I quote from an obituary (of Nancy Wertheimer, which refers to her partner, Ed Leeper – both were American): “In 1979, Wertheimer and Leeper reported that children living near high-current electrical wiring had a higher than expected rate of leukaemia. At the time, the association was seen as a curiosity and was largely discounted and ignored. “That all changed in 1988, when a study sponsored by the New York State Department of Health supported their hypothesis. Later work confirmed the link and extended it to measured power frequency magnetic fields.”

Well, there you are – ground zero power lines causing cancer. The only problem is that Wertheimer and Leeper were dead wrong. Subsequently, the British government paid £12-million to investigate the link between childhood leukaemia and electromagnetic fields. They concluded that possibly two to five cases out of 500 cases of childhood leukaemia might be caused by electromagnetic fields.

They further stated: “This number is based on the assumption that exposure has to be above a certain threshold before there could be a health effect. The overall evidence, however, is not strong enough to draw a firm conclusion that magnetic fields cause childhood leukaemia.”

They also said: “Magnetic fields don’t have sufficient energy to damage cells and thereby cause cancer. At present, there is no clear biological explanation for the possible increase in childhood leukaemia from exposure to magnetic fields. The evidence that exposure to magnetic fields causes any other type of illness in children or adults is far weaker.”

Despite these statements by the Mother Grundy of all governments, there is still a perception among the public that magnetic fields and cancer are linked. It is my opinion that Wertheimer was a flake. Anybody with a modicum of scientific knowledge would have realised that, if childhood leukaemia was caused by power lines, then there would be a whole lot more childhood leukaemia deaths worldwide. It would have been noticed before.

The tragedy is that, despite the UK research, the scientific community immediately leaped onto this bandwagon and demanded funding to study the phenomena in the same way they have reacted to holes in the ozone layer, swine flu, bird flu, Y2K and climate change. “Give us the money,” they say, “and we’ll do the study.” Like rats out of a drain. I will write about this in a future instalment of this column.

But here, in your favourite engineering magazine, I present my own Number One Flake Theory. It is this: the drought in Cape Town is caused by the wind farms in Port Elizabeth. Yep. Taking wind removes water. It’s true, my china.

Proof: in the Port Elizabeth area, there is currently a total of 700 MW wind farms. Cape Town’s rainfall is absolutely based on cyclones. These are circulating masses of air that pass over the Cape. A south-east wind brings no rain but, sooner or later, is followed by a north-west wind that will bring rain.

Assuming that a cyclone is about 250 km across, then about half that distance will be over Port Elizabeth wind farms when the north-west wind is expected over Cape Town. If the cyclone air is moving at 10 m/s and is a front of 3 000 m high, then the cyclone power is about 270 000 MW. However, 700 MW is taken away by the wind turbines, which, in my theory, causes delayed rainfall in Cape Town.

Ha! You will say, 700 MW is very much less than 270 000 MW. So it is. But we are not trying to cancel out the whole 270 000 MW. Certainly, out there is somebody who would agree that, if the wind farms took up 20% of the cyclone energy, then there would be an effect. At what point does that effect start? I claim that, on the basis of the severe drought in Cape Town, the 700 MW deficit has just this effect. Never in all my years in the Cape have February and March been so still and rain free. It is all due to the wind farms. Prove me wrong. In the meantime, the T-shirt is coming, wait for the book and the film and riches follow . . .