IN RESPONSE to Mr Brazier's letter (Standard, March 1) on the Cotswold District Council decision on the Northleach wind turbine and Geoffrey Clifton Brown’s crowd-pleasing remarks last week (March 15), they might like to consider a few facts instead of hearsay and ‘many say’.

An evidence review published in the journal Renewable Energy in 2010, which included data from 119 turbines across 50 sites going back 30 years, concluded that the average wind farm produces 20-25 times more energy during its operational life than was used to construct and install its turbines. It also found that the average ‘energy payback’ of a turbine was 3-6 months.

The 2011 annual energy statement from Department of Energy and Climate Change stated that green policies such as the Renewables Obligation, which ensures that suppliers generate an increasing proportion of electricity from renewable sources, add £20 to the average domestic fuel bill each year, of which wind is responsible for only 50 per cent - £10.

The UK Energy Research Centre undertook a thoroughgoing review of the evidence base available in 2006 on the costs and impacts of intermittent electricity generation. Data from countries where the penetration of wind farms has reached a significant level (such as Ireland, Denmark, Spain, Germany and some US states, demonstrates conclusively that wind does reduce carbon emissions.

It can be demonstrated in a laboratory that the addition of carbon dioxide to an atmosphere acts to trap heat and cause the temperature to rise. It is unquestionable that human beings burning fossil fuels are the cause of extra carbon dioxide to our atmosphere. Anyone who does not accept these facts had better turn off their television, throw their mobile phone in the bin and scrap their car, because these and the atmosphere all work by the same universal laws of physics, laid down by physicists and mathematicians over hundreds of years, and you cannot choose which of these laws work for you and which do not.

R W IRVING For Cirencester Friends of the Earth