Global warming, climate change, all these things are just a dream come true for politicians. I deal with evidence and not with frightening computer models because the seeker after truth does not put his faith in any consensus. The road to the truth is long and hard, but this is the road we must follow. People who describe the unprecedented comfort and ease of modern life as a climate disaster, in my opinion have no idea what a real problem is.
Australia has built 11.5 GW of theoretical total wind power capacity on the National Energy Market (NEM) spread across 80 locations on the Eastern Seaboard, and at one point today only 4.1% of it was working. Another gigawatt of generation on the Western side is only generating at 3 – 5% capacity.
There is no saving the Australian wind industry from a high pressure cell
Right now 19 out of 20 wind turbines are essentially towers of fiberglass waste
Australia has built 11.5 GW of theoretical total wind power capacity on the National Energy Market (NEM) spread across 80 locations on the Eastern Seaboard, and at one point today only 4.1% of it was working. Another gigawatt of generation on the Western side is only generating at 3 – 5% capacity.
The green bar below represents total wind generation today compared to the total power consumed (the black line).
Total wind generation for the NEM in Australia.
The Australian government is telling us “we’re different” to other countries struggling to make wind and solar work. We supposedly have “world-class resources” and “natural advantages in renewables“. But we also have world-class high pressure cells that stop wind generation across the entire nation simultaneously. On days like these, it doesn’t matter much whether we have 1,000 wind turbines or 10,000 if 95% of them are failing.
Compared to Europe, we have a natural disadvantage in wind power — there’s no one to rescue us when we screw up. We’re surrounded by vast oceans which make interconnectors prohibitively long, expensive and a strategic security risk for communist ships that might drag anchors accidentally-on-purpose through a region with long sub-sea cables. (Which is apparently what happened in the Baltic Sea last year).
So where exactly can we build another thousand wind turbines that would work on a day like today? Macquarie Island or Antarctica?
And it’s not just one day. So far for May 2024 wind generation has been unusually low about half the time.
Macquarie Island is 2,500 kilometers from the closest Australian capital city, and Casey base Antarctica is 3,500 kilometers away. It’s 2,000 kilometers direct to New Zealand, which is bad enough, but parts of the Tasman Sea are 5km deep. They don’t call it the “abyss” for nothing. In any case, wind speeds over New Zealand right now are only 1 – 7 km/hr. (At about 3pm EST Australia).
For the record, the National Energy Grid connects the Eastern five states of Australia and 90% of the population and is running at about 25GW in late autumn. The South West grid is a tenth of that, and all those other dots, apart from Darwin, are “microgrids”. In some parts of Australia all we need is one diesel generator, and we’ll put it on the national map. Kings Canyon, for example is just 1.1MW. The square is vastly larger than the town.
Clouds are an essential part of Earth’s climate system. They play a big role in weather patterns, rain, and regulating global temperatures. A recent study titled “Supersaturation and Critical Size of Cloud Condensation Nuclei in Marine Stratus Clouds,” published in Geophysical Research Letters, gives us new information about how clouds form, especially over the ocean.
Clouds are an essential part of Earth’s climate system. They play a big role in weather patterns, rain, and regulating global temperatures. A recent study titled “Supersaturation and Critical Size of Cloud Condensation Nuclei in Marine Stratus Clouds,” published in Geophysical Research Letters, gives us new information about how clouds form, especially over the ocean.
What Are Cloud Condensation Nuclei (CCN) and Supersaturation?
Clouds form when moist air rises and cools. This cooling leads to supersaturation, where the air has more water vapor than it can hold. This extra water vapor condenses onto tiny particles called cloud condensation nuclei (CCN), which then grow into cloud droplets. The size and number of these CCN are crucial for determining what the clouds will be like.
Traditionally, scientists thought that only larger particles (around 60 nm in diameter) could become CCN at typical supersaturation levels (0.2%–0.3%). However, this study by Henrik Svensmark and his team shows that much smaller particles can also act as CCN if the supersaturation is higher than previously thought.
Main Findings of the Study
Higher Supersaturation Levels: The study found that marine stratus clouds, especially those off the coast of California, often have supersaturation levels higher than 0.5%, and sometimes even up to 1%. This is much higher than what scientists used to believe and suggests that smaller particles (25-30 nm) can act as CCN in these conditions. The authors wrote, “On average, supersaturation in marine clouds is significantly higher than the conventional view of 0.2%–0.3%.”
Smaller Critical Size of CCN: By using satellite data and scientific theories, the researchers created maps showing global supersaturation levels and the sizes of particles that can act as CCN. They found that marine clouds are more sensitive to changes in the number of small particles because of these higher supersaturation levels. This means that even smaller particles than previously thought can form cloud droplets. The study notes, “Higher supersaturation implies smaller activation size for CCN making cloud formation more sensitive to changes in aerosol nucleation.”
Effects on Cloud Properties: Higher supersaturation levels mean that cloud formation is more dynamic and sensitive to changes in the particles that act as CCN. This can change cloud properties, like how many droplets they have and how thick they are, which affects how much sunlight they reflect and how much heat they trap. The study explains, “Due to the higher supersaturation, much smaller aerosols get activated into cloud droplets.”
How Did the Researchers Study This?
The researchers used data from different sources, including satellite observations and airplane measurements. They analyzed these data to understand the relationship between the number of CCN and supersaturation.
Satellite Observations: They used satellite data to estimate the number of droplets in marine stratus clouds. This, along with measurements of cloud thickness and water content, helped them analyze cloud properties over the oceans.
Airborne Measurements: Measurements from airplanes off the coast of California were crucial in discovering the higher-than-expected supersaturation levels. These measurements provided direct evidence that smaller particles could act as CCN. The authors noted, “Observations of marine stratus clouds in clean air off the Californian coast reveal a functional relationship between the number of cloud condensation nuclei (CCN) and supersaturation.”
Simulations: The researchers used a computer model to simulate how cloud droplets form under different conditions of supersaturation and vertical movement. These simulations supported their observations, showing that smaller particles could form cloud droplets at higher supersaturations. The study states, “Independent support for such high supersaturation in the marine cloud is obtained from CCN measurements provided by the ‘Atmospheric Tomography Mission.’”
Why Is This Study Important?
This study is important because it changes our understanding of how clouds form. Clouds play a key role in Earth’s climate by reflecting sunlight and trapping heat. Small changes in cloud properties can have a big impact on weather and climate. By showing that cloud formation is more sensitive to smaller particles and higher supersaturation levels, this study helps us better understand how clouds and aerosols interact.
Aerosol-Cloud Interactions: The study shows the complexity of how aerosols (tiny particles) and clouds interact. Understanding these interactions better is crucial for improving weather and climate predictions.
Cloud Microphysics: The research highlights the importance of supersaturation levels in determining cloud properties. This has implications for studying and modeling different types of clouds and their roles in weather systems.
Conclusion
The study “Supersaturation and Critical Size of Cloud Condensation Nuclei in Marine Stratus Clouds” by Svensmark et al. provides new insights into how clouds form. By revealing higher-than-expected supersaturation levels and the activation of smaller CCN, this research challenges what we thought we knew and opens new doors for understanding Earth’s atmosphere. As we continue to learn more about cloud formation, studies like this are essential for understanding the complexities of our climate.
Cloud formation is a complex process influenced by many factors. This study sheds light on some of the key aspects of this process, especially in marine environments, and highlights the importance of continuous observation and research to uncover the mysteries of our planet’s atmosphere.
There is no data whatsoever indicating climate change threatens to cause an increase in unstable air currents, and the data that does exist shows that even as the planet has slightly warmed, in-flight injuries from turbulence have declined or remained relatively flat, even as the number of fliers and miles flown have increased dramatically.
Less than 24 hours after likely air turbulence caused injuries and even a death on a Singapore bound, Singapore Airlines fight, CNN reporter, Jacopo Prisco, was quick to raise the specter of climate change as the cause. There is no real-world connection between long-term climate change and trends in air turbulence or in air injuries. There is no data whatsoever indicating climate change threatens to cause an increase in unstable air currents, and the data that does exist shows that even as the planet has slightly warmed, in-flight injuries from turbulence have declined or remained relatively flat, even as the number of fliers and miles flown have increased dramatically.
The reader might notice the phrase “likely air turbulence” in the paragraph above. That’s because, although from the experience of the aircraft and the testimony of the passengers and flight crew, turbulence was the most likely cause of the deadly mishap, until the flight recorders are checked, and plane examined we can’t know for certain their were no other issues contributing to or causing the jet’s unexpected sharp drop in altitude and erratic flight for a short period thereafter.
Despite its title, most of CNN’s story, “Climate change could be about to make flight turbulence a lot worse,” is a straight forward discussion of the various type and degrees of turbulence, how it can affect flights and cause injuries, and how many people experience in-flight turbulence and injuries each year. So far so good, straight reporting in the aftermath of a horrific, ultimately deadly, air incident.
Not content to stick with the facts, however, Prisco then brings in the climate change angle, quoting Paul Williams, a professor of atmospheric science at the University of Reading in the UK, who told Prisco that he:
believes that climate change is modifying turbulence, and started studying the subject in 2013. “We ran some computer simulations and found that severe turbulence could double or triple in the coming decades,” he says.
…
Williams’ analysis predicts that clear-air turbulence will increase significantly around the globe by the period 2050-2080, in particular along the busiest flight routes, and the strongest type of turbulence will increase the most.
Of course, the flight computer simulations use inputs from climate models to produce their outputs of future conditions. The problem is model forecasts are only as good as the assumptions and data that is input into them. But, as Climate Realism has discussed repeatedly, here, here, here, and here, for example, climate models are woefully flawed, consistently producing forecasts that don’t match the temperature and other weather and climate conditions that the world is actually experiencing. As a result, Williams’ forecast of worsening turbulence is a case of what is known in the sciences as “Garbage in, Garbage out!”
Sadly, almost every time a flight encounters serious turbulence, especially if it results in injuries, the mainstream media is quick to claim climate change is making flying more dangerous. Citing real-world data, Climate Realism has debunked this pathetic attempt to tie greenhouse gas emissions to in-flight turbulence several times in the past, including our rebuttal to the BBC last year. Repeating the same lie over and over again, even if one thinks it is in a good cause, like preventing a purported climate crisis, does not make it the truth.
The facts about trends in turbulence amidst modest warming is that there is no increasing trend. A 2021 report by the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) plotted accident data related to turbulence, finding no statistically significant increase since 1989, despite a tremendous increase in passengers and miles flown. See Figure 1 below:
If turbulence had increased due to climate change as CNN’s story implies, there would be a clear upward trend demonstrated in the graph. Instead, turbulence related aircraft accidents have held steady since about 1995, even as the number of people travelling and the number of airline miles travelled has increased dramatically globally.
CNN’s decision to allow Prisco to act like a vulture before the body was cold, promoting false climate alarm, sans evidence, was awful exercise of judgement. Even before the poor 71-years-old man from Britain who died during the Singapore Airlines had been laid to rest, and even as dozens of people injured on the flight remained hospitalized, Prisco made hay of the tragedy to promote a political narrative about dangerous climate change. This is a disgusting indicator of the state of the modern media. This story is just one instance, perhaps explaining why trust in journalists has fallen so dramatically over the years as those tied to the mainstream media have repeatedly parroted claims made by activist, politicians, and special interests, about myriad recent scientific and political controversies and policies, only to have those claims and narratives falsified again and again.
Such stories might suggest to any thoughtful observer that the press, with alarming regularity, misrepresents, covers up, and even fabricates stories in pursuit of an agenda.
Cleaning up London’s air is clearly on the agenda of London’s newly re-elected mayor Sadiq Khan – and those emission-reducing ambitions were recently re-affirmed with the news that the city’s ‘Boris Buses’ are getting the boot.
Cleaning up London’s air is clearly on the agenda of London’s newly re-elected mayor Sadiq Khan – and those emission-reducing ambitions were recently re-affirmed with the news that the city’s ‘Boris Buses’ are getting the boot.
And wow, we’ve got more London bus news. The Mayor just approved a deal between Go-Ahead Group (a UK transport company) and Chinese automaker BYD to build over 100 electric double-decker buses for London’s streets.
Each of the buses will apparently cost around £400,000, which is supposedly around £100,000 cheaper than what can be offered by UK suppliers.
However, the deal is not without its controversy. According to City AM, back in 2021 the United Nations wrote to BYD stating it had ‘received information’ that the company’s supply chain involved ‘alleged forced labour, arbitrary detention and trafficking of Uyghur [Muslims] and other minority workers’.
In response to that, TfL’s head of bus business development Tom Cunnington said: ‘We have been assured by the manufacturer that no unethical practices have taken place and would act immediately if provided with evidence to the contrary.”
We’ve been assured? Well BYD would say that, wouldn’t they!
I suppose we should not complain that TfL are saving money. The real question is how much cheaper would a diesel bus have been?
One US study suggested diesel would be about two thirds the price of an electric bus, while Wright, who make buses, quote typical costs from between £250,000 and £500,000.
I suspect though that TfL would have been bragging if they had actually saved money, so I think we can assume they have paid well over the odds.
Two simple models, heat engine and refrigerator, compliment one another. If, for example, one is interested in how heat transfer produces the observed weather, a heat engine is a good place to begin. If, on the other hand, one’s focus is how the atmosphere works to produce a stable climate, free of CO2 terror, then perhaps the refrigerator makes a better starting place.
Weather is made possible because transfer of heat also makes available some amount of mechanical work. The view of the atmosphere being akin to a Carnot heat engine has a long history involving many famous names in atmospheric science – Sverdrup, Brunt, Oort, and Lorenz. To say that the literature around this topic is vast is an understatement.
Related views, rarely mentioned, hold the atmosphere’s working to be a refrigerator or a thermostat or even air-conditioning. WUWT guest blogger, Willis Eschenbach, often makes reference to these ideas, as he did here recently and even more recently here. The Winter Gatekeeper hypothesis belongs here, too.
Two simple models, heat engine and refrigerator, compliment one another. If, for example, one is interested in how heat transfer produces the observed weather, a heat engine is a good place to begin. If, on the other hand, one’s focus is how the atmosphere works to produce a stable climate, free of CO2 terror, then perhaps the refrigerator makes a better starting place.
Carry this idea further to realize that the atmosphere is less like a heat engine than it is like a self-acting refrigerator/dehumidifier. As Paulius and Held [1] conclude regarding dissipation of available work, in cases where convective heat transport is mostly due to the latent heat, “…convection acts more as an atmospheric dehumidifier than as a heat engine….”
Dehumidifying the air makes it more transparent to long wave radiation, some of which originates right at the surface. This acts to cool our Earth.
Observations about Heat Transport
It is common for people to think that heat is carried all the way from equator to poles. Yet, most refrigeration seems to me local, as Figure 1 shows. Averages of outgoing longwave radiation (OLR) exceeds or is a large fraction of average local solar irradiance. The only exception being in the polar night where there is no solar irradiance to be had. Once heat is in motion by multiple means (ocean currents, wind, radiation) it is difficult to identify where it originated. So, my view is that most outgoing radiation occurs near where heat was absorbed and is accomplished by the characteristics of the regional weather.
Figure 1. Zonal annual mean incoming SW solar radiation against outgoing longwave IR. Modified from [2] (CC BY 3.0 DEED)
Another idea, reinforced by the near-obsession with the infrared properties of CO2, is that radiation is the predominant vertical heat transport mechanism. Figure 2 comes from Figure 1 in an WUWT essay from last December. The radiation transport is calculated using MODTRAN and the temperature/humidity structure of a mid-latitude summer atmosphere free of clouds. It illustrates clearly that vertical radiative transport calculated from the Schwarzchild transport equation using observed temperature profiles, is not adequate to explain vertical heat transport – the reason being, as explained in the essay, is that a full transport equation must satisfy the First Law of Thermodynamics and account for all transport mechanisms. The red curve of Figure 2 shows that radiation in this case accounts for less than half of net heat transport from the surface, but grows to encompass all transport toward the tropopause. The blue curve shows heat transport contributed by advection, convection, and latent heat.[3]
Figure 2, mid-latitude summer profile of upward heat transport by radiation (red curve) and other mechanisms (blue curve).
When people propose a heat engine model of the atmosphere, they typically draw a comparison to a Carnot engine. This is limiting for several reasons. First. because the Carnot engine is an abstraction. It is a “black-box”. It accepts heat energy input and delivers a fraction of this energy as mechanical work according to Carnot’s formula – (1-Th/Tc). It is more efficient than any real machine but contains no details about its workings. Second, the Carnot cycle imagines heat being exchanged with reservoirs. Yet, reservoirs are difficult to find. On Earth there is only one real reservoir to speak of and that is radiation to free space which is not reversible. Just identifying someplace like the Earth’s surface, or anvil of a thunderstorm as a reservoir is not convincing.
Figure 3. Blue arrows indicate refrigeration. Red arrows denote a heat engine.
Finally, the atmosphere doesn’t work like a heat engine. Three panels in Figure 3 illustrate the issue. Panel A) in the figure shows a heat engine as people usually think of one. In addition to its usual components there is a control surface which defines the system versus its surroundings. This is true whether the engine produces work, or whether it consumes work like a refrigerator or heat pump. In its typical form, the work made available by the engine travels beyond the control surface. The first law of thermodynamics then is Qc = Qh – W; and using the second law result that reversible heat exchange between two isentropes makes heat quantity proportional to absolute temperature of reservoirs produces the efficiency of the Carnot engine – n = (1-Tc/Th); or the coefficient of performance of a Carnot refrigerator – COP = Tc/(Th-Tc).
However, for the atmosphere as a whole and for most distinct weather events working within, the control volume encloses the work as in panel B). Now, there is no result as simple as the Carnot efficiency. The value of Qc depends on the final disposition of the work. Is the work dissipated to heat, or, is some destroyed in another way? Even if entirely dissipated to heat, does this add to Qc or could some be recycled back into more work?[4]
Panel C) shows an engine operating off flow work provided by some external source. Flow work includes mechanical energy. Ocean waves raised by wind provide an example. Perhaps the tornado, or forward flank downdraft of cooled air in a thunderstorm are examples too.
The concepts of heat engine and refrigerator shouldn’t be taken too literally. The atmosphere differs from a heat engine and greatly differs from a Carnot engine. A refrigerator consumes work to move heat against temperature. As a refrigerator the atmosphere moves heat from hot to cold which would occur on its own – COP is nonsensical in this case.
Calculating heat transferred
Entropy, as Clausius originally envisioned it, is simply a state variable. A differential element of a path (Tds) equals the amount of heat absorbed or gained on a small section of a (T,s) path describing a process. A very general way of showing the relationship between heat and work in a weather feature, then, is to construct a diagram showing temperature and entropy (T,s) of the air passing through.
The prescription for building this diagram is as follows: First, draw a schematic diagram showing the essential elements of a particular atmospheric phenomenon; that is, a diagram showing all substantial modifications to the working fluid. Then, at the same time, build a thermodynamic state graph from the schematic. Imagine following a representative parcel of fluid (i.e. a kilogram of moist or dry air) as it passes through the diagram. Path sections with positive Tds denote absorption of heat; negative Tds denotes rejected heat. Net of the complete path is available work; or it would be if this were an engineered machine.
Calculating S
Temperature is measured but entropy we must calculate. In my examples, I use this formula which captures most entropy changes except for entropy of mixing water vapor with dry air:
S = (Cd+Cw*r)Ln(T)-RLn(P)-r*L/273+S0 Eq. 1)
Where; Cd and Cw are heat capacities of dry air and water vapor, T is absolute temperature, P is total pressure, R is gas constant of dry air (0.287), r is mixing ratio (kg/kg), and L is latent heat of vaporization at (2495-2.5(273-T) kJ/kg).[5] S0 is a constant to set relative entropy to zero at a convenient place in T-S space.
An example: The Polar Low
The schematic diagram in Figure 2 is that of an Arctic Low. I modeled it on the description and measurements of one such storm that occurred in the Barents Sea plus a recent review article.[6] Figure 3 shows this working fluid path.
Figure 4. A cross-sectional model of a Polar Low. Air properties are provided at each of four points along the machine process path.
Start the analysis at point 1 in the figure. This is cold, dry polar air that has come off an ice sheet. Surface air temperature and dew point are -10C and -13C, respectively, which translates to a mixing ratio of 0.0006 kg/kg. This air now travels along the sea surface, probably below an inversion which aids in preventing dissipating the modifying air, picking up heat and moisture as it goes.
There is often a steep gradient of sea surface temperature in the Barents Sea at the ice edge. Some of the sea surface is as warm as 8C courtesy of the North Atlantic drift. By the time air reaches the center of the storm at point 2 it has been modified to be substantially warmer and more humid than when it left the ice edge – about 12C warmer with a mixing ratio many times as great (0.0021). This is so modified that it is buoyant and can rise through the inversion (undoubtedly gone within the storm).
On our thermodynamic diagram (Figure 3), the path (1->2) shows this modification of polar air. Path (2->3) shows the rise of moist air within the storm. It is a dry adiabatic rise for around 1200 meters, then saturated pseudo adiabatic above. I have placed the storm top around 500mb where a sounding recorded an environmental temperature of -46C. The saturation pseudo adiabat is about 3C warmer (231K), but quite dry (a mixing ratio probably less than 0.0002).
Closing the cycle
Closing the cycle of working fluid in Figure 3 is needed for two reasons. First, we need a closed path on our T-S diagram in order to calculate heat transfer and net work. Second, an open diagram would suggest air accumulating in places. Closing the diagram allows one to imagine a steady-state global atmosphere.
Air ejected from the storm top at 3 cools through radiation to space for some unknown time to eventually descend to the ice sheet again. The higher air so lacks humidity that cooling to space likely continues during the descent of air to the surface and there is radiation cooling of the surface too. Some process, perhaps sublimation of ice, adds humidity. There are no adiabatic paths to be had. Maybe, temperature declines at a rate something like 1-1.5C per day. The details don’t matter. What is required to close the cycle is that air returns to the ice surface at conditions equal to how it began. Path 3->4, then path 4->1, accomplishes this.
Figure 5. Simple calculations of the Tds path integral. Path 3->1 is speculative, but closes the cycle; that is, takes the working fluid properties from point 3 back to 1.
Results
The path 1->3 is entirely positive entropy change and therefore heat added to our engine (22.3 kJ/kg); the 3->4->1 is entirely negative and therefore heat expelled (or rejected) from our engine (19.4 kJ/kg). The net, which is the enclosed area, amounts to 2.9 kJ/kg of work made available by the machine; or that is how a person would interpret the diagram if this were a heat engine like Figure 3A. More generally a person would like to know the disposition of the 2.9kJ/kg of available work. Nonetheless, even without knowing this, interesting observations are possible.
For example, in contrast to the tropical hurricane in which ⅔ of heat input comes from latent heat; this arctic hurricane obtains only ⅓ from latent heat. The balance is from sensible heat. This polar cyclone runs on warm water transported from lower latitude. If more warm water were transported, then these cyclones would be more frequent or persist longer. The total absorbed heat during the steady state of this storm can be twice the heat input to the Nordic Seas by the North Atlantic Drift.
The dissipation of work
When we say the word “engine” what we usually mean is some contraption that produces external work. Yet, storm engines are different. They mainly serve to move heat. This one we have just analyzed takes 22.3 kJ of heat per kilogram of air flowing through it, and immediately rejects 19.4 kJ of it quickly to space. It uses the balance to run itself – to run the weather. Now, as the work output is actually contained within the control volume of Figure 3B, what becomes of it?
The short answer is that it is dissipated. But to answer this question more completely, think about the evolution of any weather event.
It begins as a small disturbance with a much smaller cycle than Figure 5. If dissipation of work at this scale is less than available work, the excess work can increase the intensity and scale of the storm. This continues until dissipation equals available work. During this steady state of the storm, which the Arctic hurricane might run for 18 hours, dissipation equals available work. As the reservoir of energy becomes depleted late in the storm life, intensity and scale decline to match available work. All work is eventually dissipated.
Here is a short list of dissipation and irreversible processes.
Fluid friction all along the surface path raises waves and associated spray on the sea. Raising waves is easy to see as an irreversibility since wind raises waves, which are eventually dissipated, but waves cannot raise wind.
Mechanical work is dissipated through drag of precipitation which occurs even as updrafts are operating to maintain the storm.
Dissipation through turbulence in the updraft and in the outflow above the storm.
Mixing (entrainment).
Many moist processes, such as evaporation into unsaturated air, are irreversible.
Radiation heat transfer over a finite temperature difference.
What matters in the limit is that all of the heat input to the working fluid is rejected and that air is dehumidified. The most common winter condition over the central Arctic Ocean, occurring during some 13% of weather conditions, Nygård, et al, refer to as circulation type 10.[7] It consists of the strongest and most persistent high pressures, a water content that is low, with subsidence and warming of the air, while surface radiation cools the air from below. It is coincidental with high latent and sensible heat transfer from the North Atlantic drift. Perhaps Figure 5 explains this condition.
Another example: Boundary Layer in Fair Weather
Figure 6. The outlines of an invisible column of rising air capped by a small cumulus cloud.
Renno and Williams [8] made measurements in dry-air convection over open ground near Albuquerque in 1993. They employed a remotely piloted vehicle (RPV) to stay within rising air parcels to make measurements. Rising parcels maintained a potential temperature 1C higher than descending parcels. The data were noisy because of both a tendency of the RPV to drift outside a parcel and noisiness of the instrumentation. Near the ground surface readings became increasingly variable, but there was a distinct group of measurements with a temperature about 6C above that of a rising parcel. This presumably was a superadiabatic layer at the ground surface.
Air parcels rose and fell 3.4m/s and 1.7m/s respectively, suggesting through mass conservation a 2:1 ratio of updraft to subsidence area. Mixing ratio of the updraft near ground was 0.0095 and declined to 0.009 at 800m altitude perhaps from entrainment. The downdraft approached the surface with a mixing ratio of 0.0091, although there is substantial variation in this data. Pressure is probably 835mb at ground surface (1600m).
There is simply not enough information about the atmosphere above flight level of the RPV to figure the relationship between rising and falling parcels. However, the point of this essay is that the heat absorbed at high temperature is equal to that rejected by the sum total of all operations of the refrigerator/dehumidifier. We focus, then, on heat absorbed.
Figure 7 shows (1->2) that absorbed heat is 3.4 kJ/kg. Without being able to close the diagram the net available work is unknown but probably very small because of small temperature differences. Even if only 1%, though, it amounts to 34J/kg which is sufficient to generate buoyancy and account for kinetic energy of 7.5 J/kg.
Figure 7. T-s diagram of mixing air in a descending parcel with air in the superadiabatic layer near the ground surface.
By mixing 17% of air in the superadiabatic layer with 83% of air in a descending parcel, we conserve mass, enthalpy and moisture to end up with air exactly like that at point 3. The rate of heat absorbed far exceeds what is required to remove solar insolation from the surface in this instance. The entity that is not conserved in this mixing is entropy. It increases because of this mixing. I figure this value as 1.5 J/KgK, which sounds small, but when multiplied by a dead-state temperature (around 300K) becomes 0.45 Kj of lost potential work. What this means is that one-half kilojoule of additional work would have been available for more vigorous convection if the mixing of air had been done in a reversible manner. The 1.5 J/kgK of increased entropy has to be exported to space eventually.
Climate change
Nowadays, the twenty-four thousand dollar question is: “How does this relate to climate change?” I will offer two views from the literature.
On the one hand Renno and Ingersoll formulated a model of fraction of Earth surface covered by convection cells.[9] They conclude that a climate warming will increase the intensity of updrafts, but areal coverage decreases, meaning the region of slowly descending dry air then increases. I haven’t analyzed how convincing this argument is, but it certainly sounds like the negative feedback of the adaptive iris.[10]
On the other hand, F. LaLiberte, et al, built an ambitious T-S diagram for the general circulation and concluded that the intensity of the hydrological cycle in warmer climates might limit the heat engine’s ability to generate work.[11] My reading of their supplementary materials showed meticulous completeness and attention to details. Nevertheless one cannot escape these observations: 1) the baseline and future forecast depends on a climate model (CESM) using RCP4.5, 2) the effect itself is small, amounting to 1% of available work per century in the presence of larger interannual noise, and perhaps most significantly 3) the baseline comparison between the climate model and MERRA reanalysis showed discrepancies attributed to parameterization of atmospheric convection.[12] They refer to this as the water in the gas problem. However, latent heat of water is so large that Rankine cycle plants show better efficiency with some water in their gas (i.e. outlet steam quality of 92%), and the weather can’t possibly run in any other way.
Conclusion
The atmosphere is less a heat engine than a collection of many self-running refrigerators/dehumidifiers operating in different ways to carry heat largely from surface to tropopause locally and the balance from equator to poles. An important, but perhaps underappreciated, effect of dehumidification is to make the atmosphere broadly more amenable to cooling by LWIR.
References:
1- Olivier Pauluis and Isaac M. Held, Entropy Budget of an Atmosphere in Radiative–Convective Equilibrium. Part I: Maximum Work and Frictional Dissipation, Journal of the Atmospheric Sciences,Volume 59: Issue 2, Jan 2002, Page(s): 125–139
2-Salzmann, Marc. (2017). The polar amplification asymmetry: role of Antarctic surface height. Earth System Dynamics. 8. 323-336. 10.5194/esd-8-323-2017.
3- An occasional visitor to WUWT, pdquondam, in his essay “HBC_model.pdf” caused me to think of this graph.
4-Hewitt, McKenzie, and Weiss, 1975 Dissipative heating in convective flows, J. Fluid Mech., v. 68, part 4, 721-738.
5-There are other minor terms omitted involved in mixing water vapor with dry air. In addition, the process must have reached steady state and there isn’t strict conservation of mass in the cycle because of condensed water or snow carried in the air flow.
6-See for example: Rasmussen, E, 1985, A case study of a polar low development over the Barents Sea, Tellus, 37A, 407-418, Or Emanuel, K, and Rotunno, R, 1989, Polar Lows as Arctic Hurricanes, Tellus, 41A, 1-17, and Marta Moreno-Ibanez, Rene Laprise, and Philippe Gachon, Recent advances in polar low research: current knowledge, challenges and future perspectives, Tellus A: 2021, 73, 1890412, https://doi.org/10.1080/16000870.2021.1890412
7- Tiina Nygård, Michael Tjernström and Tuomas Naakka, Winter thermodynamic vertical structure in the Arctic atmosphere linked to large-scale circulation, Weather Clim. Dynam., 2, 1263–1282, 2021
8-Renno and Williams Quasi-lagrangian measurements in convective boundary layer plumes and their implications for the calculation of CAPE, 1995, Mon. Weather Rev., September, 2733.
9-Nilton Renno, Andrew Ingersoll, Natural convection as a heat engine:a theory for CAPE,
J atmos sci, v 53, n.4, 572
10-Lindzen, Chou, and Hou, Does the Earth Have an Adaptive Iris? Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, vol 82, no. 3, March 2001.
11-Constrained work output of the moist atmospheric heat engine in a warming climate
F. LaLiberte , et al, SCIENCE, 30 Jan 2015, Vol 347, Issue 6221, pp. 540-543
DOI: 10.1126/science.125710
12-Parameterization of processes that should be based on physics is the Achilles heel of modeling; creating energy ex nihilo, destroying entropy in the universe, or masking forbidden features – all bad. See, for example, Jay D. Schieber and Markus Hutter, Multiscale modeling, beyond equilibrium, Physics Today, March 2020, p.36.
We endlessly hear the flawed assertion that because climate change is real, we should “follow the science” and end fossil fuel use.
We hear this claim from politicians who favor swift carbon cuts, and from natural scientists themselves, as when the editor-in-chief of Nature insists “The science is clear — fossil fuels must go.”
We endlessly hear the flawed assertion that because climate change is real, we should “follow the science” and end fossil fuel use.
We hear this claim from politicians who favor swift carbon cuts, and from natural scientists themselves, as when the editor-in-chief of Nature insists “The science is clear — fossil fuels must go.”
The assertion is convenient for politicians, because it allows them to avoid responsibility for the many costs and downsides of climate policy, painting these as inevitable results of diligently following the scientific evidence.
But it is false because it conflates climate science with climate policy.
The story told by activist politicians and climate campaigners suggests that there is nothing but benefits to ending fossil fuels, versus a hellscape if nothing is done.
But the reality is that the world over the past centuries has improved dramatically — largely because of the immense increase in available energy that has come mostly from fossil fuels.
Life spans have more than doubled, hunger has dramatically declined, and incomes have increased ten-fold.
While the impact of climate change is likely negative, it is enormously exaggerated.
We constantly hear about extreme weather such as droughts, storms, floods and fires, although even the UN Climate Panel finds that evidence of them worsening cannot yet be documented for most of these.
The data shows that climate-related deaths from droughts, storms, floods and fires have declined by more than 97% from nearly 500,000 annually a century ago to less than 15,000 in the 2020s.
At the same time, the costs of the climate campaigners’ calls to “just stop” oil, gas and coal are massively downplayed.
Currently, the world gets almost four-fifths of all its energy from fossil fuels. If we quickly ended our use of fossil fuels, billions would die.
Four billion people — half the world’s population — entirely depend on food grown with synthetic fertilizer produced almost entirely by natural gas.
If we ended fossil fuels quickly, we would physically have no way to feed four billion people.
Add the billions of people dependent on fossil fuel heating in the winter time, along with the dependence on fossil fuels for steel, cement, plastics, and transport, and it is little wonder that one recent estimate shows abruptly ending fossil fuels would lead to 6 billion people dying in less than a year.
Most politicians suggest a slightly less rushed end to fossil fuels by 2050.
This slower pace would avoid billions of people dying outright, but the downsides are still immense.
The latest, peer-reviewed climate-economic research shows that efficiently reaching net-zero emissions by 2050 will cost a staggering $27 trillion per year on average over the century.
That is one-quarter of the world’s current GDP.
The same research shows that the benefits will be just a small fraction of that cost. The policy is prohibitively expensive for little benefit.
A good analogy is to consider the more than 1 million global traffic deaths annually.
Traffic — like climate change — is a man-made problem. Like climate change, it is something we could entirely solve.
If scientists were to only look at how to avoid the million traffic deaths, one solution would be to reduce speed limits everywhere to 3 mph.
If heavily enforced, this would almost entirely eliminate traffic deaths.
Of course, it would also almost entirely eliminate our economies and our productive lives.
We would laugh if politicians said we should “follow the science” and stop traffic deaths by reducing speeds to 3 mph.
As we do with traffic, in the climate debate we should take a sensible approach. This means focusing on short-term adaptation to build resilience, and long-term investment in R&D for green energy.
Innovation must drive the price of reliable, green energy down below fossil fuels, eventually making sure everyone can switch to low-carbon alternatives.
When politicians tell us they are “following the science,” they use the claim to shut down open discussion of the enormous costs of their policies.
“The science” informs us about the problem, but is not the arbiter of solutions.
Democracies are.
Sudden, dramatic cuts in fossil fuel consumption will have huge downsides — which their backers would rather ignore.
Last January, I visited Prager U in California. I recorded several videos. Science.feedback.org has done a fact check on my 5 minute video, which is the topic of this post
All things considered, planet earth is doing fine. Humans are doing better than at any other time in history. Over the last hundred years, when temperatures have warmed by about two degrees Fahrenheit:
Global population has increased by 6 billion people
Global poverty has substantially decreased
And the number of people killed from weather disasters has decreased by 97% on a per capita basis.
We are obviously not facing an existential crisis.
Anyone who tells you that we are, is not paying attention to the historical data. Instead, they are concerned about what “might” happen in the future, based on predictions from inadequate climate models, driven by unrealistic assumptions.
I offer this positive diagnosis after a lifetime of study on the issue. Until recently, I was a professor of climate science and Chair of the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at the Georgia Institute of Technology.
But it’s not all good news.
The biggest problem with climate change is not climate change, per se, it’s how we’re dealing with it.
We’re attempting to control the uncontrollable, at great cost, by urgently eliminating fossil fuels. We’ve failed to properly place the risks from climate change in context of other challenges the world is facing.
Climate change has become a convenient scapegoat. As a result, we’re neglecting the real causes of these problems.
There are countless examples, but let me give you just one.
Lake Chad in Africa is shrinking. Nigeria’s president Muhammadu Buhari blames it on you-know-what. “Climate change,” he pronounced, “is largely responsible for the drying up of Lake Chad.”
But it’s not.
Yes, the initial water level decline was caused by long droughts in the 1970s and 1980s. But the lake has remained virtually empty over the past two decades, even while rainfall has recovered. During this time, rivers flowing into the lake from Cameroon, Chad, and Nigeria have been diverted by government agencies to irrigate inefficient rice farms.
In short, climate change has little to do with the declining water level of Lake Chad. Rather, bad human decisions do. Climate Change is just a convenient excuse, hiding poor management and governance.
Blaming every major weather disaster on man-made global warming defies common sense, as well as the historical data record.
For the past 50 years, the global climate has been fairly benign. In the US, the worst heat waves, droughts and hurricane landfalls occurred in the 1930s – much worse than anything we’ve experienced so far in the 21st century.
Population growth, where and how people live, and how governments manage resources are much more likely to create conditions for a disaster than the climate itself. We’ve always had hurricanes, droughts and floods, and we always will.
Maybe you think I’m being too cavalier about the dangers we face. Isn’t it true that 97% of scientists agree that humans are causing dangerous climate change?
Well, here’s what all climate scientists actually agree on:
The average global surface temperature has increased over the last 150 years.
Humans are adding carbon dioxide to the atmosphere by burning fossil fuels.
And carbon dioxide emissions have a warming effect on the planet.
However, climate scientists disagree about:
How much warming is associated with our emissions
Whether this warming is larger than natural climate variability.
And how much the climate will change in the future.
There’s a lot that we still don’t understand about how the climate works. Ocean circulation patterns and variations in clouds have a large impact. But climate models do a poor job of predicting these. Variations in the sun and volcanic eruptions also have a substantial impact, but these are simply unpredictable.
The fact is, we can’t predict the future climate. It’s simply not possible. And everybody should acknowledge that. And every scientist does.
While humans do influence the climate, we can’t control the climate. To think we can is the height of hubris, the Greek word for overconfidence.
What we can do is adapt to whatever mother nature throws our way. Human beings have a long history of being very good at that. We can build sea walls, we can better manage our water resources, and implement better disaster warning and management protocols.
These are things we can control.
If we focus on that, there’s every reason to be optimistic about our future.
The ‘fact checkers’ include Ella Tilbert, Georg Feulner, Ian Richardson, Kerry Emanuel.
“Verdict:MISLEADING”
“Claim: Climate scientists disagree about how much warming is associated with our emissions and whether this warming is larger than natural climate variability from the sun and volcanic eruptions”
“Key takeaway: Scientific evidence shows that modern global warming is primarily driven by increasing CO2 emissions from human activities. There is no evidence that solar variations or volcanic activity are substantial drivers of recent climate change.”
Their objections are focused on two of my statements:
“However, climate scientists disagree about . . . whether this warming is larger than natural climate variability.”
“But climate models do a poor job of predicting these. Variations in the sun and volcanic eruptions also have a substantial impact, but these are simply unpredictable.”
I could cite hundreds of papers published in refereed science journals that question whether the recent warming is larger than natural climate variability (many of these papers have been discussed on this blog). The IPCC chooses to ignore these papers. This does not mean that disagreement among scientists does not exist. In fact, the IPCC AR4 and AR5 conclusions about attribution are framed in terms of “most of the warming” and “more than half of the global average surface temperature increase”. So >50%. Imagining 49% is not farfetched. The IPCC AR4 talks about “unresolved internal variability” to justify using the relatively weak “most”.
With regards to the potential impact of future volcanic eruptions, the IPCC AR6 WG1 has this to say (Cross-Chapter Box 4.1):
“A low likelihood high impact outcome would be several large eruptions that would greatly alter the 21st century climate trajectory compared to SSP-based ESM projections.”
Plenty to disagree about on these topics (they didn’t mention natural internal variability, which IMO is the biggest deal). But that is the point of my statement: SCIENTISTS DISAGREE (for details, see Chapter 8 of my book Climate Uncertainty and Risk).
JC comments
The fact checkers ignore the main points of my statement, and focus on trying to emphasize the consensus that natural climate variability doesn’t matter.
Since the fact checkers essentially ignored the rest of my statement, presumably they have no objections to these statements:
“All things considered, planet earth is doing fine. Humans are doing better than at any other time in history.”
“We are obviously not facing an existential crisis.”
“The biggest problem with climate change is not climate change, per se, it’s how we’re dealing with it.”
“We’re attempting to control the uncontrollable, at great cost, by urgently eliminating fossil fuels. We’ve failed to properly place the risks from climate change in context of other challenges the world is facing.”
“Blaming every major weather disaster on man-made global warming defies common sense, as well as the historical data record.”
“Population growth, where and how people live, and how governments manage resources are much more likely to create conditions for a disaster than the climate itself. We’ve always had hurricanes, droughts and floods, and we always will.”
“However, climate scientists disagree about:
How much warming is associated with our emissions
And how much the climate will change in the future.”
“The fact is, we can’t predict the future climate. It’s simply not possible. And everybody should acknowledge that. And every scientist does. “
“While humans do influence the climate, we can’t control the climate. To think we can is the height of hubris, the Greek word for overconfidence.”
“What we can do is adapt to whatever mother nature throws our way. Human beings have a long history of being very good at that. We can build sea walls, we can better manage our water resources, and implement better disaster warning and management protocols.”
The driving ambition to stay on top appears to have completely overwhelmed former tech company commitments to green virtue signalling.
The “Energy Transition” Won’t Happen
Foundational innovation in cloud technology and artificial intelligence will require more energy than ever before—shattering any illusion that we will restrict supplies.
The laptop class has rediscovered a basic truth: foundational innovation, once adoption proceeds at scale, is followed by an epic increase in energy consumption. It’s an iron law of our universe.
To illustrate that law, consider three recent examples, all vectors leading to the “shocking” discovery of radical increases in expected electricity demand, now occupying headlines today. First, there’s the electric car, which, if there were one in every garage, as enthusiasts hope, would roughly double residential neighborhood electricity demands. Next, there’s the idea of repatriating manufacturing, especially for semiconductors. This is arguably a “foundational innovation,” since policymakers are suddenly showing concern over the decades-long exit of such industries from the U.S. Restoring American manufacturing to, say, the global market share of just two decades ago would see industrial electricity demand soar by 50 percent.
And now the scions of software are discovering that both virtual reality and artificial intelligence, which emerge from the ineluctable mathematics of machine-learning algorithms, are anchored in the hard reality that everything uses energy. This is especially true for the blazing-fast and power-hungry chips that make AI possible. Nvidia, the leader of the AI-chip revolution and a Wall Street darling, has over the past three years alone shipped some 5 million high-power AI chips. To put this in perspective, every such AI chip uses roughly as much electricity each year as do three electric vehicles. And while the market appetite for electric vehicles is sagging and ultimately limited, the appetite for AI chips is explosive and essentially unlimited.
Consider a recent headline in the Wall Street Journal: “Big Tech’s Latest Obsession Is Finding Enough Energy”—because the “AI boom is fueling an insatiable appetite for electricity.” And, as Reuters reports, “U.S. electric utilities predict a tidal wave of new demand . . . . Nine of the top 10 U.S. electric utilities said data centers were a main source of customer growth.” Today’s forecasts see near-term growth in demand for electric power three times as great as in recent years. Rediscovery of the iron law of growth inspired an urgent Senate hearing on May 21 entitled “Opportunities, Risks, and Challenges Associated with Growth in Demand for Electric Power in the United States.” (Full disclosure; a hearing at which I testified.)
…
Each datacenter—and tens of thousands of them exist—has an energy appetite often greater than skyscrapers the size of the Empire State Building. And the nearly 1,000 so-called hyperscale datacenters each consume more energy than a steel mill (and this is before counting the impacts of piling on AI chips). The incredible level of power use derives directly from the fact that just ten square feet of a datacenter today has more computing horsepower than all the world’s computers circa 1980. And each square foot creates electric power demands 100 times greater than a square foot of a skyscraper. Even before the AI revolution, the world was adding tens of millions more square feet of datacenters each year.
Microsoft Wanted to be Carbon Negative. Then It Went Big on AI
If Microsoft is shooting for the moon on decarbonization, the moon is “more than five times as far away as it was in 2020,” President Brad Smith says on Zero.
In 2020, Microsoft made an ambitious pledge: It would be carbon-negative by the end of the decade. The company was acting in response to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s 2018 warning that, if the world wanted to keep warming below 1.5C, emissions needed to fall fast.
It was an ambitious target, but at the time it seemed achievable. Now that’s changed. New figures show that Microsoft’s total emissions in 2023 were about 30% higher than in 2020.
The confounding factor, Microsoft President Brad Smith tells Zero host Akshat Rathi, is artificial intelligence. After investing $1 billion in OpenAI in 2019, Microsoft has expanded its AI strategy — and its emissions have ballooned along the way.
The company says it isn’t abandoning its green goals, and has broadened its approach for reaching them. “You’ve gotta be willing to invest and pay for it, you’ve gotta be willing to persist,” Smith said. But can the tech giant have it both ways? Rathi sat down with Zero producer Mythili Rao to talk about his interview with Smith, and why Microsoft says the good AI can do for the world will outweigh its environmental impact.
This is the death of the green energy revolution we have all been waiting for. After 2020, tech companies have come to a shock realisation they need vast supplies of cheap energy, and fast. Tech companies still claim green energy is important to them, but personally I don’t believe these claims. Tech companies are clearly preparing to downgrade green energy in favour of more energy.
AI requires crazy amounts of power. All AI involves testing millions, sometimes billions of potential solutions every second of every day, to find the right response to stimuli.
Ever seen a wind blown leaf skitter across a pavement, and for just a moment your mind tricked you into thinking you saw a big spider? Or see a coiled rope or hose and thought you saw a snake? That illusion is a rare glimpse into how your brain works. Your brain continuously tests billions of possible solutions to interpret the flood of information being received from your senses – and occasionally gets it wrong, before rapidly correcting the mistake as more data becomes available.
AIs are no different, they also continuously test billions of possible solutions to find the solution which best fits the input they receive.
As AIs become more sophisticated, and demands grow for fewer mistakes, the sophistication and depth of the potential solutions being tested and discarded will rise exponentially. The energy required to run computers to calculate all these potential solutions will be unimaginable in today’s terms.
Just look at how bitcoin mining nowadays consumes more energy than some small countries, with millions of computers across the world testing and discarding uncounted billions of potential solutions to Bitcoin cryptography puzzles, to find that one solution which earns newly minted bitcoins for their operators. Bitcoin mining is just a taste of the energy expenditure the AI revolution will demand.
There is no path to green energy delivering the required magnitude of power, on anything like the timeframe tech companies need to stay competitive.
Tech companies know they need access to a vast increase in energy generation, and they need it fast, otherwise energy rich Asian AI companies will wipe the floor with them.
Media companies are desperate for front row access to artificial intelligence, to cut newsroom costs and prevent their rivals in India and China from using AI to identify which stories will draw the most audience attention, to identify tomorrow’s big news stories before anyone else.
Financial giants in New York, Chicago and San Francisco also have skyrocketing AI needs, to power their automated trading systems, and help them maintain their income, to help them keep winning in the cutthroat financial games they play against AI augmented rivals in Asia and Europe.
The funniest part of this tech company backflip is all the lefty companies which helped Biden win are likely now quietly in President Trump’s corner.
This surge in demand for energy to drive AI technology is very new, it likely took most of them by surprise. from the Bloomberg article quoted above, as recently as 2020 people in charge of big US tech companies were oblivious to how their energy needs would suddenly skyrocket.
I wonder what phone calls are quietly being made in places like New York, San Francisco and Chicago? Are obstacles to Trump 2024 quietly being dismantled, by people making backroom deals, former Democrat supporters who have come to the shock realisation that they need access to cheap energy more than they need green virtue signalling?
Wind energy is an environmental destruction machine, warns veteran center-left columnist.
After the collapse of the Soviet Union and its communist block satellite countries in 1989, the West stood in awe, amazed by the environmental and economic wasteland left behind by the inefficient collective socialist system.
But since then, green radicals have taken over and it’s safe to say that the next generation, in about 2060, will also stand in amazement before a similar mass wreckage left behind by the “Green New Deal”.
The future generation will be asking: “What the hell were they thinking?”
“The ruthless way in which wind power is being pushed through in Germany is reminiscent of the brutal way in which the “concrete faction” wrecked many German cities in the post-war period. A wind madness inventory..,” comments Etscheit, calling Germany’s drive into wind energy “a run amok at the expense of people and nature.
Germany plans to add another 10,000 wind turbines in addition to its current 30,000, which means 2% of Germany’s land area will be completely destroyed and industrialized, according to Etscheit.
What follows are Etscheit’s 5 environmental reasons why Germany’s wind energy insanity is a major threat:
Landscape will be blighted by the addition of 10,000 wind turbines, with a height of up to 250 meters. The natural biotope surrounding these turbines will be irreversibly ruined.
Endangered bird, like the red kite, will lose their habitats. It’s estimated that an absolute collision rate of around 21 per year and wind turbine. “With 40,000 or more wind turbines planned in Germany, the million mark would soon be exceeded.”
Bats and insects severely decimated. “Wind turbines also pose a significant threat to the 25 or so species of bat found in Germany…”. …”Wind turbines also have a significant impact on flying insects, as a study published in 2017 by the German Aerospace Center (DLR), Institute of Atmospheric Physics in Oberpfaffenhofen shows … an estimated five to six billion insects per day at all German wind turbines during the warm season (200 days from April to October).”
Hazard also for marine fauna. Wind turbines have a negative impact from pressure and sound waves on some animal species with an extremely sensitive sense of hearing. The industrialization of the oceans could displace native marine mammals. “If more and more offshore wind farms are built, this will have an enormous impact on the harbor porpoise populations in the North and Baltic Seas,” reads a statement from the Society for the Rescue of Dolphins.
Infrasound harming people. People near wind turbines often complain of “severe health complaints such as insomnia, dizziness, headaches, depression, tinnitus, hearing and vision problems and cardiac arrhythmia”, and experts warn this will increase dramatically, and turbine setback regulations in Germany are being watered down.
Etscheit argues for a moratorium on the construction of new turbines, but doesn’t see this happening in Germany, where officials are pressing on with the madness, “no matter the costs.”
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Georg Etscheit is an author and journalist based in Munich. He worked for the dpa agency for almost ten years, but since 2000 has preferred to write “freelance” on environmental issues as well as on business, gourmet food, opera and classical music for the Süddeutsche Zeitung, among others. He also writes for www.aufgegessen.info, the gastrosophical blog for free enjoyment that he co-founded, and a culinary column on Achgut.com.
Gas bills are projected to rise by around £1,000 to pay for wind power under official plans currently being considered by the Energy Secretary.
Claire Coutinho received a report earlier this year that suggested moving some or all green levies from household electricity bills to gas bills, or shifting them into general taxation.
Both proposals, presented by officials at the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero (DESNZ), have been put forward amid concerns that the weight of green levies on household costs is stifling progress on net zero.
But they could prove controversial because of the likely costs to households relying on gas, as well as it being seen as fairer to apply levies to electricity bills.
A new analysis by Cadent, a gas distribution company, found energy bills would rise by £1,045 a year for millions of homes reliant on gas by 2035 if Ms Coutinho opted to move all green tariffs from electricity bills to gas bills.
It calculated that low-income families would be hit the hardest by the move, which would account for almost half (47 per cent) of energy bills for households reliant on gas.
Would the Telegraph stop calling these GREEN LEVIES, and call them what they really are – SUBSIDIES FOR WIND FARMS?
And let’s be absolutely clear – this would be a punitive tax on gas, designed to make it too expensive for people to use.
The Government has run into one of the inherent self contradictions of the Net Zero nonsense. They want us to use electricity for everything, such as cars and heating, but have also had to massively subsidise renewable energy, thus making the electrification option unaffordable for everybody.
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