 Notice. New forum software under development. It's going to miss a few functions and look a bit ugly for a while, but I'm working on it full time now as the old forum was too unstable. Couple days, all good. If you notice any issues, please contact me. |
Forum Index : Windmills : wind farms cause global warming
Page 1 of 3   |
|||||
| Author | Message | ||||
| perth Newbie  Joined: 25/11/2012 Location: AustraliaPosts: 12 |
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/earthnews/9234715/Wind-farm s-can-cause-climate-change-finds-new-study.html short version as far as i can tell is, the spinning of the blades mixes the warmer air that has risen with the cooler air on the ground, making the ground warmer. i think a big thing they r missing here is that the wind turns the blades, not the other way around. that said having big spinning towers is still gonna make turbulence. |
||||
Madness Guru  Joined: 08/10/2011 Location: AustraliaPosts: 2498 |
Wind farms cause local warming might be more accurate. There are only 10 types of people in the world: those who understand binary, and those who don't. |
||||
Gizmo Admin Group  Joined: 05/06/2004 Location: AustraliaPosts: 5078 |
I think they need to compare the additional heat released into the environment by a wind turbine to the heat released by a fossil fueled power station, or even "clean" energy sources like nuclear. Watt for Watt, I'll bet wind is the cooler option, by far. Glenn The best time to plant a tree was twenty years ago, the second best time is right now. JAQ |
||||
| Madness Guru Joined: 08/10/2011 Location: AustraliaPosts: 2498 |
I heard Dr Karl on ABC radio about a month ago talking about how the average coal fired power station also releases over 4 tons of radio active material into the atmosphere per year. It comes from material that is locked up in the coal. There are only 10 types of people in the world: those who understand binary, and those who don't. |
||||
| MOBI Guru Joined: 02/12/2012 Location: AustraliaPosts: 819 |
Don't start me on the subject of wind farms. My wife and I live IN one and are turbine hosts, more fool us! The money they earn us in no way compensates for the health problems they cause us. David M. David M. |
||||
| VK4AYQ Guru Joined: 02/12/2009 Location: AustraliaPosts: 2539 |
Hi Mobi Sounds like you have a valid beef with wind farming, how about some details of the health issues caused by the turbines. All the best Bob Foolin Around |
||||
| MOBI Guru Joined: 02/12/2012 Location: AustraliaPosts: 819 |
Hello Bob. Firstly, don't get me wrong, I am not anti wind farm, just the inappropriate placement of them WRT residences. If you want details on the effects of industrial wind turbines on health, google wind turbine syndrome. I was instrumental in getting the first wind farm in the SE of SA (Millicent) "off the ground" so to speak. I believed the lies fed to us by the developers. We were told that we wouldn't even hear the turbine noise (audible range) above the ambient levels. Well Hello!!! It was so loud that we couldn't sleep when the wind blew from the turbines. What the developers didn't tell us was that the turbines produce high levels of low frequency and pulsed infra sound which can not be detected by dBA type recording devices. The low frequency sound produces a resonant drumming in the base of the skull which can not be blocked by ear protectors. It makes getting to sleep and staying asleep very difficult - hence acute sleep deprivation and we all know what that does. The infra sound (from about 0.7Hz to 10Hz) can not be heard but produces a thumping or squeezing sensation once again in the back of the skull. This causes eratic operation of the heart, angina like chest pains, dull headaches among other nasty sensations. They scare the hell out of me. Incidentally, we have no symptoms at all when we are away from the wind farm. For eight years we have been living in the wind farm experiencing the above problems and our doctor could find nothing wrong with us. It was pure chance that I met a chap from Victoria, who had been experiencing the same symptoms since a wind farm was established within a kilometre or two of his residence. Had I not met this chap earlier this year, I would still be blissfully ignorant of the cause of the problems we have. Now this year we find that there are to be another 17 turbines directly in front of our home, twice the capacity,50 metres taller (150 metres) and half a kilometre closer on the upwind side of the prevailing winds!!! What are these people and our neighbours thinking!!! Do some research and you will find that wind farms are a taxpay funded scam that have almost zero effect on the reduction of green house gasses. Our home is totally solar and wind i.e stand alone - not connected to the grid. It is people like you and I that are truly "clean and green", not wind farms. And to think that I used to look on them as majestic and encourage others to host turbines. As I speak, our home is being acoustically monitored in the range of 1 Hz to 1KHz and shows high levels of low frequency and infra sound. The monitoring is costing us several thousand dollars which is a big chunk of our retirement income. The sad thing is, we shouldn't have to go to this length. David M. David M. |
||||
Dragonfly Newbie Joined: 25/06/2011 Location: AustraliaPosts: 17 |
I do find such silly report disturbing. I believe it is totally lacking in common sense. As much as there is a potential for mixing the cooler air up with the warmer one at a higher altitude, the "NET" amount of heat being added to the environment is "ZERO". Lets say you pour in some cool batter into a mixing bowl. This is then followed by some warmer water on top, and then stir it up. You get a slightly warmer, or cooler, bowl of batter, depending on if your reference point is the cool batter at the bottom, or the warm water at the top, initially. There is no NET gain or loss of heat to the bowl's contents. By the way, if the wind turbine is coal/gas fired, then yes, there will be an overall warming effect ! Waste not... |
||||
| Madness Guru Joined: 08/10/2011 Location: AustraliaPosts: 2498 |
Wind Turbines are powered by wind???????????????? There are only 10 types of people in the world: those who understand binary, and those who don't. |
||||
yahoo2 Guru Joined: 05/04/2011 Location: AustraliaPosts: 1166 |
This is an example of sensationalist media reporting making a mockery of what is excellent research. Looking at the original press statements there is no mention of any climate change angle whatsoever. There is enough localized effects of a temperature rise at any time of the day to scare the crap out of a farmer or manager of native vegetation. Half a degree extra in the morning in July/august would run my wheat and barley up to head a month early, devastating their yields. Without fresh genetic material added to existing crop varieties that can transpire more easily in these tougher conditions, cropping will get even more marginal away from the coastal areas. The mixing of air layers by turbines might just push things right over the edge under a wind farm, who knows? That's what research is for. 
Data like this combined with Vapour pressure deficit calculations locally doesn't fill me with a lot of optimism for the survival of any ground feeding parrots in southern Oz, in 20 years there will be even less for them to eat, they are dying out from starvation now, there is just no native grassland thriving and reproducing. There are so many plants that use combinations of temperature and moisture as seasonal cues to trigger growth, flowering, seed set and germination at the correct times. The area under wind farms in Texas is massive, some of the highest densities of turbines in the world across rangeland and plains. If we are serious about looking for changes due to local temperature fluctuations, it's probably a good place to start. I'm confused, no wait... maybe I'm not... |
||||
| Dragonfly Newbie Joined: 25/06/2011 Location: AustraliaPosts: 17 |
Yes, Madness. I just Goggle "Wind Turbine" and you are right ! Just in case you still didn't get it, it is my way of humouring the anti-wind turbine crowd. Waste not... |
||||
| Madness Guru Joined: 08/10/2011 Location: AustraliaPosts: 2498 |
Anybody with a wind generator knows trees cause turbulence, will this mix up the air and cause global warming? Might need to cut down all trees. There are only 10 types of people in the world: those who understand binary, and those who don't. |
||||
| Dragonfly Newbie Joined: 25/06/2011 Location: AustraliaPosts: 17 |
There are a few facts I believe some of the anti-wind turbine or climate change sketics have conveniently left out of the big picture. The warming of the ground as a result of the turbine blade movements is quite disturbing to folks who like easy to digest news or opinions. However, if we are to scratch the surface hard enough, it is not hard to see it is, a lot of "hot air". We all know that hot air rises and cooler air sinks. If, as the news claimed, that wind turbine mixes hot air above with the cooler air below, thus creating a net warming effect to the ground below. However, we all know that air mass does not stay static. Cooler air will, by nature, rushes in from nearby locations and replaces the rising hot air. It seems that the law of physics suddenly stopped being applicable when wind turbines came into the equation. I have also written in a previous post that there is no "NET" tangible heat produced by a wind turbine. The mixing of warm and cooler air will give zero net heat output. Your freezer will give off heat to make ice cubes. If you are to put the ice cubes into a glass of warm milk, the milk will cool down somewhat, and the ice cubes will melt. However, within that glass, there is no NET heat output. Another point I would like to make is this... A wind turbine, or even a bunch of them, are like very tiny needles in a very large haystack. To speculate they will have huge measurable negative impacts as opposed to fossil fuel power stations is, in my humble opinion, is dishonest. Waste not... |
||||
Downwind Guru Joined: 09/09/2009 Location: AustraliaPosts: 2333 |
Why would you do that? This is a forum for renewable energy, and also sharing of imformation about renewable energy, not all information will always be positive, and to highlight the negative effects is in my view more important to understand renewable energy than the positives are. The view of "we need to do something to save the planet" is true, but to make hasty dumb decisions will not help a darn thing and only cause more problems in the future. Its just unfortunate that most things are purely revenue driven and have little regards for future impact. Once we cut down all the trees now we realize that was bad and are hell bent on planting as many trees as we can to reverse the impact. Man made DDT and effected half the planet before realizing the problems, then band it, do we need to keep being short sighted and letting history proving us wrong all the time. The only changes we make is to save money or make money, and ignore the rest. Thats where the problems start i think. Sometimes it just works |
||||
| Privatteer Newbie Joined: 09/06/2012 Location: AustraliaPosts: 39 |
Yes, still remember the scare they had on the plant when they discovered some of the pipework dealing with the flyash system had absorbed enough that it was dangerous. |
||||
| VK4AYQ Guru Joined: 02/12/2009 Location: AustraliaPosts: 2539 |
Hi Mobi I agree on the subsonic sound radiation, as there was a study I read years ago recommending that large turbines should be located at least 5 KLM from residences for this very reason. Due to the insidious and constant pulse effect of low frequency sound there is a mental and physical pressure on the body and its systems, this affect had been used as a method of torture by various governments for their information gathering projects on dissidents in their custody. The hot air theory of generating more heat can apply yo the temperature gains of the generator as a certain amount of energy is transferred to heat by machinery around 15 % in total maximum, but when compared to coal or gas or diesel generating systems this is only a tiny fraction of the waste heat, and as mentioned earlier the other waste products produced by coal et al make the wind farm much more environmentally friendly. The countries producing massive amounts of pollution are the culprits in the climate change equation and they are suffering the consequences now and more in the future. It is true that the wind generation isn't the answer to all the problems and its cost is high and ongoing production costs are not as low as polluting forms of power generation but as you realise any system be it stand alone solar isn't as cheap as buying power, but the satisfaction of doing our own thing is the big plus. Like it or lump it we are stuck with global governmental incompetence and nothing is going to change the inevitable damage on the environment by commercial interests and rampant consumerism that the people now think as normal. Time to move further away from the wind farm for your health sake. All the best Bob Foolin Around |
||||
| MOBI Guru Joined: 02/12/2012 Location: AustraliaPosts: 819 |
Hello Bob, I'm not too sure why this thread is in a forum that deals with home grown wind power. Anyway, while we are here, a little known situation exists namely that all too often, due to the unreliability of wind (and often, solar) the power produced by wind farms is not used but instead, the baseload coal generators maintain their burn rate and simply vent the excess steam to the atmosphere. It is far quicker to open and shut steam valves than it is to ramp up or down a coal fired boiler. I used to be in the RAN and had a good deal to do with the boilers and know how much time it takes to build up a head of steam - also drove the multi storey boiler at the local paper pulp mill. As for moving away, we have almost sold the farm, but our retirement home where we are living 2.5km from the turbines has now had its value reduced by 20 to 30% (at least) by the proposed wind farm. If the wind farm goes ahead, we can forget about selling at all and living here will be impossible. We built this place from the ground up including the electrics and plumbing etc. Perhaps it would be a good idea to keep this thread going because the more you dig into wind farms, the more you find they are a massive scam not just in Oz but world wide. People like us are being written off as loonies and without scientific evidence, but we know what it is to live in a wind farm, your average joe has no idea and can not comprehend that subsonic (infra) pulses can be so debilitating. It cost us $13,000 to set up a stand alone solar/wind electricity supply so we have not had a power bill in 8 years. To get the grid the 500 metres from the nearest point to our home will cost around $35,000 and on going power bills. David M. David M. |
||||
| Downwind Guru Joined: 09/09/2009 Location: AustraliaPosts: 2333 |
Yes its a very interesting topic and would be better put into its own thread, windmills or other stuff should fit the category. We often dont like to hear the down side to "greener energy" but to understand it, we need to see all sides of the proposed solution. Its of little use to bat for the wrong side of development if its not practical to human inhabitant with the given area. Perhaps it might be viewed as a nuclear waste dump sight, the company says its safe (well there is $$$$ involved) and we are all seen as being green for our nuclear disposal, except for those who have the dump in their own back yard. So what? if we kill a few people for the greater cause of man kind, is that acceptable? when there is ample uninhabited areas that would work just as well, except the fact to installing transmission lines to export the power. What use is prime agricultural land ( the green triangle ) if humans can not actually live there from the installation of wind turbines. Food will always proceed energy, so we need to protect the food belts and place the energy sources else where. (its not that there is no option with our large land mass) Sometimes it just works |
||||
| MOBI Guru Joined: 02/12/2012 Location: AustraliaPosts: 819 |
I have had acoustic monitoring equipment inside our home for the last 3 weeks - the acoustician comes to remove his equipment on Sunday morning. I will try and get a screen display of the data for posting. From what I can see on the display there appears to be large levels of infra sound in the 1Hz to 7Hz range in our home but I'll wait until I have an interpretation by the acoustician before I post a screen shot of the data. David M. |
||||
muddy0409 Senior Member  Joined: 15/06/2011 Location: AustraliaPosts: 125 |
Aaahhh!... Too many baked beans perhaps? Don't poo poo conspiracy theories. Remember that everything ever discovered started somewhere as a theory. |
||||
| Page 1 of 3 |
|||||
 Print this page |
