Wind turbines kill roughly 300,000 birds each year. Compared to 6.8 million fatal collisions with cell and radio towers and the 3.7 billion slain by cats, thats a tiny fraction. Yet avian deaths remain a key point raised by renewable energy critics, including President Donald Trump, to dispute the benefits of wind power.

Now right-wing skeptics seek to tie the death of a humpback whale in Rhode Island earlier this month to the countrys first offshore wind farm. The Daily Caller , the conservative news site founded by Fox News personality Tucker Carlson, last Friday published a story suggesting noise from the turbines caused the 32-foot juvenile male to beach itself and die.

The article spread to other sites via The Daily Caller News Foundation, a nonprofit arm of the website that distributes its content to publishers for free. To back up its claim, the story cited real dangers posed by noise from the pile drivers used to construct the bases that anchor offshore wind turbines.

But construction was completed nearly a year ago on the quintet of giant pinwheels five miles off the coast of Block Island. The operation started generating electricity last November, and shut down the islands diesel-fired power plant in May. The Block Island Wind Farm went through rigorous environmental testing, and monitored for migrating whales during initial construction, according to Jeffrey Grybowski, chief executive of Deepwater Wind, the developer behind the wind farm. Plus, the turbines produce low noise levels when the blades of structures, twice the height of the Statue of Liberty, spin.

Theres no construction activity happening at the wind farm, and nothings happened since last year, Grybowski told HuffPost. Compared to ferries and cargo ships and any other kind of vessel in the water, the wind farm creates a very, very low level of vibration and sound underwater.