Although I certainly believe that renewable energy is preferable to fossil fuel burning, I’ve been thinking, is it not possible that these options will cause their own forms of climate change? For example, wind turbines should cause a small decrease in wind speed, and as climate is a chaotic system who knows what the end result could be due to the “butterfly effect.”
Likewise, hydroelectricity should cause a change in surface heat retention (due to the fact that water retains heat longer than solid ground), whilst solar power will increase the reflective properties of the ground possibly reducing surface heat take-up.
What are your opinions on this?
Also, what options do you think we have instead? Do we have ANY?
More Pages:
- Will the American Physical Society amend its ‘official’ statement on climate change?
- Solar Turbines: Do You Think Wind Turbines Could Be Harmful To The Climate? (11/27/2011)
- Solar Producer: What Is The Correlation Between Large City Pollution (Shanghai) And Climate Change? (11/22/2011)
- Solar Turbines: How Will Wind Turbines Affect The Climate? (6/20/2011)
- Anyone want to take bets that Climate Change is a HOAX…?
{ 5 comments… read them below or add one }
Renewable energy also isn’t environmentally neutral and causes some loss of natural habitat. Wind farms are noisy and effect birds and animals, solar panels also displace natural habitat. These schemes need to be very large to be effective and even in the desert there are living things which will lose their homes.
I remember in the 1980′s in Australia the Tasmanian state government wanted to build another hydro scheme which involved submerging large expanses of old growth forests and reducing the habitat of many endangered species. There was a national outcry and a high court battle between the state and federal government which managed to stop them.
the stuff you mentioned might be true , but they are nothing compared to what fossil fuel is doing , further more , the wind turbines can possibly cause that much of a disturbance , because they are relatively low to the ground , imagine if they were trees standing , would we blame them for causing disturbance in the winds ???
EVERYTHING causes a localized climate change. Shade under a tree makes it cooler than out in the open. Shade from a cloud often brings a gust of wind since there is an even bigger cooling effect over a larger area. Enough people in a room can heat it up noticably (every person puts out 500 btu on average.
I agree 100% that renewables are better than burning of fossil fuels when considering the planet as a whole. However, I don’t see how a wind turbine would make any significant difference locally.
Compare the volume of air passing through a wind turbine with the volume passing over it. Allowing for the decreasing pressure with altitude, there is the equivalent of 8 miles of air above the turbine. Compare this to (say) a turbine with 50m blades, also the 30% efficiency of the turbine, you are down to about 0.1% of the total energy being removed.
This energy then gets returned to the atmosphere as heat when the electricity is used. No net difference!
Similar arguments can be used for hydro and solar power, though I would agree that the area immediately around the lake could be a little different from when the lake wasn’t there…
Forget the “butterfly effect” It’s moronic!
While any thing we do with the current technology we have will affect the environment things like wind do significantly less than then anything produced from any hydrocarbon source.
As far as the affect of turbine on wind, if you think of the total circumference of the blade swing, at any given moment the (very thin) blades are only occupying a few percent of that total (wind filled) space.
Wind occupies most of the atmosphere from the ground to 10s of kilometers high, the suggestion that wind generator farms, were the blades are 30-40 m in diameter and 30-40 m off the ground have any meaning full effect on the climate is pointless.
I live in the very place Ben O talked about (Tasmania) and more than 80% of our total power comes from hydro, and the 80′s dam he talks of wasn’t wanted by most of the population here either, as the State Government found out at the next election.
There is also a quite large wind power farm in the North West on a large farm (Woolnorth) which now produces enough power for 70,000 homes and is the largest wind farm in the Southern Hemisphere, the continuing comments about noise are rubbish unless you go within a few hundred meters you can’t hear anything.