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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.'"
Who wrote that headline and how can we make him stop writing new ones.
Modifying wind patterns will very obviously have an effect on local climate. Local is the key word - these guys are talking about and increase of under one degree, directly above those wind farms, and it seems likely that this is caused by the small amounts of turbulence generated by the turbines.
Now, if evidence emerges that this is harmful in some way, then we should of course evaluate that and make sure we understand the effects. However, I think stating "Wind Farms Can Cause Climate Change" is clearly intended to sensationalise this research and attract page views - especially given The Telegraph's well-known rabid-anti-environmentalism (they're especially anti-wind-turbine.)
Any removal of energy from the environment wlll affect the environment.
Solar energy capture reduces ground heating. Hyrdo capture reduces errosion and soil redistribution. Wind capture reduces winds and associated head and moisture distribution. Wave energy capture reduces shore errosion and fine particlate distribution. Tide capture does really really small scale stuff to the earth-moon-sun relationship.
You don't get anything for free. The question is what do we accept as side effects of the energy extraction.
Wouldn't this really just be the same effect as an equivalent area covered by large trees? Yes, it could slightly alter the climate, but any physical environment change will.
I predicted that one a few years ago. You can not take energy out of a system with out impacting the overall performance of the system.
Solar power also cools the earth (technically wind power is Solar too). The Sun only provides so much energy and that energy is what make the Earth run. You suck enough of it away and it will be as bad as anything else.
In other words, at some point we will reach a limit where our Sun can not support the amount of humans on the planet. We need to get more efficient and invest in space exploration.
Space exploration will never be a solution to overpopulation on such a large planet. Why? Because the only possible explanation for packing 10+ billion people on this planet is ignorance and poverty.
So the people who are able to afford space travel will not be the ones with a land availability issue.
You know, there are large projects which involve planting trees along freeways to help reduce the noise of the vehicles passing through. And sometimes, in cities where the tall buildings grow, the streets are extremely windy because the streets, sans foliage, tend to channel and concentrate the flow of air as it rushes from high pressure to low pressure zones.
Trees and wind farms do tend to act against the constant shift of balance from high to low. And without them resisting (but not stopping) the flow of air, the changes become more gentle... at least near the surface... (Nothing is stopping the flows where the REAL weather is happening... up, thousands of feet above the surface of the ground.)
"You cannot take energy out of a system without impacting the performance of the system." Yeah... kinda true... sort of... but the thing that makes weather is discarded energy sent to us from the sun. The sun sends out its energy in limitless amounts. No amount of pin-wheels will change what the sun is doing and so the difference in potential which is where we get energy, will remain pretty much the same regardless of how much we are able to extract from it.
Because it's mostly BS. Think about it. What do you think planting trees does to the wind? What about cutting trees down? We've cut enough trees down over the past 200 years that we could probably put a billion wind turbines up and not get back to what was "natural" 200 years ago.
As far as the forces involved, imagine a kid dabbling his toes in a river. Does he slow the river down or change its course? No. What about 100 kids? Still no. The forces pushing the river are so much larger and stronger than anything toes can interrupt. Sure a tiny bit of the river slows down as the water swirls and eddies around the toes, but as gravity continues to pull it downstream, it speeds right back up to the speed it was going before. If you're not actually removing water (e.g. for a city water supply) or blocking enough to form a lake (e.g. a dam), you're not going to have a noticeable impact downstream.
Changes are made to a ecosystem and the ecosystem reacts to those changes, news at eleven.
> We could ditch oil, coal, and nuclear entirely if we just build solar farms.
Well, sure. Because nothing would grow due to lack of ground heating, and our remaining population of about 3 people wouldn't need all that much energy.
There, fixed that for you.
Getting energy from "Not Earth" means (eventually) dumping energy into the Earth's systems. What happens when you scale it up? TANSTAAFL.
The Sun only provides so much energy and that energy is what make the Earth run.
Well, the Sun as well as the Moon's tidal forces which cause the Earth to flex by approx 30cm daily causing friction in the Earth while also massaging the crust to help relieve pressure.
Well, that and the previous star(s) that blew up and who's energy is present in the matter and angular momentum preserved in the forming of our solar system.
You could very well also argue that if we continue using energy at this rate, we'll also accelerate the Heat Death of the Universe.