Neither windmills nor magnets work in salt water

It's what I learned from our Scientists in Chief.

You may have seen that the year-old clip of Trump explaining magnets has been getting passed around again — he said “all he knows about magnets” is that water ruins them. (If you’re going to know just one thing about magnets, it should be that.) It was quite extraordinarily bizarre. Turns out he was trying to criticize the linear induction catapult system on the newest aircraft carriers — for some reason — they’ve been pretty standard for decades in applications such as maglev trains, some rapid transit systems, conveyor belts, industrial automation, and amusement park roller coasters. (Also, they do not use magnets.)

But we can excuse that; there is no thought behind any of Trump’s verbal diarrhea. But there are plenty of thinking people passing around another related MAGA “science fact”: that windmills also don’t work in water — meaning, the offshore wind farms all around the world.

Some of the 339 wind turbines in England’s Hornsea Wind Farm — apparently “not working in salt water”

I wrote about this back in December when JD Vance went on Rogan and made this assertion, quite confidently. But he did not go into any specifics, so it left me wanting to learn more. Luckily, I found the Facebook group Windmills in Saltware Scam vs The Voices of Reason. I read it so you don’t have to.

Here are the things their complaints boil down to — but spoiler alert, I don’t know if any of them think or care about how true or false any of these might be. They’re parroting MAGA pro-oil talking points, they come to this Facebook group to circle jerk about it, and it’s really as simple as that.