Tidal heights changes caused by 18.61 years cycle of lunar 'wobbles'

[lustyd]

Sigh

You might need to explain with the aid of props and puppets, but I'm still not sure it'll work

 

[newtothis]

Agreed. A major, as yet unsolved problem, is storage of energy.

There's a trial going on somewhere in Scandiwegia that uses sand as a storage medium. Use solar/wind to heat sand "to too hot to touch but not hot enough to become glass" (400-600 C, I think), and it will stay hot for a significant enough time to make it meaningful as a storage medium. Run a heat exchanger around it, and you get a viable district heating system, and can convert the steam back to electrickery.
I suspect, however, that its maritime efficacy may be limited.

 

[Beneteau381]

There's a trial going on somewhere in Scandiwegia that uses sand as a storage medium. Use solar/wind to heat sand "to too hot to touch but not hot enough to become glass" (400-600 C, I think), and it will stay hot for a significant enough time to make it meaningful as a storage medium. Run a heat exchanger around it, and you get a viable district heating system, and can convert the steam back to electrickery.
I suspect, however, that its maritime efficacy may be limited.

mate of mines wife found out a out that when she stood on a patch of sand that had had a disposable bbq on it,serious burns

 

[franksingleton]

The problem is Frankie that some key board warriors see things in black and white. I introduced a simple question, what did the power in the wind do downstream of it before we extracted terrawatts. Nothing judgemental, just a simple question. Nothing about climate change!
Surely a simple question for a scientist such as yourself to answer? You are a scientist arent you?

Sigh!

As ever, “simple” questions about weather can rarely be answered simplistically. A simple answer needs some explanation. I will do my best but realise that my answer will be twisted and distorted by some in this thread.

The sun heats the earth and the earth radiates that heat back out to space but, in doing so, the atmosphere is heated and cooled due to absorption by GHGs. Due to variations in the earth’s surface and cloud cover the heating/cooling varies on all time and space scales. This creates pressure differences so creating wind systems of sizes varying from small scale turbulence up to the major lows, highs, Trade winds etc.

There is an old saying that -
Big whorls have little whorls feeding on their vorticity.
Little whorls have smaller whorls and so on to viscosity.

All that is background that might help you to understand.

A simple answer to your question is that , energy is continually being taken out of the atmosphere. The energy not used to drive wind turbines will dissipate through friction and viscous effects.

 

[franksingleton]

There's a trial going on somewhere in Scandiwegia that uses sand as a storage medium. Use solar/wind to heat sand "to too hot to touch but not hot enough to become glass" (400-600 C, I think), and it will stay hot for a significant enough time to make it meaningful as a storage medium. Run a heat exchanger around it, and you get a viable district heating system, and can convert the steam back to electrickery.
I suspect, however, that its maritime efficacy may be limited.

There was a similar trial some years ago in N Africa, Morocco, perhaps. I have lost sight of that but this, Finnish "sand battery" offers solution for renewable energy storage is a similar version. Of course pump storage has been around for nearly 100 years.

 

[franksingleton]

Why would I need to? I also don't have a plan on how to travel at light speed, but I've not ruled that out because I have an open mind and believe most things are achievable in the long term.

An H-bomb is a relatively small item contains a vast amount of energy. Once exploded, there is no way that energy could be put back in another container. A moderate size thunderstorm is similar to an H-bomb.

 

[johnalison]

Sigh!

As ever, “simple” questions about weather can rarely be answered simplistically. A simple answer needs some explanation. I will do my best but realise that my answer will be twisted and distorted by some in this thread.

The sun heats the earth and the earth radiates that heat back out to space but, in doing so, the atmosphere is heated and cooled due to absorption by GHGs. Due to variations in the earth’s surface and cloud cover the heating/cooling varies on all time and space scales. This creates pressure differences so creating wind systems of sizes varying from small scale turbulence up to the major lows, highs, Trade winds etc.

There is an old saying that -
Big whorls have little whorls feeding on their vorticity.
Little whorls have smaller whorls and so on to viscosity.

All that is background that might help you to understand.

A simple answer to your question is that , energy is continually being taken out of the atmosphere. The energy not used to drive wind turbines will dissipate through friction and viscous effects.

With or without due respect, I don't think that answers the question. Clearly, wind energy is dissipated by friction and ultimately by heat, but I am wondering what local effects might result from converting most of the North Sea into wind farms. Scandinavia and Holland/Germany might find themselves with lower average wind speeds over a large area. I don't imagine for a minute that this has any connection to climate generally, but the local effects might be measurable (or not).

 

[Chiara’s slave]

I’m pretty sure there’ll be some research, both by the wind farms and sceptics about the downstream effects.

 

[lustyd]

With or without due respect, I don't think that answers the question. Clearly, wind energy is dissipated by friction and ultimately by heat, but I am wondering what local effects might result from converting most of the North Sea into wind farms. Scandinavia and Holland/Germany might find themselves with lower average wind speeds over a large area. I don't imagine for a minute that this has any connection to climate generally, but the local effects might be measurable (or not).

It could just as easily result in very high wind speeds as the spinning planet and atmosphere hits a man made “wall” causing a vacuum behind the wind farm. The interesting question is where the air then comes from, north or south, to know whether they get hotter and drier or colder and wetter.

 

[lustyd]

An H-bomb is a relatively small item contains a vast amount of energy. Once exploded, there is no way that energy could be put back in another container. A moderate size thunderstorm is similar to an H-bomb.

And yet we see nature doing exactly this all the time in stars and black holes, so we know for sure it’s not only possible but being done. The challenge is scaling it down and engineering it.

 

[johnalison]

It could just as easily result in very high wind speeds as the spinning planet and atmosphere hits a man made “wall” causing a vacuum behind the wind farm. The interesting question is where the air then comes from, north or south, to know whether they get hotter and drier or colder and wetter.

Although I have motored through the odd wind farm I have only once been through when there was a sailing wind, of around 15 knots. This was a moderate-sized farm south of Falster and I remember losing the wind almost entirely on the way through, and as far as I recall it wasn't until 10-15 miles downwind of the farm that we got the full wind again. There may be a shadow upwind as well but this will only be a mile or so.

 

[boomerangben]

Wind farms. I fly over wind farms a lot. On a windy day it is clear that there is turbulence on the water down wind and not up wind. That makes sense since the wind turbine takes more or less laminar 1D air flow, bounces (layman’s term given the complexity of aerodynamics) off the blades and given a 3 dimensional component. Some of that has downward vertical component which hits the water, hence the patterns I see on the surface. As wind passes through the field, electrical energy is taken out and air has been accelerated away from its 1D regime. The net result will be a decrease in the horizontal component of wind speed and thereby a change in pressure.

does that mean the winds are going to get less as we put more turbines up? I doubt it because I believe the world is a net windier place each time we pump more fossil fuels, co2 from working soils and drying wetlands etc. into the atmosphere. As someone has already said, more co2=warmer atmosphere =more wind. I suspect the world will become a windier place despite our best efforts to harness the energy. And yes downwind of a wind farm is going to be a bumpy place to be if you rely on the air for motion/support.

As for solar (pv or water or GSHP) those mechanism will in theory have a net cooling effect on the atmosphere since energy is removed/shielded from the soil, but I suspect that any such difference is more than offset by urbanisation, agricultural practices and changes of land use.

 

[Beneteau381]

Wind farms. I fly over wind farms a lot. On a windy day it is clear that there is turbulence on the water down wind and not up wind. That makes sense since the wind turbine takes more or less laminar 1D air flow, bounces (layman’s term given the complexity of aerodynamics) off the blades and given a 3 dimensional component. Some of that has downward vertical component which hits the water, hence the patterns I see on the surface. As wind passes through the field, electrical energy is taken out and air has been accelerated away from its 1D regime. The net result will be a decrease in the horizontal component of wind speed and thereby a change in pressure.

does that mean the winds are going to get less as we put more turbines up? I doubt it because I believe the world is a net windier place each time we pump more fossil fuels, co2 from working soils and drying wetlands etc. into the atmosphere. As someone has already said, more co2=warmer atmosphere =more wind. I suspect the world will become a windier place despite our best efforts to harness the energy. And yes downwind of a wind farm is going to be a bumpy place to be if you rely on the air for motion/support.

As for solar (pv or water or GSHP) those mechanism will in theory have a net cooling effect on the atmosphere since energy is removed/shielded from the soil, but I suspect that any such difference is more than offset by urbanisation, agricultural practices and changes of land use.

This is more like it, a reasoned take on what is going on, cause and effect, xactly what I had in mind when I first posed the questions

 

[franksingleton]

This is more like it, a reasoned take on what is going on, cause and effect, xactly what I had in mind when I first posed the questions

The question posed was ”what did the power in the wind do downstream before we extracted power?”

 

[franksingleton]

And yet we see nature doing exactly this all the time in stars and black holes, so we know for sure it’s not only possible but being done. The challenge is scaling it down and engineering it.

You really are clutching at straws.

 

[franksingleton]

Although I have motored through the odd wind farm I have only once been through when there was a sailing wind, of around 15 knots. This was a moderate-sized farm south of Falster and I remember losing the wind almost entirely on the way through, and as far as I recall it wasn't until 10-15 miles downwind of the farm that we got the full wind again. There may be a shadow upwind as well but this will only be a mile or so.

That is what I would expect. Local effects, fairly limited in extent. I would expect flow to be more turbulent. However, do not forget just how variable the wind can be even over the sea well away from land. Have you never sailed into a hole?

 

[boomerangben]

The question posed was ”what did the power in the wind do downstream before we extracted power?”

Created waves. Still does.

 

[johnalison]

That is what I would expect. Local effects, fairly limited in extent. I would expect flow to be more turbulent. However, do not forget just how variable the wind can be even over the sea well away from land. Have you never sailed into a hole?

Every time I tried to race on the Blackwater, with the result that the rest of the fleet swanned past me. The most striking hole I encountered was when sailing past Mons Klint, a massive cliff in Denmark. There was a stiff 15-20 knot wind blowing ashore from the east and we were a good mile from the cliff, but drifted along for the whole length of the cliff before romping along again.

Actually, even more remarkable was during the Morning Cloud gale. We had been stuck in Brightlingsea for five days and it had scarcely blown less than F9 the whole time. On the Friday morning, when we were thinking about how to get home by bus, the reports from coastal stations was F6 at Sandettie and F11 at the Varne. The centre of the depression was somewhere well in the north but to my surprise there was no wind. We rapidly cast off and motored twelve mile back to Heybridge in a glassy calm. By lunchtime it was blowing a hoolie again. On another occasion the forecast was NE 6-7 but we set off from Brighton to Cherbourg anyway. At midday we were motoring in no wind while the report from Royal Sovereign was NE 7 for the previous hour, from less than 50 miles away.

 

[LittleSister]

Before we started burning coal and oil to drive ships and boats there were an awful lot more sailing vessels afloat, and windmills and wind pumps ashore, slowing down the wind and causing turbulence than there are yet wind turbines producing electricity, so perhaps we're just getting towards the status quo ante!

There's a nice related local example which amuses me - the Norfolk Broads. (The actual broads (as opposed to the rivers that link them) are flooded peat ('fossil' fuel? slow speed bio-mass?) diggings, which adds a further twist.) The extensive marshes of the Broads were drained for agricultural use by wind pumps (windmills). Gradually these were replaced by steam (fossil fuel powered) engine driven pumps. These in turn were replaced over time by mains electric (also mainly fossil fuel powered) pumps. In some places you can still see the remains of a wind pump and steam engine house alongside the current (arf, arf) working electric pump house. The landscape is now heavily protected (the Broads is a national park in all but name), so you'd have a hard time getting planning permission now for something as obtrusive as a windmill! Partly as a result of this you often can see, far across the rather flat landscape, the wind turbines (outside the 'national park') at Martham and just offshore at Scroby Sands, which presumably are making some contribution to powering the electric pumps - so in a way we're back to draining the Broads using wind energy, but now remotely!

To add another twist, reed growing and harvesting (for thatching buildings, etc.) was once an important industry in the Broads (it's still extant on a very small scale). If reed growing were revived we could perhaps have a reed burning power station to generate some of the electricity . . . Hang on. Have I just invented perpetual motion?

Reeds also take us nicely back to the origins of the thread, as controlling the depth of water at different times in its growth is critical to reed production. If the mangroves are adversely affected by the tide changes every 18.61 years as a result of 'moon wobble', then so will the reeds, unless the water levels can be controlled, which will require the pumping of water, which in turn would require some input of power from fossil fuel, wind pumps/generators, reed fuelled power station or whatever! ?

 

[johnalison]

I don't think that the scattering of wind pumps, windmills and modestly-sized sailing craft begins to compare with the equipment on wind farms either in size or number. I wish you luck with your plan to fuel Britain with reeds but I won't be investing in it myself.