Wind Power Farms

Can you say minuscule?

And besides, the wind doesn't always blow directly against the earth's rotation. It goes every which way, so sometimes it's pushing the earth faster, sometimes it's pushing it perpendicular to the rotation, and sometimes it slows it down.

It all comes out in the wash.

Your comment seems to sum up opinion expressed in most of the other comments.

I'll play devil's advocate:

Near the surface of the earth (native habitat of windmills) prevailing winds near the most populous areas as well as the large swath between the tropic of Cancer and the tropic of Capricorn (where a windmill would have the most leverage) blow predominantly east to west.

This would suggest that although the effect IS minuscule, that it probably doesn't all come out in the wash.

BBB

Flee to me remote elf!

I'd have thought that most of the mills would initially be built in North America and Europe:-

from http://maps.howstuffworks.com/world-prevailing-winds-map.htm

A picture may be worth a thousand words; the truth of those words is another story (or at least another picture)

I would agree with what you'd have thought, although I'd also include other highly populated areas. Your confusion stems from the oversimplified map you were viewing. It appears as if the mapper assumed a smooth and homogeneous surface.

Below are some more detailed depictions of prevailing winds. Notice that prevailing winds near areas of dense population (more windmills) as well as prevailing winds closer to the equator (more leverage) are comprised of almost no winds with an west-to-east component and mostly by winds with where east-to-west is the largest component. Take a look at these and see it perhaps we agree after all:

BBB

Flee to me remote elF

Hi BenBenBen,

I can only see one map (the others are just red crosses): in that the researcher seems to have ignored most of Europe. The US seems to average out at "from S to N".

There appears to be an interesting effect all down the West coast of N America: the offshore wind is all from NW to SE whilst on shore is the opposite direction.

Had you not spent considerably more effort to dress down Massey for what is an infinitesimal grammatical error (in your opinion), I might give your response some consideration.

You would need to consider the specific locations and prevailing winds in the local of all the wind farms on earth before you could say definitively that it didn't all come out in the wash.

Since you have no way of proving I'm wrong, I'll say I'm right and you are wrong.

Go prove it.

LLL

Tiny. The moon drives the tides, and that looks to be more significant, but it is slowing the earth down very slowly, if you know what I mean.

Back in the 50's some old lady wrote a letter to the editor of the Portland, OR paper complaining about the construction of The Dalles dam on the Columbia - it is on a lower section of the river.

She was very concerned that with all the dams from British Columbia, Washington and Oregon generating electricity from the river there would not be any left to extract by the time the water reached the newest dam - a total waste it would be according to her.

Massey, You wrote: "Wind turbines can only absorb an infinetessimal amount of this energy and will be seen as just another little frictional loss."

The misuse of the word 'infinitesimal' is something I am encountering with increasing regularity (the misuse of the phrase 'begs the question' is also wildly popular right now). It seems to have been adopted recently as popular jargon for 'comparatively small'. This is an engineering blog, in which 'Infinitesimal' should be used for what it actually means.

The amount of energy even a single wind turbine 'absorbs' is not an amount so minute as to present a problem in distinguishing it from zero. Whatever units you choose, the amount is not a number approaching zero. Quantifying the energy 'absorbed' by all wind turbines as a whole, should be even easier to distinguish as not being infinitesimal.

BBB

Dear Guest,

I apologise and stand corrected for using sloppy or non-accurate language on the forum. Indeed it, the solar contribution, can be quantitified but there are other big players in the total energy balance which need to be included, as they also have a bearing on the dynamics of the weather.

I was only attempting to indicate that our measly activity in this arena is very small in the wideder context.

Massey.

Indeed - taking all that copper and iron from below the mean diameter and sticking it on hills, above mean diameter, has got to be at least "tesimal".

so that's what is making my sundial run slow. If we store that stuff in the basements in the summer and take them out in the winter maybe we will sustain a 'constant' rotation.

Or, you could look at it this way.....How many wind farms would it take to come close to matching the clear cutting of trees that has taken place in the last 100-150 years?

If wind farming were to slow down earth's rotation, I would think that the clear cutting of trees around the planet would have sped it up.

My answer would be zero effect.

That said, there have been ideas regarding the use of tethered wind collectors that ride in the jet stream and harness power from the relatively constant winds found there.

The argument against that, is that it could have an effect, not on the earth's rotation, but on the natural weather patterns that could potentially be changed by slowing down the jet stream.

fair empirical point - & correct answer 'midway'

Hey ron,

Here is a more definitive answer culled from the internet. It seems obvious now. The earth does not spin independently from the atmosphere.

Question - Does the rotation of the earth effect the flight time of airplanes?
ex. Does flying to a destination against the rotation take longer than
flying to one with the rotation, or do objects within the earths
atmosphere travel at a relative speed with the earth?
------------------------------------------------
Dane,
The Earth's orbit has no direct effect on flight time. The planes do not
fly through space; they fly through the air. As an example, consider a
hot-air balloon. The surface of the Earth, as seen from the Moon or another
planet, rotates at about 5000 m/s. A balloon released into the air does not
see the Earth move at 5000 m/s. The atmosphere rotates with the Earth, and
the balloon moves with the air. 10 or 20 mile per hour winds can make the
balloon move, but not anywhere near 5000 m/s. Also, the direction of the
wind is not in any way determined by the direction of rotation of the Earth.
Temperature and water distribution across the planet are much more
important. A plane not moving through the air will fall straight down.
Moving through the air is like moving through the water. When you enter a
pool, does the earth move without you, causing the side of the pool to crash
into your body?

Dr. Ken Mellendorf
Illinois Central College

Dr. Ken ought to be able to do better than that! The surface of the Earth moves at about 25000 miles (Earth's circumference) in 24 hours, more like 500 m/s.

And that's just at the Equator.

Cheers.....Codey

Okay Okay....you got me, I didn't check the numbers.

But the point is valid.

LynLynch is right. Your question only has merit if all these devices went against the direction of the earths rotation but since winds come in diff. directions then they would cancel out??? But then again, the winds turn the fans and they do not rotate of their own so the force they generate is not from within but a result of wind moving over them... so it does not work like a fan "blowing" wind!

Further the earth has an atmosphere and our rotation and orbit are a result of gravity/magnetic attractions of solar bodies, plus creation or big bang so what happens on the earths surface (within that atmosphere), I don't think has the potential to alter "greater" conditions.

So if everyone on the Northern latitudes jumped at the precise same moment will the earths orbit hiccup?

Not likely =)

Cheers

Thousand trucks rushing opposite to earth's direction of rotation at 100 miles/ hr can not make earth rotate faster.

In order to have any effect all (most) of the windmills need to be oriented in the same direction - which means the wind should flow only in one direction all around the globe!. Since the wind patterns are wildly varying as far as direction is concerned the overall effect is likely to be negligible.

IN short no,The theramal energy captured by the sun heating up the air it is aimed at causes thermal highs as the earth rotates thheated area is now cooling off= denser air sinking simplylooking at the USA as teh heated surface moves from east coast to west coast the heating exanding air is pulled toward the cooling area the sun was just at.

Water heats up and cools down slower than land so the thermal reactions are directed by the land masses. look at the northamerican jet stream and see how it comes down away from the west coast and then rides up the east coast towards Maine Canada border.

The abrupt temperature changes over the sahara causes the spiral rotation and picking up of water to form Hurricanes. If wind towers could even make a small den ti n affecting wind patterns there would be thousands on the western coast of Africa preventing hurricanes.

no the large surface heating and cooling effects are so great there is literally nothing that can stop it or effect the the rotation of the planet not even a little. The wind is the by product of the earths rotation not the other way around. I hope this helps as the movement of air in the world is a free source of energy mostly at night.

GA

Good understanding. Earth is force resolved entity in a vacuum.

Wind is secondary solar, neither has an effect on rotation. Climate energy levels perhaps, but as most captured energy is returned to climate as heat, the system is essentially 'climate neutral' as are PV (and rain).

I think the engineer you knew was trying to fuel some thought as to what causes the Earth's rotation in the first place, and how exchanging the energy conserved in it's angular momentum can affect that rotation.

http://www.newton.dep.anl.gov/askasci/ast99/ast99318.htm

http://www.universetoday.com/14491/why-does-the-earth-rotate/

Evidence has shown that the crust, magma and core rotate at slightly different speeds and in some cases the crust will speed up or slow down just a bit. Why? The winds:

http://www.nasa.gov/centers/goddard/news/topstory/2003/0210rotation.html

So what is really happening here? angular momentum of the crust is converted into kinetic energy and transferred to the atmosphere (or magma) and that changes the angular momentum of those things. It simply gets passed back and forth.

But one question is if we have converted this energy into other forms that is not given back to the angular momentum in some way, how much angular momentum can we use before it has a negative impact on the biosphere? Getting to an answer is probably like counting grains of sand on the Earth's crust - approximates only.

But what if something is driving the rotation and it is not just inertia? After all, tidal forces heat up the interior of Jupiter's Moon IO. Could it be that something is pumping the rotation in some way also? Hmmmm . . .

Good Grief,

All this speculation.

Just look at the NASA link in my #15 Comment and see the data for yourself.

Bleagh.

Ok, I'm looking;

"The conservation of angular momentum is a law of physics that states the total angular momentum of a rotating object with no outside force remains constant regardless of changes within the system."

Or what I said a dozen posts ago

Or practicing tennis against a wall in the international space station, does not change its average orbit.

So, winds banging against mountains? See the Law in para 1 above.

But;

You could argue the ballet dancer one - if say the atmosphere got warmer and 'expanded', so moving its mean radius of mass outward, so slowing rotation.

But the scale of effect?;

"The atmosphere has a mass of about 5 × 10¹⁸ kg. Link

Mass of Earth (Wiki) 5.9736 × 10²⁴ kg

So all you need to do now is work out how hot you have to get the atmosphere to move the mean mass radius verses the 6,371,000 m mean radius of Earth.

1/2 Atm could be taken as mean mass, so r would be 6,376,486 m.

So "scale" is something like the effect of moving 1/1,000,000 of the system mass by 1/6,000,000 of the radius.

Wind energy (heat energy) being extracted? You could argue reduces temperature - so speeds rotation.

But as said, most is just re-released as heat. Only that % used purely in movement is 'cooling'.

However; it does raise the specter of headlines like "Alternate energy is slowing the planet!!!!" -(quick burn more fossil!)

You may have missed the word "Solid" in that article ;-)

Some time back one of the poster had asked if the weight of the earth would not increase with massive increase in population.

Yes, but there are countries wageing wars and testing their bombs, so population is diminishing . Population is not increasing as last 50 years back because mostly people on condom due "safe sex".

The population IS increasing ...

and according to scientist the world over, the Earth IS increasing it's mass ...

therefore, the increasing population IS increasing the mass of the Earth ...

here ... check this graph ...

Al Gore.

Did you mean mass or mess?

The Wind turbines have no effect on earth's rotation. This can be referenced to many of the above inputs.

While on the subject of what ifs. How about this; Prevailing winds are mainly from the west so what about all of the Jet's in the world? They typically take off into the wind (towards the west), so why aren't we concerned with this slowing down or speeding up the earth?

You mean if we don't keep them balanced we may go off course and end up bumping into the moon or Mars?

BBB in #19 said prevailing winds are from east to west. I was surprised as I had tried to work it out from Earth's rotation, sunrise etc and concluded west to east, so thought maybe I'd missed something.

Who is right?

Codey

Anyone not left, is right ... but I'm not sure that is correct.

But seriously ... prevailing winds go both ways ... depends on your latitude ... At the Poles and Tropics (Easterlies), they are east to west while the 'jet streams' between (Westerlies), run west to east.

Just don't get caught in the ITCZ ... if you get my 'drift' ... yar yar yar.

For homework look up Hadley, Ferrel, and Polar cells.

OK thanks

Codey

I have always believed that air, being fluid, was dragged around by the earth underneath it. Since the equator moved faster than the poles, there was a speed differential between high and low latitudes, which would result in eddy currents and gyres. If one were to get a serious eddy current, such as a hurricane, the earth would simply turn and move from west to east under the eddy. The hurricane would appear to move from east to west as a result. Storms caused by uneven heating of the air by the sun would have no effect on rotation, because such events would be random in direction. Only hurricanes would affect rotation.

Pretty simplistic model. Sorry. There is much more involved. Apparently, in the winter months, the earth actually speeds up.

IN WINTER THE EARTH SPEEDS UP ....

Now I have the evidence!

That's where we get Spring 'brake' from! I knew there was a logical reason for thinking that Summer was a 'drag.'

This how we know all those NASA shots from space are fakes.

Their mistake is, they forget the equator - which is on all the maps - because it where the slip - or differential action occurs - between 'fast in winter' for one hemisphere and 'slow in summer' in the other one.

you lost me on that one.

Well if the northern hemisphere speeds up in it's winter - what is the southern hemisphere doing in it's summer?

Going slower! ....... So obviously stands to reason there must be a crack around the "equator" - so each can do it's thing.

Probably explains earthquakes too.

Ummm - but maybe, it's another case of NASA Photoshop

Since land mass is concentrated in the northern hemi, winters are colder and summers hotter. The southern hemi has milder summers and winters since it is more water than land mass ... therefore, the earth as a whole is cooler when it is winter in the nothern hemi ... the total mass is more concentrated ... therefore, the concentrated mass spins a bit faster.

In addition, the earth is closest (perihelion) to the sun (3+% closer) when the northern hemi is in winter ... which has no real effect on rotation, but I just wanted an excuse to use the word perihelion.

If only the earth did rotate at opposite speeds at the equator we could put some huge magnets there and generate incredible amounts of power ... Tesla would be proud.

I have a hard time determining if you are joking or are serious. I suspect joking ... but is that really how you spell Vladisvostok?

"I have a hard time determining if you are joking or are serious"

I alternate - thus hoping to make Tesla proud , but my frequency tends to be 'input reactive' rather than sinusoidal << . Or perhaps undergoes a velocity and direction change at the threat of perihelion< with Hobbits.

Well yes , given I typed it , but that spelling is another 'bit of fun at the time'

^{_{(well spotted BTW, first 'other member' to do so - I'd forgotten - probably should update)}}

"therefore, the earth as a whole is cooler when it is winter in the northern hemi ... the total mass is more concentrated ... therefore, the concentrated mass spins a bit faster." ^{_{(note; "northern" fixed free of charge)}}

But what about the height of the snow?

my lazy tounge has a hard time with the r'r's

The 'Westerlies' all move in the same general direction in both Hemispheres, from the West to the East and they blow year round.

However, they are stronger in the winter and therefore cause an increase in the Solid Earth's rotation (due to drag) during the Winter/Summer. So in the Spring/Fall there is a decrease and in the Winter/Summer there is an increase. The increase is more substantial when the Northern Hemisphere is in the Winter due to increased drag over the land masses.

Ocean Currents are affected as well:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Westerlies#Impact_on_ocean_currents

What is so unclear about;

"Earth is force resolved entity in a vacuum."

or "hitting a ball against the wall in the Space station"

or the law of conservation of energy

or "it comes out in the wash"

?

It's more likely that a burst of radiation passing through one side of Earths magnetic field, would effect rotation, than any of "ballet dancer" or "friction" slowing down what has been equally sped up against "friction".

It's half equation thinking.

At least a radiation burst would be an "external force"

"force resolved" is not to say Earth is a static entity. Equally no mention is made in these "wind theories" of the other dynamic influences affecting 'movement'.

For a start, Earth "wobbles" - not as much as it once did, likely causing "ice ages" (and fossil fuel)

Continents drift, magma circulates ...... none of it enough to 'overwhelm' 'inertial values' on atmosphere and oceanic mass, under the "external" Sun/Moon forces.

These geophysical massive masses moving, impact 'wobble' and 'roundness' which have had an almost immeasurably small effect on 'rotation' since coalescing of the planet (well once it had cooled and shrunk and the water condensed ...).

But; if you stood in the right place and only did measurements in phase with the wobble - it could appear rotation was 'slower' - or 'faster'.

Equally you might find the phases of the Moon useful.

p.s. ref your remark on my 'missing solid' earlier:

"Air has weight" - or so some guy said, and I suspect water vapour has too. Makes you wonder if only Earth Brand gravity affects it or Sun/Moon Brand might too.

Perhaps that "we have a drying climate" is why the moon is moving away?

Or maybe it's all the windmills taking energy out of "atmosphere tides"?

And why not - after all, at least they are "external forces" ....

@34point5

Sorry to have ruffled your feathers there - certainly didn't mean to - just like to get the facts straight is all. The thread is over run with supposition and opinions and the facts seem to be getting buried under such concepts as "force resolved entity in a vacuum'. While this principle certainly has merit, it is not at all accurate. For example, Jupiter's Moon IO could be included in such a concept right? Wrong, because it is very clear that the internal heating is caused by tidal forces at odds with each other. The Earth has similar reactions to the Moon and Sun tidal forces. Far from 'resolved', considering that so much thermal energy is lost to space every day on both IO and the Earth, these are open systems.

The question in this thread wasn't whether or not the Earth is a force resolved entity, the question was "IF" we convert those forces to other forms of energy could it have an affect on the rotation of the planet.

The answer is YES, it could. How do we know? Because we have data to support it as I have posted the link from NASA. Since it is well known that the winds do change the solid earth rotation by some measurable amounts, it does cause us to ponder how much energy we can beam out into space (consider heat lost by our deserts to space) without permanently reducing the Earth's rotation. Obviously once the energy is gone, there is no getting it back. Fortunately we do have a constant source of fresh energy coming in from our Sun, but is it possible to upset the balance? Could we cause more energy to escape than we receive?

Since we know that the Westerlies are driven by solar activity, and we have shown that they in turn do push the Earth in it's rotation by some small factor, what would happen if we converted 100% of the Westerlies energy into Gamma radiation and beamed it out into space? I guess the solid Earth would have to stop speeding up in the Winters and Summers. Of course there is no way that force could possibly have any impact on the average rotation of the Earth - or so we would like to think. I can remember when damming up our rivers seemed like a good idea, now we have to rethink that.

I applaud this engineer for giving his associate something to think about that requires forward thinking. And I applaud all the readers here that have gone beyond the 'status quo' and applied the 'what if'. If the world had more of that, perhaps we could have be en spending our time working on replicators for our galaxy class star ships instead of trying to fix all the problems we caused by being short sighted and narrow minded.

One thing is for certain, all of us in the human race still have a lot to learn, no man has all the answers.

Cheers!

My feathers ruffled? - hardly - and just look at all the extra things you/everyone, now have to chat about.

But it might be an idea to look a bit harder at that works relationship to NASA, before you assume 'authentication' by NASA.

And here is another thought;

What if the "northern hemisphere slows down" in winter because it has mostly deciduous trees?

Nice to know that link amused y'all.

I was hoping somebody would refute it, but I have found the statement that the earth speeds up a bit in norther hemisphere winter on other sites as well. Damned if it makes sense to me, but then lots of things don't make sense to me.

A spinning skater(planet) draws the mass of the arms(atmosphere) in ... so the rotation does what ... increases maybe? Presumably, when the no{r}thern hemi is in winter, the system called 'earth' is cooler (due to land mass more in no{r}thern hemi.) Less humidity (absolutely -to pun a phrase). Think concentrated mass ... it has nada to do with the wind blowing (or maybe it is from the wind chill hehe.)

The earth and the atmosphere are all floating in space. In the absolute worst case, the only thing wind turbines could do is make the atmosphere move in sync with the earth and then we would have no more wind (which wouldn't be good either)

The idea that you could slow the earth with wind turbines has as much merit as try to get a sail boat to move by blowing into the sail while you sit on the boat.

You mean like this?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0CrXvOKPymk

Good answer, even though it was off topic with the original post.

A better sail would have done even better. So many people have such a rudimentary knowledge of how wind works with sails. Rudimentary to the point of being useless, and possibly even dangerously wrong.

A variant of this question could be:

"Is the chance zero, that some numbers of wind devices throughout the air currents of the world, change the currents themselves, and in doing so, change the weather, and therefore the climate, in some fashion".

I'm not concerned about 10,000 wind machines, but should we be concerned about 1,000,000? How about tidal machines? Does not the energy transference indicate absorption? How much is too much?

Just wondering...

Does the guest have a name, some person to whom a reasoned reply might be made. Other than the joy of hearing myself talk, how do I know I am talking to a person instead of a robot? (I hate answering machines)

I am sure you are a real person "guest", why not go to the trouble to sign in AS a real person. We are not such bad people, really. Because lets face it, if you can't be arsed to sign in, why should any of us be arsed to formulate an answer?

What about all the buildings, skyscrapers, cities all around the globe (Chicago - known as the windy city comes to mind), ships on the seas - These are all reactive to the prevailing wind flows - Does any appreciable effect of these examples apply?

The answer to all this is in this months challenge question - regard the runner as a weather system.

I appreciate the concept of your reply '34.5', but it's just a bit too much math equations for me to take in at this time in my life - maybe if I were to be only a few years younger, I could maybe be able to grasp a sense of it all - Now perhaps, if I would just roll another 'joint' and take some time to enjoy it in peace - then I may be inclined to take in the Cosmos and all that it entails, and then, the multiverse might finally make some sort of sense to me. (including mathematics) - One can only hope for the best outcomes, right?. - Loupy.