Wind turbines increase temperatures more than burning fossil fuels

[Anonymous]

Wind farms can actually INCREASE climate change by raising temperatures and causing downpours, warn academics

Temperatures can fall by up to 4C downwind of farms



Tory MPs write to PM demanding dramatic subsidy cuts.



They have long been championed as a way to combat global warming by creating clean energy.



But wind farms can actually alter the climate according to a new study by a group of American scientists.



The team from the University of Illinois found that daytime temperatures around wind farms can fall by as much as 4C, while at night temperatures can increase.



The study found that currently the effect is restricted to areas near to the turbines, but the increase in larger farms could create weather changes on a regional scale.



The study was led by Somnath Roy, assistant professor of atmospheric sciences at the university, with the San Gorgonio wind farm in California the focal point of his research.



He found that the day ground temperature behind turbines was up to 4C lower than in front.



He suggested that the turbines' blades scoop warm from the ground and push the cooler air downwards. This is then reversed at night.



Research: Somnath Roy of the University of Illinois conducted the study into climate around wind farms

Research: Somnath Roy of the University of Illinois conducted the study into climate around wind farms



Roy, whose findings were published in the Sunday Times, added that he believes the turbines causing turbulence and reducing winds speed are the cause.



He also added that the churning of air from low to high can create vortices that could extend the phenomenon for large distances downwind.



Roy's research is supported by a study undertaken by the Iowa State University, who looked at how a 100-turbine farm would affect conditions on farmland.



They found that temperatures on the ground were warmer at night, which in turn allowed plants to breathe more.



While scientists in the United States have conducted research into the effects of wind farms on climate, such research in the UK is at an early stage.



The members are calling for a dramatic cut in subsidies to onshore wind farms and more influence for local people to stop them being built.



The move is seen as a major revolt against government policy and sees the politicians join forces with other parties to express serious concerns over the level of taxpayers' money going to the sector.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2096797/Wind-farms-actually-INCREASE-climate-change-raising-temperatures-warn-academics.html">https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/articl ... emics.html">https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2096797/Wind-farms-actually-INCREASE-climate-change-raising-temperatures-warn-academics.html



Wind power is not technology, it's not efficient and it certainly isn't green.

[Frood]

Solar has similar issues. If enough panels were laid on the surface to provide for humanity's most basic needs, the environment would drastically change.

[Anonymous]

If wind turbines were to supply all of that growth but no more, how many would need to be built each year? The answer is nearly 350,000, since a two-megawatt turbine can produce about 0.005 terawatt-hours per annum. That's one-and-a-half times as many as have been built in the world since governments started pouring consumer funds into this so-called industry in the early 2000s.



At a density of, very roughly, 50 acres per megawatt, typical for wind farms, that many turbines would require a land area greater than the British Isles, including Ireland. Every year. If we kept this up for 50 years, we would have covered every square mile of a land area the size of Russia with wind farms. Remember, this would be just to fulfil the new demand for energy, not to displace the vast existing supply of energy from fossil fuels, which currently supply 80 per cent of global energy needs.



Do not take refuge in the idea that wind turbines could become more efficient. There is a limit to how much energy you can extract from a moving fluid, the Betz limit, and wind turbines are already close to it. Their effectiveness (the load factor, to use the engineering term) is determined by the wind that is available, and that varies at its own sweet will from second to second, day to day, year to year.



As machines, wind turbines are pretty good already; the problem is the wind resource itself, and we cannot change that. It's a fluctuating stream of low–density energy. Mankind stopped using it for mission-critical transport and mechanical power long ago, for sound reasons. It's just not very good.



As for resource consumption and environmental impacts, the direct effects of wind turbines — killing birds and bats, sinking concrete foundations deep into wild lands — is bad enough. But out of sight and out of mind is the dirty pollution generated in Inner Mongolia by the mining of rare-earth metals for the magnets in the turbines. This generates toxic and radioactive waste on an epic scale, which is why the phrase 'clean energy' is such a sick joke and ministers should be ashamed every time it passes their lips.



It gets worse. Wind turbines, apart from the fibreglass blades, are made mostly of steel, with concrete bases. They need about 200 times as much material per unit of capacity as a modern combined cycle gas turbine. Steel is made with coal, not just to provide the heat for smelting ore, but to supply the carbon in the alloy. Cement is also often made using coal. The machinery of 'clean' renewables is the output of the fossil fuel economy, and largely the coal economy.



A two-megawatt wind turbine weighs about 250 tonnes, including the tower, nacelle, rotor and blades. Globally, it takes about half a tonne of coal to make a tonne of steel. Add another 25 tonnes of coal for making the cement and you're talking 150 tonnes of coal per turbine. Now if we are to build 350,000 wind turbines a year (or a smaller number of bigger ones), just to keep up with increasing energy demand, that will require 50 million tonnes of coal a year. That's about half the EU's hard coal–mining output.



Forgive me if you have heard this before, but I have a commercial interest in coal. Now it appears that the black stuff also gives me a commercial interest in 'clean', green wind power.



The point of running through these numbers is to demonstrate that it is utterly futile, on a priori grounds, even to think that wind power can make any significant contribution to world energy supply, let alone to emissions reductions, without ruining the planet. As the late David MacKay pointed out years back, the arithmetic is against such unreliable renewables.



The truth is, if you want to power civilisation with fewer greenhouse gas emissions, then you should focus on shifting power generation, heat and transport to natural gas, the economically recoverable reserves of which — thanks to horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing — are much more abundant than we dreamed they ever could be. It is also the lowest-emitting of the fossil fuels, so the emissions intensity of our wealth creation can actually fall while our wealth continues to increase. Good.

https://www.spectator.co.uk/2017/05/wind-turbines-are-neither-clean-nor-green-and-they-provide-zero-global-energy/">https://www.spectator.co.uk/2017/05/win ... al-energy/">https://www.spectator.co.uk/2017/05/wind-turbines-are-neither-clean-nor-green-and-they-provide-zero-global-energy/



And on top of all of that wind turbines raise temperatures.

[Anonymous]

Wind farms do waste a lot of land.

[Bricktop]

And sea.



When in the UK recently, we visited a beach near Skegness, a popular tourist spot (although I could not fathom why...it was a horrible place).



Around a kilometre from the shoreline were over 250 wind turbines...turning the ocean vista into a repugnant blight.



What I found intriguing is that the government saw fit to plant these things offshore from a holiday location that is targeted towards the less affluent...it's a working class series of holiday camps that differed from concentration camps only by lack of barbed wire. They are crowded and tawdry but cheap.



However, there were NO turbines on the southern coast, which borders the wealthy counties of Surrey, Devon, Kent and Cornwall.

[Anonymous]

And sea.



When in the UK recently, we visited a beach near Skegness, a popular tourist spot (although I could not fathom why...it was a horrible place).



Around a kilometre from the shoreline were over 250 wind turbines...turning the ocean vista into a repugnant blight.



What I found intriguing is that the government saw fit to plant these things offshore from a holiday location that is targeted towards the less affluent...it's a working class series of holiday camps that differed from concentration camps only by lack of barbed wire. They are crowded and tawdry but cheap.



However, there were NO turbines on the southern coast, which borders the wealthy counties of Surrey, Devon, Kent and Cornwall.

Wealthy people love wind farms as long as they don't have to live within one hundred kms of the massive eyesores.

[Anonymous]

And sea.



When in the UK recently, we visited a beach near Skegness, a popular tourist spot (although I could not fathom why...it was a horrible place).



Around a kilometre from the shoreline were over 250 wind turbines...turning the ocean vista into a repugnant blight.



What I found intriguing is that the government saw fit to plant these things offshore from a holiday location that is targeted towards the less affluent...it's a working class series of holiday camps that differed from concentration camps only by lack of barbed wire. They are crowded and tawdry but cheap.



However, there were NO turbines on the southern coast, which borders the wealthy counties of Surrey, Devon, Kent and Cornwall.

Wealthy people love wind farms as long as they don't have to live within one hundred kms of the massive eyesores.

Rich people only want pretty things around. No ugly steel plants, refineries, mines, meat packing plants or drilling rigs in their back yards. They don't need to work, so they don't care.

[Anonymous]

And sea.



When in the UK recently, we visited a beach near Skegness, a popular tourist spot (although I could not fathom why...it was a horrible place).



Around a kilometre from the shoreline were over 250 wind turbines...turning the ocean vista into a repugnant blight.



What I found intriguing is that the government saw fit to plant these things offshore from a holiday location that is targeted towards the less affluent...it's a working class series of holiday camps that differed from concentration camps only by lack of barbed wire. They are crowded and tawdry but cheap.



However, there were NO turbines on the southern coast, which borders the wealthy counties of Surrey, Devon, Kent and Cornwall.

Wealthy people love wind farms as long as they don't have to live within one hundred kms of the massive eyesores.

Rich people only want pretty things around. No ugly steel plants, refineries, mines, meat packing plants or drilling rigs in their back yards. They don't need to work, so they don't care.

It's very selfish of them..



But, I think we're getting off topic here..



The op is about wind farms increasing temperatures.

[Anonymous]

And sea.



When in the UK recently, we visited a beach near Skegness, a popular tourist spot (although I could not fathom why...it was a horrible place).



Around a kilometre from the shoreline were over 250 wind turbines...turning the ocean vista into a repugnant blight.



What I found intriguing is that the government saw fit to plant these things offshore from a holiday location that is targeted towards the less affluent...it's a working class series of holiday camps that differed from concentration camps only by lack of barbed wire. They are crowded and tawdry but cheap.



However, there were NO turbines on the southern coast, which borders the wealthy counties of Surrey, Devon, Kent and Cornwall.

Wealthy people love wind farms as long as they don't have to live within one hundred kms of the massive eyesores.

Rich people only want pretty things around. No ugly steel plants, refineries, mines, meat packing plants or drilling rigs in their back yards. They don't need to work, so they don't care.

It's very selfish of them..



But, I think we're getting off topic here..



The op is about wind farms increasing temperatures.

It's all related to the useless waste of taxpayer money wind farms are.

[Frood]

And sea.



When in the UK recently, we visited a beach near Skegness, a popular tourist spot (although I could not fathom why...it was a horrible place).



Around a kilometre from the shoreline were over 250 wind turbines...turning the ocean vista into a repugnant blight.



What I found intriguing is that the government saw fit to plant these things offshore from a holiday location that is targeted towards the less affluent...it's a working class series of holiday camps that differed from concentration camps only by lack of barbed wire. They are crowded and tawdry but cheap.



However, there were NO turbines on the southern coast, which borders the wealthy counties of Surrey, Devon, Kent and Cornwall.

Wealthy people love wind farms as long as they don't have to live within one hundred kms of the massive eyesores.

Rich people only want pretty things around. No ugly steel plants, refineries, mines, meat packing plants or drilling rigs in their back yards. They don't need to work, so they don't care.

It's very selfish of them..



But, I think we're getting off topic here..



The op is about wind farms increasing temperatures.

It's all related to the useless waste of taxpayer money wind farms are.

Aren't most dystopian coups? Line up the ducks then take them out with one shot. Bonus points if the ducks are demanding it.

[Anonymous]

And sea.



When in the UK recently, we visited a beach near Skegness, a popular tourist spot (although I could not fathom why...it was a horrible place).



Around a kilometre from the shoreline were over 250 wind turbines...turning the ocean vista into a repugnant blight.



What I found intriguing is that the government saw fit to plant these things offshore from a holiday location that is targeted towards the less affluent...it's a working class series of holiday camps that differed from concentration camps only by lack of barbed wire. They are crowded and tawdry but cheap.



However, there were NO turbines on the southern coast, which borders the wealthy counties of Surrey, Devon, Kent and Cornwall.

Wealthy people love wind farms as long as they don't have to live within one hundred kms of the massive eyesores.

Rich people only want pretty things around. No ugly steel plants, refineries, mines, meat packing plants or drilling rigs in their back yards. They don't need to work, so they don't care.

It's very selfish of them..



But, I think we're getting off topic here..



The op is about wind farms increasing temperatures.

It's all related to the useless waste of taxpayer money wind farms are.

True enough.