Verzijlbergh explained that Belgian wind farms have an advantage over Dutch ones. “They are located southwest of the Dutch parks and the wind often comes from the southwest, so you often steal some of our wind,” he said.
Umm, my guy. It sounds like it’s their wind and they graciously pass on their leftovers instead of “extracting” all of the wind.
It was then that the Dutch poldered the Netherlands out to upwind of the Belgian wind farms.
Would be such a power move.
Just ask them to spin the windmills in reverse 3% of the time
LMAO
Peak old man yells at clouds.
They’re gonna steal them next!
There’s a fart joke here somewhere…
“But it turned out the French were the ones producing it all along.”
How did they catch wind of this?
Im sending them my farts
ooooo those Belgians! That’s why they have those little twirly moustaches!
For fuck’s sake… it starts…
They’ll never have more trumps than the US.
In an interview with Belgian broadcaster VRT, Verzijlbergh said: “A wind turbine is designed to extract wind from the air. If you measure behind a wind turbine, the wind blows less hard. Behind a wind farm with many wind turbines together, you really see lower wind speeds.”
To me this does make ‘scientific or math sense’. But, how dramatic is it?
It doesn’t really even make scientific or math sense. Why? Due to why\how wind exists in the first place. You could completely block or “use up” 100% of the wind a windmill height, but it wouldn’t effect anything at all for airspeed a km away. It’s much the same way that you can have a leaf blower shooting out 300km\hour wind, but not feel it the slightest bit from 10 meters.
Air movement is constantly having to have energy fed into it in order to make it go anywhere. This is from uneven heating and air going from high pressure areas to low pressure areas. It isn’t really made from the wind that’s already moving around. If this weather guy wasn’t actually just making a joke, he must be a terrible meteorologist for having such a poor understanding of something that should be directly in his wheelhouse.
Let’s take windmill like in the example, it has 3 blades, each maybe at most 5 degrees wide (out of the 360 for a circle). So that covers 15 total degrees or 1/24th the wind area, so at absolute best, it’s about 4% of the wind power in that area being stopped. But the blades don’t actually capture 100% of the wind power, a good amount will deflect off, those blades are not 5 degrees wide, they’re less and they aren’t straight blades, so again they capture less. Further the blade only captures a small vertical section of its own footprint, so it captures dramatically less wind power. Lastly blades are spaced with a good amount of clearance from each other leading to even less wind power captured. In aggregate, even by entirely layman measure, these likely have an immeasurable impact on another wind farm.
I’d bet if you built a mile high, mile wide wind capture device that captured 100% of wind power going to it, and then put a 2nd one 1 mile directly behind that, you could just maybe get a few % measurable impact.
To add to this, it is literally impossible to capture 100% of wind power, even in theory, because that would mean bringing the air to a full stop, halting flow. The air must retain some of its energy to continue moving through the system. The theoretical maximum is a little under 60% according to Betz’s Law. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betz’s_law
So, quite literally ‘no noticeable impact’ and entirely ‘free energy’. And these ‘anti-wind’ viewpoints are still continued anti-renewable propaganda. Like the thousands of dead birds from hitting windmills…
Ok but they are saying they want that few% I don’t think anyone is arguing it’s a big number but it is a number none the less. That’s the number they need back.
it does make sense to me too. the effect is just not “big”, whatever that means xD.
Just don’t break it, before you send the wind onwards to me…
Next thing we know they’ll be accusing chestnuts of being lazy.
We just need one world government. Problem solved.
Yeah, governments never fuck up. Better just have one big unstoppable one. Real genius level thinking there. Can’t go wrong.
If all the wind farms are owned by one entity they can’t steal wind from each other.
That necessitates everyone in that entity agreeing.
That’s the problem.
You’re not being downvoted for a utopian worldwide government being something people don’t want, you’re being downvoted for being too unrealistic.
Yeah, if everyone agreed and there was only one entity, the wind wouldn’t be an issue, probably. And neither would wars or famine or poverty.
But… they are.
Simply stating “oh why don’t we all just get along” is just… kinda silly.
If wishes were horses, beggars would ride.
— Scottish proverb
Yes, at the core I have the same perspective as the op, but realistically it’s never gonna be “one government” it’s gonna be a huge mess with local governments, alliances, treaties, delegations and so on and so forth. I kinda think that might be a good thing though, the layers of democracy are a safeguard.
I’d agree that with a very high probability, not in our lifetimes.
However I don’t like using the word “never”. When I was reading science mags and pop sci in the late 90’s and early 2000’s, organ printing etc may have been mentioned, but no-one even floated the idea of practical immortality. Now theres actual fields of science looking into longevity, some claiming that our ability to enhance longevity may actually outpace our aging at some point.
I do agree that strong government and fundamental democracy is important, but the reason we have election cycles and not basically real life feedback is just a silly tradition dating back thousands of years when people actually couldn’t communicate and interact as we do now. We could build stronger democracies and stronger safeguards. What if Trump actually derailing shit this bad would mean an objectively low score on some system, triggering a vote which everyone can participate through on their phone (given we imagine it’s secure) and give a vote of no confidence or smth. Actual democracy?
Putting those fantasies aside, it’s still possible for a Star Trek-esque utopia to emerge one day. Although I see it as less and less possible every day. However even in ST canon there’s WWIII and it takes a while to settle after that.
Current track are headed more likely to a dystopia, for sure, but revolutions have happened in the past and I’m sure as shit not going to give up hope.
Unfortunately not all people have sworn the oaths and will protect those they hate.
“PROBLEM SOLVED.” is on sale right now!
Grab your populist talking point for only 3 seconds of thought at your nearest mouth.
