Submitted by Judith Hope:

In an Aug. 30 rally in Evansville, Indiana, President Donald Trump made three unsubstantiated claims about wind turbines, which he calls “windmills”:

• Trump suggested that a single turbine can be responsible for “thousands” of bird deaths. Birds are killed by turbines, but the real death toll from a single turbine is orders of magnitude lower than this. A 2013 study estimated an average of just over five bird deaths per turbine per year.
• He repeatedly referred to “problems” when the wind doesn’t blow. It’s true that lack of wind prevents turbines from generating energy, but these pauses do not create problems that power grid operators can’t handle.
• Trump also stated that living near turbines is noisy, enough to make someone “go crazy after a couple of years.” Studies indicate that people living near turbines are rarely exposed to average sound levels beyond 45 decibels, which is akin to the hum of a refrigerator. There is no direct evidence that the sound is detrimental to physical or mental health, although it may be annoying to some people.

Here is the full source:  https://www.factcheck.org/2018/09/trump-again-overblows-risks-of-wind-power/

Editorial remark (D. Posnett):

I can remember visiting the wind turbines off of Block Island in a chartered party boat in October 2017.   I remember,

• they are huge when you are right next to them
• they are completely silent – I just heard the waves, the wind and the people talking on the boat
• there were private fishing boats at the base of some turbines, because that is where the fish were