Wind farms can cause climate change, finds new study

[YankeyMCC]

First what I hope is a clear disclaimer. I am in full support of Wind Farms and other sustainable non-carbon sources of energy. I do want us to learn from the mistakes of the past energy booms and implement with care and thoughtfulness and therefore we need to understand all we can about impacts so we can make the most of new sources of energy and make the case for changing expectations and attitudes about energy use.

And I recognize the head line is probably designed to feed denier thought.

However, I did find it interesting to come across this, since I've been wondering about the effect on temperature. I'm not a scientist, I'm relatively science literate and I have read stories of 'terraforming' that included windmills to help increase local temps.



(snip)
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.
(snip)


http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/earthnews/9234715/Wind-farms-can-cause-climate-change-finds-new-study.html

[saras]

1. EVERY large-scale extraction of energy disrupts the enviromnent. Duh.

The ones that look like they don't, it's generally because we haven't bothered to study them yet.

We know that cities change the climate around them. We know that changing roof color from black to white will change this. It seems reasonable to ASSUME that any equally large installation of solar cells will have similar effects. The question is whether we bother to study the effects BEFORE we install a shitload of them and start finding things dying.

It also seems reasonable to assume that anything that sucks enough energy out of tides to provide useful power to people is going to grossly disturb the entire ecology of the place the tide energy used to affect. That energy didn't do NOTHING, it shaped an ecosystem.

And so on. Large-scale geothermal will mean that we're pumping large amounts of heat out of the earth onto the surface. Local climate change - absolutely. What kind - who knows?

[kristopher]

4. This has been studied in detail - climatic effects are insignificant

The study looked at the use of wind turbines to provide 100% of global energy. At most wind will probably provide about 30-40%. Climatic effects are insignificant.

Investigating the Effect of Large Wind Farms on Energy in the Atmosphere
Magdalena R.V. Sta. Maria * and Mark Z. Jacobson Atmosphere/Energy Program, Civil and Environmental Engineering Department, Stanford University,
Stanford, CA 94035, USA; E-Mail: [e-mail]
* Author to whom correspondence should be addressed...
Received: 21 August 2009 / Accepted: 27 September 2009 / Published: 30 September 2009

Abstract: This study presents a parameterization of the interaction between wind turbines and the atmosphere and estimates the global and regional atmospheric energy losses due to such interactions. The parameterization is based on the Blade Element Momentum theory, which calculates forces on turbine blades. Should wind supply the world’s energy needs, this parameterization estimates energy loss in the lowest 1 km of the atmosphere to be ~0.007%. This is an order of magnitude smaller than atmospheric energy loss from aerosol pollution and urbanization, and orders of magnitude less than the energy added to the atmosphere from doubling CO2. Also, the net heat added to the environment due to wind dissipation is much less than that added by thermal plants that the turbines displace.

This is from an open access journal so you can find it and download it here:
Energies 2009, 2, 816-838; doi:10.3390/en20400816
energies
ISSN 1996-1073
www.mdpi.com/journal/energies

[Kolesar]

2. That is "local scale meteorology", not "climate change" eom

[pscot]

10. Weather, not climate

The butterfly effect, scaled up.

[IDemo]

3. This sounds like an endothermic phenomena

There is no heat being produced by the windmills themselves, short of the very small amount of frictional losses within the genset. They likely are doing nothing more than the frost fans used by citrus growers: draw warm air from above down and mix it with the colder air at the surface. The "cause climate change" headline, as the OP notes, seems almost designed to provoke mirth and contempt from the deniers.

[JayhawkSD]

5. I think the climate change claim is entirely bogus.

I don't believe that anyone anywhere has ever made the claim that changes in weather patterns would lead to global warming, and the suggestion is absurd on the face of it. That the inverse would happen, that global warming would alter weather patterns, certainly. The trivial degree of microclimate change that wind farms create is unlikely as hell to change weather patterns in any case. Somebody has been smoking bad quality weed.

[Motown_Johnny]

6. Then anything that produces heat "Causes Climate Change"

and I think we all know that nobody is using that definition.

[Dead_Parrot]

7. This is a micro-climate effect, not a global one

Don't put too much faith in the right-wing press.

This might be quite useful - in borderline conditions, the land beneath a windfarm could be frost-free zone, good for orchards and the like...

See http://www.nature.com/nclimate/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nclimate1505.html for Zhou's original (Sub).

[FogerRox]

13. Correct, its only .72 degrees and is not a large order effect.

This was posted @ kos, and a anti wind shill showed up, makes me wonder...... Paid shill?

[Dead_Parrot]

15. Well, certainly not a big fan...

...and raises suspicions as to their choice of news outlet. But there's plenty of stupid to go around without people needing to be paid.

[Starboard Tack]

8. Don't believe the headlines. Wind farms do not cause 'global' warming.

http://www.csmonitor.com/Science/2012/0430/Don-t-believe-the-headlines.-Wind-farms-do-not-cause-global-warming

This new study doesn't necessarily illustrate a causal link between wind turbines and localized warming, let alone temperature change on a global scale. The authors of the Nature paper were the first to admit that further science is needed to determine that exact nature of this link.

If it were true that the spinning blades of wind turbines increased the overall temperature of the planet, as opposed to simply redistributing thermal energy, we would have to rewrite some basic laws of physics, particularly the 2nd law of thermodynamics. This is an important distinction from the burning of fossil fuels, which produces gas that increases how much of the sun's energy the Earth retains. In this respect, this process contributes to a globally warming climate because the source of energy (the sun) is apart from the system that is warmed (the Earth.)

[Lftrsuk]

9. Wind farms - the actual value of electricity supplied to the grid

Why bother trying to condemn wind turbines with such obtuse arguments, when their actual performance is so abysmal? Wind turbine proponents always quote figures in terms of averages, percentages or totals; we never get an account of how they actually perform.

Well over here in the UK, a report has used actual figures from the National Grid of the amount of electricity delivered by wind farms and periods of time over which that electricity was contributed: http://lftrsuk.blogspot.co.uk/2012/04/wind-energy-wanna-be-lievers-whats.html

It is a shameful disgrace that our politicians can be so beguiled by the false claims of the industry's snake-oil salesmen and their gullible supporters into spending such vast sums of our hard-earned taxes on such a useless technology.

[Kolesar]

11. You're going to get chopped up like a migrating pigeon very soon...eom

[kristopher]

14. A thorium huckster saying the fastest growing energy source is "snake-oil"?

That's rich.

[bananas]

16. "Lftr suk" - appropriate name.

[AWEAJason]

12. AWEA Response

This "new study" of the effect of local air mixing at the site of a wind farm says nothing about wind energy and global climate, and casts no doubt on all the other studies that find wind power is one of the best ways to address climate change. Local air mixing has nothing to do with climate, because no heat or heat-trapping gases are being added to the atmosphere.

To clarify the facts:

-Wind plants do not contribute to climate change, and in fact they are one of the leading technologies preventing climate change by avoiding fossil fuel use and the emission of greenhouse gases
-All studies have found that any impact wind plants may have on local weather is trivially small.

Read our full fact check on the Into the Wind Blog at http://bit.ly/IEC4tI

[joshcryer]

17. This confirms MIT's study:

http://election.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=115x242091

Which was denied just a few short years ago here.

The science is sound.

It is an immaterial observation on the scheme of things, but it still must be addressed and accepted by the community as a whole, not dismissed with kneejerk reactions.

[joshcryer]

18. Another link, which was denied again and again:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=115&topic_id=235898&mesg_id=235898

Feels good to be right.