The last time I visited family in my old home state of Iowa, we landed in Des Moines and had to drive across about a third of the state to get to the small town where two of our kids live with their families. While driving across the great flat lands north and east of Des Moines, the one thing that struck me, as it has the last few times I've covered that ground, is the expansion of big, ugly windmills. I mentioned it to our oldest daughter, who had come down to pick up her mother and me.
"I hate those things," our daughter said. "They're ugly, and you wouldn't believe all the birds they kill."
But they keep putting up more of them, mostly in the name of that great bugaboo, climate change, claiming that they will reduce mankind's CO2 output. But a recent paper put out at wiseenergy.org takes exception with that notion, and boy do they have a lot of data to back that up.
The fundamental question is: if we accept the Climate Change contention and then spend Trillions of dollars to assiduously implement their wind energy solution, will the existential threat be extinguished in the short time-table they say we have?
The answer is an unequivocal NO, for at least the following six (6) reasons:
The six reasons are all worth looking at. We'll look at a couple, but the real meat of the piece lies in the references — links to lots and lots of references.
1 - There is no scientific proof that wind energy saves any consequential CO2. Industrial wind energy has been around now for over 20 years, so there is plenty of empirical data available. However, if we ask for scientific proof that wind energy actually saves a meaningful amount of CO2, what wind proponents provide are “studies” based on computer models. There are two major problems with that non-answer:
a) Computer models are appropriate for when there is no actual data available.
b) The other reason that wind marketers love computer models, is that they can easily hide important assumptions in the code. For example, one of their favorite tricks is to compare wind energy produced CO2 to coal produced CO2.
There is, of course, a lot of data available. This isn't exactly a brand-new thingamajig we're dealing with here. But it is in points 2 through 6 that the rubber really meets the road, as there is a wealth of links pointing to actual evaluations and research. For example:
3 - There are quality studies that conclude that wind turbines add to global warming. The reasons for this unsuspected outcome are a bit complex, and range from “increased boundary layer mixing” to “altered large-scale atmospheric flow.” Some sample studies that have come to such conclusions are: PNAS study (2004), MIT study (2010), MIT study (2011), Texas study (2012), MN study (2013), SUNY study (2014), Colorado study (2015), Kansas study (2015), Harvard study (2018).
There's a more where that came from — a lot more. This, folks, is how science is done. And this is how you research issues of public policy. If you're at all interested in the facts behind the claims the Green New Deal advocates make about wind power, there are hours worth of reading in these links.
See Related: 'Green' Energy Fail: Multiple Iowa Tornadoes Wrecking Windmills
Generation of Wind Power Dropped in 2023. Why? Less Wind.
And that's part of the problem — as with so many things that involve natural processes, which are chaotic, unpredictable, and unbelievably complex. Finding and evaluating data is the work of lifetimes; something as impossibly huge and chaotic as the global climate is unfathomable to most of us, as are other climate-related things like ocean currents; there is a reason Robert Heinlein referred to the "ungrokkable vastness of ocean." Building a case based on actual data can take months or years and is difficult to explain in short bursts — such as congressional hearings. Understanding the numbers and the work that goes into drawing conclusions from the data is very nearly as hard as comprehending the complexity of the systems being discussed.
But the opposite? All the climate scolds have to do is produce some colorful charts and graphs and shout about rising sea levels and hot summer days, and too many people are willing to take them at their word.
Especially other leftists.
This compilation of information concludes:
The bottom line is that there is no scientific proof that wind energy saves any consequential amount of CO2 — and plenty of evidence that wind energy is not a good solution to a claimed catastrophic threat (that requires a large, short-term change). What does it say about the “experts” who propose an illegitimate solution? It either means that: a) they are not real experts, or b) they are pushing an undeclared agenda.
All this should be no surprise as (regarding the global warming issue) we have left the security of genuine Science, and are now sinking into the quagmire of political science.
Ay, there's the rub. The claims made by climate scolds are political, not scientific; scratch a greenie, and you'll find a socialist, at best. There isn't a green-energy agenda item that doesn't trample our liberty in one way or another, demanding the question, why? Is this a feature, or a bug? I'm inclined to believe the former.
There is good information out there if one is willing to seek it out. And it behooves us to do so; this isn't an argument that is going away any time soon.
