Posted on 04/29/2012 4:01:29 PM PDT by Free ThinkerNY
New research finds that wind farms actually warm up the surface of the land underneath them during the night, a phenomena that could put a damper on efforts to expand wind energy as a green energy solution.
Researchers used satellite data from 2003 to 2011 to examine surface temperatures across as wide swath of west Texas, which has built four of the world's largest wind farms. The data showed a direct correlation between night-time temperatures increases of 0.72 degrees C (1.3 degrees F) and the placement of the farms.
"Given the present installed capacity and the projected growth in installation of wind farms across the world, I feel that wind farms, if spatially large enough, might have noticeable impacts on local to regional meteorology," Liming Zhou, associate professor at the State University of New York, Albany and author of the paper published April 29 in Nature Climate Change said in an e-mail to Discovery News.
Analysts say wind power is a good complement to solar power, because winds often blow more strongly at night while solar power is only available during daytime hours. But Zhou and his colleagues found that turbulence behind the wind turbine blades stirs up a layer of cooler air that usually settles on the ground at night, and mixes in warm air that is on top.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.discovery.com ...
The title should be: “Green Energy Causes Global Warming.”
These people aren’t going to be happy until we are all living in caves.
Another goofy liberal idea turns into a disaster. What a bunch of losers.
Just dang.
COROLLARY: The universal law of unintended consequences never sleeps.
I love so much about living in TX , but dang it all, last summer was beastly hot.........thanks greenies.......
That's a riot!
Bring back coal.
But Zhou and his colleagues found that turbulence behind the wind turbine blades stirs up a layer of cooler air that usually settles on the ground at night, and mixes in warm air that is on top.
so we are talking about mixing of a couple hundred feet of
wait for it..... wait for it..... AIR
And the net difference to the planet is???
Thanks Free ThinkerNY.
“...a phenomena that could put a damper on efforts to expand wind energy as a green energy solution.”
Don’t count on it. When so called scientists toss the scientific process into the trash by telling us that AWG is real beyond a doubt, logic and reason have nothing to do with it.
A wind farm will essentially take energy (heat) from one area (where it is collected) and transport that energy (heat) to another area maybe hundreds or thousands of miles away.
Of course it changes local climate...
Local Warming Ping!
These people aren’t going to be happy until we are all living in caves.Living in caves, eating turnips, driving donkey carts and dying off in our 40s. That's what THEY want for US.
Hahahahahahahaha
Question: what happens when millions and millions of windmills pull the energy out of the rural climate system and redeposit it in areas where energy is consumed in mass — cities. Cities get hotter and rural areas get colder. A disparity that would try to correct itself... tornados?
Isn't this amount greater than the forecast increase in temperatures due to carbon dioxide by the turn of the century (by the idiot climate alarmists)?
Also, and they want a lot fewer humans on the planet too.
Don’t bother me. I have to cut down all my windbreaks and fences. Then I need to fill in all the drainage ditches and ponds. When I finish, I’ll find a way to bury myself and hope the planet can survive my having been here. If we’re lucky, I’m not too late to save everything.
Two more problems with wind turbines:
(1) They kill birds
(2) They’re BUTT UGLY!! (Visual pollution)
And they lower property values.
We drive to Lubbock quite often and from around Abilene to Lubbock is nothing but fields and fields of wind farms. All of the buttes are now covered with them. at night, especially in some of the more remote areas, all you see is tens of thousands of red flashing lights as far as you can see, like a tacky Christmas display.
I wouldn’t be surprised if wind farms have cussed more global warming then every source of so called “dirty” power such as coal and nuclear.
If you were to designate it a Christmas Light display, the RATs at the ACLU would take it down in no time.
You mean to tell me that extracting sufficient energy from the environment to run an advanced society is going to have an impact!?
Say it ain't so, Obama told me the energy was green. Next you will probably tell me that windmills will affect the wind patterns and the atmospheric forces - you b*stards!
Please pardon the "sargasm."
No more ice for cold drinks or sore muscles.
All ice will now be dumped below wind turbines to cool the ground.
Don’t get caught icing down a cold one, or nursing that sprained ankle, you ice destroyers...
We, who are in the orchard business, have been using this phenomenon for over 40 years.
We have large wind machines powered by 454 Chevies or 460 Fords to power the wind machines.
We have known about the warm inversion layer of air that lays over the colder air at night for that long. The wind machines break through the inversion and bring the warmer air down to the cold surface air and mix it. This can raise the surface air temp. 1 to 5 or more degrees.
Many nights that is enough to keep the fruit buds from freezing.
Even on the coldest night in the dead of winter there is a warmer layer of air, most nights above the inversion. When trying to save peach, nectarine or apricot buds, that may be helpful in saving the crop.
For what it is worth.
Garde la Foi, mes amis! Nous nous sommes les sauveurs de la République! Maintenant et Toujours!
(Keep the Faith, my friends! We are the saviors of the Republic! Now and Forever!)
LonePalm, le Républicain du verre cassé (The Broken Glass Republican)
Ya know, a 3/4 ton pickup truck with a railroad timber for a front bumper could have a lot of fun there...
Could windmills be the culprit behind the historic droughts in Texas and other parts of the world? If so, that industry will be right up there with coal, oil, and nuclear energy.
Want green energy with beneficial impact on the environment?
Put turbines on some of the tens of thousands of small to medium sized dams across America.
Oh wait, I almost forgot, we live in bizarro world where we’re removing dams so the rivers can run free.
I miss Hazel O’Leary. At least she doesn’t trip over a Nobel Prize every time she turns around. The GAO accused her of spending too much when she traveled on our money so she would fit right in with the current bunch.
Without a testable hypothesis of how the windmills increase night time temperature to that extent, it is simple junk science or science by conjecture.
An extensive map of the temperature distributions would be a good start, and not just localized over the wind farms themselves.
IMHO...not only have wind turbine fires been caused by heat generated in the wiring; or from lightning strikes or by overspeed of the blades caused by wind gusts, etc.
http://www.windfarmfactsutah.org/PHOTOS.html
Something that I’ve not seen mentioned as a source of heat/fire, is the heat generated in the gearboxes of these things. A very steep gear ratio is required to harness the very slow revolutions of the propeller shaft, and step it up, through a series of gears, to the speed required to spin a generator at the revs per minute required to produce electricity. The pressure on that gear train has to be very high, and it surely results in a lot of heat being created.
This very type of heat generation in the harnessing of mechanical torque is why there are transmission coolers on trucks, and on cars used to pull campers and other loads. Also, the housing/fairing enclosing the gearbox and generator machinery actually traps most of this heat because the housing must be fairly tight to preclude bird nests, insects and their nests, etc. So the machinery is not even effectively air-cooled.
Not many reach temps sufficient to cause a fire, but I think the rise in air temperatures surrounding the turbines comes at least as much, if not more, from the heat generated BY the turbines themselves, than it does merely from disturbance of the air strata around them. Bottom line: The turbines innately are generators of heat, as well as electricity.
i guess without wind they are just big money pits...
Wind farms occasionally show up as precipitation on weather radars during times of high humidity (evenings, early mornings). I had more or less assumed that the cause was condensation on the blades. However, your picture shows that other possibilities exist.
Mostly correct. “They” have no intent on “them” living in caves. The caves are reserved for us.
I don't think so.
LOL - Things are bigger up close.
Pleased to meet ya.
Do you still light smudge pots, too?
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