Supreme irony: wind farms can cause atmospheric warming, finds a new study

No doubt warming is a good thing for both human and ecological systems.

Uh…..no, I just can’t say it. Too coarse to be snip-proof. Truly, nothing is sacred any more. The causation has flipped.

If you dig a lot of big holes in a small area and fill them full of concrete, won’t this cause a sort of mini-UHI effect?

OMG 1C warmer! And we all know how utterly devastating 1C is. My goodness, it is a wonder that Texas is not under water by now, what with the huge increase in temperature it is suffering from. That must be why there is no Coral Reef in Texas. It’s too hot.

From 2010.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1251721/Pictured-The-stunning-micro-climate-sea-fog-created-Britains-windfarms.html
Air mixing making fog.. oh what about the albedo? Positive or negative feedbacks?

Is this not caused by the basic thermo effect of heat being created whenever there is a conversion of one type of energy to another? Windmills convert kinetic energy to electricity. I would presume all power generation systems, e.g. coal, gas, etc. also has local heating effect?

This is both tragic & funny at the same time – Shakespeare would have a ball with this material.

This phenomenon has been known for some time but at last it’s getting traction. When we submitted against this wind farm we raised the issue of wind turbines dessicating the native forest in the area and increasing the likelihood of a catastrophic fire, we were ignored.

The paper is pay-walled so difficult to see to what extentthe observed effects impact maximum (daytime) temperature readings. But potentially very important finding since the results would seem to require that the definition of the ‘urban heat island’ (UHI) now be extended well beyond the perimeter of the surbubs and the airports…
And as the study also points-out – teh same effect is also observed in grape-growing regions which use horizontal windmills (ie. helicopters) to mix air in order to elevate ground temperatures.
Presumably maximum temperatures during short winter days will be similarly affected ie. artifically increased…?
Perhaps now time to simply accept that the land-based record has been, and increasingly is, corrupted to the point of no utility in measuring temperature change? Too many confounding/ corrupting variables in data recording, data creation (interpolation) and data analysis.
Time to assign the land-based records to the category of science fiction. The satellites are demonstrably far more dependable and far less prone to man-made sources of ‘error’.

I have ceased to be surprised, I begin to wonder is there anything that AGW devotion doesn’t make worse than the problem it was supposed to solve. Reading the comments on the Telegraph site it also seems that the true believers are becoming even more dogmatic, they allow for no argument that might upset their belief that wind technology can be anything other short of wonderful. The emperor’s clothes are now openly styled and worn by warmists.

Will we see a sudden increase in the number of weather stations being relocated into these wind-subsidy farms’ footprint & GISS doing a spot of “backdating”? 😉

It is hillarious! Try Thorium instead.

This story is being carried in some of the UK press (The Daily Mail and The Daily Telegraph).
I am sceptical about the study although it would not surprise me that at a local level, a windfarm could have some impact on its immediate environment. It is obviously altering the natural windflow. There have also been some reports suggesting that windfarms may be reducing the average wind speed.
Whether this local impact has any significant bearing on global levels is, of course, a very different matter.
We now know that windfarms do not to any significant degree reduce CO2 levels (if for no other reason that they require almost 100% back up with conventional power generation). They therefore fail at their primary aim. It would be a lovely irony if there is merit in this study and they actually add to global warming.
Hopefully, this study will add to the weight of evidence calling for a re-think on windfarms.

I’m no fan of these ugly, bird killing contraptions, but it seems that the warming is restricted to the surface. Since wind farms mix different layers of the atmosphere, as the lower ones absorb heat, the higher parts should get colder. So perhaps (I couldn’t read the paywalled paper) claiming that wind farms cause atmospheric warming is a bit misleading.

The ‘over wind farms’ has me a bit baffled. That indicates less turbulence, resulting in less air to surface heat transfer during the night. Whereas I’d expect wind turbines to increase turbulence as any obstruction would.

Tony Mach says:
April 30, 2012 at 12:18 am
I wonder with regards to the UHI effect if high-rise buildings could lead to turbulences – and therefore too to the mixing of warmer air from higher up. This could be another contribution to the UHI.

Never thought of that issue before but now that you mention it — yes most certainly. In the last few decades there has been a specialty in urban design and architecture where they analyze the effect of tall building complexes on surface winds. There a many example of buildings magnifying surface winds by redirecting airflow as the prevailiing wind impacts the up wind side of the building. Sometimes those surface winds are strong enough to blow pedestrians off their feet.
The Dept of Reclamation building on the Denver Federal Center is one of those buildings where there is a large court yard under the open lowest story of the building. During our front range wind storms they close access to that area because the winds will literally pick people up and slam dunk them to the pavement.
Larry

When even High Priestess Louise Gray says wind “power” is warm, you can be sure it has lost its coolness. And since all modern religious “science” is solely about coolness and status, an uncool “power” source will be on the way out soon.
Without wind “power”, the Gaian repertoire of Healing Sacraments gets mighty short. The Solar Sacrament doesn’t work at all in Northern Europe; they haven’t even tried to defend that one.

How about this; let those who want wind energy buy only electricity generated that way.
Then let those of us who don’t want it, buy our electricity from other, non wind-generated sources.
Then we’ll wait for the next big freeze and the entire chicken-little crowd will have changed their minds.

P. Solar says:
April 30, 2012 at 1:38 am
“Wind turbines are designed to produce renewable energy. That is their function and always has been. Anyone thinking they well reduce global CO2 is probably beyond help.”
I disagree, their main function, for the time being, is pumping money. The energy is a byproduct.
“The fact that they cause localised warming is indeed not surprising. Just about any technique producing or consuming hundreds of MW of power will produce localised warming.”
Don’t be silly. You’d need about 2,000 2.5 MW Wind turbines to replace one single 1 GW coal or nuclear plant; assuming a capacity factor of 20 %; and then you’d still need the GW plant to accomodate for when the wind doesn’t blow.
“Coal plants give of huge amounts of steam from their cooling towers: huge installations designed to dump heat into the local atmosphere. Nuclear plant does the same thing into local water ways or coastal waters.”
Again, one plant against 2,000 wind turbines.
“Both those effects are much larger than the warming caused by the turbulence of wind mills. Classical power generation is only about 35% efficient, the rest ending up as heat. For a 1GW nuclear plant that’s about 650MW of localise heating 24/7 .”
That is one cooling tower against 2,000 big wind turbine wakes. Again, you’re trying to belittle the effect of wind turbines by not mentioning the number needed. 2,000 big wind turbine wakes cover a lot of area.
“So the article is correct, it’s no surprise that large scale power generation causes local warming. Why then is it worth an article?”
You have been trying to deceive with every sentence in your comment by making it sound like that’s one wind turbine vs. one power plant.
Now, I couldn’t care less about this negligible warming, it’s probably even good for plants and wildlife at least where I live, but we can and will use this warming effect to irritate warmists and make them blather self-contradictory stuff. After all, I’d like to see the subsidies gone.

Having said that, if the IPCC were to extrapolate in line with their usual “scenarios” …..

Another thing is by slowing down the wind ever slow slightly reduces the cooling power of the wind. As a result there is increased heating down wind from the wind farm.

“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.”
T. Boone Pickens’ oily handprints are all over this one.

Any climate effect that is not related specifically to the products of burning fossil fuels can be safely ignored, rationalized or overlooked.
The flow of taxpayer funds into the pockets of the crony bureaucrats, politicians and financial interests who perpetuate these scams is especially to be overlooked and never considered when it is time to vote.

The law of unintended consequences.

WFHI Wind Farm Heat Island effect?

ROTFLMAO,
Quick have GISS place all their thermometers next to wind mill farms and really develop that hockey stick.
Don’t you just love it when a plan comes together?

Once again, dollars spent on researching “duh” because CO2 correlated warming just isn’t behaving like their darling anymore.
Just wait, the next thing will be that warmer temperatures cause sweating.

All the wind farms are warming the earth; that we know.
Electricity gained? There is not much to show.
The green power decree
Heats the earth one degree.
Its Quixotic pursuit has now reached a new low.

Black has some more useful comments; its a bit of a shame whoever wrote this post didn’t read him first, it would have avoided a lot of confusion. For example:
“Recognising that this could wrongly be interpreted as suggesting the local temperature will continue to rise, lead researcher Liming Zhou cautioned: “The estimated warming trend only applies to the study region and to the study period, and thus should not be extrapolated linearly into other regions or over longer periods.”
and
“At night, air above ground level tends to be warmer than the ground. Dr Zhou and his colleagues believe the turbine blades are simply stirring up the air, mixing warm and cold, and bringing some of the warmth down to ground level.
“The result in the paper looks pretty solid to me,” commented Prof Steven Sherwood from the Climate Change Research Centre at the University of New South Wales in Australia.
“Daytime temperatures do not appear to be affected. This makes sense, (and) this same strategy is commonly used by fruit growers who fly helicopters over their orchards to combat early morning frosts.”

Anthony, looks like you will have to add another column for your site surveyors. Check for local windfarms.

Mr. Connolly, I didn’t miss it. We have motor-driven wind turbines in orchards along Hwy 11 for the purpose of mixing warmer air with cold frost-producing air in order to keep fragile fruit from frost damage. No farmer I know would extrapolate that practice to say that “the climate is affected” because of it. They are fully aware of the local mixing affect. In these parts, that’s a “duh” piece of information.
My complaint centers on the money used to produce this already known “revelation”. I’ve a better way to spend research money. Just ask a farmer.
But then “weall ur red-nek flat erthrs ta the likes a’yu”.

@wmconnolley quoting approvingly Zhou: “The estimated warming trend only applies to the study region and to the study period, and thus should not be extrapolated linearly into other regions or over longer periods.”
This is your version of science? Then go tell all the model makers they are out of business because observations must not be extrapolated to the world at large. Every study that estimated empty grid cells from neighboring cells is fatally flawed.
If the sun rose in the east this morning and every morning in your living memory, don’t count on it happening tomorrow because you’d be committing the sin of extrapolation.

I’m waiting for a paper that shows that all the extreme weather events – all the “weather wierding” and “climate disruption” – is actually being caused by wind farms. Now that would be ironic.

“Overall, the warming effect reported in this study is local and is small compared to the strong background year-to-year land surface temperature changes. Very likely, the wind turbines do not create a net warming of the air and instead only re-distribute the air’s heat near the surface, which is fundamentally different from the large-scale warming effect caused by increasing atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases”.
taken from a Q&A with the paper’s authors. Incidentally, the Fox News coverage of this is fantastic. [/sarc]
http://nation.foxnews.com/global-warming/2012/04/30/new-research-shows-wind-farms-cause-global-warming

wmconnolley says:
April 30, 2012 at 6:03 am
Mark says:… Richard Black has (albeit with huge caveats) covered this at the BBC http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-17871300
Yes, and Balck has got it right: the key bit you’ve all missed is “The scientists believe the effect is caused by turbines bringing relatively warm air down to ground level.”
==========================================================
Nobody missed it. “Believe” suggests to me that it’s a theory developed to explain the observations which will need to be further investigated. Nice to see a theory being developed to explain the data rather than the other way round.
One question, though. The claim is that there is a temperature differential between the ground and air at night but not in the day. I was under the (obviously) mistaken impression that during the day, the ground was warmer and then radiated the extra heat back to the air at night. In that case, I’d have thought that the same mechanics would lead to turbines “bringing the relatively cool air down to ground level” during the day and commensurately reducing daytime ground temperature?
REPLY: This is just another case of the “Connolley is superior and we are all stupid” mindset he holds. Apparently he missed my introduction about frost mitigation when he lumped me and everyone into “you’ve all missed it”. What a plonker of a comment. – Anthony

Connelly is here?
William, whatever happened with you taking your toys and running home… never to return?
[Moderator’s Note: I don’t believe he ever said that. Please keep the Connolley bashing to a minimum and engage him with substance. -REP]

“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”
And why does the air closer to the ground become colder, but that it radiates to the 3 K of outer space, while air above it doesn’t lose heat energy via radiation in the wavelengths of the ‘atmospheric window’ like the ‘black body’ of the ground surface? There isn’t any overall warming, actually cooling, from more radiative heat loss from the warmer ground, just an increase in surface temps.

Reblogged this on contrary2belief and commented:
The changing climate; courtesy of those who try to stop it from changing.
The only way to fight entropy is to produce greater entropy elsewhere.

I’ll go with the farmers any day – they know the effect better than anyone here and have used this method of frost prevention to save their produce by common practice. That’s a local effect. In regard to the temperatures itself – it appears our methods of temperature record keeping merely measures where gages are at any given moment in time at what altitude. I can tell you the temperature next to my house but I have no idea what that temperature is 10 or 20 or 200 meters above my house. Exactly who does at all points over the earth? I believe if my memory serves me correctly – Anthony you did a very nice study on the local Reno ( I think that was you) area and its UHI effect for that local area awhile back that would be similar to the local area covered by windmills here. Would this effect then be somewhat similar?

I would have thought that the concrete bases and metal structure would also cause warming? As someone said above another UHI effect.

As an amusing side note, observe that warming the nighttime surface actually causes more rapid net cooling of the Earth viewed as a system. The warmer the ground temperatures are at night, the more they radiate. The more they are re-warmed by recirculated air the more net energy they radiate away over the course of the night (because recall that the air itself almost doesn’t radiate at all — nearly transparent in the broad band of BB radiation centroid to its temperature). The cooler, then, the air itself at the end of the night.
Since this doesn’t affect the rate that energy is absorbed the following day, the overall effect is net cooling.
I am a bit dubious, though. Wind turbines don’t turn unless there is enough wind to turn them. They then have to significantly increase the downstream turbulence in order to produce enough mixing to significantly warm the ground, especially when there is generally a thermal lapse rate that goes the other way, with the air overhead being cooler, not warmer, than the air on the ground (although yes, this could at some point invert over the course of an evening — but does the inversion occur that regularly?). In general it sounds like the sort of thing that can happen only when the conditions are just right — dry near-desert air so that ground-air temperatures generally do invert, a smooth, flat plain with gentle vertically structured laminar flow breezes with little ground structure to create turbulence. Too strong a breeze or just a few trees and you get mixing and turbulence anyway, too much humidity and you don’t get the inversion, and so on. Texas, perhaps, NC I very much doubt it (too humid, little inversion, lots of turbulence anyway, at least near the coast or on mountain slopes where there is likely to be a sustained wind).
Either way, though — warmer ground due to mixing equals a cooler Earth overall. In fact, one can compute the additional radiative loss associated with 1 degree K of sustained differential surface heating and see just how much cooler the Earth as a whole will be. Oh, and we get a bit more differential cooling by turning some of the energy of the wind into electricity and then turning the electricity into LOCALIZED heat — the more hot spots we have, the more efficient the cooling. Thermally homogeneous air and ground cools the slowest.
rgb

Imagine if thermometers were placed at expanding wind farms over the years. When some would have noticed there seemed to be an unusual warming trend compared to “rural” areas without them, we’d be told it was thoroughly investigated by statistical analysis or wind patterns and found to be negligible with no effect on “global” trends.

Re: Donald L. Klipstein 7:45 am and Bob Maginnis 8:24 am

So added turbulence is bringing atmospheric heat from above down to the
surface, and increasing surface temperature on clear nights. This increases
outgoing radiation, and therefore cooling of the atmosphere.

And why does the air closer to the ground become colder, but that it radiates to the 3 K of outer space, while air above it doesn’t lose heat energy via radiation in the wavelengths of the ‘atmospheric window’ like the ‘black body’ of the ground surface? There isn’t any overall warming, actually cooling, from more radiative heat loss from the warmer ground, just an increase in surface temps.

This study is actually quite instructive about the heat flow mechanic going on. The headline should be changed to: Wind Farms can cause warming of ground and ground based thermometers while silmultaneously cooling the atmosphere. The thermometers are leading us astray again. Is this a Rural Heat Island effect?

I haven’t read through all of the comments so this might have already been stated. I’m not sure that this is all so important, as the amount of heat is unchanged, i.e. calories. All that it speaks to is that the heat is moved to somewhere that it wasn’t previously at a certain point in time. But does it affect weather all that much? Personally, I doubt it as the heat and cold don’t seem to be displaced very much. Methinks a LOT more research is going to be needed. It should be interesting to await such research though.

William, as you read the above, please change “pushed down by convection” to conduction. Caught that on my first glance after hitting “Post Comment”. Sometimes my fingers are typing in front of my thoughts! 😉

Got me thinking about forests(tall trees causing wind turbulence),rocky outcropings,cliffs,large boulders(heat islands ?).Does all that remove heat from the atmosphere?to the surface?WUWT?
Thanks for all the interesting articles and comments

” scale of nighttime warming, large enough to be visible on MODIS satellite imagery thanks to large scale wind farms.”
Dr. No would be proud of them!
Gore, Hansen, Mann, (et al) knowing man-made CO2 was not going to result in Global Warming as scammed; those fiends came up with an alternative, pro Gaia looking, scheme to raise earth’s temperatures.

wayne says: > William, I don’t think I am wrong, it is you instead. There is no warmer upper air on the average, there is such a thing called a lapse rate that guarantees, averaged, that the higher you go the colder it gets, day or night, averaged.
Sigh. Yes, I know that. What you’ve failed to realise (perhaps excusably, if all you’re relying on is this post) is that the effect isn’t constant. It only occurs under particular conditions. You could do worse than read Black of the Beeb who says “At night, air above ground level tends to be warmer than the ground. Dr Zhou and his colleagues believe the turbine blades are simply stirring up the air, mixing warm and cold, and bringing some of the warmth down to ground level.”. Or, indeed, you could actually read what I’ve already said higher up, cos I’ve said this already.
So yes: on average, temperature decreases with height (well, nearly everywhere: it isn’t true over Antarctica in winter, or indeed on annual average). But it doesn’t always, which is why, errm, there is this thing called an inversion. But you’re wrong about the guarantee, as Antarctica proves.
> You need to spend some time studying what is called radiosondes…
Don’t try to teach your grandmother to suck eggs, you wet behind the ears puppy.

> Ric Werme says: … http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urban_heat_island#Causes … e.g. the first sentence: “There are several causes of an urban heat island (UHI). The principal reason for the nighttime warming is that buildings block surface heat from radiating into the relatively cold night sky.” While that might be “principal” in an urban canyon, several reports at WUWT have documented UHI effects in surprisingly small towns.
Well, the wiki page comes with references, so potentially you can read those and verify its correct. If you want to discuss it, the obvious place to do so is on the wiki talk page (don’t worry, contrary to what some here might think, the place is not infested with demons and it is safe to visit; you can always leave). If you’ve got evidence to back up your “UHI effects are generally blamed on heat storage in bricks, concrete, and pavement being released at night” you could present it.

Reblogged this on TaJnB | TheAverageJoeNewsBlogg.

> Ric Werme says:… http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urban_heat_island#Causes …I forgot to ask about one of your recent edit there…
Indeed, you didn’t formally ask a question at all. But I think the question you meant to ask was: “WMC, so you made the article better, unlike RW who has never helped at all; but why didn’t you make it perfect?” Which is self-answering really.
REPLY: And the answer is… after the black marks you’ve given Wikipedia for your arrogant behavior there, many people don’t want to participate any more due to the bullying that you and a few others display there on the climate issue. The fact is that with many (but not all) climate articles, there aren’t stable references from one day to the next because there is so much tinkering going on. I think I speak for many in saying that we’d feel the climate articles would be more trustworthy if you weren’t involved. -Anthony

Anthony> many people don’t want to participate any more
What do you mean, “any more”? You never have; and I doubt any of the folks here have. You’d rather sit on the sidelines carping, and inventing excuses for not making things better.
> due to the bullying that you and a few others display there on the climate issue.
Excuses, excuses.
> The fact is that with many (but not all) climate articles, there aren’t stable references from one day to the next because there is so much tinkering going on.
You’re making that up. Care to prove me wrong? Then find some examples. vague generalities don’t cut it.
REPLY: I’ve never contributed? Really, you should learn to research before making such challenges. I submitted the original page on the Climate Reference Network to Wikipedia in April 2008 after my invited visit to NCDC. I actually did it from my hotel room in Asheville because no page existed on it and I thought there should be one after meeting with NCDC staff (who I was impressed with BTW for that project division). So I took the description from NCDC and posted it along with the appropriate title and cites. It was then promptly deleted by one of the pseudonym named climate bullies you cavort with. My crime was using my own name….because well, we just can’t have that awful Watts person submitting to Wikipedia. Only the anointed get to touch the holy Wiki climate reference book it seems, mere unclean mortals like myself get their contributions deleted wholesale. So I don’t bother anymore. I know others that have been turned off by the bullying as well.
Ah, the famous WMC signature line “You’re making that up.”, now used on almost any blog entry where you are challenged. Just look at any talk page and note the change history for articles on climate for Wikipedia and it is easy to see how much change goes on from day to day. There’s a lot of tinkering. Though from your world view it seems you don’t believe so. A few examples of what the climate bullies of Wikipedia have had happen to them:
Another prominent Wikipedia editor has been climate topic banned – Kim Dabelstein
William Connolley, now “climate topic banned” at Wikipedia

Wikipedia climate revisionism by William Connolley continues
More on Wikipedia and Connolley – he’s been canned as a Wiki administrator
And of course there’s this one which laid it all bare:
Wikibullies at work. The National Post exposes broad trust issues over Wikipedia climate information
Of course since you’ve never taken any responsibility for your behavior, I doubt you’ll do so now. You’ll just act like Mike Mann does and say its everyone else’s problem but yours.
Look, we don’t like each other, and I doubt we ever will. You think I’m stupid (along with everyone else here) and have said so publicly, I think you are a condescending bully. By that premise, why would we bother to even try anymore at Wikipedia (to make it better – your words) when you claim we are too stupid to contribute anything? So let’s make it simple, let’s not waste each other’s time here anymore. You have Stoat, I have WUWT. Your comments really aren’t welcome here because you’ve been so disruptive that the threads become mostly about you, rather than the topic. So, I suggest you stick to Stoat, because you aren’t winning any converts here with your style. – Anthony

I think there is way more going on here than simple mixing from above. Think about a surface model….
It’s a boundary layer connected to a (virtually, for a daily cycle) constant energy supply, a few meters below it, by soil with a highly variable, moisture dependent conductivity. Above, it is connected to the atmosphere by an insulator that has an R value highly dependent on turbulent flow at the surface.
During the day it is bombarded by short wave that it can either shed by conduction down (highly variable), conduction up (highly variable), or radiation ( temperature dependent).
The amount of turbulence in the boundary layer determines just how much incoming energy is available to radiate up or conduct down during the day. At night the turbulence determines how much stored soil energy can be extracted to replenish what is being lost by radiation.

> So I took the description from NCDC and posted it. It was then promptly deleted
If you copied text from elsewhere into wiki, I’m not surprised it was deleted. Nor am I terribly surprised by you not understanding the rules. The article itself shows no trace of what you say, though (http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Climate_Reference_Network&action=history). But then again, I probably can’t see deleted entries. I’ll ask an admin.
> A few examples…
No; those are just other examples of you making stuff up. Your claim was “The fact is that with many (but not all) climate articles, there aren’t stable references from one day to the next because there is so much tinkering going on”. You’ve provided no evidence for that (the CRN page obviously isn’t an example, its been stable for years, and you’ve provided no others). So, how about you find me a single wiki climate article that is, currently, badly unstable; or has been massively tinkered with “one day to the next” recently.
> Look, we don’t like each other, and I doubt we ever will. You think I’m stupid (along with everyone else here)
No, not really. “Unthinking” would be closer.
> So let’s make it simple, let’s not waste each other’s time here anymore. You have Stoat, I have WUWT. Your comments really aren’t welcome here…
I’m not here to be liked. I’m here to help educate your people who (from the comments in this thread, I think you cannot but agree) are in need of help. so if you’re formally banning me, you need to actually say so (but then you can forget all about the “no censorship” claims).
REPLY: And there you go, making stuff up. Do you see “formally banning” (your words) anywhere? How about a citation? I suggest that your presence here is a huge waste of everyone’s time, because due to your baggage, and your particular style of condescension, you are not well received. Further, you can’t even fess up to your own posts on Stoat, much less your failings on Wikipedia where you were in fact demoted.. You write a Stoat post about how stupid we are, citing Policy Lass and now to save face it’s “unthinking”. Mr. Connolley, your actions here (and elsewhere) personify the main reason climate science is failing in its message, and therefore I suggest your time is wasted. Though if you want to continue to waste time, be my guest. However, as before, you’ll get an extra level of moderation.
Here’s the Wiki history page for “global warming” http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Global_warming&action=history
Seems pretty “day to day” revised to me:
(cur | prev) 14:52, 28 April 2012‎ Nigelj (talk | contribs)‎ . . (146,643 bytes) (-8)‎ . . (rm unnecessary quotes from ‘dangerous’ x 2, ‘La Niña year’, and ‘Keeling Curve’, the first per talk page)
(cur | prev) 05:55, 28 April 2012‎ William M. Connolley (talk | contribs)‎ . . (146,651 bytes) (-959)‎ . . (not sure this can’t-survive-35-oc matters)
(cur | prev) 01:34, 28 April 2012‎ Saedon (talk | contribs)‎ . . (147,610 bytes) (+210)‎ . . (Reverted 1 edit by NewsAndEventsGuy (talk): La Page is a published expert with a master’s in atmospheric science and as such meets blog exception criteria per WP:SPS ([[…)
(cur | prev) 00:59, 28 April 2012‎ NewsAndEventsGuy (talk | contribs)‎ . . (147,400 bytes) (-210)‎ . . (→‎Expected social system effects: WP:BLOG)
(cur | prev) 20:53, 26 April 2012‎ TheThomas (talk | contribs)‎ . . (147,610 bytes) (-17)‎ . . (→‎See also: There were two coppies of the link to Terraforming, both were spelled incorrectly.)
(cur | prev) 20:49, 26 April 2012‎ CaribDigita (talk | contribs)‎ . . (147,627 bytes) (+18)‎ . . (→‎See also: +Teraforming which is diliberate warming of a planet. (or altering the atmosphere in some way.))
(cur | prev) 20:49, 26 April 2012‎ CaribDigita (talk | contribs)‎ . . (147,609 bytes) (+18)‎ . . (→‎See also: +Teraforming which is diliberate warming of a planet. (or altering the atmosphere in some way.))
(cur | prev) 18:22, 26 April 2012‎ Nigelj (talk | contribs)‎ . . (147,591 bytes) (-4)‎ . . (remove unnecessary quotes from the word ‘dangerous’ both times. These are not used in the source, and both times the phrase is attributed to the source. http://unfccc.int/essential_background/convention/background/items/1353.php)
(cur | prev) 03:23, 26 April 2012‎ Narssarssuaq (talk | contribs)‎ . . (147,595 bytes) (+265)‎ . . (→‎Adaptation)
(cur | prev) 03:18, 26 April 2012‎ Narssarssuaq (talk | contribs)‎ . . (147,330 bytes) (+25)‎ . . (→‎Expected social system effects)
(cur | prev) 03:15, 26 April 2012‎ Narssarssuaq (talk | contribs)‎ . . (147,305 bytes) (+654)‎ . . (→‎Expected social system effects)
(cur | prev) 02:45, 26 April 2012‎ KimDabelsteinPetersen (talk | contribs)‎ . . (146,651 bytes) (-157)‎ . . (Reverted to revision 489118328 by Mikenorton: rv per WP:SUMMARY and WP:Manual of Style/Lead Section. using TW)
(cur | prev) 02:42, 26 April 2012‎ Narssarssuaq (talk | contribs)‎ . . (146,808 bytes) (+8)‎ . . (→‎Introduction)
(cur | prev) 02:34, 26 April 2012‎ Narssarssuaq (talk | contribs)‎ . . (146,800 bytes) (+2)‎ . . (→‎Introduction: “this works better”?)
(cur | prev) 02:13, 26 April 2012‎ Narssarssuaq (talk | contribs)‎ . . (146,798 bytes) (+147)‎
(cur | prev) 07:06, 25 April 2012‎ Mikenorton (talk | contribs)‎ . . (146,651 bytes) (-99)‎ . . (rv – please discuss on the talk page)
(cur | prev) 03:19, 25 April 2012‎ Narssarssuaq (talk | contribs)‎ . . (146,750 bytes) (+19)‎
(cur | prev) 03:17, 25 April 2012‎ Narssarssuaq (talk | contribs)‎ . . (146,731 bytes) (+61)‎
(cur | prev) 03:11, 25 April 2012‎ Narssarssuaq (talk | contribs)‎ . . (146,670 bytes) (+19)‎
(cur | prev) 05:38, 19 April 2012‎ Nicehumor (talk | contribs)‎ . . (146,651 bytes) (-1,975)‎ . . (See talk page. No reason geoengineering should get a separate section.)
(cur | prev) 19:17, 18 April 2012‎ Martarius (talk | contribs)‎ . . (148,626 bytes) (0)‎ . . (-us)
(cur | prev) 13:54, 17 April 2012‎ NewsAndEventsGuy (talk | contribs)‎ . . (148,626 bytes) (+6)‎ . . (Undid revision 487834044 by Joeytanc (talk) rv vandalism)
(cur | prev) 13:53, 17 April 2012‎ Joeytanc (talk | contribs)‎ . . (148,620 bytes) (-6)‎ . . (→‎Observed temperature changes)
(cur | prev) 00:59, 17 April 2012‎ TjBot (talk | contribs)‎ m . . (148,626 bytes) (+30)‎ . . (r2.7.2) (Robot: Adding ilo:Panagpúdot ti lubong)
(cur | prev) 04:23, 16 April 2012‎ Beyond My Ken (talk | contribs)‎ . . (148,596 bytes) (+37)‎
(cur | prev) 12:08, 13 April 2012‎ Nicehumor (talk | contribs)‎ . . (148,559 bytes) (+2,457)‎ . . (A major social system effect may not be a significant natural system effect and vice versa. Since they are a little different it may be better to have separate sections.)
(cur | prev) 12:37, 11 April 2012‎ Rjwilmsi (talk | contribs)‎ m . . (146,102 bytes) (-8)‎ . . (→‎Observed temperature changes: Sraight quotes per MOS:PUNCT, replaced: “ → ” (4) using AWB (8060))
(cur | prev) 14:37, 9 April 2012‎ Rjwilmsi (talk | contribs)‎ m . . (146,110 bytes) (+42)‎ . . (→‎Particulates and soot: Journal cites:, added 2 PMIDs, added 1 PMC, using AWB (8051))
(cur | prev) 00:47, 8 April 2012‎ Wavelength (talk | contribs)‎ . . (146,068 bytes) (+3)‎ . . (→‎Etymology: [¶1 of 2] “it” —> “which”)
(cur | prev) 22:35, 4 April 2012‎ Teapeat (talk | contribs)‎ m . . (146,065 bytes) (-7)‎ . . (per WP:MOS, articles are about the topic, not the term for the topic)
(cur | prev) 06:05, 4 April 2012‎ Stephan Schulz (talk | contribs)‎ . . (146,072 bytes) (-2,157)‎ . . (Undid revision 485461502 by Nw68868 (talk) Sorry, but no. Original research, no reliable sources, and plain wrong. See talk if you need to discuss this.)
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(cur | prev) 19:33, 3 April 2012‎ Nathan Johnson (talk | contribs)‎ . . (146,072 bytes) (-10)‎ . . (→‎Initial causes of temperature changes (external forcings): 1958-2009 is not in any way “long-term”. besides, it’s quantified a few words later.)
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P.S.Linking to other web pages in your name – deleted. Choose Stoat for your name link, or leave it blank, you are not Grumbine.
P.P.S. For a real eye opener, see this Wikipedia page about Connolley and what they think about him and what actions have been taken
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Climate_change#Climate_change:_discretionary_sanctions
But I’m sure he’ll insist that I’ve “made it up”. – Anthony

Anthony, let Connolley keep posting. He does himself more harm than good with each post, whether he knows it or not. Likely not ( the signature of the narcissistic sociopath). Snip as you like.

Uh oh.
So I ran Louise Gray’s article through the Churnalism engine now that I finally have the press release to compare it with (I spent a fair bit of time trying to find it as soon as I saw Gray’s article to no avail. Was she emailed a copy of it before the embargo time and decided to report on it regardless beforehand?).
Her article pops up straight away. However the churnalism engine detects less churn than there actually appears to be when one eyeballs the article. I found one reason why – it compares the two in 15-character chunks. There are places where she has done something even worse than a straight cut and paste – if you compare the two you can see where she has falsely attributed quotes to people, simply using text from the press release and slapping quotes around it. It’s utterly appalling journalism:
http://churnalism.com/j8cvy/
Gray is also consistently one of the worst offenders in my previous research on environmental churnalism:
http://i-squared.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/churnalism

> Darren Potter says:
No, you’ve completely misunderstood Potter. At least, you’ve misunderstood what I meant by it. UHI isn’t (wasn’t) my speciality. The point is that in the open, the ground can “see” the sky, and IR from the ground gets a clear path to leave (ignoring atmospheric path lengths for the moment, because that will only confuse). In an urban canyon, the ground can only “see” a thin strip of sky; most of the rest is building. So the IR is absorbed by the building, and then the arguement applies again. Not completely, and eventually the heat can make its way out. But it has very little to do with the heat stored in the building.
You might try asking that nice RP Sr; he knows more about this than I do. Except he doesn’t allow comments on his blog, so you can’t.

Reblogged this on Climate Ponderings and commented:
wmconnolley says – “I’m here to help educate your people who (from the comments in this thread, I think you cannot but agree) are in need of help.”
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Sorry, Mr Connolley….I’m not yours to educate. I choose my mentors very carefully. You need not apply.

So let’s see what I learned so far… the problem is that the IWTs create mixing where it wasn’t happening before and thus the temperatures at the ground will go up due to upper warmer air being brought closer to ground level. And this will cause a loss of soil moisture. Hmmm… so how about the electricity generated by the IWTs being used to run some pumps to irrigate the land. What.. you say that it will take all the electricity from the IWTs just to run the pumps? Ohhhhh…..

rgbatduke says:
April 30, 2012 at 9:54 am
As an amusing side note, observe that warming the nighttime surface actually causes more rapid net cooling of the Earth viewed as a system. The warmer the ground temperatures are at night, the more they radiate. The more they are re-warmed by recirculated air the more net energy they radiate away over the course of the night
A rarely remarked on related phenomena is that across England and I believe much of western Europe, from the 1950s many of the hedgerows and small copses of trees were removed to create larger fields more suited to mechanised agriculture.
This would have reduced near ground turbulence, surface warming and loss of heat through radiation. Thus warming the near ground atmosphere. And as this happened progressively over several decades, it would have introduce a warming trend. Hedgerow removal had largely stopped by the 1990s.

wmconnolley says – “I’m here to help educate your people who (from the comments in this thread, I think you cannot but agree) are in need of help.”
Thanks…I always wanted a BIG BROTHER to help edjumicate me.

An idea:
Wind make changes in climate, this article shows it.
There is a weekly change in climate in some places, weekends are different.
This is blamed on aerosols, which is convenient for the warmists, since in gets them off the kook for the lack of warming.
That way, if they can’t get you for CO2, they can get you for creating aerosols, they have you coming and going.
On weekdays, cars rush around to and from work etc, this creates some wind.
This wind may change the climate just like wind farms, or at least somewhat.
Therefore, this article shows that aerosols may be off the hook, completly or partially.
And this is not even counting the other things that could cause this weekly change, such as the heat from all that combustion going on in those cars.

wayne says:
April 30, 2012 at 6:26 pm
wmc: “Don’t try to teach your grandmother to suck eggs, you wet-behind-the-ears puppy.”
Anthony, Wikipedia, as loose some of it’s information is, will not even have William M. Connolley spewing his bad science information laced with insults…. so why is he here? For enlightenment to see how bad AGW badness can get?
>>>>>>>>
Yes! Everytime I see wmc drawn into discussion of the actual science, he makes a fool of himself, like his comment upthread where he seems to think that putting buildings on land reduces the surface area that can “see” the sky by the area of the building. Highly instructive for those new to the discussion.

Let Connolly post. I need a good belly laugh before going off to bed. Plus it gives me added faith in the educated people who post here from all viewpoints. I am getting a great education in my retirement … Thank you for this open site.

Darren Potter says> No doubt, Global Warming experts all have our best interests at heart
Not at all. I’m here to talk about the science, not the economics or the politics.
Smokey says:> …Connolley’s … “17)‎ . . (→‎See also: There were two coppies [sic] of the link to Terraforming, both were spelled incorrectly.)”
Well, I knew I was important – that’s obvious. But I hadn’t realised I was so important that a trivial typo in a checkin comment raises to the level of notability.
Anthony> For a real eye opener, see this Wikipedia page about Connolley and what they think about him and what actions have been taken http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Climate_change#Climate_change:_discretionary_sanctions But I’m sure he’ll insist that I’ve “made it up”.
Sorry, missed that one earlier. No, that page is real, of course. But so is this.

So where is the warming? Is it ‘over’ the wind farms? Is it ‘around’ the wind farms? Or is it the land surface? Effectively below the wind farms.
As the discussion above shows, which of these it is indicates completely different mechanisms at work.
Climate science has a general problem with vague or poorly phrased claims, but this is worse than usual.
The study itself, which might be more enlightening, is paywalled.

Hmm, this is trash. I would delete it. 0.7Celsius per decade makes no sense. It isn’t going to get warmer and warmer forever. It will just get warmer after the windfarm is put into operation.
Naturally there will be slight warming because the wind is giving up its energy. Somewhere else must be getting slighlty cooler. It’s all entropy. Big deal.

Charlie says:
April 30, 2012 at 7:33 am
“Overall, the warming effect reported in this study is local and is small compared to the strong background year-to-year land surface temperature changes. -> Very likely, the wind turbines do not create a net warming of the air and instead only re-distribute the air’s heat near the surface <-, which is fundamentally different from the large-scale warming effect caused by increasing atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases”.

I think these scientists are correct that wind farms increase temperatures. But I think they have confused the reason.
Stand in front of a fan at any time to understand the truth of this. Get out of a shower, feel how warm you are. Now, stand in front of a fan. You will notice your temperature dropping a great deal!
So there you have it. These wind farms will slow down the wind, which is an important factor in cooling the earth. Slowing down the wind even a tiny amount will increase global temperatures. These wind farms must be stopped!
I’m certain in five years from now, Al Gore’s son will tell us the consequences of relying on Wind power, that Solar has destroyed our deserts, and the only way to get good power is hamsters on a hamster wheel. But only one hamster per household, because the excess C02 output might cause another unacceptable increase in global temperatures.

Mr. Connelley: In a manner quite similar to the Laws of Thermodymanics, the net flow of insults always flows AWAY from the loser. Take heed!

davidmhoffer said:
“Suppose you have a lot that is 1000 square meters. You build a building upon it that covers exactly half the lot. What is the surface area that can “see” the sky?”
WMC’s argument is not hard to understand; just because you don’t like him doesn’t mean you should act dense when responding to him. If I have a rectangular lot and I build a building on half of it, half of the lot becomes roof and can see the whole sky; the other half of the lot only sees about half the sky that it did before. If instead I build my building around the edges of the lot with a courtyard in the middle, the courtyard loses almost its entire view of the sky. I don’t have any idea what the magnitude of the resulting effect is, but you shouldn’t act superior to someone if you don’t even understand the point he’s making.

Smokey, looks like you don’t have a clue, either, unfortunately. A photon emitted from the ground heads up at some angle. If it heads straight up, it maybe escapes the atmosphere relatively quickly. If it heads off at an angle and there are no tall things around, ditto. Now put a tall building next to it; if it heads off in the direction of the building, it necessarily doesn’t escape the atmosphere before running in to something (namely, the building). Thus, the building increases the average amount of time a photon takes to escape. This is a very simple idea. I have no idea if it actually explains UHI (which is WMC’s claim), but evidently neither you nor davidmhoffer can be troubled to understand what the claim is before deciding it must be wrong.

(Note also that this doesn’t involve an appeal to anyone’s authority, it involves an appeal to spending 5 minutes actually thinking about the claims you’re making instead of instinctively lashing out.)

First of all, how hard is it to get my tag right? Second of all, it’s emphatically not about looking straight up. The ground emits heat in all directions, including angled (i.e., not directly) upwards. It’s this “angled” heat that’s being blocked by buildings. The cutting off of the horizon is what’s under discussion here. Building large buildings cuts off the average amount of sky visible from the ground; this increases the length of the average radiative path from the ground to the top of the atmosphere.

Everybody seem to missing the elephant in the room, wind farms do cause global warming but not buy the mixing method.
Essentially wind farms work by taking power from the air flows which cool the earth, these are the air flows which allow warm air to rise and cool and cooler air to fall to the ground.
When you slow that process you get warming.
We humans actually use a similar process to stay warm, but we raise hairs on our body to trap air not wind mills. It’s pretty basic stuff but has been over looked.
I argue the case against strong opposition here and I think I win!!
http://www.scienceforums.net/topic/66151-do-wind-turbines-slow-down-the-wind/

http://www.scienceforums.net/topic/66114-wind-farms-cause-global-warming/
actually i gave the slightly wrong link above

Smokey – Do not play poker – it is not a game for the honest! (I suck at it, but do enjoy playing). 😉
Lookupitseasy- your use is correct. That is pretty much how poker players use the term. My tell is bad so I only play penny poker. No one is going to study you intently over a dollar pot.