Posted on 11/15/2004 7:55:15 PM PST by wagglebee
New York, Nov 16 (IANS) An India-born, US-based scientist has proved that large-scale installation of windmills to replace conventional sources of energy may cause drastic local weather changes.
According to a newly published study by The Journal of Geophysical Research quoted by the New York Times, a wind farm with thousands of wind turbines also removed an enormous amount of energy from the air.
The research was headed by Somnath Baidya Roy who works with Princeton University in New Jersey, along with R.L. Walko of Duke University in North Carolina and S.W. Pacala, also of Princeton University.
It showed that the movement of windmill blades led to a great amount of atmospheric mixing, causing meteorological changes.
For the study, a wind farm consisting of an array of 10,000 turbines with rotor blades 50 metres long was set up in a 97 x 97 kilometre area in north-central Oklahoma.
According to Roy, the wind farm was much larger than those that have been built so far but was similar to those being considered for more power from renewable resources.
During the course of the experiment, the turbines were seen to trap a cool nocturnal jet of air, present in the Great Plains in Oklahoma, that separated the cool moist air near the ground from the drier, warmer air above.
This, in turn, caused turbulence in the air that led to vertical mixing of the air currents.
"It is the turbulence generated by the rotor that is crucial when you talk about impact on local meteorology," Roy said.
As a result of the warming and drying of surface air that occurred in the Great Plains, there could be weather impacts similar to the kinds of local atmospheric changes that occur with large-scale deforestation.
"You might see some kind of convective clouds or scattered rainfall here and there," he said.
Roy, who was born in Kolkata, did his graduation in BSc Physics from Presidency College there and got his MSc in Environmental Science from Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi. He has published many journals on atmospheric sciences, geophysical research and conservation ecology in the US.
Having worked as a research assistant for the Department of Science and Technology in New Delhi (1993) and for the Planning Commission (1994-95), Roy is now a research associate at Princeton University.
Noting that although his current study was only preliminary, he indicated a need to improve rotor design to reduce turbulence in windmills of the future.
Well...damned if you do and damned if you don't.
SAVE THE WIND!
That'll be the day.
LOL. You beat me to it!
There goes the Democrat renewable energy source idea out the window.
Bring back the nukes!
Then, on one fateful day, the last gust of wind will be used up and then we shall suffer an eternity of calmness.
He hasn't "proved" anything, all he did was issue a press release and Yahoo put it on their site.
So we should have worldwide conferences and treaties to combat "GLOBAL STILLNESS"?!
do solar panels also drain the sun? ;)
Not only this, but if there was ever an example of polluting the landscape, just drive by those stupid windmill farms in California sometime. It's amazing that liberals don't consider this pollution, these things littering the hillsides. Almost as bad as the omnipresent spider web of electrical wires above every street in San Francisco, destroying everyone's view, all so buses can drive on electricity. They ruin the landscape, in the name of ecology. How perfectly liberal.
I have to share this with my liberal neighbor. He informed me today that Bush is the worst environmental President in the history of the U.S. I was also informed that we (the U.S) are destroying the world with our global warming.
I shot back that we had better prevent Mount St. Helen from going off because it is going to cause more global warming and more polluntion that the cars do.
No joke.
Not to worry, it won't happen because it's not economically viable without government subsidies and even then, it only helps on the fringe.
Oil and gas. Coal. Nukes. That is our future.
Consider this, windmills take energy from the air, which will affect the spin of the planet and then we'll spiral into the sun. We're all doomed unless we go back to our caves.
Not true. Wind energy is very cost competitive with nat gas and coal.
I'm a conservative freeper, but also a founder of North American Windpower Magazine (www.nawindpower.com).
I can assure you wind energy is quite economically viable (and full of conservatives on the business end, btw).
"do solar panels also drain the sun?"
They only drain your wallet!
When I asked him, "How mucn does the Earth weigh?" he stammered and gave the typical liberal yammer about he was right and the facts were unimportant...kinda like Global Warming"
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