alt Hacker NewsThe amount we can extract is tiny compared to the volume of energy put into the air every day by the sun. At a certain scale it could definitely become an issue and change the local environment and reduce wind speeds, we have seen that with some of the biggest solar farms where the air temperature is changed and the shade increases vegetation and wildlife so presumably wind speed reductions will have some effect. But compared to the CO2e it saves from being emitted its absolutely worth it currently.
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> But compared to the CO2e it saves from being emitted its absolutely worth it currently.
Funny. That’s a huge part of the argument made to justify that burning fossil fuels is OK. The problem with letting small problems linger while you scale is that suddenly you have a huge problem you can’t do anything meaningfully about because suddenly it’s a critical part of your economy.
> The amount we can extract is tiny compared to the volume of energy put into the air every day by the sun.
Here's a study in how much wind power you can extract before adding more wind turbines doesn't produce more power overall.
At the 100m mark (as opposed to the whole atmosphere up to the jet streams), they calculate 250TW.
Total human electricity generation is well under 5TW (30PWh/yr, out of around 180PWh/yr of total energy), so we could supply all electricity from wind and still leave 98% of the "extractable" global wind potential in the air, which is itself less than all wind energy because of the Betz limit.
https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1208993109