"Winds light to variable..."

That's one of my favourite Goon Show quotes.

The Goon Show was the product of Spike "The Well-Known Typing Error" Milligna's fevered and fertile imagination. A twisted surreal version of reality I sometimes recall when I read what's written or said by those so frightened of climate change they choose to deny it's even happening.

The overwhelming majority of climate scientists are 95% certain we humans are causing Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW). Let's be clear, the Earth will survive it; many species of plants and animals will survive it (though alien space travelers may one day conclude the cause of the last Mass Extinction on Earth was not an asteroid but humankind). Humankind may survive it, though perhaps not our civilisation. Unless we can keep the global temperature increase below 2 degrees Celsius.

Part of the answer is a switch to green, renewable energy. I am a firm supporter of power generation by offshore, but also onshore wind turbines. These beautiful elegant machines harvest the energy bestowed on Earth by Sol, just as we use combined harvesters to reap the food grown under the Sun to feed our bellies.

But there are many who don't share my views. I have so often heard that wind power is too intermittent; that the wind does not always blow, blows too hard, or not hard enough. One Tweep even claimed the wind turbines visible to him were turning even though there was no wind (does the Daily Mail know about this nefarious plan to turn electricity into wind?).

Well yes, but the wind is a stochastic system. It is always blowing somewhere. You simply have to install sufficient capacity across the country to ensure you can meet your baseload requirements and consumption peaks whatever the impact of localised microclimatic conditions.

So, to satisfy myself, if no-one else, I've decided to capture one wind forecast per day and post it here to see just how many days out of the year experience total calm across the whole of the UK. Yes, they're forecasts, but the science of weather forecasting has made enormous leaps of progress in the last few years and we can expect a high degree of accuracy.

Clearly I would like to thank the Met Office and other sources of wind speed forecasts. Naturally, I acknowledge any rights and copyrights vested in such material. However I do feel that the use of such material in the pursuit of 'fair comment' is legitimate in the context of informing this important debate.