Question. Is extracting wind power causing some climate change problems?

[Mountainmike]

Do I need to remind you this thread is about the real effects of wind farms on the climate, not hypothetical turbine arrays numbering tens of thousands of wind turbines changing the path or strength of hurricanes.

To coin your own phrase spare me this simplistic nonsense.
If it is true you are "physical modeler" familiar with fluid mechanics then you should have realised the Reynolds number for air can be high.
In case you don’t know what this is which wouldn’t surprise me, a high Reynolds number means air is turbulent and the TKE (turbulence kinetic energy) associated with eddies in turbulent flow undergoes an energy cascade as the eddies are unstable and go from large to small scales.
The result is the wind farm's wake dissipates rapidly with distance.

So the image which you claim “supports a point I made..” is patently untrue and actual measurements using synthetic aperture radar of the Horns Dev wind farm show the wake can only extend 5-20 km beyond the wind farm depending on local conditions.
It’s gets back to my original point the scale of a wind farm's wake is far too small to affect the external environment and is confined to microclimate scales.

If I wanted to read cloak and dagger stories I would much rather prefer John Le Carre than you.

Streuth.

Meanwhile in the land of sanity, windmills extract energy. Windmills slow wind.
It doesn’t get put back, except in the places energy is used.
That has consequences.

So your magic reappearance of energy is clearly false.

Averaging Effects will make it less noticeable. At present the energy taken is small.
this thread is mine, to questpion longer range effects.

 

[Mountainmike]

Potential for a time loop


No one wants to question linear time

Fire away. Anything but this!

 

[Mountainmike]

Yes, we agree that it is hard to predict, however, you offer nothing but your opinion which you are entitled to.

On the other hand you offer nothing that refutes with I wrote above, which is no just my opinion but expert opinions.

Read for yourself: Expert reaction to research on climatic impact of wind power​

And just in case you missed it, I will repeat what Keith, the author of the article wind turbines said:

Keith, (author) an outspoken proponent of clean energy to combat global warming, says he’s sure the paper will be misinterpreted or misrepresented by some to argue against the rollout of wind power. Emphasis added.​

​

I think it is fair to say that Keith was anticipating your type of misinterpretation and misrepresentation.

If you have read some of my other posts you would know that I am pessimistic on climate change. While I believe it is still possible to limit some of the worse predictions humans will still need to adapt to a much warmer climate at a time when the world will be hitting Limits to Growth.

View attachment 334536
The down arrow represents the mid 2030s.

The Boy Scout Motto:

View attachment 334537

Step back.

Look at the big picture.

Windmills extract energy.
It doesn’t get put back except in the places it is used. As heat not wind.

So if the energy extracted reappears all by itself just downstream , then you can do the same again ad Infinitum, congratulations! its the first perpetual motion machine. Banned at the patent office for scientific absurdity!

Taking energy must have downstream consequencess which are not being modelled.
All any of us can do is guess. Including your Favourite professor.

Climate is complex. His models are limited.

MY WORRY is Interference with cloud formation/ precipitation after which “ all bets are off” on the consequences,
These things are normally treated on an “ assuming everything else is unaffected” basis .

I am simply urging caution.
And checking what they are not.

Last month in central England , farmers all brought in their crops at low yield because the mother of storms was coming.
but it never came. These models are far from perfect.
Understand this if nothing else : weather is chaotic process , so small changes in input assumptions can make differences. Slowing the wind is not insignificant.

( Because the forum goes off at tangents, let me say I am not relating that to windmills , only the difficulty of modelling climate.)

And that is the last I will say of it . If you don’t believe it, that’s fine by me.
I only used this thread to fill an empty space, with an interesting but presently unanswerable question.

I am happy with good natured disagreement. As indeed your post.
But I am not intersrested in conflict, which is all this forum seems to do!

Try a more productive question my other thread.
What else can you use an unreliable energy source for, that lets us store the product of energy.

 

[Frank Robert]

You’re talking about the current timeline


Perhaps there is another try…

My post was about the converging of limited resources and climate change.

Temperature is on track to rise by 2.7 F (1.5 C) by the early 2030s. It could be a bit sooner or a bit later, in an case, it will be about the same time as the world limited critical resources. We are already having world wide food shortages. S. American countries and others like Niger are fighting to control critical resources like lithium and uranium.

What is your timeline?

 

[Mountainmike]

My post was about the converging of limited resources and climate change.

Temperature is on track to rise by 2.7 F (1.5 C) by the early 2030s. It could be a bit sooner or a bit later, in an case, it will be about the same time as the world limited critical resources. We are already having world wide food shortages. S. American countries and others like Niger are fighting to control critical resources like lithium and uranium.

What is your timeline?

My question is whether we are fixating on the right issues.

Take… I just read this on the web.

“A typical one-liter plastic bottle uses about two liters of water during this process – so a one-liter bottle of water represents three liters of water consumption. Each of those bottles takes about 4 million joules of energy to create, and every ton of this plastic that is produced creates three tons of CO2.”

Thats a kw/h. ( which sounds crazy to me, so some figures need checking! )

7.7bn used in U.K. per year,
100 per person per year!

So A waste of 100kwh

Ban single use drink bottles. Period. My generation lived without them.

There are MANY crazy energy use stats,
not just well publicised ones.

Start a thread on it Frank.
What are the most absurd uses of energy other than the usual Like private jets.

 

[JohnEmmett]

My post was about the converging of limited resources and climate change.

What is your timeline?

maybe time will reset…

 

[Frank Robert]

maybe time will reset…

It is ok that you have don't have anything to offer.

 

[JohnEmmett]

It is ok

God has a plan


Hence do not worry about climate

 

[RDKirk]

The question might be why aren't electric vehicles using mounted wind turbines to charge batteries while on the move.

The law of conservation of energy, for one thing. The automobile is using more energy than a practical wind device could generate.

 

[RDKirk]

You are all missing the point. Is it deliberate?
my point is whether wind extraction is causing greater land temperatures? Ie disturbing climate balance?
literalky a green house effect. A green house is in essence a window free enclosure .

That could likely be a problem if wind farms were ever large enough and dense enough. A lot larger and a lot more dense.

 

[Mountainmike]

That could likely be a problem if wind farms were ever large enough and dense enough. A lot larger and a lot more dense.

I notice an error in my post - I meant “ wind free”, not window free. I suspect spell checkers at work.

My point is the plan IS to have wind farms a lot larger and more dense!
I think more studys are needed First.

Weather is chaotic process, small changes can have a big effect.
If the moisture , cloud and precipitation are affected by reduced wind it could be significant,

I suspect this has run its course.

I did mention somewhere that I knew Prof B J Cory of imperial - a windmill pioneer 50 years ago.
Lectures to promote the technology said at that time
“ we aren’t sure whether there is a downside impact to taking wind energy“
Still don’t as far as I can tell.

To be fair array processors were 10mflop, not 10Gflop at the time,

 

[Frank Robert]

God has a plan


Hence do not worry about climate

For humans to benefit from God's plan humans must do their part and carry them out.

(If) His actions show laziness and an unwillingness to work. As a result, “poverty” and “scarcity” will come upon the sluggard (Proverbs 6:11)​

 

[dlamberth]

God has a plan


Hence do not worry about climate

I think it's totally wrong minded to redirect responsibility to some imagined divine plan.

 

[JohnEmmett]

I think it's totally wrong minded to redirect responsibility to some imagined divine plan.

Then save one person… yourself

 

[sjastro]

Streuth.

Meanwhile in the land of sanity, windmills extract energy. Windmills slow wind.
It doesn’t get put back, except in the places energy is used.
That has consequences.

So your magic reappearance of energy is clearly false.

Averaging Effects will make it less noticeable. At present the energy taken is small.
this thread is mine, to questpion longer range effects.

You are totally clueless.
In case you didn’t know the wind turbine wake diffuses into the environment due to turbulence while the turbulent kinetic energy is converted into heat due to downscaling of the eddies as described in my previous post.
This accounts for your so called "missing energy" and when the temperature reaches thermal equilibrium, the wake becomes indistinguishable from the environment.
Then there is the evidence through synthetic aperture radar which shows the wakes can only extend tens of kilometres beyond the source.

 

[sjastro]

My point is the plan IS to have wind farms a lot larger and more dense!
I think more studys are needed First.

The evidence is already out there, you don't want to increase the density where the downwind stream tube of a wind turbine becomes part of the upwind stream tube of another.

 

[Mountainmike]

You are totally clueless.
In case you didn’t know the wind turbine wake diffuses into the environment due to turbulence while the turbulent kinetic energy is converted into heat due to downscaling of the eddies as described in my previous post.
This accounts for your so called "missing energy" and when the temperature reaches thermal equilibrium, the wake becomes indistinguishable from the environment.
Then there is the evidence through synthetic aperture radar which shows the wakes can only extend tens of kilometres beyond the source.

You clearly don’t understand that windmills remove energy , which is not put back downstream
So downstream is permanently affected.

Its called conservation of energy , perhaps you haven’t heard of it
You can’t take energy out without affecting something. Downstream Pressures . Temperature . Velocities.
It’s basic stuff.
Once it has resolved either the kinetic or potential energy must reduce to allow for what was taken out,

Only the turbulence has finite trail.
and only because we are not extracting much , do we not notice the other net impacts yet.

I told you once , I knew prof BJ Cory , one of the pioneers 50 years ago.
He aired similar concerns way back then : the question was not whether there were was impact but the consequences of it

Was he “clueless” too In your opinion?

I offer only the word of caution in the light of what is not yet known.
That is fair comment.

I’m moving on.
To science conversations where at least the other posters accept energy conservation!!

There are a lot of assumptions and limitations in SAR data used for wind mapping. Are you even aware of what it actually measures?

Now synthetic apertures SAR and superesolution generally. Those are interesting subjects!

 

[sjastro]

You clearly don’t understand that windmills remove energy , which is not put back downstream
So downstream is permanently affected.

Its called conservation of energy , perhaps you haven’t heard of it
You can’t take energy out without affecting something. Downstream Pressures . Temperature . Velocities.
It’s basic stuff.
Once it has resolved either the kinetic or potential energy must reduce to allow for what was taken out,

Only the turbulence has finite trail.
and only because we are not extracting much , do we not notice the other net impacts yet.

I told you once , I knew prof BJ Cory , one of the pioneers 50 years ago.
He aired similar concerns way back then : the question was not whether there were was impact but the consequences of it

Was he “clueless” too In your opinion?

I offer only the word of caution in the light of what is not yet known.
That is fair comment.

I’m moving on.
To science conversations where at least the other posters accept energy conservation!!

There are a lot of assumptions and limitations in SAR data used for wind mapping. Are you even aware of what it actually measures?

Now synthetic apertures SAR and superesolution generally. Those are interesting subjects!

Instead of discussing how large Reynold numbers leads to your word salad description, the best you can do for supporting evidence is based purely on hearsay involving a certain BJ Cory without any references or citations.
To coin your phrase yet again spare me the simplistic nonsense.

Unlike you I have discussed the science and have explained why the downstream is not affected the way you describe it and as a result the conservation of energy is not violated.
I also have the evidence and models to back me up.
The evidence as I stated is the turbines’ wake which can only extend to at most tens of kilometers.
As for the models here is an application of CFM (Computational Fluid Mechanics) using the LES (Large Eddy Simulation) turbulence model on the effect on the downwind stream of a wind turbine.

The simulation should be self evident even to you, the eddies collapse and the wake turbulence causes a chaotic distribution of wind velocities downstream before being completely diffused where conditions become the same as the surrounding environment and contradicts your pseudoscience.

Finally here is a video where turbulence models are discussed and based on the principles such as Reynolds number, collapsing eddies and energy cascade as I have described and not on your pseudoscience.

Now do us a favour and stick to your comment of moving on.

 

[Mountainmike]

Instead of discussing how large Reynold numbers leads to your word salad description, the best you can do for supporting evidence is based purely on hearsay involving a certain BJ Cory without any references or citations.
To coin your phrase yet again spare me the simplistic nonsense.

Unlike you I have discussed the science and have explained why the downstream is not affected the way you describe it and as a result the conservation of energy is not violated.
I also have the evidence and models to back me up.
The evidence as I stated is the turbines’ wake which can only extend to at most tens of kilometers.
As for the models here is an application of CFM (Computational Fluid Mechanics) using the LES (Large Eddy Simulation) turbulence model on the effect on the downwind stream of a wind turbine.

The simulation should be self evident even to you, the eddies collapse and the wake turbulence causes a chaotic distribution of wind velocities downstream before being completely diffused where conditions become the same as the surrounding environment and contradicts your pseudoscience.

Finally here is a video where turbulence models are discussed and based on the principles such as Reynolds number, collapsing eddies and energy cascade as I have described and not on your pseudoscience.

Now do us a favour and stick to your comment of moving on.

Meanwhile in the land of science, if you extract energy , the remaining atmosphere must have less potential or kinetic energy. Since you don’t appear to understand that, you need to study basic physics , before reading papers on fluid mechanics .

You confuse turbulent path length with longer range of velocity deficit - discussed in many papers.

Velocity deficit can be a substantial multiple of turbulent wake ( obviously) And as windfarms get bigger we will discover the true cost and consequence to the climate. And whether moisture uptake, cloud or precipatation are affecred , in which case the consequence could be severe.

Reality is that the computational cost of modelling means almost all modelling is only of local areas and is coarse.
not downstream fine interaction. It is that lack of detail and modelling that gives me concern as a Professional modeller.
Accurate modelling of flows even around single structures or within single reactor vessels are horrendously complex and computationally Intensive. I know , I’ve done it Thanks. Got the t shirt.

My advice ? Study simple energy balance first. The inevitable loss of downstream energy. The velocity deficit.
The detail flow is clearly confusing you.

 

[sjastro]

Meanwhile in the land of science, if you extract energy , the remaining atmosphere must have less potential or kinetic energy. Since you don’t appear to understand that, you need to study basic physics , before reading papers on fluid mechanics .

You confuse turbulent path length with longer range of velocity deficit - discussed in many papers.

Velocity deficit can be a substantial multiple of turbulent wake ( obviously) And as windfarms get bigger we will discover the true cost and consequence to the climate. And whether moisture uptake, cloud or precipatation are affecred , in which case the consequence could be severe.

Reality is that the computational cost of modelling means almost all modelling is only of local areas and is coarse.
not downstream fine interaction. It is that lack of detail and modelling that gives me concern as a Professional modeller.
Accurate modelling of flows even around single structures or within single reactor vessels are horrendously complex and computationally Intensive. I know , I’ve done it Thanks. Got the t shirt.

My advice ? Study simple energy balance first. The inevitable loss of downstream energy. The velocity deficit.
The detail flow is clearly confusing you.

What is pure comedy about your posts in your inability to comprehend how a velocity deficit cannot be maintained even at relatively short distances for high Reynolds numbers so your solution is motivated by denial mode, disguised as word salad and supported by hearsay and supposed papers that never see the light of day in this forum.

Here is a paper for a model wind farm which refutes "velocity deficit can be a substantial multiple of turbulent path (obviously)", the phrase itself being nonsensical as velocity and distance do not have the same dimensional units, but the deficit approaches zero as the wake reaches its fullest extent.

​

Here U is the wind velocity downstream, Uhub is the upstream velocity at hub height, x is the distance from where the wind is upstream and D is the rotor diameter.
As you can see U/Uhub → 1 is a limit in the downstream and the conservation of energy would be violated if the limit was exceeded.
Needless to say the model is also supported by satellite measurements which shows the wake ends when the velocity deficit approaches zero.

How far the wake of a wind farm can persist for?

With the increased penetration of wind energy in our nation’s energy portfolio, wind farms are placed in a way close to each other. Thus, their wakes …

www.sciencedirect.com

You can now retreat into your make believe world where the denials will continue thick and fast along with the pseudoscience .