Birds Killed by.....

During the campaign, Trump railed about windmills, emphasizing the birds killed by them and the supposed hypocrisy of liberals for wanting windmills despite this problem.,   At his rallies, he often expressed it as "killing all the birds".  So I did a little research.  All these numbers are bird mortality for the US

0.2-.35M     Windmills
1-2M         Oil and wastewater pits
15M          Hunters
60M          Collisions with cars
72M          Pesticides
174M         Collisions with power lines
400-900M  Collisions with windows
1400-3700M     Cats
So windows are at least 1000 times more dangerous to birds than are windmills.  And cats.   We need to ban cats and windows!!!! 

Sheesh!

Of course we should do everything reasonable to minimize all of these, but the idea that it would be a reason to not build windmills is foolish.  The oil business kills far more.

The  real reason he doesn't like windmills is because some would be built in the view of one of his resorts and he thinks that would reduce the price he could charge (maybe, maybe not),   but more importantly, he is beholden to fossil fuel interests and wants to drag his feet as much as possible on the inevitable switch to renewables.

He also claimed that all of the wind turbines come from Germany and Japan.  Uh, no, there are several wind turbine manufacturers in the US, and GE owns wind companies in several other countries.
China  10
South Korea 6
Germany 4
US  3
Japan  3
Spain  2
Denmark 1.  but it's by far the biggest

There were 88,000 wind power workers in the US at the start of 2016, growing at about 20% per year.  The American Wind Energy Association estimates that there will be 380,000 wind power jobs in the US by 2030.  The vast majority of these are in rural areas or semi-rural areas.  There were 63,000 US jobs in the coal business in 2015 and this number can only decline.  Virtually all coal mining is done in strip mines and mountaintop removal, which substitutes big machines for workers, and there is nothing Trump or anyone else can do to change this.

addenda 10 Mar 2017
Predatory birds like eagles are particularly susceptible to poisoning because many of them are also scavengers.  A particularly serious problem is birds and animals killed by hunters and abandoned, either because the hunter only took enough to make a trophy, or because they couldn't find their victim. Eagles and other scavengers eat the decaying flesh, including the lead shot.  Lead is a slow neurotoxin, so they don't die immediately, but their thinking and coordination is damaged, and they often crash into things that they'd have otherwise been able to avoid.

Eagles and other raptors are also particularly susceptible to being hit by windmills, because their hunting methods may put them at the same height as the moving blades.

Living Presidents

I've come down with a cold, so between naps, I've been using wikipedia to figure out how many living presidents and ex-presidents there have been at any one time.:

1800 1: John Adams.  Washington died in Dec 1799
1801 2: Thomas Jefferson and John Adams (both died in 1826)
1809 3: James Madison (1836), Thomas Jefferson and John Adams
1817 4: James Monroe (1831), Madison, Jefferson and Adams
1825 5: John Quincy Adams (1848), Monroe, Madison, Jefferson, Adams
1826 3: Adams Sr and Jefferson died in July: Adams Jr, Monroe, Madison
1829 4: Andrew Jackson (1845), Adams, Monroe, Madison
1831 3: Jackson, Adams, Madison
1836 2: Jackson, Adams
1837 3: Martin van Buren (1862), Jackson, Adams
1841 4: William H Harrison (1841), Van Buren, Jackson, Adams
1841 4: John Tyler (1862), Van Buren, Jackson, Adams
1845 5: James K Polk (1849), Tyler, Van Buren, Jackson, Adams
1845 4: Jackson died in June: Polk, Tyler, Van Buren, Adams
1848 3: Polk, Tyler, Van Buren
1849 3: Zachary Taylor(1850), Tyler, Van Buren
1850 3: Millard Fillmore (1874), Tyler, Van Buren
1853 4: Franklin Pierce (1869), Fillmore, Tyler, Van Buren
1857 5: James Buchanan (1868), Pierce, Fillmore, Tyler, Van Buren
1861 6: Abraham Lincoln (1865), Buchanan, Pierce, Fillmore, Tyler, Van Buren
1862 4: Lincoln, Buchanan, Pierce, Fillmore
1865 4: Andrew Johnson (1875), Buchanan, Pierce, Fillmore
1868 3: Johnson, Pierce, Fillmore
1869 4: Ulysses S Grant (1885), Johnson, Pierce, Fillmore
1869 3: Grant, Johnson, Fillmore
1874 2: Grant, Johnson
1875 1: Grant
1877 2: Rutherford B. Hayes (1893), Grant
1881 3: James Garfield (1881), Hayes, Grant
1881 3: Chester A Arthur (1886), Hayes, Grant
1885 4: Grover Cleveland (1908), Arthur, Hayes, Grant
1885 3: Cleveland, Arthur, Hayes
1886 2: Cleveland, Hayes
1889 3: Benjamin Harrison (1901), Cleveland, Hayes
1893 2: Harrison, Cleveland
1897 3: William McKinley (1901), Harrison, Cleveland
1901 2: Theodore Roosevelt (1919), Cleveland
1908 1: Roosevelt
1909 2: William H Taft (1930), Roosevelt
1913 3: Woodrow Wilson (1924), Taft, Roosevelt
1919 2: Wilson, Taft
1921 3: Warren G Harding (1923), Wilson, Taft
1923 3: Calvin Coolidge (1833), Wilson, Taft
1924 2: Coolidge, Taft
1929 3: Herbert Hoover (1964), Coolidge, Taft
1930 2: Hoover, Coolidge
1933 1: Coolidge died in January.  FDR took office in March.  for those 2 months, Hoover was the only living president
1933 2: Franklin Delano Roosevelt (1945), Hoover
1945 2: Harry S Truman (1972), Hoover
1954 3: Dwight Eisenhower (1969), Truman, Hoover
1961 4: John F Kennedy (1963), Ike, Truman, Hoover
1963 4: Lyndon Baines Johnson (1973), Ike, Truman, Hoover
1964 3: Johnson, Ike, Truman
1969 4: Richard Milhous Nixon(1994), Johnson, Ike, Truman
1969 3: Ike died in March.  Nixon, Johnson, Truman
1972 2: Nixon, Johnson
1973 1: Nixon
1974 2: Gerald Ford (2006), Nixon
1977 3: James E Carter(still alive), Ford, Nixon
1981 4: Ronald Reagan (2004), Carter, Ford, Nixon
1989 5: George HW Bush (still alive), Reagan, Carter, Ford, Nixon
1993 6: William Clinton (still alive), Bush, Reagan, Carter, Ford, Nixon
1994 5: Clinton, Bush, Reagan, Carter, Ford
2001 6: George W Bush (still alive), Clinton, HW, Reagan, Carter, Ford
2004 5: W, Clinton, HW, Carter, Ford
2006 4: W, Clinton, HW, Carter
2009 5: Barack Obama (still alive), W, Clinton, HW, Carter

There have been 3 times that we've had 6 living presidents and ex-presidents:
1861 to early 1862, 1993 to the death of Nixon in 1994, and 2001-2004.
We may have another starting next year.

There have been 5 times that there were no living ex-presidents: 1799-1801, 1875-77, 1908-9, 1933, 1973-4

addenda 1 Dec 2018.  GHW Bush died yesterday, so there are two new lines:
2017 6: Trump, Obama, W, Clinton, HW, Carter
2018 5: Trump, Obama, W, Clinton, Carter
I was hoping Trump would be run out of town on a rail before HW or Carter died and we'd have 7 for the first time, but no such luck.

addenda 19 Mar 2021

2021 6: Biden, Trump, Obama, W, Clinton, Carter

To their credit, all living ex presidents had sharply rebuked Trump, including the second worst, GW Bush, who looks positively Periclean in comparison.