Ops-Normal.org

All over the world, the wind is slowing. Bit by bit, low-level land wind speeds have been decreasing since reliable records began in the 1970s. It is called "the stilling".

The decline was silently sneaking through under the radar until Australian National University professor Michael Roderick and his colleagues made a mistake.

They noticed that the pan evaporation rates in the Northern Hemisphere were going down — not what you would intuitively expect in a warming world.

The pan evaporation rate is a measure of how quickly water evaporates from a pan, which is useful to know in relation to water storage and soil dryness.

They concluded it must have been because of increased pollution or potentially increased cloud cover blocking the sun.

But they were missing something.

"Shortly after doing that work I was asked what was happening in Australia and I didn't know, to my embarrassment," Professor Roderick said.

When he did look at pan evaporation rates in Australia, they turned out to be decreasing like the rest of the world.

This threw a major spanner in the works, because if increased pollution alone was to blame, the evaporation rates in relatively clean Australia would not have been affected.

This sent Professor Roderick back to the drawing board.

Key points:

Researchers eventually realised a decrease in pan evaporation rates was due to a decrease in wind speeds
Theories abound as to why wind speeds have steadily decreased, but nobody yet knows for sure
An ongoing program, funded by the European Union, is investigating the potential effects of the phenomenon

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-10-27/ ... g/10392980

I suspect that the cause of this is the reduction in the volume of hot air spoken since the fall of communism. Fidel Castro must have contributed volumes to it.

You may suspect whatever, Caco, but absolutely everybody knows it's because the wind generators use up the wind and slow down the Earth (which makes even more less wind, of course, as anybody can notice when sticking their head out of a car doing 70 or 30, kmph or mph, either or both).



P.S but it IS interesting, Alison.

Here are 2 'wild' suggestions:
1) We are extracting more energy now from wind using wind farms
2) We are extracting more solar energy now using panels. Solar heating of the earth's surface has a significant effect on surface winds.

It would be interesting to see what, if any, changes there are in the 'free' wind, traditionally taken as the 2000' wind over normal terrain. The suggestion that climatic warming is decreasing the polar/tropical temperature gradient and thus the winds also have, IMO, great merit.

Energy is neither created nor destroyed

You cannot get something, for nothing.

Boac wrote: ↑

Sat Oct 27, 2018 7:16 am

Here are 2 'wild' suggestions:
1) We are extracting more energy now from wind using wind farms
2) We are extracting more solar energy now using panels. Solar heating of the earth's surface has a significant effect on surface winds.

Not that simple unfortunately. The article makes the point that the decline in wind speed has also been experienced in areas of Australia that have no solar panels or wind farms. Nor have there been significant increases in forestation. I wonder if extra energy is being dissipated in increased hurricane activity.

Alison

The loss of wind speed will not necessarily be caused purely by local factors.

Anything to do with the falling sales of Heinz baked beans?

Caco

In 50 years eco warriors will be railing against the solar and wind blotches on the landscape and their deleterious effects on our ecological equilibrium.

I won't live that long, but till the day I die I'll point out how the eco-war against DDT condemned millions of third world human beings vulnerable to malaria to death from the disease so that do-gooders' consciences could be given some feel-good moral superiority. Solar and wind power, which do hold promise, are not yet economically viable, and their political advocates have cost real people astronomically.

On the Black Mountain above the town of Roses were a row of wind turbines, erected over 30 years ago. Now we get a ferocious north wind called the Tramontana, up to 200 kph, and very frequent. I always used to jokingly tell visitors that the wind turbines created the winds. Last year they dismantled the turbines. Would you believe it, since they have gone we have hardly had any Tramontanas. So there !

BenThere wrote: ↑

Sat Oct 27, 2018 12:56 pm

I won't live that long, but till the day I die I'll point out how the eco-war against DDT condemned millions of third world human beings vulnerable to malaria to death from the disease so that do-gooders' consciences could be given some feel-good moral superiority.

The instigator of the DDT ban was Socialist International Ben as a flexing muscle exercise. I know because I remember the ruckus in Oz and why the rabid lunatic left wing unions were all for it.

Bob Santamaria, head of the National Civic Council in Oz on his Sunday arvo program Point of View, stated that SI had the false notion its global power was waning in 1980. I tried digging it up on the 'net but no success.

The argument went something like this:

Free World: you guys are a spent force.

SI: no we're not. We can change anything we want when we want.

FW: oh yeh? How?

SI: we can implement a worldwide ban on something essential.

FW: like what then?

SI: hmm. We'll go with...DDT.

FW: DDT? Are you f**king crazy? Never gonna happen! Too many people will die without it.

SI: Is that so? Well you just watch us!

It was banned in England 1986 and Oz followed in 1987. As you say the banning killed millions - but socialists don't give a sh!t about human life as their silly backward ideology takes precedence.

[Global warming is the same thing - but done with a very savage vengeance for something close to their hearts - the redistribution of global wealth.]

BenThere wrote: ↑

Sat Oct 27, 2018 12:56 pm

In 50 years eco warriors will be railing against the solar and wind blotches on the landscape and their deleterious effects on our ecological equilibrium.

Solar and wind power, which do hold promise, are not yet economically viable, and their political advocates have cost real people astronomically.

I must admit that I am apt to take the studies and research of creditable and credible organisations like the NOAA more seriously than I do the hot air blown by some people here.

Caco

DDT isn't banned for use against malaria. Starting in the late 60s countries started banning its use in agriculture, so apparently Socialists International have a time machine.

When I last moved house I threw out a 5lb tin of DDT that I had inherited from my father-in-law (it was in his shed - I have no idea why he had wanted it).

I did dispose of it legally through the local authority 'poisons' scheme (along with my childhood collection of mercury).

I must admit that I am apt to take the studies and research of creditable and credible organisations like the NOAA more seriously than I do the hot air blown by some people here.

There's your problem, Caco. Many of the organizations considered credible by the undiscerning are really not; they're generally shills for the leftist juggernaut trying to figure out new ways to redistribute wealth and/or destroy capitalism. They don't work on farms or in industry, they just read what comes from academic Meccas, regurgitate it, and think they're smart and bright, but they don't know much beyond their marching orders.

If you want a gage to determine the most credible, focus on those the left criticizes at its highest octave. There you will likely find truth, which is opposite to what is being attacked, but always assess with a skeptical eye is my advice. Everyone has an angle.

G-CPTN, I would have kept the DDT as it was really good stuff - effective and not nearly the poison it was purported to be, except for mosquitos.

I had a problem with black widow spiders when I lived on a fairly large property in Northern California. The land had old oak and almond trees, very dry in summer - the perfect habitat for black widows, who build their strong webs under every eave outside my house. The only effective control for them was Chlordane, which was banned around 1980. When the banning was announced, I went out and bought several gallons, which when diluted according to the instructions, amounted to a hundred or so shoulder sprayer fulls, assuring a long term, maybe 10 year, supply. An application of Chlordane eliminates black widows for a year and it proved to be much less toxic than a black widow spider bite.

Dragging ourselves away from a long banned insecticide and back to the topic, here’s a look at how the wind farm craze is affecting the UK energy costing and pricing protocols;

https://www.gbnews.uk/news/wind-farms-e ... act/285252

Reader caution, this article features a colour photo of one Boris Johnson flaunting his obligatory outdoors sartorial elegance in the form of hi-vis jacket and hard hat, which some may find offensive!

Some more tech info on the wind turbine question which hopefully cools the ardour for reforesting the Earth with steel, aluminium and fibreglass structures which only work in the right wind conditions;

https://capx.co/is-wind-power-really-th ... rgy-needs/

I believe I may have posted a reference to the huge problem of disposal of the blades, once they were time expired due fatigue and/or erosion of the fibreglass assemblies.

Apparently the only safe and environmentally acceptable method is to dig gigantic trenches and to bury them as no other way of possibly recycling their material has been found, so good luck with that solution.

Can't the blades be 'chipped' into tiny pieces and then encapsulated into some sort of sarcophagus and buried (taking up less space than an otherwise intact blade) or reused as 'filler' for some reconstruction just as tyres are recycled?

It's probably carcinogenic when it breaks down into small enough particles.

Don't they also generate huge vortices downwind which can flip a small aircraft?