Copyright dailymail
When Donald Trump warned that wind farms were 'eagle graveyards' he was mocked by liberals, but now a cabinet secretary is warning that as well as harming wildlife, they threaten America's troops. In an exclusive interview with the Daily Mail, Interior Secretary Doug Burgum warned that the towers — which dwarf the Statue of Liberty — can interfere with critical military radars. Burgum said the Department of Defense is investigating the potential threat, while the FAA fears they could disrupt systems at commercial airports along the East Coast, particularly in the densely populated northeast. The man in charge of America's 2.5 billion acres of offshore land also chided Democrats for turning a blind eye to the ecological concerns posed by renewable energy sources while sprinting away from fossil fuels. 'The Biden administration bypassed serious biological opinions that were putting out warnings about these offshore wind towers,' Burgum shared. 'Offshore wind is some of the highest cost electricity we can produce. Now it's becoming quite clear that there's enormous damage to marine fisheries, to marine mammals like whales.' The secretary in charge of US federal lands, natural resources and cultural preservation stressed how the projects need to be re-examined due to threats to marine animal welfare and the efficacy of offshore energy. 'When you're pounding into the ocean floor to build a pillar for one of these gigantic wind towers, many of them taller than the Seattle Space Needle, when you're doing that, it can produce decibels up to 220 decibels,' the secretary explained. 'That would just destroy your hearing if you were at a concert. I mean, 100 decibels higher than what would even be the loudest cheering you'd see at a sports event.' Despite this, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has said it has found no links to offshore wind farms and whale deaths, though it admits that studying 'acoustic trauma, which could result from close exposure to loud human-produced sounds, is very challenging to assess.' The Trump administration has said this year that it is investigating whether offshore wind farms pose a national security threat. Trump has long hated windmills, believing they are an eyesore that threaten some of America's most beloved wildlife, including the bald eagle. 'You want to see a bird graveyard? You just go. Take a look. Go under a windmill someday. You'll see more birds than you've ever seen in your life... 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,' the president told a Turning Point USA summit in 2019. He was mocked by leftists after a news conference in January when he warned that the windmills are 'driving the whales crazy'. Trump cited a series of beached whales in Massachusetts where he claimed the confused mammals had been driven ashore by wind farm noise pollution. At least half a dozen Cabinet members, including Burgum, are probing the impacts of offshore wind on their departments. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Energy Secretary Chris Wright, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, Environmental Protection Agency boss Lee Zeldin and Department of Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy are also involved, the New York Times reports. Their effort makes good on an executive order signed by Trump on his first day in office to review the many offshore wind projects approved by Joe Biden. In total, at least 11 different offshore wind leasing projects with over 1,000 turbines were approved to be built along US coastlines under Biden. The projects, some of which have been canceled or paused amid the Trump administration's review of the impacts of offshore wind, were estimated to bring in enough power for millions of homes. Under the Democrat, permits were approved for projects in Alaska, California, North Carolina, South Carolina, Massachusetts, Maryland, New York, Rhode Island, Virginia and more. Trump and Burgum are now trying to reverse many of those green energy deals. 'Since day one, President Trump has reversed Joe Biden's Green New Scam to restore America's energy dominance,' White House spokeswoman Taylor Rogers told the Daily Mail in a statement. Though Trump has attempted to halt offshore wind projects, many of which have already been approved with construction underway, some of his attempts have not been successful. Despite efforts to stop the wind projects in New York and Rhode Island, both are going forward. But it's not just the damage to animals or the ugly appearance of turbines in coastal waters that are worrying the administration officials. 'There's a lot of reasons beyond just the aesthetics to be very concerned about offshore wind, but the number one for U.S. taxpayers is we were subsidizing with taxpayer dollars, massively, a source of electricity that is completely intermittent and weather-dependent,' Burgum warned. 'We've got to get back in the game now of having baseload power that's affordable and reliable.
