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New Study Suggests Wind Farms Can Cause Climate Change
nachiketas writes "A study led by Liming Zhou, Research Associate Professor at the Department of Atmospheric and Environmental Sciences at the University of New York concludes that large wind farms could noticeably impact local weather patterns. According to Professor Zhou: 'While converting wind's kinetic energy into electricity, wind turbines modify surface-atmosphere exchanges and transfer of energy, momentum, mass and moisture within the atmosphere. These changes, if spatially large enough, might have noticeable impacts on local to regional weather and climate.'"
"These changes, if spatially large enough, might have noticeable impacts on local to regional weather and climate."
Headline matches the summary.
This has nothing to do with climate change, which is a change to the underlying system.
By that logic, there is no such thing as climate change. CO2 emissions do not change the underlying system, and were they do stop completely, the system would, in time, revert/adjust. By your logic, climate change can't exist unless thermodynamic laws (or whatever) are changed.
Anyone who thinks that the deployment of [technologies] across large portions of Earth's surface will not have significant impact is delusional. Don't be that guy.
All "clean" energy, whether wind, solar, hydro, coal, fission, etc. is merely "relatively" clean. Wind kills birds and warms areas downstream. Coal makes smog and dumps carbon. Hydro kills fish and and alters local climate. Fission makes giant lizards emerge from Tokyo bay...
Cats, power lines and shiny glass buildings kill more birds than wind farms. Of course we don't have that many wind turbines yet, but still the figures don't look that scary. http://science.howstuffworks.com/environmental/green-science/wind-turbine-kill-birds.htm
Wind farms apparently do weird shit to bats though: http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn14593-wind-turbines-make-bat-lungs-explode.html
Windfarms only cause apparent climate change when meteorologists have their thermometers on the ground. Mixing air of different temperatures doesn't heat it, not while the conservation of energy is valid.
You're forgetting how few people actually understand thermodynamics.
I imagine most people (and politicians) think wind / solar / tidal energy = magically free energy, with an emphasis on the word magic.
I am John Hurt.
Wind farms *MIGHT* perceptably slow down air near the surface of the earth only... within a hundred meters or so.... in a not entirely dissimilar way to how buildings can shelter people from wind.
But you could cover the entire planet with wind farms, and that would have negligible impact on the earth's climate because 100 meters is positively puny compared to the total size of the earth's atmosphere. It would impact even less than buildings because buildings actually block the air, where turbines let it all through. Further, the cross sectional area of a blade that is 10 meters long is perhaps at most about 10 square meters, while the total swept area of a blade that long is over 300 square meters. Allowing for the fact that there are 3 blades per turbine, the turbine is only affecting (at most) 10% of the air that is passing through any given turbine. And again, it's not actually stopping it... it's passing right through. Coupled with the absolutely enormous mass of air above the turbines that is even more negligibly affected by the presence of stuff on the ground, the net impact on climate stands to be somewhere near nil.
One might as well suggest that harnessing the energy from tides might perceptibly impact the orbit of the moon...
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Coal doesn't make whole areas uninhabitable
Yes it does. Ever seen a strip mine?
Help I am stuck in a signature factory!
These changes, if spatially large enough, might have noticeable impacts on local to regional weather and climate.
I think the implication is that a world covered in wind farms would experience climate change, which is improbably indeed
Umm, no. From a few sentences around the quote you cherry picked FTFA:
However Prof Zhou pointed out the most extreme changes were just at night and the overall changes may be smaller.
Also, it is much smaller than the estimated change caused by other factors such as man made global warming.
“Overall, the warming effect reported in this study is local and is small compared to the strong background year-to-year land surface temperature changes,” he added.
The study read: "Despite debates regarding the possible impacts of wind farms on regional to global scale weather and climate, modelling studies agree that they can significantly affect local scale meteorology."
The effect is localized, remains localized, and does not have anywhere near the same impact as "other factors such as man made global warming". The use of the word "extreme" to categorize a 1.37F change in overnight temperatures in a ten year period is a bit, well, extreme. It's good that they did notice this effect and my guess is something will be done to the turbine design to mitigate this 0.72C (1.37F) over ten years change in localized, overnight temperatures near wind turbines. This is much ado about nothing but I am sure the climate change extremists will be all over it, while the rest of us who do believe and are trying to do something rational about climate change will put this on a low priority. The benefits of renewable energy still outweigh that ridiculously low cost with current turbine designs. If things stay static this might be a problem. Given that the research is out, I am sure there will be a reaction. The important thing is not to come unhinged and react a bit too wildly to every bit of negative data that comes up. This is really not that big a problem it can't be designed or engineered around, and I believe even Prof. Zhou would agree.
Every construction has some local effect. Most cities have warmer temperatures by several degrees than they would without structures. This is...really not that big of a deal. I would not call it climate change, more of a minor local weather change. Planting a line of trees would also result in minor local weather changes, possibly on a much larger scale. This isn't really a problem, though, and linking it to the larger climate change issue is unfortunate.
Support more choices in goverment-Vote 3rd party.