Xanthippa's Chamberpot

We have known for a long time that wind farms – those large fields filled with spinning turbines which harness wind energy and turn it into electricity have problems.

• Infrasound – which activates the fight/flight reflex of many vertebrates, flooding the body with adrenaline and thus causing long term health damage (in addition to disrupting sleep).
• Killing bats and endangered birds – by exploding their lungs as they fly in the low-air pressure pockets caused by the air turbulence they create.
• Rain-shadows – those areas ‘behind’ the farm – as the wind blows – which now receive much less wind as a consequence of the wind harnessed by the wind farms also receive much fewer clouds which are pushed in by the winds, resulting in lands that receive significantly less precipitation than they would naturally, which destroys their ecosystems and may even make them too dry for farming.

Now, a new study led by Liming Zhou from the Department of Atmospheric and Environmental Sciences at the University of New Yorks says there is an additional harm wind farms cause:  they actually increase the temperature in the whole region in which they are located.

According to the study, because the turbines are high above the ground, they mix air higher up and prevent the mingling of the cooler air currents near the ground at night with the warmer air above.  This mechanism interferes with the natural cooling of air cycles and, the study found that as a result of this,  the local temperatures went up by about 1 degree Celsius over a decade!

That beats the pants off anything carbon dioxide has managed to do!!!

H/T:  SlashDot