Yup, and George Soros does actually funds pro-wind groups. Open Society Foundation gives $400 million over 8 years to green economic development. That said, I think that's a bullshit argument for not supporting wind, and I'd much rather have an argument with data about the long-term economics.
wiradikusuma · 43m ago
I read the article but it's still unclear what argument the anti-wind groups use to say _why_ "wind is bad for environment/our children/the economy/greater good"?
probably_wrong · 2m ago
From what I understand the point is precisely not having to straight up say out loud why, "attacking renewable energy solutions without necessarily questioning the science that the climate is changing due to human activity".
Two argument seem to be to "claim damages from the visual impact of offshore with projects located off their coasts" and "invoking the federal environment legislation such as the Endangered Species Act and Marine Mammal Protection Act".
decimalenough · 32m ago
Ruins the view, kills birds, noisy is the usual trifecta. Or to quote one site I won't deign to link to, "Protecting the marine environment and ecosystems from the industrialisation of our oceans."
Of course, the same folks have no objections whatsoever to offshore drilling.
extraisland · 16m ago
Those are the weaker arguments. In the UK, I've heard many more convincing arguments against wind power.
e.g.
- Often wind typically need to be subsidised heavily by the government and are not cost effective over its lifetime.
- Typically wind needs to be backed up by fossil fuel or nuclear power generators as it is unreliable or you need to buy capacity from elsewhere.
I won't pretend to know enough to state whether they are valid arguments or not. But they are potentially much stronger arguments against wind power than the others frequently made.
thaumasiotes · 27m ago
> Of course, the same folks have no objections whatsoever to offshore drilling.
Well, if they were entirely sincere in their concern for the view, the birds, and the noise, only one of those concerns would apply to offshore drilling.
Considering "preventing industrialization" to be an end in itself is something different, usually associated with being pro-wind-power.
NIMBYism (destroying the beautiful views from my golf course) and "Think of the birds" also feature high on the list.
sligor · 40m ago
Who needs argument in 2025 ? Just say it is "woke".
nicolailolansen · 1h ago
Anti-wind groups are oil-funded? Surprised Pikachu.
fabian2k · 43m ago
Only the ones not funded by Russia.
sligor · 39m ago
Well, Russia itself is oil founded (huge part of the budget)
dzhiurgis · 50m ago
Why tho? Oil money should be funding renewables so they continue making money.
melvinroest · 40m ago
You can argue both sides right? It makes business sense for oil money to do that.
However, there's also a trend that giant corporations are kind of like giant oil tankers (no pun intended). It takes a humongous amount of energy to change a company's fundamental core business. Oil companies are in the business of oil. Even if they expand to becoming an energy company, it takes a long time for them to change their "oil DNA". Based on that, I can imagine that certain oil companies - though not all oil companies - elect to maintain the status quo.
I don't think this is unique to big oil. It's unique to big {pharma, tech, oil, *}. What I find harder to find out is what the "weights" are for both sides and how they are influenced.
chii · 44m ago
> Oil money should be funding renewables
not while there's still oil to be extracted. Rigs (esp. offshore ones) take a lot of initial investment, and takes several decades to fully pay out. It's not hard to imagine that those investments hadn't fully matured and so they'd want the demand for oil to continue.
consp · 17m ago
The demand for oil as hydrogen base, plastic and other derivatives will keep those platforms profitable for a long time. Maybe not as massively profitable as now but more than a reasonable ROI. Oh wait, more profits above everything no matter what because the plebs are the only ones affected by it so they don't care.
wraptile · 13m ago
You can actually do both. This way you have full control - invest where you control the market and sabotage where you don't.
testhest · 10m ago
Wind is only useful up to a point, once it gets above 20% of generation capacity ensuing grid stability becomes expensive either through huge price swings or grid level energy storage.
jncfhnb · 50s ago
Oil is only useful up to a point, once your planetary ecosystem starts to collapse it gets a lot more expensive
ceejayoz · 4m ago
This talking point is years out of date. We’re doing grid-level energy storage already. Expect more.
> For the first time ever, California's batteries took over gas as the primary source for supplying evening power demand in April, providing "akin to the output from seven large nuclear reactors" one evening, according to the New York Times.
Tade0 · 1h ago
A major reason I don't treat conspiracy theorists seriously is that with all their paranoia they have a huge blind spot for the Captain-Planet-cartoon-villainy the oil industry is engaging in.
Just the stuff the Heartland Institute does is enough to write a book about and still not a peep from the usual crowd.
autoexec · 16m ago
Plenty of conspiracy theorists have conspiracies about the oil industry being evil, it's just harder to spot them when so many of them turn out to be true. Fracking, OPEC, exxon, BP, government deals with "suspicious" Saudis, and oil spills are common targets. The wild stuff is pretty much the usual though. Depopulation, psychic attacks, secret global government stuff, UFOs, etc.
MomsAVoxell · 47m ago
If you don't treat conspiracy theorists seriously, how would you know if the conspiracy theory scene has already addressed oil industry corruption?
The War-for-Oil conspiracy theories are proven correct.
The suppression of 'free energy' is discussed widely as being a result of oil-industry repression.
And on and on.
Tade0 · 2m ago
> how would you know if the conspiracy theory scene has already addressed oil industry corruption?
Because it hasn't. The "free energy" stuff is way off the mark and pales in comparison to absolute kookery of weather machines being responsible for things climate change is actually doing.
They don't have a solid grasp of reality and it shows in how they're unaware about the specific things the oil industry is doing. Much of their rhetoric is big oil propaganda being repeated anyway.
War for oil isn't a conspiracy - it's such obvious public knowledge that there are memes about it. Yes, the country that is a major oil producer and in the currency of which most if not all oil transactions are done uses its military might to preserve the status quo - that's hardly a secret.
Dylan16807 · 42m ago
You can learn about a scene without thinking they're competent.
It doesn't really prove war for oil, war tends to mess up production and also we have a huge amount of domestic production. But that depends on what exactly the claims are.
"Free energy" doesn't exist so that just goes back to them barking up the wrong tree. It's taking a real villain and blaming them for nonsense instead of something they actually do.
whatever1 · 21m ago
I don’t think big oil feels particularly threatened by renewables. They are definitely scared of nuclear and car batteries.
michaelbuckbee · 9m ago
Anthropomorphizing big industries is always fraught, but looking at their actions, I'd concede it means something that the American Gas Association is doing things like hiring influencers to promote gas cooking over induction ranges.
I n my ideal world these people would be prosecuted.
usrnm · 1h ago
But we live in their ideal world, not yours
oulipo2 · 1h ago
So let's vote them out
easyThrowaway · 17m ago
Also write them a very stern letter, That'll show'em.
The only way to stop those people is boots-on-the-ground political, social, and cultural activism. No, writing mean tweets and just taking part to that fancy "guess your next leader" powerball variant you do once every four years is not remotely enough.
h4ck_th3_pl4n3t · 21m ago
Cute that you think there will be an election. Why do you think have all controlling and independent agencies that are part of the election process or cybersecurity been removed in the first week via executive orders?
xyzal · 1h ago
I would love to obtain a handbook on how to convince moronic far-right leaning neighbors to change or at least soften their stance. I usually just tell them to fuck off, which apparently is not that much effective.
JumpCrisscross · 1h ago
> love to obtain a handbook on how to convince moronic far-right leaning neighbors to change or at least soften their stance
Real answer? Pick a battle and commit to it. That means allying with folks who agree with you—or have an incentive to agree—on your one issue with whom you may strongly disagree on other policy or even moral positions. This doesn’t need to be a permanent alliance, after all, just a transactional one to achieve a goal.
Dont call them moronic. Don't tell them to fuck off.
If you HONESTLY want to try to convince people that these politicians and industries are a net negative you can not just sit there and call people fucking idiots. It makes a person retreat into their view that much more. You have to just calmly explain things. Sometimes you have to explain that thing a lot.
A lot of people who voted right wing are looking for reasons to re-evaluate their decisions. Dont give them a reason to double down by calling them fucking mornons. Soft language will win this fight.
jimkleiber · 40m ago
> Sometimes you have to explain that thing a lot.
This.
Sometimes I think I want people to change their minds extremely and instantaneously. When I look at the micro-changes they make, and have the endurance to see these changes over time, they can actually make extreme changes and in a short period of time. It's just rarely instantaneously extreme.
Dylan16807 · 55m ago
If your only advice is to not insult people then this really isn't helpful.
chii · 41m ago
> A lot of people who voted right wing are looking for reasons to re-evaluate their decisions
i dont believe this to be the case. If they have such a reason, then surely they would've already examined it much earlier and came to a conclusion under which they won't have been a right wing voter in the first place.
So there's something else at play, such as preconceived notions, or the inability to sort out facts from fiction (being presented as fact on TV), that makes them behave the way they did.
Upvoter33 · 41m ago
> A lot of people who voted right wing are looking for reasons to re-evaluate their decisions
If only
shoobiedoo · 54m ago
> I usually just tell them to fuck off
and then everyone clapped
Dylan16807 · 50m ago
That implies you don't believe the story? There is zero reason to disbelieve something as mundane as telling someone to fuck off.
vincnetas · 57m ago
step one, stop calling them "moronic far-right leaning neighbors" ;)
tovej · 1h ago
Astroturfing has been the favorite MO of harmful industries like tobacco, oil, and defense for a long time now.
It's sad that this has become so normal, and that they can pressure opponents into silence. I'm wondering if we'll ever get rid of this.
yahoozoo · 56m ago
Next you’ll tell me anti-oil groups are wind-funded.
lstodd · 47m ago
Anti-oil groups are oil funded so that the oil can show they are "responsible" to their boards.
edit:
apart from that, no one is willing to pay for a realistic substitute for the fuel oil (marine) or diesel, so the question is actually moot.
qcnguy · 17m ago
Ridiculous six-degrees-of-Kevin-Bacon propaganda. Leftist claims that groups are oil funded are always like this: someone working for an oil company donated to some think tank, which in turn was represented by a lawyer, who in turn represented plaintiffs in a wind project. That is meaningless. How would the original employee even know?
There's no actual funding happening here! It's all just "links" between random orgs and people. Anyone can draw such multi-hop links between any two groups of people. It's schizo but you can do it and "prove" anything in this way.
But it gets worse! The level of funding climate change lobbying groups get is astronomically larger and more evil than anything their opponents do. Climate extremists literally corrupt entire news organizations, filling them with paid lobbyists who pretend to be journalists:
Just imagine the extent to which the left would lose their shit if the AP, Reuters or the NYT hired entire newsrooms that do nothing but systematically promote right wing ideas without revealing that fact, funded entirely by wealthy right wingers. They'd claim it was the end of democracy. But when the left do it, that's alright then.
Step one to improving public debate about climate: ban news companies from taking money from "philanthropists" (lobbyists). Writing funded not by their subscribers needs to be correctly described as advertising.
Step two: oil companies don't actually fund attacks on climate activists, but they should! Climate activism is institutionally dishonest. Their claims are constantly being disproven, and their predictions keep not coming true. There's nothing wrong with oil company employees sticking up for their own by fairly attacking their opponents arguments. Debate like that is how civilizations work out what's true. The current environment where left wing extremists shut down debate is unhealthy and leads to terrible decision making, just like it did during COVID.
tonyedgecombe · 16m ago
Who funds you?
focusgroup0 · 11m ago
The total amount of energy involved in producing, transporting, maintaining, installing, and decommissioning the turbine is net negative:
It would be interesting to compare the net energy requirements of different electricity production means, in such a way that, for every kWh provided to the grid by each source, we could somehow quantify:
- How many kWh the grid has to provide in exchange.
- How many kWh are obtained from other sources in order for this kWh to have been produced.
- How much CO₂ will be released for that kWh, considering the entire lifecycle of the source.
So that we can identify which other electricity production means would have been preferable (both in terms of total energy expenditure, and total CO₂ released).
At the moment, "net negative energy involved" seems like a proxy metric to me, and I don't know a proxy for what precisely.
Two argument seem to be to "claim damages from the visual impact of offshore with projects located off their coasts" and "invoking the federal environment legislation such as the Endangered Species Act and Marine Mammal Protection Act".
Of course, the same folks have no objections whatsoever to offshore drilling.
e.g.
- Often wind typically need to be subsidised heavily by the government and are not cost effective over its lifetime.
- Typically wind needs to be backed up by fossil fuel or nuclear power generators as it is unreliable or you need to buy capacity from elsewhere.
I won't pretend to know enough to state whether they are valid arguments or not. But they are potentially much stronger arguments against wind power than the others frequently made.
Well, if they were entirely sincere in their concern for the view, the birds, and the noise, only one of those concerns would apply to offshore drilling.
Considering "preventing industrialization" to be an end in itself is something different, usually associated with being pro-wind-power.
There is, of course, a debunking video response (14 minutes): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oKVNFqqzvP4
NIMBYism (destroying the beautiful views from my golf course) and "Think of the birds" also feature high on the list.
However, there's also a trend that giant corporations are kind of like giant oil tankers (no pun intended). It takes a humongous amount of energy to change a company's fundamental core business. Oil companies are in the business of oil. Even if they expand to becoming an energy company, it takes a long time for them to change their "oil DNA". Based on that, I can imagine that certain oil companies - though not all oil companies - elect to maintain the status quo.
I don't think this is unique to big oil. It's unique to big {pharma, tech, oil, *}. What I find harder to find out is what the "weights" are for both sides and how they are influenced.
not while there's still oil to be extracted. Rigs (esp. offshore ones) take a lot of initial investment, and takes several decades to fully pay out. It's not hard to imagine that those investments hadn't fully matured and so they'd want the demand for oil to continue.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-08-06/what-australia-can-le...
> For the first time ever, California's batteries took over gas as the primary source for supplying evening power demand in April, providing "akin to the output from seven large nuclear reactors" one evening, according to the New York Times.
Just the stuff the Heartland Institute does is enough to write a book about and still not a peep from the usual crowd.
The War-for-Oil conspiracy theories are proven correct.
The suppression of 'free energy' is discussed widely as being a result of oil-industry repression.
And on and on.
Because it hasn't. The "free energy" stuff is way off the mark and pales in comparison to absolute kookery of weather machines being responsible for things climate change is actually doing.
They don't have a solid grasp of reality and it shows in how they're unaware about the specific things the oil industry is doing. Much of their rhetoric is big oil propaganda being repeated anyway.
War for oil isn't a conspiracy - it's such obvious public knowledge that there are memes about it. Yes, the country that is a major oil producer and in the currency of which most if not all oil transactions are done uses its military might to preserve the status quo - that's hardly a secret.
It doesn't really prove war for oil, war tends to mess up production and also we have a huge amount of domestic production. But that depends on what exactly the claims are.
"Free energy" doesn't exist so that just goes back to them barking up the wrong tree. It's taking a real villain and blaming them for nonsense instead of something they actually do.
https://www.treehugger.com/the-marketing-of-gas-stoves-never...
I n my ideal world these people would be prosecuted.
The only way to stop those people is boots-on-the-ground political, social, and cultural activism. No, writing mean tweets and just taking part to that fancy "guess your next leader" powerball variant you do once every four years is not remotely enough.
Real answer? Pick a battle and commit to it. That means allying with folks who agree with you—or have an incentive to agree—on your one issue with whom you may strongly disagree on other policy or even moral positions. This doesn’t need to be a permanent alliance, after all, just a transactional one to achieve a goal.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Association_of_German_National...
If you HONESTLY want to try to convince people that these politicians and industries are a net negative you can not just sit there and call people fucking idiots. It makes a person retreat into their view that much more. You have to just calmly explain things. Sometimes you have to explain that thing a lot.
A lot of people who voted right wing are looking for reasons to re-evaluate their decisions. Dont give them a reason to double down by calling them fucking mornons. Soft language will win this fight.
This.
Sometimes I think I want people to change their minds extremely and instantaneously. When I look at the micro-changes they make, and have the endurance to see these changes over time, they can actually make extreme changes and in a short period of time. It's just rarely instantaneously extreme.
i dont believe this to be the case. If they have such a reason, then surely they would've already examined it much earlier and came to a conclusion under which they won't have been a right wing voter in the first place.
So there's something else at play, such as preconceived notions, or the inability to sort out facts from fiction (being presented as fact on TV), that makes them behave the way they did.
If only
and then everyone clapped
It's sad that this has become so normal, and that they can pressure opponents into silence. I'm wondering if we'll ever get rid of this.
edit: apart from that, no one is willing to pay for a realistic substitute for the fuel oil (marine) or diesel, so the question is actually moot.
There's no actual funding happening here! It's all just "links" between random orgs and people. Anyone can draw such multi-hop links between any two groups of people. It's schizo but you can do it and "prove" anything in this way.
But it gets worse! The level of funding climate change lobbying groups get is astronomically larger and more evil than anything their opponents do. Climate extremists literally corrupt entire news organizations, filling them with paid lobbyists who pretend to be journalists:
https://apnews.com/article/science-business-arts-and-enterta...
Just imagine the extent to which the left would lose their shit if the AP, Reuters or the NYT hired entire newsrooms that do nothing but systematically promote right wing ideas without revealing that fact, funded entirely by wealthy right wingers. They'd claim it was the end of democracy. But when the left do it, that's alright then.
Step one to improving public debate about climate: ban news companies from taking money from "philanthropists" (lobbyists). Writing funded not by their subscribers needs to be correctly described as advertising.
Step two: oil companies don't actually fund attacks on climate activists, but they should! Climate activism is institutionally dishonest. Their claims are constantly being disproven, and their predictions keep not coming true. There's nothing wrong with oil company employees sticking up for their own by fairly attacking their opponents arguments. Debate like that is how civilizations work out what's true. The current environment where left wing extremists shut down debate is unhealthy and leads to terrible decision making, just like it did during COVID.
https://x.com/RizomaSchool/status/1805813119664484836
See Also:
The False Promises of Green Energy:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZWuKqFUsDH0
No, I am not oil-funded.
- How many kWh the grid has to provide in exchange.
- How many kWh are obtained from other sources in order for this kWh to have been produced.
- How much CO₂ will be released for that kWh, considering the entire lifecycle of the source.
So that we can identify which other electricity production means would have been preferable (both in terms of total energy expenditure, and total CO₂ released).
At the moment, "net negative energy involved" seems like a proxy metric to me, and I don't know a proxy for what precisely.