Posted on 10/05/2018 7:47:07 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
Those ugly, unreliable, heavily subsidized windmills that dot the landscape in increasing numbers not only kill millions of birds, but actually increase global warming, if you buy into the assumptions used by the warmist cult. We have this on the authority of scientists bearing the imprimatur of prestigious universities. From Technology Review, published by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology:
[A] new study by a pair of Harvard researchers finds that a high amount of wind power could mean more climate warming, at least regionally and in the immediate decades ahead. The paper raises serious questions about just how much the United States or other nations should look to wind power to clean up electricity systems.
The study, published in the journal Joule, found that if wind power supplied all US electricity demands, it would warm the surface of the continental United States by 0.24˚C. That could significantly exceed the reduction in US warming achieved by decarbonizing the nation's electricity sector this century, which would be around 0.1˚C. ...
The core problem is that wind turbines generate electricity by extracting energy out of the air, slowing down wind and otherwise altering "the exchange of heat, moisture, and momentum between the surface and the atmosphere," the study explains. That can produce some level of warming.
(Excerpt) Read more at americanthinker.com ...
Harvard kids always were a little slow.
Wind works only when it’s really windy.
And then... There are repair crews on-site...
The other dirty secret of wind power:
Endangered bird pieces all over the place.
Wind guys aren’t allowed to collect the feathers,
but they do.
Wiondmills aren’t designed to generate realiable energy. That’s just the maguffin. Their real purpose is to pump taxpayer subsidy dollars into the pockets of landowners, mfgrs, and politicians.
Important study. They interfere with the normal action of the wind. The wind redistributes heat energy, a normal action than leads to equilibrium. Interfering with that is not good.
Windmills have become a symbol for the left. bammy allowed them to kill thousands of birds every day.
I’m pretty sure that the takeaway from this is that humans using any kind of energy at all, will cause global warming. The only way to save the planet is for a huge or complete die off of humanity. If you truly love the planet, you know what to do.
Their real purpose is to pump taxpayer subsidy dollars into the pockets of landowners, mfgrs, and politicians.
*************
Precisely. You nailed it.
Wind is turned into money — for a few.
Harvard is nothing but a ‘snob factory’
windmills not only kills millions of song birds, eagles and so on, but uncounted millions of bats ... the insect kingdom loves windmills; the put windmills right up there with the elimination of DDT.
Save the Bugs!!! Build Windmills!
And marketing firms, even in oil-rich states.
$$$
Years ago, the Wall Street Journal published an article by a well known investor. (I forget who)
He was asked to buy into a large offshore Atlantic wind farm. The investment looked great with a good ROI. At the last minute, he asked his staff to rerun the numbers with the government subsidies removed.
ROI went to <1%. He said if one unit got damaged or had a problem, he would lose money on his investment and thus he chose not to invest.
Coal is awesome. Wind is useless. Solar is good for limited purposes.
A company I used to work for supplied a solar manufacturer. I worked closely with them. If solar is so great, why is the plant on the grid? They had a two big plants, one in Michigan and one in Mexico. They could make their own panels at cost, yet they used none. When foreign subsidies dried up, the company died.
If the can’t be relied upon for constant power, something must be used to instantly take up the load. That something is called spinning reserve. It’s the gas and coal fired boilers that produce steam to turn turbines. Those turbines must be spinning all the time with a low load to be able to take up the slack and it takes a long time to fire up a cold boiler to produce 3000 psi steam.
And have you ever seen the dust cloud that emits from below the Turbines. If you live near one, you breathe that dust. Have seen it many times, huge dust clouds.
The magic of huge wind turbines? How do they sync the phase on each turbine? How do they control the peak AC voltage when you don’t precisely control the speed they turn at.
Wind generators are very practical for local DC applications. For charging battery banks for lights and DC devices. No practical for Heating and Air systems.
I want to see the themodynamic analysis on this one. I say BS.
And further, after a cursory search on the authors’ publication history, I see nothing indicating the serious background in thermodynamics such a study would require.
Yep, seems that wind power being environmentally friendly is just HOT AIR.
i’ve often wondered how millions of 60-story windmills might alter the earth’s energy balance ... for one thing, there would be a whole lot of friction between those blades and the air ... not to mention massive disruption to the various normal wind flows here and there ...
Solar panels generate DC voltage. (at low current low voltage levels.) It is great for some applications. NOT powerful applications.
If solar panels are used to generate AC it must be done through an inverter of some type. Many are 50% efficient, and all of them produce Square Wave (not Sine Wave) AC. Sine wave AC is very noisy and generates some heating in the transformers.
I bought my first solar panels in the 1980’s. They were surplus out of Los Alamos.
To make wind really work, you need two things: cheap storage, so that off-peak generation isn’t wasted; and unlimited space in other people’s backyards (viewsheds), since turbines are unsightly and no one wants to live around them.
Need to brush up on the current state of solar panels and especially inverters if what you posted was from the 1980’s.
Square wave inverters produce noise, making them unsuitable for motor and many electronic applications. Pure Sine Wave inverters are not noisy and efficiency is much greater now.
Me too.
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