Wednesday, April 06, 2011

the winds of change

Change in axiomatic constructs always is slow but it is both insistent and inevitable once reasonable people beginning questioning assumptions and examining, causality rather than merely accepting ideological assertions.  Today, I want to highlight two examples of the extent to which orthodoxy and dogma are no longer being automatically accepted as axiomatic.

The first is the latest in a series of studies that examine the actual performance of windmills as a power source.  The significance of this latest study is that it was commissioned by an environmentalist organization predisposed ideologically towards the promotion of wind as a power source.  The study finds that wind power is not only unreliable, but actual generation of power occurs less than 20% of the time in over half the installations and power generation is less than 10% pf capacity in over 30% of cases.  Simply put, wind power is not only massively inefficient, it also is massively ineffective: current wind power technology will never be anything but a small sporadic supplemental power source.

The second example is a wonderful summary of the latest research on the potential (apparent?) influence of solar variation on climate change.  The presentation is available as a YouTube video and is an excellent example of how science will eventually act to right itself.  The IPCC models and mantra are dismissive of solar as a forcing mechanism within climate change, partly from a lack of understanding and appreciation, but mostly from an ideological commitment to the exclusive promotion of CO2  as the sole driver of climate change. Coutillot's presentation is informative and summarizes much of the latest research.  However, it also alludes to the ongoing difficulty still facing scientists who work outside the parameters of the IPCC agenda. 


People of integrity expect to be believed.  And when they are not, they let time prove them right.