"you can't steal something that can't be owned - and nobody owns the wind"

Fortunately it seems to be fine from these perspectives.

It’s only recently that the right wing has become particularly against them

I do not understand HN's pathological obsession with trying to "gotcha" news media titles for being "clickbait" especially given the "Software (version number)" posts and edgy titles to corporate and personal blogs that are everywhere here.

Moreover, the economics of offshore wind farms is often commingled with state enterprises and various subsidy schemes, which makes them uneconomical even in the best of times, so a 2% capacity reduction coupled with inevitable maintenance and repair costs escalations might make many wind farms uneconomical.

Onshore wind farms are much more economical but the best locations such as Texas, Oklahoma and New Mexico already have been developed.

TFA discusses this:

> To justify their investment and make a profit, "it's very important for a developer to be able to project that the wind farm will produce a given amount of electricity for 25 or 30 years", the typical lifespan of a wind farm, he says. Even a relatively small, unexpected reduction in that energy output can upset this investment calculation and make the wind farm not financially viable, Finserås says.

E.g. country A is saying that country B is stealing their incoming (upstream) wind, but there's currently a zone of negative pressure (based on the mountains/shore/passing by cyclone/whatever) on the country A's territory which actually allows for the pressure gradient to form through both countries A and B - so there's more energy potential available to tap into on country A's territory?

Areas with more changing wind patterns are likely less desirable.

Wind farms do have meteorological impacts (e.g. onshore ones slightly dry the soil behind them). It is measurable but insignificant.

1) the total height of the atmosphere and

2) other natural obstructions like cliffs and hills

What happens in surface level winds (which is where windmills operate) are actually controlled by the upper level winds. Obstructing surface level winds has local effects (these are also called "terrain effects" since this is usually caused by geography).

Theoretically, if you were to cover the earth in windmills, this would have a serious effect on surface level winds, where they would generally be blocked by a nearby windmill. This would be especially noticeable at sea where you otherwise don't get terrain effects. The vast majority of the atmosphere (everything above a few hundred feet) would continue to be unaffected, though, and would continue to be driven by ground and sea surface temperatures and the Coriolis effect, mostly.

With wind turbines, I suspect additional wind speed due to additional energy would cancel out the drop in density.

Kill two bird with one stone! Sap hurricane energy and turn it into renewable energy.

Unless/until the day we paved the entire earth with solar panels and capture the entire atmosphere of their wind, this will continue to be the case. Hopefully, we reach a dyson swarm before that occurs...

Allegedly this was a problem in the Cotswolds, UK, when the woollen industry was where the big money was. I only know this from school history classes, not from Google, hence my use of the word 'allegedly'. Allegedly, mills placed upstream slowed the flow to existing mills downstream, leading to disputes.

In time, mills were built with big chimneys, meaning coal. But why would you go for expensive coal that had to be transported when you had 'free' power from the river? It has been hypothesised that drought may have played a part in this, not the over use of waterwheels.

Mine, by Kim Faulk, 2022 Synopsis: “ Family is everything... I always knew my father was a cold, heartless bastard.

But the moment he took Elle Castlemaine and her pathetic daughter into our home, barely a month after our mom died, he unleashed something savage inside me.”

I’m guessing it’s not that one!