http://nationalreport.net/...-suns-energy-experts-say/

This is almost as good as the US congressman that said building wind farms would eventually make us run out of wind.

Your not serious about the second point r u? Did someone actually make the wind comment?

I love the national report. Great satire, and not quite as obvious as the onion, so it really has a knack for drawing people in and making them thing their news is real. Good stuff. The comments on that article are hilarious; Poe's law at work.

Unfortunately the comment about wind farms causing us to run out of wind is actually a -real- comment made by US Republican Congressman Joe Barton, who is the Chairman Emeritus of the House Energy and Commerce Committee.

His quote: "Wind is God's way of balancing heat. Wind is the way you shift heat from areas where it's hotter to areas where it's cooler. That's what wind is. Wouldn't it be ironic if in the interest of global warming we mandated massive switches to energy, which is a finite resource, which slows the winds down, which causes the temperature to go up? Now, I'm not saying that's going to happen, Mr. Chairman, but that is definitely something on the massive scale. I mean, it does make some sense. You stop something, you can't transfer that heat, and the heat goes up. It's just something to think about."

It's.... pretty damn sad this guy is in the position he is in.

to be fair his principals are not 100% incorrect about air flow and then restricting said airflow with massive fields of wind turbines.

but the scale would have to be something impressive to effect global air patterns.

Yeah, actually, his principles are 100% incorrect about air flow/wind.

Temperature differences are not what cause wind. Wind is caused by air moving from areas of higher air pressure to areas of lower air pressure. The reasons for the imbalances of air pressure around the world are many, including temperature.

And no, you'll never be able to restrict airflow in Earth's atmosphere to any perceptible degree. Yes, you may be able to change wind direction on very small scales, but if there's an area of higher pressure near an area of lower pressure, air is going to end up moving towards the area of lower pressure, no matter how many wind turbines you throw up in front of it.

crap I almost drunk deleted this. never drink and mod...:(

so he isnt 100% incorrect by your explanation, hes just retarded in his interpretation. like i said.

If they would surround DC with wind turbines, every time congress gets in session there would be ample hot air to drive the wind turbines I would think. All those stupid people talking all the time arguing about stupid fluff like what "is" means, and whether or not a blow job is "sex", in the past, to now, whether or not it would have made a difference if someone had done their job properly over the Benghazi incident, or Obama tasking the IRS to harrass dissident opinion organizations. Harness all that hot aid and bullfluff and the energy crunch would be over for sure.

motherfluffing liberals!

The point is the law of unintended consequences. When people do things to a complex system often there are consequences that were unforeseen and unintended.

Happens all the time with governments. They pass law with all the good intentions possible and then are shocked when it turns out bad. Of course that gives them more opportunity to pass more laws....

So Mr. Scientist you have done large scale atmospheric experiments? You are 100% confident that increasing wind turbine density by 1000s% will cause no harmful side effects? Oh what's that, you are just powering a wind turbine with your hot air.. I see.

Now the congressman certainly was pushing an agenda, likely for an oil or coal interest. I doubt he knew even the first thing about what he speaks. On the other hand it is certainly something to study before any large scale density change of wind powered technology. A basic understanding of atmospheric dynamics does not mean you are qualified to make such judgments about the effects of human engineering in nature.

No, what he said was totally and completely wrong, regardless of whether or not there would be consequences.

And, there have been studies of what lots of wind turbines would do. One of them suggested they may reduce hurricane intensity by some small fraction if we put enough of them on the East coast of the US....

Just be sure not to point them all in the same direction, lest we blow the Earth off it's orbit!

Also: Why would anyone get their science from a politician?

When I seen, Wyoming I T I thought of fluff Cheney, only to later see commissioned by Halliburton ... go figure

SOOOO Solar panels are like Hoover vacuum cleaners !!
Now I understand!!

bonus what

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zNZczIgVXjg

Umm...not sure I follow your logic, but yes, he is wrong.




It is not customary for an intelligent human to converse with an ant, but I'll make an exception for you.

I did not say that there would be no harmful side effects by literally filling the countryside with wind turbines. I just said that you won't be able to restrict air movement, no matter how many turbines you stick in the ground. The tallest wind turbine tops out at about 670 feet. The troposphere (the area of the atmosphere humans and other things live in) tops out at anywhere between 23k and 65k feet. If the ground and the sea were littered with nothing but wind turbines whose height topped out at 670 feet, you still wouldn't see any air restriction between areas of different air pressure. A vacuum cannot exist in an atmosphere. If there's a pressure difference, air will move to equalize that difference. You can't stop it.

Wait, who is the ant? What is the ant saying? How many convos with an ant before one is considered a fluffing retard? I say its one conversation.

According to this same logic, if everyone puts up solar panels on their roof to extract energy from sunlight, sunlight will be reduced below the point where it will function for photosynthesis and we'll all starve because the plants won't grow and the animals that eat the plants won't grow and we won't be able to get meat from them.

OMGZORZ We're Screwed, there is only a FINITE amount of energy that can be taken from the sun, it will go Nova if we all went green at the same time.

I'm gonna have to dig a hole in my backyard so that I can get into it with all my guns and await the mobs of rioting suntanners that have been displaced from the beach.

That is a pretty stupid analogy.

A global scale, and a solar scale, are pretty different. Humans have atleast a slight chance at effecting global change, as already evident by alleged climate change. It isn't too far fetched to demand more research be done. Regardless if upper atmospheric wind patterns can be changed, I know for damn sure surface wind flow can be changed, and has been changed by something as simple as buildings downtown in a large city.

Has been changed on an extremely small, local scale. Nobody is disputing that. But there is no way in hell we can ever manipulate airflow over the entire surface of the planet with our current level of technology. If you think otherwise...go back to school...please...

Yes, but even local and small scale changes can have adverse effects.

Look, I'm all for wind turbine fields. But an environmental study per site isn't too much to ask imo. And I'm pretty sure it's already SOP so I don't even know why we are debating this.

Absolutely there should be an environmental impact study... but the conclusions won't be "we might run out of wind" as much as "don't put that in the middle of the migration path of these endangered birds". ;)

And related to gov't screwups:

http://www.cnn.com/...ouse/index.html?hpt=hp_t2

Doh...

make the stupid stop already please

we have congressmen that literally make public statements about breaking wind?

Because he didn't say that. He said we would RUN OUT OF WIND! You realize how crazy that is...right?

I expected nothing less than crazy from someone who opened up with "gods way of"

Correct, "every action has a reaction" no way around that!