golfCharlie. Sorry, but Simon Jenkyns column does not mention climate change. Instead he despairs of the changing fashions of the advice given about health and eating. He also lamented that social science was doing little to examine some important issues of the day. That is why I saw little to object to.

Alan Kendall 8:05 as soon as science is slanted for news worthiness, and political potential, the science becomes corrupted. This has been Climate Science's problem from the outset, even before Mann's Holy Hockey Stick.

Rather than address the problem, and find some Real Climate Science, they fabricated a 97% Consensus instead. To prove how badly climate science has failed, they did another one, and got the US President to endorse it.

The level of Denial within Climate Science is such that they still can't understand why 97% of people don't take them seriously. (In honour of Climate Science, I made up that 97% people's opinion bit)

EM, thank you for the link to Matthew Maurie, but how did he actually measure windspeed? This is a brief extract from the 'Beaufort Scale' from WikiP

"The initial scale of thirteen classes (zero to twelve) did not reference wind speed numbers but related qualitative wind conditions to effects on the sails of a frigate, then the main ship of the Royal Navy, from "just sufficient to give steerage" to "that which no canvas sails could withstand".[2]"

The Beaufort Scale is still used today, and was based on observed evidence, so that any seafarer, whether or not numerate or illiterate, could determine wind strength, and set sails accordingly. It became accepted (with variations) around the world. Wind strength is given as a '3' OR '4' not 3.3/3.8 etc. Ships of that era could not sail closer than about 80 degrees to the wind with square rigged sails, so wind direction was critical for commerce and warfare, and could be measured with a compass to a degree or so of acurracy.

Wind speeds on the Beaufort are increments of 3-5 mph upto 40mph. How do you determine a 10% increase in windspeeds over a 150 year timescale when the difference between a F2 and F3 (recorded in a Ship's Log) could be over 200% (depending on statistical technique)?

Modern instrumentation relies on anemometers mounted at the top of a mast. They are rarely checked or maintained, let alone recalibrated. Experienced seafarers tend to trust the empirical Beaufort, it can be a matter of life or death.

Stewgreen. What was wrong with the column, other than it being written by a Guardian columnist? Seemed to me to be rather level headed. My only complaint was that he failed to lay a large part of the blame onto his own profession who judge science by how newsworthy they can make it.

So a half gigawatt wind turbine has the same output power as a Gloster Gladiator with its 840hp at 80% efficiency. That would run about 40 galls per hour costing about £60 or so before tax. 12p a KwH. If it was a diesel about half that. Is my arithmetic correct? Roughly, of course.

EM:

An excellent introduction to wind turbine generation designs (and indeed wider aspects of turbine design)

Golf Charlie

Matthew Maury's charts would give 19th century data for comparison with current wind data.