New Study Suggests Wind Farms Can Cause Climate Change 384
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.'"
Local impact = climate change? (Score:5, Insightful)
Who wrote that headline and how can we make him stop writing new ones.
Re:Local impact = climate change? (Score:4, Informative)
"These changes, if spatially large enough, might have noticeable impacts on local to regional weather and climate."
Headline matches the summary.
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Re:Local impact = climate change? (Score:4, Funny)
"These changes, if spatially large enough, might have noticeable impacts on local to regional weather and climate."
Headline matches the summary.
yes it matches .. sort of. The summary uses words like 'might' and 'could', but the headline uses 'can'. IMHO 'can' denotes something that is far more likely to occur than 'might' or 'could' - hence the headline is effectively editorializing (even if not explicitly done)
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IMHO 'can' denotes something that is far more likely to occur than 'might' or 'could' - hence the headline is effectively editorializing (even if not explicitly done)
'could' is the future tense of the word 'can.' They mean precisely the same thing.
Now you know.
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Just because you can have sex with a man, doesn't mean you will.
Even if you could walk [at some point in the future], it doesn't mean you will.
Have we really fallen so far as a society that people no longer know the difference between basic words like can and will? Shit, no wonder I can't understand half the garbage people put online - they themselves have no idea what they're actually saying.
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"Climate change" generally refers to a world-wide phenomenon. What TFA actually says is that the ground under a wind farm can be slightly warmer due to the turbines. The effect is highly localized and not at all worrisome like actual Climate Change is.
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It's deliberately misleading to generate page clicks. Gutter press level, basically.
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Are under the impression that Slashdot is /not/ gutter press?
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Well if you change enough of the local areas then you could effect a global scale.
Everything you choose has a trade-offs. The best defense isn't "green energy" but energy diversity. So we limit the hazards of our trade-offs and if one trade-off becomes too expensive then you can switch to an other one without have to do a major change.
Re:Local impact = climate change? (Score:5, Funny)
Female reporter: "Those windmills will keep them cool!"
Morbo [youtube.com]: "WINDMILLS DO NOT WORK THAT WAY! GOODNIGHT!"
Re:Local impact = climate change? (Score:4, Insightful)
Actually they are right.
But also what should be in the news:
cars affect climate change
houses affect climate change
everyone by breathing affect climate change.
So its nothing new - move along. Everything affects climate change even the wings of a colibri in the amazonas...
Re:obvious (Score:5, Insightful)
Changes are made to a ecosystem and the ecosystem reacts to those changes, news at eleven.
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecosystem [wikipedia.org]
"An ecosystem is a biological system consisting of all the living organisms or biotic components in a particular area and the nonliving or abiotic component with which the organisms interact, such as air, mineral soil, water and sunlight."
Even if windmills are not living beings, they interact with wind that in turn interacts with living beings and other abiotic components. I'm no biologist but I think this is quite obvious.
Re:Local impact = climate change? (Score:5, Insightful)
Stop conflating climate with a global system.
Localities also have a climate. Climate does not equal global climate. Climate is merely the weather over a significant period of time of a particular location -- your back yard has a climate, though it likely matches your neighbor's climate. Valleys have a climate different than the mountains that surround them.
In short, in your attempt to be a pedant and nitpick the headline and the summary, you have instead shown yourself a fool. A foolish fool.
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There is no such thing as a global climate though. There are a number of different climates which interact in a global system, but it's not a global climate.
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Who wrote that headline and how can we make him stop writing new ones.
Call The Telegraph and complain would be my suggestion. Author: Louise Gray, Environment Correspondent
Telegraph General Switchboard +44 20 7931 2000
Re:Local impact = climate change? (Score:4, Informative)
These changes, if spatially large enough, might have noticeable impacts on local to regional weather and climate.
I think the implication is that a world covered in wind farms would experience climate change, which is improbably indeed
Umm, no. From a few sentences around the quote you cherry picked FTFA:
However Prof Zhou pointed out the most extreme changes were just at night and the overall changes may be smaller.
Also, it is much smaller than the estimated change caused by other factors such as man made global warming.
“Overall, the warming effect reported in this study is local and is small compared to the strong background year-to-year land surface temperature changes,” he added.
The study read: "Despite debates regarding the possible impacts of wind farms on regional to global scale weather and climate, modelling studies agree that they can significantly affect local scale meteorology."
The effect is localized, remains localized, and does not have anywhere near the same impact as "other factors such as man made global warming". The use of the word "extreme" to categorize a 1.37F change in overnight temperatures in a ten year period is a bit, well, extreme. It's good that they did notice this effect and my guess is something will be done to the turbine design to mitigate this 0.72C (1.37F) over ten years change in localized, overnight temperatures near wind turbines. This is much ado about nothing but I am sure the climate change extremists will be all over it, while the rest of us who do believe and are trying to do something rational about climate change will put this on a low priority. The benefits of renewable energy still outweigh that ridiculously low cost with current turbine designs. If things stay static this might be a problem. Given that the research is out, I am sure there will be a reaction. The important thing is not to come unhinged and react a bit too wildly to every bit of negative data that comes up. This is really not that big a problem it can't be designed or engineered around, and I believe even Prof. Zhou would agree.
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I think GW is about a global increase of atmospheric temperature.
FTA, it's not clear to me that there is an increase of atmospheric temperature, even in that locale. All that's mentioned is the ground staying warmer; it doesn't say anything about what happens in the air above the turbines.
Re:Local impact = climate change? (Score:4, Insightful)
The annoying thing is that we all know now that the denialists are going to add this to their talking points. "Hockey stick", "Climategate", "Wind farms cause warming, so we might as well burn oil shale".
Re:Local impact = climate change? (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Local impact = climate change? (Score:5, Insightful)
Not really, once you remove the turbines, damage may have been done, you may have changed your treeline structure and it will take many years to get back to normal.
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Damage? Who said that climate change is damage? Often, yeah, it makes for unfortunate situations, like droughts or increased floods, or grazing land turning to desert. Other times it turns grazing land into farm-able land, or in this case, lessens the effect of windstorms. (oh so slightly).
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Second Windmills will probably alter rainfall patterns greatly, my guess is that they will cause rainfall changes ahead of the windfarm with increases and behind will get drier. This is typical of mountains.
The density at which windmills would need to be placed to provide a significant portion of the US electricity generation would not be anything like a mountain range for altering airflow. More like the effect of some trees planted across the continent a few miles apart from each other.
Third Wind Farms derive their power from a really odd source. It is primarily tidal power. As a result the effect will include increasing winds in other locations and laterations of overall atmospheric patterns some. (Not a lot but some)
Winds are not tidal. They are convection currents normalising air pressure between areas of the earths surface that are not equally heated by the sun, due to local differences such as reflectivity, heat absorbtion capability o
Re:Local impact = climate change? (Score:5, Informative)
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...
Re:Local impact = climate change? (Score:5, Informative)
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 [howstuffworks.com]
Wind farms apparently do weird shit to bats though: http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn14593-wind-turbines-make-bat-lungs-explode.html [newscientist.com]
Re:Local impact = climate change? (Score:5, Insightful)
You missed asphalt ... which absorbs heat during the day and slowly radiates it at night, completely altering local weather in and near large cities.
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Coal makes smog and dumps carbon.
You forgot that coal creates acid rain that generally kills off wildlife and not-so-slowly dissolves buildings away.
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and not-so-slowly dissolves buildings away.
The broken window economics folks might consider this a positive.
Re:Local impact = climate change? (Score:5, Informative)
Coal doesn't make whole areas uninhabitable
Yes it does. Ever seen a strip mine?
Re:Local impact = climate change? (Score:4, Interesting)
Ok, I'm not saying strip mines are a good thing, but everything we do affects the environment. Our advancements in agriculture have significantly increased humidity in the whole Midwest [niu.edu], and everyone knows the problems caused by miles of asphalt and buildings. It'd be crazy not to assume that wind turbines do the same, but how much more do they affect an area compared to an office building of the same size?
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Yes it does. Ever seen Beijing?
No, and neither has anyone else lately [denverpost.com].
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i don't know... FTA
“This makes sense, since at night the ground becomes much cooler than the air just a few hundred meters above the surface, and the wind farms generate gentle turbulence near the ground that causes these to mix together, thus the ground doesn't get quite as cool. This same strategy is commonly used by fruit growers (who fly helicopters over the orchards rather than windmills) to combat early morning frosts.”
sounds like the inverse of blowing on hot food.. which, IMO, doesn't q
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I wonder if this is why I see weird short-windmills scattered throughout the vineyards in the Niagara-On-The-Lake region...
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It could just be a Mark 1 wind farm. Individual turbines have gotten a lot bigger and taller over the years.
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Even so, these changes are wholly dependent on these machines - remove the wind fans and the weather will revert to its previous state. This has nothing to do with climate change, which is a change to the underlying system.
What would you define as climate change then, if you take the extra CO2 and other man made gasses out of the air weather will revert back to its previous state as well as the removal of these giant structures littered across the country side.
Re:Local impact = climate change? (Score:5, Insightful)
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That is not accurate at all.
If you change the climate then you necessarily change the environment, which in tun effects the climate.
If you turn a desert into a swamp or a forest into glacier then there is no easy way to go back.
Not only will even a small amount of climate change kill most indigenous life but it will also change the landscape enough that no matter how much time you give it after you remove the wind farms the climate very well might never go back.
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out of so called "destruction", new things arrive.
without much of the so called destruction, we wouldn't exist.
True, but now that we do exist, I would like the destruction to stop, thank you very much.
No way! (Score:5, Funny)
We must stop this reliance on wind energy, which is causing such harm to the environment! Increased usage of this harmful wind pollution will inevitably result in a global climate catastrophe within the next century! We must start finding alternative fuels NOW!
Done to death already (Score:4, Interesting)
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This has ...The bottom line... effect of ... cooling the earth.
Global warming solved. Got it.
Re:Done to death already (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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Solar power also cools the earth...
So what you're saying is we need global warming to fix it? I'll just go drive my SUV around the block a couple times.
Of course they can. (Score:5, Insightful)
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.)
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So there's going to be a wind farm on every single square mile of land? Including the ocean?
No? Then you're not going to have a global change of one degree.
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So there's going to be a wind farm on every single square mile of land? Including the ocean?
um, well...yes...eventually.
Our demand for energy is still rising, we're progressively banning all other forms of energy generation for not being 'green' enough. And wind generation is very very inefficient in terms of land use.
So unless we switch to another form of power generation before then...yes
RTFA before writing headline (Score:3, Informative)
From TFA:
However Prof Zhou pointed out the most extreme changes were just at night and the overall changes may be smaller.
Also, it is much smaller than the estimated change caused by other factors such as man made global warming.
“Overall, the warming effect reported in this study is local and is small compared to the strong background year-to-year land surface temperature changes,” he added.
...
“This makes sense, since at night the ground becomes much cooler than the air just a few hundred meters above the surface, and the wind farms generate gentle turbulence near the ground that causes these to mix together, thus the ground doesn't get quite as cool. This same strategy is commonly used by fruit growers (who fly helicopters over the orchards rather than windmills) to combat early morning frosts.”
Duh, removal of enegy from enviro affects enviro (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Duh, removal of enegy from enviro affects envir (Score:5, Funny)
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That makes two things entropy has in common with my ex. (The first: both are always increasing)
Robert Heinlein (Score:5, Interesting)
All rational people understand that entropy exists and is always increasing. The point is not that humans can have an impact on climate and environment, the question is can we do things to minimize the impact.
For example, we replaced horse poop all over the city with leaded fuel exhaust. When we did not all live in cities, the horse poop was not so bad, but cars were better for cities. Then we realized that lead was not so good for us, so we took lead out. Then the exhaust was still not so good, so we made cars more efficient. These changes costs important people lots of money, so they were opposed by uncreative people with lots of money, but in the end we have more efficient transportation that do not leave piles of feces in the street.
So I read this report the other day, and my question is still the same. Would these locations prefer a windmill farm or coal fired plant. I ask this question because ultimately we cannot continue to reap the benefit of electricity production and outsource the consequences. It is expensive to do so. The question is not that does the new tech cause problems, but are those problems less than the old tech. I think it is arguably so.
Re:Robert Heinlein (Score:4, Interesting)
It's not that I disagree, it's that I sure wish you had added that we noticed that horses were difficult and walking was slow, so we added mass transit, and then about 100 years later we noticed that no matter how little autos emit from their tailpipes, they are still not very welcome in cities because they take up too much space, slow down mass transit buses and street cars, and are far too dangerous to pedestrians and bicycles. Because of this, [some] cities in the past 20 years have actively worked to reduce the number of autos in the city, through a suite of tools including car-free streets or urban centers, reducing parking minimums in zoning and even replacing them with parking maximums, increasing the price of on-street parking while reducing it's quantity, increasing the availability and efficiency of mass transit and, more recently, bicycle sharing, and rethinking roadway infrastructure to improve the flow and safety for peds, cyclists, and mass transit users even if it degrades the efficiency for motor vehicles.
Sorry, not entirely relevant but I couldn't resist!
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"There is no such thing as a free lunch"
Sure there is. You just have to get to the fridge at 11:55.
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> Would these locations prefer a windmill farm or coal fired plant.
Oh, wow. This is the most blatant example of a false dichotomy I have seen for days. There are many other options, all of them more practical. Note, especially, the human death rate per Terrawatt-hour of energy produced here: http://www-958.ibm.com/software/data/cognos/manyeyes/visualizations/deaths-per-twh-by-energy-sources [ibm.com] and look at the bottom of the graph on the right (consistent with http://nextbigfuture.com/2011/03/deaths-per-twh-b [nextbigfuture.com]
Not just that! (Score:2)
They also extract energy from the athmosphere (I actually have no idea on how much).
But in the end all depends on how many wind farms will be deployed.
Cities, planes .... (Score:2)
Cities cause local/regional climate change.
Plane travel collectively has a continent wide impact on cloud cover.
Face it, there are enough people that anything we do collectively has impact on the world.
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Face it, there are enough people that anything we do collectively has impact on the world.
as part of the biosphere of our planet, this is entirely natural.
This is where the Gaia theory starts, that our atmosphere, climate included, is generated by the biosphere, by all us living things. To give the most dramatic example,l we changed it from an anaerobic atmosphere to an aerobic one.
Changing our atmosphere, our world, our climate, is as natural as breathing.
Trees (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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Dingdingdingding! This has actually been discussed here on Slashdot to goddamn death. Every time there's a story about wind energy some asshole pops up to say "but if we put up enough windmills to get all our energy" (or whatever other fascetious argument) "then what effect will that have on the atmosphere?" Well, there used to be trees where we're putting the windmills, what did you think THEY did to the wind? There's clearly an excess of energy in the system of global weather, we're seeing the results now
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Windmills extract much more energy for a given projected area - that is the entire point of these machines.
Trees don't "harvest" any energy, so perhaps you could make a statement that makes some kind of sense. They do, however, turn that energy into benefit; a tree whipped by the wind will become stronger. Trees turn wind energy into structural integrity, which we can make use of later.
Regardless, the total surface area of the trees that would be in a place versus the windmills that would be in a place is much higher even if you count the rotor as a disc, let alone if you treat it as what it is.
Umm.... so do buildings... (Score:5, Funny)
predicted that one (Score:2, Insightful)
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.
Climate change, isn't that what we want? (Score:5, Funny)
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If you go back far enough you will find the answer is no. Wind power was proposed to provide an alternate source of energy to reduce carbon pollution to slow climate change. They hadn't thought far enough ahead to consider climate or other effects of the things on large scale. Up until that point 'wind farms' were more theory than practice.
yet another reason for solar (Score:2, Funny)
This is a great boon to those looking for a reason to choose solar over wind.
We could ditch oil, coal, and nuclear entirely if we just build solar farms.
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Dumbass, he wasn't talking about "building a farm on the Sun", he was talking about a farm where we could grow our own tiny stars right here on Earth.
Trees affect the wind too! (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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I have had some rabid grenies claim to me that the windmills were slowing the earths rotation.
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Counter-argument: what if it was actually speeding up the Earth's rotation?
Just so we're clear... (Score:3)
Compare this to the heat island effect (Score:2)
It only causes measurement problems (Score:4, Informative)
Windfarms only cause apparent climate change when meteorologists have their thermometers on the ground. Mixing air of different temperatures doesn't heat it, not while the conservation of energy is valid.
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There you go again, bringing fact and sanity into the conversation.
Stop that, it's an election year, and foaming at the mouth counter-rationalism statements are what is required.
I'm mostly concerned that the blades will cut the puppies and kittens in half when it rains cats and dogs.
No-Guilt Massive Energy Transfers (Score:5, Interesting)
I think this almost falls into the 'no shit, Sherlock' camp. I'm glad someone with credentials is finally saying it. Please pass it along to the geo-thermal guys, who seem to think that sucking energy from the inside of this planet will never have an effect. Oh, and the wave-power-generation guys need to know too - they'll be disturbing ecologies and water flow patterns for miles around - who knows how far those effects will cascade? Scale counts - oil consumption wasn't a problem until we scaled it out - the same fate awaits any terrestrial energy source we scale.
There are only two places to get energy: 1. Earth, 2. Not Earth. Given a choice, I'll choose 2.
Re:No-Guilt Massive Energy Transfers (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Skyscrapers and any city (Score:3)
Less Impact (Score:2)
This option doesn't emit carcinogens into our environment leading to health issues down the road.
It may cause climatological changes in the local area, but call me crazy for thinking I'd rather adapt to weather pattern changes than have my body try to adapt to carcinogens from current energy producing means.
Just like forests. (Score:2)
Trees also slow the wind causing a LOCAL change. So should we also ban trees?
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Not only that trees capture moisture and create ground level humidity resulting in temperature change moderation. Darn those rascally megaflora.
Misleading story about microclimate, not global (Score:2)
... might have noticeable impacts on local to regional weather and climate
In other news, jumping up and down on the spot might have noticable impacts on the temperature in your imediate area.
Does it imact global weather and climate, who cares... weve already been paid.
Here's a shocker (Score:5, Interesting)
Windmills will reduce global warming and CO2 (Score:3, Informative)
The reason fossil fuels are well known to cause climate change is the effect is, practically permenant since we are raising the level of the CO2. The CO2 will STILL BE THERE after we stop burning fossil fuels, even after we have depleted every bit of coal and oil, it will be in the atmosphere for a long time. The idea that wind farms would cause warming is absurd, since wind farms could displace Co2 consumption they would reduce it by reducing Co2 emissions. The effect of reducing or eliminating CO2 would have a far greater positive impact than any negative of wind. The effet of Co2 is permenant and irreversible. A Wind farm can be turned on and off at will.
Another reason for these renewables is they are renewable, climate change is happening but the fact tht solar and wind are renewable alone makes them better choices than fossil fuels. Fossil fuels will be depleted, first hitting peak and then decling, hence peak oil. THAT is an absolute, gauranteed physical certainty. It is hard to precisely estimate how much longer fossil fuels will last but they WILL run out. And sooner than later. Since data on how much is in the ground is imprecise there is uncertaintly in the precise amount but we have a general idea. Its like you have an hourglass and you can see that the top half of the hourglass is a certain size, but you dont know how far it is filled with sand, because the top half is opaque, but you can see how much has poured into the bottom half and how long it has been pouring in there, thus a rate of depletion,, you know that there is a finite amount of sand in the top half and that it is emptying out, and you can see by the rate it is emptying that the sand will be depleted not too far from now, even though you do not know exactly when, you know it will happen and it is not that far away. The "cornucopians" who think thje earth has an unlimited amount of fossil fuels and that basically we can do anything, that the laws of nature dont matter, that we can if we want generate infinite amounts of fossil fuel energy, basic physics be damned, well, they are basically saying that since we cannot see the amount of sand in the top half of the hourglass that since we cannot make a precise measurement that therefore we might as well just assume the amount of sand is infinite. This is despite thje fact that the top half of the hourglass is of a finite size, the sand is pouring out quickly and already a lot has poured out.
Basically the cornucopias, they are living in a fantasy world, insisting the top half of the hourglass contains an infinite amount of sand, are in denial about the dire state of affairs and the fact we are headed towards practical depletion of fossil fuels.
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Do you have a lot of very large turbine farms in your area? Then possibly, but unlikely.
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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 anyth
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Or course trees block wind and change climate, everyone knows this.
That does not change the fact the wind farms do this as well.
And of course a single toe slows a river.
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Here's a summary of your post:
Imagine a beowulf cluster of butterfly effect!
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Because humans have never been able to comprehend things the size of the earth. Our history is littered with "there is so much of this it does not matter what we do with it, we will never effect it" thinking.
If you or someone else had raised this idea on a previous /. article about wind turbines, ocean wave generators, geothermal, ect. you would have 5 guys responding with that exact same line.
Re:I've never understood... (Score:5, Informative)
You're forgetting how few people actually understand thermodynamics.
I imagine most people (and politicians) think wind / solar / tidal energy = magically free energy, with an emphasis on the word magic.
Re:I've never understood... (Score:5, Funny)
A very concerned bum asked me about that one time while I was walking around with a hard hat on.
I told him "No, solar panels won't suck up all the sun, they just used the wasted sunlight, so there will still be enough for you"
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damn I never have mod points when I need them. +1 Funny :)
Re:I've never understood... (Score:5, Informative)
Wind farms *MIGHT* perceptably slow down air near the surface of the earth only... within a hundred meters or so.... in a not entirely dissimilar way to how buildings can shelter people from wind.
But you could cover the entire planet with wind farms, and that would have negligible impact on the earth's climate because 100 meters is positively puny compared to the total size of the earth's atmosphere. It would impact even less than buildings because buildings actually block the air, where turbines let it all through. Further, the cross sectional area of a blade that is 10 meters long is perhaps at most about 10 square meters, while the total swept area of a blade that long is over 300 square meters. Allowing for the fact that there are 3 blades per turbine, the turbine is only affecting (at most) 10% of the air that is passing through any given turbine. And again, it's not actually stopping it... it's passing right through. Coupled with the absolutely enormous mass of air above the turbines that is even more negligibly affected by the presence of stuff on the ground, the net impact on climate stands to be somewhere near nil.
One might as well suggest that harnessing the energy from tides might perceptibly impact the orbit of the moon...
Re: (Score:3)
And this same exact effect is also observed in a forest. And those areas where the wind farms are (except for off shore ones) used to have Huge old growth forests only a few hundred years ago if you are talking about the USA, 6000 years ago if you are talking europe, asia, middle-east, etc..
So what about the effect on climate from all those damned trees?
Re: (Score:2)
How about this: if, about 6000 years from now, we figure out that windmills are worst than trees, we'll cut them up to harvest the metal and plant new trees in their place.
Re: (Score:2)
But... you have to build bypasses!
Re: (Score:2)
Given that the planet is a rather limited place there isn't really a happy alternative. We're just moving crap from one pile to another and arguing NIMBY although if you elevate your perspective a bit its more of an issue of NOMP (not on my planet) but then we don't have any choice since everyone is stuck here. So we're back to move junk from one spot to another and even though it accomplishes nothing at all the various points of view feel like they are doing something at least by either arguing about it
Re: (Score:2)
How about spinning skyscrapers?
Birds can kill themselves by flying into skyscraper windows and can get killed by windmills. So a spinning skyscraper would literally be killing two birds with one stone!