There most likely is no problem. I actually AM a meteorologist (BS, MS, and finishing up my PhD) and these just look like some cumulus lenticularis- the formation mechanism is due to some waveform within the atmosphere that causes regular forms of condensation that appear like this. These are nothing really new, the sceintific basis is pretty good for these clouds to be listed. It's a 2-D wave pattern with a good airmass boundary. It's definitely neat, but it's not like it's earth-shattering cloud formation.

It's certainly possible. We haven't quite quantified it yet. But the short answer is, yes. Here's a link to a paper that studied the effects of a proposed wind farm in Kansas: http://www.atmos.uiuc.edu/~sbroy/publ/jgr2004.pdf They see lots of local effects, but little effects that go on to larger levels. Here's another link to another paper (in PNAS)... http://www.pnas.org/content/101/46/16115.full.pdf+html They say that there would be non-negligible impact in the climate due to wind power, but it would be better then current power generation. The fact of the matter is that there is always some effect. If you put a solar panel out in the middle of the field, you're changing the local albedo, absorbing more energy (especially in a desert, as they are generally white). This will cause some differences in total energy balance and may potentially change the weather patterns and water allocation. There are studies about the changes in albedo that have shown to have large impacts in local weather. Deforestation has the same thing happening in changing local wind patterns, and putting in a shit-ton (scientific term) of wind turbines would definitely have massive local effects on the meteorology. Would it be bad or good? Hard to say. But everything interacts with the system. Hope the papers help.

There are still good scientific applications for good old Fortran. Most research weather models are still written in it (because when you need to calculate seven partial differential equations over 10-second intervals for 48-hours for a grid that's 200x200x50, you need something that runs quick) and it's still relatively easy to understand. Plus, Fortran scales to MPI work pretty well. And when you're running grids like that, you want to be able to assign 40 processors to it so that your 48-hour model run actually completes in less then 48 hours.

You know, a lot of the climate and weather prediction models are open source. You can download the source code if you want, and run it on your own PC if you have certain compilers. Some links for you for your own perusal: Community Climate Model NASA GISS Model Weather Research and Forecasting Model Regional Atmospheric Modeling System As long as you have access to a Linux/Unix machine, you can get these models yourself. If you want to contribute, you can do so. Just know that you probably need to have taken graduate level courses in numerical methods and actually get the physical terms in the model to make changes that mean something. Science in this case is rather open. People can easily download these models and make changes to improve it if they needed to (or to test sensitivity, etc).