Wind farms alter ocean currents

Ok so this guy is hypothesizing that large wind farms will cause all kinds of drastic changes in ocean currents.
Yeah I understand a butterfly flapping it's wings might result in a hurricane....somewhere someday.
But to expand on Freud's sometimes a cigar is just a cigar line of thinking, sometimes noise in a signal is just noise. It's not going to add to anything substantial.

He sounds like he has an agenda and is trying to fit the science to the agenda as opposed to seeing where the facts take him.

Your smarter at this wind and weather stuff than I am, what are your thoughts?

 

Well, it doesn't look as if he's playing Chicken Little (although the publication seems to be trying). He's just pointing out that, yes, wind farms generate turbulence and alter wind patterns and that, in turn, could affect upper ocean transport patterns. He notes that the changes could be beneficial (or maybe not).

There's no free lunch. Everything has its influence on the world around it, and the question is what is the balance of the trade-offs. Want clean power? What are you willing to compromise to get it?

Wind farms (on land) are known to be a problem for birds and bats, and lots of people complain about visual and audial pollution.

Just now, I'm doing some computer calculations of what might be the effects on the Gulf Stream (between here and the Bahamas) if underwater turbines were put in the ocean to generate power -- the underwater equivalent of these wind farms. I don't have answers yet, but it's an interesting problem in oceanography. Just like the windmills, one turbine will be completely benign, most likely; it's when there's a large-scale array of them that it gets interesting. HPH

 

Human intuitive physics is often wrong. Intuitive physics says that if you take a small amount of something from a large amount of something, you haven't really changed the large amount. It also says that environmental forces like the wind and the tides are limitless. But these are not actually true in real physics.

If you generate power from a windmill, you are removing energy from the wind. One windmill is not going to change the climate by any reasonable measure. But enough windmills to seriously make a dent in the US power grid? They would have *some* effect, that's certain. Exactly what effect they would have is probably pretty hard to model.

 

^^ I think of that everytime I flush. [Sorry, I had to do it, Dr. C or someone else would have done it] . Now, back OT.

 

But it's just as true (in a different sort of way) if you don't flush, too. HPH

 

I'll choose the latter.

 

I only flush when embarassed.





sorry...just came from the latest pun thread.




I heard another theory not long ago that geothermal energy capture on a large scale could actually slow the rotation of the earth. And, yes, I am serious.

 

Seems doubtful to me. The rotation of the earth's crust is not driven by geothermal energy, as far as I know. It does get confusing because of the magnetic fields involved.

 

I think the term to be looked at carefully is "large scale."
Geothermal energy is generated by internal magma flow.
If you could suck enough energy out you might be able to impact
internal core activity if you could get deep enough into the mantle.
I suspect if the transfer of energy was substantial enough to impact the rotation of the earth, then it would also be enough to cook the atmosphere to unbearable levels.

just a gut hunch.

 

Mmmmm. Well.

Earth's rotation is not really maintained by anything tectonic or deeper, as far as I know. The only way I can think of that large-scale (very, very large-scale) geothermal heat extraction would affect the rotation would be by somehow changing the planet's moment of inertia, thereby affecting the rotation through angular momentum conservation. If the mantle activity slowed down enough to let the heavy stuff sink to the center (instead of being held up in plumes and so on), the spin rate could actually increase, seems like. HPH