5 ms·

The contrarian in me has always been curious about how tapping "eco friendly" energy sources impact the environment. (Any here have some serious pointers?) For

The contrarian in me has always been curious about how tapping "eco friendly" energy sources impact the environment. (Any here have some serious pointers?) For example, if the energy of the wind at high altitudes is tapped, the wind will (duh) lose its force. How will that impact weather systems? Same for solar power - we'll be trapping radiation that will otherwise be reflected back into space. How does this affect thermodynamic equilibrium? Same for geothermal energy - how does it affect deep-earth physics? Maybe the effects in these cases are indeed linear in the small - like taking a drink from a river, but it is hard to be sure about whether they can be scaled with continued linear behaviour. Just as with fossil fuels ... one car probably didn't do much damage. 8 orders of magnitude later, its a different story altogether.

roel_v 16y ago
This has been brought up since the first wind/solar/tidal energy plants were being brought in production. I don't have any links at hand but this has been studied; watch the comments under stories like this one, they come up often. Basically as far as I understand the general consensus, even when evaluating worst case scenarios, is that the amount of power that is taken away is negligible, even compared to the total power consumption on earth (i.e. even if all power on earth would come from e.g. wind power, that would still be only a minuscule part of the total power that is in winds blowing all day, or sunshine that is emitted by the sun each day.)
jacquesm 16y ago
There is an easy way to see why this would not happen. A mountain range is a pretty sizable obstacle to the progress of airflow. It affects the weather directly around the mountain, and as much as 50 miles before the mountain and after it. But that's as far as the influence extends, and you'd need some pretty good data gathering and analysis to prove that. The effects that you can actually feel with your senses usually don't extend more than 10 miles or so beyond the mountain in the leeward direction, upwind you'd be hard pressed to notice any change at all. There will never be a windfarm that has a cross section comparable to a mountain range.
- Tamerlin 16y ago
  That's not a good answer here. A mountain range isn't sucking the energy out of the system and sending into another one. The mountain range sucks the energy out of the air and transfers it elsewhere -- leading to the violent and unpredictable weather that large mountain ranges are known for. Turbines suck the energy out of the air and don't put it back in the same place. I don't think that we'll be able to draw enough energy out of the air to make more than micro-climate level changes, but then if you look at what's happening to the eastern Washington water table and the massive reservoirs on the Columbia River, the massive reservoirs on the Colorado, and so on, things start to look a little bit less promising.
  - jacquesm 16y ago
    You are missing some basic stuff here. A mountain range is more, not less effective at 'sucking energy out of the air', it's basic physics. A windmill can only oppose the wind so much before it fails to work (see Betz' limit), a mountain range can suck 100% of the energy out of the air as you word it by simply converting the energy in the air to heat on impact (that's simplified but that's a good part of it). As to your choice of words, turbines don't 'suck energy out of the air', they slow down the moving air. A mountain range does the exact same thing.
    - Tamerlin 16y ago
      Read my post again. I did not say "mountain ranges don't suck energy out of the air." BTW, turbines don't 'suck energy out of the air', they slow down the moving air Those two statements are identical. Slowing down is sucking energy out of it.

roel_v 16y ago

This has been brought up since the first wind/solar/tidal energy plants were being brought in production. I don't have any links at hand but this has been studied; watch the comments under stories like this one, they come up often. Basically as far as I understand the general consensus, even when evaluating worst case scenarios, is that the amount of power that is taken away is negligible, even compared to the total power consumption on earth (i.e. even if all power on earth would come from e.g. wind power, that would still be only a minuscule part of the total power that is in winds blowing all day, or sunshine that is emitted by the sun each day.)

jacquesm 16y ago

There is an easy way to see why this would not happen. A mountain range is a pretty sizable obstacle to the progress of airflow. It affects the weather directly around the mountain, and as much as 50 miles before the mountain and after it. But that's as far as the influence extends, and you'd need some pretty good data gathering and analysis to prove that. The effects that you can actually feel with your senses usually don't extend more than 10 miles or so beyond the mountain in the leeward direction, upwind you'd be hard pressed to notice any change at all. There will never be a windfarm that has a cross section comparable to a mountain range.

Tamerlin 16y ago
That's not a good answer here. A mountain range isn't sucking the energy out of the system and sending into another one. The mountain range sucks the energy out of the air and transfers it elsewhere -- leading to the violent and unpredictable weather that large mountain ranges are known for. Turbines suck the energy out of the air and don't put it back in the same place. I don't think that we'll be able to draw enough energy out of the air to make more than micro-climate level changes, but then if you look at what's happening to the eastern Washington water table and the massive reservoirs on the Columbia River, the massive reservoirs on the Colorado, and so on, things start to look a little bit less promising.
- jacquesm 16y ago
  You are missing some basic stuff here. A mountain range is more, not less effective at 'sucking energy out of the air', it's basic physics. A windmill can only oppose the wind so much before it fails to work (see Betz' limit), a mountain range can suck 100% of the energy out of the air as you word it by simply converting the energy in the air to heat on impact (that's simplified but that's a good part of it). As to your choice of words, turbines don't 'suck energy out of the air', they slow down the moving air. A mountain range does the exact same thing.
  - Tamerlin 16y ago
    Read my post again. I did not say "mountain ranges don't suck energy out of the air." BTW, turbines don't 'suck energy out of the air', they slow down the moving air Those two statements are identical. Slowing down is sucking energy out of it.