this post was submitted on 29 Jul 2023
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The World’s Largest Wind Turbine Has Been Switched On::It’s turbo time.

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[–] troyunrau@lemmy.ca 16 points 1 year ago (33 children)

Caveat: I'm pro wind if it gets us off fossil fuels. It's better than doing nothing and perfect cannot be the enemy of good enough (for now).

That said: in the late 1890s and early 1900s, scientists already knew about fossil fuels and greenhouse gasses and they didn't speak up loud enough.

Take the idea of wind energy and project it's growth a hundred years. From a pure physics perspective, when harvesting wind energy, you must steal kinetic energy from the wind. What happens when we're harvesting say, 1% of all the kinetic energy of the atmosphere. Or 10%. Surely that will have major weather and climate effects. Or some far future anime sci fi outcome where we've captured 100% of the kinetic energy of the atmosphere and no air is moving except through turbines...

This turbine is very cool. What else should we be doing to prevent wind power from turning into the next generation's climate disaster?

[–] sudo 9 points 1 year ago

Why are you trying to blame "scientists for not speaking up loud enough" and not the ruling class and politicians who have time and time again worked against the interest of people and the stability of Earth's climate in the name of quarterly profits and claiming lower taxes.

And then you're suggesting that the climate impact of wind turbines is going to cause more changes versus what we're already doing.

Do you not think trees? Buildings? Cars? Other mega structures? Are not already changing the way wind is moving? Look at the physical profile of a wind turbine, how much space does it take up at once? Now compare that to the face of a building. How many tens, hundreds of blades could fit in that space? Compare that to Earths entire atmosphere. And you're out here suggesting somehow we'd be at 10% coverage? Even 1% is completely outlandish.

You claim to be pro wind and then just offer absolutely absurd arguments against it. And you're acting like we're doing enough with our current climate crisis to run into another disaster in the future. Wishful thinking, honestly we'll be lucky if we can get far enough to have the issues you're imagining.

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