Yet Another Obstacle To Alternative Power Sources

The latest excuse for not building large scale wind power projects? It affects the climate, at least according to a study from 2004 that pondered a wind farm far larger than anything ever built to date.

There has been at least one preliminary study of wind farming that suggested the possibility of an adverse effect on local weather systems from a large wind farm with many rotors in one area. But the researchers also suggested that potential problems could be ameliorated by redesigning the rotors to produce less turbulence.

The study, published in October 2004 in The Journal of Geophysical Research, used a hypothetical model of a wind farm much larger than any that had been built: 10,000 turbines, with rotor blades 165 feet long, in a 60-by-60-mile grid in north-central Oklahoma.

Dr. Somnath Baidya Roy, the lead author, then at Princeton, said the impact would come not so much from the rotor blades’ slowing down the air but from atmospheric mixing in the wake of the blades. The mixing of layers of air would create warmer, drier conditions at the surface, the study suggested.

Expect those opposed to wind power project to start citing to this study as a way to block the development of alternative and renewable energy sources claiming that they'll destroy the environment by facilitating climate change.

In the same fashion, eco-leftists have all but stopped hydropower projects in the US claiming that dams destroy the environment, destroy fish habitat and have gone so far as to demand that dams be demolished or make water for consumption or power production secondary to preserving habitat downstream.