Wind Speeds Drop As They Speed Up!
October 9, 2021
By Paul Homewood
Settled Science!
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Wind speeds are getting faster worldwide, and that’s good news for renewable energy production — at least for now.
A study published yesterday in the journal Nature Climate Change finds that winds across much of North America, Europe and Asia have been growing faster since about 2010.
In less than a decade, the global average wind speed has increased from about 7 mph to about 7.4 mph. For the average wind turbine, that translates to a 17% increase in potential wind energy. That might explain about half the increase in U.S. wind power capacity since 2010, researchers say.
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-worlds-winds-are-speeding-up/
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NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT 
I! is called having your cake and eating it!
Climatology must be the only ‘science’ where an identical set of events can have two diametrically opposing results!
Where even more bizarrely two sets of completely conflicting sets of data can exist simultaneously!
Is wind increasing or decreasing? Or as I strongly suspect, varying as normal thus allowing anybody to pick their starting point and claim whatever they like.
The winds of no change, basically, as in the planet’s climate, despite what will be discussed at COP26.
I’ve seen it reported that, in the 1970s, there was at least one occasion where a publication had a ‘We’re heading for an Ice Age’ and a ‘We’re all going to Fry’ in the same edition.
I am sure there are many more examples, with flooding and drought, etc.
RC: “I’ve seen it reported that, in the 1970s, there was at least one occasion where a publication had a ‘We’re heading for an Ice Age’ and a ‘We’re all going to Fry’ in the same edition.”
Probably the Daily Express newspaper – they specialise in that sort of thing.
I remember The Sun in (the long hot summer) of 1976 publishing articles about “the coming ice age” always with photos of scantily clad models in pool and typicaly headlined “What a scorcher”.
Dual diagnosis ?
I guess you can’t be wrong that way …
If it’s drier here it must be wetter somewhere else. If it’s cold here it is warmer elsewhere. If wind is faster here it’ll be slower somewhere else. The alarmists will always have correctly predicted whichever issue supports the hypothesis (note, not theory)
File in the cabinet marked “Make it up as you go along”
O/T
I have received a “free” copy of the magazine Prospect today – The Climate Countdown. Most who congregate here at Mr. Homewood’s place will find this issue taxes their bloody pressure.
From the editorial to Fiona Harvey (yes Guardian I know) to a piece by Lawrence M Krauss (a theoretical physicist) which is full of hyperbole and propaganda, the settled position is anti-sceptic. We are all deniers.
I love that Fiona Harvey calls Piers Corbyn a “crank climatologist”. Whatever one thinks of Corbyn, I am not sure that her degree in English Lit. trumps Corbyn’s 1st in Physics and Msc in Astrophysics.
It appears that I have been the lucky recipient of this free copy of Prospect because I subscribe to the online “Spectator”. May be not much longer.
All the content of this Prospect magazine expresses a very liberal view that I do not subscribe to on a number of topics. The Spectator is moving the same way and we have noted before the same tendency at The Express. Even the Telegraph is giving cause for concern. Is it part of the long march through the institutions?
“Even the Telegraph is giving cause for concern.”
A couple of months ago I would have agreed. I’m quite enjoying their recent ‘pull your finger out Boris and frack for gas /build more nukes’ attitude!
You have a point there Stuart. Credit where credit is due.
I was in the same physics class at Imperial. He was in the top two or three physicists in the year (but he was a bit eccentric – it runs in the family). Knowing Piers, when I saw him in ‘The Great Global warming Swindle’, I knew I had to look at the science – and yes, he was 100% right. The physicists who call themselves ‘climate scientists’ are all second or third rate.
Its very clear, obvious really. Winds are picking up speed over the US , blowing themselves out by the time they reach the east coast leaving precious little for Europe after they cross the Atlantic. Its called ‘TBE’ , the Biden effect. Well known green effect. ‘Damn those pesky French/Germans, they are not having our wind, America First. Or have I got the wrong president? Tricky this new science business.
When they need to prove climate change is happening, winds speeds are decreasing. When they need to prove wind power can be great, wind speeds are increasing.
No doubt if winds not changing suits their argument at some point we will be told winds are not changing.
Wind speeds down = energy scare. Wind speeds up = hurricane scare. Scared yet?
I have lost it now, but I once had a bookmark for a website that just listed items as Paul has done here, where CONsistency is lacking in the Climate Change world.
Can anyone help? – getting too old to retain all the URLs is my head. – and I need a search engine for my bookmarks!!
Becalmed Britain!
And we are today down here in the South East, and have largely been so for the last few weeks.
I suspect it’s no better anywhere else in the UK. And I mean, literally not a leaf on a tree moving.
The last time this happened was the winter of 2020/2021, only 9 months or so ago but we got away with it.
I’m not sure we’ll be as lucky this year, hopefully we are, but the coming five years or so will be challenging and I can’t see us getting through them without periods of rolling black outs.
And when every households ovens go on at the same time across the UK on Christmas Day, we had better hope there’s a really strong breeze.
I have got fed up with challenging the idiots in charge. they have chosen to jump into the Abyss and have dragged the rest of us with them, it is too late to stop them.
Having a world wide competition to see who was fastest at blowing up power stations looked like fun, after all what could possibly go wrong.
I am too old to be bothered. I will look after my grandchildren by giving them loads of money, before Boris and his chums get hold of it.
Lindzen has pointed out many times that in a warming world we expect the polar to equatorial temperature gradient to decline because the poles warm but the tropics do not – they are thermally limited by other mechanisms such as convection.
So simple physics (remember that?) suggests that wind speeds should decline and storms reduce in intensity in a warming world.
And there is evidence of stronger storms during the LIA that supports that view.
Isn’t it strange how all predictions are that a warming world will be worse? And yet geological and paleo evidence suggest natural abundance in a warmer world.
Of course when scientists were predicting a colder world, things were going to be worse then too.
Historic storms of the north sea, British Isles and Northwest Europe, H. H. Lamb in collaboration with Knud Frydendahl, Cambridge University Press, 1991
Many disasters in the 1300-1800 period. Tens of thousands dead, displaced etc.
Much misery. Doesn’t mention the witchcraft craze, but modern hysterics want us to go back to those conditions.
The 1987 ‘hurricane’ might have been an outlier.
Of course it’s simple physics that the more energy you have in the world weather system the higher the wind speeds, however if you actually run the equations… Well a 0.5°C increase in global temperatures translates to a 0.2% increase in average wind velocity. Let’s say an absolute increase of 0.02mph. Find me an anemometer that’ll pick up that difference!
Winds and weather are driven by tropic to polar temperature gradient, not total average temperature. So because the temp at the tropics is constrained due to convection, its the poles that warm most when the planet warms. Ergo, in a warming world the tropic to polar temperature gradient decreases, therefore we should expect less severe weather and winds, not more.
Simple physics.
I could have this wrong but…..doesn’t “the physics” use absolute temps for the formulae etc?
The world’s average temp is something like 288 deg K so an increase to, say, 290 is probably lost in the variability of the weather.
This is the argument I always use “where is the evidence from the last 550 million years that a warmer world is a worse one?” – answer is there none – people are so completely ignorant of the Earth’s history!
Gamecock’s weather forecast for CoP26: Cloudy, wet, wind still. For days.
The Telegraph has been a left wing rag for years.
i cancelled it at least ten years ago when they started running “Articles” carrying attributions to the Carbon Trust and I realised that they were adverts which had been bought by the govt.
Scum.
Hoxton Boy, Roger,
Juliet Samuel’s piece in Saturday’s Telegraph was a lot of sense with regard to government policy on energy, what amess they have made and what they should do.
However with BEIS and the CCC advising the government it seems unlikely that they will pay any heed?
I bet the Lebanese are not arguing the toss on CC tonight….
UK was reliant on wind 25% and gas 32% (2020)
(whereas Europe was more like 30%)
Now getting 7% from wind (down by 72%) and a worldwide shortage of natural gas (with higher prices). Demand in Asia has shot up.
Meanwhile Russian gas supplies have dropped from 81M cubic metres in 2020 to 49M cubic metres in July 2021 (39.5% drop) followed by a further 59% drop in August 2021 to 20M cubic metres (an overall reduction of 75.3% in a year). Supposedly caused by mechanical problems but some suspicion that Russia is building their reserves going into an expected cold winter.
Norway has also reduced its gas output by 7.6%.
With the huge surge in price neither country has lost money.
UK coal capacity
In 2011 the UK had 23GW coal-fired capacity
In 2021 5GW (but 2 Drax units running system support as well)
whereas Europe was more like 30% and unlike the UK, Germany didn’t destroy its coal fired plants and could restart them, and Poland added some new ones.
It is not Go Woke, Go Broke…now it is Go Woke, Go Dark.
I reckon the UK has about 20m cubic meters of tables and chairs. I present our primary source of heating this winter!
Energy transitions:
Coal to oil
Oil to gas
Gas to furniture
Technically if wind speeds have increased then the temperature will have decreased. In layman’s terms it is called ‘WindChill’.
My understanding is that standard turbines produce no power at 7.4 mph. They need a whopping 33 mph for full power. So those stats say wind cannot work.