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Wide-Scale US Wind Power Could Cause Significant Warming, Study Says (technologyreview.com)
XxtraLarGe shares a report: Wind power is booming in the United States. It's expanded 35-fold since 2000 and now provides 8% of the nation's electricity. The US Department of Energy expects wind turbine capacity to more than quadruple again by 2050. But a new study by a pair of Harvard researchers finds that a high amount of wind power could mean more climate warming, at least regionally and in the immediate decades ahead. The paper raises serious questions about just how much the United States or other nations should look to wind power to clean up electricity systems. The study, published in the journal Joule, found that if wind power supplied all US electricity demands, it would warm the surface of the continental United States by 0.24 C. That could significantly exceed the reduction in US warming achieved by decarbonizing the nation's electricity sector this century, which would be around 0.1 C. "If your perspective is the next 10 years, wind power actually has -- in some respects -- more climate impact than coal or gas," coauthor David Keith, a professor of applied physics and public policy at Harvard, said in a statement. "If your perspective is the next thousand years, then wind power is enormously cleaner than coal or gas."
the long history of nuclear safety issues
And yet the fact is, the per-terawatt-hour death rate from nuclear is lower than for any power source -- lower than wind, lower than rooftop solar, lower than hydroelectric, lower than biomass, lower than natural gas, lower than oil, and lower than coal.
If people were rationally concerned about safety, they'd be holding massive protests demanding the replacement of other sources of electrical generation with nuclear. That it would massively reduce greenhouse gas emissions over fossil fuels and that it is far easier to integrate with the electrical grid than solar or wind would then just be the side benefits of saving lives.