They took over the airports.
We need more airports.
Close.
We should get the windmill cancer speech too!
Oh boy, that one is one of my favorites. "I never understood wind, yet I know windmills very much. I've studied it better than anybody. I know it's very expensive. They're made in China and Germany, mostly. Very few made here, almost none."
Bear in mind that he knows windmills very much and has studied it better than anybody. A simple Google search will reveal these figures, which I grant you, I have not cross-referenced with a multitude of sources. Also, it comes from the Marxist, Leftist Wikipedia.
He goes on to teach us that the ". . . world is tiny compared to the universe. So, tremendous, tremendous amounts of fumes and everything, you talk about the
carbon footprint, fumes are spewing into the air, right? Spewing. Whether it's in China, Germany, it's going into the air; it's our air, their air, everything, right?"
Essentially, what I gather here is that his thesis is that wind turbines are tremendously polluting and expensive. I am not an environmental scientist, nor am I a conservationist. However, these things do not use fossil fuels nor is there the use of combustion. Maybe they leak now and then? I assume that is possible a short can cause a fire here and there? But, overall I would say that this is probably not a very founded thesis.
He makes some good points about the depreciation of real estate as it applies to windmills, as one does. "So, they make these things and then they put them up and if you own a house within vision of some of these monsters, you're house is worth 50% of the price. They're noisy, they kill the birds."
I remember rolling through the Pocono Mountains on my way to upstate NY a few years ago and, having never seen the Pocono Mountains, thoroughly enjoyed the scenery. But, there were these windmills at the mountain tops and on every ridge. This went on for 40 miles it seemed. It did take away from the scenery, but it was also comforting knowing that maybe we can keep those trees and mountains around a while because of said "monsters." But, I am pro-environment.
Ah, the birds. He went a bit deep here, I believe. "They're noisy, they kill the birds. You want to see a [bird] graveyard? You just go. Take a look. A bird graveyard? Go under a windmill some day. You'll see more birds ever than you've ever seen in your life. You know, in California they were killing the bald eagle. If you shoot a bald eagle, they want to put you in jail for ten years. A windmill will kill many bald eagles, it's true. And you know what? After a certain number, they make you turn the windmill off, that's true by the way. This is. They make you turn it off after you. And yet if you killed one, they put you in jail, that's okay. But, why is it okay for these windmills to destroy the bird population?"
On bird population destruction, he is correct. Windmills account for an estimated 140k to 500k birds each year (US Fish and Wildlife Service). Domesticated cats in the United States alone in 2013 killed an estimated 3.7 billion birds (Smithsonian Biology Institute and US Fish and Wildlife Service). Even if that number is 300% exaggerated, which I have no reason to believe, that is a billion birds. To put that in perspective, windmills account for .05% of the bird deaths that cats are responsible for each year in the United States.
All I have done here is take exactly what the president said and lazily looked for sources and facts to back those claims. Pretty simple academics.
