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Fluffeh writes:
"At the recent meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, Mark Z. Jacobson, a professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Stanford, spoke in a session on renewable energy.
Jacobson was invited to speak at the conference because he has developed a roadmap to convert the entire U.S. to renewable energy using primarily wind, water, and solar generated energy. His detailed analysis includes looking at costs and benefits on a per-state basis, including the obvious benefits to human health from reduced pollution. One of his slides showed a very unexpected benefit, however: taming of destructive hurricanes with the help of offshore wind farms.
Jakobson's study, co-authored by Cristina L. Archer and Willett Kempton, has been published in Nature Climate Change (full text available here)."
(Score: 2, Interesting) by JimmyCrackCorn on Friday February 28 2014, @04:41AM
I agree. Lunacy.
From the article:
"In the case of Katrina, Jacobson's model revealed that an array of 78,000 wind turbines off the coast of New Orleans would have significantly weakened the hurricane well before it made landfall."
That would look like shit in the gulf and what percentage above 78,000 would have to be built to make sure this unproven, untested beyond common sense tactic would work to calm the winds.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by tibman on Friday February 28 2014, @06:45AM
You can't see much of the Gulf of Mexico from shore. It's over half a million square miles. I'm sure they could hide a bunch of wind turbines out there and nobody would know. But i agree with you about the storm reduction. I mean, it's possible but it would take a lot. Kind of like how jet contrails affect weather. It takes a lot but the effect is there.
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(Score: 2, Interesting) by ls671 on Friday February 28 2014, @08:02AM
Also, those wind mills could get a hit and be destroyed if the winds that hit them are too strong, leaking oil and what not into the sea.
Everything I write is lies, read between the lines.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by monster on Friday February 28 2014, @10:07AM
Add to this that such reduction in wind energy would also cause at least a change in rain patterns (if the wind is not strong enough, clouds may not travel too inland before raining, like in Australia) leading to droughs in some places. Not saying that it couldn't happen because of other causes (climate is dynamic, after all) but doing it on purpose...