Scientist exposes anti-wind groups as oil-funded, now they want to silence him

Corporate capture, astroturfing, and lawfare

• Many commenters see the story as yet another example of fossil-fuel-backed astroturfing, akin to tobacco’s playbook: industry-funded front groups, “weaponized activists,” and legal harassment aimed at silencing inconvenient research.
• Some extend this to courts and universities, arguing that the legal system and academic funding are increasingly bent toward protecting corporate interests and punishing environmental critics.
• Others note that pro-wind funding also exists, but see a clear difference between philanthropic climate funding and self-interested fossil spending to protect stranded assets.

Why oil fights wind and solar

• Several threads dissect why oil and gas firms oppose wind: long-lived capital-intensive assets need decades of high demand; rapid decarbonization would destroy asset values.
• Some argue fossil companies try to both invest in renewables they control and sabotage those they don’t. Others emphasize organizational inertia: big firms struggle to abandon their “oil DNA.”
• There’s debate over whether oil “should” be investing in renewables versus rationally milking short-term profits and leveraging political influence (e.g., US policy shifts, large campaign donations).

Arguments over wind’s economics, grids, and storage

• Pro-wind commenters stress that onshore wind is now cheap, intermittency is manageable with diverse generation, interconnectors, and growing storage, and 100% variable-renewable grids are modeled as technically and economically viable.
• Critics raise concerns about: subsidies, full system costs (backup, transmission, balancing), curtailment and low-price overproduction, and long-duration storage needs in places with long calm or dark periods.
• Long subthreads compare wind/solar to nuclear and gas in the UK, Germany, Nordics, and Denmark, arguing over capacity factors, capacity markets, regional pricing, coal phase-out, and whether nuclear’s high capex fits a renewables-heavy, low-marginal-cost grid.

Environmental and local impacts

• Anti-wind talking points listed: bird and bat deaths, noise, visual impact, deforestation and habitat loss, marine impacts (especially during offshore construction), microplastic/abrasion, unclear decommissioning and recycling.
• Supporters counter that these harms are small and reversible compared to oil, coal, and current nuclear waste legacies, and that many objections are selective (e.g., no similar outrage over offshore drilling).

Politics, culture war, and persuasion

• Several comments tie anti-wind sentiment to broader right-wing culture war narratives (“woke,” TV dramas portraying renewables as villains, conspiracy tropes).
• Others stress that changing minds resembles “cult deprogramming”: don’t insult people, build relationships, focus on incremental shifts, and address underlying economic insecurity.
• A minority sees the article’s language (“anti-wind,” “oil-funded”) and invocation of “scientists” as itself propagandistic, arguing that all large industries and states are corrupt and that local anti-wind groups can be genuinely grassroots.