Wired News gushes about a new study that says building wind turbines at all surveyed locations with wind speeds high enough to power them would produce five times our (as in humans') current energy need. Applying the Wired style of technofetishism to the topic of electric power always reminds me of conjuring something out of nothing, and how that's simply not possible. Specifically I remember how harvesting a resource must upset the system it's in: if we take 72 terawatts of energy out of the wind, how does that affect local and global weather?
Sounds like if there's any scholarly writing on it, it'd be in the Journal of Geophysical Research -- Atmospheres. Does anyone happen to know if there is any?
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There have been a couple articles from New Scientist on the future of wind power. They’ve tended to focus on the vast number of birds that the generators kill in any given year though. Were I a bird, I think I’d try to avoid large rotating blades.
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i’ve often wondered about that myself: what’s the weather behind the windmill like? grass don’t grow ‘neath a solar panel.
if there is a legitimate method for measuring what we’re (yes, humans) snagging out of the wind air for energy, and if we have a way of understanding what sort of effect that has on the environment, how likely is it to be as bad as our current fossil-sucking footprint?
long story, short: use less.