It’s not often we see a report that turns things on their head quite like this.
Wind turbines may cause more local warming than global cooling in the next century.
Photo: Jo Nova
If the US were to install a lot of turbines, Wind power could warm the United States by 0.24 degrees Celsius instead of cooling it, because wind turbines “redistribute heat” in the atmosphere. They mix the surface layers. (0.24C would be equivalent to two decades of recent warming.) The largest effect is at night where wind plants can warm the local area by 1.5C.
At least 10 previous studies have now observed local warming caused by US wind farms. Keith and Miller compared their simulated warming to observations and found rough consistency between the data and model.
The new studies by Keith and Miller were published in Environmental Research Letters and Joule.
Major downer. The power density of wind energy is up to *100 times* less than predicted.
The new research suggests we can’t put too many turbines to close together or the whole group become far less efficient. That means we need 5 – 20 times as much land as previously thought (at least as thought by academics). Shame the US built 57,000 wind towers before they realized.
The power density of wind is just too low, and there’s an effect where the more we construct the worse it gets. A large wind shadow follows wind turbines, reducing the output from other turbines downstream. The larger the area of the wind plants, the worse their performance — the energy per meter squared falls by 75% as wind farms increase from 15km2 up to 150km2.
Wind is worse than coal for the environment in the next ten years?
Wind farms may be worse than coal for first ten years of operation, and increasing local warming for the first one hundred! But hey, people one thousand years from now might be grateful.
The down side to wind power
Leah Burrows, Harvard Gazette
“If your perspective is the next 10 years, wind power actually has — in some respects — more climate impact than coal or gas. If your perspective is the next thousand years, then wind power has enormously less climatic impact than coal or gas.” — David Keith
What’s the discount rate on one thousand year time-frames?
Hmm. Wind power warms local air, and cools globe, maybe, possibly
On the one hand theoretically wind turbines cool the world, on the other hand, they warm the local area. Which effect wins?
We haven’t measured the outcome of a million wind turbines on planetary temperature. What if the assumptions of the effect of CO2 are wrong by a factor of a hundred too? Like, say, if the hot spot is missing, the rainfall estimates are skillless and the cloud cover predictions are voodoo?
That’d mean we were paying all this money to install equipment that tried to stop heatwaves by increasing local warmth…
If the USA builds lots more wind turbines it will have to wait a hundred years for any cooling effect? | Click to enlarge
Seriously. Wind won’t be “reducing “temperatures” for one hundred years?
Long after todays wind turbines have died, their great-grandchildren-turbines will amount to something.
The Harvard researchers found that the warming effect of wind turbines in the continental U.S. was actually larger than the effect of reduced emissions for the first century of its operation. This is because the warming effect is predominantly local to the wind farm, while greenhouse gas concentrations must be reduced globally before the benefits are realized.
Luckily CO2 emissions are irrelevant and mild warmth is probably beneficial. Who knows, if the sun cools us, wind farms might have some useful outcome, just not the one anyone expected. Can they keep the frost off crops?
Kiss goodbye to land, wilderness, quiet farms
The Harvard Gazette tells it as nicely as it can with a heavy seasoning of pro-renewables cliches. But the real implications are unsaid. Tucked far into the paper itself are some killer statistics. To power the US electrical grid based on the measured power densities wind power would have to cover fully 12% of the Continental land area. To power all the US energy needs wind turbines would have to cover 72% of the country.
How much land?
The more wind plants we build the lower the power density will become.
Power densities clearly carry implications for land use. Meeting present-day US electricity consumption, for example, would require 12% of the Continental US land area for wind at 0.5 We m−2, or 1% for solar at 5.4 We m−2.
If wind was to replace all oil and gas for cars and as well as electricity wind farms need to cover 72% of total USA land area:
US electricity consumption is just 1/6 total primary energy consumption (BP 2018), so meeting total consumption would therefore require 72% and 6% respectively for US wind and solar.
Many nations have higher energy needs (per metre) than the USA.
In Germany Energiewende would need to grow to cover a quarter of all the country with solar panels to meet all primary energy needs. If they, crikey, cover the entire nation in wind turbines — they will still only supply 62% of German energy needs — at best:
Germany’s primary energy consumption rate is 1.28 W m−2 (BP 2018). If our US wind power density of 0.50 We m−2 was applicable to Germany, then devoting all German land to wind power would meet about 40% of Germany’s total primary energy consumption, while if German wind power performs like the best 10% of US wind (0.80 We m−2 ), then generation would be 62% of Germany’s consumption.
Whereas for solar at 5.4 We m−2 , 24% of Germany’s land area would need to be devoted to commercial scale solar to meet total primary energy consumption
On Science Daily, the editors take that as a message that solar has some good points, since it uses the land more effectively than wind. This is their top summary paragraph — downplay the bad side, spin, spin, spin:
Extracting energy from the wind causes climatic impacts that are small compared to current projections of 21st century warming, but large compared to the effect of reducing US electricity emissions to zero with solar.
Wind Turbines are stirring up the air close to the ground:
Leah Burrows, Harvard Gazette
In 2013 research, Keith described how each wind turbine creates a “wind shadow” behind it where air has been slowed down by the turbine’s blades. Today’s commercial-scale wind farms carefully space turbines to reduce the impact of these wind shadows…
What was missing from this previous research, however, were observations to support the modeling. Then, a few months ago, the U.S. Geological Survey released the locations of 57,636 wind turbines around the U.S. Using this data set, in combination with several other U.S. government databases, Keith and postdoctoral fellow Lee Miller were able to quantify the power density of 411 wind farms and 1,150 solar photovoltaic plants operating in the U.S. during 2016.
“For wind, we found that the average power density — meaning the rate of energy generation divided by the encompassing area of the wind plant — was up to 100 times lower than estimates by some leading energy experts,” said Miller, who is the first author of both papers. “Most of these estimates failed to consider the turbine-atmosphere interaction. For an isolated wind turbine, interactions are not important at all, but once the wind farms are more than five to 10 kilometers deep, these interactions have a major impact on the power density.”
Wind has a higher capacity factor (it works more often), but solar has a higher power density (uses less land).
Figure 3. Distributions of capacity factors and power densities. Probability density functions(A),(B) over all wind and solar power plants; and, cumulative distribution functions of the normalized aggregated capacity (C),(D). In each case, annual average data for 2016, 2014, and 2012 is plotted, with the colored key in (D) clarifying wind from solar and the specific year.
Or put another way, they are both horrible for different reasons. But they’re also horrible together for their intermittency, their expense, and the vandalizing effect they have on the good parts of the grid.
A whole bunch of experts were wrong
There were clues…
For wind power, estimates of the power density vary by about a factor of 70.
Wind’s mean power density in 2016 was 0.50 We m−2 . This observed mean is consistent with estimates based on atmospheric theory and modeling (Gustavson 1979, Keith et al 2004, Wang and Prinn 2010, Milleret al 2011, Ganset al 2012, Jacobson and Archer 2012, Marvel et al 2012, Adams and Keith 2013, Milleret al 2015, Miller and Kleidon 2016) which predicted that large-scale wind power densities would be under 1.0 We m−2 and also that power densities will decrease with increasing size of the wind farm installation. This observed mean power density is much smaller than many common estimates (Archer and Jacobson 2005, Lu et al 2009, Sta. Maria and Jacobson 2009, Jacobson and Delucchi 2011, Lopez et al 2012, US Department of Energy 2015, World Bank Group and Technical University of Denmark 2018)
For solar photovoltaics (PV), estimates of the power density differ by about a factor of 12. From 3–9 We m−2 up to 120 We m−2 if such sunny flat regions were blanketed with today’s highest (~40%) efficiency PV panels.
Power density statistics for the diehards
For solar energy, the average power density (measured in watts per meter squared) is 10 times higher than wind power, but also much lower than estimates by leading energy experts.
The mean power density of 411 onshore wind power plants in 2016 was 0.50 We m−2. Wind plants with the largest areas have the lowest power densities. The mean 2016 power density of 1150 solar power plants was 5.4 We m−2.
The energy produced per m2 shrinks to a quarter as the size of the wind installation spreads across the land:
While many wind power plants with areas less than 15 km2 generate more than 1.0 We m−2 , power density decreases with increasing power plant size. This result was previously observed for 0–20 km2 wind power plants by (MacKay 2013a). We verify this early result, and extend it by showing that wind’s power density reaches an asymptote of about 0.25 We m−2 when the wind farm area exceeds about 150 km2 .
Compare that to the power demands per m2 of large cities
…the primary energy demand of large cities, such as Phoenix with a primary energy demand of 8.1 W m−2 , Los Angeles with 21 Wm−2 or New York City with 69 W m−2.
Be grateful for small mercies:
In 2017, wind and solar generated 6.0% and 1.8% respectively of US electricity (BP 2018).
REFERENCE
Keith and Miller (2018) Observation-based solar and wind power capacity factors and power densities, Environmental Research Letters, Volume 13, Number 10
If wind could have driven things like heavy machinery before Tesla came along and showed how to use alternating current our past would probably be quite different. So before Tesla came the steam engine that could harness the power in burning fuel, then the internal combustion engine for the same reason. Edison may have started his system on DC but he was already swamped by a distribution nightmare until Tesla showed the world how to do it.
And now the fanatics are surprised that wind is just hot air. Go figure. 🙁
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Roy, I reckon your inverted commas are in the wrong place. !00 times is just a hundred times. But “100 times less” has gotta be some kind of record.
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Ted,
It may be just that I haven’t had enough coffee yet. But ??? 🙂
I just quoted Jo verbatim.
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Sorry, Roy. Old eyes and small print. They are not inverted commas at all.
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Believe me, Ted, I know the problem much too well.
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And these articles never seemed concerned with the negative overall energy from building the panels and turbines! https://spectrum.ieee.org/energy/renewables/what-it-would-really-take-to-reverse-climate-change
If a system won’t work, why do more of it?
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Reverse it to what?
1852?
The 1852 flood caused the most recorded Australian deaths by drowning in written history, with an estimated 89 settler-colonisers perishing.
https://indigenousx.com.au/the-heroes-of-gundagai/#.WzDDkS1L2hd
Doomsday Global Warming; the Marty McFly of ‘science’.
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Interesting Mark.
It’s good to have these positives put out there.
KK
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For our overseas visitors, Gundagai is of Australian folklore.
Australian song that was written by Jack O’Hagan during the First World War.
The song is extremely synonymous with the ANZAC’s during both World Wars.
This particular swing version is performed by Jack Davidson & His Dandies in 1938:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V1-kXmp6ZE0
Here it is by Aussie music legend, Slim Dusty:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P1KH9qBWK1E
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This is so fallacious.it is even one that this blog has looked at before and concluded the same. If people today were living in tents, poorly nourished and overworked with no means of transport – vehicles and roads – in a flood plain that is about to get a flash flood, the consequences would be the same. The same floods today however would likely take no human lives not because the event is different but because society is.
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Good point, Gee Aye.
Thank you, fossil fuels.
Thank you, industrial revolution.
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Also, someone might want to contact Bob Brown & his 97% of junk scientists, and ask them to explain the lack of coal miners back then…
Coal miners to blame for Queensland floods, says Australian Greens leader Bob Brown
https://www.news.com.au/breaking-news/coal-miners-to-blame-for-queensland-floods-says-australian-greens-leader-bob-brown/news-story/cbfe12042fa9c4149ea3c10524f57344
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Hi Gee Aye,
When you say phalacious I assume you are talking about the level and power of the flood and that we can’t really judge the weather that caused it simply by the death toll.
If that’s what you’re saying then a scientist would agree.
Many rivers around Australia would have been damd or partially blocked by all sorts of things since the time of earlier floods and so reduce flow.
There is a strong memory up in Wollombi, in the Hunter, of a huge rise, almost unimaginable, caused by trees and undergrowth being held at a narrow part of the river course during one storm. Maybe 1949.
The level of flooding cannot be determined by the human toll, many townships, e.g. Maitland, have either moved or built retaining walls to help.
KK
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That is true Keith, the flood plains were extensive before the arrival of Europeans because, as you say, the rivers were clogged with fallen trees.
The first explorers over the Blue Mountains thought they had stumbled across Acadia, lightly treed, plenty of grasses and herbs. Later arrivals naturally built on the flood plain and paid the price.
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The records for the Hawkesbury at Windsor show one flood in from memory the 1850s which was three metres higher than the second highest. 3m on top of a big flood is a helluva lot of water. I have always wondered if that flood was caused by extra rain or by blockage of the channel downstream. Blockage by tree growth is not inconceivable.
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Ahh gee isn’t that exactly what you want the world to be like ? You know same living conditions pre industrial!
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Being in that same institution i saw that article. Problem is that you cant reverse something that isnt happening in the first place. I does cover the cost well. Exposing the stupidity of it all.
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Wind power— reduced emissions — reduced CO2 concentrations. Really? Where?
CO2 is not controlled by humans. Our contribution is barely noticeable. So instead of talking temperature, why isn’t anyone showing that windmills actually reduce CO2? Show how 350,000+ windmills have reduced world CO2 over the last twenty years.
There are many wrong assumptions here including
– CO2 levels are man made. Proven wrong by radio carbon dating of aerial CO2.
– CO2 can be reduced by reducing CO2 emissions. Proven wrong by the CO2 graph. Double nothing is still nothing.
– CO2 is in any way connected to temperature. Proven wrong by the last 20 year of climbing CO2 and frozen, even declining temperatures. Snow in Cairo. Blankets in Bangladesh.
– CO2 can be lowered locally, say in South Australia or even Australia. If not, why are we closing coal power when China is building them?
Where is the IPCC report on how successful the last 30 years in reducing CO2? Nothing done has affected CO2 growth, one way or the other. Common sense would say that mankind was irrelevant, insignificant, that CO2 is set by the world temperature, not the other way around and that there is nothing we can do about it.
You would have to think it was time to review the successes of the IPCC. If CO2 is the problem, what has been achieved? Nothing.
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Really, if 350,000 giant windmills have achieved nothing, why are we still paying for them? And in Australia paying billions in hidden carbon taxes to fund more patently useless foreign owned windmills?
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The answers are: 1-Money, 2-Money, 3-Globalism.
Further answers are equally inane and depressing.
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Good to see another aspect of this Green Nightmare exposed to reasoned analysis.
I’m still waiting for the same on “so called” noise from windturbines. The scammers are still talking about “noise” to hide the reality that people, birds and animals are being physically destroyed by the atmospheric pressure pulsing which is shaking bodies and nervous systems.
This topic is the clincher that proves conclusively that other humans are expendable to the main cause and that this is Not an environmental issue.
It’s become a moral one.
KK
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KK these are the same people that want to enforce vegan diets on everyone citing “plants use less food, water and resources than animals” but are quite happy to have miles of turbines that use large amounts of energy to produce and operate just so their intense self hatred gets dialed down to 10.
If the means justifies the end then the collective dissonance must ignore the reality of their hypocrisy in loving nature at all costs then killing at with a price tag.
http://savetheeaglesinternational.org/
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Plants are my food’s food.
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Talking to a colleague , he lived in a rural area where a wind farm was to be set up. The owners of the wind farm were door knocking prior to construction, and when he questioned them at length about noise/infrasound, they shut up and wouldnt say anything…..
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They talk about noise as a misdirection.
VLF pulsing is not good for people but those who profit from the turbine subsidy farming have pushed this atrocity out of sight for too long.
All renewables should be terminated immediately and CSIRO properly funded to test and develop them until they can make them as cost effective as current coal fired power generators.
The price we have paid as a nation to enter renewables into service before they have been properly developed is appalling.
I would hate to fly in an aircraft that was at the same primitive, unhealthy and polluting state of development as renewables are at present.
KK
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Government is as government does. There was NO intent that the wind farms would work. After all, if it only took a few windmills to generate the necessary power, where is the gain for government from that? The government solution for the designed in failure mode was, is, and always will be to do more of the same. Not a mere doubling down. NO! Based upon this story, they are going to be really “forward” looking and demand an increase in their failed program by 100 times. The fact that a mere ten times increase would destroy the power generation industry AND the economy that is expected to pay for it is not going to stop them. Why? Because that was the plan from the get go. I just took much more spending to make it happen than they expected.
Why do we keep feeding them?
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Why do we keep feeding them?
Were we given a choice? I don’t recall giving politicians permission to fritter our money away.
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Who needs all that land when all you need is a flapping tax.
“Owing to the chaotic nature of the atmospheric circulation (often depicted by the flap of a butterfly’s wings changing the future weather), the detailed day-to-day weather cannot be forecast accurately more than about two weeks into the future.” (theconversation)
https://www.technologyreview.com/s/422809/when-the-butterfly-effect-took-flight/
… when they could so easily have taxed butterflies flapping their wings.
Less flapping, better climate.
Elsewhere:
Culcairn residents have banded together to fight a proposed solar farm development in their community.
https://www.prime7.com.au/news/4218-solar-protest
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As more wind and solar farms pop up, we need a #EndTheSolarOccupation or #EndTheWindFarmsOccupation hash tags….similar could be also said for speed cameras….they are slowly colonizing and taking over our planet…. 🙂
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Yes, razing the land to cover it with wind turbines and solar panels is the right thing to do in order to save the planet. Wildlife will adapt to the changing conditions or those that can’t can simply perish.
I mentioned in another post that a vocal resident of our township, who is opposed to logging, called us Hobbits and our township Hobbiton. Methinks that these planet loving Greens are the true Orcs wanting to despoil the land, raise totem poles and conduct sacrifices in the name of false gods.
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Orcs is a good analogy, from 2015 this amazing claim based on equally amazing maths of powering the world with solar farm the size of Spain, then this year the calculation of entirely covering Victoria with solar panels would match its current power generation but not consistency is more realistic, progress prehaps?
The march of the Ents must continue.
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bemused @ #7 said:
Did he now? Hobbits wouldn’t do that. You can cheerfully tell him he is dead wrong: Hobbiton is in the Waikato in the North Island of New Zealand. That’s on the eastern side of the Tasman Sea. If you haven’t got furry feet, you can’t be a Hobbit.
Maybe he’s thinking about Isengard and the Tower of Orthanc where Sauruman grew Orcs and despoiled the land with the Orcs cutting forest trees down along with the release of industrial pollution. The damage to the forest by the Orcs angered the Ents who eventually dismantled Saruman’s industries. It’s up to you if you want to tell him this little bit …
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Are we not going backwards in terms of power density and efficiency?
I like to look at relative figures.
The two biggest offshore wind farms in Europe are in the UK.
Walney Extension has 639MW capacity over 73 km2 i.e. 8.75 MW/km2
London Array has 630MW capacity over 120 km2 i.e. 5.16 MW/km2
Bełchatów coal-fired power station in Poland has an area – including adjacent open cast coal mines – of 100-150 km2 with a capacity of 5472 MW. i.e. 36-55 MW/km2
The utilization of Bełchatów (the biggest coal-fired power station in Europe) is about 55-60% compared to maybe 45% for the London Array in 2015. (seems a bit high). Even on this most generous basis there coal-fired power station produces 8-20 times kwh per m2 of an offshore wind farm. For onshore wind farms is more like 12-30 times the power – and the onshore wind farms have to be well spaced out.
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As another comparison of land use, consider a gas-fired power station with one of the world’s most land-intensive solar power stations.
The Carrington gas-fired combined cycle power station began operating in 2016 with a capacity of 880 MW. It was one of the few fossil fuel power stations to be commissioned in the UK in recent years. At 60% capacity it will produce 4.6 Twh per annum. The site is about 0.5 km2, so output is around 9200 Gwh/km2.
The Ivanpah solar power station is famous for its central tower. It has a capacity of 392 MW over 14.2 km2. Actual output has been below forecast at 20.6% of capacity in 2016. Annual output is therefore around 50 Gwh/km2.
The latest, most compact, design for large-scale solar uses almost 200 times the land area per unit of power generated as a medium-sized gas-fired power station.
Note – Carrington is to the West of Manchester UK and is home to the Manchester United training grounds.
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Pol Pot always advocated emptying the cities and forcing people out into the rural areas, and agrarian Communist revolution of sorts…of course like most Leftist adventures, it ended in genocide and mass graves….
The UN Agenda 21/30 plan is to empty the countryside of human habitation to protect thier mythical “gaia” and force into huge cities.
Historically, there is only one reason you force people into ghettos….
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Those ghettos were created to segregate certain people and restrict their movements, these ghettos will be…………never mind.
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Back in the nazis time, the ghettos were emptied physically. I suspect the purpose of constraining people will be to maximize whatever might be “deployed” against the inhabitants….greater likely hood of having an effect. Cramped quarters are not healthy….
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A real PC version of carbon reduction……nice.
As long as people have a take away coffee and a phone with slow internet it should all be good.
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The PC low-carbon (di-oxide) version of bread and circuses, “Solyent Green” & “Logans Run” rolled into one…..
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Wind turbines are intermittent in production and need backing up by equivalent reliable generation, they are expensive and require a lot of maintenance in remote areas, they suffer frequent storm damage, they require lengthy connecting cables to remote locations acceptable to population, they vandalise the landscape and environment that they are in, they pester people and livestock, and possibly most immorally they kill bats and birds ruthlessly. Solar Collectors do not work at night and are patchy in cloudy weather and have limited life requiring maintenance and cleaning, and they too require back-up by reliable generation when they are down in peak times, high-temperature concentrating solar generators fry birds. These alternative power sources are so impractical, bad and environmentally unfriendly that they could only have been dreamed up by Greenies and Socialists.
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Meanwhile in the republic of Victoriastan our glorious leader has decreed that dissent against his windfarm building plans can only be heard by one Government agency .
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-10-05/wind-farm-noise-rules-to-be-reviewed-by-victorian-government/10334752
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People who vote for a bigger government will be pleased this should include any farmers or rural types that willfully or lazily voted Labor, Greens or any LNP or independents that pandered to climate doctrine.
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And rushes to install new diesel generators on Mornington Peninsular before the summer demand for electricity.
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I wonder if they factored this into their “calculations” ?
https://horizon-magazine.eu/article/what-happens-world-dying-winds.html
“the average terrestrial wind speed has decreased by 0.5 kilometres per hour (0.3 miles per hour) every decade, according to data starting in the 1960s.”
Surely this can’t be true because climate experts tell us there is more energy in the system due to heat trapping ?
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Yes Rosco,
Don’t-ya just like all that ‘trapped heat’.
As winter is acoming here, please send all your extra trappings over this way.
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Rosco:
It’s caused by all the hot air emitted by the gullible. Whenever a new wind farm starts up they gather and breathe out (more CO2) and say things like “saving the planet”, “wonderful technology” etc.
As someone once remarked “Only an idiot would think of putting a small power station on top of a long pole, where it is exposed to the weather and hard to get at for maintenance”.
If only lightning would strike them ( vote here for your choice of wind turbine or gullible troll).
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You hear it every time.
It seems that’s the only phrase they know.
Tony.
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Why is the posting time shown as 8:34 for my post above – I thought daylight saving didn’t commence until 2:00 am Sunday 7 October ?
Another insidious effect of climate change ?
[Ahem. Buggy software keeps the clock here in its own timezone somewhere 40minutes East of Brisbane. Another job for the General Manager of Bugs and Software (me). Sigh. – On my list. you would think websites, being connected to the internet and all, would update their own clock. But I cannot even manually set the time. – Jo]
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Maybe it’s ‘Coordinated Universal Climate Time’
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Maybe the software is only 97% bug free…
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The extensive wind turbine atmospheric disturbance can be easily seen with the right weather conditions.
http://blisslab.pratt.duke.edu/research/turbine-wake-steering
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Impressive image of the wake.
A turbine can remove up to 9/16ths of the wind energy within its swept area. The image shows how the concentrated loss of energy at the turbines being dispersed downwind.
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So what is all this turbine wake turbulence doing to the local and not so local weather then? That image at the link makes it pretty clear that wind patterns, temperature, frosting/non-frosting etc., are all going to be altered.
Are they “solving” one “non-problem” but causing another?
Do they care?
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Your comment in the main media the other day was put up on Jo’s site for us to read.
It covered just about everything.
Great stuff.
🙂
00
What happens if we blanket a coastline with wind towers? How much of the wind’s energy is converted to electricity, and how much is left to continue inland? If inland breezes are reduced, will that reduce evaporation and increase land temperatures?
According to a report in the SMH, the latest wind towers are 240 metres high to the tip of the blade. According to the manufacturer, operational noise levels have been lowered to 104 dBA, which at the typical distance of 300 to 400 metres away from housing equates to the sound of a refrigerator.
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It’s basic.
In one instance, why not look at educating children about having smaller families when they grow up and so forth. Problem solved. Economics could be re-invented to look at quality rather than growth. More detail was not included in this comment due to the mind boggling simplicity of the concept and the solution.
It has been proven that when people are awake and particularly when standing, they create wind shadows that impair the function of wind turbines.
The moronicity of it all…hmmm
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“What happens if we blanket a coastline with wind towers? How much of the wind’s energy is converted to electricity, and how much is left to continue inland?”
According to new research, the amount of wind depends on if the wind is dampened by populated areas, particularly when there are many standing up in unison, like at a football match or in a busy street with lots of pedestrians.
50
Like at the start of a yacht race and competing boats manoeuvre to capture wind to stall the sails of a rival boat.
80
A refrigerator does not make a helicopter-like thumping noise.
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Hi Robber
Stories from people forced to live near wind turbines are that the vey low frequency pulsing makes them sick in a way that most people would find hard to understand.
Noise, on the other hand may be annoying but not life threatening.
That’s why they prefer using the noise level diversion to avoid the real issue: VLF pulsing.
KK
00
Wind farms will go down as one of many mankind’s major follies. If one really thinks it through it must be one of the most inefficient ways to produce power on a mass scale ever invented. Apart from the intermittency problem, which is a major one, there’s also the amount of land required. It always reminds me of the stupid idea some scientists used to push whereby spacecraft can be propelled by solar wind sails. Apart from the problem of the massively large surface area required to propel a decent sized spacecraft, it would only work in one direction and cease to work only a small distance from the sun. Totally useless.
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A few years ago an engineer who works for a wind turbine manufacturer posted similar views here. He said he enjoys his place of employment and work, but.
I recall that sometime later he admitted that his employer was not impressed by his comment.
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Safetguy66 I believe, he gave some good insights into the industry but its a bit like a vegan working in an abattoir I guess.
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You mean like a sceptic having to put up with the loony left dominated world….
Lets face it, I cant believe how many people trust “Aunty”…..the mere fact Aunty is unhinged and so left leaning she can only go around corners one way seems to have evaded people….
As long as people get their govt hand outs they are pacified….the mere fact the govt created a problem to make people dependent on govt seems to have escaped their tiny mental faculties….
One of the biggest dangers to society would be the Welfare payment computers shutting down….
110
Aunty was once fair and balanced, but over the last 20 years or more they have moved to the centre left. Its our job to bring them back to the centre, then dismantle the organisation.
Steve would I be correct in thinking you have never been unemployed?
53
I have been unemployed, but thankfully only briefly.
10
Okay, didn’t mean to pry.
10
Let me be a broken record and say it again…
It must be obvious to nearly all engineers from the very start that these diffuse, intermittent, expensive antique technologies will not do a job of work. So how? So why?
It’s comforting to think that Big Green runs on mass delusion or good intentions. But what if it is deliberate waste and impoverishment? An industrial civilisation has formed due to ever-increasing efficiency of combustion, of fire, of pressure, all of which has enormous downsides balanced by even more enormous advantages. That’s us. Modern man. Naughty, but here we are. Some people (we call them elites, but really…) object to the number of people living too long with amenities once reserved for a few. (You know, all humans are numerous but some are more numerous than others.) What if those elites decided to do something about it?
Now, if someone said let’s stop being like this I’d say fine, but you go first (starting with all climate conferences to be by video only, and bring your own sandwiches). If someone said there may be truly new tech which may replace the old I’d be keen. But if someone said we can stay this way but eliminate the downsides by reverting to old, feeble technologies with long-proven limits…I wouldn’t say fine.
No. I wouldn’t say fine. I’d say take your ludicrous NWO antique contraptions to the white elephants’ graveyard. And I’d make them remove not just the whirlygigs but those concrete bases…which should give them employment for a century. Because all those concrete bases are going to take some shifting, lemme tellya.
140
It’s biodegradable green reinforced concrete, isn’t it?
sarc.
90
There is lots of biodegradable green reinforced concrete undergoing transformation in Syria and Iraq etc with great finesse assisted by the guidance of intergovernmental panels and so on.
80
Predator drones are handy like that 🙂
“Hell hath on fury like a millennial scorned”
100
Dennis, while the concrete is a little stubborn, the good news is that the whirlies themselves are as degradable as any temperamental gizmo left out in the weather on a pole and completely renewable on payment of huge wallops of money.
The bad news is…
https://stopthesethings.com/2014/08/16/how-much-co2-gets-emitted-to-build-a-wind-turbine/
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[snip]
50
[snip see email.]
30
[snip email coming.]
00
“Because all those concrete bases are going to take some shifting, lemme tellya.”
not if you dont even try and just bury them
10
The sun provides all the life on the planet through photosynthesis. CO2 and H2O form carbo-hydrates, stored solar energy. However the sun also heats our planet or it would be very cold lump of rock in space. It heats our water. It creates clouds and storms and rain. It creates our climates. It is the greatest power in our lives and for most of history, men have worshipped the sun and feared winter and the cold. Christian Saints still have sun discs behind them, now just halos.
At what point did we start worshipping science and ignoring reality? Not real science, the politics of stopping every advance in quality of life and going back to some primitive dreamtime like the Flintstones? The same cars except you push them up hills. The very idea that the biggest force in climate is not the sun is unbelievable. The biggest contributor to the weather is H2O. CO2 is irrelevant, a very soluble gas most of which is dissolved in the vast oceans and comes out with any heating.
Surely if anyone seriously believed CO2 and not the sun was responsible for a very slightly warmer planet, they have had 30 years to prove it. Surely if CO2 levels were man made, they could prove that too? Surely if they believed man made CO2 was producing wild weather, they could explain how that happened? No, we have to believe.
It is a form of madness, a rejection of modern comfortable society and a desperation to go back to the a dreamtime of the Flintstones, a cartoon view of the world.
Windmills were abandoned immediately when we discovered coal and most recently, electricity. Now people want to go back to the time of windmills and compliant politicians are happy to indulge this with our cash. What is certain is that there is no truth in man made CO2 driven Global Warming. Australians are being robbed by their own laws, by our own politicians on behalf of overseas windmill and solar panel vendors and the world’s biggest carbon tax, called the RET. We are not even allowed use our own coal or power stations. Gas prices are going through the roof.
Why does anyone believe this nonsense? Or is even that not true? Cui Bono, follow the money.
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“If your perspective is the next 10 years, wind power actually has — in some respects — more climate impact than coal or gas. If your perspective is the next thousand years, then wind power has enormously less climatic impact than coal or gas.” — David Keith
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
David, the premise for building these obscenities was that they would last about 25 years. Over that time they were said to paid back what it cost to install them. On both counts they have failed — very, very few will last 20years without lots of expensive maintenance, and those that do last 25 years do not generate enough to cover the cost of their installation and decommissioning.
No ‘windfarm’ can last a thousand years — the current technology is just too fragile. With current designs lasting about 20years on average with little chance of recycling the majority of the parts, this means that in about 100years we will have significant piles of ‘windfarm’ detritus piling about us. Thus far offshore ‘windfarms’ appear to have significantly shorter lifespans as predicted by many people (including me).
In addition they industrialize the green spaces and wild areas of the world, causing significant environmental degradation, vast lengths of cabling installed disrupting the wildlife habitats, while the blades chop-up many birds and asphyxiate bats.
Wind generation is hopelessly inefficient — ‘windfarms’ are are spread over a large areas and often many, many miles away from the consumers, thus there are significant line losses — losses that warm the atmosphere.
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Perhaps if those wind towers actually delivered more power, they might be okay, but as I have said all along, they just don’t deliver!
We have a Nameplate of 5300MW for wind power here in Australia, and that is spread across 47 wind plants across five States, and there are around three thousand individual wind towers.
Across a whole year, all those wind towers deliver around 13,400 GigaWattHours of power to the Australian grid across those same five States.
Just the one large scale coal fired power plant, Bayswater has a Nameplate of 2640MW, around half the total of all those wind plants, and yet Bayswater alone delivers 26% more power (around 17000 GigaWattHours) than ALL of those wind towers combined, from just four Units at the one location.
Now I couldn’t care less when uninformed people say wind power is cheaper than coal fired power, because I can tell you that those 47 wind plants in total cost waaaay more than Bayswater, or even more than a replacement for Bayswater, and that replacement, just like Bayswater, will also deliver more power than all those wind towers, and last twice as long as well, considering that Bayswater has already been in operation five years longer than the best case life expectancy for ANY wind plant.
Tony.
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Tony it sounds like you only see merit in a boring old system that reliably runs 24/7/365 with tight specifications on frequency and voltage, while delivering electricity to the consumer anytime they want it and can pay for it.
Surely you can see how wonderfully exciting electricity distribution becomes when you don’t know when the generators will kick in and for how long, and at what cost to the consumer.
Gee life can get so exciting when all the ruinable providers bounce in at once only to fade again over the next minute to umpteen hours.
—
Good game eh?
So everyone pay the subsidy, for one of these providers is betting on hitting the supply-side jackpot real soon.
[do I need a /sarc tag on this?]
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At 8,760 hrs per year and 13,400 GWH per year that is roughly 1.5 GWH per hr delivered. With a nameplate of 5,300 MW or rather 5.3 GW, it is 29% nameplate throughput which seems pretty good. What am I doing wrong here?
00
They don’t work when the wind doesn’t blow .
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Yes there is thermal gas generation for when the wind doesn’t blow, nor the sun shines brightly. Those gas plants are inexpensive and nothing wrong in taking advantage of rewewable generation when you got it.
The topic is fascinating because wake turbulence and boundary mixing are big deals. Moreover, thermal plants have plumes and large PVC installation UHI surely influence air flow and mixing.
I cannot imagine what it means or where all this leads. There is no free lunch
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Why build and support 2 systems when 1 will do?
Only one is needed.
The other is a parasite.
I got a Giardia infection a few years ago.
Never thought to encourage it.
Killed it as soon as it was discovered.
I view grid-scale wind and solar power as parasites. The sooner they are gone, the better.
10
The link in the article; “Nick Carne — Cosmos magazine”, did not work for me. I was surprised to see Cosmos quoted in an article like this. They are usually ardent Warmists and Greenhouse advocates.
20
Finkel front.
00
Their abc announces record cold in Darwin and blames it on the wind direction …
Darwin weather: Territorians experience coldest April temperature since 1968
“The south-easterlies on the southern side of the low were still bringing in quite a bit of dry air near the surface but we had rain coming in from higher up, which kind of worked like an evaporative air-conditioner where the rain coming into the drier air cools that air,” Bureau of Meteorology (BOM) senior forecaster Craig Earl-Spurr said.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-04-12/darwin-weather-april-coldest-day-since-1968/8436068
When its too hot their abc blames it on CO2 …
March temperatures sets record as hottest ever, Bureau of Meteorology says
“[Global Warming] is thought to be adding to the unusual heat.
The scorching start to 2016 prompted Australia’s chief scientist Alan Finkel to warn that the world was “losing the battle” against climate change.”
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-04-01/march-temperatures-sets-record-as-hottest-ever,-bom-says/7293500
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Towards 2000 (their abc) captured the birth of modern renewable wind power in 1981.
Ironically, it was a windless day …
http://www.abc.net.au/science/articles/2015/07/30/4282474.htm
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[…] does the IPCC have to say about the warming effect of windmills? The Harvard researchers found that the warming effect of wind turbines in the continental U.S. was […]
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The capacity factors and power densities quoted are only possible when the intermittents are connected to a system that permits them to run whenever they like. At market share higher than 15% in a system with little storage capacity, the generation output becomes system constrained and they can no longer run whenever they like. This situation is now occurring in SA on at least a weekly basis.
A cost minimised system aiming for 100% wind and solar generation using lithium battery storage will only produce about 30% of its unconstrained capacity. In this case the stated power density figures would be about 1/3rd what is quoted in the paper; corresponding to 0.17W/sq.m for wind and 1.8W/sq.m for solar.
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Carnegie Energy’s Albany wave farm to get $2.6m from WA Government despite viability concerns
Carnegie Clean Energy is set to receive a $2.6 million government pay cheque despite serious questions over its ability to fund what it has billed as Australia’s first commercial-scaled wave farm.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-10-05/carnegie-energy-albany-wave-farm-/10342270?smid=ABCRural-Twitter_Organic&WT.tsrc=Twitter_Organic&sf199416191=1
History:
Perth-based David Harries, one of the architects of the Renewable Energy Target policy and a director of EMC before it was bought by Carnegie, said it would be a challenge to ever get the cost of wave power to be competitive with solar and wind.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-09-22/power-company-carnegie-energy-hit-by-wave-of-discontent/10289772
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robert rosicka comment #10 posts the following link.
this is the bit I want to emphasise:
5 Oct: ABC: Wind farms attract new rules governing noise in Victoria to ‘give community confidence’
ABC Rural By Sinéad Mangan and Bridget Fitzgerald
Victoria’s wind farm industry is rapidly growing with 20 operating farms, 11 undergoing construction and 12 more at the developmental stages.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-10-05/wind-farm-noise-rules-to-be-reviewed-by-victorian-government/10334752
groups who have been opposing Wind farms need to bring the Harvard study to the attention of the Victorian authorities…and the public (not easy, when the CAGW-infested MSM won’t even report it).
still can’t find any coverage by ABC, BBC, Guardian, Fairfax, Reuters or Newscorp! in fact, can’t find anything in much of the FakeNewsMSM.
quite scary, given AP has reported it and all MSM subscribe to AP.
thankfully, it’s been picked up by enough MSM for the story to get around online.
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Pat the reason for Herr Daniels panic is the independent report done on a farm in Gippsland somewhere after numerous noise complaints from neighbors, the investigators couldn’t hear the people they were trying to interview at almost two kilometres from the nearest turbine .
Residents want either the whole thing switched off at night and or permanently in noise mitigation mode ,whatever noise mitigation mode is but assume it’s not going to produce much power in this mode .
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robert rosicka –
hope others will be inspired by their success, but there’s still much more to do before we end this RE lunacy.
00
ABC has plenty of time for this rubbish – “unknowable” except for CAGW:
6 Oct: ABC: Coastal erosion on the north-west Tasmanian coast, and planning for the unknowable future
ABC Northern Tasmania By Rick Eaves
Defending against unknowable short-term weather trends is complicated by the contentious nature of longer-term global warming predictions.
Councils are all too aware of sea level rise predictions and the mapping of Australia’s coastline given a forecast sea-level rise of 90cm by 2100…
“When the storm surge occurred in July, it came right up to houses in West Ulverstone and started people thinking about all the issues we could face here,” Mr Kersnovski said.
“We’re investigating that. We are also reviewing our climate change action plan because there have been some changes to consider after these past couple of months.”…
Bill Walker, the natural resource management officer for Waratah-Wynyard and Circular Head councils said the task for councils had been made harder by the management decisions of the past and from times before the advent of contemporary global warming concerns…
A Researcher in Coastal Geomorphology at the University of Tasmania, ***Chris Sharples, is currently researching the increasing magnitude of coastal erosion. He has some sympathy for the councils who are on the frontline of dealing with the issue.
“Just as in other places like the USA where the federal government is in denial about climate change, in Tasmania it is local government which is most serious about climate change mitigation and adaptation,” Mr Sharples said.
“Local government is pro-active in trying to mitigate and adapt to climate change because they have to deal most directly with the consequences.”…
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-10-06/coastal-erosion-on-tasmanias-north-west-how-to-plan-for-future/10329410
AUDIO: 12min16sec: Apr 2017: ABC Hobart: Irreversible erosion: Tasmanian beaches being washed away by climate change
On Drive with Louise Saunders
Tasmania made the pages of the New York Times today, with a report on coastal erosion at Port Arthur. Louise Saunders is joined by researcher ***Chris Sharples from the University of Tasmania to discuss the issue of coastal erosion at beaches around the state.
http://www.abc.net.au/radio/hobart/programs/drive/chris-sharples-coastal-erosion/8477680
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6 Oct: ABC: Great Barrier Reef catchment land clearing ‘crisis’ revealed in Government climate report
ABC Science By environment reporter Nick Kilvert
Federal Minister for the Environment Melissa Price said state and territory governments were primarily responsible for regulating land clearing, and net land sector emissions had declined since 2004/05.
“This declining trend reflects lower emissions from forest clearing and native forest harvesting, and more sequestration in regrowing forests,” she said in a statement.
“We know climate change is a big issue for the Reef and this is why we have invested more than $400 million to help protect the reef through the Great Barrier Reef Foundation.”…
The new land clearing figures were published in the Update of Australia’s National Greenhouse Gas Inventory, which also showed that greenhouse gas emissions had risen for the third year in a row.
Documents obtained under Freedom of Information laws showed the Government sat on the data for nearly two months before it publishing last Friday…
Wilderness Society spokesperson Jessica Panegyres: Ms Panegyres is calling for stricter land clearing laws at the federal level to prevent future broad-scale deforestation, such as has been occurring in Queensland…
“That means no new fossil fuel projects or expansions, a credible domestic emissions reduction target, and new national laws that stop the escalating deforestation crisis and actually protect our incredible environment.”…
http://www.abc.net.au/news/science/2018-10-06/great-barrier-reef-catchment-land-clearing-near-10yr-peak/10337952
headline on “ABC Just In” page: Who are Queensland’s most complained about electricity providers?
however, the article – now with a different headline – is more a hit piece on Click, with ABC using percentage increase to single them out:
6 Oct: ABC: Rising power bills, bad customer service prompt rise in complaints about electricity providers
By Laura Gartry
Ten thousand complaints were made to Queensland’s energy ombudsman last year with the majority coming from residential customers taking issue with billing and credit, Government documents reveal.
Formal complaints have increased 37 per cent in the past financial year with electricity customers distressed about rising costs, confusing deals, bad customer service and debt collection…
Click Energy was one of the most complained about with 943 complaints this year, an increase of 283 per cent…
Complaints against the major providers also increased with Origin up 16 per cent and AGL up 27 per cent…
Complaints to the Energy Ombudsman
Origin 1,914
AGL 1,235
Click 943
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-10-06/power-bill-prompt-rise-in-complaints-about-electricity-providers/10337204
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the perfect guy to refute the study, while saying the warming is real, BUT.
Marshall doesn’t address the land required:
5 Oct: Forbes: No, Wind Farms Are Not Causing Global Warming
by Michael Marshall
(I am a freelance science journalist and have been covering life sciences and the environment since 2007. I have a BA and MPhil from the University of Cambridge and an MSc in Science Communication from Imperial College London. I began my journalism career with New Scientist, where I remained for seven years, latterly as environment reporter and then environment news editor. In 2014 I moved to BBC Worldwide as deputy editor of the BBC Earth website. I subsequently became acting editor, before leaving in summer 2017 to go freelance. Since then I have edited a book for New Scientist on the science of human origins. I’m currently writing a book about the origin of life for Weidenfeld & Nicolson, to be published in 2020)
The current claims that they do stem from a misreading of a scientific study, which does not show anything of the kind.
The study in question was conducted by Lee Miller and David Keith at Harvard University…
At this point, you might ask what is the point of the study. In fact it has useful things to tell us, but they are subtle points.
The first is that we will need a mix of zero-carbon energies if we’re to keep our society running and avoid dangerous climate change. Putting all our eggs in one basket will lead to the sort of unwelcome consequences that Miller and Keith found. That means solar, tidal, wave, bioenergy, nuclear, wind, geothermal and anything else we can think of.
For this reason, anyone who says “wind is better than solar” or “solar is better than wind”, or any such comparison, is just being daft. It’s like saying cabbages are a better food than bananas…READ ON
https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelmarshalleurope/2018/10/05/no-wind-farms-are-not-causing-global-warming/
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An excellent comment @ Morning Mail today;
“Bushkid 06/10/2018, 9:25 am
Indeed, Akto. For all that CO2 to have become trapped in coal, gas etc., it had to have been, at one time, all free in the atmosphere, hence at far, far higher concentrations than at present.
Somehow, the planet managed to survive that particular “catastrophe” – without any UN, IPCC, carbon taxes, RETs, “renewables” subsidies etc.
Amazing!
The miracle is that plant life, and hence animal life, mammals and ultimately humans, survived the almost total lack of CO2 that resulted from locking it up all in “fossil fuels” and coal. 0.04% is only just beginning to claw our way back to a comfortable survival level. It’s only the liberation of the CO2 from nasty coal etc., that has pulled us back from the brink – the real tipping point, if you like.
But try to explain that to a politician hell-bent on ruining the country and our lives, or some unthinking greenie twit, or some poor school kid who’s being indoctrinated……
One of the most disgusting aspects of this is the harm being done to kids. I have a young cousin who, in primary school, was so terrified of the things his teachers were telling him about CAGW that I feared he’d take his own life in despair! He was absolutely distraught. That was a kid in primary school FFS. To me, that is outright child abuse and criminal.”
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Thanks for putting that up Dennis.
It’s powerful, it’s informative in a way that most people could follow and it should be spread far and wide.
Thanks Bushkid.
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Wind power proponents have remained comfortably and perhaps deliberately ignorant of some basic fluid mechanics.
I covered a paper on wind farms in a blog article recently. Studies confirm what has been understood for about a century.
One can’t be a good Engineer or scientist without also being a keen observer of the real world.
40
Very true Bernd.
10
In ability to communicate math is very tiresome. Example” 5 cookies on a plate, someone takes 2 and you have 2 cookies less.” 5-2=3 so 3 cookies left.
If you said I want 1/2 of a slice of piece. That means I want 50% of the present slice.
Hence if a large groupn/number is reduces: say 1200 down to 800 Then you are losing 400 from the 1200 to reach 800 OR you are losing 1/3 of what you HAVE (at 1200) or 1/3*1200 = 400 lost. So one says, we will have 1/3 less or 33.333% less.
Less NEVER is used as r times less (if r is > 1) as thing it is more. 1/3 less is appropriate. 1/3 times less is appropriate but NOT 3 times less!
I only can wonder who taught this?
00
Australia should nationalize and pay the cost of base/reserve power generation. That way the door is open and flexible for politicing/motivating renewable//green generation structures.
CO2 emission saved is reduced carbon emission. Reduce when the opportunity is available. No need to be fanatical or absolute about it one way or the other.
11
Should the government seek tenders for coal fired power stations?
40
Not sure what you mean by that.
Here in Ontarion Canada, the power generation and distribution used to be public owned. It was a mix of nuclear hydro coal and gas. The government agencies spent and wasted money constructing maintaining and altering these power projects. The government set prices for industries and citizens. Funds were given and taken from the public purse.. The point being it costs what it costs. For a modern industrialized society power generation and distribution is essential and inexpensive.
I can appreciate the desire to privatise and reduce carbon emissions. See no problem deveoping and evolving towards private and renewable generation.
For me it seems risky to privatise the base generation and charge punitive manipulative taxes on the fossil fuels. Switch to gas and/or nuclear for base if you like. Keep that expense at cost and in the public domain.
The government can make the policy for pricing electricity and distributing monies
What is wanted after all is flexibility and encouragement in a privatized renewable sector
30
Thanks, I agree the government should take back control of power generation. We have the same problem in Australia with privatisation, power bills went through the roof.
Now we are waiting to see whether PM Morrison et al will build new coal fired power stations.
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Fortune is in the guise of unavoidable. Either base/reserve capacity is guarded or the blackouts will be insufferable. Doesn’t matter whether electric prices remain manageable or go through the roof.
I can see Australia go right up to and beyond catastrophe, then build a few fossil monsters very quickly. You are lucky that the solution is easy and painless
The base will be rebuilt/refurbished because nothing else can cut it for a quick remedy. (Aside: Perhaps the Chinese can help with design and finance)
I applaud Australia for corageously testing the cliff wall of insufficient generation capacity. Your bravery puts the USA and EU to shame. They are years behind you. /satire intended/
40
Yeah although being someone elses crash test dummies isnt fun. You dont have to jump off a 4 story building to find out if it may well be fatal….
30
Strong long power grid failures produce baby booms 9 months later. Look on the brighter side of life!
Don’t think you guys are dummies either. Expect most everyone have an acute sense of impending doom. Greens know this just as well as skeptics.
You only need to walk back from your dysfuctional energy policy and reconfigure it to a practical viable entity.
Stop getting gored on the horns of a selfmade dilema
00
Raving , im not sure how closely youve been reading and reasearching, but the evidence suggests the energy policy appears to have been created to cause thw problems it has. This suggests collusion between govt, greenists, NGOs and the UN.
As such, it seems weve been sabotaged from within…
20
“This suggests collusion between govt, greenists, NGOs and the UN”
They are doing politics.
00
‘Perhaps the Chinese can help with design and finance’
They are salivating at the bit and will build state of the art cheaper than anyone else, but we don’t need their money to begin construction.
00
Exactly!
00
It’s all about politics and money since the Greiner NSW Coalition Government in the 1980s decided to shut down the NSW Electricity Commission based on unacceptably high operational costs impacted on by unionism and related poor work practises. Premier Greiner, a businessman, decided to form government owned private companies to take control of and manage Commission assets based on the private sector business model including annual budgets and targets to achieve dividends (profit) for the shareholders (taxpayers) and through improved efficiency of operations rather than increasing electricity pricing.
When the Carr Labor Government took office around 1990 they placed unionists in senior management positions in the government owned private companies and arranged for those businesses to borrow money to increase dividends to the NSW government which were used to improve the bottom line budget result each financial year.
The Commission mentality and union shop attitude returned.
To put this into perspective, the Greiner Government also closed NSW Railway workshops and put the repairs and maintenance of trains to tender with the private sector. I am aware of a quarterly district meeting of employers that included Chullora, delegates from the Railway advised that the daily rate of absenteeism was 60 per cent, that is 6 out of every 10 employees taking sick leave or unpaid leave. Obviously workshops not dominated by the unions would have operated satisfactorily with half the number of employees if most turned up for work most of the time. And operating costs would have been much lower. I understand that the problems were similar to Electricity Commission.
During the 16-years of Labor in NSW it went from bad to worse progressively. But during the period 2007 to 2013 there was the Rudd and Gillard Labor federal government and the push on RET and subsidises. RET trial basis only 3% RET increased to 28%, and during that period the NSW Coalition Government commenced implementing the state Labor government plans to sell the assets managed by the government owned private companies. And here we are today with “the transition to renewable energy”, unreliable wind and solar, electricity price auctions to gain maximum price to consumers, etc.
The issue for me is government interference picking winners and losers, free-market capitalism does not work that way, that is more like socialism, and as we know has led to crony capitalism profiteering, encouraged by politicians holding hands with the UN IPCC hoaxers and manipulators.
Yes our goverments must stop the RET nonsense, get out of or ignore the Paris Agreement carbon dioxide emissions targets and re-establish what was a reliable and low cost world’s largest interconnected electricity grid as soon as possible.
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We have had problems with union work places growing fat and entitled. Privatization and shop busting are methods used here as well.
In general I am in favor of unions. The concessions they win help everyone in the trickle down sense of things. Yet if unions grow unchecked in their root pursuit, they inflate into bloated wasteful costly professions.
Takes a strong politician to stand up to and stare down the essential service strike. Its a better solution thsn privatization, tendering, dismemberment or union busting.
Politicians like the easy way out. They settle or sell off. Restructuring is painful, hazardous and unsightly. Look how hard it is to force concessions on unionized rail workers, postmen, teachers, utility workers, police officers or garbage people. The pushback is intense
Here the government loves to privatize and sell off public assets to raise easy money to pay for their expensive public promises. Politicians love the easy way out
00
5 Oct: ClimateChangeNews: Climate Weekly: Saudis push back as IPCC talks head into overtime
By Megan Darby
International talks on how to present the science around 1.5C of global warming just ran into overtime in Incheon, South Korea.
National delegates are expected to argue well into Saturday about the feasibility of holding temperature rise to 1.5C – the stretch goal of the Paris Agreement – and its implications for sustainable development.
Saudi Arabia is leading the criticism of several elements of the draft summary of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s special report, sources told Climate Home News reporter Natalie Sauer in Incheon.
The country’s diplomats want to emphasise the costs of climate action and downplay the sustainable development benefits, a source said…
One observer described the Saudi delegation as “more aggressive and virulent – both in terms of issues and airtime – than any time in my memory”. Others confirmed the Saudis had been vocal, but did not see their behaviour as different to previous meetings.
The US is reportedly keeping a lower profile, but leaked pre-meeting comments from the Trump administration reveal some pro-fossil fuel talking points…
Of course, the top IPCC scientists are there to make sure the final wording reflects the underlying evidence. They are a bulwark against any government using the report to make unfounded claims, but may come under pressure to remove or downplay conclusions where the interpretation is disputed…
As soon as the final text emerges, we will be scrutinising it to see which narratives got the upper hand. And we will be asking the decision-makers: what next? Look for our special coverage on Monday…
On Sunday, the first round of Brazil’s presidential election is one for the whole world to watch. Will the country that houses the world’s biggest rainforest will elect a climate denier as leader? Jair Bolsonaro, who wants to pull out of the Paris climate deal, has surged in the polls.
http://www.climatechangenews.com/2018/10/05/climate-weekly-saudis-push-back-ipcc-talks-head-overtime/
5 Oct: TWEET: Nitin Sethi, BusinessStandardIndia:
Hearing rather bad stories of how the US and some authors are acting at the #climatechange #ipcc #sr15 report negotiations. US trying to obliterate reference of cumulative emissions. #COP24 . When will climate negotiations stop being about ignoring science and history?
https://twitter.com/nit_set/status/1048235472831561728
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Windfarms Unnatural
‘Usually at night the air closer to the ground becomes colder when the sun goes down and the earth cools.
‘But on huge wind farms the motion of the turbines mixes the air higher in the atmosphere that is warmer, pushing up the overall temperature.
‘Satellite data over a large area in Texas, that is now covered by four of the world’s largest wind farms, found that over a decade the local temperature went up by almost 1C as more turbines are built.’
UK Telegraph
50
So, maybe, the push to so called renewable energy that makes no sense to practical people including engineers has yet another twist to it?
Were the plotters at UN IPCC well aware of the temperature rise effect?
50
I doubt it…..they have so far proved to be uniformly clueless as to understanding actual science….so….
30
Am sure the IPCC is aware of this. Don’t envy their task at coming to grips with such modelling. We are talking boundary layers, evaporation, moisture and co2 transport across boundaries, lofting of dust and other particulates, macro turbulance and coupling of airflow across tens of kilometers.
Not to mention regional (100s of square kilometers) 1 deg C temperature rises which are of the same size as the AGW effect itself
20
The IPCC would have known 15 years ago its models were rubbish, but they have been taking the money and dishing up nonsense….
What does that tell you?
10
Climate research is difficult expensive and filled with politics
(Politics = shaping and steering opinion)
00
Much of the current and future carbon emissions are anticipated to come from China, India and other countries with developing economies and large populations.
Climate change (should it exist) is going to effect these countries heavily. It is for them to decide and act for effective GG reduction. Western countries have too little industry or economy to offsetthe emissions.
Australia should concen itself with Australia’s environment and leave China and other places to decide and act for themselves in their own intersts.
No saving the world. Need to save ourselves first. Mitigating hypothetical climate change is feasible.
I am not being unkind here. There is no means to offset China’s emission. It’s too big. They must choose to do that for themselves or else choose to mitigate the change or choose to lump it or whatever
10
When you use an electric motor does it get warm because of the wiring resistance.
When you reverse the process as in turbines do we think that the wiring may produce a little heat?
And these turbines are big boys.
KK
30
‘Electricity prices on the east coast and in southern states could spike early next year, energy experts warn.’ Oz
50
No surprise is there, it’s all about money, profiteering on the coat tails of the global warming scare hoax.
Grab all they can while the opportunity lasts, and before facing expensive replacement of equipment expenses.
And then there is the new world order de-industrialisation agenda, UN Lima Agreement 1975.
51
Price spikes no idea why ? Well Victoriastan did remove 25% of the power generation so that could be a reason but surely not !
Wind farms should have a 10 kilometre buffer zone from any house , instead of building more useless wind farms how about a few useful dams .
50
Sailors know about stealing another’s wind.
Fruit farmers know about stirring the air to keep ground frost at bay.
Greenhouse farmers know about increasing CO2 levels to increase from yield.
Politicians appreciate a good lunch and know how to spend other people’s money.
70
Well said.
Actually, it was great fun in our days of dinghy racing, to steal wind from other boats!
30
Their wind power to climate flow chart has included climate change which they will have modelled as being correct. It looks pretty flawed, the whole thing.
20
The whole thing looked like a complete nonsense.
Modern science.
10
“What’s the discount rate on one thousand year time-frames?”
Hitler’s “Tausendjähriges Reich” has given the answer
20
5 Oct: EconomicTimesIndia: AFP: Saudi Arabia threatens to block key UN climate report: Sources
“We are very concerned that a single country is threatening to hold up adoption of the IPCC Special Report if scientific findings are not changed or deleted according to its demands,” said an informed observer who asked not to be named.
The source, along with two other persons with direct knowledge of the situation, identified the country as Saudi Arabia.
“This has become a battle between Saudi Arabia, a rich oil producer, and small island states threatened with extinction,” sa ..
“The report hangs in the balance,” the meeting’s chair said Saturday — a day after talks were due to end — before convening an emergency huddle of the IPCC’s half-dozen vice chairs, according to someone in the room…
An email to Saudi officials seeking comment was not answered, and delegates at the closed-door meeting were not accessible…
At issue is a passage in the summary stating that voluntary national commitments to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, annexed to the 2015 Paris climate treaty, will fail to limit warming to 1.5C…
The passage goes on to note that capping global warming under 1.5C “can only be achieved if global CO2 emissions start to decline well before 2030.”…
***In case of an impasse, the chairs of an IPCC meeting can override an objection from one or a few countries, recording the objection in a footnote.
“It’s quite rare that a government will be willing to have their name on the bottom of the page with an asterisk,” Jonathan Lynn, head of communications for the IPCC, said last week.
“We do everything we can to avoid it.”…
During the week-long talks in Incheon, “the Saudis have been running interference across the board, on main and minor issues,” a participant in the meeting said.
https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/international/world-news/saudi-arabia-threatens-to-block-key-un-climate-report-sources/articleshow/66097054.cms
6 Oct: Rappler: AFP: Saudi Arabia backs down from blocking U.N. climate report – sources
The Saudis had objected to the inclusion of a passage emphasising the need for sharp reductions in the use of fossil fuels –Saudi Arabia’s main export.
Oil giant Saudi Arabia backed down at the last minute Saturday, October 6, from obstructing the adoption of a major report by the United Nation or UN’s climate science panel, sources told Agence France Presse (AFP).
With the threat removed, the meeting of the 195-nation panel in Incheon, South Korea – deep into overtime – swiftly approved the report on how to cap global warming at 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit), and what a 1.5C world might look like…
“Saudi Arabia withdrew its blockage of the passage when their objection was about to be formally recorded in a footnote,” said a participant in the meeting.
“It was a game of chicken, and the Saudis blinked first.”…
“We expected tough negotiations on this landmark report and we are happy that governments have delivered a good reflection of the underlying science,” said Stephen Cornelius, WWF’s chief advisor on climate change and a former IPCC negotiator.
“Current country pledges to cut emissions are insufficient to limit global warming to 1.5°C – you can’t negotiate with science.”
A email to Saudi officials was not answered, and delegates at the closed-door meeting were not available for comment…
https://www.rappler.com/world/global-affairs/213673-saudi-arabia-backs-down-blocking-un-report
00
5 Oct: Nitin Sethi, Business Standard India:
Leaked Notes from Korea, happening now: #Trump’s US disowns the UN #IPCC #ClimateChange science report #sr15
***(READ LEAKED NOTES. CAN’T COPY)
https://twitter.com/nit_set/status/1048466650712788993
5 Oct: Nitin Sethi, Business Standard India:
The US to distance itself away from the UN #ipcc #ClimateChange science #sr15 report once its finalised. “Acceptance is not endorsement of the report findings”
https://twitter.com/nit_set/status/1048464060562337793
5 Oct: TWEET: Mark Howden, Vice-chair WGII @IPCC_CH & Director @ANU_Climate
@IPCC_CH #SR15 just approved by the joint session of IPCC Working Groups 1, 2 and 3 in South Korea. #climatechange
reply: Nitin Sethi:
Did the US endorse the contents and findings, sir?
(no response as yet)
https://twitter.com/nit_set/status/1048463451390005248
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5 Oct: TWEET: Mark Howden, Vice-chair WGII @IPCC_CH & Director @ANU_Climate
Fabulous work by the @IPCC_CH Co-Chairs, Vice Chairs, Technical Support Units and mostly the authors, chapter scientists and reviewers of the Special Report as well as the broader science community who generate the underlying science synthesised in the #SR15 #climatechange
reply: Chandni Singh, Climate change, adaptation, vulnerability, livelihoods, migration. Researcher @iihsin. IPCC #AR6 Lead Author
Tears of joy among the author teams and fabulous @IPCC_CH technical support units as #SR15 gets approved! Honoured to work alongside @AromarRevi @HeleendeConinck @anna_pirani @ccadapt @ProfMarkHowden @connorsSL @DianaLiv
00
the rest of the comments that somehow didn’t go through!
TWEET: Mark Howden:
Nice assessment by @frankjotzo and colleagues of the transition pathways towards renewables that will help reduce emissions so as to avoid #climatechange and reduce health and environmental problems from air pollution from coal-fired power stations…
TWEET: Frank Jotzo, Policy and economics of climate change and energy. Prof at @anucrawford, Australian National University. Joint editor, Climate Policy. IPCC, CCICED.
Will AUS meet 2030 emissions target?
Not without appropriate policies economy-wide.
But the coal-to-renewables transition underway will cut emissions by A LOT, if policy doesn’t throw a spanner in the works, as we show in our @CoalTransitions report: (LINK)
Coal transitions in Australia: Preparing for the looming domestic coal phase-out and falling export demand DOWNLOAD
Under the Coal Transitions project, national experts in China, India, South Africa, Poland, Australia and Germany explored options for their countries to implement economically feasible and socially acceptable coal transition strategies that are consistent with the goals of the Paris Climate Agreement.
This report explores pathways, implications and policy options for Australia to move beyond domestic coal use during the next 2 decades, as its old coal plant fleet continues to age and renewable energy becomes more competitive. It also highlights the need to prepare for growing downside risks to its coal export sector as market fundamentals shift in the Asia-Pacific region…
https://twitter.com/ProfMarkHowden
00
from replies to Mark Howden – not sure what it means:
Kees van der Leun, 32 years for sustainable energy @Ecofys, and now @NavigantEnergy. 100% renewable energy globally by 2050 is possible!
Wasn’t the Summary for Policy Makers approved and the Report accepted ;?
But congratulations anyway!
00
5 Oct: CNBC: Reuters: UPDATE 2-RWE profits to take a hit after court delays brown coal mining
by Tom Käckenhoff
* Shares in RWE fall as much as 4.7 pct (Adds details from court ruling, RWE statement, comment from BUND, TV)
German utility RWE on Friday said a court ruling which delays its ability to mine brown coal in Hambach, Germany will result in a more than 100 million euro fall in operating profit for its Lignite & Nuclear division in 2019.
A German court told RWE that it could not start logging in an ancient forest until a separate court had reviewed environmental claims, potentially delaying the start of lignite mining in the area until after 2020…READ ALL
https://www.cnbc.com/2018/10/05/reuters-america-update-2-rwe-profits-to-take-a-hit-after-court-delays-brown-coal-mining.html
6 Oct: Deutsche Welle: Germany: Thousands hold anti-coal protest in Hambach Forest
by tj/ng (epd, dpa)
A large demonstration against woodland clearance has gone ahead in Germany’s Hambach Forest after a ban was lifted. Organizers say that more is at stake than just conserving a nature area.
The protest took place a day after a court in Aachen revoked a ban on the demonstration imposed by police over security concerns. Hundreds of officers have been on duty since the early morning hours.
Demonstrators’ spirits have also been lifted after another court ordered that the clearance of the forest be suspended while a lawsuit calling for the area to be conserved as a special bat habitat is being decided.
“There is a cheerful atmosphere because of the clearance ban by the Higher Administrative Court in Münster,” said a spokeswoman for the environmental group BUND, which is behind the lawsuit.
Some 20,000 people were expected to join the demonstration during the day…
PIC: ONE THOUSAND?
https://www.dw.com/en/germany-thousands-hold-anti-coal-protest-in-hambach-forest/a-45779366
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DW predicts 20,000; AFP says 5,000 but provides NO picture.
6 Oct: France24: AFP: Thousands join German forest demo after court reprieve
“The mood is great,” said Greenpeace spokeswoman Gesche Juergens, welcoming “the strong signal” sent by the court.
“But it’s only a first step. The battle goes on to start phasing out coal.”…
By midday, a police spokesman at the demo estimated the turnout at some ***5,000 people…
https://www.france24.com/en/20181006-thousands-join-german-forest-demo-after-court-reprieve
00
If we compare the environmental impacts of wind farms to modern oil and gas drilling the wind farm is much, much, worse. The oil and gas drilling environmental impacts are incontestably tiny in comparison. Modern drilling only requires one pad and location for scores of producing wells. That means only one road and one drilling pad, and two mud ponds. All of this can be returned to nature, and usually is, in less than one year. The EPA has found no evidence, and you can bet they tried, that fracking is harmful. Noise and harmless co2 emissions during the drilling process are only temporary.
Wind Farms on the other hand, require hundreds of miles of roads to each and every tower built by bull dozers and other heavy equipment, buried or airborne transmission lines, cubic and cubic meters of steel reinforced concrete, plus the environmental impacts of operating and maintaining them and then replacing them over a period of about three decades. I haven’t got to the impacts on wildlife yet.
This last point is carefully and hypocritically ignored by wind advocates, while environmentalists claim that drilling stops some wildlife from having sex. If you think wildlife are going abstain from procreation you need to have that birds and bees talk with your parents again.
What disaster green energy has proven to be! Stop it now!
40
Good points, the antis (enviro-nutters) continually come up with such stupid , un-physical arguments for their claims.
30
Any reader of adventures and battles at sea could have told these alleged researchers about lee shores, wind shadows or that work removed from wind leaves the wind still. Hello temperature inversions!
How does that work?
1) Will the wind, drained of energy, pick up speed by then?
2) Given that wind turbines barely last 20 years, replacing wind turbines through use of fossil fuels prevents gaining benefits over time.
3) Nor have researchers truly calculated how much land is required for either solar or wind energy generation. They’d happily destroy agronomy, wildlife, health of man and beast in furtherance of their fantasies.
20
Tell me one thing, “Green” Nuts — how many windmills will it take to power the windmill factory? Until you can come up with even a ballpark answer to that, you’re just whacking yourselves off.
00