protect our coast nj
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in January 5, Fox host Jesse Watters attacked AP News’ climate coverage, seemingly in response to a story dispelling offshore wind misinformation. The segment repeated the false claim — debunked by several fact checks from a variety of sources — that offshore wind development is killing whales.
The same false claim appeared on Fox News at least as early as December 2022 and proliferated on the network throughout 2023, with at least 54 segments pushing the misinformation seemingly intended to hurt support for offshore wind.
In early 2023, Fox News helped propel the false narrative into a right-wing media story which has persisted even though no evidence supports the link between the slew of whale deaths along the East Coast and offshore wind development.
An analysis by Media Matters found that:
- Fox News aired at least 54 segments suggesting that offshore wind development is causing whale deaths. At least 15 programs on the network have reported on the false link between offshore wind and whale deaths, including the network’s so-called straight news program Special Report With Bret Baier.
- 12 of the 54 (22%) segments appeared on Fox & Friends (on its daily or weekend program), 11 of the 54 (20%) segments appeared on Jesse Watters Primetime, and 9 (17%) appeared on The Story with Martha MacCullum.
- 26 of 54 segments aired in the first two months of 2023. With 14 segments, coverage peaked in February 2023. At least one segment pushing the false claim appeared on Fox every month of 2023 except May and October.
A December report by the Center for American Progress illustrates how the fossil fuel industry is bankrolling offshore wind misinformation, “with money flowing through interest groups, think tanks, and astroturf groups to achieve its ultimate goal of slowing, if not stopping, the expansion of offshore wind in the United States.”
Fox News has played a key role in the proliferation of offshore wind misinformation by regularly airing false claims about the technology and providing a platform to some of the groups identified in the report, including Protect Our Coast NJ and people associated with the Texas Public Policy Foundation and Environmental Progress, whose founder and president, Michael Shellenberger, has appeared frequently on Fox News to spread offshore wind misinformation.
Methodology...
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... shillnberger
- hrown to the Windrelies heavily on the work of “environment and energy activist” Lisa Linowes, who has longstanding ties to the fossil industry, including the Texas Public Policy Foundation.In 2018, Linowes was a senior fellow at TPPF, which for years has been “shaping laws, running influence campaigns and taking legal action in a bid to promote fossil fuels.” Linowes also has ties to the Institute for Energy Research, which has received funding from the Koch network,coal producer Peabody Energy, andthe Edison Electric Institute. In 2017, the Energy and Policy Institute discovered that a letter asking Congress to end the wind production tax credit that had been attributed to Linowes was seemingly written by an IER employee. Energy and Policy Institute,[12/11/17; Mastersource.org, 8/8/22; The New York Times, 12/4/22; Texas Public Policy Institute, 7/13/18;
- Linowes is also a member of Save Right Whales Coalition, which was founded in part by Environmental Progress, Shellenberger’s pro-nuclear nonprofit. Save Right Whales Coalition is a group of East Coast-based organizations that oppose offshore wind projects in the area. Linowes also runs an anti-renewable energy nonprofit called the WindAction Group. Environmental Progress, [8/13/23]
- Linowes has appeared on Fox programs multiple times to attack wind energy in recent years. In 2021, before she joined the Save Right Whales Coalition, Linowes was an expert in a Carlson-produced anti-wind energy documentary in which she claimed that industrial-scale wind development “is not about getting us off fossil fuels.” In June 2022, on Martha MacCallum’s radio show, Linowes claimed that offshore wind turbines could drive right whales to extinction. “These turbines are almost certainly going to stress them and may wipe them off the face of the earth,” she said. However, later in the interview, seemingly contradicting her previous statement, Linowes admitted, “We do not know what the impacts will be on these species.” On Fox Business in March 2023, Linowes called the Bureau of Ocean Management’s attitude toward protecting endangered right whales “cavalier.” Fox Nation,*Tucker Carlson Originals*, [10/21/21; Fox Business, The Big Money Show, 3/3/23; Fox Radio, The Untold Story with Martha MacCallum;6/30/2022]
- Another member group of the Save Right Whales Coalition has ties to conservative dark money groups via David Stevenson, a member of former President Donald Trump’s EPA transition team.Protect Our Coast New Jersey “belongs to the American Coalition for Ocean Protection (ACOP), which was founded by David Stevenson, who formerly served on Trump’s EPA transition team. Stevenson also heads the Center for Energy and Environment Policy at the Caesar Rodney Institute. Under Stevenson, Acop is fundraising to create a permanent wind energy exclusion zone along the east coast.” The Guardian, [7/31/23]
- Stevenson and the Caesar Rodney Institute have direct ties to the fossil fuel industry.Stevenson, who has publicly questioned the science of climate change, is a policy adviser for the Heartland Institute, a conservative think tank that recently sent thousands of climate-denying textbooks to teachers across the country. As Fast Company detailed, the Caesar Rodney Institute is a “nonprofit that has been backed by the conservative dark money groups Donors Capital Fund and DonorsTrust, along with the American Fuel and Petrochemical Manufacturers and the American Energy Alliance, a fossil industry group founded by a former Enron executive.” Fast Company, [3/1/23] Grist, [2/6/23]
- The acoustics expert featured in the documentary has publicly shared debunked climate change theories.Robert W. Rand of the Ocean Mammal Institute publicly supported the false claim that heat from the Earth’s core is a dominant factor influencing how the climate is currently changing. Twitter/X, [12/30/21, 4/27/23] USA Today, [2/14/23]
- ## Shellenberger has a track record of spreading misinformation about climate change...
https://www.mediamatters.org/facebook/misinformation-about-recent-whale-deaths-dominated-discussions-offshore-wind-energy
no lnx twt
:{after a slew of whale deaths along the east coast of the U.S., right-wing media have been promoting false fossil fuel industry talking points about offshore wind projects on Facebook.
Media Matters found that in the first two months of 2023, from January 1 - March 1:
Of the 288 posts that mention wind energy, nearly 84% specifically mentioned the unsubstantiated claim that offshore wind farms impact whale populations. These posts received 73,457 (73%) out of 101,277 interactions on posts about wind energy.
22 out of the top 50 most-interacted with posts about offshore wind energy contained misinformation claiming that they may be responsible for whale deaths on the East Coast.
None of the posts with misinformation had fact-checks from Facebook moderators, and nearly all of them were from right-leaning pages.}:
Right-leaning pages earned 90% of interactions on posts about wind energy.
Many posts that did not contain misinformation still promoted a misleading narrative about offshore wind projects.
According to NOAA and other experts, there is no evidence that proposed offshore projects have contributed to what the agency is calling an “unusual mortality event.”
:{Ramping up offshore wind development has been a focus of Biden’s energy agenda. In 2021, the administration set a goal of deploying 30 Gigawatts of offshore wind by 2030. More recently, the Inflation Reduction Act granted $100 million for offshore wind projects and reopened additional areas for lease in the eastern Gulf of Mexico and the Atlantic for wind development.
This effort, along with concerns over what is causing whale mortality, has mobilized clean energy opponents and sparked extensive coverage and discussion on Facebook, driven almost entirely by right-leaning pages.}:
84% of Facebook posts about wind energy also mentioned whale populations
Out of the 288 posts on the topic of wind energy from the study period, 241, or 84%, specifically mentioned whale populations. From December 1 to March 1, 16 humpback whales have been stranded on or near beaches in states along the Atlantic coast, mostly in New Jersey and New York. North Atlantic Right Whales have also been experiencing an unusual mortality event along the Atlantic Coast since 2017; 6 have been found dead so far in 2023.
Currently, there are only two functional wind farms in the U.S., with about 20 proposed offshore wind projects in various stages of development in 11 states along the East Coast. This has become the perfect opportunity for anti-renewable activists and fossil fuels industry shills posing as environmentalists sympathetic to the plight of whales to launch a public relations and legal campaign in opposition to these offshore wind projects.
Right-wing media, and particularly Fox News,have propelled these efforts in response to Biden’s push for offshore wind. One of the top posts with the most interactions, about 1,600, featured a FoxNews.com article with a headline that read, “SOMETHING FISHY: Congressman says green energy projects may be to blame for animal deaths.” That Congressman isRep. Chris Smith (R-NJ), who introduced legislation that would mandate a federal investigation into the role wind energy development may have played in the recent uptick in whale deaths.
Fox News article with image of beached whale
Smith isn’t the only lawmaker that spoke out after extensive right-wing media coverage. Reps. Jeff Van Drew (R-NJ), Rep. Andy Harris (R-MD), as well as a dozen New Jersey mayors have all called for a moratorium on offshore wind construction.
Another popular post was a screenshot of a tweet from Monica Crowley, a right-wing podcaster, former Trump official, and former Fox News contributor. The post suggests environmentalists do not care about whales dying because, in this instance, it does not fit their political agenda. It was shared by several pages affiliated with The Western Journal, including the Tea Party Community and Conservative Tribune. The February 13 tweet itself had over 100,000 likes, shares, and comments.
screenshot of a tweet from Monica Crowley
22 out of the top 50 posts with the most interactions about offshore wind and whales contained misinformation on the topic.
Nearly half of the top 50 posts examined by Media Matters incorrectly linked whale deaths to offshore wind projects.
The most popular post from our study, which had nearly 19,500 interactions, was a clip from the January 11 edition of Fox News’ Jesse Watters Primetime where Watters claimed that surveying for wind projects is killing whales. On January 11, Watters did a segment on his prime time show where he attempted to misleadingly portray Protect Our Coasts NJ as a grassroots oceans advocacy organization.
Jesse Watters plays video of beached whale
The second most popular post, which had almost 15,500 interactions came from Power the Future, whose founder, Daniel Turner, is an alumnus of the Charles Koch Institute. The post links to an opinion piece by Turner claiming that “radical environmentalists” are blaming whale deaths on fishing communities when they should, without evidence, be blaming wind farms.
Power The Future posts an article about "radical wind farm activists" from the Daily Caller
None of the posts were labeled as misleading by Facebook fact-checkers
None of the posts which contained blatant misinformation were labeled as such by Facebook through its fact-checking partnerships. In general, these posts failed to note NOAA’s statement on the topic or statements from any experts that have pointed out the improbability of a connection between the mortality event and offshore wind, especially given that whales face many other risks such as vessel strikes and entanglement. Some posts also accused environmentalists, Democrats and the Biden administration of being dismissive about the plight of whales. In reality, Biden’s massive investments in renewable energy may actually be key to helping save marine life; burning fossil fuels is impacting the species by limiting the availability of their food and changing marine migration patterns.
Other social media posts that were not included in this study and contain similar misinformation on the topic have been repeatedly fact-checked by other sites.
:{Many posts that did not contain misinformation still promoted a misleading narrative about offshore wind projects
Several posts Media Matters looked at featured articles and reports from USA Today, NPR, POLITICO, and Greenpeace that called out this misinformation campaign around offshore wind.
However, these debunks were outnumbered by content that, even if it acknowledged the lack of evidence to support anti-wind talking points, still gave them credence by repeating them over and over again without an immediate debunk and framing the issue as a real debate when very few groups actually disagree with NOAA, and those that do have no evidence to support their claims. Some coverage is also omitting or muddling key details about how far along the wind projects are to make them seem more directly correlated with whale deaths. }:
Even left-leaning pages were complicit in this. For example, a NowThis video asked: “Could Offshore Wind Developments be Causing Whales to Die?” The answer is no, but that isn’t evident until the end of the video.
All in all, the fact that content about all of the benefits offshore wind could bring to coastal communities paled in comparison to perceived harms reveals the success of fossil fuel industry propaganda online.
Is offshore wind killing whales?
Conservative New Jersey activist jumps into anti-wind crusade
Out of all of the posts about whales and offshore wind, 31 posts (13%) came from the page of a conservative activist Joseph Rudy Rullo, who unsuccessfully ran for New Jersey governor in 2017. So far, in 2023, Rullo has dedicated his Facebook page which has 384,000 followers, to spreading misinformation about offshore wind development and bashing New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy for opting to not implement a moratorium on offshore wind development off of the New Jersey coast. He has also been used as a source on the topic for local New Jersey news.
Rullo has directed his followers to take steps to actively oppose offshore wind projects, such as attending New Jersey EPA meetings as well as the February 19 rally to “save the whales.” At the rally, “organizers” with the fossil fuel industry front group Protect Our Oceans NJ addressed the crowd along with lawmakers.
Right-leaning pages posted the most about wind energy compared to left-leaning and ideologically nonaligned pages
Right-leaning pages that post about news and politics have almost completely dominated the Facebook conversation about wind energy in general, not just offshore wind. Right-leaning pages posted more often, and earned more total interactions than either nonaligned or left-leaning pages. Right-leaning pages earned over 91,300 interactions on posts about wind energy, or 90% of all interactions on posts about wind energy, while nonaligned pages earned over 5,800 interactions (6%), and left-leaning pages earned 4,077 interactions (4%).
Right-leaning Facebook pages made 192 posts about wind energy issues, over twice the volume of nonaligned pages, which had 81 posts. Left-leaning pages made just 15 posts. All in all, right-leaning pages made up 67%, or nearly three-quarters of Facebook posts about wind energy.
These posts mainly focused on offshore wind projects and marine life, but also pushed misinformation about the functionality of wind turbines on land and their environmental impact, in addition to making exaggerated statements about how often they experience structural issues.
For example, one Newsmax headline suggested that green energy is flawed while in the same video a Newsmax correspondent admitted that according to the Department of Energy, the “reliability rate of a wind turbine is about 98% so these collapses and failures are quite rare by industry standards.”
Jon Glasgow on wind turbines on American Agenda
The threat that wind turbines pose to birds, which has long been exaggerated and pale in comparison to other threats to avian life such as climate change, buildings, pesticides, and domestic cats was also a theme. The idea has been a staple of climate change deniers with deep ties to the fossil fuel industry, such as Robert Bryce and more recently resurrected by renewable energy skeptics on Twitter.
Methodology
Using CrowdTangle, Media Matters compiled a list of 1,773 Facebook pages that frequently posted about U.S. politics from January 1 to August 25, 2020.
For an explanation of how we compiled pages and identified them as right-leaning, left-leaning, or ideologically nonaligned, see the methodology here.
The resulting list consisted of 771 right-leaning pages, 497 ideologically nonaligned pages, and 505 left-leaning pages.
Using CrowdTangle, Media Matters compiled all posts for the pages on this list that were related to wind energy or whales deaths that contained the keywords: “wind energy,” “wind turbines,” “wind turbine,” “wind farm,” “wind farms,” “offshore wind,” “wind projects,” “wind project,” “wind development," “dead whale,” “whale death,” or “whale deaths” in the post itself or in the headline or description of any included link from January 1, 2023, through March 1, 2023.
Two Media Matters researchers then reviewed the posts to determine which ones were relevant to the topic of wind energy, and which were relevant to the topic of offshore wind and whales specifically.
Finally, researchers coded 50 posts with the most interactions to determine whether they contained misinformation about offshore wind and whale mortality. Misinformation in this case was defined as the suggestion that there is evidence that offshore wind development, most frequently the sonar used in undersea surveys, has been or may be contributing to whale deaths. If coding differed, posts were reviewed and discussed to reach a consensus.
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In an embarrassing attempt to undermine renewable energy, Fox host Jesse Watters platformed a fossil fuel industry-funded envoy flimsily disguised as an “ocean advocate” for Protect Our Coast NJ. Watters hosted self-described “Jersey Shore Lifer” Mike Dean, although he was misidentified on-screen as Mike Davis. Dean’s Twitter account demonstrates opposition to climate science, frequently retweeting Big Oil shill Steve Milloy and “#climatescam” posts.
dean – without evidence – blamed recent whale deaths in New Jersey on wind development and claimed, “The harms with these projects and the costs are limitless, and it’s really hard to find any benefits at all.” (While the cause of the deaths are not known yet, factors including oceanic plastic pollution, the presence of an anomalously large whale population in the area for this time of year due to warmer waters, and underwater sonar use by the military could all lead to these “unusual mortality events.”)
While Protect Our Coast NJ’s website boasts the group as “residents, homeowners, business owners, fishermen and visitors of the New Jersey coastal communities,” reporting has indicated that other interests are playing a part in the group’s activities. Popular Information’s Michael Thomas reported that the donation page redirects to a PayPal page for the Caesar Rodney Institute. The website also links to content from right-wing media’s favorite climate contrarian Michael Shellenberger. The Caesar Rodney Institute is a part of the State Policy Network, a network of conservative and libertarian think tanks.
The Caesar Rodney Institute has a history of hostility toward government environmental regulation and climate change mitigation policies. In 2021, the Caesar Rodney Institute’s Energy and Environment director, David Stevenson, a former member of the Trump EPA transition team, established the American Coalition for Ocean Protection (ACOP), a legal defense fund for groups to file lawsuits to fight offshore wind developments on the Eastern Seaboard. In 2022, the ACOP announced a partnership with Marc Morano’s Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow and the Heartland Institute to fend off a coastal Virginia offshore wind project.
As reported by The Intercept’s Lee Fang, the Caesar Rodney Institute has received funding from the American Energy Alliance, which in return was funded by fossil fuel insiders like the American Fuel and Petrochemical Manufacturers and Stand Together Chamber Commerce, a Koch Industries business trade group.