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:1, Insightful)
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
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.)
Re:Local impact = climate change? (Score:2, Insightful)
It's deliberately misleading to generate page clicks. Gutter press level, basically.
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.
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.
Re:Local impact = climate change? (Score:2, Insightful)
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.
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.
Re:Done to death already (Score:0, Insightful)
Solar power also cools the earth (technically wind power is Solar too). The Sun only provides so much energy and that energy is what make the Earth run. You suck enough of it away and it will be as bad as anything else.
In other words, at some point we will reach a limit where our Sun can not support the amount of humans on the planet. We need to get more efficient and invest in space exploration.
Space exploration will never be a solution to overpopulation on such a large planet. Why? Because the only possible explanation for packing 10+ billion people on this planet is ignorance and poverty.
So the people who are able to afford space travel will not be the ones with a land availability issue.
Re:Local impact = climate change? (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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:I've never understood... (Score:2, Insightful)
Because it's mostly BS. Think about it. What do you think planting trees does to the wind? What about cutting trees down? We've cut enough trees down over the past 200 years that we could probably put a billion wind turbines up and not get back to what was "natural" 200 years ago.
As far as the forces involved, imagine a kid dabbling his toes in a river. Does he slow the river down or change its course? No. What about 100 kids? Still no. The forces pushing the river are so much larger and stronger than anything toes can interrupt. Sure a tiny bit of the river slows down as the water swirls and eddies around the toes, but as gravity continues to pull it downstream, it speeds right back up to the speed it was going before. If you're not actually removing water (e.g. for a city water supply) or blocking enough to form a lake (e.g. a dam), you're not going to have a noticeable impact downstream.
Re:obvious (Score:5, Insightful)
Changes are made to a ecosystem and the ecosystem reacts to those changes, news at eleven.
Re:yet another reason for solar (Score:0, Insightful)
> We could ditch oil, coal, and nuclear entirely if we just build solar farms.
Well, sure. Because nothing would grow due to lack of ground heating, and our remaining population of about 3 people wouldn't need all that much energy.
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.
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.
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.
Re:Local impact = climate change? (Score:3, Insightful)
and not-so-slowly dissolves buildings away.
The broken window economics folks might consider this a positive.
Re:Local impact = climate change? (Score:3, Insightful)
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).
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.
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".