Climate-Science Deniers, Right-Wing Think Tanks, and Fossil Fuel Shills Are Plotting Against the Clean Energy Transition

[Brenda]

By Rebecca Burnson Mar 16, 2024

LAST JULY, a small group of rabble-rousers boarded a trio of powerboats, banners and bullhorns in hand. They were headed for the massive floating construction site of an offshore wind farm 35 miles from the eastern tip of Long Island, New York. As the boats motored through the swells, the self-styled activists broke into a chorus of pleas for the wind farm construction to cease—chants likely intended less for the still-faraway workers than for the camera there to capture footage. “Hear this message: We’re here to save the whales!” called out a man in a black polo shirt. “If you were a fossil fuel project, you would have been shut down long ago.”

That apparent conservation activist was, in fact, an infamous climate change disinformation artist: Marc Morano, who’s done more than perhaps any other person to manufacture doubt about global warming. From his perch at Climate Depot, the blog he’s run since 2009, Morano has elevated fake climate experts, encouraged the harassment of real climate scientists, and promoted the myth of “global cooling.”

More recently, Morano has been talking about whales—specifically, the idea that the higher-than-usual number of dead ones washing ashore along the East Coast is the result of President Joe Biden’s push to develop 30 gigawatts of offshore wind power by the end of the decade. In fact, the spate of whale strandings began in January 2016, before most survey activity for ocean turbines had even begun. Federal agencies are still investigating “unusual mortality events” for three whale species, but regulators and academic researchers say there’s no evidence of a link to wind development. Since 2019, hundreds of gray whales have also washed up dead on the West Coast, where offshore wind development is only now getting underway. The clearest common factor is rising ocean temperatures, which are disrupting whales’ feeding and migration patterns. In other words, climate change. But no matter—video of Morano’s boat protest landed on Fox News and spread like a ripple through the social media groups that have sprouted to oppose offshore wind.

“There is absolutely zero evidence that any of the offshore wind activity has been involved in any of those strandings,” says Douglas Nowacek, a professor of marine conservation technology at Duke University. Claims that noise from offshore wind surveys are driving whales into harm’s way don’t hold water, according to Nowacek—and it bears noting that seismic surveys for oil and gas are far louder. Many of the dead whales have borne signs of ship strikes or entanglement in fishing gear.

One of those names is John Droz. He is a retired real-estate investor who has been involved in an impressive array of local energy fights over the past 15 years. It was Droz who convened the 2012 meeting that brought together staff from groups like the American Legislative Exchange Council and the Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow with local wind opponents. Droz also edited the PR document that put forth tactics including a meme campaign, a “dummy business” to go into communities considering wind development, and youth science fairs “with preset parameters that cause students to steer away from wind.” The watchdog group Checks and Balances Project, which obtained documents from the conference, told The Guardian that it marked “the first time that local NIMBY anti-wind groups are coordinating and working with national fossil-fuel-funded advocacy groups to wreck the wind industry,” referring to “not in my backyard” anti-wind groups that proliferated during the mid-aughts.

Droz, who once worked at General Electric and describes himself as an “independent physicist,” has links to some of the key organs of the Right. He has been a guest speaker at the infamous climate-denial conferences hosted by the Heartland Institute. But Droz has achieved much of his impact through fastidious networking in communities with planned renewable energy projects. On his website, the Alliance for Wise Energy Decisions, he provides a menu of wind ordinance templates. The ordinances often focus on “setback” rules, which mandate how far wind turbines must be located from neighboring properties. In one strategy document, Droz explains that the point of setbacks should be to make them “so restrictive that the cost of the project becomes prohibitive and the developer leaves.”

https://www.desmog.com/2024/03/16/climate-denial-marc-morano-droz-wind-energy-whale-deaths-solar/

[Irish_Dem]

1. The GOP wants to destroy any hint of progress.

Who benefits from the US going back to the dark ages?

[Brenda]

2. You probably remember this name of a former DUer:

nothingshocksmeanymore. That's the way I feel whenever I read climate news these days. They can't even find a shred of evidence of harm from the transition - they just make it up out of thin air and have lots of money to fool people through facebook.

I am not a religious person yet I can't find any word other than evil to describe these fuckers!

[Irish_Dem]

3. Yes nothing shocks me anymore either.

I know the PutinGOP wishes to destroy this country and Americans.
All for the sake of power and wealth.
They will burn it all down to get what they want.

[Brenda]

5. And the really crazy thing is

no amount of power or wealth will save you and your offspring from what's coming. Doesn't Ivanka live on a barrier island? How fucking dumb can she be?

[Irish_Dem]

7. The wealthy believe they will be immune from all of it.

They are accustomed to their wealth protecting them from everything.

The rich are looking to relocate to areas they think are safe.
Will have special homes, precautions, staff, etc.

Musk even thinks he can colonize Mars or some such nonsense.

[Brenda]

8. Yeah, I'm aware of their delusions.

How can they ever be safe in their bunkers while relying on outside sources for food, water, medicine, toilet paper, soap, etc.?

No matter how much they stockpile, it will run out or rot.

The humans who will survive will not be billionaires. They will be humans who have handy skills like growing food, building things with their own hands, knowledge instead of soundbites, ability to cook and clean.

The Billionaire Bunkers may have a problem with their security staff when they get hungry.

[Irish_Dem]

11. They cannot conceive of a world where their money is absolutely worthless.

All their expensive precautions, food, etc.

All that security and staff go bye bye fast.
When the chips are down.

It is going to be so ironic. The billionaires ruined the planet
because of their greed and addiction to money.

They fooled themselves into thinking it would protect them from the world they ruined.
And then all they built up is worthless and no good when the shit hits the fan.

Someone should write a book and make a movie of this plot line.

[Brenda]

12. There are lots of great short stories and novelettes in Asimov's SF about this very thing.

But you are so right, they think they can buy their way out of any and every thing.

You can't buy the knowledge of people who did the work for you. You need to have that knowledge and experience yourself.

Do you think they realize that and that's why they're fucking the rest of us? Like I said, evil.

[Irish_Dem]

13. They always have bought everything they want or need.

Everything has a price and they can pay it.

What we are talking about does not compute for them.

Like with Putin, he just cannot conceive that he cannot buy, bully, terrorize the world
to get what he wants. It does not compute for him.

Yes it is all pure evil.

[flying_wahini]

4. RUSSIA, that's who.

[Irish_Dem]

6. Russia, China, Saudi, Iran, North Korea, etc.

[Think. Again.]

9. Thanks for posting this!

It's mind-boggling how many seemingly intelligent people are so gullible to the fossil fuel industry's B.S.

And then there's republicans who eat it all up too!

[Brenda]

10. It's a really great article with lots of links.

[hunter]

14. Which "energy transition" is that?

The one that's promoted by the petroleum and gas industry?

Those industries seem to be thriving and their long term prospects are good, even in places that support aggressive renewable energy programs.

Hybrid gas/wind/solar energy systems are a threat to the coal industry, which explains most of the politics, especially in places like Germany and U.S.A coal producing regions.

Regions that have rejected coal can throw up a bunch of wind turbines and solar panels and pretend to be "green."

We'll never be green until we abandon our automobile culture. We need to transform our cities into attractive affordable places where car ownership is unnecessary. Many cities are now attractive, so very attractive in fact that they are not affordable.

[Brenda]

15. So you didn't read the article.

1. Why is it "pretending" to go green when you actually are?
2. Why dismiss the world wide spread of solar panels and wind turbines by saying "throw up a bunch?"
3. Proposing something impossible (getting rid of all cars in America) so nothing alternative like Solar and Wind can be discussed! Hey, just like the article said!

Gold Star.

[hunter]

16. And so the world will burn...

Sometimes bad people do bad things for bad reasons.

Sometimes good people do bad things for bad reasons.

I'm a radical environmentalist, I have some formal training as a scientist and I can do the math. I've got a pretty good understanding of big numbers and deep geological time.

I relate all this to the Kübler-Ross model, five stages of grief.

Most fossil fuel producers and consumers are still in denial.

Throwing up wind and solar panels is the bargaining stage of the process.

Mother Nature simply doesn't give a shit. She's seen many disruptive species come and go.

I'd rather we not go.

If you have a car you could go out right now, open the oil cap, and poor sand in the engine. Then you could smash your electric meter and tell your local power company to go fuck themselves.

Then what? Solar panels and batteries? That comes with problems and those problems are the same at any scale, from a small home to an entire electric grid. Ask anyone who is living that dream. (Net metering is simply an accounting trick. That doesn't count.)

One of the horrors of our twenty first century is that about half the fixed nitrogen circulating through the biosphere is made by man, most of that directly made from fossil fuels, some of it as fossil fuel pollutants from internal combustion engines, etc. That artificially supplemented nitrogen cycle is one of the reasons this planet can support eight billion human beings. That nitrogen is in you, it makes you, it's in your "organic" foods, there is no avoiding it. We've become dependent on high density energy resources, such as those that fix nitrogen, for our survival.

That's one reason, by my rough reckoning, a purely "renewable energy" economy could only support half of us.

So, who should die?

Sadly the world still burns if every nation fully embraces gas / wind / solar energy systems hoping that "someday soon" (say by 2035...) we'll get a handle on fusion power or magical energy storage systems.

I did read this article, about the bad people and their devious machinations and propaganda. Unlike them, the solar and wind enthusiasts mostly have good intentions, at least those who are not amoral corporations selling wind and solar power systems out one door, gas power systems out the other (Siemens, General Electric, etc....)

Somehow these good people can complain about copper mines on sacred Indian sites yet at the same time promote electric cars or the construction of wind and solar follies that obliterate previously undeveloped landscapes and seascapes, all of which require the mining of vast amounts of copper. That's bad reasoning.

"We had to destroy the natural environment in order to save it," is not an ethical position.

There are quite a few environmental causes I enthusiastically support, among these mostly vegan/vegetarian diets, less car dependent lifestyles, and the political and economic empowerment of women, for its own sake and also because that seems the only proven way to halt human population growth.