Trump says that windmills kill 'all the birds' after saying he knows 'more about wind' than Biden
Donald Trump told Joe Biden during Thursday's presidential debate that 'I know more about wind than you do' and said wind turbines kill 'all the birds.'
It came amid a discussion about Biden's plan to invest in green energy and build wind turbines.
The Democratic presidential challenger mocked Trump for his previous suggestion that wind turbines could cause cancer.
Donald Trump said that wind turbines kill "all the birds" and told Joe Biden that he knows "more about wind than you do" during a debate with the Democratic presidential challenger.
During Thursday evening's debate, the subject turned to climate change and renewable energy. As Biden defended his $2 trillion plan to invest in green energy infrastructure, he mocked Trump for claims he has made in the past suggesting that wind power could cause cancer.
Trump replied by telling Biden: "I know more about wind than you do. It's extremely expensive, kills all the birds, it's very intermittent, it's got a lot of problems."
Trump has repeatedly claimed that wind turbines kill large numbers of birds. Those claims have been questioned by fact-checking sites including FactCheck.Org. According to the site, which last year examined a similar claim the president made, the US Fish and Wildlife Service estimates that turbines kill anywhere between 140,438 and 327,586 birds every year.
—Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) October 23, 2020
But other things kill birds in much greater numbers, FactCheck reported, citing estimates that cats kill more than a billion birds every year while electric lines and buildings also kill millions.
Biden's claim that Trump believes that windmills can cause cancer appears to be a reference to a speech the president made in April 2019, when he also claimed that windmills reduce the value of nearby houses by 75%.
"If you have a windmill anywhere near your house, congratulations," he said at a National Republican Congressional Committee dinner last year.
"Your house just went down 75% in value, and they say the noise causes cancer. You tell me that one ... And of course it's like a graveyard for birds. If you love birds you'd never want to walk under a windmill because it's a very sad, sad sight. It's like a cemetery," the president said.
The claim about house prices was misleading, according to FactCheck, which cited a 2014 paper in which found that there was no significant evidence of wind turbines impacting on house prices as well as a large-scale study of properties in Massachusetts.
There is no evidence that wind turbines cause cancer. "The American Cancer Society is unaware of any credible evidence linking the noise from windmills to cancer," a spokesperson for the group said in a statement provided to the New York Times last year.
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