Thread: wind turbines environmental affect?

Since theyre powered by the wind arent they basically stealing some energy from the wind, making less go wherever it was headed?

With everything that wind does from tides to soil to moving seeds and just more things than I can list...isnt it dangerous to take large amounts of energy from the wind?

I mean I know we have man made structures that block breezes all over the world but they arent made purposely to effectively harvest that energy as much as possible right?

Basically I am asking is it at all likely that there is some currently ignored consequence from harvesting wind energy on a mass scale?

Originally Posted by wesker fan

Since theyre powered by the wind arent they basically stealing some energy from the wind, making less go wherever it was headed?

With everything that wind does from tides to soil to moving seeds and just more things than I can list...isnt it dangerous to take large amounts of energy from the wind?

I mean I know we have man made structures that block breezes all over the world but they arent made purposely to effectively harvest that energy as much as possible right?

Basically I am asking is it at all likely that there is some currently ignored consequence from harvesting wind energy on a mass scale?

Yes, it is true that wind farms convert kinetic energy in wind to electrical power that would otherwise be dissipated as heat somewhere somehow.

The same statement applies to hydroelectric power, including tidal power. And solar power.

Use of fossil fuels wood liberates chemical energy that would otherwise lay dormant in the chemical structure of the fuels and eventually that energy is released as heat to the environment.

Burning wood releases energy quickly that would otherwise be released slowly through the biological process of rotting, or releases at a time different from that that would result from wild fires.

Use of nuclear fuels converts energy of the strong and weak forces to heat that would otherwise be released only over much longer perioids of time and distributed over much larger areas.

Any excess heat raises the temperture of the Earth slightly, and the Earth radiates excess energy to the universe at large. All of these processes increases the entropy of the universe.

If we forego all such uses of energy civilization will collapse and we will all die. Even primitive man required wood fires.

Originally Posted by wesker fan

Basically I am asking is it at all likely that there is some currently ignored consequence from harvesting wind energy on a mass scale?

Yeah, but the other way. A forest or a row of poplars screens the wind much better than turbines. Now, where we place wind farms we purposely don't obstruct the (eroding) wind with tall trees. Thinking of the prairies but this applies most everywhere on land. So the wind farms actually discourage artificial blocking of the wind.