Yes. There are researchers at MIT who have considered the question of what would happen to weather patterns if we were generating so much wind power that we were essentially using up the wind.
Noooo! The wind is free! Freeeee!
No? Huh.
We'd just have to spin the earth faster. Which would shorten the days, so we'd all live longer. But more stressed out.
On the other hand, turbines capture a relatively small portion of the wind's energy -- not terribly much surface area, you know? -- so we're not in any particular danger of that, like, ever.
3: well, in a relatively banal way, sure. If we built solar panels that covered the entire earth's surface, we'd use up all the sunlight.
Much more evident in damned rivers where a much larger percentage of the kinetic energy of the flow is tapped.
Tidal energy would be more analogous to the wind.
It would be interesting to know if there was a point where you could have so much wind power that it would (by offsetting the use of fossil fuels and reducing wind energy) exactly balance the increased energy captured by the earth's atmosphere due to global warming. I kinda bet there's not.
Blessed are the undamned rivers, they shall excavate the earth.
7: Well, but the sun would still keep shining. We'd kill the rest of the planet, sure, I'll grant that.
Roses are red,
The wind is blew,
Solar panels aren't free,
And neither are you.
Since I view the natural world as basically a medieval peasant, reasoning my physics by intuition without the benefit of science or so-called "knowledge," I am often inclined to ask questions like Stanley's to myself.
But this one seems intuitively obvious; of course the wind transfers some of its energy to the big turbine and loses that amount of energy, right? If you put a pinwheel in front of your face and stand in front of a fan, the wind that goes into the pinwheel loses some force and doesn't blow as hard into your face. Ammirite?
12: okay, if you wanted to actually use up all the solar energy, you'd need to build a shell of solar panels that completely surrounded the sun, a subject of much dippy-seeming speculation in science fiction.
Ever since the beginning of time, Sifu Tweety has yearned to destroy the sun.
7, 12: Build a Dyson sphere, but don't go in it our use power from it.
I was pwned, but mine was stupider.
Figuring out how you would use up all the wind is much more interesting.
so much wind power that it would (by offsetting the use of fossil fuels and reducing wind energy) exactly balance the increased energy captured by the earth's atmosphere due to global warming
This seems silly. We all know that wind power is a myth. Why do you think they call it the moulin ruse?
If you block the sun, I expect most of the wind would stop. You may also have to stop the rotation of the Earth.
Figuring out how you would use up all the wind is much more interesting.
Build a windmill. Behind it, another windmill. Repeat until there is no room on earth that is not covered by a windmill. Then, build windmills on top of windmills until you've gotten all the upper atmosphere stuff. Then OH SHIT THERE'S SOMETHING CALLED SOLAR WIND I THINK.
You may also have to stop the rotation of the Earth.
What, again?
23: it's windmills all the way up.
This is a bit dated (2004), but seems a nice summary:
Results from climate modeling studies by myself and others suggest that large-scale use of wind power can alter local and global climate. Wind turbines can change wind patterns which can in turn change the climate by (slightly) altering amount of heat and moisture transported by the winds. The fact that an enormous number of wind turbines can change the climate is not important; many human activities can change the climate if they occur at a sufficiently large scale.To me that last sentence strikes a bit of a Wittgensteinian note:
I am, therefore, of the opinion that the problems have in essentials been finally solved. And if I am not mistaken in this, then the value of this work secondly consists in the fact that it shows how little has been done when these problems have been solved.
24: If the Earth spins, you could put a long windmill in geosync orbit and let the spinning atmosphere turn the blades.
And small windmills on the blades of the big ones, and tiny windmills on the blades of the small ones. Fractal windmills.
Also, Stanley's question has occurred to me many times.
this is what I was thinking about while showering this morning
Playing helicopter again?
26: The shelter belts they planted back home really seemed to have some climate altering effect, at least a far as what happens to plowed land. But that was millions of trees.
A google search for "sierpinski windmill" was unenlightening, even with safesearch off, but I did find this site, which is a very obscure brand of idiocy.
There was a story somewhere, a Mother Jones blog I think- too lazy to find it- that answered the question of why we can't nuke a hurricane to stop it with the answer that all the energy ever used by humans is something like a billionth of the energy in a single hurricane (thermal plus wind) so it seems unlikely we'd ever significantly affect the global amount of wind by harvesting enough for our needs.
Ok, I looked it up and was exaggerating the billionth, but human power usage is still a minuscule fraction of available global wind energy:
The main difficulty with using explosives to modify hurricanes is the amount of energy required. A fully developed hurricane can release heat energy at a rate of 5 to 20x10^13 watts and converts less than 10% of the heat into the mechanical energy of the wind. The heat release is equivalent to a 10-megaton nuclear bomb exploding every 20 minutes. According to the 1993 World Almanac, the entire human race used energy at a rate of 10^13 watts in 1990, a rate less than 20% of the power of a hurricane.
9: Tidal energy would be more analogous to the wind.
I'm kind of drawing a blank here. Do we harness tidal energy (aside from the myriad ways in which our planet and ecosystem already does)?
31: technology!
You shouldn't be at work at this time of night, but if you are for god's sake why would you think about clicking that link?
34: I never did count them or anything.
38: Yeah, I figured I should have googled, but I'm off in a minute, so I thought I'd just ask.
3. Not using it up, but increasing the use of solar panels does lower the albedo of the earth's surface, thus contributing to global warming, because the sunlight isn't reflected back out into space, and the energy is instead absorbed by the earth.
This thread is useless without Emmy Noether.
41: you aren't listening to that Mhyrvold knucklehead, are you?
The sun says "neato!"
Checks its albedo
and goes to the earth in its new tuxedo.
Oh the Freakonomist thing! Please read Ray Pierrehumbert's response, a.k.a. my favorite use of Google Maps ever.
The Earth is still sort of warm, so even if the sun was dead wouldn't there still be a small amount of convection?
29: Fractal windmills.
Like this? If you are someone very different than m you can learn how to make one of them via this video.
That said, if you covered the planet with solar cells, it does sound like it would generate a lot of waste heat. But that would create a lot of wind, so then we could build network of wind turbines above the solar panel shell, and use the additional energy they create to heat the perpetually dark warrens beneath the solar shell where we humans would live out our sniveling, mole-like existences.
47: Maybe I can pronounce it if it is spelled differently.
Oh. I don't know who Myhrvold is. The thing about albedo and solar cells is something I learned in an environmental science class circa 1996. I do realize that the state of scientific knowledge changes from time to time, but I wish it wouldn't do so when I'm not in school, as it's so inconvenient to stay up-to-date.
How many cells must a fan blow down
Before you can call it a fan?
49 to 22. I see we've now moved on to smacking cocks. But enough about Myrrhvoldt.
Oh wow, I was so pwned.
53 The thing about albedo and solar cells is something I learned in an environmental science class circa 1996. I do realize that the state of scientific knowledge changes from time to time, but I wish it wouldn't do so when I'm not in school, as it's so inconvenient to stay up-to-date.
Rather than the state of knowledge changing, I suspect you were taught by someone innumerate.
51: Sounds like a plan. I don't doubt that science fiction stories have been written to that effect.
Fettuccine albedo cooks out in the sun.
56. I wouldn't think so. It was this gentleman.
51: the perpetually dark warrens beneath the solar shell where we humans would live out our sniveling, mole-like existences.
That's Morlock it.
59: Huh. Yeah. Definitely not innumerate. I dunno.
If his parents weren't married in 1996, he might have been innumerate then.
Hmm. I took an environmental sciences course around 1996, but not with that guy. (My course was team-taught.) I don't think I can remember anything climate-change-related from it.
21: Are you talking about the racially problematic Disney picture that was actually never made, just advertised? The Mulan Ruse?
Yes, the wind transfers momentum to the turbine. An insignificant amount for any realizable turbine. Energy is lost to heat in driving the turbine in various ways.
Tidal power plants affect currents significantly, they're something intermediate between dam+turbine and floating turbines. There's a big one in France, and enormous ones planned in Korea.
OT: Can somebody tell me how LinkedIn works to find connections? People I have not seen for 10 years are put up as suggestions. The woman I pestered for information for two months (unsuccessfully) shows up as a possible connection. I didn't give it my gmail password and none of these people work in the same company as any I have listed. My profile is empty. My only connection is an uncle who is not professionally linked to me in any way. How does it know who my wife is when she has a different last name and we have no professional connection?
Tidal power plants affect currents significantly
Yes, more like the impact of river dams in their immediate vicinity; I was thinking more in terms of global tidal patterns.
Don't know LinkedIn, but fb uses viewing history, yours and other peoples', to recommend. Otherwise, cookies? Others' email histories?
68: How does it know I knew a guy who I hadn't emailed in a decade because I don't know his email? Maybe he searched me on LinkedIn?
It's going to snow tomorrow night. Not at my house, but within sight. Right now they're saying it won't start until after midnight, so it won't technically be snowing in August.
This proves global warming.
Simplest explanation, that or network analysis. How many false positives (freind-of-two-friends that you've never met?)
I'm still not sure I get LinkedIn. It wants me to ask to be introduced to my brother and to connect with the guy my boss had a huge fight with and apparently you have to pay for shit.
5
On the other hand, turbines capture a relatively small portion of the wind's energy -- not terribly much surface area, you know? -- so we're not in any particular danger of that, like, ever.
40-50% actually. See here .
In 1919 the physicist Albert Betz showed that for a hypothetical ideal wind-energy extraction machine, the fundamental laws of conservation of mass and energy allowed no more than 16/27 (59.3%) of the kinetic energy of the wind to be captured. This Betz' law limit can be approached by modern turbine designs which may reach 70 to 80% of this theoretical limit.
Last time I had this conversation seriously, the memorable points were that we expect more wind w/ more equatorial insolation being captured, might as well use it; and anyway the local weather effects of adding all that turbulence would be hard to predict. Then we worried about birds for a while.
If you lock your doors and shutter the windows, you need not fear birds.
I totally know the guy in 48.
77: The guy Sifu linked first in 46? I kind of wish I knew him. When I was in high school I participated in (won, actually) a Science Olympiad event that he ran related to climate, and I was kind of intending to take some of his classes and try to find out if he had research opportunities available when I started college, before some unlikely coincidences dropped a particle physics job in my lap and I didn't look back.
before some unlikely coincidences dropped a particle physics job in my lap and I didn't look back.
Meanwhile, however, in some alternate universe that exists embedded within an 9-dimensional string,* young Essear is working on climate science with that guy.
*Not like you can't tell, but I'm just tossing around buzzwords here.
44: The lost verses of "Bust a Move" take a strange turn!
My wife has always had a lower albedo than me. It's been a constant source of marital tension.
There was an interesting paper about the climate impact of using lots of wind power in PNAS in 2004; I haven't kept up with the subject since then.
82: Yes, the link in 28 goes to a non-technical discussion of that paper by David Keith (one of the co-authors).
My wife has always had a lower albedo than me. It's been a constant source of marital tensionradiative transfer.
I've occasionally wondered about the analogous question with small-scale geothermal (excuse me, ground-source heat pumps). It doesn't seem likely to cause real problems, but I could imagine the heat pump not working as well if everyone in your neighborhood has one.
My wife has always had a lower albedo than me.
Maybe you should put a shirt on, then.
Maybe you should put a shirt on, then.
That's what she said! </rimshot>
85: presumably that depends on the heat conductivity of soil, right? The Earth's crust per se seems like it probably has plenty of mass to regulate temperature regardless of how many people have heat exchangers stuck in it.
small-scale geothermal (excuse me, ground-source heat pumps)
Geothermal: David MacKay estimates that the sustainable geothermal energy is no more than 50 mW/m², and most of that is not suitable for extraction, because the temperature gradients are so low. The prospects for "mining" out the hot rock is good in a few places like Iceland and Hawaii, but pretty hopeless for most of the rest the world.
Ground-source heat pumps: these basically use the ground as a place to store heat in the summer and retrieve it in the winter. Again, David MacKay estimates that at typical urban densities in the UK, there simply isn't enough ground for everyone to be able to run a ground-source heat pump all winter.
89.last: Why does he limit his calculations to 2 meters?
re: 90
I'd guess it's not really feasible to dig down more than 2m in urban areas? Utilities, brownfield debris, bedrock, energy expenditure to dig down that far?
Good question! Maybe it's an estimate of the typical soil depth in an urban area? You could try asking him.
That does seem sort of odd. 20 meters is about the shallowest you go for a vertical ground-source installation, and vertical is recommended in exactly some of the situations (like urban areas) where you don't have a large area for shallower trench installations.
Or it could be an estimate for the depth of soil that is warmed in a typical summer.
92: I don't talk to strangers.
94: That just means the soil below will be around the annual average temperature, which in most places would still be useful for heating and cooling.
89.last: My dad's church and many other churches and schools in his area have dug their parking lots out, installed the heat pump tubes, and put the parking lot back. I've mentioned this before. Apparently, at typical suburban-ish densities and with below zero temperatures for much of the winter, it can pay for itself in a few years.
If you're heating *and* cooling, then heat pumps make a lot more sense, because you're pushing heat into the ground during summer that you can use in the winter.
In the UK, where you're just heating, you're limited to the heat that is stored naturally by the sun warming the ground during the summer. (There's an extra reservoir of pre-existing heat that can be "mined", but that's not sustainable.)
I didn't think the heat pushed down in the summer was anything like an offset to the heat drained during the winter. You're heating from say 20F to 55F (or thereabouts*) but only cooling from say 90F to 78F. I thought the heat just came from the sun or the bowels of the earth or the fires of the mole-people.
*You do, of course, need an actual furnace.
78: Yeah that guy. He was an alum of a summer program that I attended/worked at, and came to talk a few times (mostly about the climate of Mars, I think). His daughter was a student of mine at that program (which is a gradstudent/advisor type interaction not a "was one student in a class" thing). Best student in the program her year too.
I thought the heat just came from the sun or the bowels of the earth or the fires of the mole-people.
From the sun: about 5 W/m²
From the bowels of the earth: 0.05 W/m²
From the fires of the mole-people: unknown, but probably not carbon neutral
From the fires of the mole-people: unknown, but probably not carbon neutral
It depends, dareisay, on how they get their wood.
It is a universal truth widely acknowledged that mole people get off with fantasies of rough treatment from a badger.
mole people get off with fantasies of rough treatment from a badger.
"Honey badger don't give a shit."
The fires of the mole people radiate 6.022 x 1023 guacamoles. This is known as Avocado's Constant.
How hard did the consultant squeeze you?
I think we all knew 104 was coming.
99: Is that the summer program associated with a certain admiral? I seem to have a lot of acquaintances who were involved in that one (I wasn't).
I think we all knew 104 was coming.
No way--she was definitely faking it.
I'm confused. Either I can't figure out which program you're referring to in 107 (which is odd, there aren't very many summer programs you might be referring to), or you're right but are making what is in my opinion an extremely obscure reference.
At any rate, if you correctly guess the program it should be very easy to confirm that it's right given the information in 99.
It looks like I guessed the wrong one -- I had in mind the one where the students give themselves an admiral-related nickname. But Google turns up a testimonial for a different one that makes it pretty clear it's the one you mean.
Huh, I never knew that R used to stand for something else. I had a friend who thought "went to RSI with" was a good euphemism for sex, which leads to much hilarity. At any rate, I applied to RSI but didn't get in.
I didn't apply because I wanted to go to what I think Thorn or Smearcase referred to as "Statewide Nerd Camp". Which I think was probably better for my social development at the time. Plus, I didn't have to worry about getting rejected.