Why wind farms attract so much misinformation and conspiracy theory | Hacker News Reader

Why wind farms attract so much misinformation and conspiracy theory

theconversation.com

16 pointsrbanffy15 comments

Okay...but the article has far too little emphasis on wind's problem with polarizing cultural branding. If you're just trying to sell wind at small scales, in deep-blue areas - that can be quite useful. But at real scales, nationally, when 1/2 the population votes for Team Red? D'oh, no. Wind advocates should be talking "like drilling oil wells, but with thousands of tons of steel, going straight up into the air, and a 200-ton generator on every one, pumping out umpteen gigawatts of power, and proving that America can still build man-sized stuff, and ...".

Is it true that wind power has polarizing cultural branding, or do opponents of wind power fabricate cultural issues with it to justify their opposition? Vestas for example, the world's largest manufacturer of wind turbines, has a US site that's framed pretty much how you're recommending (https://us.vestas.com/en-us).

With the bitter cultural divide, and Team Blue so obviously besotted with wind, I don't think "rational" opponents of wind (Big Coal, Big Oil, etc.) need to do any fabrication. And less-rational opponents of wind power don't need any reason, beyond "to show off my loyalty to Team Red", to fabricate.

I don't understand what you're talking about. Who is "Team Blue" and what makes it obvious that they're besotted with wind? I understand that you're trying to gesture at the major political parties and their supporters, but it's not at all obvious that the Democratic National Committee, or Hakeem Jeffries, or Joe Biden is besotted with wind. So who specifically is the subject here?

You Americans always tell me (European), just how big your country is. When we talk about nuclear energy my worries of nuclear waste are always countered with: "We have enough empty space".

There are literally oil fields with millions of tons of steel moving about, but suddenly with wind energy space with moving metal structures in it is a problem? I don't buy that the opposition to wind energy is entirely rational.

People aren't rational. If people were rational we would have been building exclusively nuclear, wind, solar and other clean power generation for the past 40+ years and coal power would have been history decades ago. Natural gas would have been niche power generation for special use cases.

Yeah that works.

Also worth mentioning there are some great studies of windmills helping crops by regulating temp and humidity in the day/night when they're in farm fields.

(Right now Trump has a hate against them for losing a NIMBY fight against power companies).

>telephones spread diseases

Telephone networks begot the internet. The pair then engaged in an incestuous relationship from which sprang the smartphone. The smartphone, as it aged, grew into the most effective means of spreading mental illness ever recorded.

Maybe they were on to something in a crooked sort of way?

This comment rhymes with the conspiracy thinking mentioned in the article. No, they literally thought they would catch tuberculosis and diphtheria.

I'm aware of the unsubstantiated biological disease concerns. I would however chuckle a bit if the real threat to humanity ended up being an information virus enabled by ubiquitous telecommunication.

As someone who grew up in a right wing environment: It isn't all that complicated.

Windmills are read as clear and visible symbols of an "ideology" these people hate. You're a bigot who is already angry about a world that demands you to be more sensible about it? And now they are sensible about the environment and shove it into your face with a barrage of big moving structures? Outrageous!

People like these think that being sensible is the opposite of what a real man is about. Being a sensible male could even make you a suspect of the worst: you might be gay¹. So of course a visible sign that sensibility is winning is a threat.

Aside from the obvious question (How fragile is your identity as a man if you are afraid what it does to your male-ness if you show sensibility?) this guides us to a (IMO) more interesting one: Do they truly believe the stories they tell?

My conclusion is: most of them don't. They just have a string pre-existing existential urge to fight anything that would demand them to show sensibility and thus the story is just a post-hoc rationalization for a strong feeling they already have. It doesn't need to be true, it needs to feel true.

Since admitting the underlying fears would require them to also admit they are feeling uneasy, they need that kind story to be(come) true. But they don't really believe in it as a factual truth, more like you "believe" your sports team is going to win.

¹: obvious sarcasm, this mark is here to avoid ambiguity

To add to that, conservatives are usually much more religious. So I think a big part of the queastion boils down to faith vs evidence. They don't believe in wind power, because nobody on their side told them to, so they fight it.

Yes, but I think this is an aspect where the European wingnuts and the US wingnuts differ. The religious angle is much less pronounced over here. There are of course crazy religious conservatives that make an extrimist religion their whole identity. But there is no religious mainstream that would back this and if there is it is not paneuropean but a local phenomenon.

This is certainly not the case in the US, where the right is consolidated to an unnatural degree.

Doubleplusungood bellyfeel

In Germany such nonsense has historically been propagated in the German press by Axel Springer, which until 2024 was majority controlled by the fossil-fuel focused private equity group KKR. They have the vast majority of their portfolio in fossil fuel interests.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Axel_Springer_SE

https://www.lobbycontrol.de/lobbyismus-und-klima/springer-ko...

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