Anyone who watches with a skeptical or even neutral mind would see that the renewable energy proponents actually don’t give a damn about the environment, as they routinely ignore, or even actively hide, evidence of damage caused by so-called renewables. This damage occurs across the life cycle of renewables such as wind and solar, from the process of extracting minerals needed for manufacture, to manufacturing itself, to the operation of the renewables and to the eventual disposal of the equipment. They use excess amounts of land, lots of toxic materials, destroy and disrupt wildlife and create their own weather and climate effects. Offshore wind farms are promoted as a way to generate electricity without using up land, but they are particularly bad. Although the whackos are in denial about it, it is apparent that these farms are killing whales.
I have posted on similar research before. These offshore farms also change wind patterns, as you would expect, which in turn influences ocean currents, which affect all the sea life and sea birds in the area around and downstream of the wind farms. This article describes these impacts in detail for the North Sea area, which Germany and other countries are using extensively for energy production. It is clear that these installations will cause substantial disruption to the ocean ecosystem, and that these disruptions are being ignored in the approval processes. Just imagine if this were an oil pipeline. If we were really concerned about the environment, there would be constant intensive monitoring of these effects. But the rich people who are behind the whackos and who make a fortune from subsidies and other government spending don’t want any collection of such evidence, much less revelation of it to the public. Hypocrisy and corruption at its finest. (Wind Farm Study)
Kevin, I don’t think the conclusions in the paper are as prominent as you indicate. You state “It is clear that these installations will cause SUBSTANTIAL disruption to the ocean ecosystem”. See my own emphasis of words from the conclusion of the paper. Now, your inclusion of the oil pipeline comment I believe is certainly relevant, since the eco-folks would have made that the instrument of the devil. So my conclusion is that the paper gives some good starting points for gathering information about wind-water dynamic interactions in a real system, seemingly from sensors from various depths and lateral locations in the air & water. A good start.
From the CONCLUSION of the paper: (my emphasis is in CAPITALS)
…the large-scale sea level alterations trigger lateral and vertical changes in the temperature and salinity distribution and affect the hydrodynamics in areas covered by offshore wind farms. HOWEVER, the magnitude of these changes is RATHER SMALL compared to the long-term variability of temperature and salinity and CAN HARDLY BE DISTINGUISHED from the interannual variability…
…changing wind directions inhibit severe local impact, as the VARYING INTERNAL PROCESSES MITIGATE each other.
…Therefore, FURTHER investigations and improvements of the wake model are CRUCIAL, in order to assess the ACTUAL IMPACT of future wind farm development in the North Sea environment.