Wind Turbines at Sea Suffer Catastrophic Design Failure

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Investors in wind farms around British and Danish coasts are facing financial ruin as a new study from the University of Olso affirms a catastrophic design oversight. Newly identifed flaws mean that all windmills currently in operation are in real danger of snapping like matchwood during severe storms. 

Science Daily runs the story, ‘Windmills at Sea Can Break Like Matches’ (Feb. 26, 2013) highlighting the findings of a team led by Professor John Grue of the Department of Mathematics at the University of Oslo, Norway. Professor Grue warns that even medium-sized waves can break wind turbines at sea like matches. “These waves occur even in small storms, which are quite common in the Norwegian Sea,” says the report.
windfarm in sea

“The problem is, we still do not know exactly when the wind turbines may break,” says Grue, one of the world’s foremost experts on wave research. In 1989 he discovered an inexplicable wave phenomenon called ringing, which is a special type of vibration that occurs when choppy waves hit marine installations. The discovery was made in a 25-metre long wave laboratory located in the basement of the mathematics building at Blindern Campus. So far scientists have studied ringing in small and large waves, but as it turns out, ringing is more common in medium-size waves. For wind turbines at sea with a cylinder diameter of eight metres, the worst waves are those that are more than 13 metres high and have an 11-second interval between them.
 
Financial ruin
 
The ringing problem may increase significantly in the years ahead. There are plans to build tens of thousands of wind turbines at sea.
 
“If we do not take ringing into consideration, offshore wind turbine parks can lead to financial ruin,” warns John Grue to the research magazine Apollon at University of Oslo.
 
Today, the largest windmill parks at sea are outside the coasts of Denmark and Great Britain. They are nevertheless like small miniatures compared to Statkraft and Statoil’s enormous plans on the Dogger Bank outside Scotland. This windmill park is to produce as much electricity as 60 to 90 Alta power plants. A windmill park with the capacity of two Alta power plants will be built outside Møre og Romsdal in West-Norway.
 
“Thus far it has not been possible to measure the force exerted by ringing. Laboratory measurements show that the biggest vibrations in the wind turbines occur just after the wave has passed and not when the wave hits the turbine. Right after the crest of the wave has passed, a second force hits the structure. If the second force resonates with the structural frequency of the wind turbine, the vibration is strong. This means that the wind turbine is first exposed to one force, and is then shaken by another force. When specific types of waves are repeated this causes the wear to be especially pronounced. This increases the danger of fatigue.”
 
It is precisely this secondary force that creates ringing and that the mathematicians until now have not managed to calculate.
 

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Skepticism Under Attack in new movie: “Greedy Lying Bastards”

Written by Dr. Pierre R Latour

Dr. Pierre R. Latour, noted for his engineering prowess in helping design and develop the docking system for NASA’s Apollo space mission, turns film critic to lambast the latest film sold in the name of junk science. Latour’s eagle eye has landed on the new science-free climate movie: “Greedy Lying Bastards” (PG-13, 90 min) that trumpets alarmist fears over man-made global warming in the shrillest and most despairing tones.

green lunatic

Here is Dr. Latour’s round up:

If you find any physics linking COto temperature here, please advise.

If you discover ways to earn a living from global warming hysteria, you are smart.

If you discover glacial cycles have a period of about 100,000 years with an interglacial period of about 15,000, your discovery has been made already.

If you realize Chicago is covered by an ice sheet >1 mile thick 85{154653b9ea5f83bbbf00f55de12e21cba2da5b4b158a426ee0e27ae0c1b44117} of the time, you get it.

If you realize humanity prospers during interglacials, not glacials, you get it.

If you discover Earth’s temperature has stabilized at a local high since 1998, you can expect it to begin cooling soon. Maybe -15C. Because a new glacial has begun.

If you accept Lucy walked around Kenya 3 million years ago, you can conclude your ancestors survived 3,000,000/100,000 = 30 glacials.

Her ancestors appeared about 7 million years ago so they survived 4,000,000/100,000 = 40 more glacials. 30 + 40 = 70.

If you have enough faith in current humanity to believe we will survive at least one more = 100,000 years, year 102,013, you are a Greedy Lying Bastard, like me, with a new movie named after you.

Remedy? Invest in property near the Equator. This is not good or bad news, it’s just news.

Don’t be provocative. Have a fabulous day. Breathe your COeasy.

 

 

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How CIA Evidence Exposes the Greatest Climate Change Error

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Critics of the greenhouse gas theory and it’s supposed role in climate change have presented a fresh analysis of a CIA report that suggests climatologists created a false scientific basis to link global warming to levels of carbon dioxide. An assumption that wrongly fixed cloud cover as a constant factor encouraged scientists to incorrectly assume changes in CO2 rather than changes in cloud cover determine temperatures.

CIA

Researchers at Principia Scientific International have put under the microscope an important but widely overlooked 1970’s U.S. government climate report by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). ‘A Study of Climatological Research as it Pertains to Intelligence Problems’ offers a wealth of evidence to prove the greenhouse gas effect (GHE) was disregarded by the best brains in climatology and the document shows no indication as to why the GHE was trumpeted as the accepted ‘theory’ on climate a mere half dozen years later. The CIA in-depth study dates from August 1974 and was uncovered by Maurizio Morabito in 2009 and despite tens of thousands of words not one mention is made anywhere of a supposed greenhouse gas effect. [1]

The CIA study was regarded by the U.S. Government as a highly accurate appraisal of the best peer-reviewed climate science of the day on concerns of global cooling. This document starkly contradicts a report by Peterson, Connolley and Fleck who misused the American Meteorological Society (AMS) in September 2008 to paint a different picture about global warming. [2]

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Hurricanes More Powerful Driver of Climate than Greenhouse Gases

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Independent climate analysts crunch the numbers to prove that hurricanes are a more powerful driver of climate than so-called greenhouse gases. Dr. Pierre R Latour, a leading industry expert in thermodynamics, has peer-reviewed the latest newsletter from long-time climate skeptic, Dr. Vincent Gray and affirmed Gray’s calculations to be correct.

Dr. Latour, who first made his name assisting in the engineering of NASA’s Apollo space mission agrees that Dr. Gray’s analysis points to the greenhouse gas effect (GHE) being trivial (if, indeed, it does exist) when compared to the actual energy manifested in hurricanes. Gray is noted as the only expert reviewer of all five reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

Latour, Principia Scientific International’s (PSI) lead expert on thermodynamics affirms what other industry experts had long suspected. “We know that hurricanes can never create or consume energy. All they do is transform the energy received into the Earth’s system and move it around,” says Dr. Latour. Unlike climatologists Latour is an engineer trained to the highest standards in thermodynamics. He can’t understand why modern academics are incapable of discerning what an earlier generation of climate researchers knew to be true: carbon dioxide is just not a factor at all in the climate equation.

Dr Vincent Gray

Dr. Pierre Latour has peer-reviewed Dr. Gray’s numbers and confirms that “This analysis supports my long held contention measuring the average temperature of the whole atmosphere is impossible. Measuring any change in that average over years or decades is even harder.” It is the overwhelming power of evaporation, condensation, rain, storms and wind energy – seen at their most dramatic in hurricanes – that tell us the hydrological cycle is the key, not any trace gas like CO2. “Water is the great leveler in the system,” Latour insists, “It all averages out if you wait long enough. Turbulent fluid flow is well known.”

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The Death Knell for the CO2 Theory

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The death knell tolls for the Carbon Dioxide Greenhouse Gas Theory (CO2-GHT). If the CO2-GHT ever was a plausible theory, it is rapidly turning into a giant hoax. The perceived scientific underpinnings of the theory are unravelling fast. It took a while to get the “Anti-CO2-Warmist-Theory” scientific camp on the right footing. Now, Principia Scientific Intl. (PSI) has taken the lead in dispelling the last of the CO2-GHT “consensus”-based vestiges.

The latest nail for the CO2-GHT coffin has been contributed by Dr. Charles R. Anderson with his article “The Most Essential Physics of the Earth’s Temperature and Why Carbon Dioxide is No Threat to the Earth.” This comes hard on the heels of a recent paper on “The phase relation between atmospheric carbon dioxide and global temperature” by Dr. Ole Humlum and coworkers. Their work showed conclusively that the regular seasonal variations in the atmospheric CO2 levels are lagging the sea surface temperatures by 9.5 to 12 months — not the other way.

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The Unsettled Earth Energy Budget

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An examination of the energy budgets for the Earth of recent years gives one reason to be unsettled about the settled science claimed for the catastrophic man-made global warming hypothesis.  The energy budget currently posted by NASA is shown in Figure 1 below.

NASA Energy Budget Fig 1

Figure 1 shows the principal NASA energy budget for the Earth as of February 2013.  Note the huge surface radiation and the huge radiation from the atmosphere all of which is absorbed by the surface.  The surface-absorbed atmospheric down radiation is 100{154653b9ea5f83bbbf00f55de12e21cba2da5b4b158a426ee0e27ae0c1b44117} of the solar insolation at the top of the atmosphere and it is all claimed to be absorbed by the surface!  The greenhouse gases absorb a very unrealistic 90{154653b9ea5f83bbbf00f55de12e21cba2da5b4b158a426ee0e27ae0c1b44117} of all of the radiation emitted from the surface!

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Chemistry of Yore and Now

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For many the field of chemistry is a terra incognita, an unknown world. This is odd if one considers that humans are virtually chemistry factories, ingesting, processing and producing chemicals throughout our lives. We routinely use a wide variety of chemicals without ever thinking of them in those terms, from detergents to medications. Besides, with all kinds of wonderful electronic gadgets, who needs to know anything about chemistry or chemicals anyway? On top of that, we are constantly told that chemicals are dangerous to our health. Everything else, including meteorites are too.

 

Neanderthals

You might not believe it, but the Neanderthals (80,000 years ago) and their later cousins, the Cro-Magnon people (30,000 years ago) had an inkling of chemistry. Their cave paintings in France and Spain survived for tens of thousands of years simply because they used extremely stable, mineral-based pigments including mercury, iron and manganese type minerals. For example, just look at any of the many pictographs from ancient caves around the Pyrenees (Fig. 1). They appear to be done yesterday, clear and crisp. The lesson is to use stable pigments for your art; some knowledge of chemistry helps for that.

cave painting

Fig. 1. Pregnant mare running through wild wheat; pictograph from the wall of a cave in Lascaux, France, dating to 15,000 to 10,000 BC; photo courtesy of http://frontiers-of-anthropology.blogspot.ca.

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The Myth of ‘Acidification’ of Oceans

Written by Professor Cliff Ollier

by Professor Cliff Ollier

School of Earth and Environment, University of Western Australia. 

To demonise CO2 yet again, a false claim is that human production of CO2 will cause the oceans to become acid. ‘Acid’ is an emotive word to the general public, which is why it is seized upon by the alarmists in their search for yet another scare. In reality increasing CO2 makes the ocean become ‘less alkaline’, but never ‘acid’.

ocean acidification

pH is a measurement of the amount of hydrogen ion concentration in a solution, the log of the hydrogen ion concentration with the sign changed. Because it is a log scale it is very hard to move a pH of 8.2 to 7.0, which is neutral.

The pH needs to be less than 7 to be ‘acid’, and this has not happened through at least the past 600 million years because it would dissolve limestones, and limestone have been deposited in the sea and not re-dissolved in the sea through all that time.

Many marine organisms need CO2 to make their coral skeletons, carbonate shells and so on. Corals also have symbiotic plants within their flesh that use CO2 in photosynthesis.

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Greenhouse Gas Errors Abound on WUWT Blog

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Because of the stringent censorship policy of Anthony Watts his award-winning WUWT science blog is not a place  you will find articles skeptical of the so-called greenhouse gas theory (GHE). In keeping with that ethos Willis Eschenbach’s recent guest article for Watts provides another defense of what critics say is pseudo-science.  Nonetheless, adverse comments there soon began to fly, which was unusual coming from loyal WUWT readers. Below is an edited version of Joe Postma’s impassioned refutation of that Eschenbach  piece. If only Mr. Eschenbach and Mr. Watts would engage Postma and other GHE critics in debate. There is no doubt WUWT readers have a growing appetite for it.

CO2 smoking image 

 

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Stephen Crothers Presents the Case against Black Holes and Relativity

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In what is an exotic yet contentious subject, Stephen Crothers used a recent science conference in Albuquerque, New Mexico to deliver a robust attack on the cornerstone of modern cosmology. Crothers, who was forced to quit his PhD studies because he questioned ‘Big Bang’ physics offers an entertaining and compelling argument for his position.

Electric Universe

This addresses the Big Question that has long perplexed scientists: what is the true driving force behind our Universe? But from the early 20th Century a consensus was established around the ideas of Albert Einstein whose Theories of Relativity seemed so compelling. But in the new millenium the debate is once again hotting up. Opponents of such problematic ideas as Dark matter and Dark energy are espousing the notion of plasma cosmology (also known as the Electric Universe theory), and it is here where Crothers has taken center stage.

Crothers and others say there is increasing evidence to believe there are no isolated islands in the universe. They say all objects in space, from subatomic particles to galactic clusters, are connected by manifestations of the electric force acting in real time.

In this two part video presentation (part one, part two) we see that not only is the concept of an electric universe, its driving forces, and electro-magnetic mechanical properties far more readily understood than those of ‘Big Bang’ physics, picking holes in Black Holes is a lot of fun, too. As Crothers quips during his presentation, “When quantum physicists don’t understand things, they postulate a new particle.”

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Colony Collapse Disorder

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Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD) is the term used for the unusually large die-offs in honey bee colonies over winter. First observed about a decade ago, the “disorder” is back with a vengeance. While most prevalent in the US, European and other countries are starting to find similar problems though not yet at the same scale.

The Problem

The problem is that there are not enough bees around to guarantee pollination of a variety of agricultural crops. From almond groves in California to corn and soybeans farms in the Midwest, CCD is widespread and appears to be on the verge of becoming a global problem.

honeybees

Theories

Numerous theories have been advanced in the hope of finding a cause for the problem. So far none has panned out.

For example, some types of chemical pesticides, known as neonicotinoids have been implicated. However, other studies have shown that there does not appear to be any cause-effect relationship of that kind.

Other theories implicated genetically modified (GM) plants such as GM-corn containing the gene of Bacillus thuringiensis. Again, that was disproven as a probable cause of CCD by tests showing that pollen from such plants had no detrimental effects on bees.

Naturally (pun intended), even climate change has been proposed as the cause for CCD, an effect yet to be listed on the warmlist’s collation of claimed effects. Pun aside, I have my own theory, backed by some relevant observations.

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President of Royal Society Called a Liar by former Chancellor of Exchequer

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Lord Nigel Lawson, Chancellor in Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher’s government in the 1980’s, issues a public statement that Sir Paul Nurse, the President of the Royal Society, is a global warming liar.

In his boldest attack yet on the frontman of Britain’s crumbling climate alarmist establishment Lord Lawson has thrown down a gauntlet that Nurse is not likely to pick up.  Lawson, former holder of the second highest office of government, has responded to Paul Nurse’s wild accusations that Lawson was cherrypicking data when he stated that global temperatures have been flatlining for 17 years. Lawson’s open letter published by the Global Warming Policy Foundation (February, 27, 2013) where Lawson is Chairman, states:

“You [Nurse] claim that I “would choose two points and say ‘look, no warming’s taking place’, knowing that all the other points that you chose in the 20 years around it would not support his case”. That is a lie.”

Paul Nurse and Nigel Lawson

Sir Paul Nurse, who won the 2001 Nobel Prize in Physiology/Medicine, is described in the letter as more a  “shop steward for some kind of scientists’ closed shop” rather than the figurehead of Britain’s most prestigious science body.

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Breaking: British Member of Parliament Admits Climate Change Act ‘A Mistake’

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Britain’s deeply unpopular Climate Change Act (2008) may be set for repeal as another politician joins the growing number of MP’s aghast at the damage it is having on the nation’s ailing economy.

Conservative Member of Parliament, Douglas Carswell’s mea culpa today (February 25, 2013) shows dignity and acceptance of the weight of evidence conflicting with the already scientifically dubious notion of human-caused global warming.  “My biggest regret as an MP is that I failed to oppose the 2008 Climate Change Act. It was a mistake. I am sorry,” said Carswell on his blog.

Douglas Carswell1

The announcement comes hot on the heels of last week’s surprise admission by Rajendra Pachuari, the UN’s head of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Dr. Pachauri conceded that we are now into a 17-year pause in global temperature rises, as confirmed recently by Britain’s Met Office. Even NASA’s most strident climate doomsayer, Dr. James Hansen concedes there has been “a pause” in any temperature rise.

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Dysfunctional Peer Review of New Science?

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The scholarly peer review system may be functional for normal science or puzzle solving routine science in the sense of Kuhn, but is not well suited to handle non-normal new science challenging an existing paradigm. This is because any new idea poses a threat to existing normal science and as such often meets overly negative reviews by referees without sufficient knowledge of the novelty. Correct new science may thus get rejected without good reasons,  but is also possible that incorrect new science can get accepted by uncritical referees.

Claes Johnson

Furrther, incorrect normal science may be perpetuated by the peer review system, because incorrect normal science can only be questioned by new science.

In short, the peer review system is not suitable to handle new science, because either (i) good articles are rejected on bad grounds, or (ii) bad articles are accepted without good grounds. 

An example of new science is given by the article New Theory of Flight presented on The Secret of Flight. The article was rejected by AIAA Journal and is now under review by Journal of Mathematical Fluid Mechanics JMFM. 

JMFM has a difficult case to handle: Referees from normal science of fluid mechanics are not eager to touch the article and if so the review will be negative because the existing paradigm is challenged. On the other hand referee’s from outside the fluid mechanics community under AIAA may not be able to give a credible review.

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Atmospheric CO2 Not Linked to Humans says Global and Planetary Journal

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An incredible new paper in the reputed Global and Planetary Journal using freely available government data may be about to cause an unwelcome storm for believers in the greenhouse gas theory and the ‘green’ carbon reductions industry. It’s publication is accompanied by a surge in highly-credentialed scientists joining dissenting fledgling science body, Principia Scientific International.*

Norwegian scientists led by Professor Ole Humlum of the University of Oslo analyzed measurements of atmospheric carbon dioxide and compared them to temperatures with an astonishing result that throws serious doubt on claims that climate change is carbon related. If verified by other scientists Humlum’s study will confirm the findings of researchers at Principia Scientific International (PSI) who claim they have already refuted the greenhouse gas theory.

NOAA and HADCrut CO2 levels graphNOAA and HADCrut CO2 levels graph (click to enlarge)

The scientists investigated the phase relation (leads/lags) between atmospheric carbon dioxide and global temperatures using standard data series for the period January 1980 to December 2011. They found that changes in global atmospheric CO2 follow 11–12 months behind changes in global sea surface temperature and 9.5–10 months behind changes in global air surface temperature. The findings conflict with the consensus view concerning the greenhouse gas ‘theory’ that says the opposite should happen with temperatures supposedly being driven by any rise in atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2 levels are up 40 percent in recent decades).

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Wind Energy’s Epic Fail: ‘Unreliables’ not Renewables

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In the ongoing intellectual war where the traditional scientific method is battling the rise of “post normal science” the Alliance for Wise Energy Decisions (AWED) has struck a blow for real science. Engineers expose ten unfixable wind turbine problems that make then unreliable not renewable.

wind turbine fires

AWED spokesman, John Droz Jr. a qualified physicist and environmentalist steps up his organization’s campaign to ensure policymakers are presented with the cold hard facts on so-called “renewables.”

Having established a powerful grassroots network of informed individuals and organizations interested in improving national, state, and local energy & environmental policies AWED has hit on the correct nomenclature for that fair weather energy source: wind. Rather than putting wind farms in the “renewables” category AWED found they are very much the “unreliables.”

The problem, says, Droz, is that “Instead of a science-based approach, our energy and environmental policies are typically written by those who stand to economically or politically profit from them. As a result, anything genuinely science-based in these policies is usually inadvertent and accidental.”

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