What IS it with Trump and windmills? His obsession with them, with wind farms that provide renewable energy is well known. What’s also known is that they freaking work. As technology for making the windmills has improved the ability of wind farms to provide reliable and significant power has grown. Sadly, the United States hasn’t led the way on this. CHINA has. No matter, Trump gets his not ‘very fine brain’ fixated on a notion and no amount of facts or reason will ever get him to change. Trumpty thought a windfarm in the ocean that could be seen from one of his golf resorts spoiled the view, and he’s been at war with the wind energy industry ever since!
Being Trumpty, he’s said stupid things up to and including flat-out lies about renewable energy over the years but WIND energy, windmills evoke a special ire from him. He talks about how ‘dangerous’ they are, especially to wildlife. Especially birds. Is there anyone who thinks Trumpty cares about dead birds? Maybe he figures “environmentalists” will see things his way, and demand dismantling of every wind farm including and especially the one near his resort. Funny how he doesn’t seem at all concerned with fish and wildlife that die from oil spills!
The bottom line is that Trumpty didn’t like that HE wasn’t able to prevent the view of the ocean from that golf resort from being ‘spoiled’ because he didn’t own the freaking section of ocean that could be seen from those golf links. In case you’re not a golfer what’s known as links golf, mostly found in the United Kingdom involves having to usually deal with steady, strong winds. It’s why so many courses/links got sited where they are. That same steady, often strong wind in such places also makes for good spots for farms of windmills producing lots of clean, renewable energy. But Trumpty doesn’t like the look of them so his mission is to destroy the entire industry!
The other thing about windmills is that China, not the U.S. has led the development, and worse manufacture of windmills. Trumpty is also obsessed with China, or CHY-NER as he pronounces it, albeit often for stupid reasons. His new riff about China is described in this article from Huffington Post. Trumpty of course LIES and boy did he step in it:
President Donald Trump on Friday made a wild new claim about wind power as he renewed his attacks on renewable energy.
Trump complained that many of the components used in wind turbines are made in China, then suggested that China itself doesn’t actually use wind turbines.
“I have never seen a wind farm in China,” Trump declared. “Why is that? Somebody check that out.”
In reality, China is far and away the world’s leading producer of wind energy, with more than triple the current U.S. wind capacity.
Uh Oh. Trumpty should have left off that last part. I don’t have the ability to embed tweets into my posts but Acyn put one on Xitter of him at the WH Friday bloviating (or verbally farting if you will) about China, coal and wind. Here’s the text from the video in the tweet:
TRUMP: And we are putting up wind. It does not work, aside from ruining our fields and valleys and killing all the birds. Being very weak and expensive, all made in China. I have never seen a wind farm in China. Why is that?
Well, I recommend clicking on the link to the HuffPost article. It seems a whole bunch of people decided to do what Trumpty suggested and check things out. A lot of fun, as in mocking and ridicule is raining down on him. Given China is a vast country his ‘human printer’ is probably frantically printing out pages of fields and offshore views from China with nary a windmill in sight!
The facts however tell the story that Trumpty simply won’t accept or acknowledge. Like the U.S. China gets roughly ten percent of its electricity from wind farms. However China has four times as many people. That’s why they have so many more windmills and windmill farms than WE do! Sadly, that’s going to change and not in a good way for us. These idiotic comments from Trumpy were made in the context of his signing that awful bill GOPers in Congress sent him. Trump wanted and got huge cuts to non-renewable energy, especially of course windmills:
Now, Trump might finally get his way as his “big beautiful bill” will wipe out tax credits for wind and solar power, potentially decimating the industry. The Rhodium Group, a research firm, estimates the bill will put a stop to between 57% and 72% of new solar and wind projects.
Critics have wasted no time pointing out how stupid and destructive all this is to U.S. interests. North America’s Building Trades Unions say with all the projects that will be cancelled this is “the biggest job-killing bill in the history of this country.” Their statement goes on to say critical infrastructure projects are being sacrificed due to ideology. They’re right. Thomas Friedman of the NYT is even more blunt, writing that the Chinese are “laughing at us” and can’t believe their luck. He points out the folly of undermining our renewable energy capability at the dawn of the energy guzzling age of Artificial Intelligence.
All because of a long held Trump grudge over what he considered a ‘spoiled view’ from one of his freaking golf courses in the UK:
Trump, however, has long had issues with renewable energy ― especially wind, which he has called “bullshit” and “a hoax,” a grudge he has held since a dispute over an offshore wind farm near one of his resorts.
Well, Trumpty has largely gotten his way. The linked article includes an estimate from The Rhodium Group (a research firm) stating the bill will kill off between 57%-72% of new solar and wind projects. It doesn’t talk about the effects on existing ones but with cuts to subsidies the negative impact will be even greater.
Still, I started writing this because Trumpty shot off is big, ugly fat mouth AND issued a challenge. So again, check out the link and scroll through a bunch of tweets (there are many more of course) that do to him what he hates most – mock and ridicule him. And he can’t count on Elon anymore to limit how badly he’s being ratioed on Xitter.
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I don’t remember where I saw it, but offshore wind farms actually create artificial reefs and restore ecosystems. The article specifically mentioned Chesapeake bay and somewhere off the Virginia coast where fish populations are coming back.