dagblog - Comments for "Wind and wave farms could affect Earth's energy balance "

Anyone have a clue how to

kgb999 — Sat, 25 Jun 2011 04:30:41 +0000

In reply to There's no such thing as a

Anyone have a clue how to increase the speed of a global current?

A well-placed monster venturi?

It's OK to get the tooth

NCD — Sat, 25 Jun 2011 03:16:13 +0000

In reply to But then how will I get my

It's OK to get the tooth pulled than filled, or root canaled for heavens sake. Eat oatmeal. The directives will come back if you medicate yourself sufficiently. Don't forget to stoop under the free energy depleting windmills.

I tried to tell people about

quinn esq — Sat, 25 Jun 2011 00:20:16 +0000

In reply to But then how will I get my

I tried to tell people about the teeth, but they don't listen. Wood, baby, wood. Gotta get wood. Now why do I suddenly feel I'm talking to the wrong man?

If I keep drinking Strongbows

Rootman — Sat, 25 Jun 2011 00:16:49 +0000

In reply to Wind and wave farms could affect Earth's energy balance

If I keep drinking Strongbows and falling down, I will use up all the gravity, and you will all fly away into the sun.

That's why I blog.

But then how will I get my

jollyroger — Fri, 24 Jun 2011 23:51:12 +0000

In reply to ...and don't forget get those

But then how will I get my directives from nutjob central? I had a tooth pulled and half my transmissions got garbled.

I think this guy's

kgb999 — Fri, 24 Jun 2011 22:06:09 +0000

In reply to Wind and wave farms could affect Earth's energy balance

I think this guy's conclusions are off-base, he doesn't seem to have availed himself of all available research before undertaking his own. I lost my bookmarks so I need to track down the study again .... but I'm pretty certain that it has been clearly demonstrated that localized low-altitude turbulence is self-limiting in such a way that impact on the entirety of the atmospheric system can not possibly create the outcomes he imagines. The issue came up on one of ClearThinker's "stop having babies" threads. My memory is that the study produced extensive modelling of various surface coverages and impacts, etc. which directly contradict his imagined warming impacts from global-scale wind farming.

From memory, the basic essence of their findings in this regard were that a wind turbine creates localized turbulence which in turn reduces the efficiency of nearby turbines. The kinetic energy stored in the entire mass of the atmosphere will only be reduced by the maximum resistance of combined turbulence-limited turbines (which should only generate resistance within 500 feet of the planet surface) - which is a comparatively trivial quantity of energy. It seems like this guy implies if we were to reforest the planet with 150' trees, it would have catastrophically negative impacts on the planetary system.

I am having a bit of dissonance trying to reconcile a study relying on the second law of thermodynamics that also so easily tosses around the phrase "free energy". Even when referring to energy available in the earth's system for extraction - it is a terrible choice of verbiage. I'm also puzzled by his reference to chemical disequilibrium. My understanding is that wind is caused by kinetic disequilibrium - generally driven by the heating/cooling cycle of the sun vs. earth's rotation. And I always thought the tides were largely driven by extra-planetary magnetic forces acting on our planetary system.

There is obviously a finite quantity of energy that can be extracted from any system. Beyond that, I'm not that impressed with this study. I'm seeing sizzle, but very little steak. Personally, I am far more concerned with the failure of models to account for the increasing impacts of direct-heat forcing (my specific worry is nuclear dissipating massive amounts of heat waste directly to the OHC budget which is currently trivially dismissed as if it were entering the global heat budget in the same way as solar radiation - which must be absorbed or transferred to the water system in order to impact OHC).

...and don't forget get those

NCD — Fri, 24 Jun 2011 20:47:31 +0000

In reply to So, instead of wind turbines,

...and don't forget get those dental fillings changed out.

The key is scale, which goes

Donal — Fri, 24 Jun 2011 17:57:56 +0000

In reply to There's no such thing as a

The key is scale, which goes back to population, which frightens everyone. When we were putting in geothermal at the school, I was wondering at what point do we exchange so much energy that we begin to change the soil? The idea seems similar in spirit to what the Gaia folk have in mind. Obviously the earth is very massive, and termites probably have a larger effect on the soil than we do - now. But if we heat up or cool down the soil to make our buildings comfortable, what does that do, over long periods of time, to the critters in the soil?

So, instead of wind turbines,

Donal — Fri, 24 Jun 2011 17:52:23 +0000

In reply to A Lovelock GAIA purveyor, I

So, instead of wind turbines, we need hurricane-rated turbines, tornado-rated turbines and mudslide wave generators.

Felt like we went through

quinn esq — Fri, 24 Jun 2011 17:19:42 +0000

In reply to Wind and wave farms could affect Earth's energy balance

Felt like we went through this once already, with that Prof out in Calgary.

Anyhoo. Yup, you'll get localized changes in wind, temperature, etc., when you put in a wind-farm, or solar installation. And since the local is global, there'll be global effects.

Now. Try this. Human beings have constructed literally billions of... buildings. Big, solid things, constructed almost s though they wanted to wall the wind out! Hell, sometimes there's even lots of em gathered together in places, which seems to give the the confidence to go higher - even HIGHER than a windmill! Hard to imagine.

Plus... get this. These humans.... cut down trees. Across billions of acres. And plant trees, only of the kind they like, across billions of other acres.

All of this, disrupting the wind!

And then, they take the tops right off of mountains! And carve roads into mountains, and make bridges, and then they laid out TENS of billions of telephone poles, along with all sorts of other things that disrupt the wind.

Shorter... lots of what we do changes the winds. The more useful questions will be around what types of impact result, what scale, how permanent, etc. This guy's calculations are being chewed apart. I'll wait a couple of years and check back in.