So, it seems like a fallacy to think that increasing wind and solar power will have not influence the climate.
Is this line of thinking present in the current discussion, or is it not valid?
One reason is that, as other commenters pointed out, the total volume of wind and solar is currently tiny compared to the energy delivered to the Earth’s surface from the sun. So the size of the effect is not large enough to be noticeable, or probably even measurable.
The other reason involves the mechanics of how wind and solar work.
Solar (photovoltaic) converts electromagnetic energy that would otherwise heat the atmosphere, directly into electricity. But, it converts probably less energy than you think (solar panels still get hot in the sun, i.e. they still radiate in the infrared). And, once the electricity is used by people to do work, the energy is converted back into atmospheric heat. No heat is lost; energy can’t be destroyed.
Wind turbines do absorb energy from the wind, but only from the wind they can reach, which is mostly regional. There is a boundary layer close to the Earth’s surface (below a few thousand feet above mean ground level) where air movement is relatively slow and chaotic. That’s what we experience as “wind” and what wind turbines can reach. But most atmospheric heat transport happens via extremely powerful and persistent air currents higher in the atmosphere. You may have heard of the “jet stream” for example. Wind turbines in high enough concentration could conceivably have a regional effect on wind patterns (just like tall buildings do) but it’s basically adding a small amount of local chaos to a part of the atmosphere that is already small and chaotic, like adding a couple new rocks to the bottom of a river. You might create some new little eddies along the bottom, but you’re not meaningfully affecting the main flow.
There is also the effect (the name of which I currently can't remember) that consumption increases when people think it does no harm. Like when LED lights were introduced, energy usage allegedly actually increased. Because people were using LED lights for all kinds of things that were NOT using incandescent lights before, as the energy used was thought to be negligible.
This is not true. More lights might be on, but the total energy usage for lights is currently falling with increased LED production. You can find lots of stated fears and speculation on the internet that it could happen - FUD - but not evidence. There is some indirect evidence not specific to LEDs that people sometimes do use more energy when the cost goes down. But LEDs are an order of magnitude more efficient than incandescents, and there has been no such 10x increase in lighting use. Per-capita electricity use in the US is currently falling slowly.
Aside from that, I took the first couple of sources I found googling as roughly accurate, and I see estimates of about 35B-45B tons total C02, where around 3B-3.5B might come from 8B humans breathing. So assuming those numbers are anything close to accurate, we are perhaps slightly less than 10%.
Solar panels are also on a tiny fraction of the Earth's surface, the rest receives and treats radiation the same way as always.
And of course a thermal source like nuclear pumps out 3x as much heat pollution (2x at the plant, 1x at the place the power is used).
Direct thermal pollution is still very minor globally, compared to heating from increased greenhouse gases.
1- wind and solar (and hydro) are so much better than coal when it comes global warming and other negative environmental impact, the main reason to bring up “concerns” is entrenched economic interests, and not real fears of increased warming. The fact is that renewable sources are net cooling - and not by a little - compared to the warming we’re already causing with coal burning and CO2 emissions.
2- The scale of the earth’s atmosphere and surface area are “very large” compared to our solar and wind farms. So large that it might seem funny at first to think turbines or solar cells would have any effect. One way to think about turbines is that they’re somewhat comparable to trees, and we’ve lost many times more trees in the last 50 years than we’ve added turbines. Another way is to compare the height of a turbine (say, 100 meters) to the height of the wind (maybe 400 km, depending how you measure), so the turbines touch maybe 1/4000 of the vertical air, and across the world cover very little of the total land area, meaning the total volume of air impacted by turbines is ‘tiny’.
According to my internet searches just now, the earth’s land surface (1.5e14 m^2) gets, on average, 2.4e16 watts of solar power. [1] The total solar power production today is just less than 800GW, or 8e11 watts. [2] So solar might be capturing one thirty-thousandth of the surface energy, or 0.003%. (And that actually seems surprisingly large to me, it’s possible I’m missing more orders of magnitude somewhere. I don’t think solar farms are covering anywhere near as much as 0.003% of the surface of the earth.)
Atmospheric energy is about half of the surface energy, and wind is currently capturing roughly the same as solar [3], so maybe we could estimate it about 0.006% of the wind energy.
[1] https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/features/EnergyBalance
I suppose 'covering the Sahara in solar panels' might need a little thought in regards to how it affects weather patterns across North Africa and Europe, but we're a wee way off from there yet.
Again, probably not much, mind!
As for the energy required to make the concrete, steel and glass that made those same buildings, that has increased the amount of wind that New York has to deal with so indirectly - 'yes', in answer to your question.
I think OP means more 'at the hugely massive scale we appear to need' which I don't think is as neuron-murdering a thought experiment as you so unkindly suggest.
https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2018/10/large-scale-w...
Basically, yes, wind power can have effects on the climate, and we should be aware of them and use them to weigh tradeoffs with other power generation options. This is a reasonable question to ask!
https://www.sciencemediacentre.org/expert-reaction-to-resear...