In reply to John Steck's message of Wed, 14 Jun 2006 09:29:50 -0500: Hi, [snip] >I wonder what the environmental impact would be to tap it. Wind farms of >that magnitude surely would have some net-effect on the low altitude weather >patterns of the region they are located and the regions down wind of >them.... the closest analogy I can think of is hydroelectric damming. [snip] Since the Globe is warming anyway, there is more energy being added to the wind system. This means that as global warming progresses, average wind speed (and resultant damage in storms) is going to increase. It also means that windmills are going to return the investment made in them sooner. Furthermore windmills extract energy from the global weather system, thus they are a two edged sword (or three if you have one with three blades ;). First they reduce the energy in the system, and second they displace fossil fuel use cutting down on greenhouse gasses. Regards,
Robin van Spaandonk http://users.bigpond.net.au/rvanspaa/ Competition provides the motivation, Cooperation provides the means.
