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Butteryfly theory style.

If we're pulling energy out of the wind that was going to go elsewhere, could that impact the weather more than power plants?

Butteryfly theory style. If we're pulling energy out of the wind that was going to go elsewhere, could that impact the weather more than power plants?

(post is archived)

[–] 1 pt

On a global scale the impact shoul be infinitesimal on a regional scale a large wind farm could be effective as a row of trees or a forrest at effecting windspeed.

One of the countermeasures against the dustbowl was planting rows of trees between crops and it did help cut down on dust storms. It's pretty obvious a treeline will cut windspeed.

I imagine the bigger concern is the heat island effect, imagine thousands of square miles of black terrain being added all over the earth creating heat vortexes and effecting wind patterns on a regional scale but it's happening in basically every region on the planet excepting mongolia, central africa, and polar circles.

People ridiculing you, for the most part, haven't thought about this at all.

I would love to see some simulations on the effects of these factors on weather patterns.

Now to be fair it takes a mountain range to break down a real storm but even hills can cause a tornado to fall apart.

The scale and effects of weather systems and their total energy are decreasingly intuitive as they get larger, I'd bet part of this is nonlinear growth and our two common perspectives are from above and below a storm but the height of a storm front is generally ignored. Those factors combined with the way atmospheric energy can rapidly flash into a stormcell without much warning is why weather seems so mysterious, it's unintuitive that a clear sky is full of energy that can begin to convert when a variable changes.

There is a difference between a row of trees and a wind farm. While trees dissipate the wind energy and turn it into heat, wind farms capture the energy and whisk it away elsewhere. The heat is now generated elsewhere--where the energy is used.

[–] 0 pt

OP mentioned butterfly effect so I was thinking in terms of air currents and weather systems.

Shouldn't the heat effect of wind friction in a forrest be neutral anyway?

As to wind turbines, they can catch fire from friction

I'm not sure what you mean by neutral. The windmills are taking energy which would have otherwise been dissipated as heat and they're carrying it elsewhere as electricity. They also affect the strength of wind. Even small effects to wind can have drastic effects on the weather in the surrounding areas.

However, the size of the effect and whether it's significant is hard to determine.

[–] 0 pt

People ridiculing you

Pretty much the internet in general