Storms, Climate Change & an Economy of Truth.

You've heard the rhetoric. Global Warming/Climate Change/Climate Emergency is increasing severe weather events. There will be more storms. More destruction.

Statements like this from my friends in Greenpeace (of whom I have none) Link Here 

[quote]

“The frequency and strength of storms is increasing, leaving destruction in their wake.”

[unquote]

Lurid stuff. Frightening even.

But is it true?

Is the frequency and strength of storms increasing?

The answer to that is No.

The frequency and strength of storms is not increasing. In fact for the last thirty years the average wind speed across large sections of the planet have been in decline, as have severe storm events. You can trace a slowing in global wind speeds right back to the 1960's.

From Antarctica right up to near the North Pole wind speeds have been going down.

I’ll concentrate here on the UK but this really is a global phenomena. (see references later)

Here is the frequency of high wind gusts events across the UK by year which the Met Office states they use as an indicator of "storminess".

Notice all gusts are in decline and that includes the extreme gusts that are supposed to be increasing. (MET office Data taken from Here)

Even though they have adopted a silly storm naming scheme (one suspects in order to add a little drama to otherwise common or garden weather events) the Met Office have come out and made clear that there is no link between Global Warming and UK storm frequency.

But they cannot quite bring themselves to reference their own data showing a slow decline in storminess since the 1990's. The Met Office webpage on Wind Storms is Here

The global slowing of wind speed is emphatic and serious enough to now be a research project for EU. (Here)

Even dear old Wikipedia has a (somewhat rudimentary) page on it Here

The best page is probably This Page from the Institute of Physics. (with caveats – see later)

Here’s a few more links that give useful insight into the phenomena.

ABC News Australia

Cosmo Magazine

Nature Magazine

So, while the panic laden Drama Queens in Greenpeace and Extinction Rebellion would like you to think that storms are dangerously increasing, actually the reverse is true.

Bad things always happen. There will always be storms. But today there are less of them and they are less potent.

But you will not hear anyone suggesting that this is a “good thing”.

Even the Phys.org article above struggled hard to find some bad outcomes yet failed to address any of the advantages of lower wind speed and less storms.

Yet when we look to (say) coastal defence, less storms mean coastal defence systems last longer. Less storms mean less storm surges. Less storms mean less wind damage. Less lost work days and less insurance claims.

The list goes on.

Even a merely lower average wind speed must result in less wear and tear on external structures. I am sure you can think a few more advantages of what is in essence more benign weather. 

By the way while the linked reports are all reasonably recent, this is far from new knowledge. Its just appears to have been kept pretty quiet until now.

It is interesting to note that while these reports all mention the possible ill affect on wind-turbines the reports make great efforts to (incorrectly) indicate that little is known about the wind speed at wind-turbine height.

I first blogged on it and how it can affect the wind turbine farce using data from Garrard-Hassan. But that data from 2011 which shows the slowing of wind speed across Northern Europe seems to have been (how should we say…) overlooked.

The full 2011 post is Here: Wind Speed Decline: A Blip or a Trend?

Here's the Garrard Hassan graph (this only goes to 2005)

But whatever the effects on marginal power producers, clearly wind speed is something that is getting more benign. Maybe it is due to Global Warming, maybe not. But whatever, wind speed is not getting worse.

Global Warming may well have deleterious affects. But (like this) there may also be positive outcomes

It’s just nobody wants to tell you about them.

Cold Feet in Turbine Heaven.

On the 12th July the government published its latest white paper of energy reform The Electricity Market Reform Paper 2011 Here

Although this white paper cements in an absurd commitment to a massive expansion and deployment of wind turbines, the bankers and investors are getting cold feet.

They are blaming this on what they say is a lack of clarity in the white paper. (As described in "The Scotsman" Here)

But there is more to the bankers prevarication, as noted in the above article:

[quote]
That was partly due to regulatory uncertainty, he said, but funding for wind farms was also being impacted by low average wind speeds over the last couple of years, which has depressed rates of return on existing projects.
[unquote]

Maybe the bankers have started paying more attention to data indicating a reduction in wind speed across the UK. As described in a paper by Wind Turbine enthusiasts Garrad Hassan.
(see Billothewisp post "Wind Speed In Decline: A Blip or a Trend?").

Maybe now they can see that even with their huge subsidies, erratically performing turbines may not be the sure investment bet they were once thought to be.

Whatever the bankers think, one thing is sure, nobody in government would now risk the wrath of the electorate by giving the bankers a guarantee on any continuation of the currently flawed ROC scheme let alone an increase. If they want a cast iron guarantee on what is really very risky high return investment, they are going to be dissapointed. (at last)

What if these grubby little investors attempt to blackmail us by threatening to take their "green" investments elsewhere?

Billothewisp has two words to say to them

Bye Bye.

Wind Speed in Decline: A Blip or a Trend?

It has been knuckle chewing time for the last couple of years for those wind farms that have been stupidly built in the less windy parts of the country. Even those built where the wind actually blows have seen their profitability massively cut. But those who had been planning to cash in on sub 20% capacity factor outputs are now beginning to feel the heat.

Of course we all know that none of them were, are, or ever will be, viable without a massive ROC subsidy. But even with this subsidy some must now be trading on the margins of viability.

Last year for example the output of all UK wind farms fell by 7%. Yet in that same year many more turbines were built. The theoretical (some say imaginary) total wind-farm capacity increased by 13 %.

To me, that looks like over a 21% drop in total.

Ouch!

An unpredictable long term reduction, getting worse year on year. Just what the bankers want to hear (not).

2009 wind speed was low, last year it was lower still.

So, is this a blip? Or is it a long term trend?

Oh, such a quandary and who has the answer?

Actually it is our friendly BWEA to the rescue. Or rather a paper presented by the doyens of the Wind Turbine fraternity: Garrad Hassan and Partners Ltd

I hasten to add this paper was presented first in 2006 and is now dated 2009, both dates are before the current downturn.

You can find the PDF of their paper Here  (if it disappears, Billothewisp has a copy)

It is titled:

LONG-TERM WIND SPEED TRENDS IN NORTHWESTERN EUROPE

The running 15 year trend with wind speed, according to Garrad-Hassan is as follows

It is going down. Now remember this was up to 2005.

Garrad-Hassan then tried valiantly to use some weather indices as proxies to go back further. Back to the 1960's in fact. The most important of these is the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO) then there are two other indices used. One is Katalog Der Grosswetterlagen Europas. This is a subjective catalogue of large scale weather patterns over Europe dating back 100 years. Then finally they also used the UK Jenkinson Lamb weather classification (which is similar to the Grosswetterlagen catalogue but for the UK)

Here is what they found for the NAO

here is the Jenkinson Lamb result

Finally here is the Grosswetterlagen graph

Notice how they all roughly correlate.

Also notice the "blip" around 1995.

In their conclusions, Garrad-Hassan try and sweeten the pill of the 15 year decline by suggesting that all that was happening was that wind was returning to stability after a upward blip in the mid 1990's.

However we should remember that this is then essentially returning to a stable "low" wind-speed. Garrad-Hassen re-assuringly write that a further fall in average wind speed should not be assumed. Though, they could not rule it out.

But of course, this Garrad-Hassan data only goes up to 2005. Since then we know that things have actually got worse (significantly so in the last year)

So, are we just bottoming out? Or are we still going down?

Perhaps our previously loan happy banking fraternity should look a little more closely at what they might be letting themselves in for.

Maybe the wind turbine carpet-bagging fraternity will be seeing that big red stamp that spells out "DECLINED" being used a little more on their loan applications from now on.

Maybe a few of their pals who have built these things in totally inappropriate areas will soon be queuing up at the local Licensed Insolvency Practitioners office.

Then I expect the poor bloody rate-payer will have to fork out to pull the things down.

What a waste.