Hacker News Reader

Comment by ok_craig | Hacker News Reader

I'm pretty naive on the science of these things, but I have a concern: is there any possibility that increasing use of wind energy could have negative affects on the environment by essentially taking energy out of our atmosphere? Could our winds gradually slow down over time?

Maybe it's just such a small fraction that it doesn't matter. Or maybe wind energy is essentially another form of capturing solar energy, because the winds are created by temperature differences, which are created by the sun hitting the earth, and that energy is constantly renewed?

I don't know, but I'm curious. Any insight about this would be appreciated.

View on HN

Wind is pretty fickle already. I sail a lot on the Long Island Sound (25 miles north-east of NYC). On hot afternoons the bridges create thermals that completely screw with the prevailing "natural" wind. You can feel the effects 10-15 miles away.

I don't think it's a bad thing at all, it doesn't impact the macro climate just the local power of the wind and direction, but it is noticeable. There are all sorts of micro influences based on the buildings on land as well that matter to sailing, but the overall picture is dominated by the weather rolling through on any given day. A bridge or a building or a big open parking lot might shift the direction a few degrees or locally increase/decrease the wind, but that's it.

I doubt wind turbines do much more than that.

The short answer is: no.

Any windmill impact from changing wind patterns or reducing wind power is radically less than eg building homes (given we build millions of homes annually), or simply driving vehicles (of any sort, given the numbers of vehicles globally).

You could never build enough windmills to cause a problem. The only real environmental concerns are killing animals (insects?), and construction / manufacturing related.

So where does energy from wind hitting a building or a car go? It just dissipates into the ground?

I'd have thought amounts of energy involved are so vanishingly small compared to atmospheric wind in general that it makes no difference.

A while ago we thought the same thing about greenhouse gas emissions or human activity raising global atmospheric temperatures.

I like wind power, but that's not a very strong argument without numbers.

No you're right (and nice comparison) - I just wanted to trigger conversation because someone had downvoted the question, which I thought was pretty unfair. I just didn't/don't have time to do any actual research to get hard numbers.

Well since the wind is due in large part to the rotational inertia of the the planet (the air stays still, the earth and everything on the surface moves through the air) the earth's rotational kinetic energy is being sapped. It can't last. Peak spinnage! Tell the people! (...some will say)

Reply on news.ycombinator.com