Do Wind Turbines Mess with Radar?

Or is that just more Trump bullshit. My bullshit detector is pinging.

Esquire:

Oh, this is just beautiful. The administration has decided to halt every wind-farm project in the United States on the grounds of … wait for it … national security. From Financial Times (via Reuters):

Approvals for about 165 onshore wind projects on private lands are being held up by the Pentagon, FT said, citing the American Clean Power Association and people close to the matter. The affected projects ⁠include wind farms that were awaiting final sign-off, others in the middle of negotiations and some that typically would not require oversight by the Pentagon, the FT said.

Since August 2025, wind developers have faced a mix of setbacks, including a ‌lack ⁠of expected communication from the Pentagon, canceled meetings with no chance to reschedule, and being told that applications are no longer being processed, FT reported, citing people with knowledge of the situation. Letters sent to ⁠developers in early April said the Pentagon was reviewing its processes for evaluating the impact of energy projects on national security, according to ⁠the newspaper.

Apparently it’s hard to make the dead whales and/or shredded eagles into threats to national security, so the latest excuse is that wind farms cause “radar interference.” There’s more truth to this one than we’re used to getting from the administration. But as the NYT report makes clear, the problems are easily handled.

New York Times:
Wind turbines create two problems for radar on ships and for ground-based systems looking for aircraft. The steel support towers can reflect electromagnetic waves, making it more difficult for radar to pick up nearby objects, while the rotating blades can create a “blade flash” on a radar screen, appearing to be another object where there is none.

Pentagon officials in recent weeks have blocked reviews of 150 onshore wind farms, citing issues of national defense and radar interference. President Trump has called wind farms ugly and expensive, and has vowed not to allow them to be built.

But researchers who study radar interference say the problem is manageable, by using new technologies and by adjusting where companies build wind turbines.

Hao Ling, a professor emeritus of engineering at the University of Texas at Austin, participated in government studies looking at radar interference from wind farms in 2013 and 2022. “There will be some interference,” Dr. Ling, an expert in radar signal processing, said. “That’s the nature of the physics. But it’s a solvable situation.”

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For farmers, their land is their income, their health insurance, their retirement, and they hope, their legacy.

Bridge (Michigan):

As Michigan farmers prepare for planting season, higher prices for fertilizer and diesel — both sparked by the war with Iran — are making a stressful planting season for Michigan farmers, some of whom are already barely holding on financially.

Farm diesel prices have jumped from an average of $2.94 a gallon last summer to $4.57 currently, with most of the increase occurring in the two months since the US attacked Iran and the closing of the Strait of Hormuz, through which a quarter of the world’s oil supply normally travels.

That’s a huge difference for farmers with equipment that can suck a half-gallon of diesel or more per acre, a typical acre of corn getting between three and five passes over the course of a growing season. The math for Delmotte, who farms 1,200 acres: an additional $6,000 to $10,000 in fuel costs. 

Between 20% and 30% of the world’s fertilizer also travels through the Strait of Hormuz. With that supply stalled for now, fertilizer prices have jumped as much as 49%.

Between fuel and fertilizer price hikes, the average farmer could pay $22,000 more this season, according to Michigan Ag Today. Prices of both diesel and fertilizer have continued to rise since that estimate was made in early April.

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The Chem Trail and Data Center Connection. Who Knew?

When Conspiracy theories start having babies, you get this shit.

This area of Michigan is generically referred to as “Ypsi-Tucky”, and maybe you can see why.
The data center that is being referred to here is actually one that is arguably doing the right thing insofar as power and water – purchasing 1.4 gigawatts of battery storage as well as additional clean energy to provide power, and includes a closed loop cooling system, minimizing water demands on the local area.

Cleanview:

DTE Energy will supply power using existing resources augmented by new battery storage financed entirely by the project. The utility stated that no costs will be passed on to existing customers and projected the deal would save ratepayers $300 million annually.

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Virtual Data Centers Could Replace Big Box Model

CNBC:

Even as more communities rise up against the proliferation of massive, energy- and water-sucking data centers, some big players in housing are betting consumers would be willing to put mini data centers right on the walls of their homes.

Span is a California-based startup that originally launched with “smart” electrical panels designed to help homeowners save money on their electricity bills. Now, with the help of Nvidia, it has come up with something new — small, fractional data centers, or “nodes,” called XFRA units, that can be put on the side of residential homes and small commercial businesses. 

The idea is to take advantage of unused electrical capacity on local grids, which the Span smart panels can pinpoint. The rapid growth of artificial intelligence has strained power grids nationwide and, in some cases, resulted in higher electricity bills for homeowners. 

A network of these nodes, communicating with each other across the country, is the equivalent of a small to mid-sized traditional data center, which could either augment an existing center or negate the need to build a new one, Span says. Hyperscalers and AI cloud providers just tap into the network as they would a traditional data center. 

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As War for Oil Destroys American’s Lives – the Real Threat is Wind Turbines

Expected US peak power demand shows a shortfall beginning in 2028 – after which, prices will skyrocket

Financial Times:

The Trump administration has brought US onshore wind development to a halt citing national security concerns, representing a major escalation in the president’s crusade against renewable energy. 

Approvals for about 165 onshore wind projects on private lands are being stalled by the Department of Defense, including wind farms which were awaiting final sign-off, others in the middle of negotiations and some that typically would not require oversight by the department, according to the American Clean Power Association (ACP) and people close to the matter.

Wind farms require routine approval from the defence department to ensure they do not interfere with radar systems. This typically involves the level of risk being assessed and the developer paying an agreed sum for the army to update its radar filter system so it can locate the windmill.

Some projects can be deemed not to pose a risk due to their distance from army facilities and flight paths. Normally these assessments can take as little as a few days to complete.
Since August 2025, developers have faced a mix of setbacks, including not receiving expected communications from DoD, having meetings to discuss the status of their projects cancelled without the opportunity to reschedule, and being informed that the department has stopped processing their applications, according to people with knowledge of the situation.

John Ketchum is CEO of NextEra, the largest US operator of Nuclear, gas and renewable generation. Without aggressive renewable adoption, he says, electric prices will skyrocket
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Ford Opens a Crack into EV “Skunkworks”

Wall Street Journal:

The secret is now out as Ford races toward building its first model, a new truck it says will be nearly as fast as a Mustang, travel around 300 miles on a single charge and feature in-car technology to compete with Tesla and China. It’s aiming for a 2027 launch and a price tag of around $30,000, the cost of a Toyota Camry.

Getting there means tearing up a century of manufacturing practices in a notoriously hidebound industry. At stake for Ford is securing a future beyond the gas-guzzling pickups and SUVs that have long defined its bottom line. 

The project had been kept quiet from its 2022 start, led by veterans from Tesla and Apple who worked on designs out of a California office. Ford eventually brought in some of its own employees to help execute the vision. The process was filled with misunderstandings and distrust as the techie outsiders worked to win over the risk-averse industry veterans. 

To build these new EVs, the company must use fewer people and simpler parts, and dismantle decades of engineering inertia. Chief Executive Jim Farley is calling it Ford’s new “Model T moment.” Rival automakers say overcoming China on EVs can’t be done, given their advantages: extensive government backing, low-cost labor and a massive head start.

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DOGE Cuts Bite As Tornado Warnings Delayed

Everybody loves a surprise, but not so much when it’s a tornado.
Trump’s DOGE cuts bite as weather warnings delayed.

NBC News April 16:

..in its Monday afternoon outlook, the National Weather Service’s Storm Prediction Center, which forecasts severe thunderstorms and tornadoes, did not anticipate a tornado threat for the Kansas City area. The disconnect has prompted concerns among some outside meteorologists that ongoing changes to staffing and weather balloon releases at the agency might be leaving forecasters in the dark about threats. 

Many forecasting offices in the Great Plains did not launch weather balloons at 7 a.m. Monday, as they have for decades, and instead they released the balloons at noon — a change that several meteorologists think was made because of staffing issues. 

“We are missing data at the normal times,” said Chris Vagasky, a meteorologist and research manager at the Wisconsin Environmental Mesonet, a statewide network of weather monitoring stations. He added that the staggered balloon launches Monday left a “big area over the southern Plains in the central United States without that weather balloon data, which might have caused the models to not forecast the day’s activity as well as it could have.” 

The strongest tornado in the Kansas City area Monday was rated EF2, according to the enhanced Fujita scale, which rates tornadoes by wind speed and destruction. That tornado’s wind speeds reached about 125 mph, according to preliminary damage reports.

War Opens Pakistan’s Solar Divide

Pakistan is the world’s leading importer of solar panels, and that has changed the way the grid works, and how people are paying for it.
The Closure of the Strait of Hormuz has accentuated some of the class divisions in the energy transition.
Pakistan will be a forerunner of the developing world’s accelerating move to clean energy, so this DW report is worth a look.

In Korea: Hormuz Impact Preserves Coal, Accelerates Solar

AlJazeera reporting on the status of a small village’s solar project, and how it has changed lives in the area.

Korean Leadership has vowed to ramp up renewable energy in response to shortages following the Hormuz closure, and the report backs that up.
One unfortunate side effect is extending the life of existing coal fired power plants. While undesirable, I don’t think coal is that much worse that the Liquified Natural Gas that has been cut off. Recent history suggests that, economically, it will not be competitive with a strong solar commitment.

Politico:

Import-dependent countries such as Pakistan and Thailand have used the moment to emphasize their desire to transition faster to renewables. Pakistan’s rooftop solar boom — sparked in part by natural gas price spikes in 2022 — have helped cushion it from the current supply shock.

“We were on the right track,” the country’s finance minister, Muhammad Aurangzeb, said at an IMF panel this week. “But clearly we feel the journey needs to be accelerated.”

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