The development of wind energy is essential for decarbonizing energy production. However, the construction of wind farms changes land surface temperature (LST) and vegetation by modifying land surface properties and disturbing land–atmosphere interactions. In this study, we used moderate resolution imaging spectroradiometer satellite data to quantify the impacts on local climate and vegetation of 319 wind farms in the United States. Our results indicated insignificant impacts on LST during the daytime but significant warming of 0.10 °C of annual mean nighttime LST averaged over all wind farms, and 0.36 °C for those 61% wind farms with warming. The nighttime LST impacts exhibited seasonal variations, with stronger warming in winter and autumn, up to 0.18 °C, but weaker effects in summer and spring. We observed a decrease in peak normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) for 59% of wind farms due to infrastructure construction, with an average reduction of 0.0067 compared to non-wind farm areas. The impacts of wind farms depended on wind farm size, with winter LST impacts for large and small wind farms ranging from 0.21 °C to 0.14 °C, and peak NDVI impacts ranging from −0.009 to −0.006. The LST impacts declined with the increasing distance from the wind farm, with detectable impacts up to 10 km. In contrast, the vegetation impacts on NDVI were only evident within the wind farm locations. Wind farms built in grassland and cropland showed larger warming effects but weaker vegetation impact than those built on forests. Furthermore, spatial correlation analyses with environmental factors suggest limited geographical controls on the heterogeneous wind farm impacts and highlight the important role of local factors. Our analyses based on a large sample offer new evidence for wind farm impacts with improved representativeness compared to previous studies. This knowledge is important to fully understand the climatic and environmental implications of energy system decarbonization.

So what's worse, and potentially more lethal,
and for a far longer period?

One Fukushima meltdown or 100 wind turbines'
self-destruction?

AusGeoff wrote on Jan 19^th, 2024 at 1:26am:



A meltdown and explosion of radioactive substances poisons land forever.

Nuclear waste takes too long to decay.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radioactive_waste

Some common nuclear waste half lives:

Plutonium 239 half life      24,110 years.
Americium 241 half life          432 years
Radium 226     Half life      1,600  years
Uranium 236  Half life   15 million years.
Plutonium 244 Half life   80 million years
Uranium 235  Half life  704 million years
Uranium 238 half life      4.5 billion years

Bobby. wrote on Jan 19^th, 2024 at 5:01am:


What is 'nuclear waste' ?

lee wrote on Jan 19^th, 2024 at 11:53am:

It's naive to equate the absence of any immediate deaths
as minimising the effects of the disaster on the lives of those
164,000 residents living in the region.

The rates of psychological distress among evacuated people
rose fivefold compared to the Japanese average due to the
experience of the accident and evacuation.

A 2012 survey by the Iitate local government obtained responses
from approximately 1,743 evacuees within the evacuation zone.
The survey showed that many residents are experiencing growing
frustration, instability, and an inability to return to their earlier lives.
Sixty percent of respondents stated that their health and the health
of their families had deteriorated after evacuating, while 39.9%
reported feeling more irritated compared to before the accident.

In 2022, six residents who developed thyroid cancer sued
the facility's owner, the Tokyo Electric Power Company, and
its former executive officers were ordered to pay AU$154 billion,
intended to cover the costs to TEPCO for dismantling the reactors,
compensating affected residents and cleaning up contamination.

And thus granite dust is low level waste.