Sir — No one disagreed with me that windfarms were an expensive and unsightly way of putting the lights out — indeed, Ag Smith, for the climate campers, felt we should learn to live without electricity on tap anyway.

Few of us are likely to share that view. Man-made climate change remains just a theory — a theory that because atmospheric C02 has been increasing it must therefore be the cause of this particular peak in the millennia old cycle of global warming and cooling, just the kind of scientific assumption which wrongly linked MMR with autism, or 'proved' Iraq had WMD.

Even supposing that climate change really was to some extent man-made — and the IPCC themselves still only think this is 'probably' the case; even supposing it was not more realistic to adapt to live with it, as we have lived through countless similar peaks in the past, than to try to prevent it; then that Canute-like mission would impose such enormous taxes on us that every penny must be spent wisely.

Windfarms spectacularly fail the test. Turbines produce only a third or less of the output of which they are notionally capable; and even then, as Denmark, who has gone before us, has found, less than half of that is actually usable, when the right sort of wind happens to coincide with the right sort of demand.

Despite that example our Government has committed to desecrating the landscape with turbines and pylons; inflating our electricity bills by 30 per cent to fund its folly; and consigning us in ten years time to be sitting in the dark when it isn't windy. We can no longer afford to indulge these green whimsies that will blight our landscapes and pile taxes on our citizens to no purpose.

Michael Tyce, Waterstock