It is very surprising to hear about a survey carried out by the well respected IPSOS / Mori organisation into the issue of public support for onshore wind farm development. There appears to be an unbelievable amount of bias in the methodology used in selecting respondents. For example, people over 64 years old were excluded (possibly because their hearing had not been impaired by listening to loud pop music??). Secondly the bulk of opinions were sought from people living in the South East of England and West Midlands where there are very few wind farms so respondents would have little or no experience of the noise or other impacts of these giant turbines. Only 5% of chosen respondents were from Wales and 8% from Scotland where the vast majority of wind farms are to be found. Of course, without actual experience by people of wind farm impacts, they may well think that wind driven energy is a good idea and they won't be put off visiting affected areas.
It is interesting to note that in contrast to the IPSOS / Mori finding that 80% of people believed them acceptable, an online survey by the Friends of the Earth found that the majority of people were against onshore wind farms. OK respondents were self selected but you would have expected FoE site browsers would be pro rather than con wind farms!
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