Readers of anAP story written by Seth Borenstein this morning may be forgiven if something seems not quite right with the study being reported as showing that global warming is causing less wind in the American midwest and east.
Here’s how Borenstein reports the study:
“The idea that winds may be slowing is still a speculative one, and scientists disagree whether that is happening. But a first-of-its-kind study suggests that average and peak wind speeds have been noticeably slowing since 1973, especially in the Midwest and the East.
“‘It’s a very large effect,’ said study co-author Eugene Takle, a professor of atmospheric science at Iowa State University. In some places in the Midwest, the trend shows a 10 percent drop or more over a decade. That adds up when the average wind speed in the region is about 10 to 12 miles per hour.
“There’s been a jump in the number of low or no wind days in the Midwest, said the study’s lead author, Sara Pryor, an atmospheric scientist at Indiana University.
“Wind measurements plotted out on U.S. maps by Pryor show wind speeds falling mostly along and east of the Mississippi River. Some areas that are banking on wind power, such as west Texas and parts of the Northern Plains, do not show winds slowing nearly as much. Yet, states such as Ohio, Indiana, Michigan, Illinois, Kansas, Virginia, Louisiana, Georgia, northern Maine and western Montana show some of the biggest drop in wind speeds.”
But as Climate Deport’s Marc Morano points out, haven’t global warming advocates been telling us ever since Hurricane Katrina that global warming is causing the atmosphere to heat up, with a result that more and more violent storms are being spawned?
I’m not a logician but doesn’t the assertion that global warming is simultaneously causing more and stronger winds (i.e. tornadoes and hurricanes) and weaker winds for generating power a flagrant violation of the principle of non-contradiction, that is, that A cannot also be non-A?
