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kga6
offlineMember
Surely there must be an angle on this...
Radiators contributing to global warming
'The air temperature around radiators has been shown to be 50 degrees higher than the world average...'
Daily Mail reporters to blame for global warming
'The temperature of the scientific wisdom spurting from the mouth of the average Daily Mail journalist is 1000 times the national average. The reporters dismiss claims that they are full of hot air...
waylandsmithy
offlineMember
Actually, this story is sort of true! Research showed that turbines increased ground temperatures in the US.
Also, all our offshore wind turbines are backed up by onshore gas turbines, which are cheap, quick to start up but not particularly clean or efficient. The whole wind turbine adventure is s shitload less green than the industry would have us believe.
Al OPecia
offlineMember
No it isn't sort of true, just half a fact distorted and stretched to enormous lengths. There is no one answer, but every little helps. Areas around coal fired power stations get a fuck of a lot hotter than 0.72 degrees C above ambient, as does any sort of machinery, including the PC that you are typing on.
Daily Mail Headline: Climate Change Scientists PC's warm their surroundings, shock!!!
Your inbox is full, by the way, Wayland.
kga6
offlineMember
Correct Al, it isn't even half true. The cynical headline "Wind farms make climate change WORSE" is completely misleading/not even slightly correct, and is the sort of outrageous propaganda that makes getting the public to support real science a challenge.
As a scientist, and having read the actual Nature publication itself, rather than a Daily Mail headline, the facts are: Yes, a massive of fleet of wind farms means the natural turbulence (wind) is absorbed to store energy, and hence does not dissipate natural heat (ie the opposite of a fan). All this means is that the area of land with the turbines on is not cooled like land with no turbines on, and may be slightly warmed relative to the ground elsewhere. As Al points out, like all machinery.
This is not the same as global warming, which is, amongst other things, heat trapped within the atmosphere due to gases like CO2 etc... "Not taking away heat already in the atmosphere causes global warming" is as ridiculous as my saying that 'radiators cause global warming'. The heat localised at the turbine site is merely heat energy that would otherwise be dissipated across the wider area.
So whilst this extra heat and change to the natural air flow may cause minor fluxes in local temperatures/weather, the global picture is all but unchanged.
Sinnick
offlineMember
Al and kga6 are spot on. I think the root cause of this is that DM reporters are not really likely to have a clue what they're talking about. See other recent posts.
If DM readers weren't being taken in by this nonsense, then they'd be taken in by something else. Same goes for readers of several other so-called newspapers.
If you want to know about science, read a science publication such as Science, New Scientist or Nature, or one of the more detailed publications written by real scientists (yes, my real name is in there somewhere).
But please don't think that the Daily Mail has the slightest clue about what they publish.
waylandsmithy
offlineMember
Err, it is still sort of true. The turbines affect local climate, and the article doesn't link them to global warming! It's a cynical article that doesn't help much, but then no-one mentions the gas turbines running on rotor-barring 24/7, ready to provide power when it's not windy enough/too windy/the wrong type of wind.
Sinnick
offlineMember
The turbines might increase ground temp a tad - fine. So does just about any activity - motorways, buildings, farm machinery, etc. But this is not climate change.
Climate, weather and local effects are different concepts. Climate is large-scale (continental size), long-term (many years) trend. Weather is local and short- and medium term.
So, conversations such as "I don't believe in climate change because it was cold in March" are inaccurate. This is a comment on the weather - a very common misconception.
A statement like "Europe has been on average warmer for the last 10 years" is a comment on climate.
Oxbridge
offlineMember
Not so much that DM journalists don't know what they are talking about, more that they are under explicit orders to produce distorted right-wing nonsense to scare idiots.
That said, wind energy is a sideshow. The long-term solution can only ever be solar. When photovoltaics get seriously efficient, this debate will wind down very quickly.
"sort of journalism" sums up most of what appears in newspapers doesn't it? It's written by somebody who has "journalist" in their job title, so that makes it journalism.
I sometimes wonder if these "science" type of articles are a result of the journalist being too stupid to understand what a study is really saying, too lazy to understand what it is really saying, or just not interested in understanding what it is really saying, and more concerned with putting a spin on it that suits them, as Oxy says.
As a sidenote, I don't believe in climate change.
But I also don't believe in evolution, gravity, or postmen (A friend told me that it's just your parents putting stuff through the letterbox and saying it's from "the postman").
Sinnick
offlineMember
That's another debate, oxy.
I think solar is part of the way forward, but if you're considering serious production of electricity, the solar power stations need to be somewhere warmer than the UK, such as the various Arab states ...
Wind farms have their place for local small-scale energy production, only. Tidal power is just plain crazy, causing vast environmental damage.
The main pragmatic method is nuclear, using modern technology. I'm always frustrated at how the media report the safety aspects of ancient technology, when there haven't been any significant issues with modern power stations - not to be complacent, though. Thorium as a fuel for fission reactors should become widespread - it bypasses many of the concerns associated with Uranium and Plutonium as fuels. And, don't forget fusion power, which is still in its infancy - it will come of age in a couple of decades.
beau-jolly
offlineMember
Re Global Warming/climate change. As I understand it, we are not causing "global warming" but there may be some evidence that human activity is affecting the rate of natural climate change.
The fragrant Anne Widdicombe recently changed her views regarding climate change and is now an ardent "climate change denier" (A term I hate - anyone with an opposite and educated view is as bad as a holocaust denier). What ever you may think of her, Ms. Widdicombe is not a stupid woman. Her change of view came as a result of studying the scientific facts rather than reading the papers. As an ex-MP she can now have a personal view. Having said that, does any one know what she read that changed her mind and is there a quick and simple-to-read version I can look at before I give any opinion?
waylandsmithy
offlineMember
Sinnick, I'm not normally one to defend the Daily Mail (or any of our god-forsaken newspapers, for that matter).
But 'climate' doesn't have to be 'global'! I live on a hill. The climate is cooler, windier and wetter than the village at the bottom of the hill. Always has been, probably always will be.
If they built a windfarm all over the village, the research suggests that it would raise the ground temperature a smidge. And that would be a permanent affect, for as long as the windmills remain. So the climate for that area would be affected.
It's still a story that's been 'spun' to make it seem worse than it is, but that's true of all newspaper articles. It's because ALL jounalists are sexually inadequate alcoholics with poor hygiene and a fetish for disabled dwarves.
Midfield Diamond
offlineMember
All the 'conventional' power stations (coal, oil, gas, nuclear) work by generating tons of heat to boil water to produce steam to drive turbines which rotate generators to produce electricity. One of the waste products of this is warm water which is usually pumped back into the river from which it was extracted. I understand that some power stations harvest the oysters which grow bigger and faster in the warmer water of their outlets.
The 'green' power generators (solar, wind, tidal) don't produce warm water; does the green power lobby understand what a threat they are to the oyster trade?
Sinnick
offlineMember
smithy, I think we're saying more-or-less the same thing. I guess "climate" can be used on a very local scale, too. I don't think the Met Office is concerned about how much warmer the M6 is than the Cheshire plains, for example.
Temperature drops with altitude by ~1 deg C every 200 metres. Also, it's cooler up there, so there's forced cooling.
And I fully concur about DM and most journalists.
~~~~
Here's a little something I located last year, concerning why Climate Change is so hard to acknowledge:
Try the following video called "Global Warming and Psychology", by Prof Daniel Gilbert of Harvard. Hope my instructions work ...
•Within ITunes, ensure Edit, Preferences, tab General has the "iTunes U" option checked.
•If you're logged on to iTunes, click on "iTunes Store" on the left-hand-side
•Scroll to the bottom, where "iTunes U" is the very very last clickable item (you may have to click on "more", to give the "iTunes U" home page
•At the top right of this, click on "Universities & Colleges", then select "Harvard University"
•in the "Highly Rated Collections", select icon for "Harvard Thinks Big"
•Select video 15, "Global Warming and Psychology" (9:41) by Prof Daniel Gilbert
I think it explains why so many people just cannot get out of the "Denial" phase of accepting & dealing with this little problem. The same argument applies to world overpopulation
kga6
offlineMember
I agree entirely with your nuclear stance Sinnick. This is one of the science issues particularly badly spun by the Media. Will have a listen to the suggested file.
For me, irrespective of your climate change opinion, the development of new, cleaner, sustainable energy sources and reducing waste is the key issue. No one can deny smog, overfull landfill sites or the fact we are running out of fossil fuels.
By misleading the public by getting them involved with pseudoscience, (i.e. Wind farms make climate change worse) they forget that coal etc is signficantly worse.
waylandsmithy
offlineMember
Yeah, they also forget that the electricity from windmills is often coming from gas turbines, too. They're a political sop.
Al OPecia
offlineMember
When you find yourself agreeing with Rick Santorum, Sarah Palin and Michelle Bachmann about climate change, you ought to pause for a moments reflection.
And, I'm afraid that "electricity from windmills is often coming from gas turbines" makes no sense whatsoever.
waylandsmithy
offlineMember
Al, the gas turbines are onshore, constantly burning fuel on tickover, ready to step in when the windmills fail to produce electricity when the conditions are wrong. No-one ever mentions them!! Wind power is unreliabl and hard to predict so there has to be a backup. That's why you can't go beyond a certain percentage of power from wind: people still like the hospitals, street lights and basic infrastructure to work when the weather's a bit calm.
I'm in favour of nuclear, and as much solar power as is practical. Then we can use gas turbines and wind turbines as the conditions allow. But spending any more on wind power is wasteful and a smokescreen to a longterm energy crisis.
butagirl
offlineMember
Wayland, I'm not sure I get your point. Without the wind turbines, there would need to be some alternative source of power to supply energy needs. In the cases you refer, this is provided by a gas turbine. It could just as easily be a nuclear plant, a waste incinerator, or some other fossil fuel source. It still makes more sense to run the two in parallel and achieve some renewable energy than run the gas turbine to provide all the energy load, even if the turbine is running in tickover at other times.
The main issue is not wind power per se, but rather the peaks and troughs of energy generation (solar and tidal have the same issue) and how this can best be managed, given that it's impractical to "store" electricity on this scale. One way in development at the moment is to use excess energy generated to move water uphill and then release the resultant potential energy in the water to generate electricity by allowing it to flow downhill over a water mill when demand is higher.
waylandsmithy
offlineMember
The point is that gas is dirty, and windmills encourage more to be used. You can't switch nuclear in and off quickly so it can't back up wind power. It pretty much has to be gas, but the turbines run constantly: they too take hours to get up and running from scratch.
So we're all paying for windmills, which spend a lot of time not producing power. They're not a proper solution: they're an excuse to put off the political hot potato of more nuclear power plants.
Al OPecia
offlineMember
Wayland are you seriously suggesting that windfarms are the cause of gas turbine generators and not demand for electricity?
Think, please:
If wind generators were not in place then there would be MORE gas burnt, it is very simple.
And yes I agree we should build more nuclear power plants, but as PART of the solution. There is, as I have pointed out before, no single energy generation answer. And lets not forget energy saving.
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