[A] new study by a pair of Harvard researchers finds that a high amount of wind power could mean more climate warming, at least regionally and in the immediate decades ahead. The paper raises serious questions about just how much the United States or other nations should look to wind power to clean up electricity systems.

Those ugly, unreliable , heavily subsidized windmills that dot the landscape in increasing numbers not only kill millions of birds, but actually increase global warming, if you buy into the assumptions used by the warmist cult. We have this on the authority of scientists bearing the imprimatur of prestigious universities. From Technology Review , published by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology:

Maybe this study will shock the cultists into realizing the folly of their fantasy. But so many wealthy people and corporations (cough! Google ) are getting rich off their subsidies for wind farms that maybe the information will be ignored.

Of course, there are already critiques of the study, which is good – because it will require more debate and discussion, and thereby draw attention to the many drawbacks of windmill power. Windmills are one of the core fantasies of the warmist cult. So much do the warmists love the idea that they ignore the fate of migratory birds that follow the very wind flows necessary for the windmills and get chopped up in the gigantic Cuisinarts that these wind farms comprise. In other arenas of public policy, such as filling in wetlands for adequate runways at SFO Airport, for instance, migratory birds are a sacred cause. Yet when it comes to windmills, even bald eagles, otherwise protected, are allowed to be killed .

The core problem is that wind turbines generate electricity by extracting energy out of the air, slowing down wind and otherwise altering "the exchange of heat, moisture, and momentum between the surface and the atmosphere," the study explains. That can produce some level of warming.

The study, published in the journal Joule, found that if wind power supplied all US electricity demands, it would warm the surface of the continental United States by 0.24˚C. That could significantly exceed the reduction in US warming achieved by decarbonizing the nation's electricity sector this century, which would be around 0.1˚C. ...

Those ugly, unreliable, heavily subsidized windmills that dot the landscape in increasing numbers not only kill millions of birds, but actually increase global warming, if you buy into the assumptions used by the warmist cult. We have this on the authority of scientists bearing the imprimatur of prestigious universities. From Technology Review, published by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology:

[A] new study by a pair of Harvard researchers finds that a high amount of wind power could mean more climate warming, at least regionally and in the immediate decades ahead. The paper raises serious questions about just how much the United States or other nations should look to wind power to clean up electricity systems. The study, published in the journal Joule, found that if wind power supplied all US electricity demands, it would warm the surface of the continental United States by 0.24˚C. That could significantly exceed the reduction in US warming achieved by decarbonizing the nation's electricity sector this century, which would be around 0.1˚C. ... The core problem is that wind turbines generate electricity by extracting energy out of the air, slowing down wind and otherwise altering "the exchange of heat, moisture, and momentum between the surface and the atmosphere," the study explains. That can produce some level of warming.

Of course, there are already critiques of the study, which is good – because it will require more debate and discussion, and thereby draw attention to the many drawbacks of windmill power. Windmills are one of the core fantasies of the warmist cult. So much do the warmists love the idea that they ignore the fate of migratory birds that follow the very wind flows necessary for the windmills and get chopped up in the gigantic Cuisinarts that these wind farms comprise. In other arenas of public policy, such as filling in wetlands for adequate runways at SFO Airport, for instance, migratory birds are a sacred cause. Yet when it comes to windmills, even bald eagles, otherwise protected, are allowed to be killed.



Image from U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

Maybe this study will shock the cultists into realizing the folly of their fantasy. But so many wealthy people and corporations (cough! Google) are getting rich off their subsidies for wind farms that maybe the information will be ignored.

Hat tip: Bryan Demko