| | | No, Wind Farms Are Not Causing Global Warming
Despite what you may have reader, wind farms are not causing the planet to heat up. The current claims that they do stem from a misreading of a scientific study, which does not show anything of the kind.
The study in question was conducted by Lee Miller and David Keith at Harvard University. The pair simulated what would happen if the US’s entire electricity demand was supplied solely by wind turbines. This is not a plausible scenario, because the electricity grid is easier to run if it has a mix of sources rather than just one, but let’s set that aside: it’s a “what if” question, designed solely to examine how the turbines affect the surrounding environment.
Miller and Keith estimate that this many wind turbines would heat up the surface area over the continental US by 0.24°C. The study was published in the journal Joule.
At first glance, 0.24°C seems like quite a lot – particularly when you consider that we are being told that we must do everything possible to limit global warming to 2°C or even 1.5°C. But that is where the misreadings come in.
For starters, that warming is only occurring over the US – a rather small fraction of the Earth’s surface. It would take much more energy to warm the entire planet’s surface by 0.24°C.
But that is almost beside the point, because the wind turbines are not generating extra heat. Instead, they are moving the existing heat around. Normally, the air just above the ground cools at night, but the rotating turbine blades draw down warmer air from higher up. So things get warmer just under the turbines at night while they’re on, but they also get cooler elsewhere. The planet as a whole does not warm at all.
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forbes.com |
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