Hi Guys,

I hope that you are having a good day.

The UK’s Mail Online Science and Tech section on the 27th August 2009 reported that the Met Office’s weather supercomputer used to predict climate change is one of Britain’s worst polluters.

I wouldn’t go as far as that. It is not polluting directly. What it does is guzzle electricity which in the global warmist / environmental camp translates to a carbon footprint.

What bothers me is that they keep on trying to infer that carbon dioxide is a pollutant. That is pure bullshit. Carbon dioxide is one of the building blocks of life. Plants absorb it to grow and animals, including us, exhale it as we breathe.

As far as I’m concerned it is a waste of time and money. Let’s face it, it can hardly predict the following day’s weather accurately, so how will it be able to predict the weather/climate change in 1, 10, 20 or more years into the future especially when it predicted a “BBQ summer” which turned out to be another wash-out summer with the occasional nice day.

When it comes to modeling anything on a computer the old adage still holds true – garbage in, garbage out.

The super-computer is pretty impressive, as it is more powerful than 100,000 standard personal computers. At a cost of £33 million it is capable of 1000 billion calculations per second and uses 1.2 megawatts of energy to run. And so it does appear that others may use a tad more electricity than St Al Bore.

When you go on their website you can see that they have invested quite a bit of time and effort on global warming/climate change. Unfortunately for them there is an easier way of predicting long term climate change and it has nothing to do with carbon dioxide or man made “pollution” – it relies on observing solar activity such as sun spots etc to determine whether it is going to get hotter or cooler on the cosmic spec of dust we call earth.

As always, I wish you everything I wish myself.

Until the next time.

Alain

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Hi Guys,

I hope that you’ve all had a really great day.

As I actively promote Renewable Home Energy Solutions that include wind power you may be surprised that I don’t endorse the use of industrial wind power generation.

I will go into the reasons I believe that commercial wind power cannot be regarded as green energy. I have thought long and hard about this subject and my observations have brought me to the conclusions detailed below.

The main problem with wind power is it’s variability i.e. if the wind blows or blows too hard the turbines stop spinning. This means that these fluctuations in electricity production cause a roller coaster of surges on the power grid linked to these turbines.

The reason for this is that electricity cannot be stored directly on an industrial scale therefore because there are no large electricity storage capacity the commercial wind generators operate in a just-in-time system framework i.e. the electricity generated by these turbines is pushed onto the power grid as soon as it is generated.

To counter this, gas turbines are built as backups to compensate for the troughs. These backup gas turbines have to be resilient as they are throttled up and down depending on demand. The power grids linked to commercial wind generators have to be monitored constantly and by constantly I mean second by second to ensures a constant electricity supply throughout the grid.

So if you believe the exaggerations sprouted about carbon dioxide being a so-called green house gas then you are going to be sorely disappointed about commercial wind generation as the necessary backup gas turbines still emit carbon dioxide. As the generation and demand have to be balanced on the grid constantly throttling gas and oil turbines up and down to counter losses and gains from wind turbines generates more CO2 per kWh generated than if operated normally.

Wind power is expensive, unreliable and won’t save on natural gas. Wind power in the United Kingdom, Europe’s windiest country, comes at a steep price. A price that greatly distorts the markets as the real cost of wind power is hidden.

While the rest of Europe experienced a 15% price rise, the United Kingdom experienced a 29.7 % rise in gas and electricity prices. Ofgem, (Office of Gas and Electricity Markets) the government regulator for the electricity and downstream natural gas markets in the United Kingdom, believes that wind subsidies was a prime factor for the difference and questions the logic when, taking all the public investment into account, wind generates a mere 1.3% of the United Kingdom’s energy needs.

According to the United Kingdom’s government statistics, in 2006, the average load factor for wind turbines across the United Kingdom was just 27.4% with the worst performing turbine having a load factor of only 7%. Therefore a typical 2MW turbine only produced 0.54MW on average. This does not compare well with the 90% load factor for thermal plants.

The poor return on investment is obscured by the subsidy system which allows turbine operators and supporters to claim that they make a profit even when wind turbines operate at very low load factors.

Apart from the high cost of wind power, the perceived benign environmental impact of commercial wind turbines does not correspond with the latest studies on migratory bird and bat mortality. The mortality of within the already declining bird population include raptors and eagles

There is also considerable public protest over the noise and health effects such as provoked by these installation. Chronic sound trauma due to the low frequency noise generated by the blades and infrasound transmitted through the ground.

Further cause for concern include the devaluation of real estate for neighbouring properties, the degradation of natural heritage and the potential loss of the tourist industries in surrounding areas.

The unholy partnership of self interested businesses, so-called scientists, grandstanding politicians, alarmist campaigners and a main stream media pushing their sponsors agendas provide a new twist on a very old practice; companies and individuals using public policy to line their own pockets. This loose grouping, termed the Climate-Industrial Complex do not promote any discussion or free thoughts on the matter but vilify any person not on message. They would make the Spanish Inquisition proud in their labelling any and all dissenters as heretics.

As an afterthought, maybe just maybe, in light of the financial irregularities with minister’s expenses in the United Kingdom, we should follow the money and investigate the relationship between the “partners” of the Climate-Industrial Complex and look at the politician’s personal investments within this industry.

However, I do believe that wind power has a place within Renewable Home Energy Solutions either as a complementary mix to solar energy or as stand alone provided one stores excess energy in an array of batteries.

I wish you everything I wish myself.

Until the next time.

Alain

Review of the top 3 products in renewable home enegy solution

Review of the Home Made Power Plant product

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