Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) gushed misinformation on Fox News when he repeated the evidence-free claim that windmills have been fatal to whales. (See the video below.)
“All this climate change alarmism is based on bad science, completely ignoring the impact of clouds to basically be a heat sink,” Johnson inaccurately told host Dagen McDowell on Sunday. “Again, the climate has always changed, always will. I’m not an alarmist and I’m not in denial. ... These windmills, according to an earlier report on your network, are killing whales.”
This false claim has proliferated among opponents to offshore wind farms, so much so that the Department of Energy had to set the record straight in an April post that declared “there is no evidence to support speculation that noise resulting from wind development-related site characterization surveys could potentially cause mortality of whales.”
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration also said there are “no known links between recent large whale mortalities and ongoing offshore wind surveys.”
Fox News itself has let the evidence-free claim bask on the airwaves, recently promoting a documentary that pushes the theory linking offshore wind projects to a rise in whale deaths and strandings, according to Media Matters for America.
Fox News’ Martha MacCallum recommended the documentary on her show last month, while in past instances other personalities have plugged the theory on air.
Johnson’s climate disinformation in Sunday’s segment also caught the attention of MeidasTouch Network. As the group noted, the senator failed to mention the expert view that the leap in global temperatures in the past century and a half has primarily been caused by the rise in carbon emissions following industrialization.
Johnson and Fox News did not immediately respond to HuffPost’s request for comment.
Clarification: A previous version said MeidasTouch was a liberal political action committee. MeidasTouch is no longer associated with a PAC.