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"It's so vast that small human actions couldn't possibly have an impact" is literally the same wrong-headed reasoning that leads people to believe that human CO

"It's so vast that small human actions couldn't possibly have an impact" is literally the same wrong-headed reasoning that leads people to believe that human CO₂ emissions don't matter. There seems to have been a lot of extreme weather in recent years. Could it be because harvesting energy from the wind alters weather patterns? A lot of people would rather just blame it on global warming than ask a question that might expose a flaw in our plans to wean ourselves off of fossil fuels. We need to have bit more humility and a bit less dogma about what we "know".

jeffbee 4y ago
The mechanism by which CO2 raises the steady-state temperature of the atmosphere is well understood, and it is not because of the awesome power of CO2, it is because the Sun is incredibly energetic. By contrast, there is no known way that wind power extraction, which is currently < 1TW globally, could possibly be destabilizing the energy system of the rotation of the Earth (which is what causes wind). That system contains ten billion times more kinetic energy than we remove from it annually. The amount of kinetic energy the moon removes from the Earth's rotational kinetic energy every year is larger, and has been going on for a long, long time, so if it was going to cause fire weather that would already have been a long-standing problem. In short, the amount of CO2 that humans have dumped into the atmosphere in the last 200 years is comparable to the amount that was in there to begin with. It can't be ignored. But the amount of energy we remove from the wind is nine or ten orders of magnitude smaller than the total amount that exists, and therefore it can be ignored.
Dylan16807 4y ago
The reason CO₂ emissions matter so much is that they accumulate over time. > There seems to have been a lot of extreme weather in recent years. Could it be because harvesting energy from the wind alters weather patterns? A lot of people would rather just blame it on global warming than ask a question that might expose a flaw in our plans to wean ourselves off of fossil fuels. Do you have anything other than wild speculation? Because in most cases slowing down air currents should calm the weather. And of course this has been asked!
- salawat 4y ago
  Slowing down air currents doesn't necessarily decrease extreme weather. Air currents are a means of energy diffusion. Stopping up that process is more likely to just exacerbate local maxima. Stabilized local maxima can be useful for energy extraction while being quite inconvenient for just about everything else. Energy races to heat. Heat tries to diffuse. If it can't, it's still there. Moving it still costs more energy. Entropy always wins.
tomc1985 4y ago
I don't think we will ever see power generation via renewables (one industry) approach the scale of anything near carbon emissions (all industry) You could do some very basic napkin math multiplying the air displacement per turbine (or whatever metric you choose) and multiplying by every turbine that exists, and I'd bet that number would be nowhere near total air displacement from natural causes. Human CO2 emissions matter precisely because the math has exceeded change from natural causes. And this happens because literally everyone is doing it. IF we cover the planet in wind turbines the same way we cover it with waste C02 then maybe you might have a case. Not to say renewables aren't without their issues. There are likely a whole host of second- and third-order issues there that have yet to be discovered, let alone resolved. But we would need adoption on a scale far beyond what has been proposed to combat global warming to approach that.
- Mindless2112 4y ago
  I'm not saying that CO₂ and wind turbines have a comparable effect on the climate. I'm saying that "it's small so it couldn't matter" is the same flawed thinking. > Human CO2 emissions matter precisely because the math has exceeded change from natural causes. Why? It's the significant detrimental impact of the human activity that's important, not how it compares to the amount or change from natural causes. (It doesn't even matter that it's human activity. If Earth were going to become inhospitable by entirely natural causes, that would still matter.) > then maybe you might have a case. I'm not making the case that wind turbines are harming the environment; that's just the example at hand. I'm making the case that casually dismissing (questions about) the potential impact of human activities is wrong.
  - tomc1985 4y ago
    My point is that the scale of pretty much everything we do is minuscule compared to carbon emissions. And, short of being more specific on what 'human activities' are in question, the negative tradeoffs are going to have to be far worse, in order to be a worse alternative than our current course of spewing CO2.

jeffbee 4y ago

The mechanism by which CO2 raises the steady-state temperature of the atmosphere is well understood, and it is not because of the awesome power of CO2, it is because the Sun is incredibly energetic. By contrast, there is no known way that wind power extraction, which is currently < 1TW globally, could possibly be destabilizing the energy system of the rotation of the Earth (which is what causes wind). That system contains ten billion times more kinetic energy than we remove from it annually. The amount of kinetic energy the moon removes from the Earth's rotational kinetic energy every year is larger, and has been going on for a long, long time, so if it was going to cause fire weather that would already have been a long-standing problem. In short, the amount of CO2 that humans have dumped into the atmosphere in the last 200 years is comparable to the amount that was in there to begin with. It can't be ignored. But the amount of energy we remove from the wind is nine or ten orders of magnitude smaller than the total amount that exists, and therefore it can be ignored.

Dylan16807 4y ago

The reason CO₂ emissions matter so much is that they accumulate over time. > There seems to have been a lot of extreme weather in recent years. Could it be because harvesting energy from the wind alters weather patterns? A lot of people would rather just blame it on global warming than ask a question that might expose a flaw in our plans to wean ourselves off of fossil fuels. Do you have anything other than wild speculation? Because in most cases slowing down air currents should calm the weather. And of course this has been asked!

salawat 4y ago
Slowing down air currents doesn't necessarily decrease extreme weather. Air currents are a means of energy diffusion. Stopping up that process is more likely to just exacerbate local maxima. Stabilized local maxima can be useful for energy extraction while being quite inconvenient for just about everything else. Energy races to heat. Heat tries to diffuse. If it can't, it's still there. Moving it still costs more energy. Entropy always wins.

tomc1985 4y ago

I don't think we will ever see power generation via renewables (one industry) approach the scale of anything near carbon emissions (all industry) You could do some very basic napkin math multiplying the air displacement per turbine (or whatever metric you choose) and multiplying by every turbine that exists, and I'd bet that number would be nowhere near total air displacement from natural causes. Human CO2 emissions matter precisely because the math has exceeded change from natural causes. And this happens because literally everyone is doing it. IF we cover the planet in wind turbines the same way we cover it with waste C02 then maybe you might have a case. Not to say renewables aren't without their issues. There are likely a whole host of second- and third-order issues there that have yet to be discovered, let alone resolved. But we would need adoption on a scale far beyond what has been proposed to combat global warming to approach that.

Mindless2112 4y ago
I'm not saying that CO₂ and wind turbines have a comparable effect on the climate. I'm saying that "it's small so it couldn't matter" is the same flawed thinking. > Human CO2 emissions matter precisely because the math has exceeded change from natural causes. Why? It's the significant detrimental impact of the human activity that's important, not how it compares to the amount or change from natural causes. (It doesn't even matter that it's human activity. If Earth were going to become inhospitable by entirely natural causes, that would still matter.) > then maybe you might have a case. I'm not making the case that wind turbines are harming the environment; that's just the example at hand. I'm making the case that casually dismissing (questions about) the potential impact of human activities is wrong.
- tomc1985 4y ago
  My point is that the scale of pretty much everything we do is minuscule compared to carbon emissions. And, short of being more specific on what 'human activities' are in question, the negative tradeoffs are going to have to be far worse, in order to be a worse alternative than our current course of spewing CO2.