Have we ever really thought wind power through?

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So much is being said and done about alternative sources of energy these days that it is easy to think that anything is better than older power sources. Take wind energy, for instance: that has to be good, right? It doesn't pollute the atmosphere and is available anywhere the wind blows. Yet I think we haven't really thought about the effects it could cause. We all know by now that it can only ever be a contributor to our energy requirements; we would have to cover the surface of the earth with windmills to supply even the energy we use today, let alone the future. But let us say we aim for a certain percentage of our energy requirements to be supplied by wind power. We build the windmills and start taking off electricity. What happens to the wind? The energy that we take out comes from the wind - we are effectively depriving the wind of some of its power. If we take enough, we will actually cause the wind to drop, perhaps even to stop. Yet the low pressure that caused the wind in the first place is still there, struggling to draw in air to fill itself. We have blocked off one source of that air so the system will pull in air from somewhere else. That means that a new wind will start from another direction. What does this do to weather patterns? Suddenly an area that was used to receiving rainfall from the wind we blocked no longer receives rain. And elsewhere, the new wind starts bringing rain to an area that might never have received so much rain before. See what I'm saying? Extensive use of wind power might result in changing weather patterns that could do far more damage to our environment than our present methods of obtaining energy. We need to think carefully about consequences before happily accepting alternative energy sources as uniformly good. They need not be so.