Wide-Scale US Wind Power Could Cause Significant Warming, Study Says (technologyreview.com) 320
XxtraLarGe shares a report: Wind power is booming in the United States. It's expanded 35-fold since 2000 and now provides 8% of the nation's electricity. The US Department of Energy expects wind turbine capacity to more than quadruple again by 2050. But a new study by a pair of Harvard researchers finds that a high amount of wind power could mean more climate warming, at least regionally and in the immediate decades ahead. The paper raises serious questions about just how much the United States or other nations should look to wind power to clean up electricity systems. The study, published in the journal Joule, found that if wind power supplied all US electricity demands, it would warm the surface of the continental United States by 0.24 C. That could significantly exceed the reduction in US warming achieved by decarbonizing the nation's electricity sector this century, which would be around 0.1 C. "If your perspective is the next 10 years, wind power actually has -- in some respects -- more climate impact than coal or gas," coauthor David Keith, a professor of applied physics and public policy at Harvard, said in a statement. "If your perspective is the next thousand years, then wind power is enormously cleaner than coal or gas."
This is complete bullshit (Score:5, Insightful)
Greenhouse gases add heat energy (and thus average temperature) to the Earth's global atmosphere.
These are completely different things.
Attempting to conflate them is pro-fossil-fuel FUD.
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I don't know if it's necessarily trying to conflate wind with fossil fuels, it's just looking at the impact that 100% wind power would have. It's pretty explicit that the effects are localized only to where the generators are, and that this is only short-term, over a longer term wind is obviously much cooler than any burning.
Anyway, let's go ahead and scratch "100% wind power" off the list we don't have, and assume that some combination of wind, solar, hydro, nuclear, etc is probably the way to go.
Obviousl
Re:This is complete bullshit (Score:4, Informative)
Windpower does not add heat to the atmosphere of Earth, it just mixes around where it's hot and where it's cold. Greenhouse gases add heat energy (and thus average temperature) to the Earth's global atmosphere. These are completely different things.
Add to that the fact that CO2 is warming the globe by about 0.2C/decade [woodfortrees.org]. That dwarfs the localized warming after only a few decades. - even if we converted all US energy production to wind.
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Problem being that localized heat increase happening over many locales over many decades has a global impact. Thermal energy has to go somewhere, it doesn't just vanish because it's not generated by sun rays in this case. That's why paper is talking about 0,5GW of generation across the US, not a single wind park.
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Windpower does not add heat to the atmosphere of Earth, it just mixes around where it's hot and where it's cold. Greenhouse gases add heat energy (and thus average temperature) to the Earth's global atmosphere. These are completely different things. Attempting to conflate them is pro-fossil-fuel FUD.
Windpower does not add heat to the atmosphere of Earth, it just mixes around where it's hot and where it's cold. Greenhouse gases add heat energy (and thus average temperature) to the Earth's global atmosphere. These are completely different things. Attempting to conflate them is pro-fossil-fuel FUD.
There is a difference between global climate and local weather. Greenhouse gasses affect the global climate eventually affecting local weather, mass scale wind-generation affects wind patterns immediately affecting the local weather. As the report indicates, wind-generation can cause local weather to become warmer even without changes in global climate
Local vs Global Temperature (Score:3)
Windpower does not add heat to the atmosphere of Earth, it just mixes around where it's hot and where it's cold.
Exactly. So if it slows hot air escaping the continent in the summer then it may cause localized increases in temperature inland while there would be a reduction over the ocean. Overall the planet wins but since we live and grow crops and animals on the land we may end up being more affected due to the localized increase in temperature due to the reduced mixing.
I've not looked at his paper so I'm not going to defend it but your argument for immediately dismissing it as false simply does not hold water.
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It's started to be called "climate change" instead of "warming" for a reason
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Not complete bullshit (Score:2)
Windpower does not add heat to the atmosphere of Earth, it just mixes around where it's hot and where it's cold.
Yes... and no.
I take it you didn't read the link. The study didn't say that the windpower "adds" heat to the atmosphere of the Earth. What it said was that it redistributes heat through the boundary layer (by increasing boundary layer mixing), and the net redistribution of heat can reduce the thermal emission, i.e., increases the temperature. You say " it just mixes around where it's hot and where it's cold", but mixing where it's hot and where it's cold can reduce the thermal emission. They state that t
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Windpower does not add heat to the atmosphere of Earth, it just mixes around where it's hot and where it's cold. Greenhouse gases add heat energy (and thus average temperature) to the Earth's global atmosphere. These are completely different things. Attempting to conflate them is pro-fossil-fuel FUD.
What do you mean it's not true?! Don't you know what happened to Holland? It was once covered in windmills which brought on near catastrophic sea level rise which threatened to inundate the whole country. Wind turbines will be the end of us all! [/end sarcasm]
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How this ignorance of basic physics got modded "+5 insightful" tells a lot of anti-scientific bias among certain activist types when science contradicts their ideology. It's exceedingly obvious that wind power generates heat which is dissipated into the atmosphere. You need not go beyond high school level physics for this, as both laws of energy conservation, thermodynamics and friction are covered there.
The angle of the study is that "as electric generation reduces its carbon emissions, wind power becomes
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And the study obviously talks about "boundary layer mixing preventing emission of heat from the system" which I got wrong in the initial post. Otherwise, meaning of the post is exactly the same.
Not [entirely] pro-fossil-fuel FUD. NIMBY FUD also (Score:3)
I'm gonna go out on a limb here and claim that this is a product of bias and mental issues by the authors.
Much like how the authors of SuperFreakonomics couldn't have resisted their "one clever trick to fix global warming" chapter thanks to their personal biases. Which came back to bite them. [realclimate.org]
Also, the claim made in the paper is clearly false, even fraudulent.
Whether due to bias or to drum up publicity, I don't know. But they actually show that they are wrong.
More on that below. First a word or two on author
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Global warming happens when heat is being retained on earth faster than it is being emitted back into space. Harnessing wind power doesn't change that, changing the effective chemical make-up of our atmosphere by changing how much of any given substance there might be in it does.
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Adding a bit more CO2 also has very little direct effect on global warming. It's all about the feedback mechanisms. E.g., change the saturation point of the atmosphere just a little, and you change the Earth's albedo just a little, and that much bigger than the original effect. Melt the ice caps a bit, and you get a bit lower albedo, which helps melt a bit more ice. There are negative feedback loops too (which ultimately win and stabilize things, but on geological time scales).
But the paper seems to cla
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No it is not.
Global warming means that heat from outside the planet is being added to it faster than it is being emitted back into space.
Wind power does not change that in the slightest... it causes regional warming, but the total amount of heat in the atmosphere is unaffected, and the global temperature average remains constant. A perhaps oversimplified way of looking at it is that with regional warming, for every degree warmer you make it at point
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If you think CO2 is enough to change that balance, then you better believe altering the patterns of motion and conduction are as well.
Global mean temperature of the Earth without greenhouse gasses is ~ 33C cooler than today [nasa.gov].
Global mean temperature of the Earth without wind turbines is ~ exactly the same as today.
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If you think CO2 is enough to change that balance, then you better believe altering the patterns of motion and conduction are as well.
Global mean temperature of the Earth without greenhouse gasses is ~ 33C cooler than today [nasa.gov].
Global mean temperature of the Earth without wind turbines is ~ exactly the same as today.
And the bulk of that is from water vapor, hmm why didn't link mention water except for cooling ? hmmmmmm
"Water vapor is the most important greenhouse gas. It controls the Earth's temperature.” It's true that water vapor is the largest contributor to the Earth's greenhouse effect. On average, it probably accounts for about 60% of the warming effect
https://www.acs.org/content/ac... [acs.org]"
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The lovely thing about this subject is nobody knows what's going on but everyone is willing to demand money and other people do things
https://www.nasa.gov/topics/ea... [nasa.gov]
Water vapor is known to be Earth’s most abundant greenhouse gas, but the extent of its contribution to global warming has been debated. Using recent NASA satellite data, researchers have estimated more precisely than ever the heat-trapping effect of water in the air, validating the role of the gas as a critical component of climate change.
Andrew Dessler and colleagues from Texas A&M University in College Station confirmed that the heat-amplifying effect of water vapor is potent enough to double the climate warming caused by increased levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.
All the article does is reaffirm my point that without a thorough understanding of how the dominant green house gas functions you can't make meaningful predictions based on incomplete models.
But hey tell me again how anything that says windpower causes warming is FUD.
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We're literally coming out of ice age. It was here just a few tens of thousands of years ago. Problem is, we've accelerated the warming process to the point where adaptation to it has become a significant challenge for many species, including ourselves.
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We don't have to control the process. We just need to control the people. With our placards and bullhorns. And political power we accumulate over time.
It's always worked so well in the past. What could go wrong?
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If you think CO2 is enough to change that balance, then you better believe altering the patterns of motion and conduction are as well.
Yes, that's exactly what Manabe and Wetherald did: they did the greenhouse calculation with accurate wavelength-dependent infrared absorption and a model of convect
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"I'm not sure why you think that climate scientists don't understand this. "
I am not sure why you can't read
vs what I said
"It never ceases to amaze me how the climate doom people never understand the most basic concepts about heat transport."
vs what I was replying to which is so many ways wrong it's not even funny
"Windpower does not add heat to the atmosphere of Earth, it just mixes around where it's hot and where it's cold.
Greenhouse gases add heat energy (and thus average temperature) to the Earth's global atmosphere."
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Uh... no. You may be thinking of the kind of greenhouse that's made out of glass
Speaking of not being able to read, I said greenhouse not greenhouse effect. You should at least know the terms of what you are talking about.
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what part of the sentence "that's not what we're talking about here" are you finding hard to understand?
the kind of greenhouse that's made out of glass, the ones that you grow plants in, is not what we're discussing here. When we talk about the "greenhouse effect": that's not it.
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Please tell those "climate deniers" at NASA
Appeal to authority. Perhaps we should apply to the CIA for our questions about intelligence.
Why did you link to a children's educational webpage that nasa sponsors?
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Appeal to authority is only a fallacy if the authority you appeal to is not competent in the topic.
E.g. because Mr. Smith, btw. a Doctor in Medicine, thinks climate change is bollocks, then we better all side with Dr. Smith!! He must be right, after all he is a PhD!
That was a fallacy.
On the other hand: Dr. Roman Miller, PhD in climatology, PhD in meteorology, Professor at MiT, tells us: "climate change could happen quicker and stronger, than we at the moment expect". Considering that Dr. Miller, is an exper
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1. Physical motion of the fluid ( Convection and any other source of velocity)
2. Conduction (hot areas heating cooler areas by being in physical contact)
3. Radiation a gas molecule emits a photon and it's absorbed by another molecule, in the case of the earth you can include the planet as a heat source)
If you think CO2 is enough to change that balance, then you better believe altering the patterns of motion and conduction are as well.
Off the top of my head, heat leaving the Earth (excluding primary reflection) is something like 83% radiative, 17% convective. Early models were more convective, but that was a long time ago.
The heat absorbed by CO2 is indeed tiny, which is why Climate Science is a science, not a high school experiment: there are feedback mechanisms which greatly exaggerate the direct effect of the CO2 (positive and negative, BTW, though the positive feedback dominates in the short term). Climate Science is about the stu
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Sure, you are totally right... and venus is a paradise, with its 400C air temperature (higher than mercury) because CO2 do not generate greenhouse effect and heat a planet
Planets radiate heat they absorb from the sun and the atmosphere absorb some of that heat and with conduction heats the atmosphere and the planet... not only that, but it will also release it back... some will still go to space, but another part will be sent back to the planet... repeat this and you get the greenhouse effect...
this happen
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Sure, you are totally right... and venus is a paradise, with its 400C air temperature (higher than mercury) because CO2 do not generate greenhouse effect and heat a planet
Venus has 90 times the atmosphere we do, and mercury has none but is roughly 1/3rd the destance from the Sun we are.
You have no idea how any of this works do you ? Thank you for demonstrating that you can be deeply religious without even realizing it.
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Strange comparison considering Mercury has no stable atmosphere, unlike Venus (and Earth).
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Dude you totally overlooked the heat generated by all the anti-wind-turbine protesters. That is transferred without fluid motion or conductors, as they can transfer their anger over the internet.
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Dude you totally overlooked the heat generated by all the anti-wind-turbine protesters. That is transferred without fluid motion or conductors, as they can transfer their anger over the internet.
Lol it's offset by the cold fury of environmentalists that think they are saving the world. Hell if they weren't saving the world, they would have to admit they are useless losers.
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So, how much more heat does a wind turbine create compared with say the wind blasting against a rock face?
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Problem is described in your own post. "Balance".
By definition, to disturb balance in one direction, you do not need a significant increase on the "emission" end. You just need enough to be more than "absorption" part. No altering of any other patterns is necessary.
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Problem is described in your own post. "Balance".
By definition, to disturb balance in one direction, you do not need a significant increase on the "emission" end. You just need enough to be more than "absorption" part. No altering of any other patterns is necessary.
I don't dispute this but I question why you think it lends validity to the stupid original post, that called anything the poster didn't like FUD
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I don't think it lends any validity to original post, considering I disputed it in my other reply. I'm simply addressing things that I see being wrong/missing as I see them.
I'm well familiar with slashdot's weirdo green ultras who hold religious style dogmaic beliefs on global warming, and have butted heads with them quite often in the past when they post nonsense.
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The greenhouse effect absolutely works by blocking radiation. CO2 is a trace gas that has no direct physical effect whatsoever on convection.
The reason CO2 affects the energy in the atmosphere is that the Earth receives an immense amount of solar energy, enough that tiny variations (such as produced by orbital resonances) can have what to us seem enormous effects.
Conduction has minimal effect on energy transfer within a medium (air or water) in comparison to advection and diffusion, but ti does play some
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The greenhouse effect is not what makes a greenhouse work. Don't believe me ? How well do you think a greenhouse with just a roof and no walls would work.
If you can't actually think for yourself
Here's a firm that trains people how to operate greenhouses
https://www.pthorticulture.com... [pthorticulture.com]
And before you go BBBBBBUt CO2
Water vapor the American Chemical society disagrees with you
https://www.acs.org/content/ac... [acs.org]
I post these because I know many people can only appear to reason and can't actually accept a fact unle
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Oy. Nobody is saying the Earth is literally a greenhouse with a glass roof. However it does have a troposphere, which is warming, and a stratosphere, which is cooling (although there is more going on there than CO2).
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3. Radiation a gas molecule emits a photon and it's absorbed by another molecule, in the case of the earth you can include the planet as a heat source)
If you think CO2 is enough to change that balance, then you better believe altering the patterns of motion and conduction are as well.
Or, that person just knows things about spectra.
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3. Radiation a gas molecule emits a photon and it's absorbed by another molecule, in the case of the earth you can include the planet as a heat source)
If you think CO2 is enough to change that balance, then you better believe altering the patterns of motion and conduction are as well.
Or, that person just knows things about spectra.
And absolutely nothing about anything else that contributes to the Earth's temperature. You seem to be in that club.
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I'm not sure where you're trying to go with all this - I hadn't mentioned the greenhouse effect, nor did the "prior poster".
Yes, climate scientists are aware that the great majority of trapped warmth is from water, and the effect of CO2 is relatively small. But even tiny effects add up over time when the equilibrium is altered, and we're observing exactly that [noaa.gov]. The calculated decrease in radiative transfer from the IR blocked by all the extra CO2 [noaa.gov] agrees very well with these observations - and no other poten
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It's always funny when someone who clearly doesn't know how greenhouse gases work complains about "climate doom people". A greenhouse works because it stops conduction and convection. Greenhouse gases have an impact by raising the height in the atmosphere where infrared radiation is emitted into space. This means the effective temperature of the Earth for radiation emission is lower.
Always funny when a greenie proves not only don't they understand physics but also can't read
"BTW a greenhouse works not so much because it stops radiation but because it prevents conduction and convection."
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You realize that in 100 years it adds up to 1 part per hundred, right?
You realize that, that 100 ppm is since the industrial revolution ? Or going on 300 years now not per year ?
And people wonder why I hold environmentalists in the same regard I hold young earth creationists.
Re:You not liking this doesn't make it FUD (Score:4, Informative)
He didn't say it was, he said that conflating the adding of heat to the atmosphere with changing where it happens to get warmer is pro-fossil-fuel FUD.
The paper doesn't conflate them, explicitly acknowledging that the observed temperature change is regional, but the summary of the underlying message it delivers, which is that it causes significant warming, most definitely strongly appears to.
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The summary takes into account the basics of law of energy conservation. I'm not sure how you think that the fact that thermal energy generated by friction at the windmills being eventually dissipated across the continent is "pro-fossil-fuel-FUD". Can you please elaborate?
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Mea culpa. I was answering another person about "no heat generated at all at the windmill" which got the "friction" stuck in my head through several other replies.
Original post is supposed to say "thermal energy conserved within atmosphere by reducing emissions into space" which is what study references.
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Of course... but the summary, which is simply that widespread windpower usage could cause significant warming, is heavily suggestive of an argument that a person who had an agenda for pushing fossil fuel use would use.
The article itself clarifies this explicitly by saying that such warming is regional, but that's not going to change how people who don't bother to read past the summary are likely to see it.
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Warming may be regional, but the baseline mechanism is same as with global warming. Reduction in thermal energy vented into space. That means that totality of the semi-closed system that is earth's atmosphere will get globally warmed with reasonably widespread wind energy generation.
"But the opponents may use it" is an ideological argument. Anyone saying this belongs with the global warming denialists in the "but muh dogma" pit, where they can slug it out in the mud. I have no interest in it.
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I'm confused. The summary says "it would warm the surface of the continental United States by 0.24 C" but the technologyreview article suggests it is a local change. So, is 0.24 C an average over the whole country or is it the local warming around a wind farm? If it is only local then... who cares?
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That's given. The study literally states that in long term, wind energy is better when it comes to handling global warming. The claim being made is that as we remove carbon emitters from energy generation, wind power gets relatively worse to other sources of such energy generation due to having a warming effect.
It's an a pro-CO2 argument. It's pro-other than wind carbon neutral or carbon negative generation sources.
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Sigh. I hate posting on laptop. Last paragraph is supposed to read "It's not a pro-CO2 argument. It's pro-other than wind carbon neutral or carbon negative generation sources."
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Study expressly states that wind is better long term than fossil fuels when it comes to controlling global warming. The claim it makes is that as we remove carbon emitters from power generation, wind becomes a relatively worse option compared to alternatives from the same point of view, because it does cause significant amount of warming per electric energy generated through mechanical friction.
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Correction to above post, I accidentally confused this with another reply. The heating occurs due to reduction of heat loss from atmosphere because of boundary layer mixing. Essentially similar reason as to how global warming works, except that unlike CO2 emissions, this effect is static and not cumulative.
Oh. Come. On. (Score:3)
This. This is why we can't have nice things.
Somebody's got a bad case of perpetual Debbie Downer.
Reverse it by (Score:5, Funny)
Dennis Moore, Dennis Moore!! (Score:2)
There's no such thing as a free lunch. (Score:5, Interesting)
It can get complicated, but Scientists have known for years that there is a price to be paid, somewhere, for the apparent benefits of "free energy".
It is virtually impossible to calculate ALL the costs in providing wind and solar power.Do you start with the costs of mining the materials needed to produce the components of a wind generator? Wait! How about starting with the costs of producing the machinery that mine those elements? No, that doesn't take into account the lab time and personnel needed to come up with the idea in the first place...etc., etc. I found the articles on the IEEE Spectrum page very interesting. the articles have rotated off the page but are still searchable. There are many smaller articles in the series. Here's one: https://spectrum.ieee.org/ener... [ieee.org]
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This is interesting in an academic sense, but unlikely to be a practica
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Really it's a very interesting statement. I'm not saying we shouldn't use wind, because it "warms" up an area. But if any energy is taken out of a system, in this case wind, there is a result. Same if we were talking about solar. Energy is being removed from the system. There will be an effect. Is it worse than using coal, most likely not, but there is an effect.
There is no free lunch when it comes to energy. There is always a cost. What it might be, now that would be the right question...
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Yeah, thank $diety that coal and oil are made out of unicorn-farts, and are hand-delivered by Jesus
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But how hot do the generators get when they are active? Won't they be radiating heat from moving parts?
Well, now we know... (Score:2)
... the percentage of our energy needs that a technology needs to hit before The Usual Suspects will find some reason, any reason, to start wailing and gnashing their teeth and rending their clothes and shrieking "It's EEEVIL!! Tear it DOWN, NOW!!"
8%.
So predictable.
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Those bastards! If it weren't for them we would all be driving water powered cars by now! And we would have free access to un-vaccination treatments! And the aliens would be allowed to show themselves to us! I know, I have read the interwebs!!
I'm going to scream.. (Score:2)
It's the physics, baby! (Score:2)
More energy used = more heat to the atmosphere.
You need to reduce the energy used to cool the planet down!
next FUD rearch will show...butterfly effect (Score:2)
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Cell.com is driving subscription sales (Score:3)
Step 1: Create Controversy
Step 2: Provide paid access to the materials needed to refute that controversy
Step 3: Profit!
First, this is a simulation, for which as far as I can tell (remember, they are selling any clues here), they didn't even model all the physical laws of the real world. The "model" for that simulation expressed in Figure 1 is absolutely laughable.
Note, the wind turbine has transferred a percentage of "heat" elsewhere in the form of electricity. This electricity is representative of heat that is no longer in the local system, thus not all the heat is mixed and even still present in the "local" system. That heat generated by the "use" of that electricity would have been generated no matter what the source of that electricity might be.
The mixing of the air effectively lowers the overall environmental temperature of the local system. Extracting energy from that air lowers it even more.
So, a little something to consider... (Score:3)
We're talking about a small regional temperature change for excellent long-term benefit. This is not the same as a climbing planetary average.
I don't see how this is a major issue, but it's good to know in places where the warmer climate is marginal to supporting the current way-of-life. In those places, they may want to reconsider putting too much wind power up. Here in Wisconsin, I'm pretty sure they can put up all the wind mills they like and people will just be happy with it. Wind power is still a "no brainer."
The headline is misleading. "Significant" has a number of meanings, one of which is essentially "a whole lot." I would have preferred "statistically significant." Because that's really what we're talking about: it's measurable and beyond the margin of error. Big whoop.
Global warming isn't really "warming" (Score:3)
Wind power extracts energy from the system and converts it electricity and whatever heat is created from the inherent friction of moving mechanical parts. The point here is that wind power systems EXTRACT energy from the weather system.
Mixes boundary layers/reduces stratification (Score:3)
Based on the included graph, I'm also going to guess that they're in the photovoltaic camp and feel that wind should be a secondary option.
Title is FUD, but the article doesn't look bad (Score:5, Insightful)
If you read the summary well, they are comparing a 100% wind setup for USA (something that we all know that is not even desirable, we need several power sources) and they agree that the worse case is a "small" 0.24C increase due a little higher mixing of atmospheric layers... comparing that with the current setup is a clear win, as that value is even less what we get if we could stop using coal and other dirty power sources everywhere.
Yes, everything we do can change things, probably big cities make higher temperature increase due to their skyscrapers and AC systems than wind farms and this paper just try to measure this... and agree that is a better solution.
Sadly people do not really read things, just quickly screen the summary and assume what they want... or even worse, dirty energy lobbies abuse the paper to try to spread FUD.
Wingnut Math (Score:3)
Just another example of people using higher math [pinimg.com] to back up some crackpot idea, like claiming a Prius pollutes more than a Hummer. [autoblog.com]
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How do these compare to nuclear? Everyone keeps talking about fossil fuels and green renewables, but I have to hunt around for mention of nuclear. What gives?
Fukushima, Chernobyl, Mayak, Three Mile Island, Lucens, Sellafield, Ibaraki, Jaslovské Bohunice, Idaho Falls all INES level 4 or higher. You can argue in favour of nuclear till you are blue in the face but, fair or not, given the long history of nuclear safety issues the public is about as interested in living within 500 kilometres of a nuclear plant as it is in eating as vanilla ice cream with ketchup and onions.
Re:What about other options (Score:5, Interesting)
the long history of nuclear safety issues
And yet the fact is, the per-terawatt-hour death rate from nuclear is lower than for any power source -- lower than wind, lower than rooftop solar, lower than hydroelectric, lower than biomass, lower than natural gas, lower than oil, and lower than coal.
If people were rationally concerned about safety, they'd be holding massive protests demanding the replacement of other sources of electrical generation with nuclear. That it would massively reduce greenhouse gas emissions over fossil fuels and that it is far easier to integrate with the electrical grid than solar or wind would then just be the side benefits of saving lives.
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And yet the fact is, the per-terawatt-hour death rate from nuclear is lower than for any power source -- lower than wind, lower than rooftop solar, lower than hydroelectric, lower than biomass, lower than natural gas, lower than oil, and lower than coal.
First of all: that is not true.
Secondly: the metric is completely irrelevant.
You are counting people who died in coal mines?
Why don't you count the people who died in iron ore mines? Wow, because then you would need to think about "steel", and how much "stee
Except wind and solar power deaths are zero (Score:3, Insightful)
If an electrician slips and falls to his death while performing maintenance on a nuclear cooling tower, would you say that fatality was due to nuclear power? Of course not, you'd say that was an industrial accident. Same as if that electrician's brother sl
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the long history of nuclear safety issues
And yet the fact is, the per-terawatt-hour death rate from nuclear is...
Unknown.
If we were rationally having this discussion we would be discussing transgenic disease and the role of bio-accumulation in propagating radio-isotopes through the food chain. If we were having a realistic discussion we wouldn't just talk about deaths of people, we would talk about the genomic damage done to all species, including human beings, from the abundance of radioactive effluents released into the environment by the nuclear industry.
The deaths of the communities that surround nuclear power
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I Google'd "deaths per terawatt" and found this: https://www.statista.com/stati... [statista.com]
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At $49/m, I'll pass. Howzabout you cut&paste the numbers instead?
Re:What about other options (Score:5, Informative)
And yet coal-ash disasters can destroy tons of square miles, pollute rivers for hundreds of miles, and cost over a $billion to clean up, and nobody says a word. The coal industry better thank $diety that "nuclear" is a now a curse-word...
http://www.washingtonpost.com/... [washingtonpost.com]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
http://appvoices.org/coalash/d... [appvoices.org]
(and more I'm too lazy to look up)
Cooling towers (Score:2)
Remember the big towers associated with nuclear plants??? Those are cooling towers for all the excess heat given off. Most are near bodies of water or rivers for cheap cooling sources. Just think about it-- the whole thing works from STEAM and you do not extract all that heat energy.
It doesn't even come close--- you don' need cooling towers or big sources of water ... or any water source at all for a wind generator! water being the cheapest cooling option they would use water if it produced serious amou
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
How do these compare to nuclear?
Nuclear: no carbon pollution at all, its first commercial iteration being several orders of magnitude safer than most (and at least 1 than any) "renewables" (and especially coal or oil), any subsequent iterations being drastically safer than even that. Any opposition against nuclear is 100% political.
Re: (Score:3)
What gives is price.
Nuclear is much more expensive than any other method of power generation. So much so that if we over-build solar and wind by a factor of 3 to handle intermittency, it's still cheaper than nuclear.
There's also the matter of waste. If that was actually priced in, nuclear would be in even worse shape. Instead, we're still operating on the fiction that the government will take care of it for free.
Finally, "advanced designs" that were supposed to eliminate the problems with nuclear reactor
Re: (Score:2)
Study not funded by Nuclear industry (Score:2)
MIT has a cozy relationship with Nuclear, and remember all the wealthy Cape Codders who don't want wind power off their shores...
You're aware that the authors of this study were Harvard scientists, right? Harvard is not MIT.
(https://www.cell.com/joule/fulltext/S2542-4351(18)30446-X , if you missed the link in the summary)
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Nope, this is coming from fossil fuel corporations who stand to lose $107 TRILLION in investments if we all move to renewables.
It's like they always say, follow the money, and the sunk investments in fossil fuels ECLIPSE any money spent on funding AGW studies
Re: (Score:2)
Interesting, do you have a source for that number? I hope it's true, it would put the conspiracy theorists' "follow the money" argument 6ft under once and for all.
Re: (Score:3)
You know that in the last 15 years the wind turbine have turn much better than the ones used 20 years ago!
Currently big and modern wind turbines work well, do not fail, produce good amount of energy for the wind level... they are big and expensive, but still much less than other power stations and do not have unknowns anymore, other than how much wind will be at a certain time. But that is also not a problem anymore because experience and data analysis show in average how many days you get without wind and