this post was submitted on 22 May 2024
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Discussion of climate, how it is changing, activism around that, the politics, and the energy systems change we need in order to stabilize things.

As a starting point, the burning of fossil fuels, and to a lesser extent deforestation and release of methane are responsible for the warming in recent decades: Graph of temperature as observed with significant warming, and simulated without added greenhouse gases and other anthropogentic changes, which shows no significant warming

How much each change to the atmosphere has warmed the world: IPCC AR6 Figure 2 - Thee bar charts: first chart: how much each gas has warmed the world. About 1C of total warming. Second chart: about 1.5C of total warming from well-mixed greenhouse gases, offset by 0.4C of cooling from aerosols and negligible influence from changes to solar output, volcanoes, and internal variability. Third chart: about 1.25C of warming from CO2, 0.5C from methane, and a bunch more in small quantities from other gases. About 0.5C of cooling with large error bars from SO2.

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[Video] INSANE TORNADO PIPE intercept with windmills toppled near Greenfield, Iowa! (www.youtube.com)
submitted 5 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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[โ€“] [email protected] 5 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (1 children)

Those blades are way, way, way bigger than you think they are. They are moving extremely fast even at normal speeds. That 15ish rpm converts to around 1.5 rads/s. Modern windmill blades are something like 70m long -- so we're talking speeds of 100m/s or north of 350 kph / 220 mph.

Pretty comparable speeds to the windspeeds of the tornadoes in question during routine operation. Of course, there's a lot more intensity with a tornado, but windmills are actually designed to let most of the air pass them unimpeded because it makes them work more efficiently.

Of course, their energy production will be deliberately curtailed under high winds because the generators and infrastructure hooking them up can only handle so much -- they'll brake the blades, or rely on back-emf from the motors, or some combination of those factors to prevent them from over-generating.

Of course, unlike typical wind being harvested by the windmills, the tornado's airflow is far from laminar, meaning that even with their highest intensity, they will be losing a lot of efficiency in driving those blades.

...the tornado, of course, will simply knock them down.

[โ€“] [email protected] 3 points 5 months ago

Thank you for the detailed answer. I was really just making a joke, but I still do appreciate how much I have learned here.