For those of you who don’t know yet, Kenji is our family dog. Kenji is also a official dues paying member of the Union of Concerned scientists. see: Friday Funny – The newest member of the Union of Concerned Scientists because as Kenji’s membership proved, you don’t need to be a scientist to join, all you need is a valid credit card.
Like any UCS member he gets propaganda informational mailings from them, for example, this one today:
This was followed by another embedded email, because, they haven’t heard from Kenji and they are trying to get him to re-up his membership. Only one problem though; their lead claim is completely false, not once but twice. I’ve underlined the lead claim in red:
Citation #1 (at the bottom) refers to this article in Fox Nation on April 30th 2012:
1. Note the source date and source wire service: April 29 (Reuters) the original Reuters story is here: http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/04/29/us-wind-farms-climate-idUSBRE83S0BG20120429
Fox news didn’t make the claim of warming, Reuters did by reporting the story on the science from a press release. Fox News simply carried the Reuters story verbatim as many other news outlets did.
And, they were not the only major news outlet to run with a headline like that. Environmental reporter Louise Gray at the Telegraph had a nearly identical headline:
But of course, the paid political activists at UCS aren’t upset about that headline, because even though she reported the story accurately, Louise is part of the team on the UCS side of the argument. The National Science Foundation was the source of the story in their press release here. UCS wouldn’t dare be upset about that one.
2. Note also that the study results are peer reviewed in Nature Climate Change authored by SUNY in Albany by examining satellite data comparing wind farms and other areas.
Here is the paper:
Zhou, Liming, Yuhong Tian, Somnath Baidya Roy, Chris Thorncroft, Lance F. Bosart and Yuanlong Hu 2012: Impacts of wind farms on land surface temperature. Nature Climate Change. doi:10.1038/nclimate1505
And the abstract (bold mine):
The wind industry in the United States has experienced a remarkably rapid expansion of capacity in recent years and this fast growth is expected to continue in the future. While converting wind’s kinetic energy into electricity, wind turbines modify surface–atmosphere exchanges and the transfer of energy, momentum, mass and moisture within the atmosphere. These changes, if spatially large enough, may have noticeable impacts on local to regional weather and climate.
Here we present observational evidence for such impacts based on analyses of satellite data for the period of 2003–2011 over a region in west-central Texas, where four of the world’s largest wind farms are located. Our results show a significant warming trend of up to 0.72 °C per decade, particularly at night-time, over wind farms relative to nearby non-wind-farm regions. We attribute this warming primarily to wind farms as its spatial pattern and magnitude couples very well with the geographic distribution of wind turbines.
The study methodology isn’t controversial, and the results make sense given that wind farms create turbulence, which mixes the atmosphere more effectively, especially at night. The raises the overnight observed Tmin, which in turn raises the Tavg temperature, creating a local warming trend.
Temperature Differences near Wind Farms
This graph shows the night-time land surface temperature differences near wind farms between 2010 and 2013. Credit: Liming Zhou et al., Nature Climate Change
Orchardists and viticulturists have known of this mixing effect by wind turbines for years, which is why all over California we have powered wind turbines placed in orchards and in vineyards like this one to ward off frost by increasing the vertical mixing of the atmosphere, bringing warming air downward to mix it with cold air near the ground:
Of course, if it was the other way around, and something that produced energy caused some local warming that wasn’t part of the anointed “clean energy” solution set held dear by UCS, they’d be all over it saying it contributed to global warming.
We see examples of this sort of bias almost daily in MSM stories about “climate change” and global warming.
When UCS says this about Fox News: But their twisting of facts is anything but a joke.
It is clear that UCS is the ones twisting the facts, and the joke is on them.
Even my dog can see through the charlatans at UCS; they aren’t in it for the science, they are in it for the money when they use slimeball tactics like this for fundraising drives.
And finally, maybe UCS will find a way to get upset about this story carried on WUWT recently:
- Rethinking wind power – Harvard study shows it to be overestimated (wattsupwiththat.com)
Or maybe this one:
- Wind farms will create more carbon dioxide, say scientists (telegraph.co.uk)
And ask for even more money to counter these “twisted facts”.
Let the bloviating for dollars commence!
A little humor at UCS expense thanks to Josh:
- Sunday Silliness – Kenji takes on the UCS Chicken Little (wattsupwiththat.com)
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Fox news is slanted.. republican religious, (notice I didn’t call them conservative) but if you think there is a news channel out there that isnt maybe you are missing the fact that all of them are owned by giant parent corps (including newspapers, and mags) that most likely have their own agenda’s. Furthermore I have yet to see Fox news play a story that the AP didn’t release first.. check any channel, any day and you will find the same 4 or 5 stories on all of them… given the station slant of course. The interesting thing about that is, the AP shortens local stories from news orgs and gives them their own slant, often by leaving out specific facts. The news is propaganda, just pick your flavor. .. but good news, it takes very little effort to go look up the original story.
on the union… 3500 suckers born every minute?? heheh.
Max Hugoson says:
February 27, 2013 at 7:47 pm
I assume their monthly magazine (at least they had a monthly magazine when I was a member in the 1970s) is mailed at periodical rates (used to be 2nd class until some PC weenie fixed that).
At the end of every October, periodical permit holders have to report their Ownership and Circulation data to the USPS and print it in the next issue. The report form doesn’t have to be used, I created a very compact layout we print in the newsletter I mail.
Anyone with time and access to back issues can go searching for it and tally up the results.
One caveat – the form has people report the average for all issues and the actual data for the most recent issue. There are several reasons, but comparing the two looking for a trend does not work well.
This is very clever pretending to be a dog to get information from the Union of Concerned science. What else did you find out? Do they send out instructions to members of how they fake global warming or have you not got high enough in their organisation yet? You could try for the committee except I guess they might figure out who you really are and kick you out.
Good on you for showing iniative.
1. The UCS clearly states that it is an organization of “citizens and scientists.” No need for feigned shock that it accepts non-scientists. No need for Kenji to “prove” that it accepts non-scientists. It says that it does on its About page.
2. There’s nothing “completely false” about the UCS claim. UCS says that Fox reported that wind farms cause global warming. Fox did that.
3. UCS didn’t “twist” any facts. It correctly reported what Fox said.
4. “Reuters got it wrong” is a pretty lame excuse, whether for Fox or anyone else. They’re supposed to be news organizations. They’re not supposed to report false information, regardless of the source. The first sentence of the Reuters piece was sufficient to know that the headline was wrong. Fox apparently didn’t even read it.
To forestall the inevitable incorrect inferences, no, I don’t have any connection to the UCS. I’m not even a member.
Gareth Phillips said:
“Conversely, it could be said that anyone who genuinely believes Fox news to have balanced and un-biased reporting must have pretty hard right wing views.”
I always get a laugh when I hear people say things like that. It’s been my observation, not yet falsified, that people who say things like that never watch Fox News. The first person I remember saying it was a former co-worker who was proud of the fact that he didn’t have a television. Many of them, when pressed, will admit that they “know” it’s true because they heard it from the lips of Bill Maher, Jon Stewart, Stephen Colbert or Joel McHale (The Soup). Fox News personalities like John Stossel and Jesse Watters, who does regular man-on-the-street interviews that are featured on Bill O’Reilly’s show, challenge every person who repeats the “Fox Lies!” mantra. When asked to give an example to back up their assertion, they slink away. Always.
@lynn Clark – I have an open challenge for anyone to demonstrate right wing NEWS reporting bias (or even lies as is often the accusation) by Fox. So far, the challenge is unmet. Most of the time, it readily becomes apparent the accuser does not know the difference between a news show and a commentary show.