Donald Trump’s on the warpath against his mortal enemy again, and it made a big splash on social media.
The former president raged during a campaign speech in South Carolina that “windmills” are driving whales “crazy.”
“Windmills are causing whales to die in numbers never seen before. Nobody does anything about that,” he declared.
“They’re driving the whales, I think, a little batty,” he said.
Trump’s had a yearslong vendetta against wind turbines, ever since a lengthy and unsuccessful legal battle to stop Scottish officials from building what he called a “really ugly wind farm” in view of his Aberdeen golf resort.
The whales tidbit is just the latest in a long list of complaints he’s had about the renewable energy generators, including false claims that they cause cancer and kill “all the birds.”
As absurd as it sounds, Trump’s not the first person to make some version of the whales claim, despite a lack of evidence.
Fox News and Republican lawmakers have repeatedly suggested that a spate of whale deaths off the East Coast earlier this year were linked to the early stages of development of offshore wind farms, a claim promulgated by climate deniers with ties to the fossil fuel industry.
Some environmental groups have also raised concerns about how the development and construction of wind farms could impact whales. However, the environmental community has pointed to the absence of any evidence suggesting there’s a link between the projects and whale deaths, and stressed the importance of renewable energy to combat climate change ― the greatest threat to marine life.
On its website, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration says there are no known links between large whale mortalities and offshore wind surveys.
“At this point, there is no scientific evidence that noise resulting from offshore wind site characterization surveys could cause mortality of whales,” the agency said.
The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management also said it had found no evidence, noting: “Past and current research show that vessel strikes and entanglements in fishing gear continue to pose a dangerous, life-threatening risk to whales.”
