Texas Wind Farms
Posted on 04/29/2012 11:01:35 PM PDT by DallasBiff
LONDON, April 29 (Reuters) - Large wind farms might have a warming effect on the local climate, research in the United States showed on Sunday, casting a shadow over the long-term sustainability of wind power.
Carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases from burning fossil fuels contribute to global warming, which could lead to the melting of glaciers, sea level rise, ocean acidification, crop failure and other devastating effects, scientists say.
In a move to cut such emissions, many nations are moving towards cleaner energy sources such as wind power.
The world's wind farms last year had the capacity to produce 238 gigawatt of electricity at any one time. That was a 21 percent rise on 2010 and capacity is expected to reach nearly 500 gigawatt by the end of 2016 as more, and bigger, farms spring up, according to the Global Wind Energy Council.
Researchers at the State University of New York at Albany analysed the satellite data of areas around large wind farms in Texas, where four of the world's largest farms are located, over the period 2003 to 2011.
The results, published in the journal Nature Climate Change, showed a warming trend of up to 0.72 degrees Celsius per decade in areas over the farms, compared with nearby regions without the farms.
"We attribute this warming primarily to wind farms," the study said. The temperature change could be due to the effects of the energy expelled by farms and the movement and turbulence generated by turbine rotors, it said.
"These changes, if spatially large enough, may have noticeable impacts on local to regional weather and climate," the authors said.
(Excerpt) Read more at reuters.com ...
BTW, Thank you T Boone Pickens for making Texas warmer, all for a buck and an invitation to a DC garden party.
Dodgy science, squared. Somebody’s confusing “heat transfer” and “heat creation”.
UH? Doesn't heat transfer mitigate your arguement, greenie?
Let's see now. What's the English word for stupid?...Oh, wait!
I can also tell you that solar panels will also contribute to global warming. They are black, so they absorb most of the solar energy. Without them a lot of sunlight is reflected back into space. That extra absorbed energy will eventually end up as heat.
Maybe the word for "stupid" is "windfarm".
Texas Wind Farms
Property values will dive as long as we Baby Boomers are croaking. That will be the main remedy against socialist NIMBYs who attend commissioners’ meetings as radical environmentalists. We don’t need no stinking “property values.” We do need to get to some real work (like manufacturing). As for subsidies, all kinds of subsidies should be abolished.
Wind farm illness: Waubra Disease
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wYnNQoTcsHY
Protect yourself.
Acoustic Vibration Disease Hat
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=El2vVl5Figk
66 percent of Tea Party members would agree with having wind turbines near their homes (Saint Consulting Group, poll of 1,000 in US, June, 2011). 73 percent of men agreed but far fewer women.
Environmentalists are against Wind power
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pODvhqSfyeM
Wind turbine syndrome news report
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SRCekFYWsPo
Wind Nimby Spanking
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lLHOydx2RTA
Wind Nimby Rant
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KurAbrMHu2k
John Stossel Wind Power and NIMBY
[Environmentalists against wind turbines.]
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mo2rMj8KVtQ
They kill anything that flies into their blades also. Takes a allot of maintenance to clean their little bodies off of those blades
I used to put up those windmill thingies in my SimCity game for energy... but they kept blowing up.
When it comes down to it, it will probably be a combination of wind disruption and all the ground that is laid bare in order to provide access to these machines. Bare ground = heat absorption. No wind or less wind = less heat dissipation. Either could lead to an increase in temperature around the devices.
......or a cooling effect depending on which way the ole wind is blowing’’....
If "movement and turbulence" is raising the temperature near turbine, it only means that the temperature is not being raised somewhere else, maybe a very widely-dispersed "somewhere else".
I also wonder if it’s just a matter of the turbine and tower heating up during the day and giving up that heat overnight, regardless of how much wind blew that day.
Sounds like someome is fabricating ways to shut down wind power...solar is next, especially if it’s on YOUR private property.
Inconvenient thermodynamics.
If wind patterns are disrupted of course weather patterns will change. Not only that but the energy absorbed by the windmills which is energy REMOVED from the atmosphere and that energy might have been used to influence warm and cold fronts.
Shouldn’t they have known that?
If they screwed that up - what else are they screwing up?
Because the relatively low power output (as compared to other methods of generating electricity) and millions of dead birds were not, in fact, causing doubts about wind farms.
The seasons will be changing with the varied tilt of the earth's axis and the longer days and longer nights, but the temperatures would not be changed. Nights tend to cool off what the sun did the day before.
I have a PhD.
the bottom line for the granola crunchers.
There is no globull warming.. there is no threat to the temp from windmills... when it comes to the environment... there is only racketeering and the worship of false gods.
LLS
We would be better off if we were using some of the 10s of thousands of small and medium sized dams in this country to produce hydroelectric power.
But nope, we’re tearing dams out to let the rivers run free.
“Carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases from burning fossil fuels contribute to global warming, which could lead to the melting of glaciers, sea level rise, ocean acidification, crop failure and other devastating effects, scientists say.”
Gotta love that alarmism, lol.
“Somebody’s confusing “heat transfer” and “heat creation””
Wind turbines convert wind velocity to electric power. Energy is extracted from the wind. The turbines reduce the velocity of the wind and, I believe, cool the air slightly because the speed of the air molecules is reduced.
I have a high school education, and know almost nothing about the effects of wind farms on the spin of the earth. BUT, this one thing I do know as a West Texan those wind farms and cattle feed lots don’t mix. PU
Adding resistance (friction) to a moving system does not create cooling. It creates heat.
Since prior to hitting the turbine blades, the individual air molecules are moving at the same speed as those around them, their is no air resistance at that point generating heat, until it hits the turbine blades.
Well if that were the case, we'd all be burning to death up here in Maine where we have a tree every square yard.
The only way they produce any heat is when we burn them.
Hydro is virtually drawback free and has multiple beneficial side effects. The modern small hydro turbine technologies are very low maintenance high output.
Someone quacks in Albany just pimped some more stimulus money in the form of a grant. Out tax dollars at work.
I wasn’t trying to claim it was significant heat. But adding wind resistance is not going to provide cooling.
Yes folks, that's up to zeropointseventwo degrees per decade! (While day-night variations are easily 25+ °C.) They're certain to a hundredth of a degree!
Just how stupid do these people think we are?
“does not create cooling. It creates heat”
If it were a fan blowing the air you would be correct, but it is the air blowing the fan. Energy is taken from the air and converted to electricity. The energy in the air is due to the motion of the air molecules. When there’s a net direction to the air molecules it appears as wind. When there’s no wind the molecules are in random motion and the aggregate speed of those molecules is felt as heat.
The turbine’s removal of energy from the air manifests itself as a lowering of the air’s velocity and also probably the lowering of temperature, but definitely not the increasing of temperature.
Just accept the fact that what the neo-luddites really want is to reduce the earth’s population by 80%, and for the remainder (which will be them of course), to live in some idyllic 17th century pre-industrial revolution age.
You are claiming work is being done and it generates surplus energy. Laws of Physics are just the opposite.
“You are claiming work is being done and it generates surplus energy. Laws of Physics are just the opposite.”
Work is being done on the air and on the turbine blades. What does “generates surplus energy” mean?
Anyway ...
Energy from the moving air is converted to electrical energy by the turbine. The air exiting the turbine has lower energy than the air entering the turbine. Do you disagree?
How does the air leaving the turbine differ from the air entering the turbine? Answer: its molecules are moving slower. That can manifest itself as lower velocity or lower temperature. Do you disagree?
Next time you are in wine country, check out the Wind Machines.
The purpose of these windmills is not to generate electricity. In fact, they are powered by electic motors, and their purpose is to disturb the airflow over the vinyard to keep the ground level warmer at night.
They have been using these things out in California for as long as I can remember, so at least thirty years. This is not exactly a newly discovered phenomenon.
"There is only so much wind on a given day... If we take that wind and convert it to electricity, what impact could it have on the environment? Even more global warming? Wouldn’t wind help cool the planet?"
And they called me crazy. :D
I would love to see the scientific explanation. I am trained as a Physicist and have done research in the optics and semiconductor fields. These gaia idiots have yet to offer ANY scientific proof of their lies BECAUSE THEY CAN’T. We should bring a class action suit claiming damages from increased prices on gas, food, and everything else. The punishment is DEATH by packing the bastards in ice and letting them freeze to death!
I would love to simply see the chemical equations. Coal and oil vs wind and solar. Seems to me there is a simple way to predict the amount of energy needed to produce usable energy. Of course, that would also need to include the storage and distribution of each. We have a lot of very bright people working on things and yet, we cannot get simple answers. If the idiots cannot produce it, we must.
I am a scientist with a PhD in Gaia ScienceA PhD in Greek mythology...got it.
No. Velocity is not an energy level.
Velocity gives potential energy, relative to other objects, similar to gravity if an object is raised above a surface.
Unless an object interacts with another object at a different velocity, there is no difference than being at rest.
The mass of air moving at 50 mph only has potential energy to striking objects at rest. The air molecules colliding with other air molecules traveling at the same speed are no different in potential energy than those at zero velocity.
Those same air molecules are spinning at velocity with the earth's rotation, as well as around the sun. Velocity only has meaning in relative terms to other objects. It does not raise or lower the temperature of the object.
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