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Comment by depaya | Hacker News Reader

This may seem like a silly question but I'm genuinely curious... are there are concerns about harnessing too much power from wind and affecting global climate, air currents, etc? It seams far fetched, but we are removing energy from the atmosphere.

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Initially I thought this seemed like a silly question too given the enormous amount of kinetic energy available in the atmosphere. But...someone did the research and produced a paper:

https://www.cell.com/joule/fulltext/S2542-4351(18)30446-X

Their conclusion:

In agreement with observations and prior model-based analyses, US wind power will likely cause non-negligible climate impacts. While these impacts differ from the climate impacts of GHGs in many important respects, they should not be neglected. Wind's climate impacts are large compared with solar PVs. Similar studies are needed for offshore wind power, for other countries, and for other renewable technologies. There is no simple answer regarding the best renewable technology, but choices between renewable energy sources should be informed by systematic analysis of their generation potential and their environmental impacts.

Make of it what you will.

Most people would consider the impact of planting a forest with tall trees on air currents to be mostly benign. I imagine this is the same, except with less fire risk.

Wind is caused by the sun. In a single hour, the amount of power from the sun that strikes the Earth is more than the entire world consumes in an year. Humans are currently using nearly as much energy, as 0,011% of sunlight.

I seem to recall reading something along these lines from those anti-wind power tirades. They claim they have affects on birds. There's pretty much all sorts of claims. They are claims and not necessarily based on reality, but you could probably find something along these lines if you searched hard enough.

I've wondered the same. Especially over an area where we have so much scale for it that's so naturally windy in the middle of the US.

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