Minnesotans are a little colder in this cold snap because a dozen wind
turbines the state bought to produce electric power aren't working.
The problem in Minnesota seems to be that the hydraulic fluid in the
turbines congeals in very cold weather, turning them into "no spin
zones," even when the wind is blowing, said a reporter for the
television station KSTP.
The problem in Britain, which is experiencing perhaps its coldest winter
in 100 years, is more fundamental. When it is really, really cold, the
wind doesn't blow as much. In theory, Britain should be getting 5
percent of its energy from its vast array of wind farms. But in the
days before her story was published Jan. 11, London Telegraph reporter
Rowena Mason said wind turbines were supplying only two tenths of one
percent of the country's energy needs.
Tragedy was averted because Britain still has coal-fired plants it uses
for backup. But these are slated to be shut down over the next decade.
Wind turbines are supposed to provide 25 percent of Britain's electric
power by 2020.
"If we had this 30 gigawatts of wind power, it wouldn't have
contributed anything of any significance this winter," Jeremy Nicholson,
director of the Energy Intensive Users Group, told Ms. Mason.
But if the wind turbines aren't spinning, the politicians still are.
Citing "the overwhelming scientific evidence on climate change,"
President Obama urged in his State of the Union address passage of
legislation which would force greater reliance on alternative sources
such as wind and solar power.
That "evidence" comes mostly from the United Nation's Intergovernmental
Panel on Climate Change. The Indian magazine Open described that
"evidence" Sunday as "a pack of lies."
The IPCC claims its global warming alarmism is based on "peer reviewed"
research. That claim took a big hit last month when it was revealed
that its preposterous 2007 claim that the Siachen Glacier in the
Himalayas would melt by 2035 was based on a 1999 magazine interview with
an Indian scientist, Dr. Syed Iqbal Hasnain, who said the glacier might
melt by 2350, but told the New Scientist magazine his speculation was
not based on research.
The IPCC's credibility took another big hit Saturday when the London
Telegraph revealed that its claim that global warming is causing ice to
recede in the Alps and Andes were based on anecdotes in a mountain
climbing magazine, and in the dissertation of a Swiss graduate student
in geography.
Trouble comes in threes, at least for the IPCC. On Sunday, the Times of
London reported that the IPCC's claim that decreased rainfall resulting
from global warming might wipe out 40 percent of the Amazon rainforest
came from two activists for the World Wildlife Fund, who grossly
misrepresented the results of a study published in the journal Nature.
"The Nature paper is about the interactions of logging damage, fire and
periodic droughts...but is not related to the vulnerability of these
forests to reductions in rainfall," Royal Society research fellow Simon
Lewis told the Times.
The British government reported Jan. 27 that scientists at the
University of East Anglia, on whom the IPCC principally relied for data
on warming, violated the law by refusing to permit other scientists to
examine their raw data. The scientists are suspected of manipulating
data to show more warming than actually occured.
Data from NASA's Goddard Institute of Space Studies show essentially no
warming at all in rural America — that portion of America not subject
to the "heat island" effect — since 1900.
The IPCC is headed by Dr. Rajenda Pachauri, but perhaps not for much
longer. A railroad engineer with no experience in climatology, Dr.
Pachauri has profited much from global warming alarmism, and — like Al
Gore — has a large personal "carbon footprint."
Canadian scientist Andrew Weaver, the lead author on two IPCC reports,
told the CanWest news service Jan. 26 that the IPCC has "crossed the
line" from scientific research into advocacy.
"If Andrew Weaver is heading for the exits, it's a pretty sure sign the
United Nations agency is under monumental stress," wrote Terence
Corcoran in Canada's National Post.
The credibility of global warming alarmists is melting a lot faster than
the glaciers and the polar ice caps.
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