The global slowing of winds: the cause

A paper in Nature claims that the wind speeds dropped by 5%-15% since 1979,

Northern Hemisphere atmospheric stilling partly attributed to an increase in surface roughness (abstract).

The authors, Robert Vautard, Julien Cattiaux, Pascal Yiou, Jean-Noël Thépaut & Philippe Ciais, have investigated winds in 5 most important countries in the world - namely in the U.S., China, the Czech Republic, Australia, and the Netherlands. ;-)

And the speeds went down by 10% in 30 years, with a lot of messy disclaimers.




Nature has also published a popular summary,

Why winds are slowing.

Their most sensible possible reasons of the signals include

1. Measurement errors
2. Afforestation
3. Other types of thriving vegetation that also increase the roughness of the surface
4. Climate change

Paradoxically enough, I would choose "climate change" as the primary cause because the temperature difference between the poles and the equators has been recently shrinking and because of the decrease of the related gradient, I would expect less storminess - and probably also weaker winds.

The impact of this drop on the economy of the wind turbines is being discussed by many people. Well, I wouldn't pay too much attention to this question. How much money is being wasted for the subsidized wind turbines is primarily determined by the number of these structures that will be built. But whether a single wind turbine returns 21% or 19% of the money that is "inserted" into it is clearly secondary.

By the way, some scientists say that wind turbines should be painted purple or pink so that they would kill fewer bats. If this procedure were realized, the godless monster money wasting machines would only attract and kill homosexual bats. ;-)

However, whether the disgusting purple color would also help with the hundreds of fires of the wind turbines - click the picture at the top - and with the atrocious economy is yet to be seen. ;-)

Thanks to Willie Soon

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Consensus science: liquids occupy the same volume as gases of the same mass

Jeff Id has pointed out a new paper that may actually be relevant for the answer to the question about "slowing winds", too:

Where do winds come from? A new theory on how water vapor condensation influences atmospheric pressure and dynamics (Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics)

The authors from Russia, California, Uganda, and Brazil show that virtually all existing climate models suffer from a serious bug: they think that condensation is an explosion. What I mean is that the models fail to acknowledge that condensation actually decreases the pressure. It obviously does: just think how much more space gases (such as vapor) occupy relatively to liquids (such as water).

This has potentially far-reaching consequences for a proper description of pretty much any meteorological behavior. The changes of pressure after condensation also generally produce winds - so it's clear that the existing climate models can't say anything reliable about the winds, either. The typical climate models used today are an example of the GIGO principle - garbage in, garbage out.

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Green Spain on the edge of bankruptcy

As Bloomberg reminds us, Zapatero's green socialist Spain has thrown lots of money to subsidize solar adventures. Lots of greedy people jumped on the bandwagon, placed their solar panels anywhere (some of them were producing electricity at night), and it turned out that Spain doesn't have the money.

Of course, it would be optimal to separate the green ministries of Spain from the rest of the country, allow the green ministries to go bankrupt, and encourage all the solar adventurers to starve to death in order to avoid a similar renewable moral hazard in the future - in Spain and in the rest of the world, too. Unfortunately, we don't live in an ideal world.

German and U.K. energy prices

German consumers will have to pay an extra EUR 10 a month next year for renewable energy issues. Christopher Booker is showing that the same is expected in the U.K.

Sino-American, American, and Californian green business

China is criticizing the hypocrisy of the U.S. that is doing exactly what it criticizes China for. This is a trade war that America cannot win, China says.

Meanwhile, the Obama administration caves to Big Corn. And The Wall Street Journal discusses the cap-and-trade wars before and on the November elections when a ballot will be voted about, too.

Czech president will attack AGW delusions again

Václav Klaus is giving a GWPF talk in the U.K. tonight. Update: see Reuters and Omniclimate for reports.

Via Benny Peiser