President Trump Donald John TrumpFormer pro golfer advanced business interests of indicted Giuliani associates: report Republican group to run ads in target states demanding testimony from White House officials in Trump impeachment trial Mulvaney deputy tapped for White House tech post MORE lashed out again at wind farms on Saturday, claiming that the production of wind turbines causes a large carbon footprint.
During a speech to the conservative student group Turning Point USA, Trump told attendees that he "never understood" the allure of wind power plants, according to a report from Mediaite.
“I never understood wind,” Trump said, according to Mediaite. “I know windmills very much, I have studied it better than anybody. I know it is very expensive. They are made in China and Germany mostly, very few made here, almost none, but they are manufactured, tremendous — if you are into this — tremendous fumes and gases are spewing into the atmosphere. You know we have a world, right?”
“So the world is tiny compared to the universe. So tremendous, tremendous amount of fumes and everything. You talk about the carbon footprint, fumes are spewing into the air, right spewing, whether it is China or Germany, is going into the air,” the president added.
Critics of wind power plants frequently point to the carbon emissions from concrete and other manufacturers involved in the production of wind power farms as a reason against further construction of wind farms. However, the American Wind Energy Association found that wind farms around the world generated enough energy to avoid 200 million tons of carbon pollution from burning fossil fuels last year and estimates that most wind power plants repay their own carbon footprints within six months of operation.
Trump also claimed during his speech that wind power plants are responsible for killing birds, including bald eagles.
“A windmill will kill many bald eagles,” he said, according to Mediate. “After a certain number, they make you turn the windmill off, that is true. By the way, they make you turn it off. And yet, if you killed one, they put you in jail. That is OK. But why is it OK for windmills to destroy the bird population?”
A study earlier this year found that about 150,000 birds are affected by wind turbines in some way every year in the U.S., a number that remains far lower than the number killed by domestic animals each year.
fiendishrabbit on December 24th, 2019 at 03:57 UTC »
Wind does have a carbon footprint...but per kilowatt/hour over a windturbines lifetime that's about 1% of the carbon footprint per kwh of coal, and 50% the carbon footprint of hydropower (yes, hydropower also has a carbonfootprint due to the use of concrete&steel during production and the environmental changes created by waterstorage).
Overall the rankings (from best to worst in terms of carbon footprint) are:
Wind/Nuclear (nuclear comes with other problems, obviously) 4-40g2/kwh (median of about 12-15g/kwh) Hydropower Solar power Biomass Gas Coal. 750+ g/kwh (median of 850 g/kwh). Technologies under development (such as carbon capture) may reduce this to approx. 100-250g/kwh.Exact emissions depend on use (for example Gas turbines when used in a plant for both heating water and producing electricity are about 25% more energy efficient than when used purely to produce electricity since the waste heat can be better managed) and means of construction (both the choice of materials and how those materials have been produced. I chose to not list Geothermal since it ranges from very clean to very dirty (depending on the type of plant and geological conditions. Primary form of pollution is that if CO2 rich water is brought up from great depth the heat and loss of pressure will result in CO2 being released into the atmosphere)
So as usual Trump is full of it.
Gatokar on December 24th, 2019 at 03:32 UTC »
Between all the intense studying and tweeting he does, I've no idea how he finds the time to be President
theflowercat on December 24th, 2019 at 02:22 UTC »
fuckin winds. how do they work?