

How would you imagine an environmentalist would react when presented with the following proposition? A power company plans to build a new development on a stretch of wild moorland. It will be nearly seven miles long, and consist of 150 structures, each made of steel and mounted on hundreds of tons of concrete. ...The answer is that if you are like many modern environmentalists you will support this project without question. You will dismiss anyone who opposes it as a nimby ...and campaign for thousands more.

It is true that alternative energy sources such as wind power have a limited role to play in meeting Britain’s energy needs. But they will only ever have a small role, and if the cost is scarring the increasingly threatened landscape, they should be rejected and other green and more efficient forms, including nuclear power, should prevail.

As I am Jane Davis, I hope you will allow me the time honoured right to reply to this gentleman's statements. Noise pollution from the Wind Farm 930 metres from our home has indeed caused us to abandon our home and rent a house 5 miles away. Not an easy decision to make when your home is on your farm. ...The Local Government Ombudsman has only yesterday decided that our situation needs proper investigation, with all facts available to all parties and this is to happen in the near future. She is however concerned that the planning condition for noise "put in place to protect local residents" and based on the industry standard ETSU-R-97, is "Vague, open to interpretation, immeasurable and thus unenforceable".

Aberdeen’s claim that it should become the seat of any new national energy institute seems a no-brainer.