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Yes, wind and wave power are renewable; New Scientist pulls a Charlie Sheen

On April 4, 2011 · Leave a Comment · In carbon, Climate Change, electricity, energy, Environment, Global Warming, Renewable Resources, sustainable, wind power

In the annals of absurdly sexed up science stories crying for attention like, oh, some addled TV star, we have a new contender.  The once-excellent New Scientist , which has started running seriously flawed climate stories, as we’ve seen , now runs this stunner: Wind and wave energies are not renewable after all Build enough wind farms to replace fossil fuels and we could do as much damage to the climate as greenhouse global warming Rubbish.  Indeed, what is surprising about this entire piece is just how much misinformation it contains.  You can read the original, unsexy, somewhat opaque (and probably wrong) paper submitted to Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society here . Even if it were true that increasing global wind power capacity 300-fold (!) would do as much damage to the climate as greenhouse warming — and there’s no evidence in this study that it would — wind and wave power would still be renewable.  As NASA’s Gavin Schmidt wrote me (see below), “The NS headline is wrong.” I’ve been bombarded with people asking me to respond to this in detail, so here goes. New Scientist explains the work of Axel Kleidon of the Max Planck Institute for Biogeochemistry this way: He concludes that it is a mistake to assume that energy sources like wind and waves are truly renewable. Build enough wind farms to replace fossil fuels, he says, and we could seriously deplete the energy available in the atmosphere, with consequences as dire as severe climate change. In fact, New Scientist has misrepresented Kleidon’s research.  He coauthored a new open access paper in Earth System Dynamics , “ Estimating maximum global land surface wind power extractability and associated climatic consequences ,” which has been severely critiqued by multiple sources, including folks like Stanford’s Mark Jacobson ( here and below), whom I trust a great deal. That study finds a maximum extractable amount of wind in the range of 18–68 TW and states “we show with the general circulation model simulations that some climatic effects at maximum wind power extraction are similar in magnitude to those associated with a doubling of atmospheric CO2 .” So Kleidon wrote “some” effects at 68TW might be “similar in magnitude” to 550 ppm — whereas NS says it would have “consequences as dire as severe climate change.”  No, I don’t think wind turbines will cause a mass marine extinction or endless sea level rise. As an aside, I just wish people who write this kind of stuff based on one paper which may or may not be true (that in any case they don’t understand) would actually read the dozens of scientific papers that explain how dire severe climate change is.  Heck, they could even read multiple papers in the journal they are citing:  Royal Society special issue details ‘hellish vision’ of 7°F (4°C) world — which we may face in the 2060s! Back to the story: Axel Kleidon of the Max Planck Institute for Biogeochemistry in Jena, Germany, says that efforts to satisfy a large proportion of our energy needs from the wind and waves will sap a significant proportion of the usable energy available from the sun

In the annals of absurdly sexed up science stories crying for attention like, oh, some addled TV star, we have a new contender.  The once-excellent New Scientist , which has started running seriously flawed climate stories, as we’ve seen , now runs this stunner: Wind and wave energies are not renewable after all Build enough wind farms to replace fossil fuels and we could do as much damage to the climate as greenhouse global warming Rubbish.  Indeed, what is surprising about this entire piece is just how much misinformation it contains.  You can read the original, unsexy, somewhat opaque (and probably wrong) paper submitted to Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society here . Even if it were true that increasing global wind power capacity 300-fold (!) would do as much damage to the climate as greenhouse warming — and there’s no evidence in this study that it would — wind and wave power would still be renewable.  As NASA’s Gavin Schmidt wrote me (see below), “The NS headline is wrong.” I’ve been bombarded with people asking me to respond to this in detail, so here goes. New Scientist explains the work of Axel Kleidon of the Max Planck Institute for Biogeochemistry this way: He concludes that it is a mistake to assume that energy sources like wind and waves are truly renewable. Build enough wind farms to replace fossil fuels, he says, and we could seriously deplete the energy available in the atmosphere, with consequences as dire as severe climate change. In fact, New Scientist has misrepresented Kleidon’s research.  He coauthored a new open access paper in Earth System Dynamics , “ Estimating maximum global land surface wind power extractability and associated climatic consequences ,” which has been severely critiqued by multiple sources, including folks like Stanford’s Mark Jacobson ( here and below), whom I trust a great deal. That study finds a maximum extractable amount of wind in the range of 18–68 TW and states “we show with the general circulation model simulations that some climatic effects at maximum wind power extraction are similar in magnitude to those associated with a doubling of atmospheric CO2 .” So Kleidon wrote “some” effects at 68TW might be “similar in magnitude” to 550 ppm — whereas NS says it would have “consequences as dire as severe climate change.”  No, I don’t think wind turbines will cause a mass marine extinction or endless sea level rise. As an aside, I just wish people who write this kind of stuff based on one paper which may or may not be true (that in any case they don’t understand) would actually read the dozens of scientific papers that explain how dire severe climate change is.  Heck, they could even read multiple papers in the journal they are citing:  Royal Society special issue details ‘hellish vision’ of 7°F (4°C) world — which we may face in the 2060s! Back to the story: Axel Kleidon of the Max Planck Institute for Biogeochemistry in Jena, Germany, says that efforts to satisfy a large proportion of our energy needs from the wind and waves will sap a significant proportion of the usable energy available from the sun

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Yes, wind and wave power are renewable; New Scientist pulls a Charlie Sheen

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Science Sunday: Stabilizing CO2 levels is tough for humanity, not stabilizing them is tougher on humanity – Also, increases in per capita energy and…

On March 27, 2011 · Leave a Comment · In carbon, Climate Change, electricity, energy, Environment, Global Warming, Green Living, hybrid, sustainable, wind power

Climate science is the foundation of this blog, the sine qua non for all the other analyses. The reasons we must be far more ambitious in politics and policy and clean technology deployment are the increasing evidence of accelerated carbon-cycle feedbacks and the dire warnings from the scientific community about the dangers of unrestricted greenhouse gas emissions (see Lonnie Thompson on why climatologists are speaking out: “Virtually all of us are now convinced that global warming poses a clear and present danger to civilization” ). Yet, most new climate science remains either under-reported or mis-reported by most of the traditional media and blogosphere.  And, like CO2 concentrations, the rate of growth (of important science articles) is growing faster as the reality of human-caused climate changes grows — and it’s growing faster than ClimateProgress can cover thoroughly.  At the same time, climate politics and the disinformers and media miscoverage and clean energy solutions and nuclear power and natural gas and peak oil and on and on … also demand attention. What to do?  Well, I hope to be hiring someone soon to help cover some of these issues.  Also, I have a plan to expand coverage of climate science. First, I will still do detailed analysis of the really important studies, like these: JPL bombshell: Polar ice sheet mass loss is speeding up, on pace for 1 foot sea level rise by 2050 NSIDC bombshell: Thawing permafrost feedback will turn Arctic from carbon sink to source in the 2020s, releasing 100 billion tons of carbon by 2100 Two seminal Nature papers join growing body of evidence that human emissions fuel extreme weather, flooding that harm humans and the environment Science : Second ‘100-year’ Amazon drought in 5 years caused huge CO2 emissions. If this pattern continues, the forest would become a warming source. Must-read Hansen and Sato paper: We are at a climate tipping point that, once crossed, enables multi-meter sea level rise this century Second, I will keep covering the important ‘second-tier’ studies that deserve attention: Temperatures of North Atlantic “are unprecedented over the past 2000 years and are presumably linked to the Arctic amplification of global warming” — Science Third, I’ll keep setting the record on the studies that the media doesn’t get quite right: NOAA: Monster crop-destroying Russian heat wave to be once-in-a-decade event by 2060s (or sooner) Polar bear, Arctic sea ice all-but doomed: Misleading Nature cover story misleads the media, public Fourth, I’ll repost pieces from Skeptical Science and Dr. Jeff Masters and others from time to time: The Physical Chemistry of Carbon Dioxide Absorption Was the 2010 Haiti Earthquake triggered by deforestation and the 2008 hurricanes

Climate science is the foundation of this blog, the sine qua non for all the other analyses. The reasons we must be far more ambitious in politics and policy and clean technology deployment are the increasing evidence of accelerated carbon-cycle feedbacks and the dire warnings from the scientific community about the dangers of unrestricted greenhouse gas emissions (see Lonnie Thompson on why climatologists are speaking out: “Virtually all of us are now convinced that global warming poses a clear and present danger to civilization” ). Yet, most new climate science remains either under-reported or mis-reported by most of the traditional media and blogosphere.  And, like CO2 concentrations, the rate of growth (of important science articles) is growing faster as the reality of human-caused climate changes grows — and it’s growing faster than ClimateProgress can cover thoroughly.  At the same time, climate politics and the disinformers and media miscoverage and clean energy solutions and nuclear power and natural gas and peak oil and on and on … also demand attention. What to do?  Well, I hope to be hiring someone soon to help cover some of these issues.  Also, I have a plan to expand coverage of climate science. First, I will still do detailed analysis of the really important studies, like these: JPL bombshell: Polar ice sheet mass loss is speeding up, on pace for 1 foot sea level rise by 2050 NSIDC bombshell: Thawing permafrost feedback will turn Arctic from carbon sink to source in the 2020s, releasing 100 billion tons of carbon by 2100 Two seminal Nature papers join growing body of evidence that human emissions fuel extreme weather, flooding that harm humans and the environment Science : Second ‘100-year’ Amazon drought in 5 years caused huge CO2 emissions. If this pattern continues, the forest would become a warming source. Must-read Hansen and Sato paper: We are at a climate tipping point that, once crossed, enables multi-meter sea level rise this century Second, I will keep covering the important ‘second-tier’ studies that deserve attention: Temperatures of North Atlantic “are unprecedented over the past 2000 years and are presumably linked to the Arctic amplification of global warming” — Science Third, I’ll keep setting the record on the studies that the media doesn’t get quite right: NOAA: Monster crop-destroying Russian heat wave to be once-in-a-decade event by 2060s (or sooner) Polar bear, Arctic sea ice all-but doomed: Misleading Nature cover story misleads the media, public Fourth, I’ll repost pieces from Skeptical Science and Dr. Jeff Masters and others from time to time: The Physical Chemistry of Carbon Dioxide Absorption Was the 2010 Haiti Earthquake triggered by deforestation and the 2008 hurricanes

deb3373fc8et al.gif 100x43 Science Sunday: Stabilizing CO2 levels is tough for humanity, not stabilizing them is tougher on humanity Also, increases in per capita energy and...

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Science Sunday: Stabilizing CO2 levels is tough for humanity, not stabilizing them is tougher on humanity – Also, increases in per capita energy and…

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Water: the Unsung Upside to Wind Power

On March 25, 2011 · Leave a Comment · In energy, Environment, Green Living, wind power

Amongst the many oft-repeated arguments against wind power — that it is intermittent, unreliable, expensive, noisy, dangerous to wildlife, or aesthetically unappealing — one argument you will not hear from wind power detractors is that wind uses too much water.

Amongst the many oft-repeated arguments against wind power — that it is intermittent, unreliable, expensive, noisy, dangerous to wildlife, or aesthetically unappealing — one argument you will not hear from wind power detractors is that wind uses too much water.

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Clean Tech Bursts Ahead, Exceeding Growth Expectations

On March 17, 2011 · Leave a Comment · In energy, Environment, Green Living, solar power, sustainable, wind power

In a report issued by Clean Edge, Inc. on March 14 th , combined revenue for solar, and wind power, along with biofuels, increased 35.2 percent over the last year, leaping from $139.1 billion to 188.1 billion.

In a report issued by Clean Edge, Inc. on March 14 th , combined revenue for solar, and wind power, along with biofuels, increased 35.2 percent over the last year, leaping from $139.1 billion to 188.1 billion.

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Wind Power with No Where to go in China

On March 17, 2011 · Leave a Comment · In bp, energy, Global Warming, Green Living, sustainable, wind power

Yesterday, we examined the actual wind power being produced versus the wind power installed in China. With only 2/3rds of installed wind power connected to the grid, the Chinese wind companies are losing money and opportunities to further diversify their energy mix. One of the major barriers to getting all of the installed turbines on

Yesterday, we examined the actual wind power being produced versus the wind power installed in China. With only 2/3rds of installed wind power connected to the grid, the Chinese wind companies are losing money and opportunities to further diversify their energy mix. One of the major barriers to getting all of the installed turbines on

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Wind Power with No Where to go in China

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