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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
I agree. There are proposals out that would have small neighborhood turbines that would power neighborhoods exclusively. I haven’t read too much about it.
How would you know?
Or even picking one up off the ground, so I’m told (could be fake news).
Believe it or not, the electric utilities are aware of these proposals, and they are discussed whenever long range planning is considered. I’ve been a small part of these discussions, listening mostly, whenever my employer has held these type sessions.
But given your challenge here you go.
Yep, unless you’re “native”.