The fact is, people, wind power is one of absolutely the worst ways we can go to generate power. Think about what wind is and what it does. Wind is one of the earth's heat transfer mechanisms. Wind is a major driver of our weather systems. So, it makes absolutely no sense to fuck with wind. Doing so will remove energy from the earth's heat transfer systems, thus disrupting how heat is moved around the planet.

If you want proof, look at North America's weather changes since the installation of major wind farms in the western part of the US. I would argue that most of our perceived "climate change" that we attribute to CO2 is likely due to those wind farms. Those wind farms cause the midwest to retain more heat than it normally would, and they possibly disrupt where the jet stream would normally go.

And, to make matters worse, we have some geniuses in Florida who want to sink generators in the GULF STREAM. Yes, the fucking gulf stream. Am I the only person who sees a problem with this? Yes, let's remove energy from a system that we already know makes England's climate dramatically different than other locations at the same latitude. Yes, that is pure fucking genius! You want to see some powerful hurricanes? Then fuck with the mechanism that removes heat from the part of the ocean where hurricanes form.

6/23/2008 9:31:47 PM

are you fucking crazy? Stupid?

or are you just fucking with us......

6/23/2008 9:41:04 PM

Quote :

"are you fucking crazy? Stupid? or are you just fucking with us...... "

6/23/2008 9:41:42 PM

one way to combat heat is to use solar power, where the sunlight is absorbed and thus cools the earth.

but seriously, haven't environmentalists realized that conservation of energy means that if we take power from one natural cycle, we're messing it up?

and yes, this also applies to using biofuels that raise the cost of food.

6/23/2008 9:51:19 PM

^^, ^^^

thanks for your great input!

6/23/2008 9:52:22 PM

Just so we're clear...

You think anthropogenic CO2 doesn't affect the climate, but wind farms do?

6/23/2008 10:19:11 PM

how is it a couple of windfarms, in your mind, could cause climate change.

Bit the gigawatts of energy released by co2 emissions from cars and coal plants, and all the steam from nuclear plants can't have any effect on the environment? Wind/hydro does not in any way unbalance the energy system more than any other typo of energy, and is very likely to have less of an impact/watt than other types of energy (when you factor in the mining and maintenance costs of traditional plants vs. windmills).


[Edited on June 23, 2008 at 10:21 PM. Reason : ]

6/23/2008 10:20:49 PM

I do not find this a credible worry.

6/23/2008 10:21:01 PM

how is that fucking with major climate mechanisms could affect the climate? Are you SERIOUSLY asking that? How is it that firing a gun into my temple might kill me?

haha. STEAM FROM POWER PLANTS? Are you fucking kidding me? nah. Fucking with the heat-transfer of the earth is not a problem. riiight. and, btw, co2 emissions don't release energy. thanks for living up to your screenname. We have something that very clearly affects climate, since we KNOW that wind actually is a climate driver, and you aren't even remotely concerned about it. I guess that must be because your god and saviour, Al Gore, hasn't decreed that wind power is a bad thing. Tell me, einstein, how is it that you don't think that fucking with HEAT TRANSFER, you know, the very thing that makes our climate what it fucking is, wouldn't fuck with our climate? Hmmm? explain that.

6/23/2008 10:36:31 PM

The first thing that comes to mind is that wind generators are a few hundred feet tall. The jet stream flows about 10 miles above the surface of the earth.



My real fear here is that you're not trolling.

[Edited on June 23, 2008 at 10:43 PM. Reason : ]

6/23/2008 10:40:55 PM

you think that a few relative-toothpick-sized turbines sticking a few yards in the air will actually mess with a jetstream that flows miles above the earth's surface? What's less, when the turbines are moving at full speed, the amount of energy required to keep them moving in a stiff breeze is minuscule compared to the total amount of force carried by the wind.

6/23/2008 10:42:28 PM

^ not only that but all the windmills on the planet likely represent less than 1 percent of all the wind energy on the planet. It's a drop in the bucket compared to what we're harvesting. And the hot water and steam from a single nuclear plant very likely adds way more energy to the energy mechanisms of the earth than 2 windfarms can remove.

6/23/2008 10:44:16 PM

aaronburro, are you suggesting we should cut down the world's forests because they interfere with the wind as a heat transfer system?

Look, from an engineering perspective, compared to the energy a wind farm pulls out of the wind, the energy that remains is astronomical. Our wind-mills only affect the air at a certain altitude, and only extracts a puny percentage of the energy out of the wind it does make contact with. As such, I have no reservation in predicting that while wind farms will certainly have an impact, the impact will be localized and on the whole insignificant.

6/23/2008 10:51:54 PM

Quote :

"I do not find this a credible worry."

6/23/2008 10:54:19 PM

wind farms are just retarded because, well, the wind just cant provide base load

we already have a base load capable, co2 free power source

6/23/2008 10:54:58 PM

lets mow down all the mountain ranges in the world

they are impediments to wind and weather


this is the stupidest thread in the history of TWW

6/23/2008 10:59:06 PM

This is the inconvenientest shit I ever saw

6/23/2008 11:02:12 PM

YEAH, AND LETS BAN SAILBOATS TOO!

6/23/2008 11:02:59 PM

Quote :

"My real fear here is that you're not trolling."

Quote :

"are you fucking crazy? Stupid? or are you just fucking with us......"

Quote :

"Just so we're clear... You think anthropogenic CO2 doesn't affect the climate, but wind farms do?"

Quote :

"this is the stupidest thread in the history of TWW"

Quote :

"This is the inconvenientest shit I ever saw"

LOL, some great responses in this thread

6/23/2008 11:06:21 PM

Quote :

"And the hot water and steam from a single nuclear plant very likely adds way more energy to the energy mechanisms of the earth than 2 windfarms can remove."

World nuclear capacity is 370,721 MW.

World wind capacity is 93,849 MW.

The waste heat produced by nuclear power plants if very likely greater than the production of wind turbines. However....



The heat input of the sun is 1,800,000,000,000 MW.













So it really doesn't matter.

6/23/2008 11:08:01 PM

I hope he realizes that the wind farms don't actually generate more wind, just harvests the wind.

6/23/2008 11:10:44 PM

I thought he was saying that the windmills would get in the way and block out all the wind

6/23/2008 11:13:09 PM

we are left with two conclusions

1. raze everything that is above 5 feet in height from the earth, including trees, buildings, mountains and hills

2. he thinks windmills actually generate wind.

6/23/2008 11:18:53 PM

1.21 JIGGAWATTS!11!

6/23/2008 11:22:26 PM

^^reading comprehension was never your strong point. He's saying that the wind farms interfere with thermal transfer by blocking [some of] the wind, which carries heat out of one area and into another.

Still very stupid, but not as dumb as the 2 conclusions you put forth.

[Edited on June 23, 2008 at 11:26 PM. Reason : 2]

6/23/2008 11:25:05 PM

Quote :

"You want to see some powerful hurricanes?"

Yes.

6/24/2008 12:50:24 AM

^^ Troof.

Entire Thread...

6/24/2008 4:12:08 AM

I call troll.

6/24/2008 7:07:46 AM

I think he's attempting satire.

attempting

6/24/2008 8:09:17 AM

Quote :

"Still very stupid, but not as dumb as the 2 conclusions you put forth."

Not at all. By blocking thermal transfer, it means that any structure that obstructs the thermal transfer would need to be destroyed. Hence razing all buildings and anything abover 5 feet since they would obstruct the thermal transfer.

So lose the air of superiority.

6/24/2008 8:24:32 AM

I've heard of wind power causing "micro climate change". But nothing of the sort of accusations here - it's just not possible to verify or even speculate.

Quote :

"The fact is, people, wind power is one of absolutely the worst ways we can go to generate power."

Well, there's still...

solar thermal
solar PV
micro hydro
biomass

plenty of ways worse than wind power. In fact, given a short amount of time and fees paid, I could surely invent and patent a new source of power worse than wind.

6/24/2008 8:29:52 AM

Quote :

"I think he's attempting satire. attempting"

The problem with this approach is that when you're already a complete fucking idiot, people will always assume that you're just being retarded rather than satirical.

6/24/2008 8:53:27 AM

Wind is effectively the result of a temperature gradient. Go to the beach on a Spring day and feel the breeze as the water beings to warm...a large lake gives the same effect. The heat transfer between the two bodies (hot and cold) is governed by the transfer medium....essentially air in this case. Th and Tc will approach each other and eventually reach equilibrium. Removing some of the transfer energy would effect the transfer rate, effectively delaying the cooling and heating of the thermal banks by some amount of time....I think thats what you are going with right, aaronburro?

My answer is that...sure it will. But would taking 0.1% of the energy from this process result in millisecond differentials, or would it result in a delay of days, weeks, or months is the question.

I havent seen the data, but I would theroize milliseconds......

6/24/2008 11:54:15 AM

If I had to guess, I would wager the point was that wind power has just about as quantifiable an effect on the global climate as any number of other supposed evil enemies of Gia. Difference being that wind power is perceived as "environmentally friendly" whereas modulo lip service by politicians whose votes speak otherwise (Yucca Mountain) nuclear power, clean coal, etc.... are "not a renewable energy" and as such must be avoided. Of course, it saddens me a bit that we basically are as a society looking for a perpetual motion machine, something that does not hurt food supplies (oops, sorry about that starving third world... ethanol, our bad), doesn't take oodles of energy to set up and somehow magically resupplies itself so we can keep using the energy.

In short, I'd rather we use natural resources to maintain the standard of living and eliminate non-hypothetical human suffering. We can theorize about climate models and change, who knows maybe the temperature will rise and the seas as well. However, what is happening right now, this is not a theory, is people are starving because we are putting roadblocks in the way of supplying more oil to the world and more directly we are burning food in our cars. This needs to stop now.

Maybe we can figure out better batteries to make solar more tenable, maybe we can get fusion to work (I'd guess the hot version if I was a betting man), maybe we could actually use modern power generation techniques to take advantage of the piles of radioactive "waste" which are actually fuel if we put our mind and engineering skills towards it. These are all big maybes. What is for sure is that for technical or political reasons those are not ready now. What is ready now is fossil fuels. We need to free private enterprise to take full advantage both for the US and all the other countries that have been inadvertently punished for our own environmentally motivated stupidities.

6/24/2008 9:37:01 PM

Quote :

"If I had to guess, I would wager the point was that wind power has just about as quantifiable an effect on the global climate as any number of other supposed evil enemies of Gia."

if that was aaronburro's original point (and for his sake, let's hope it was), that's just absurd. To equate a few toothpick sized windmills (effective as they are or not at generating electricity) to methods that produce the following results is ridiculous

6/24/2008 9:53:01 PM

Quote :

"Difference being that wind power is perceived as "environmentally friendly" whereas modulo lip service by politicians whose votes speak otherwise (Yucca Mountain) nuclear power, clean coal, etc.... are "not a renewable energy" and as such must be avoided."

nuclear is the only non co2 emitting power source that is capable of supplying base load

6/24/2008 10:25:18 PM

huh huh

you said "load"

6/24/2008 10:58:37 PM

Quote :

"nuclear is the only non co2 emitting power source that is capable of supplying base load"

Dude, we are out of space for large hydro. Epically if you're not a fan of fucking up more of federal land. That's just a fact of life.

6/24/2008 11:46:12 PM

ermm.... i'm not seeing the connection between nuclear and hydro....?

6/25/2008 12:18:29 AM

this thread has to be a joke. The energy contained into the total wind circulation of the earth is several orders of magnitude greater than the energy harvested in wind farms.

6/25/2008 12:55:40 PM

think of the birds! they'll get hurt! we can't take that risk

6/25/2008 1:07:23 PM

Quote :

"ermm.... i'm not seeing the connection between nuclear and hydro....?"

Because you didn't read the sentence quoted right above that?

6/25/2008 1:53:47 PM

this thread has been my comic relief of the day..

6/25/2008 1:56:01 PM

an arguement that we are taking enough energy out of the climate to effect the weather with wind farms is one of the dumbest things I have heard in a while.

6/25/2008 2:31:05 PM

more importantly, if climate changes will wind farms be as effective?

6/25/2008 3:35:01 PM

I know I can predict the weathr ten years from now, so I will say yes.

6/25/2008 3:42:54 PM

http://www.pickensplan.com/theplan/

7/13/2008 8:50:04 PM

^Can people stop saying we're "addicted to oil." Are we addicted to steel? To plastic? To plants? We're dependent on oil, not addicted.

7/13/2008 9:07:08 PM

haha. I love some of the response in this thread. Naaah, taking energy out of our climate drivers isn't a problem. How could that EVER be a problem?

7/13/2008 9:13:58 PM

^^

Quote :

" addicted |?'diktid| adjective physically and mentally dependent on a particular substance, and unable to stop taking it without incurring adverse effects : she became addicted to alcohol and diet pills. • enthusiastically devoted to a particular thing or activity : he's addicted to computers. ORIGIN mid 16th cent.: from the obsolete adjective addict [bound or devoted (to someone),] from Latin addict- ‘assigned,’ from the verb addicere, from ad- ‘to’ + dicere ‘say.’ "

If you're not a conservative, you sure are as dumb as one
(j/k... i'm just referencing another thread )

7/13/2008 10:15:25 PM