Monday, March 18, 2019
The host of CBC radio's Quirks and Quarks turned to a Waterloo Engineering professor with a question about wind turbines on the program’s March 16 show.
Bob MacDonald asked David Johnson, a Waterloo mechanical engineering professor and founder of the University's Wind Energy Research Group, to respond to the following question submitted by a listener in North Gower, Ottawa.
“I am curious to know the effects on climate that may be caused by the very large wind turbine farms. The turbines are obviously absorbing energy from the wind, so is there an effect "downstream", from the farm?”
Johnson explained that turbines don’t increase the temperature, but they redistribute heat that is already in the air. [Quirks and Quarks article and audio clip]