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Harvard study finds that wind turbines create MORE global warming than the fossil fuels they eliminate – and the same is true for scooters and electric cars

  • Aug 26, 2019
  • 5431 views
Source: 
NaturalNews.com

(Natural News) Researchers from Harvard University have made an interesting and hilarious discovery with regards to wind power, which actually causes more global warming than the burning of fossil fuels does. While massive wind farms are said by some to be the “renewable” energy source of the future...

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Spell checking: Press the CTRL or COMMAND key then click on the underlined misspelled word.
Tim Hunt's picture
Tim Hunt on Aug 28, 2019

Wow! This is a bold statement from a rather "Liberal" institution.......... What next? A research budget cut coming.

Has anyone seen the national weather prediction from the new Farmers Almanac release for the coming winter. Didn't sound like much Global Warming in the future this winter.

Mark Silverstone's picture
Mark Silverstone on Aug 29, 2019

OK. Someone had to bite the bullet and check to see if the "Natural News" accurately reported what the article says. So, I paid to the see the article in Joule. If anyone wants to discuss further, I suggest you read the article first.  With any luck, maybe we can get one or more of the authors to comment.

In any case, the statement from this review of the article: "...hilarious discovery with regards to wind power, which actually causes more global warming than the burning of fossil fuels does." is patently false. Note: It is not misleading. It is false.

I quote a few sentences from the article:

1. "The climate impacts of wind and solar are small compared with the impacts of the fossil fuels they displace, but they are not necessarily negligible."

2." ..the direct climatic impacts of wind power are predominantly local to the wind farm region, while the benefits of reduced emissions are global."

3."Our comparison was based solely on surface air temperature differences. Wind turbines and GHGs both alter a host of interrelated climate variables. The use of surface temperature as the sole proxy for climate impacts may bias the resulting ratio of impacts-to-benefits in either direction."

4. "Wind beats fossil fuels under any reasonable measure of long-term environmental impacts per unit of energy generated."
 

Also, note that this study pertains to on-shore wind turbines only. Offshore turbines may well be entirely different with respect to the measurements used in this study.

If you don´t like my selection of quotes from the study, please make your own. But, don´t make them up!

Audra Drazga's picture
Audra Drazga on Aug 29, 2019

Mark - Thanks for reading the full article.  In todays world we all just take what we read in the headlines as truth and don't even dive into the full article.  Headlines can have a bias and be missleading.  This seems like an interesting study and I have seen other articles similar to this one.  Something to watch over the next year. 

Bob Webster's picture
Bob Webster on Aug 31, 2019

Exactly what does this mean?

4. "Wind beats fossil fuels under any reasonable measure of long-term environmental impacts per unit of energy generated."

Beats what?  "long-term environmental impacts per unit of energy generated"?

That suggests "wind" has greater (beats) environmental impacts per unit of energy generated than does fossil fuel.

The statement is not at all clear.

Perhaps that is how "Natural News" understood the statement?  Which seems a more realistic interpretation at odds with 1.

In short, 1. suggests fossil fuel has more negative impacts, 2. and 3. suggest they both have negative impacts but makes no comparison, while 4. states wind has more negative impacts.

Most important, fossil fuel impacts are generally vastly over-stated and are rooted in a number of assumptions that have never been validated.  Principally, that fossil fuel CO2 emissions have extremely long atmospheric lifetimes (misleading and not consistent with long-standing research/measurements), and that changing atmospheric CO2 is a strong force for changing climate (demonstrably not true by examination of the records for atmosperic CO2 and global average surface temperatures).

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