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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."
Similar enough to https://patents.google.com/pat... and only because I'd previous built one (and dismantled it) from Meccano in 1991 and tried to patent it (rejected) after thinking the world needs more wind power :-(
Windpower does not add heat to the atmosphere of Earth, it just mixes around where it's hot and where it's cold.
Greenhouse gases add heat energy (and thus average temperature) to the Earth's global atmosphere.
These are completely different things.
Attempting to conflate them is pro-fossil-fuel FUD.
Where are we going and why are we in a handbasket?
This. This is why we can't have nice things.
Somebody's got a bad case of perpetual Debbie Downer.
We should just turn the fans on. Burn coal and dump the power into the wind farms.
From the study: "We find that generating today's US electricity demand (0.5 TW e) with wind power would warm Continental US surface temperatures by 0.24C."
Ok, who cares? We aren't really worried about warming on the surface of the continental US, or really on most concentrated surface areas. The real risk is global warming. If this heat doesn't reach the polar ice caps, is it really a problem?
FAKE NEWS!!
LOL how's it feel?
Because it is only the atmosphere's kinetic energy that is involved. It is quite different than injecting tons of heat inducing chemicals into the atmosphere.
Follow the money...
What a bunch of BS. Here comes the coal-paid-for researchers to claim clean energy is bad.... yeah... f*** off Harvard
How do these compare to nuclear? Everyone keeps talking about fossil fuels and green renewables, but I have to hunt around for mention of nuclear. What gives?
It never ceases to amaze me how the climate doom people never understand the most basic concepts about heat transport.
There three ways heat moves through a non uniform fluid
1. Physical motion of the fluid ( Convection and any other source of velocity)
2. Conduction (hot areas heating cooler areas by being in physical contact)
3. Radiation a gas molecule emits a photon and it's absorbed by another molecule, in the case of the earth you can include the planet as a heat source)
If you think CO2 is enough to change that balance, then you better believe altering the patterns of motion and conduction are as well.
BTW a greenhouse works not so much because it stops radiation but because it prevents conduction and convection.
Read the paper's summary. It is explicitly not pro-fossil-fuel. You fucking prejudiced idiot.
XXTRALARGE faggot denialist shill, you can see it on the very first page of his comment history. He's a fucking tailpipe-breathing retard Republican like the rest. Throw it on the pile of burning bullshit that is Trumpism.
MIT has a cozy relationship with Nuclear, and remember all the wealthy Cape Codders who don't want wind power off their shores...
Stuff like this always reminds me of the punch line to the Monty Python Dennis Moore sketch.... "Wait a tic... blimey, this redistribution of wealth is trickier than I thought." Law of unintended consequences. (insert Women's Institute applause here)
"If you want to improve, be content to be thought foolish and stupid." - Epictetus
You're saying MIT takes zero oil money for their climate studies? Are you a pole-greasing Republican on Putin's dick or what? Go drink your oil, kid. Wind turbines mix air, they don't warm it. XXtraLarge is a known denialist shill.
I hate windmills. Ugly eyesores that don't work all the time. Kill birds and now cause local global warming.
It can get complicated, but Scientists have known for years that there is a price to be paid, somewhere, for the apparent benefits of "free energy".
It is virtually impossible to calculate ALL the costs in providing wind and solar power.Do you start with the costs of mining the materials needed to produce the components of a wind generator? Wait! How about starting with the costs of producing the machinery that mine those elements? No, that doesn't take into account the lab time and personnel needed to come up with the idea in the first place...etc., etc. I found the articles on the IEEE Spectrum page very interesting. the articles have rotated off the page but are still searchable. There are many smaller articles in the series. Here's one: https://spectrum.ieee.org/ener...
"The mind works quicker than you think!"
Remember the big towers associated with nuclear plants??? Those are cooling towers for all the excess heat given off. Most are near bodies of water or rivers for cheap cooling sources. Just think about it-- the whole thing works from STEAM and you do not extract all that heat energy.
It doesn't even come close--- you don' need cooling towers or big sources of water ... or any water source at all for a wind generator! water being the cheapest cooling option they would use water if it produced serious amounts of heat.
Academic games like this don't belong in the news.
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
Windpower does not add heat to the atmosphere of Earth, it just mixes around where it's hot and where it's cold.
Exactly. So if it slows hot air escaping the continent in the summer then it may cause localized increases in temperature inland while there would be a reduction over the ocean. Overall the planet wins but since we live and grow crops and animals on the land we may end up being more affected due to the localized increase in temperature due to the reduced mixing.
I've not looked at his paper so I'm not going to defend it but your argument for immediately dismissing it as false simply does not hold water. Nor do I see this as "pro-fossil fuel" - if anything it is an argument for more solar and tidal power and/or taking some care in where we place wind farms.
... the percentage of our energy needs that a technology needs to hit before The Usual Suspects will find some reason, any reason, to start wailing and gnashing their teeth and rending their clothes and shrieking "It's EEEVIL!! Tear it DOWN, NOW!!"
8%.
So predictable.
Windpower does not add heat to the atmosphere of Earth, it just mixes around where it's hot and where it's cold.
Yes... and no.
I take it you didn't read the link. The study didn't say that the windpower "adds" heat to the atmosphere of the Earth. What it said was that it redistributes heat through the boundary layer (by increasing boundary layer mixing), and the net redistribution of heat can reduce the thermal emission, i.e., increases the temperature. You say " it just mixes around where it's hot and where it's cold", but mixing where it's hot and where it's cold can reduce the thermal emission. They state that this occurs primarily at night: by mixing cooler low-altitude air into higher altitudes, and bringing warmer high altitude air toward the surface.
My comment would be "I'll wait to hear if there's a consensus on this model result, since it seems somewhat disputed right now." But that's not the same as "it's complete bullshit."
(I'll also point out that the effect they're talking about is proportional to the wind power, whereas the warming by carbon-containing fuel burning to generate energy is proportional to the integral of the power. So over the long term, burning carbon adds a lot more heat: the heating effect of the carbon dioxide lingers for at least a hundred years, and, according to some analyses, much longer.)
How much wind do those block? How much do the trucks and cars on the highway change the wind? How much wind do trees block, let's cut them all down...
What a biased piece of crap.
The wind goes right around the wind turbines for the most part. And it isn't going to make a difference in the overall wind speed.
Goodnight
Fucking kykes and sand n1ggers.
MIT has a cozy relationship with Nuclear, and remember all the wealthy Cape Codders who don't want wind power off their shores...
You're aware that the authors of this study were Harvard scientists, right? Harvard is not MIT.
(https://www.cell.com/joule/fulltext/S2542-4351(18)30446-X , if you missed the link in the summary)
The islands will tip over when the marines land to guard the grain stored in the pyramids. Without the cool breezes, the pyramids will concentrate the energy and ruin the grain. It's a worst case scenario.
..if the Trump administration twists this into a reason to ban wind power in favor of more goddamned coal burning.
Nuking our self might increase temperatures in the short term, but in the long term it might be better.
Apparently everything else we do will negatively affect the climate, whether using coal or wind or solar.
Have they figured out how to make the wind turbines last long enough to break even or turn a profit?
pure trumptard science.
More energy used = more heat to the atmosphere.
You need to reduce the energy used to cool the planet down!
Sent as ripples into the electromagnetic field. No single photon has been harmed in the process.
let me guess - next FUD rearch will show... butterfly effect - an increase in tornados and huricanes caused by wind turbines....
This article in Joule needs peer review very badly. The author of the article didn't explain in enough detail how a wind turbine in California can possibly cause a glacier in Greenland to melt down, or for the arctic ice cap to disappear. Clearly the entire North American Continent will not be covered by a thick blanket of wind turbines stretching from coast to coast.
Step 1: Create Controversy
Step 2: Provide paid access to the materials needed to refute that controversy
Step 3: Profit!
First, this is a simulation, for which as far as I can tell (remember, they are selling any clues here), they didn't even model all the physical laws of the real world. The "model" for that simulation expressed in Figure 1 is absolutely laughable.
Note, the wind turbine has transferred a percentage of "heat" elsewhere in the form of electricity. This electricity is representative of heat that is no longer in the local system, thus not all the heat is mixed and even still present in the "local" system. That heat generated by the "use" of that electricity would have been generated no matter what the source of that electricity might be.
The mixing of the air effectively lowers the overall environmental temperature of the local system. Extracting energy from that air lowers it even more.
We're talking about a small regional temperature change for excellent long-term benefit. This is not the same as a climbing planetary average.
I don't see how this is a major issue, but it's good to know in places where the warmer climate is marginal to supporting the current way-of-life. In those places, they may want to reconsider putting too much wind power up. Here in Wisconsin, I'm pretty sure they can put up all the wind mills they like and people will just be happy with it. Wind power is still a "no brainer."
The headline is misleading. "Significant" has a number of meanings, one of which is essentially "a whole lot." I would have preferred "statistically significant." Because that's really what we're talking about: it's measurable and beyond the margin of error. Big whoop.
Assuming the claims are true, and that switching all of the US to wind would increase the world's temperature by 0.24 C...how much would the temperature *lower* by eradicating all the other sources?
Fud its just fucking FUD
Not content with making the ridiculous and unproven claim that humans are somehow capable of affecting an entire planet, these AGW "scientists" are now trying to secure additional funding by claiming that somehow even green energy causes AGW. Low, very low, AGW nutters.
Know what, scrawny, pencil-necked AGW crybabies? I don't give a shit what you claim. It's all bullshit and YOU still have it all to prove. Until you have proof (real proof, not some bullshit showing nebulous changing temperatures for a brief period of time), I'm not going to entertain even the notion of your make-believe stories.
Nope, this is coming from fossil fuel corporations who stand to lose $107 TRILLION in investments if we all move to renewables.
It's like they always say, follow the money, and the sunk investments in fossil fuels ECLIPSE any money spent on funding AGW studies
Wind power extracts energy from the system and converts it electricity and whatever heat is created from the inherent friction of moving mechanical parts. The point here is that wind power systems EXTRACT energy from the weather system.
We should put a giant fan outside earth to cool us down.
Last month, a study was posted in Science that said wind turbines in Africa could boost vegetation in the semi-desert regions at the edge of the Sahara: Study: Large-scale wind and solar farms in the Sahara would increase heat, rain, vegetation
Seems like there's no real reason to avoid using wind turbines in either study, at least not compared to fossil fuels, and yet inevitably this headline will make the rounds, no one will read the article, we'll all forget last month's study, and in the end we'll just have some wrong, dumb little talking point.
I'm gonna go out on a limb here and claim that this is a product of bias and mental issues by the authors.
Much like how the authors of SuperFreakonomics couldn't have resisted their "one clever trick to fix global warming" chapter thanks to their personal biases. Which came back to bite them.
Also, the claim made in the paper is clearly false, even fraudulent.
Whether due to bias or to drum up publicity, I don't know. But they actually show that they are wrong.
More on that below. First a word or two on authors.
David W.Keith is a pusher of solar and geoengineering as a solution for climate change.
Also, best way to solve that climate change, according to him, is to start spraying sulfuric acid into air.
And he owns and runs a geoengineering company.
Which kinda runs on tar sands money.
Carbon Engineering is funded by several government and sustainability-focused agencies as well as by private investors, including Microsoft founder Bill Gates and oil sands financier N. Murray Edwards.[5][6][7]
Lee Miller on the other hand really hates them windmills.
And both windmills and photovoltaics should be kept out of the cities, tucked away somewhere in the desert.
In fact, he's done resear... I mean he played with computer models to "prove" that installing windmills will basically... stop the wind. Well... slow it down.
Someone should have told him about all those sails we used to use globally, that we're no longer using.
I.e. That a reduction of things to preindustrial levels actually requires reduction of wind speeds as well.
Or remind him that the air moved by the wind is a fluid. Like water.
And just like how water in the sea doesn't stop moving because of all the boats blocking it from moving freely... neither will global air currents actually slow down.
And even if they do - we could just reduce the number of flags and start driving cars only downwind, while wearing more tight fitting clothes, right?
Or tell him about the chance that his model is NOT REALLY a completely accurate representation of reality.
As for the study... It claims the following:
generating today's US electricity demand (0.5 TWe) with wind power would warm Continental US surface temperatures by 0.24 C.
...
The warming effect is: small compared with projections of 21st century warming, approximately equivalent to the reduced warming achieved by decarbonizing global electricity generation, and large compared with the reduced warming achieved by decarbonizing US electricity with wind.
It also claims that solar effect would be smaller but that's besides the point, unless you're looking for more bias fodder.
The issue is that those "approximately equivalent" and "large compared with the reduced warming achieved by decarbonizing US electricity" are COMPLETELY ignoring that the US is a part of a global system.
As seen from the graph they've provided.
They claim a warming of 0.24C over Continental US from 0.5TWe produced with wind power, by 2080, at which point it would level out.
At the same time they claim a cooling of about -0.48C over Continental US from
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
The abstract mentions that the mechanism seems to be that the turbines or air patterns due to them break the boundary layers, allowing warmer air back down to warm the surface. This seems like it would be geographically very localized to within and downwind of large wind farms, and is not in any way atmospheric or climate warming.
Based on the included graph, I'm also going to guess that they're in the photovoltaic camp and feel that wind should be a secondary option.
fencepost
just a little off
If you read the summary well, they are comparing a 100% wind setup for USA (something that we all know that is not even desirable, we need several power sources) and they agree that the worse case is a "small" 0.24C increase due a little higher mixing of atmospheric layers... comparing that with the current setup is a clear win, as that value is even less what we get if we could stop using coal and other dirty power sources everywhere.
Yes, everything we do can change things, probably big cities make higher temperature increase due to their skyscrapers and AC systems than wind farms and this paper just try to measure this... and agree that is a better solution.
Sadly people do not really read things, just quickly screen the summary and assume what they want... or even worse, dirty energy lobbies abuse the paper to try to spread FUD.
Higuita
Interesting, do you have a source for that number? I hope it's true, it would put the conspiracy theorists' "follow the money" argument 6ft under once and for all.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
Forbes: https://www.forbes.com/sites/judeclemente/2015/06/25/how-much-oil-does-the-world-have-left/#7227563d5b1f
"Even at current lowered crude prices of $63 per barrel, the 1.7 trillion proven reserves alone have a value of $107 trillion"
Cue the Kevin Spacey Lex Luthor.
Wrong!
By themselves, greenhouse gasses add NOTHING.
What greenhouse gasses do is TRAP heat.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
Fan death, hello!
We NEED to have multiple types of energy. Wind, and Solar should be just PART of our energy.
We need to add more Geo-thermal, tidal, and most of all, Nukes.
In the end, we need to create an energy matrix and limit the input from any one of these energy types.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Just another example of people using higher math to back up some crackpot idea, like claiming a Prius pollutes more than a Hummer.
If an electrician slips and falls to his death while performing maintenance on a nuclear cooling tower, would you say that fatality was due to nuclear power? Of course not, you'd say that was an industrial accident. Same as if that electrician's brother slips and falls to his death while performing maintenance on a wind turbine.
When a wind farm produces a deadly tornado, or a solar farm turns in an Archimedes death ray, let us know. And no other power source has the chance for such devastation that each of its generators has an evacuation zone for everyone within a ten mile radius.
IT'S COMPLETE BULLSHIT YOU ARE A FAGGOT XX LARGE FAGGOT
Filter error: Don't use so many caps. It's like YELLING.
Filter error: Don't use so many caps. It's like YELLING.
Filter error: Don't use so many caps. It's like YELLING.
if you can cool the planet safely thats still bad.
Look at history, when all civs collapsed or when disease broke out or when millions starved it was due to sudden cool cold summers.
COLD = death.
Extra warmness means more time to grow food, = more food.
Try growing crops at -2c, on ice, with all water frozen solid.
Liberty freedom are no1, not dicks in suits.
Market value of raw materials in the ground is not the same as investments. In fact, they are entirely different.
When you figure out what an investment is you may return and possibly be taken semi seriously.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Keith_(scientist)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_Engineering
Carbon Engineering is a Direct Air Capture technology company, whose aim is clearly not to promote wind power.
There is an increase in a small area (compared to the distance you HAVE to have between wind turbines for optimal efficiency) but it is miniscule and static. The same effect happens with buildings. And the effect is FAR FAR LESS than the UHI effect. Don't see any studies warning about building towns and cities, do you?
Guess which assumption is the least viable...
Oh, hang on, thats already going to happen if the USA plants all the power needed as wind turbines to replace its power use. So, yeah, not a problem.
Oh, what WOULD happen is the USA (no glaciers) gets warmer while the other places (with glaciers) get cooler. Which will reverse the glacier retreat that AGW has produced, increase the snow cover, increase the reflection of solar energy into space and therefore decrease the global energy budget, cooling the planet.
Too busy trying to find ways to halt changing to renewables to think this through, aren't you?
But what about the study. Debunk it.
No? Then please explain why your point is relevant. There ARE harvard professors who are ideologues. If you're a rightwinger you already know this. They're all liberal anti christian commies out to indoctrinate your children for the NWO.
So please tell me what YOU think causes someone to NOT have an anti-renewable ideology if they're a Harvard Applied Physics professor? And explain why one of them owning a company funded by money from fracking and fossil fuels companies isn't being affected when you already insist that the entire AGW thing is due to scientists chasing that research grant money?
Tell us where the only options for people who don't agree with your bollocks is "anything that says windpower causes warming is FUD". THIS report and your bullshit is FUD, but you aren't ALL THERE IS about wind power.
You frigging idiot.
so wind power adds 0.24C _one_ time.
fossil fuel power rise in earth's warming will not stop and keep on increasing unless we stop using it (and even if we stop using it, the rise in temperature might still continue to go on).
On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero.
could mean more climate warming, at least regionally
Isn't that just a fancy way of saying local weather? And don't we always hear the argument that we shouldn't look at local weather when talking about climate change?
Actually, it seems as a one of two study. A post doc student, doing his diligence. Of something never published. Such as what are the results downwind from something upwind. It would have been better if he would have used the engineering studies already out to validate his results, but he was using what tools we have now, supposedly better then the slide rule results of previous studies. He validated the old studies. Stick a building up, you change the airflow, you stick a fan on it, you create a non laminar flow. Air pressure changes, downwind. Now, here are some of the changes. And he listed them. How's that a bad study. Even naval engeeners of the 16 the century, knew to interrupt the windflow of the enemy, cut their manuverability, and changed a battle. Is it any different now?
I Google'd "deaths per terawatt" and found this: https://www.statista.com/stati...
Non-paywalled data is at https://www.forbes.com/sites/j...
The biggest problem with this claim is that it is a gross oversimplification even with some pretty straight forward reasoning. To understand the deaths by certain industrial causes you have to consider direct and indirect mechanisms. Direct mechanisms contribute historical data, however indirect mechanisms do not create obvious historical data.
For us to consider deaths by Solar and Wind direct causes maybe someone falling off a roof or a tower. The duration of such incidents are hours. An indirect cause maybe a chemical byproduct of the production process or perhaps going crazy from infra sound. These are somewhat avoidable and correctable issues with a duration of months to years. Propagation over area can be tens to hundreds of metres.
To consider Coal direct causes maybe someone getting black lung from mining, being burnt to death, falling, crushed or fire. The duration of such incidents are days to weeks. Indirect causes maybe asthma or other lung diseases. You may breathe in a natural radio-isotope causing lung cancer. These are difficult to avoid and correct with a duration of years to decades. Propagation over area can be tens to hundreds of Kilometres.
These are easy to understand because the means that creates the deaths are obvious. However with Nuclear the causes of death are not so obvious.
To consider Nuclear direct causes maybe Industrial accidents similar to a coal plant or a severe exposure to radiation. The duration of such incidents are years to indefinite considering that Chernobyl has only just been bought under control with New Safe Confinement and Fukushima is barely controlled. Indirect causes for Nuclear are ignored in the forbes article because it ignores the externalities of the Nuclear industry whilst focusing on the one for other industries. These are so varied because the vectors are cancer from absorbing radio-isotopes, transgenic disease from DNA damage received in a previous generation, pregnancies that failed to come to term and fatal birth defects from those who did all occur over a long time. You may breathe in an enriched radio-isotope causing lung cancer. You may drink or eat it and you could not detect it was there as it organically binds inside your body. These are impossible to correct with a duration of decades to unknown amount of years. You can't tell if you do or do not avoid them. Propagation of radio-isotopes from Fukushima has spread all over the world, with much of it landing on the west coast of the US. We know this because the MOX fuel elements in Unit three can be tracked using data from the Nuclear test ban treaty monitoring stations. Bio-accumulation in the environment is also a complex subject that takes a long time to manifest as something that can be measured. This is all relative to the rates at which the radio-isotopes decay through their daughter products.
When I get a chance I subscribe to statistica to have a look at the underlying data however it is clear to see the flaw in the reasoning is that we are still at the beginning of the nuclear accidents, there is no historical data to compare. Considerable obfuscation of data has been performed to keep the truth vague and ambiguous. To truly understand it you have to model the propagation of these elements in the body and the environment. However I think H. L. Mencken summed it up nicely when he said:
For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
o'rly? And you do not think that they have invested money in finding those proven reserves, or licensing access or even put those potential revenues on their balance sheets or projections for future revenues?
Then you are simple a useful idiot who parses words in their most simplistic form, enjoy your shilling
There are some. Solar causes localized cooling and massive farms could actually become a weather problem, especially if efficiency keeps going up. But, all of that heat energy just gets moved with the electricity produced.
But, as a kid, I loved water skiing near the nuclear plant at Lake Keowee during cooler weather because the water was about 10 degrees warmer. That is what nuclear plants do - create heat. The portion that does not become electricity due to inefficiencies goes into the local environment.
Any source that uses heat to drive turbines is going to heat the local environment. They just aren't very efficient at the conversion.
But, as this article points out, any source that drives a turbine at all will generate heat. So, even hydro is going to lose some of its energy to heating the water and the things the water flows over.
But, I'd be surprised if the net effect to the local environment versus letting the water free flow through the same fall is not a cooling one because a lot of the potential energy is converted to electricity that would have otherwise been converted to heat in the natural course of the water's movement.
The paper states that wind farms have local impact mostly at night. In total they do not have an climate impact, but it could have an local effect which can cause negative results when 0.28 ÂC more is an issue for local plants and animals.
They further want to support the selection of whether to use solar or wind in certain areas.
Unfortunately, the /. title suggests an issue comparable to CO2 emissions. This is not what the study is about.
They have not invested $107 trillion, as you stated, so don't be a smart ass.
Nope, this is coming from fossil fuel corporations who stand to lose $107 TRILLION in investments....
You even contradicted yourself with:
"Even at current lowered crude prices of $63 per barrel, the 1.7 trillion proven reserves alone have a value of $107 trillion"
You claim $107 trillion in investments and then you state $107 trillion in product value. Are you trying to imply it costs $1 in investment to get $1 in oil out of the ground?
Of course you aren't, so nobody has invested $107 trillion. Admit your mistake, like an adult, and move on..