Saving...In a provocative paper to be published in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, German Physicist Axel Kleidon says that there is a limit to the amount of energy humans can extract from wind and wave power, and that in using these sources we could affect our environment in ways as serious as the greenhouse effect.
Put simply, Kleidon’s argument is that there is only a finite amount of wind available on the earth, and the attempts humans made to exploit that wind for energy useage in wind turbines actually affect wind patterns and thus the amount available wind to harness for energy use. According to his theory, the more wind farms we build will lead to more turbulence, changes in precipitation and cause atmospheric changes which could change the amount of radiation reaching earth’s surface.
“”Large-scale exploitation of wind energy will inevitably leave an imprint in the atmosphere,” he says. “Because we use so much free energy, and more every year, we’ll deplete the reservoir of energy.”
This kind of thinking flies in the face of many people who see wind as a force of nature that can be exploited without theoretical limit. Kleidon’s thinking is a new way of looking at the issue using earth’s own forces to exploit energy, and if more widely accepted this theory could have an affect on the future prospects wind energy industry.
