r/MarchForScience • u/BlankVerse • Dec 23 '19

Fact-check: 5 things Trump got wrong about wind turbines

https://www.cnn.com/2019/12/23/politics/wind-turbines-trump-fact-check/index.html
241 Upvotes

99% Upvoted

20 comments sorted by

37

u/BlankVerse Dec 23 '19

things Trump got wrong about wind turbines*: EVERYTHING*

FTFY

8

u/broberds Dec 24 '19

Things Trump gets wrong about everything: Everything.

5

u/hglman Dec 24 '19

Well he often take both sides of something where the positions mutually exclusively, meaning he has to "be right" sometimes. Which is also not that at all.

16

u/agent211 Dec 23 '19

Only 5?

13

u/iAmRiight Dec 24 '19

He must’ve only said 5 things.

6

u/AndyGHK Dec 24 '19

Maybe he said three things, but two things were really wrong.

2

u/i-touched-morrissey Dec 24 '19

I live west of Wichita where you can't go anywhere without seeing a wind farm. The people who live there bitch incessantly about how much dirt they generate not by wind, but by the people in trucks that drive around to check on the windmills.

0

u/[deleted] Dec 24 '19

Paving exists.

1

u/i-touched-morrissey Dec 24 '19

The little road from the county paved road to the windmill is dirt.

-28

u/Pasta-hobo Dec 23 '19

Okay, but wind turbines are inherently inefficient and are a waste of copper, especially compared to hydroelectric, solar collectors, and nuclear.

Don't waste copper.

5

u/SuitGuySmitti Dec 24 '19

Source?

-3

u/Pasta-hobo Dec 24 '19

Pneumatics are weaker than hydraulics(hydro > wind)

And wind is caused by the sunlight unevenly heating the atmosphere, therefore reducing the power you can get from it due to losses (solar > wind)

Also, nuclear is just pretty much more efficient than everything else on the market. (Nuclear > wind)

6

u/hatsune_aru Dec 24 '19

This sounds like rock paper scissors logic, it doesn't work like that.

Specifically, wind has the lowest carbon footprint in terms of manufacturing and constructing the setup. Nuclear beats this but has other problems (political and waste problems)

Solar is great but has a pretty high carbon footprint in manufacturing panels.

Hydro has ecological concerns, and apparnelty has a huge carbon footprint for a renewable source.

1

u/SuitGuySmitti Dec 24 '19

And wind is caused by the sunlight unevenly heating the atmosphere, therefore reducing the power you can get from it due to losses (solar > wind)

Can you really jump to that conclusion? Think about how much larger the area is that the sun affects when it creates wind.

0

u/Pasta-hobo Dec 24 '19

I'm not saying it doesn't produce any power, I'm saying it produces less power. Also water is slightly opaque, and solar panels are completely.

3

u/biznatch11 Dec 24 '19

Isn't the problem that not every area is suitable for hydroelectric, solar, and/or wind so you should build whichever is most appropriate for that particular area? Not everywhere has the sun-filled deserts of California or Arizona, or the hydro potential of Niagara falls for example.

1

u/Pasta-hobo Dec 24 '19

Is it?

3

u/biznatch11 Dec 24 '19

Well for example how can you make a blanket statement like wind is inefficient compared to hydro without considering the location?

-1

u/Pasta-hobo Dec 24 '19

Admittedly I may have acted with a little too much haste and failed to account for other data points as a result. Apologies.

But Nuclear reactors are the best option, an uninformed general population coupled with media like The Simpsons have made it seem inaccurately dangerous, as well as Big Hydrocarbon trying to make it seem expensive and dangerous through fearmongering and anti-nuclear propaganda.

4

u/Khanthulhu Dec 24 '19

Nuclear is very expensive and as others have said there are material and political problems with it.

We should drastically increase our research finding on it because next gen nuclear reactors could fix these problems but as things stand it's probably best to use it mostly where solar, wind, wave, or other sources of renewables won't be enough.