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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."
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.
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?
Fukushima, Chernobyl, Mayak, Three Mile Island, Lucens, Sellafield, Ibaraki, Jaslovské Bohunice, Idaho Falls all INES level 4 or higher. You can argue in favour of nuclear till you are blue in the face but, fair or not, given the long history of nuclear safety issues the public is about as interested in living within 500 kilometres of a nuclear plant as it is in eating as vanilla ice cream with ketchup and onions.
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!"
How do these compare to nuclear?
Nuclear: no carbon pollution at all, its first commercial iteration being several orders of magnitude safer than most (and at least 1 than any) "renewables" (and especially coal or oil), any subsequent iterations being drastically safer than even that. Any opposition against nuclear is 100% political.
The creatures outside looked from Alt-Right to Antifa; but already it was impossible to say which was which.
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.
If you think CO2 is enough to change that balance, then you better believe altering the patterns of motion and conduction are as well.
Global mean temperature of the Earth without greenhouse gasses is ~ 33C cooler than today.
Global mean temperature of the Earth without wind turbines is ~ exactly the same as today.
He didn't say it was, he said that conflating the adding of heat to the atmosphere with changing where it happens to get warmer is pro-fossil-fuel FUD.
The paper doesn't conflate them, explicitly acknowledging that the observed temperature change is regional, but the summary of the underlying message it delivers, which is that it causes significant warming, most definitely strongly appears to.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
If you think CO2 is enough to change that balance, then you better believe altering the patterns of motion and conduction are as well.
Yes, that's exactly what Manabe and Wetherald did: they did the greenhouse calculation with accurate wavelength-dependent infrared absorption and a model of convection.
BTW a greenhouse works not so much because it stops radiation but because it prevents conduction and convection.
Uh... no. You may be thinking of the kind of greenhouse that's made out of glass, the ones that you grow plants in. That's not what we're talking about here (and even there, conduction is trivial-- look up the thermal conductivity of air some time.) The "greenhouse effect" we're talking about is due to infrared absorption.
It's always funny when someone who clearly doesn't know how greenhouse gases work complains about "climate doom people". A greenhouse works because it stops conduction and convection. Greenhouse gases have an impact by raising the height in the atmosphere where infrared radiation is emitted into space. This means the effective temperature of the Earth for radiation emission is lower.
Always funny when a greenie proves not only don't they understand physics but also can't read
"BTW a greenhouse works not so much because it stops radiation but because it prevents conduction and convection."
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.
What gives is price.
Nuclear is much more expensive than any other method of power generation. So much so that if we over-build solar and wind by a factor of 3 to handle intermittency, it's still cheaper than nuclear.
There's also the matter of waste. If that was actually priced in, nuclear would be in even worse shape. Instead, we're still operating on the fiction that the government will take care of it for free.
Finally, "advanced designs" that were supposed to eliminate the problems with nuclear reactors have failed to deliver. For example, pebble-beds turned out to jam in the reactor, wore off the outside of the "pebble" much faster than expected, and have still-unexplained heavy metal contamination in their cooling loops.
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.
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.
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
And yet coal-ash disasters can destroy tons of square miles, pollute rivers for hundreds of miles, and cost over a $billion to clean up, and nobody says a word. The coal industry better thank $diety that "nuclear" is a now a curse-word...
http://www.washingtonpost.com/...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
http://appvoices.org/coalash/d...
(and more I'm too lazy to look up)
I am not a sig.
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
So your best argument is that a physical process doesn't exist because it was ineptly named? The power of magical thinking...
Ezekiel 23:20
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
You know that in the last 15 years the wind turbine have turn much better than the ones used 20 years ago!
Currently big and modern wind turbines work well, do not fail, produce good amount of energy for the wind level... they are big and expensive, but still much less than other power stations and do not have unknowns anymore, other than how much wind will be at a certain time. But that is also not a problem anymore because experience and data analysis show in average how many days you get without wind and with high winds. You can plan based on that, just as you can play a coal plan based on the average coal price and electricity prices... it can go up, it can go down, but you use that average and error level to map the expected break even/profit time, with a certain level of confidence. It is exactly the same not with wind farms
Higuita
Water vapor is subject to short-term feedback loops that CO2 is not. That is why it has different impact. And also why it's not of such interest for changes taking decades.
Ezekiel 23:20
Appeal to authority is only a fallacy if the authority you appeal to is not competent in the topic.
E.g. because Mr. Smith, btw. a Doctor in Medicine, thinks climate change is bollocks, then we better all side with Dr. Smith!! He must be right, after all he is a PhD!
That was a fallacy.
On the other hand: Dr. Roman Miller, PhD in climatology, PhD in meteorology, Professor at MiT, tells us: "climate change could happen quicker and stronger, than we at the moment expect". Considering that Dr. Miller, is an expert in "climate stuff", I rather side with him, than a random journalist from huffington post.
That is not a fallacy. Albeit Dr. Miller might be wrong, and me believing him, might be wrong, too.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
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.
First of all: that is not true.
Secondly: the metric is completely irrelevant.
You are counting people who died in coal mines?
Why don't you count the people who died in iron ore mines? Wow, because then you would need to think about "steel", and how much "steel" is used in a nuke.
And from there we have to count down every aspect in the industrial chain and craftsmen chain.
E.g. I doubt more than a hand full of idiots (who rejected safety regulations) died in Germany due to installing of roof top solar. But I'm pretty sure a few dozens died in traffic accident, by traveling to the place where they installed roof top solar. So: how many people die per year in the maintaining and fueling and mining for nuklear power plants? Easy answer: you have no idea!
So stop reiterating that bollocks claim.
If people were rationally concerned about safety,
Rationally concerned about what kind of safety? _My own safety_ is absolutely not touched by any accident in a mine, or on a rooftop or at a wind mill construction site! _My own safety_ is only marginally touched by coal plants as they have effective air scrubbing! _My own safety_ is touched much more by Diesel cars in my town, than by the next best coal plant, just outside of town!!!
And to top it _my own safety_ and that includes 50% - 80% of the German population: is massively touched by any old nuklear power plant around us. And that includes the French ones, but particularly the Belgium ones, and also the Swiss ones. You know: Germany has 80 million inhabitants. Here is a nice map with most active nuclear plants, no idea why some are missing (e.g. Neckar Westheim is missing): https://www1.wdr.de/wissen/tec...
If one of them goes boom, especially one of the Belgium ones, e.g. Tiange close to Aachen, then we have to evacuate up to 50million people!!! To where exactly? How exactly? Considering that Poland will have to evacuate, too. That likely parts of France, Netherlands, Switzerland, definitely 90% of Belgium have to be evacuated. To where? Hae? Any clue? No? Me neither!
What do you think what kind of impact that will have on the harvests in Europe? Basically every harvest east of the plant, in a 1000 - 2000 miles range, and most likely most of the cattle, will be lost. Do you have any idea what it means when _the world_ loses 10% - 25% of its harvests in one year?
No please call me irrational again, you stupid *******!
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
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.
The lovely thing about this subject is nobody knows what's going on but everyone is willing to demand money and other people do things
https://www.nasa.gov/topics/ea...
Water vapor is known to be Earth’s most abundant greenhouse gas, but the extent of its contribution to global warming has been debated. Using recent NASA satellite data, researchers have estimated more precisely than ever the heat-trapping effect of water in the air, validating the role of the gas as a critical component of climate change.
Andrew Dessler and colleagues from Texas A&M University in College Station confirmed that the heat-amplifying effect of water vapor is potent enough to double the climate warming caused by increased levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.
All the article does is reaffirm my point that without a thorough understanding of how the dominant green house gas functions you can't make meaningful predictions based on incomplete models.
But hey tell me again how anything that says windpower causes warming is FUD.
the long history of nuclear safety issues
And yet the fact is, the per-terawatt-hour death rate from nuclear is...
Unknown.
If we were rationally having this discussion we would be discussing transgenic disease and the role of bio-accumulation in propagating radio-isotopes through the food chain. If we were having a realistic discussion we wouldn't just talk about deaths of people, we would talk about the genomic damage done to all species, including human beings, from the abundance of radioactive effluents released into the environment by the nuclear industry.
The deaths of the communities that surround nuclear power and the mental health issues.
The statistical reduction of the birth rate of the human race and plethora of other health issues that are starting to emerge as a result of weakened immune systems from internal radio-isotope absorption that don't include death are also valid things to talk about if nuclear lobbyists are going to refer to solar installers who don't wear proper safety gear and fall off roofs.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
Somehow I don't think we have much to worry about a cooler planet in the next 50-100 years, but if the warming keeps happening then most of north western Europe will turn into an ice box during the winter (it's been getting progressively worse over the last number but still not a patch on what could happen) in the near future due to the ocean currents switching, probably the same in a few other places. So saying it's better to be warming rather than cooling is missing the reality of what impacts a general planet warming has. It's not just the whole planet getting warmer, it's the average, with some places going to get much cooler and both of these will cause widespread displacement of people.
Right now, cooling the planet would be better than warming it further as it would reduce the impact of the current changes, reduce the likelihood of widespread conflict, and provide enough time for us to work out how to raise the planet's temperature in 100-200 years time if we accidentally cooled it too much.
I'm not sure where you're trying to go with all this - I hadn't mentioned the greenhouse effect, nor did the "prior poster".
Yes, climate scientists are aware that the great majority of trapped warmth is from water, and the effect of CO2 is relatively small. But even tiny effects add up over time when the equilibrium is altered, and we're observing exactly that. The calculated decrease in radiative transfer from the IR blocked by all the extra CO2 agrees very well with these observations - and no other potential cause comes close.
The evidence shows that the localised RWP, MWP, and LIA events were triggered by factors other than CO2 - like fluctuations in solar irradiance and vulcanism.
Why would anyone engrave "Elbereth"?