Okay...
Do wind and solar power contribute to Global Warming / climate change?
Yes, they do.
Wind turbines are not perpetual motion machines. They convert wind energy to electricity and typically are 20 to 30% efficient but can in optimal conditions reach close to 50%. That means to produce 100 kw of power they take 150 to 500 kw of wind energy out of the atmosphere. This amounts to 0.5 to 1 wattmeter^2. Wind turbines also cause massive turbulence to the atmosphere in their wake. This can stretch for several miles beyond the wind farm. This turbulence causes atmospheric instability and raises temperatures in the area it covers by up to 2 degrees C. It has been found that this warming is greater than any carbon reduction benefits wind power produces.
Thus, the net effect of wind power is to increase climate change, not reduce it. When you toss in the environmental damage done by wind, like decimation of bat populations, noise pollution, landfill issues with used turbine blades, and microplastic pollution from the wear products of those blades in use, wind is on the whole less environmentally friendly than using natural gas.
How Does Wind Energy Affect the Environment? Wind energy, while a crucial part of a sustainable future, impacts the environment […]
iere.org
Long-term weather and climate observatories can be affected by the changing environments in their vicinity, such as the growth of urban areas or changing vegetation. Wind plants can also impact local atmospheric conditions through their wakes, characterized by reduced wind speed and increased...
www.nature.com
Wind also still needs backup by conventional generation for base loading so natural gas, nuclear, or oil plants remain necessary.
Solar, like wind has significant impact on the environment. Commercial farms are huge in size and have significant impact on land use and native habitat of wildlife. While this can be sometimes mitigated by use of brownfield and landfill sites, these are limited in size and location and not always suitable for use. Trying to mix use, like agriculture and solar has had very mixed results.
Like wind, disposal of solar panels is a huge landfill problem. Solar adds in the issue of toxic chemicals and metals.
Solar farms also change albedo of the planet significantly and contribute to atmospheric warming. Like with wind, this effect--urban heat island effect--is significant enough that it offsets any reduction in carbon the solar farm produces. That is, the solar farm contributes more heat to the atmosphere than the carbon it removes does.
Our explainer on the environmental impacts of solar farms will answer all your questions, and maybe even some you didn't know you had!
ugei.com
While photovoltaic (PV) renewable energy production has surged, concerns remain about whether or not PV power plants induce a “heat island” (PVHI) effect, much like the increase in ambient temperatures relative to wildlands generates an Urban Heat Island effect in cities. Transitions to PV...
www.nature.com
Worse, solar is the least efficient, and most expensive way to produce electricity there is. It is intermittent in operation and therefore requires duplication of generation sources to make power available when solar isn't. This issue raises the cost of the generation system and grid
as a whole, and cannot be gotten around. Storage of electricity generated by solar is obscenely expensive. Even at $100 a kwh--a price far below what is currently available--storage would run into the tens of trillions of dollars done on a mass scale.
Solar and wind are environmental disasters, cost ineffective, and on the whole terrible choices for production of electricity. Nuclear backed by natural gas is the winning combination.