Cancel Net Zero: Wind Turbines Cause Ocean Heating

Knock-on effects include destabilising food supplies and warming the atmosphere

Your correspondent’s work is done. Offshore wind farms cause ocean heating, with localised surface sea temperatures rising by a persistent 0.3°C-0.4°C and interannual variability up to 1°C. This is according to ground-breaking calculations made by a group of American scientists and recently published by Science. Cascading effects rippling through eco-systems not only affect sea and atmospheric temperatures but reshape the upper ocean by destabilising marine food supplies and affecting plankton and larval growth. Disruption of the Mid-Atlantic Cold Pool, a key subsurface water mass supporting regional fisheries and ecosystems, can be affected. So no more ghastly inefficient wind turbines then – if similar fears arose about hydrocarbon extraction, the operation would be shut down quicker than you could say Christopher Gary Packham.

Maybe not. Fracking for natural gas was banned in the UK once activists weaponised fears of ‘earthquakes’ similar in intensity to someone falling off a chair. Different rules apply to wind turbines, despite evidence continuing to accumulate of their destructive ability to rearrange local ecosystems. Builders of the high speed railway HS2 from London to Birmingham have been forced to spend £100 million to protect a few bats on a 1,000-metre section of the line, but green activists turn a blind eye to the worldwide slaughter of millions of the flying critters by the blades of giant wind turbines. And nobody obsessed with the Net Zero fantasy seems to give a toss when the populations of slow-breeding large raptors – including Golden Eagles, Bald Eagles and the endangered Tasmanian Wedge-tailed Eagle – are decimated.