Monday, April 30, 2012

NRDC: Since we love wind farms, and since wind farms cause warming, we just remembered that warming is a "great ancillary benefit" for crops

Do Wind Farms Really Cause Climate Change? | Samir Succar's Blog | Switchboard, from NRDC

Notice that this means that wind farms could actually extend growing seasons by reducing morning frost events. That would be a great ancillary benefit of siting turbine arrays on agricultural land and a welcome alternative to flying helicopters to accomplish the same end. It also gives you a sense of the scope and magnitude of this effect.

1 comment:

Mrs. EntryReqrd said...

No Joke, No sarcasm. Helicopters are deployed by orchards to mitigate frost damage at great expense.

I am very curious. An array of wind turbines with more powerful motors to actively spin the blades could be utilized to regulate air temps at the crop level to maximize growth and reduce loss to frost. Feasibility and cost benefit analysis studies need to be done but this has my head going right now. At the head of a valley, wind turbines could be the climate controls of an agricultural dynamo.