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An Interesting Study About Wind Farms
This Harvard Gazette article concludes that the environment impact of large-scale wind farms is not as benign as previously thought.
In two papers — published today in the journals Environmental Research Letters and Joule — Harvard University researchers find that the transition to wind or solar power in the U.S. would require five to 20 times more land than previously thought, and, if such large-scale wind farms were built, would warm average surface temperatures over the continental U.S. by 0.24 degrees Celsius.
“Wind beats coal by any environmental measure, but that doesn’t mean that its impacts are negligible,” said David Keith, the Gordon McKay Professor of Applied Physics at the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) and senior author of the papers. “We must quickly transition away from fossil fuels to stop carbon emissions. In doing so, we must make choices between various low-carbon technologies, all of which have some social and environmental impacts.”
As usual, we rush into technology before fully knowing all the impacts. Sometimes, we can only find out all the impacts by embracing the technology and reacting to it (such as the texting while driving impact on auto accidents, and the subsequent bans).
Again, nuclear is the best option (IMHO), with small modular reactors (SMRs) being a much more economical way to keep costs low.
Published in General
Acceleration. I get it.
As soon as I read a statement like this, from the article “We must quickly transition away from fossil fuels to stop carbon emissions,” I quit reading.
I know the feeling. But the authors’ opinions about global warming make their criticism of wind power an admission against interest, and that in turn makes their criticism even more compelling.
I think you misspelled nucular.
Welfare beneficiaries are always staunch defenders of welfare.
How do they know that clean coal causes more problems and suffering than it generates in prosperity?
They generate heat but without the life reinforcing and needed Co2. I’ve heard that wind energy is a net negative. They have to use some electricity if there is no wind to keep them limber. Is that true?
Do they also include the steel, aluminum and rare earth mines needed for wind and solar contraptions? Copper, Latex producing plants, mostly trees. Everything else used in the production and maintenance of wind and solar energy production?
Remember at all times: Figures do not Lie. But Liars do Figure. Always, always check to see what monetary interest a person or group has in their position on anything before putting much stock in their pitch. No good salesman will tell you anything that diminishes his chance for a sale, it’s up to you to do your own research. That applies to every grant funded research in the same way. No one applies for a grant nor grants one absent an expected outcome. And it is impossible for that not to have some effect on the conclusions drawn.
So how about this, could it qualify? If not, why not? Makes sense to me:
https://whatisnuclear.com/recycling.html
What is nuclear recycling?
Nuclear waste is recyclable. Once reactor fuel (uranium or thorium) is used in a reactor, it can be treated and put into another reactor as fuel. In fact, typical reactors only extract a few percent of the energy in their fuel. You could power the entire US electricity grid off of the energy in nuclear waste for almost 100 years (details). If you recycle the waste, the final waste that is left over decays to harmlessness within a few hundred years, rather than a million years as with standard (unrecycled) nuclear waste. This page explains how this interesting process is possible.
CAGW (Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming) is a hoax. To review, it was a 5 part claim:
For the month of September the global average temperature was *the same* as it was back in 1983. That conclusively disproves claims 1,3. The fact that it was all claimed with certainty, means it was a hoax. Claim #2 is unproven and will probably be disproved in the next 15 years (AMO and satellite data). The only claim not proven or disproved is #1. That is hard and depends on how the stratosphere behaves. (It could be that more CO2 blocks incoming heat from the thermosphere.)
How did this hoax happen? Because a lot of greedy chose money and virtue signaling over science. Energy is a $10T/year business. To control energy is to control humanity and that kind of thing is attractive to all manner of evil and corrupt people.
1983!!!!!
Absolutely, do research on everything someone thinks has promise. At their expense not that of the taxpayers. If that means we’ll have nothing to replace carbon fuels until they begin to become scarce I’m fine with that unless and until someone can show a reasonable likelihood that the environment is actually threatened. No, videos of calving icebergs don’t quite fill the bill.
Of course we do have a good replacement in place right now but people are scared to death of ‘Nucluar’ thus showing their ignorance. I’ve nothing against being ignorant, we all start out that way but that’s no reason to stay that way.
As usual, it’s pushed full steam by “progressives”, just like growing crops for fuel, like corn, instead of for food. So we import food, but still have to farm and use water, and risk soil depletion from planting the same thing, only to find out how costly biofuels really are.
FYI – the Kennedys were all about wind farms, but when they tried to set them up on the Cape, it ruined the view from their compound and failed to pass muster….
This is pretty accurate. Paying for standby gas turbine generators to fill the green energy gaps that consistently and inevitably occur is not a plan. It’s papering over the enormous hole in the base load grid that these technologies create.
There was a recent Powerline podcast that was very interesting on this stuff.
Yeah . . . it constantly refills itself.
That’s the Jimmy Carter phonetic spelling . . .
NIMBY is for everyone!
Only if he could imprison a large group of environmentalists.
Though, I imagine as President he could authorize a demonstration project for off the shelf nuclear power on remote federal lands. Like Johnson Island.
The Department of Energy has some large sites that would be perfect for an SMR demo. I live 20 miles from one (Savannah River Site).
The Army used to have a portable nuclear power plant.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/MH-1A
My main complaint about them is that they’re ugly as hell. They built a bunch of them on the mountain behind my Mom’s house; I’m not sure about the impact on birds, but they completely ruined the landscape. I’ve read that even some California homeowners are beginning to protest them.
Remember this gem?
That was by President Obama’s order.
Think of all government could allow for a price!
Swamp energy.
The Navy has a bunch of them. They call them “ships”.
Wind is air in motion.
When wind encounters and moves the propellor of a wind turbine, kinetic energy is transferred from the air to the propellor.
Thus the wind behind the energy farm ought to be slower than in front of the farm. And a little colder, too.
Build enough wind energy farms and you will change the weather downstream from them.
Except when they’re submersible. Then they’re “boats”. ;)
You also should have specialized generation. Before the advent of solar and wind, almost all fossil based generation was designed to run at one speed for long periods of time.
An electrical grid is designed so that power generation meets demand. The demand does vary during the day, and as it does, the generation is adjusted to reflect that. In this scenario, the operators have full control of the generation output, minus plant trips.
With wind and solar you have another factor outside the control of the operators, because the output of that generation varies during the course of a day outside the operator’s control (e.g. clouds come over a solar farm, or the wind stops blowing).
Before the advent of wind and solar, the vast majority of generation was designed to run at one speed for long periods of time. Varying the speed of these turbines contributes to wear and tear, and these are large investments.
Specialized generation has been designed for use in reacting to the variable power outputs of solar and wind, taking the burden off of the generation designed for staying at one speed.
Either way, this also adds to the cost of wind and solar.
In Alaska, where we have an isolated or islanded power grid, our addition of wind and some solar affects grid stability more than the lower forty-eight’s much larger grid. And we’re playing catch-up in bringing in generation designed to follow wind and solar.
One note about solar in Alaska. Alaska’s electrical power demand goes way up in the winter when enduring our extreme winters. And that’s when Alaska gets the darkest. Why we’re investing in solar boggles my mind.
The navy has lots of them.
Sorry, Al. I should have read a little further before commenting.
I agree, but disagree. Small nuclear reactors are the future for base load electric grid production. However not if the reactor has a solid fuel. In order to maximize efficiency the reactor should have a liquid fuel like Molten Salt Reactors (MSR) or a liquid fuel like the Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactor (LFTR).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liquid_fluoride_thorium_reactor
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molten_salt_reactor
Either of these reactor designs produce energy with less that 1% of the waste of a solid fuel reactor – and startup fuels for these reactors can be salvaged from the waste by products of the current fleet of solid fuel reactors. Solving 3 problems in one design.
It makes me crazy that we aren’t further along on this.
The other thing is they need to decentralize the grid. It would be more efficient and honestly run. Less politics.
Gigantic Bird Vegimatics. Wind Farms kill lots and lots of migratory birds. I like birds more than wind energy. Birds are amusing and interesting.