Wind energy is bulletproof – there’s no way that wind could have any kind of negative impact on the environment, right? Turns out it might be a little more complicated than that. The wind is fine – no one’s questioning the wind energy itself, the concern is more related to the wind farms.

Recent studies show that these wind farms are causing some unforeseen warming in the vicinity, which isn’t exactly how they’re supposed to work. It’s a crazy world. As with most ingenious plans, wind energy – or more specifically, the way we go about harnessing that energy – has a few surprising hitches of its own. It’s not a huge problem, and it’s a safe bet that this method is a lot more environmentally friendly than burning fossil fuels, but nonetheless, it’s still a little shocking.

Researcher Liming Zhou expands on this issue, stating, “The estimated warming trends only apply to the study region and to the study period, and thus should not be interpolated into other regions, globally or over longer periods.”

Suggesting that the problem may even fix itself, Zhou added, "For a given wind farm, once there are no new wind turbines added, the warming effect may reach a stable level.”

Now that we’re confident that wind farms probably aren’t going to bring on the end of the world, what about our drinking water?

Ground water samples were taken across the U.S. from 1988-2000, and again from 2001-2010 and compared side-by-side. The results show that – like the wind energy ordeal, it’s not as simple as black and white.

About 50 percent of the population’s water has maintained a consistently healthy quality, while most of the other half is seeing a significant decline in quality. This seems like a pretty big deal – it would be somewhat understandable and a bit less concerning if the results showed that five or 10 percent of the nation’s water was getting a little dirty, but half of the population is drinking this stuff?

Again though – all these studies prove is that the quality is waning in some way or another. In most cases, there’s just a little bit of a decline and in less cases, it might be a tad more serious. Still, it’s not indicative of any extreme health concerns or widespread danger.