Greens wind turbines cause global warming increase

Wind farms can change the weather, according to a model of how these forests of giant turbines interact with the local atmosphere. And the idea is backed up by observations from real wind farms.

Somnath Baidya Roy from Princeton University, and his colleagues modelled a hypothetical wind farm consisting of a 100 by 100 array of wind turbines, each 100 metres tall and set 1 kilometre apart.

They placed the virtual farm in the Great Plains region of the US, an area suitable for large wind farms, and modelled the climate using data from Oklahoma.

During the day, the model suggests that wind farms have very little effect on the climate because the warmth of the sun mixes the lower layers of the atmosphere. But at night, when the atmosphere is stiller, the wind turbines have a significant effect.

“At hub height the turbine gives an extra input of turbulence to the wind, which increases the vertical mixing,” explains Baidya Roy. This brings down to ground level the warm night air and higher wind speeds that are normally found at 100 metres.

At 3 am the average wind speed in Oklahoma is 3.5 metres per second, but it increased to around 5 m/s in the model wind farm. The model also suggested that the temperature would increase by around 2°C underneath the 10,000 turbines. Over the course of a day this averages out to an increase in ground-level wind speed of around 0.6 m/s and a rise in temperature of around 0.7°C.

Heat of the night

How such a change might affect local wildlife and agriculture is not clear.

The findings are backed by real observations. Neil Kelley, a meteorologist at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Golden, Colorado, has gathered data from a wind farm in California.

“Although the wind farm was more dense and the turbines smaller we still found that the turbines tended to pull down heat and momentum from above, particularly during the night-time hours,” he says.

Meanwhile, Gustave Corten from the Energy Research Centre in Petten in the Netherlands is carrying out experiments with a model wind farm inside a wind tunnel. “I think the study is of much interest and I can confirm that large wind farms will affect the microclimate,” says Corten.

Baidya Roy says it may be possible to modify the wind turbines so that their effect on the weather is not so extreme. “If engineers can reduce turbulence then the turbine would become more efficient and the environmental impact would be reduced,” he says.

But no amount of engineering will change the fact that energy is being removed from the wind. “People tend to think that renewable energy is for free, but it isn’t. There is a price to pay for all kinds of consumption, including renewable energy,” says Baidya Roy.

Journal reference: Journal of Geophysical Research Atmospheres (DOI: 10.1029/2004 JD004763).

Al Gores past inconvenient statements

One of the inconvenient facts not being reported by the usual suspects and the msm is Al Gores desire for "population control" including abortion and birth control for poor countries ,this fervent desire is also one of the main ideals of the peak oil industry as we mentioned here

This from William Stanton and Colin Campbell of peak oil inc

To those sentimentalists who cannot understand the need to reduce UK population from 60 million to about 2 million over 150 years, and who are outraged at the proposed replacement of human rights by cold logic, I would say “You have had your day, in which your woolly thinking has messed up not just the Western world but the whole planet, which could, if Homo sapiens had been truly intelligent, have supported a small population enjoying a wonderful quality of life almost for ever. You have thrown away that opportunity.”

The Darwinian approach, in this planned population reduction scenario, is to maximise the well-being of the UK as a nation-state. Individual citizens, and aliens, must expect to be seriously inconvenienced by the single-minded drive to reduce population ahead of resource shortage. The consolation is that the alternative, letting Nature take its course, would be so much worse.


This from Al Gore

Vice President Al Gore, warning that overpopulation fosters global warming, yesterday suggested expanding birth-control and abortion programs in developing countries to help reduce the environmental threat.

Noting that Third World nations are producing too many children too fast -- in addition to too much pollution -- Mr. Gore said it is time to ignore the controversy over family planning and cut out-of-control population growth.

While hosting about 100 TV weathermen at a White House global-warming conference, Mr. Gore was asked how to reduce population surges in developing countries that experts say will lead to a doubling of Earth's current 5.5 billion population within 40 years. After highlighting President Clinton's early decision to kill the Bush administration's so-called "Mexico City policy" that prohibited U.S. funding of overseas birth-control programs that include abortion, Mr. Gore focused on family planning and child mortality rates.

"This doesn't have to be as controversial as some people make it out to be," Mr. Gore said, offering three solutions to overpopulation.

First, he said that cutting child mortality rates will encourage families in developing countries not to have so many children.

"They count on the fact that at least some of their children will survive into adulthood and take care of them when they're old. If you have a very high child mortality rate, and a high percentage of the children die in infancy or in childbirth, then you've got to have a lot of children in order to guarantee stability and -- I mean, you know, in your old age," he explained.

The second factor is "availability of birth control information and culturally appropriate and acceptable techniques. And that's the controversial part," he said. "The third factor is the empowerment of women, socially, politically, and in the context of the family, to participate in the decisions about childbearing," said Mr. Gore, who is pro-choice.

On April 1, 1993, White House spokeswoman Dee Dee Myers told reporters that abortion was to be "part of the overall approach to population control." On May 11, 1993, State Department official Timothy Wirth told reporters that the administration was insisting on access to abortion as a reproductive choice and that foreign governments may not "hide behind the defense of sovereignty." This is nothing less than "cultural imperialism."

In a story dated January 22, 1994--the 21st anniversary of the Roe v. Wade decision--Steven Greenhouse reported in the New York Times that "Administration officials said that the population strategy was perhaps the most concrete sign of Vice President Al Gore's influence on foreign policy."

Al Gore subsequently led the U.S. delegation to the U.N.- sponsored International Conference on Population and Development in Cairo in 1994. The large American delegation exerted relentless pressure on representatives from developing countries to accept abortion as family planning even when it was contrary to their laws, customs, and religions. The threat to withhold U.S. foreign aid money and funds from international bodies was used as a club.


60 years since we heard similar ideals

Some inconveniant facts on energy prices.

The Greens are still in denial over energy pricing and the inconvenient fact that pricing is to reduce even further in the medium to long term.

“New Zealand, given its distance from its main markets and its heavy dependence on energy imports, stands to be even more affected than Australia by the projected decline in conventional oil production.

“The planning on alternatives to oil and natural gas has to begin now, and the Government needs to be showing leadership on all fronts. In a responsible fashion, it should be alerting the public to the problem. It should be launching a major drive to develop alternatives, invest in public transport, renewable electricity generation, change planning rules to reign in suburban sprawl, and much more.

"Such planning has to be an integral part of future-proofing New Zealand, and of ensuring our economy is sustainable, given the threats it will be facing from peak oil and climate change."

says the greens co leader on the 11 septemeber.

The fact that observations are the 15.5% fall in retail pricing in the last month and as I predicted here and on 3 posts in June the market caught up with the marketeers.

The ususal rant on the prices will rise again ,hmm lets see what the greens bible says
Future supplies are considered abundant A study by the Intergovernmental Panel
on Climate Change (IPCC), a study group established in 1988 by the United Nations and other world organisations to study the climate issue, estimates that total consumption of carbon energies in the period 1860–1998 totals just 1.1 per cent of what physically remains in the ground pending future production and consumption,
IPCC, Climate Change 2001: Mitigation, Cambridge University Press,
Cambridge, 2001, p. 236.

Water babies in the wilderness
I believe that the moment is near when by a procedure of active paranoiac thought, it will be possible to systematize confusion and contribute to the total discrediting of the world of reality.

Salvador Dali

This was a lead in a monologue I wrote here on the philosophical attributes of scientific debate and the convergence of virtuality and reality as a single entity ie the models being of more importance then the reality of observations and the hypothesis.

It is now the post industrial information age. Each day we experience data transformed in both electronic visual and print mediums to our senses and perceptions. The data transcends both virtuality and reality. The convergence of reality and virtuality in News and entertainment, with science and controversy, with chaos and catastrophe, and the transformation of the delivery of data along the various modes of information have resulted in uncertainty and confusion.

Indeed how can it be expected to identify reality, when there are difficulties of distinction between reality and the unreal when the unreal is being realized, and the real being shown as unreal. Each day we experience a growing crisis of unrealized proportions .As Umberto Eco observed “crisis sells well” The question such crisis pose is whether attitudes have been undermined by the experience of modernity, or whether reality itself, something objective and firm, is an illusion .Is the paradigm now one of “there is no reality?” When the media, governments, and advertisers tell us that dreams are becoming realities, does this mean conversely, reality is becoming a dream?

It is somewhat a paradox that the ones who understand science least, or are the vocal proponents of science and cite the uncertainty principle to encite the unwashed in their arguments against scientific progress, use the double standard to voice their agendas stated or perceived, in say climate change by saying there is a scientific consensus, or the scientific evidence is unimpeachable.

The philosophical ideology of what is, or not real are continuing debates. The primary questions being ontological and epistemological. The former is about being: what is real? Is there reality and form behind appearance? The epistemological question is about knowing: what is truth?. Is knowledge by reason or experience? Or do our everyday systems distinguish between reality and appearance, and truth from falsity. We expect the system of road rules to regulate the traffic, and do not question if the other drivers are rationalists, or empiricists . Previously the normality of the result of an experiment, performed by a scientist, did not rest on whether the scientist performing the experiment is an idealist or materialist, or the source of funding, but the outcome and replicability of the experiment that showed reality.

The spurious arguments that a scientist worked for an energy company ,or was an advisor to XYZ corporation is as relevant as if the scientist used his left or right hand, indeed these idealistic arguments used, are normally seen in the areas of pseudoscience.

Science has a cognitive structure (facts-hypothesis-experiment-laws-theories)together with verification. We have seen the transformation from the Merton norms of Originality, detachment, universality, Skepticism, and public accessibility, and its cognitive structure, to theories that have the form and reason of Pseudoscience. These rely on a casual approach to evidence, spurious similarities, explanation by scenario, research by literary interpretation and a refusal to revise.

As we see above skepticism is part of the structure of science. No scientific statements of fact should be taken on faith. All claims should be carefully scrutinized for invalid arguments and errors of facts, and any such errors should be made public immediately. Simplistically speaking, scientists should trust no one when it comes to claims of scientific fact.

Science and scientific method and the identification of scientific pseudoscience were subjects dear to the thinking of T.H Huxley in the 19th century who described such philistines with degrees as “promoting their value above their market worth” Of all such tales from him the best is in correspondence to his grandson.

Dear Grandpater
Have you seen a waterbaby? Did you put it in a bottle?,Did you wonder if it could get out?could I see it someday ?
Julian(aged 5)

So wrote his grandson after seeing his grandfathers picture examining a bottle that had waterbabies in the picture book of the same.

In reply he wrote

Dear Julian
I never could make sure about that waterbaby. I have seen babies in water and babies in bottles,but the baby in the water was not in the bottle and the baby in the bottle was not in the water. My friend who wrote the story of the waterbaby was a very kind man ,and very clever. Perhaps he thought I could see as much in the water as he did-There are some people who see a great deal and some who see very little in the same things, when you grow up I dare say you will see things more wonderful then waterbabies where other folk see nothing.

Etc


An interesting analogy that says more about science then any thesis.

THE CYCLICAL SPECULATIVE CHANGES DISTORTING THE FUNDAMENTALS OF THE PRICE OF OIL,
Over the last 18 months cost changes to most commodities or tangible assets have been upwards due to the strengthening of most economies and the increasing demands for energy and commodities from China, India, and other developing economies.

This has caused demand supply shortages for both services (eg.shipping) and raw commodities to supply the rising demands. Supply never precisely matches demand. Either it exceeds demand or it falls short. Those who provide supply are attentive to signals indicating the size of demand, and when the signals show more supply is required they either supply more or increase costs to provide capital to increase supply. Contrarily when the signals indicate demand is low they will cutback on supply. Through this cybernetic adaptive behavior, fluctuations in supply and demand occur constantly in cycles, normally seen in narrow boundaries of variation.

The boundaries of variation of supply-demand are normally narrower for renewables, services and manufactured commodities then for nonrenewables such as oil, or iron ore.
The cost for example of a factory making 1 million TVs per annum will have the same cost for the first as the last. With a nonrenewable commodity such as oil normally the cost for extracting the first barrel closer to the surface is less costly then further barrels from a greater depth, thus limiting the total supply, alternatively as demand price increases so does supply.

Non renewable minerals have their own demand supply characteristics in so far as non fuel minerals have a proportion that can be recycled and reused thus limiting demand at the top of the demand-supply cycle. This has been a major factor in limiting price increases in copper, aluminum, and even with paper products.

Whilst there are limitations on the recyclables of the oil industry, there is increasing reuse of byproducts such as asphalts, plastics, and lubricating oils. We also see improved efficiencies in oil production with gas flaring being used in platform energy production, and gas capture enhancement.

Cost increases for low end oil products have also meant competing alternative energy sources or substitution becomes increasingly viable, such as using coal for heating in emerging and developing markets. The price differential has meant that savings can be used to mitigate pollution from using coal by increased use of new technology.This can be seen in interesting new technologies of coal bed gasification, and cogeneration. These have enhanced VOC removal, higher thermal efficiencies,and multiple downstream ouputs,such as heat, gasification for liquid fuels, and electricity,and applications in tar sand recovery.(two pilot plants for coalbed methane recovery are under construction in China with outputs of around 500mw each.

Over the last 30-40 years there have been dire predictions based on flawed assumptions on the cost of energy,the upper production limits and the consequences of peak oil ,Some interesting examples are the Global 2000 report to the President made in the early 80’s.
If present trends continue we will see overpopulation, resource depletion, food shortages,etc.There we will stop as trends did not follow as they never do, they may change in the short term, they trend up or down, but prediction is always subjective. Demand fell, substitution occurred as coal replaced oil in generation and the price of oil and demand trended down for the next 20 years.

To view changes in demand as a constraint ,we will use the China market as demand and supply substitution ,closing faster then predictions.

As discussed in previous posts, a key factor suppressing oil demand growth is China’s amazing
66 GW (14.9%) increase in power generation capacity in 2005. This is the equivalent of adding some 1.4 times Australia’s total power generation capacity in a single year. This addition has quickly closed the demand/supply gap and lessened the need for relatively expensive oil in power. According to recent government projections, China’s power shortage will shrink from 35 GW in 2004 to an estimated 10 GW in 2006. China plans to add another 72 GW of capacity in 2006, and capacity growth should exceed the growth in power demand by some 3%. The fact that water levels at key hydropower reservoirs are some 18% above levels of a year ago is also contributing to this optimistic outlook. It is thought that a capacity surplus will emerge in 2007, which could grow over time as construction of an estimated 100 GW of installed capacity was launched in 2005. By the end of 2005 some 250 GW of capacity was under construction.as well as the 80GW contracted through the Moscow-Beijing energy cooperation agreement.

The decrease in energy generation oil use is around 250000 bbl per day of heavy fuel oils.The completion of the Kazak-China oil pipeline with capacity of around 1.2mbbl day will see the reduction of oil dependency from the middle east .In addition the agreement with TKN-Bp for the oil pipeline from the NEW Siberian oilfields will see additional supply of 80mt of oil per annum.

The increased domestic supply will bring on around 1mbbper day by 2010,Also the accelerated introduction of lpg and cng into the transport fleet of around 4 M vehicles by 2008 will further reduce market requirements.The substantial decrease in VLC Tanker charges in the last 12 months shows constraint adaption.

Another major structural change is the agreement for transportation of freight on the BAM and Transiberian railways this with capacity of 4Mtuv will further reduce shipping demands and transport pricing and time 12 days to Europe from Asia.

Upgrading of the energy distribution grid,gas reticulation and improved railway freight handling,will also produce efficiencies that will see Chinas energy-gdp Ration stabilize at 2007 levels.

Similar efficiencies in the RF are also being enacted as Russia becomes the transportation and energy conduit for the east asian economies.