Nature-Wrecking Machines…Experts Warn Wind Turbines Slowing Wind Speeds, Causing More Warming!

Experts are finding out wind turbines are not only an inefficient way to produce electricity, but that they are also wrecking the environment, natural habitats and even the climate.

German meteorologist Dr. Karsten Brandt warns wind turbines are altering local climates. Image: Donnerwetter.de.

So far we know wind parks:

  1. Are an erratic source of power
  2. Have high maintenance costs
  3. Involve recycling problems
  4. Blight the natural landscape
  5. Are a hazard to birds and wildlife
  6. Result in deforestation and wrecked biotopes
  7. Make people seriously sick (infrasound), and
  8. Interfere with weather radars.

And according to one German prominent meteorologist, Dr. Karsten Brandt of Donnerwetter.de,  wind turbines are now even putting the brakes on wind speeds and even altering local climates.

How an environmentalist could support this form of energy is becoming increasingly mind-boggling. Hat-tip Die kalte Sonne here. The Donnerwetter.de press release follows:

Less and less wind due to more and more wind turbines?

An ever weaker wind is blowing across Germany. For example in the 1960s annual wind speeds of 3.7 meters per second were measured in Osnabrück, but now it’s only 3.2 m/s. That’s a drop of over 13 percent. Almost all weather stations in the country which were analyzed by the Bonn-based meteorologists at donnerwetter.de found that the trend looks similar.

Wind speed has decreased “very significantly”

“In most places, the mean wind speed has decreased very significantly,” says Dr. Karsten Brandt. And he has a suspicion: “We believe that in the last 15 years more and more massive wind turbines have influenced the wind speed.”

The trend of ever decreasing winds was not observed out on the open sea, however. To the contrary: On the islands of Norderney or Helgoland the wind has in fact increased slightly over the past 20-30 years. Yet in northern Germany, just inland from the coast, i.e. just after the first wind rotors, the donnerwetter.de meteorologists found a decline in the average annual wind speed: from 3.8 – 3.9 m/s to less than 3.5 m/s.

“Of course, the increase in building construction and especially high-rise buildings in Germany has had a slight braking effect,” admits Brandt. “The braking effect of wind turbines should, however, exceed this.”

Confirmed by other studies

A variety of studies support the meteorologists’ assumption. “Danish research has shown that air flow is weaker than before the turbines even 14 kilometers downstream from a wind farm,” says Dr. Brandt.

This is an effect that the operators of such parks are concerned about. If a new turbine park is built in front of an existing park in the main wind direction, the losses could be over 50 percent, American studies have shown.

In northern Germany, there is now one wind turbine every 10 square kilometers. According to the donnerwetter.de meteorologists, the North German air flow is generating so much energy that a weaker north wind is now arriving at the north German interior. The situation is similar with westerlies, which are weakened by wind turbines in the Netherlands and Belgium.

Wind park warming…”more heat inland”!

According to Dr. Brandt: “The weaker wind ensures less air exchange. This in turn drives up pollutant concentration in our air. Especially in the summer months, the lack of wind means more heat inland and less land-sea-wind circulation. In addition, the air is heated by the generators, as further studies have shown.”

“Think again before further developing wind energy”

So far the wind has been considered as an almost inexhaustible source of energy – albeit being incalculable and poorly predictable. The fact that you can extract some of your energy from the wind turbines was seen as a pioneering achievement.

“But the fact that man takes so much energy from the wind”, the climatologist concludes, “and considering the consequences, we should probably think again before further developing wind energy.”

22 responses to “Nature-Wrecking Machines…Experts Warn Wind Turbines Slowing Wind Speeds, Causing More Warming!”

  1. MGJ

    I’m no cheerleader for wind farms but that does sound an awfully large effect. I’m persuadable but it sounds close to falling into the realm of extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.

    On the other hand, “government program has unintended (bad) consequences” would hardly be a surprise.

  2. SebastianH

    So they are saying 59 GW of wind turbines generating electricity at an average of around 11.4 GW are causing the wind speed to decrease by 7-10%? Since E_kin = 0.5 * m * v² (energy increases quadratic with speed), guess how much wind turbines can be built until Germany experiences no wind at all!

    Or the other way around: wind turbines produced 103.65 TWh in 2017. That’s 3.7314*10^17 Joule. If that is the difference between 3.9 and 3.5 m/s one gets a mass of ~2.5*10^17 kg using the formula for kinetic energy. That means 1.9*10^18 Joule is the total energy of the wind at an average speed of 3.9 m/s and around 50 times more wind turbines than exist today can be constructed until the wind “stops blowing”. Well, then no wind energy can get extracted at all and skeptics with their wind phobia also called wind turbine syndrome win their Don Quichotte like fight.

    Oh, I forgot “you are wrong, DNCWST!” to add some substance 😉

    1. RickWill

      The power that can be extracted from a moving air stream is a cube function of the speed (not squared as you have used). Given the average wind speed has dropped from 3.7m/s to 3.2m/s the potential power output has dropped by 54%.

      The maximum power that can be taken from a moving air stream is 9/16ths (per Betz) of the power in the stream. If the turbine was to stop the air flow then there is zero power, just force.

      Data taken from wind farms in the USA indicate the realistic economic power density for wind turbines is 0.5W/sq.m. Beyond that level the windspeed is so affected that there is diminishing returns whereby the next generator added reduces the total output of the existing turbines by an amount of the output of the new turbine. Anyone familiar with sailing knows how one sailing boat influences another and is part of racing tactics.

      In a power supply system where curtailment of wind output is a regular occurrence then the power density will be lower than 0.5W/sq.m before there is no increase in output from additional capacity. However Germany’s wind output is only at 0.03W/sq.m so much lower than the point of negative return but it is not surprising that, at 0.03W/sq.m, there is a measurable impact on the wind speed. It is a physical reality.

      1. MattS

        Excellent analysis, hat’s off to you sir.

        1. SebastianH

          I +1 that … very good comment/reply from RickWill. But I did not say that all the energy of the wind can be extracted, because obviously that would mean that there is no wind left (thus “stop blowing” in quotation marks).

          One should also note that an average wind speed of 3.5 m/s can mean that wind always blows with 3.5 m/s or 7 m/s half the time. Because of the kinetic energy formula the later case contains significantly more kinetic energy than the first. So an average wind speed can’t be used to get the harvest potential of an area.

    2. Remy Brandt

      No matter how many turbines,wind will never drop to zero. Windmills don’t absorb much of the flow at lower windspeeds for the same reasons why they don’t give much power at low windspeeds. And why they are worthless in generating any usefull grid power.

  3. RCS

    @Sebastian H.

    Are you assuming 100% wind turbine efficiency? There is surely energy dissipation due to downstream turbulence and other factors that is not reflected in generated energy.

    More generally, greenies seem to have difficulty with numbers greater than 100 (or possibly 1000). This is an argument that will simply blow over them.

    1. SebastianH

      It was a back of the napkin kind of calculation. I thought that would be clear from the last part. Take it with a grain of salt.

      More generally, greenies seem to have difficulty with numbers greater than 100 (or possibly 1000). This is an argument that will simply blow over them.

      People generally have a problem with big numbers if they can’t associate anything with them.

  4. Yonason

    As pointed out by tom0mason 2. July 2018 at 10:48 PM here

    https://notrickszone.com/2018/07/02/oslo-professor-the-deceptive-tactics-used-by-agw-believers-mark-an-epic-marketing-failure/#comment-1267251

    The objective of the “warmists” is not to stop warming, but to bring civilization to it’s knees.

    Anyone defending the scam of global warming is NOT your friend.

    1. SebastianH

      The objective of the “warmists” is not to stop warming, but to bring civilization to it’s knees.

      Nope!

      I am curious … what is your objective? Spreading FUD about the “warmists” (“leftists”) taking over control of all aspects of your live?

      Anyone calling global warming a scam “hat nicht alle Tassen im Schrank” as one would say in German or apparently “being one sandwich short of a picnic” in English. Have a lovely evening in your filter bubble, Yonason.

    2. Penelope

      Yonason says “The objective of the “warmists” is not to stop warming, but to bring civilization to it’s knees.”

      In a nutshell, sir. Well put. Especially if you mean by “warmists” those who are paying for the propaganda and control the research dollars. The dweebs who BELIEVE the propaganda aren’t powerful people; they’re just the mask.

      P.S. When you have Richard Lindzen agreeing w you, non carborundum illegitimi. Verum qui vendit honorem pecunia vendidit.

  5. Yonason

    If the IPCC and globalists win, everyone loses. And they admit it themselves.
    https://conservativedailypost.com/u-n-executive-secretary-admits-world-climate-change-scam-destroy-u-s-capitalism/

    The destruction of free market capitalism and stifling the freedoms of everyone is the goal of postmodernists, and global warming is the bludgeon they are using to try to bring that about. Why global warming? Because it is anti-science. They could not embrace it otherwise.

    “Postmodernist thought is being used to attack the scientific worldview and undermine scientific truths; a disturbing trend that has gone unnoticed by a majority of scientists.”
    https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3463968/

    Science, truth, freedom and success will all be forbidden by the lunatics storming the ramparts if they succeed. I repeat. If they win. Everyone loses.

  6. steve

    I do not care where or how my energy is generated so long as it has nothing to do with governments.

    1. Penelope

      Steve, Yeah, conservatives think all is well if we give all the power to the big corporations. And liberals wd give it all to the govt– as if WE controlled the govt. But y’know, seems to me that the big corps are controlled by the same people who control the govt.

      There MUST be a better solution than either the conservative or liberal pathway to the SAME power center.

      I, like you, like small and medium sized businesses which are NOT controlled by globalists. Used to have one myself.

  7. Penelope

    Thanks Pierre, for a great laugh. There’s something humorous about how wind farms fail to get what’s wanted (energy), while getting so much of what is NOT wanted.

    Haven’t laughed so hard since visiting cluesforum, which is an operation to fill the minds of skeptics w incredible balderdash, like ‘ rocket-propulsion in space is impossible cuz there’s no atmosphere for the exhaust to push against.’

  8. Bruce of Newcastle

    Wind farms also cost their neighbors a lot of money.
    Nearby real estate prices tend to collapse, since who’d want to buy a house next to a wind farm?

  9. Streetcred

    Not to ‘blow my own trumpet’ but this is the question I was asking at least 8 years ago … what is the downwind effect of extracting energy from the wind ?

    1. edv

      Yeah lets build coal and nuclear plants they at least don’t warm up the air…

      1. John

        Correct!

  10. Ken

    Who knew?

    Newton’s third law is: For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.

    We did know.

    TANSTAAFL.

  11. Mary Kay Barton

    They are NOT “wind parks.” Nor are they “wind farms.” Both are marketing terms created by the wind industry to make the wind mess more appealing to the energy-illiterate masses. They could be referenced as “tax farms,” as their main purpose is the business of harvesting our taxpayer dollars and shifting them into the pockets of crony-connected Big Corporate developers. What they are in fact, is sprawling industrial wind factories.

    1. Yonason

      No argument from me there, although I occasionally use the terms because that’s how people know them. But you are correct that there is a down-side to that. :-o)

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