Can wind turbines exacerbate a drought, or strip moisture from Australia’s arid soils?
This idea has circulated within Facebook groups fearful of renewables for about two years, and it’s roaring back again on the heels of a new German study.
The problem is, the most recent study doesn’t actually say what fearful online residents think it does.
The “bombshell” study showing “potentially serious consequences for agriculture” is in fact a computer simulation designed to test how turbines influence surface temperatures and soil moisture in central Europe.
It does include some scary numbers, but with a careful proviso that the scenarios it’s testing are not possible in the real world.
