Fact checking Trump’s claim that windmills “kill all the birds.”
No one took this statement literally, even the NBC fact checkers, but they admit that windmills do kill birds. Which was Trump’s point. So the fact check then adds in that they kill less birds than cats or high rises, like Trump used to live in. This is not a fact check, just a writer taking jabs at Trump.
Pointing out that cats and buildings kill more birds than windmills is true, but fails to distinguish that they kill different TYPES of birds. Windmills tend to kill larger, rarer and more threatened birds. Like golden eagles, red-tailed hawks, kestrels, burrowing owls and peregrine falcons. Cats and buildings mostly kill smaller, more common and less threatened types of birds, particularly passerines. Your house cat isn’t out killing eagles.
Furthermore, the larger birds windmills kill have far less offspring. For example, a golden eagle has just 1-2 chicks in a brood, usually less than once a year. Whereas a songbird like a robin could have up to 2 broods of 3-7 chicks a year. Some bird species are far more resilient than others, making number comparisons misleading.
Windmills also kill bats, particularly migratory bats. Scientists are worried that their populations could drastically decline because of windmills, the hoary bat up to 90% in the next 50 years. In fact, scientists consider windmills, especially a huge increase in windmills across the country, to be the single greatest threat to bats.
This is some of the missing context from a “fact check” that insisted on adding context solely to take a jab at Trump, but ended up telling you little.
The check on Trump’s claim about carbon emissions is even worse.
NBC brings up points about cutting EPA funding and reducing regulations, but this is unrelated to Trump’s claim, which was emissions. He’s equivocating emissions with “climate protections.” Why couldn’t both emissions and the EPA be cut?! Again, this is just a writer trying to take jabs at Trump.
The actual fact check about Trump’s emissions claim cites a spike of emissions from 2018, not revealing that emissions fell 2.8% in 2019! And projections for this year are for it to plummet another 11%. Obviously, this year’s numbers are impacted by COVID, but they’re falling and many emissions categories are the lowest on record. And petroleum/coal emissions are at record lows, largely offset by lower-emitting natural gas, which was a Trump’s claim in the debate.
Highlighting his comments about China, India and Russia’s environment being “filthy” is just absurd. It admits he was referring to pollution, but that the word has “a connotation far beyond that.” This gigantic stretch allows them to dredge up the “shithole countries” remark, again only to take a jab, not to inform.
Fact checking Trump’s claim that the stock market would crash if Biden wins is useless. It’s a prediction by Trump, not a factual claim. All politicians make predictions, most of which are wrong. You either believe them or not. Biden in the same debate predicted a “dark winter” with COVID. It’s only worth examining in hindsight, or arguing with in the present. The stock market might very well crash under a Biden presidency, or it could go up. The only “evidence” for either claim is the opinion of other investors, which are notoriously unreliable. How many financial experts would have predicted stock markets at this level back in March?

WHAT HAPPENED: Twitter and Facebook proactively blocked the spread of a bombshell story because they thought it *might* not be verifiable (Spoiler alert: the contents on the laptop have not been discredited). It's been a week and a half and the New York Post is still blocked on Twitter.

THE ACTUAL STORY : left wing media companies like Twitter and Facebook are going beyond their social media platform status and interfering with our elections by blocking bombshell stories.

THE STORY ACCORDING TO CNN: Conservatives are being mean to social media companies by trying to discredit them for suppressing essential information