The Propheteer

HAH! I said there was going to be a problem like this with widespread usage of wind power. Here’s the story in the Globe and Mail. My parents laughed at me just the other night when I commented I was curious as to how it would affect global weather when we started draining energy from the wind that makes up our weather patterns. On a small scale, no big deal. When you start putting these suckers up all over the place, eventually the winds are going to lose energy and then two things are going to happen. One, the energy those winds add to the global weather patters are going to decrease and change our weather patterns, and two (this is a little more long term, we’re probably not going to get there…but worth considering) the energy the wind can produce will decrease such that the total power derived from the windmills will no longer equal the energy from one multiplied by the total number of windmills. There will be a point of diminishing returns – and, to my thinking, the problem could occur over a number of years (i.e. the amount of energy drained from the wind causes a decrease in the amount of wind generated in the future, in a cycle that destroys the weather system.) Again, I don’t think we’ll ever get that far, simply because it’s impractical, but it bears up as a thought experiment. So. Just my 2 cents about the weather. I told you so!!!