In rural Carrol County, Indiana last week, I happened to listen in briefly on remarks at a County Commission meeting discussing wind and solar energy.
As familiar as I am with the entire range of bogus anti-clean energy talking points, I did hear a new one.
“Solar panels attract tornadoes.”
Kicked that around with some of my companions and everyone agreed that was a new one.
Well, this week I may have stumbled on the source. A good friend, centennial farmer and proud wind turbine host called me and asked me to take a look at a facebook posting about solar energy. He said the author claimed to be some kind of expert, and my friend did not feel well versed enough to respond.
This is what he passed along.
As more & more counties get more solar farms…here’s some truth about solar farms.
From a STEPHENVILLE resident, George Franklin:
I should start by telling you what bonafides I have for writing this. I am a retired aerospace engineer. A literal rocket scientist if you will. I worked on MX (Peacekeeper) Space Shuttle, Hubble, Brilliant Pebbles, PACOSS, Space Station, MMU, B2, the Sultan of Brunei’s half billion dollar private 747 with crystal showers, gold sinks and 100 dollar a yard coiffed silk carpets. I designed a satphone installation on prince Jeffry’s 757. I did all of the design work for the structure of Mark 1V propulsion module currently flying on at least 3 spacecraft that I know of. Some of the more exciting projects I have worked on are not shareable. My personal projects include a spin fishing reel with a 4.5 inch spool which is entirely my own designed, machined and assembled. It has 2 features that are patentable. A unique true flat level wind and a unique line pickup mechanism. I am also am FAA certified glider pilot and FAI certified gold glider pilot. I fly both full scale and model sailplanes. I am Microsoft certified and ComTIA A+ certified.
Solar panels are at best about 20% efficient. They convert almost 0% of the UV light that hits them. None of the visible spectrum and only some of the IR spectrum. At the same time as they are absorbing light they are absorbing heat from the sun. This absorbed heat is radiated into the adjacent atmosphere. It should be obvious what happens next. When air is warmed it rises. Even small differences in ordinary land surfaces are capable of creating powerful forces of weather like thunderstorms and tornadoes. These weather phenomena are initiated and reinforced by land features as they are blown downwind. It is all too obvious to me what will happen with the heat generated by an entire solar farm. Solar farms will become thunderstorm and tornado incubators and magnets.
Solar panels are dark and and they emit energy to the space above them when they are not being radiated. This is known as black-body radiation. Satellites flying in space use this phenomenon to cool internal components. If they didn’t do this they would fry themselves.
So solar farms not only produce more heat in summer than the original land that they were installed on, but they also produce more cooling in winter, thus exacerbating weather extremes.
So I conclude with this. There is nothing green about green energy except the dirty money flowing into corrupt pockets.
There is no such thing as green energy. The science doesn’t exist. The technology doesn’t exist. The engineering doesn’t exist. We are being pushed to save the planet with solutions that are worse than the problems.
———
Well alrighty then. But, as Samuel L. Jackson said, allow me to retort…
Peter Sinclair on Facebook:
This is typical BS produced by another elderly ideologue talking outside his field.
If this logic is correct, every asphalt Walmart parking lot would be creating tornadoes and thunderstorms on a regular basis.
The writer does not explain how solar fields make it “cooler in winter”, which would have to rely on an entirely different physical principle. In fact, solar panels work more efficiently, creating more electricity, in cold weather.
https://www.sunrun.com/…/do-solar-panels-work-in-cold…
Solar panel’s average efficiency of 20 percent makes them, according to research from Dr Paul Mathewson of Clean Wisconsin, an 80 to 150 times more efficient use of land than corn ethanol.
Gas, coal, and nuclear power plants are enormously inefficient as they emit tremendous amounts of waste energy as heat – requiring vast amounts of cooling water – water that is increasingly in short supply.
Most people don’t know that almost half of the surface water withdrawals in the US go to cool thermal power plants – coal, gas, nuclear.
https://www.usgs.gov/…/thermoelectric-power-water-use
Sun and wind, on the other hand, require little or no precious water.
https://www.iea.org/…/clean-energy-can-help-to-ease-the…
Moreover, as we electrify our energy system, the inherent efficiency of things like EVs will actually allow us to decrease the total primary energy that we use as a planet, as Dr Mark Jacobson (not a “rocket scientist” – an actual Stanford University expert on energy generation) has pointed out.
https://news.stanford.edu/…/50states-renewable-energy…/
Meanwhile, in Texas, energy consultant Doug Lewin points out that solar (and wind) are helping the state ride out the current arctic outbreak.
..and here in the MISO transmission region, solar and wind are doing a great job helping to keep us lights-on and toasty. Recent graphs here
For a self proclaimed “rocket Scientist” – Mr Franklin’s prognostications are stunningly shallow. He should retire to work on his fishing gear.
It was a typo, I’m sure. Mr. Franklin is a tomato magnet, not a tornado magnet, a rotten tomato magnet. Any crowd of actual scientists armed with the putrid fruit would storm him with it if they could stop laughing.
A ‘solar updraft tower’ is a renewable energy device that exploits Mr. Franklins concern to provide usable power. Prototypes have been built in Spain and China. But a 1000-panel solar farm is a ‘solar updraft tower’ with 1000 holes in it (the spaces between the panels). In a real ‘solar updraft tower’, we’re essentially encouraging a tornado to form in the updraft tower, so a solar farm has a 1000 reasons to fail to make any such formation.
I suspect his sensitivity to these matter is less because he’s a ‘rocket scientist’ and more because he’s a glider pilot.
My question for Mr. Franklin is: “Who is the ‘Chicken Little’ now?” Someone puts in a solar farm and suddenly Weather-Armageddon is upon us? It’s sad to see someone so anxious to see a technology fail that he’s reached beyond the bounds of reason to imagine it. Some solar engineer, somewhere, must have really ticked this guy off. Old soldiers never die, they just fade away (hopefully soon).
About 15 years ago Joe Romm ran a website called Climate Progress. One of his articles was a report on climate scientist who, as an experiment, ran their climate model with the removal of all non condensing green house gasses from the atmosphere. The result was within ten years the average global temperature would drop 40 degrees C. After 50 year the temperature would have dropped 50 degrees C and the oceans would be frozen except for approximately a thousand mile wide ring around the equator. So goes the effect small amounts of non condensing green house gasses have on earth’s temperature.
Mars ain’t the kind of place to raise your kids.
In fact, it’s cold as hell….
Planetary scientists have long known the important role GHGs play in a planet’s atmosphere. They could explain why Venus is hotter than Mercury, even though it is farther from the sun.
Other scientists have done similar studies removing CO2 from the atmosphere. Other studies removed all non-condensing GHGs. Similar rates of cooling and again a “snowball earth”. So goes the effect small amounts of condensing green house gasses have on earth’s temperature.
I suspect the only truth in any of that is “Microsoft and CompTIA A+ Certified”
I guess if a solar field were the size of Chicago you could get a Chicago-sized heat island effect?
Searching solar panel heat island finds an extensive literature on the subject. It seems to be something that has been measured, modeled, and known about for a while.
Since it is a known phenomenon and can be modeled, I doubt that somebody would knowingly create a solar field with a grossly problematic heat island effect.
Or to put it another way: the actual experienced engineers of my acquaintance would have gone looking for the relevant standards and literature before posting wholly speculative blather.
A natural landscape is green, often dark green. Lets say, solar absorptivity of 70%. Replace that visual landscape (note: not the actually natural landscape, which may actually benefit from the shade) by a collection of solar panels, with solar absorptivity of 90%. 20% of that is turned to electricity, so as far as ‘heat island effect’ is concerned, the solar panels have the same solar absorptivity as the natural landscape did: 70%.
I just don’t see how you build a tornado out of that difference (which in my perhaps extreme accounting, is 0%).
The depths of stupidity are truly breath-taking.
And terribly sad. All that agony for nothing.
How did this country get so stupid ??!!
The Rocket Scientist: “Solar panels are at best about 20% efficient. They convert almost 0% of the UV light that hits them. None of the visible spectrum and only some of the IR spectrum.” [emphasis mine]
Here’s a basic explainer of which wavelengths solar panels are designed to convert and why:
https://www.thinkepic.com/solar/can-solar-panels-use-ultraviolet-or-infrared-light/
“The vast majority of solar panels are made of materials that convert primarily visible light.”