President-elect Trump does not know a lot about science. His views on climate change range from conspiratorial to open-minded. He acknowledges that “space is terrific” but gives little more detail on the subject.
As a brand new conversation with him has revealed, he doesn’t know a lot about wind either. In fact, it appears that he finds it quite untrustworthy.
This week, Trump sat down with a long-time enemy of his – the New York Times – for an on-the-record interview. The NYT's White House correspondent described it quite wryly as being “less cerebral” than Obama’s equivalent back in 2007, when he was the newly minted President-elect.
As was first spotted by Gizmodo, Trump was asked about wind farms, a renewable energy source getting cheaper and more common across the US day-by-day. Previously, Trump has tweeted that wind farms kill wild birds – which they do in small numbers – and so they are not worth investing in to help stop climate change.
This time around, he doubled-down on his curious language regarding wind turbines – and, it seems, wind itself. When prompted about recent discussions on the subject he held with his UK-based right-wing surrogate Nigel Farage, he became oddly defensive.
“Was I involved with the wind farms recently? Or, not that I know of. I mean, I have a problem with wind…”
Sometimes, we all hate wind. It messes up our hair and inverts our umbrellas. Fair enough, we suppose. Pressed further, he embellished his grammatically-befuddled story further.
“I might have brought it up. But not having to do with me, just I mean, the wind is a very deceiving thing,” he declared. It’s not entirely clear what he meant by “deceiving.” Answers on a postcard, readers.
“First of all, we don’t make the windmills in the United States. They’re made in Germany and Japan. They’re made out of massive amounts of steel, which goes into the atmosphere, whether it’s in our country or not, it goes into the atmosphere.”
Fun fact: The steel from wind farms does not make it to the atmosphere. Scientists would have uncovered this troubling phenomenon by now.
Going on to point out that “for the most part they don’t work” (they do), he then repeatedly made reference to the fact that “they kill all the birds.” That’s right – all the birds, from golden eagles to albatrosses to penguins. It’s strange that this bird-based mass murder hasn’t come up in the news more often.
He ended his diatribe by pointing out that his reasoning is “hard to explain.” We’re sure scientists would agree with this point.
So there you have it, folks – wind is deceitful. Maybe he’ll build a wall around America to keep it all out.
