Comment by kaybe | Hacker News Reader

Comment by kaybe | Hacker News Reader

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Interesting question, seems it's still open but has been found worthy of study. There are probably research groups working on it right now.

Review paper (2015):

'Impact of wind-energy generation on climate: A rising spectre'

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S136403211...

'Potential climatic impacts and reliability of very large-scale windfarms'

https://www.pnas.org/content/101/46/16115.short#sec-2

'Potential climatic impacts and reliability of very large-scale windfarms'

https://www.atmos-chem-phys.net/10/2053/2010/acp-10-2053-201...

edit: There's more!

'Climate model shows large-scale wind and solar farms in the Sahara increase rain and vegetation'

https://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/full/10.1175/JCLI-D-14-0024...

'Climate Impacts of Large-Scale Wind Farms as Parameterized in a Global Climate Model '

https://science.sciencemag.org/content/361/6406/1019

Thanks for the links! The "green ... greeen!" guys just downvoted me to hell.

The papers all stress that wind farms are considerably better than fossil fuels no matter what, so 'accelerate' is maybe not the best way to put it. I propose 'influence'.

However, the consequences from each technology should still be debatable, and are an interesting question in itself I think. The problems start when questions become political - what are the implications? In the hard sciences we usually don't concern ourselves with that unless we have to, but when discussing sensitive research topics in public one has to be more careful since many people tend to deduce intentions where there were none. (I need to remind myself frequently.) I think your post fell victim to that.

>> I think your post fell victim to that.

My post raised a question and wasn't based on the papers you mentioned but based on what I was told by wind farm engineers (e.g., that many farms are not green positive when accounting for everything even when accounting for futures years of exploitation). After working in academia for years, I believe that there is a much higher likelihood of a paper being rejected if it shows that large wind farms harm local environment. It is basically $1T of interests and "green-greeen!" people against people who will figure out what happens only years later.

Hero, thanks. We teach a module on renewable energy at my uni and it's interesting to get the big picture perspective on the use of wind turbines.

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