Trump's Dumbest Comments Thread

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_EAllusion
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Re: Trump's Dumbest Comments Thread

Post by _EAllusion »

Chap wrote:Trump on wind.

Courtesy of the full transcript from the White House.

Enjoy ...

Donal Trump wrote:We’ll have an economy based on wind. I never understood wind. You know, 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. But they’re manufactured tremendous — if you’re into this — tremendous fumes. 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’s in China, Germany, it’s going into the air. It’s our air, their air, everything — right?

So they make these things and then they put them up. And if you own a house within vision of some of these monsters, your house is worth 50 percent of the price. 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 someday. You’ll see more birds than you’ve ever seen ever in your life. (Laughter.)

You know, in California, they were killing the bald eagle. If you shoot a bald eagle, they want to put you in jail for 10 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? And that’s what they’re doing.

AUDIENCE MEMBER: Because they’re idiots!

THE PRESIDENT: (Laughs.) This is a conservative group, Dan. (Applause.) No, but it’s true. Am I right? (Applause.)

I’ll tell you another thing about windmills. And I’m not — look, I like all forms of energy. And I think (inaudible) — really, they’re okay in industrial areas. Like you have an industrial plant, you put up a windmill — you know, et cetera, et cetera.

I’ve seen the most beautiful fields, farms, fields — most gorgeous things you’ve ever seen, and then you have these ugly things going up. And sometimes they’re made by different companies. You know, I’m like a perfectionist; I really built good stuff. And so you’ll see like a few windmills made by one company: General Electric. And then you’ll see a few made by Siemens, and you’ll see a few made by some other guy that doesn’t have 10 cents, so it looks like a — so you see all these windows, they’re all different shades of color. They’re like sort of white, but one is like an orange-white. (Laughter.) It’s my favorite color: orange. (Applause.)

No, but — and you see these magnificent fields, and they’re owned — and you know what they don’t tell you about windmills? After 10 years, they look like hell. You know, they start to get tired, old. You got to replace them. A lot of times, people don’t replace them. They need massive subsidy from the government in order to make it. It’s really a terrible thing.

And what they want to do is they want to get rid of all petroleum product. That means you basically won’t have any factories in the United States.


I was going to post this one. It's a good example of how the media cleans up Trump when reporting on him. While this is a particularly egregious example, he speaks like this often, and it's usually reported as things like, "Trump has critical words for wind-power" followed by snippets to support that headline that edit him down into something more coherent. The reality is he speaks not infrequently like his brain is scrambled eggs and if he was just quoted verbatim, it would give a much better picture what is going on. Instead, the coverage assists him by obscuring this. It reminds me of the media avoiding portraying FDR in a wheelchair. People are just sort of collectively choosing to pretend the President of the United States of America isn't routinely speaking like an absolute idiot and/or dementia patient.
_MeDotOrg
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Re: Trump's Dumbest Comments Thread

Post by _MeDotOrg »

Chap wrote:Trump on wind.

Courtesy of the full transcript from the White House.

Donald Trump wrote:We’ll have an economy based on wind. I never understood wind. You know, 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. But they’re manufactured tremendous — if you’re into this — tremendous fumes. 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’s in China, Germany, it’s going into the air. It’s our air, their air, everything — right?

So there you have it folks. Tremendous fumes from windmills. Gases spewing into the atmosphere.

This is insanity. He makes stuff up out of whole cloth. Can any sane person tell me about the spewing fumes from windmills? This is a man who is more concerned about the pollution from windmills than the pollution from burning coal.

And if you are a Democrat or a Republican, liberal or conservative, that is nuts.
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_Doctor CamNC4Me
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Re: Trump's Dumbest Comments Thread

Post by _Doctor CamNC4Me »

MeDotOrg wrote:And if you are a Democrat or a Republican, liberal or conservative, that is nuts.


You overestimate Trump's base in their ability to think about anything rationally. Today I participated on some Midwest newspaper's comments section regarding someone shooting someone else's dog, and... Hoo boy. The people commenting through their Facebook accounts, on some rando newspaper's story, it's a level of insanity and inanity that is ONLY matched by Trump's discombobulated ad hoc thinking. He absolutely understands who he's talking to. 100%.

In other words. They. Do. Not. Care.

They don't, they will never, and they are literally in the most literal sense of the word literal incapable of ever seeing the world how you see it. It is what it is.

- Doc
In the face of madness, rationality has no power - Xiao Wang, US historiographer, 2287 AD.

Every record...falsified, every book rewritten...every statue...has been renamed or torn down, every date...altered...the process is continuing...minute by minute. History has stopped. Nothing exists except an endless present in which the Ideology is always right.
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Re: Trump's Dumbest Comments Thread

Post by _Doctor CamNC4Me »

Clicking on this link and reading the entire post is worth your five minutes:

https://www.reddit.com/r/facepalm/comme ... h/fbtrd12/

However I excerpted a part that is contextual to the thread:

After being elected, he was interviewed by the New York Times in which he made a number of interesting (and false) claims:-

Trump: Oh, I see. I might have brought it up. But not having to do with me, just I mean the wind is a very deceiving thing. First of all, we don’t make the windmills in the United States. They’re made in Germany and Japan.

FACTCHECK: His comment on domestic wind turbine manufacturing is false.

Few wind turbines are shipped globally because they are so bulky. More than than 21,000 US factory workers make a majority of US wind farm content domestically.

Trump: 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.

FACTCHECK: Steel is not emitted into the atmosphere during component manufacture or by wind projects.

There are the usual emissions associated with any heavy manufacturing process, but making wind turbine components is not especially dirty.

Trump's apparent concern for emissions from wind turbine manufacture is impossible to reconcile with his enthusiasm for the coal industry and his disdain for climate change science.

Trump: The windmills kill birds and the windmills need massive subsidies. In other words, we’re subsidising wind mills all over this country. I mean, for the most part they don’t work. I don’t think they work at all without subsidy, and that bothers me, and they kill all the birds.

FACTCHECK: Wind turbines kill fewer birds than do cats, buildings or the fossil fuel industry.

Trump: You go to a windmill, you know in California they have the, what is it? The golden eagle? And they’re like, if you shoot a golden eagle, they go to jail for five years and yet they kill them by, they actually have to get permits that they’re only allowed to kill 30 or something in one year.

FACTCHECK: Trump’s claim about the penalty shooting a golden eagle is false. A first penalty is a maximum fine of $5,000 or one-year imprisonment.

His comment that wind project operators can legally kill 30 eagles yearly is also false.

Trump: The windmills are devastating to the bird population. OK, with that being said, there’s a place for them. But they do need subsidy. So, if I talk negatively. I’ve been saying the same thing for years about you know, the wind industry. I wouldn’t want to subsidise it.

FACTCHECK: Trump cannot seem to keep a consistent view on subsidies. During a November 2015 campaign stop in Newton, Iowa, Trump was asked for his stance on the wind Production Tax Credit.

He responded: "I’m fine with it. Any form of energy — we’ve got to get away from the Middle East….. Wind is a very expensive form of energy, and it’s got problems of storage, and lots of other things. But, I want to see whatever you can do — ethanol, I’m totally in favour … Wind will need subsidies. It’s going to have to have subsidies."

Trump: Some environmentalists agree with me very much because of all of the things I just said, including the birds, and some don’t.

FACTCHECK: We haven't found a major national environmental organisation that agrees with him.

Trump: But it’s hard to explain. I don’t care about anything having to do with anything having to do with anything other than the country.


That babbling nonsense that I bolded just above? He literally said that. And the scary part is his base, those absolute genetic dumpsterfires, get it. Whatever the “F” that was that he said, they get it, and they love it. It's... pretty damned scary to be honest.

- Doc
Last edited by Guest on Tue Dec 24, 2019 1:52 pm, edited 1 time in total.
In the face of madness, rationality has no power - Xiao Wang, US historiographer, 2287 AD.

Every record...falsified, every book rewritten...every statue...has been renamed or torn down, every date...altered...the process is continuing...minute by minute. History has stopped. Nothing exists except an endless present in which the Ideology is always right.
_honorentheos
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Re: Trump's Dumbest Comments Thread

Post by _honorentheos »

I apologize for the derail, but this factcheck is...well.
Doctor CamNC4Me wrote:Trump: The windmills kill birds and the windmills need massive subsidies. In other words, we’re subsidising wind mills all over this country. I mean, for the most part they don’t work. I don’t think they work at all without subsidy, and that bothers me, and they kill all the birds.

FACTCHECK: Wind turbines kill fewer birds than do cats, buildings or the fossil fuel industry.

Saying something kills fewer birds than cats is like arguing someone tells fewer lies than Trump to imply that makes them honest.

That windmill diatribe is interesting. There's some sausage-making in these thought processes that is even more revealing if one takes into account what was fed into the sausage-maker that is his brain first before he regurgitates it out in a poorly digested mass as he did.

Wind turbine "takes" of birds are a problem. And the claim that they are allowed a certain number of takes has a basis in reality. When evaluating the environmental impacts of a facility like a wind turbine farm, there are a certain number of "takes" that are essentially deemed acceptable as part of that process. It is part of the environmental studies involved in siting them, determining if they are proposed in a migratory bird path where more takes are likely compared to a location where fewer takes are likely for example. And then those impacts to wildlife, if deemed acceptable or mitigatable, are part of the permitting process. In that sense, what Trump said isn't exactly wrong and much of the factcheck response is misleading in trying to dismiss what Trump said rather than engage with the underlying reality. That bothers me. But what Trump said isn't right, either. Facts...who needs them, anyway.
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Re: Trump's Dumbest Comments Thread

Post by _Doctor CamNC4Me »

So a relatively quick google search pretty much puts things into perspective:

https://science.howstuffworks.com/envir ... -birds.htm

Man-made structure/technology

Associated bird deaths per year (U.S.)

Feral and domestic cats

Hundreds of millions [source: AWEA]

Power lines

130 million -- 174 million [source: AWEA]

Windows (residential and commercial)

100 million -- 1 billion [source: TreeHugger]

Pesticides

70 million [source: AWEA]

Automobiles

60 million -- 80 million [source: AWEA]

Lighted communication towers

40 million -- 50 million [source: AWEA]

Wind turbines

10,000 -- 40,000 [source: ABC]


How those sources come up with those numbers is a mystery to me. I have no idea.

- Doc
In the face of madness, rationality has no power - Xiao Wang, US historiographer, 2287 AD.

Every record...falsified, every book rewritten...every statue...has been renamed or torn down, every date...altered...the process is continuing...minute by minute. History has stopped. Nothing exists except an endless present in which the Ideology is always right.
_honorentheos
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Re: Trump's Dumbest Comments Thread

Post by _honorentheos »

The latest numbers on bird kills by cats is in the billions, somewhere between 1 and 4 billion in the US alone. Annually. Cats are terrors when it comes to wildlife and biodiversity. It's what brought me to comment. Saying anything kills fewer birds than cats to make a point is...well. Its factual but not a particularly honest statement. Regardless, Trump really did a number with the facts in his comments that reveal how right-wing conspiracy addled his brain is so that is something. It's just the fact check struck me as dishonest, too. It seemed to be trying to prove Trump was just wrong when the truth is he is acting like a drunk great-uncle who read some crap put out by the fossil fuel industry to make green energy sound bad without understanding what was actually going on there.
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_EAllusion
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Re: Trump's Dumbest Comments Thread

Post by _EAllusion »

I don't think the issue with Trump's statement is the fact that he has some poorly thought out criticisms of windmills that are half-BS'ed and half cribbed from right-wing talking points. There is that too, of course, but in trying to say dumb things he barely can speak a coherent thought.
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Re: Trump's Dumbest Comments Thread

Post by _honorentheos »

Also, here's the Audubon society on wind turbine takes:
https://www.audubon.org/news/will-wind- ... safe-birds

It's a strange world we live in where facts are up for grabs like this.

A small point: The company I work for includes a division whose job is to do resource reviews and field work as well as write NEPA documents and energy facilities are a common client. I sit about 20 feet from a couple of PhD biologists with whom I've had many a conversation about the environmental trade offs of energy. That's not my specific area of expertise or the kinds of work I do, but I'm around it almost daily. So what Trump said reminds me of the sort of comment one would hear from an angry member of the public commenting on an EA or EIS to protest wind farms. Despite how dumb Trump is, he isn't just completely off his rocker in his comments so much as "off". Environmental groups are usually one of the main opponents of most alternative energy facility for various reasons. We live in a world where perfection doesn't exist, and that applies to how we get our energy.
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Re: Trump's Dumbest Comments Thread

Post by _EAllusion »

Re: Wind turbines effect on bird populations: They are fairly devastating local bird populations. That is a drawback to them. They kill lots of birds. I remember years ago there was a popular usenet style libertarianism criticism site organized like a faq. They had a whole section dedicated to mocking a CATO paper that argued that wind turbines are very harmful to bird populations. That paper was correct; they are. Subsequent research has only made that more clear and it has since become conventional understanding of one of the costs of wind power. The libertarianism criticism site treated it as a joke, but it's now regarded as a serious problem to be taken into consideration and minimized.

The angle of response here isn't to point out cats kill even more birds. That's like responding to a study pointing out that smoking causes heart attacks by saying poor diet causes more. Uh, so? That doesn't refute the point that smoking is bad for your heart. The response should be to contextualize wind turbines' ecological harm in comparison to the energy generation it is substituting. As it turns out, fossil fuels cause even more ecological harm. It's not even close. Heck, fossil fuels even cause more harm to bird populations before you get to other kinds of life. That CATO paper was trying to attack wind turbines as an alternative energy source to slow people from going away from fossil fuels to adopt it. Once you get that context, it was pretty silly. It just wasn't silly for being wrong about the birds thing.
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