A Place to Stand

An article in Naturenews

Afforestation and climate change are blamed for stilling surface winds in the Northern Hemisphere.

Increasing amounts of vegetation could be causing up to 60% of a slowing in wind speed across the Northern Hemisphere, according to researchers analysing three decades of wind-speed data in Nature Geoscience1 today.

The decline is a potential concern for wind-turbine efficiency. But researchers cannot tell whether the effect, an average 10% slowdown, will make much difference to wind turbines — the slowing winds measured are at 10 metres above the ground, whereas turbines operate at 50–100 metres up, where there is little global data.

Normally the "environmental movement tells us that deforestation is happening (& they must be given more money to fight it. It is interesting to see this reversed (at least the first half). Reading the whole article it is clear there is no actual mechanism proposed for how "climate change" might be causing it it is simply that the term must be spread over any discussion of climate like margarine. Nonetheless it is a useful addition to John Brignell's list of things allegedly caused by global warming, which have a strong tendency to include more wind, storm & hurricanes, volcanoes, drowning tigers etc.

The article does then go on to admit it is nonsense, or at least the dubious flying of a metaphorical kite.

"There was no quality-controlled global archive of data." ...

UK Met Office in Exeter, Devon, says that the observation is interesting. "However," he adds, "the timescales are very short for a meteorological trend — it's entirely possible that the previous 30 years would show a different trend."...

He suspects that changes in general atmospheric circulation may be more important in these parts of the world than in others.

All of which are equally strong arguments against the alleged data for the alleged global warming, up to 1998.

I find it amusing that the only catastrophic effect of this is the possible but improbable effect on windmills.

Hat tip to Ed Buckley for the link.

Labels: eco-fascism, global warming, Media