It looks like I am starting a mini-series on how Trump comes up with his crazy ideas and looking at the reality behind them. Today I want to look behind his “windmills kill thousands of birds” message.
Earlier I did a diary on how “warm white” LED lamps (the technical term for a “light bulb”) can give out a much yellower or “warmer” color range than, say, compact flourescent bulbs. The result is that Donald’s orange make-up looks even more orange. I have also remarked how the need to “flush 15 times” probably means he does not understand that toilets have a cistern or tank that is filled from the water supply. If that is of low pressure, it will indeed take longer to fill the tank. So if you are impatient, pumping the handle just flushes down whatever water has accumulated in the few seconds he has allowed between attemps.
So do windmills kill birds? Well one would probably save birds because of the grain accidentally dropped as it is delivered for milling. The Dutch do not appear to have reported significant losses from the windpumps they traditionally use to drain their land. So let’s be generous and assume he is referring to wind turbines used to produce electricity, do they kill birds? Well yes, but not in the numbers he describes and importantly, fewer per GWh than electricity generated by fossil fuels.
A study published in 2009 looking at the US and Europe estimated that wind farms were responsible for about 0.3 bird deaths for every 1GWh of electricity generated, compared with 5.2 deaths per 1GWh caused by fossil-fuelled power stations.
It said this would equate to the deaths, every year, in the US, of about 7,000 birds caused by wind turbines, 300,000 by nuclear plants and 14.5 million by power plants using fossil fuels.
What’s interesting is that BBC article from July 2019 is debunking claims made by Donald’s old pal Vlad.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has warned against over-reliance on renewable energy, something he says harms birds and other wildlife.
Speaking at a global manufacturing conference, the president said: "Wind-powered generation is good but are birds being taken into account in this case? How many birds are dying?"
"[Wind turbines] shake, causing worms to come out of the soil. This is not a joke," he said.
A quick reminder here that the Russian economy and government budget is highly dependent on exports of oil and gas so this looks like a case of MRDA. Much can be avoided by the proper siting of wind farms, particularly away from the routes used by migrating birds. The same applies to the lesser used renewable technology of solar thermal power which have their own unique problem for birds.
Unlike typical solar farms that use photovoltaic panels on a large scale, the site at Ivanpah is built on entirely different principles. To catch sunlight, the plant uses 5 square miles (12.9 square kilometres) of giant mirrors that focus beams of concentrated sunlight onto three different 40-storey-tall towers.
Once the beams are focused on the towers, their energy can be used to power turbines inside, which generates energy for the power grid.
The problem is that all this concentrated light around the towers makes them a prime location for insects to hang around, and this attracts the birds. When the birds cross in front of all that concentrated light to get at the insects, they burn up in seconds.
You will note that the kill rate at that particular plant is likely due to it being on the “Pacific Flyway” migratory route. Offshore windfarms actually help marine wildlife by providing “vertical reefs” for them to feed at.
Ok, but maybe they are being killed by getting brain cancer from the whooshing sound of the blades, another Trump meme. I think I may have found the origins of this Trump meme too but to do so you have to try to replicate the processes that go through what’s left of Trump’s little grey cells.
With Trump it’s not a simple case of “in one ear, out the other”. Information seems to go through a process akin tho those rock crushers that we used to joke being spammed. It goes in, is mangled by misunde rstanding and ignorance and something completely bizarre emerges.
I think there are two basic elements to his brain cancer theory, both involving towers but not ones with wind generators atop. The first element to look at is the sound. Another part of the electricity system does generate sound, high voltage overhead power lines..
People worry especially about high-voltage power lines, probably because they are carried by very large, highly visible structures that look vaguely threatening. This fear seems to have started with a 1979 study in which Nancy Wertheimer and Ed Leeper reported a correlation between high-voltage power lines and childhood leukemia in the area around Denver, Colorado. Wertheimer's results spurred numerous studies in the years since. A review of the evidence in 1995 pointed out that
“There is no known mechanism by which magnetic fields of the type generated by high voltage power lines can play a role in cancer development. Nevertheless, epidemiologic research has rather consistently found associations between residential magnetic field exposure and cancer.”
Scientifically, the question at the time was, were these associations real or coincidental? If they were real, what’s the mechanism? Clearly, further studies were needed. Well, twenty years later, the data are in: power lines do not cause cancer.
Trump did not however refer to leukemia (probably because he could neither spell nor pronounce it) but to brain cancer. For that detail, I believe we have to look towards the commonly held idea that cellphones cause brain cancer; another debunked theory.
And finally we come to the motivation behind his hatred for “windmills”. He has long battled the Scottish government over a windfarm development offshore from his golf course in Aberdeenshire. The main picture shows this but I suspect was taken with a long focus lens thereby making the structures far larger than they are to the naked eye. In February 2019, the Scottish government was awarded costs against him to pay for his court cases and appeal to the UK Supreme Court. By October the Trump company concerned was, typically, refusing to pay the bill and the reason put proposed in the article is also typical — the action was to deflect attention from the chronic and continuing losses that his vanity project was and still is making.
Trump’s critics claimed the property mogul was complaining about the windfarm to deflect attention from his financial problems in Aberdeenshire, and the dire impact of the 2008 global recession on its prospects.
Last month [September 2019] the company admitted the 2008 recession and the collapse in oil prices in 2014 had been the reason the resort was never developed in line with Trump’s original plans. The Trump International Golf Club posted a £1m annual loss for 2018 last week, the seventh loss in a row. Trump and his family firm have now loaned the business £43m and it has yet to turn a profit.
Trump paid up the following month.
So here I think we have the way in which Trump came up with his bizarre theories about “windmills”; a financial loss and half remembered, barely understood reporting from the National Enquirer or Fox News. Leave it to swirl around in the swamp that is Trump’s brain and we have the wild imaginings from Donald in Blunderland, aided and abetted by the Red Queen from the Kremlin.