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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.'"
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
Coal doesn't make whole areas uninhabitable
Yes it does. Ever seen a strip mine?
Help I am stuck in a signature factory!