What contributions and disasters have the wind brought to mankind?

"Three autumn leaves can bloom ugly flowers. Crossing the river and thousands of feet waves, people are inclined. " This is a riddle poem describing the wind in the Tang Dynasty, and each sentence contains many elements of climate and phenology.

wind is one of the most common natural phenomena, and it is also one of the most familiar weather elements. The spring breeze is warm, the wind is clear and the moon is bright, and the wind is an invisible scenery; "The wind is like pulling a mountain out of anger, pulling out thousands of feet pine" (Lu You's poem), and the wind is a kind of disaster. In fact, scientifically speaking, wind, as the horizontal flow of air, is a kind of energy. It is estimated that the natural wind energy generated by the atmosphere on the earth's surface is 1,67 trillion degrees per year, which is equivalent to 1, times the energy generated by burning coal every year in the world.

the earliest use of natural wind by human beings is the sail. "Zhouyi" contains: "Fu Xishi is a boat with a log." "The Original" contains: "Fuxi began to ride the fork ... Xia Yu took the rudder to sail." It can be seen that in the patriarchal clan society, people have invented boats and rafts, and in the Xia and Yu era, they began to use sails. The hieroglyphics of sails appeared many times in the inscriptions on Oracle bones of Yin and Shang dynasties more than 3, years ago. By 145 ~ 143, Zheng He's seven voyages to the Western Ocean led a huge fleet, which was not only full of sails, but also good at using the laws of monsoon, and sailed more than half a century before Columbus crossed the Atlantic Ocean.

another achievement made by ancient people in using wind energy was windmills. China, Egypt and Babylon are the birthplaces of windmills. Legend has it that in the 17th century BC, the king of Babylon planned to make windmills that could be used to irrigate the fertile Mesopotamian plain. In the 3rd century BC, the Egyptian hero Alexander designed a four-blade horizontal axis windmill. There are many figures of windmills on the murals of Eastern Han tombs unearthed in Liaoyang, China. It can be seen that there were windmills in China at least 17 years ago. As for European windmills, it was during the Crusades (from the end of the 11th century to the 13th century) that they spread from the East to Italy, France, Spain and Portugal, and later to Britain, the Netherlands and Germany. Holland, known as the "windmill kingdom", has a short history of using windmills.

Wind has made outstanding contributions to ancient civilization, and it is a resource tool for human survival. If there is no wind on the earth, water vapor cannot be transported to the mainland, and there will be little precipitation on the land. Over time, rivers will be cut off, lakes will dry up, and groundwater will be exhausted day by day. At the same time, because there is no wind, the heat at high and low latitudes cannot be exchanged, and the tropical region will be hotter and the cold region will become colder. Without the indispensable water for life and the proper temperature environment, can human beings survive?

Of course, the wind sometimes loses its temper and even brings disaster to mankind. Strong winds roll up yellow sand, engulf farmland, destroy roads and affect people's lives. "Sandstorm" has become the biggest meteorological disaster in northern China in spring. In summer and autumn, the southern region is often affected by typhoons, especially in coastal areas. The typhoon with great energy is indeed overwhelming and frightening; Strong precipitation and strong convection (such as thunderstorms and hail) accompanied by typhoons often make the border areas suffer from extinction. However, with the increasing level of weather modification, one day, human beings will make the wind a "good boy", so that it can only do good things and not do bad things, and make new contributions to human civilization.