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whale wind BS offshore

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SEE MORANO CFACT

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NYT

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Law Firm Pressures Brown University to Erase Research on Anti-Wind Groups

The firm, which represents opponents of offshore wind, said it would complain to Brown’s federal and private funding sources.

Lisa Friedman

By Lisa Friedman

Aug. 25, 2025

A law firm representing opponents of offshore wind farms is demanding that Brown University retract research that details links between the fossil fuel industry and anti-wind groups.

The firm, Marzulla Law L.L.C., which has close ties to the conservative legal movement, called the research “false and injurious” and said it would complain to Brown’s public and private funders, including the Energy Department, the National Science Foundation and the Mellon Foundation.

A spokesman for the university, Brian E. Clark, did not comment directly on the law firm’s demands but said the university intended to uphold its principles of academic freedom.

“Scholars shape their own research and course of instruction at Brown,” Mr. Clark said in a statement. “One principle that is core to research at Brown is the ability for scholars to discuss contested topics and themes and to have those topics openly debated.”

Roger J. Marzulla, a founding partner of the firm, did not respond to email and telephone requests for comment.

The demands come at a precarious time for the nation’s universities, which have become targets of a pressure campaign conducted by the Trump administration. Last month, Brown struck a deal with the government to restore lost federal research funding and end investigations into alleged discrimination.

The Trump administration is trying to stop the country’s nascent wind industry, a source of energy that President Trump has disparaged since he failed to stop an offshore wind farm from being built within view of one of his Scottish golf courses.

Marzulla Law L.L.C. is representing several groups that are fighting offshore wind, including Green Oceans, a nonprofit organization that is trying to overturn federal permits for Revolution Wind, a 65-turbine wind farm off the coast of Rhode Island.

That $6.2 billion project is nearly built, but on Friday the Trump administration ordered construction to stop, citing unspecified concerns.

In an Aug. 11 letter to Brown’s general counsel, Mr. Marzulla objected to research published by the Climate and Development Lab at Brown that found that Green Oceans had spread misinformation about climate change and operated as part of “a fossil-fuel-funded disinformation network.”

Mark Herr, a spokesman for Green Oceans, said in a statement that Green Oceans was a local and nonpartisan group, adding, “We have no association with the fossil fuel industry nor any conservative political groups.”

“These oft-repeated lies are designed to discredit the messenger while preventing the public from absorbing the substance of our valid and well-researched concerns,” he said.

J. Timmons Roberts, who leads the Climate and Development Lab, said in an interview that his students had found that groups fighting offshore wind “have chosen to get in bed with some of the most anti-environment and anti-climate actors.” He called the letter “strategic harassment to shut me up and waste my time and make me more cautious.”

Lauren Kurtz, the executive director of the Climate Science Legal Defense Fund, a nonprofit organization that provides legal aid to climate scientists, called the letter academic harassment.

“It definitely struck me that they were dangling the possibility of getting the Trump administration involved,” Ms. Kurtz said. “It seems to me like they’re trying to bully Brown and their researchers.”

The Climate and Development Lab, founded in 2010, is a student and faculty research organization. Nearly three years ago, students began looking into groups fighting offshore wind off the coast of Rhode Island.

Their research does not accuse Green Ocean of accepting money from fossil fuel companies, but it highlights the similarities between arguments made by Green Ocean and those advanced by fossil fuel groups that spread climate misinformation.

A new publication issued by the Climate Development Lab on Friday maps connections between groups that oppose offshore wind and the law firms that represent them, and uses Marzulla Law as a case study. It describes the firm as having “a history of advancing anti-environmental lawsuits and significant ties with the fossil fuel industry.”

Mr. Marzulla and his wife, Nancie, who together founded the firm in 1997, both previously worked at Mountain States Legal Foundation, a conservative public interest law firm based in Colorado.

Mr. Marzulla took over as head of the foundation in 1981, and later the couple founded the Defenders of Property Rights, which defended private property owners from what they viewed as cumbersome environmental regulations. Defenders of Property Rights joined the Cooler Heads Coalition, a group of organizations that rejected the scientific finding that the burning of fossil fuels was driving climate change.

Lisa Friedman is a Times reporter who writes about how governments are addressing climate change and the effects of those policies on communities.

A version of this article appears in print on , Section A, Page 9 of the New York edition with the headline: Right-Wing Firm Presses Brown Over Wind Study.

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AI Overview

Simon Clark and Michael Shellenberger are figures involved in the controversial debate regarding whether

offshore wind development poses a threat to the endangered North Atlantic right whale.

Key Points of the Debate

Conservation efforts for the North Atlantic right whale focus on mitigating these established threats from fishing gear and vessel traffic.

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mma

Years of falsehoods from Fox News helped solidify offshore wind as a prime target for Trump

Against all evidence, right-wing media insist Trump is “saving the whales” and reducing energy costs through his nonsensical executive orders

Special ProgramsClimate & Energy

Written by Ilana Berger

Published 02/04/25

The order follows years of Fox News bashing offshore wind farms based largely on falsehoods repeated by the president and self-proclaimed conservationists with ties to fossil fuel interests. In addition to his so-called conservation efforts, Trump has promised to halve energy costs in his first year in office, and he immediately declared a “national energy emergency” with the intent of doing so. Economists and energy experts say he won’t succeed.

Offshore wind opponents, contradicting insights from marine mammal experts, maintain that the development of offshore wind farms along the East Coast is causing large whale die-offs. This poorly understood phenomenon has affected several whale species in the area since 2016. Trump and Fox News personalities, and other right-wing media figures, have characterized these projects as particularly destructive to wildlife, including birds.

Yet while they are feigning concern for whales, right-wing media are not mentioning offshore drilling for oil and gas — an activity that Trump has encouraged, and one that harms marine life. During these segments praising Trump's move to pause wind projects, they also haven’t focused on the jobs that would likely be eliminated if new offshore projects fail to materialize, while job loss has been a key focus of theirs in coverage of former President Joe Biden’s 2021 cancellation of an extension on the crude oil Keystone pipeline.

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A WHILE BACK 11 23? MORANO CLAIMED ALL OFFSHORE PJTS DEAD?

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What to know about Trump’s pause on wind development

In a wide-ranging executive order, Trump paused offshore wind lease sales and halted the approval of leases, permits and loans for both offshore and onshore wind energy projects.

January 21, 2025

By Maxine Joselow

During his first moments back in the Oval Office on Monday evening, President Donald Trump signed an executive order that pauses wind energy development on federal lands and waters, shocking and dismaying many climate advocates and clean-energy firms.

The executive order temporarily stops offshore wind lease sales in federal waters and halts the approval of leases, permits and loans for both offshore and onshore wind energy projects. It also temporarily prohibits the development of the Lava Ridge Wind Project, a large wind farm in Idaho that the Biden administration approved in December.

Though Trump has long disdained wind energy, the order is broader than many observers had expected. Here’s what to know about the order and how it could reverberate across the country.

What does Trump’s executive order mean for U.S. wind energy?

“We think the EO is likely to significantly curtail the U.S. offshore wind industry over at least the next four years,” Timothy Fox, managing director at the research firm ClearView Energy Partners, said in an email.

Wind energy in the United States has faced several economic challenges, including rising interest rates, soaring inflation and supply chain bottlenecks. These financial hurdles, along with local opposition to projects, have contributed to a decline in domestic wind energy investment in recent years.

Trump’s executive order adds a big new political obstacle to the sector’s future growth, even as many Democratic-led states in New England are counting on offshore wind to meet their ambitious climate goals, Fox said.

“The EO could have negative implications beyond Trump’s term because project developers may be wary of investing in a sector that faces demonstrable high election risk,” he said.

Jason Grumet, CEO of the American Clean Power Association, warned that the executive order could harm states that supported Trump in the 2024 election. He said wind meets more than half of electric power demand in seven key states that backed Trump: Iowa, Kansas, New Mexico, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Dakota and Wyoming.

At the same time, Grumet said, roughly 99 percent of onshore wind projects are on private land, rather than federal land overseen by the Interior Department.

“It’s long been understood that the government does not proactively interfere with private enterprise on private land, and we continue to assume that that fundamental premise of a free economy will not be significantly undermined,” he said.

What does it mean for wind projects that are approved or underway?

The executive order states that the interior secretary, in consultation with the attorney general, will “conduct a comprehensive review” of the “necessity of terminating or amending any existing wind energy leases.”

That language “strongly suggests that the Administration may try to undo leases issued and project permitted by the Biden Administration,” Fox said, adding that “there may be sufficient authority to do so.”

Yet former North Dakota governor Doug Burgum, Trump’s pick for interior secretary and “energy czar,” suggested during his confirmation hearing Thursday that offshore wind projects that are already underway could move forward.

In response to a question from Sen. Angus King (I-Maine) about offshore wind projects in the Gulf of Maine, Burgum said, “I’m not familiar with every project that the Interior has underway, but I’ll certainly be taking a look at all of those, and if they make sense and they’re already in law, then they’ll continue.”

Trump is targeting a project that Biden just green-lit. Can he stop it?

The order specifically targets the Lava Ridge Wind Project in southern Idaho, saying the Biden administration’s environmental analysis of the project may suffer from “legal deficiencies.” It instructs the Interior Department to “place a temporary moratorium on all activities and rights” of the company behind the project, Magic Valley Energy, an affiliate of the New York-based energy firm LS Power.

The Lava Ridge Wind Project is near a former incarceration camp where thousands of Japanese Americans were unjustly imprisoned during World War II. It has already faced opposition from local Republican politicians and descendants of those who were incarcerated.

Magic Valley Energy did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Why is Trump so critical of wind energy?

Trump’s disdain for wind power dates to 2006, when he bought an 1,800-acre estate in Scotland near a planned wind farm that he warned would be “monstrous” and “really ugly.”

The Trump Organization sought to build a golf course there, and it sued to block the wind project, saying the turbines would ruin the view for golfers. In December 2015, less than a year before the U.S. election, judges on Britain’s top court unanimously rejected that claim.

But the battle raged on. While in the White House, Trump frequently attacked the clean-energy source. And during an April fundraising dinner with oil executives, Trump claimed that wind power is unreliable, unattractive and bad for the environment, The Washington Post previously reported.

“I hate wind,” Trump told the oil executives over a meal of chopped steak at his Mar-a-Lago Club and resort in Florida, according to a person with knowledge of the meeting, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe a private conversation.

Do offshore wind projects kill whales or birds?

Trump falsely claimed during a Monday speech that “big, ugly windmills” are killing whales and birds.

“If you’re into whales, you don’t want windmills,” Trump told a crowd of supporters at the Capital One Arena in Washington, adding that “they kill your birds, and they ruin your beautiful landscapes.”

Leading scientists and federal agencies, including the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, have said there is no evidence that offshore wind development is responsible for a recent spate of whale deaths on the East Coast. The biggest threat to marine mammals, many scientists say, is climate change, which offshore wind can help address by lowering greenhouse gas emissions from the power sector.

While turbines can kill birds, research suggests that house cats cause far more bird deaths in the United States each year, and that painting the turbine blades black can help reduce fatalities.

Dino Grandoni contributed to this report.

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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:

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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Fox host Jesse Watters and climate contrarian Michael Shellenberger attempted to delegitimize the trusted news wire service AP News, seemingly in response to a recent story from the outlet countering disinformation that Fox regularly pushes about offshore wind projects.

Video

CitationFrom the January 2, 2024, edition of Fox News' Jesse Watters Primetime

On the January 2 edition of Jesse Watters Primetime, Watters claimed that “liberal money is literally getting global warming stories planted on the front page of America's papers.” AP News has received grants from various foundations with a broad array of focuses and philanthropic leanings, which AP has used to hire more journalists and produce better climate change coverage.

But the expansion, during which the news agency hired about 20 climate journalists, was announced in February 2022. Though Watters and Shellenberger targeted the news service’s climate coverage as a whole, they also zeroed in on one December story titled “Contrary to politicians’ claims, offshore wind farms don’t kill whales. Here’s what to know.”

During the segment, Shellenberger, who authors a right-wing Substack called Public, refuted the article by repeating myths about offshore wind turbines killing whales, despite a lack of evidence to support those claims.

Shellenberger alleged AP News is accepting “millions of dollars … to basically do propaganda” on behalf of foundations that have “direct investments in things like those whale-killing wind farms,” presumably because the climate reporting grant came in part from foundations that also support renewable energy development. Shellenberger also called the article “disinformation,” even though the information it presents has been widely confirmed by experts who work with marine mammals and reiterated by several fact checks from a variety of sources.

Despite having produced a documentary attempting to vilify offshore wind projects in 2023, Shellenberger has failed to offer concrete evidence that this development is responsible for the unusual mortality even**t that is affecting whales on the Atlantic coast. Scientists say that while it’s nearly impossible to link the event to a single cause, fishing gear entanglement, vessel collisions, and the changing migration patterns of whale prey due to warming waters could all be contributing to an increase in whale deaths.

Far from indicating a genuine concern about biased reporting, the segment advanced a longstanding and concerted campaign led by Fox News to spread panic about offshore wind energy and hinder the transition away from fossil fuels.

Throughout 2023, Watters helped spearhead the right’s dubious obsession with whale conservation through his early coverage of wind projects in New York and New Jersey.

In reality, the story Shellenberger and Watters are attacking is far from “propaganda.” Not only does it quote both scientists and think tanks that are opposed to offshore wind development, but it also fails to mention that these think tanks have deep ties to the fossil fuel industry, as do smaller activist groups involved in the supposed whale conservation effort in the Mid-Atlantic region. When it comes to climate change, Fox won’t settle for anything less than science denial.

related

  1. ### Fox anchor and climate contrarian defend Trump's unhinged comments about whales and offshore wind

10/02/23 5:07 PM EDT

  1. ### Right-wing figures are using the cancellation of two offshore wind projects to make misleading claims about renewable energy

11/14/23 2:47 PM EST

  1. ### Fox News is touting a dubious new documentary repeating misleading claims about offshore wind link to whale deaths

08/29/23

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climate denier roundup --> kos

Do you know how to write and submit an op-ed to a major national media organization? Do you have both the time to send letters with studies to obscure federal regulators and the connections to turn the response into a (supposedly) exclusive news story? Probably not! This is why public relations (PR) professionals exist, but they usually don't work for free.

Recently, we’ve seen an intriguing string of articles centered on a fisherman named Jerry Leeman, who's either the world's most media-savvy fisherman running a ship and a lobbying campaign all on his own, or is the newest face of a complex, high-profile fossil-driven PR campaign against offshore wind.

leeman's turn from catching fish to talking about wind power hurting fish seems to have taken place over the course of the last year. His first brush with fame was in May 2022, when his orca sighting off Cape Cod went viral. Just two months later, though, things took a more serious turn when Leeman's struggle to make ends meet fishing was documented in a story about how private equity is exploiting New England's fishing fleet.

It turns out that Leeman doesn't own his own boat, and can't, because regulations to stop overfishing were exploited and monopolized by private equity companies like Blue Harvest, which leave Leeman making only 14 cents per pound of fish (7 cents for the crew) compared to the market rate of $2.28 per pound. The concentration of capital is hurting small fishers like him, not "the conservation groups" he blames for protecting the fish populations he relies on.

Unfortunately, it is not the bosses that are exploiting his labor that he's mad at. In December 2022, the harried fisherman somehow found the time to draft and submit an op-ed to The New Bedford Light, in which he blames regulations for his struggles.

It’s safe to say that his article wasn't exactly convincing, as the outlet then published a barrage of responses from readers. Someone who "fished back in the '80s when they had no limits" admitted that they "wiped out the cod fish stock in a couple of years," and another reader simply asked if Leeman had "heard of overfishing?" Scott Furtado was the real hero, though, pointing out at the start of a lengthy rebuttal that while Leeman claimed to have no vested interest, that’s not actually true at all. "You have no vested interest except that it’s your job," countered Furtado, "which is exactly what vested interest means."

Through the winter, Leeman posted regularly on Facebook, and recently the next stage of Leeman's newfound media side-hustle began. On March 9, The Daily Caller quoted Leeman in a story attacking Biden's budget. "Offshore wind will put American fishermen out of business," Leeman claimed, “Fishermen can weather a lot, but we can’t handle this.”

Nine days later, Leeman had an op-ed in none other than Fox News, claiming in the headline, “I'm a fishing boat captain. Green energy companies, government want to put me out of business.”After lots of complaining about factors unrelated to private equity giving him a raw deal, Leeman describes his harsh life of being "at sea year-round for seven to ten days at a time," which "means handling 15-foot swells in subzero temperatures for hours at a time." He concludes with a note that "the work is grueling and relentless" and that he "once woke up laying on the ceiling" of the boat that had been capsized by a wave.

It’s impressive, then, that he had the time to draft this op-ed, find the editor at Fox News to whom he should pitch it, and work through the fact-checking and editing process.

Similarly impressive is Leeman's seemingly single-handed lobbying efforts. His latest Daily Caller hitindicates that he is keeping a close watch on the scientific literature of offshore wind and fishing, as in December he sent the New England Fishery Management Council (NEFMC) a letter pointing to a recent study on High Voltage Direct Current (HVDC) power cables. NEFMC responded in January to say they're aware of the study and the "concerning implications for the possible effects" of HVDC on baby fish. Leeman then handed that over to The Daily Caller to claim in the headline an "exclusive" that a "federal regulator acknowledges danger to wildlife caused by offshore wind farms."

Among more obvious and serious failings, we'll just point out it's not published as an "exclusive" to the DC, as Leeman posted it publicly to his Facebook back in January, so the very first word of the Caller's headline is a lie.

Now, it's perfectly possible that Leeman's got exceptional abilities to coordinate media releases while battling 15-foot swells from the ceiling of his upside down boat. Much more likely, though, is that the forces coordinating anti-offshore wind activism saw his viral video, laid some bait, and now thoroughly have their hooks in Jerry Leeman.

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Actions

September 27, 2022

CFACT and the Heartland Institute announceda joint legal effort with an anti-wind front group created by the Cesar Rodney Institute, the American Coalition for Ocean Protection, to oppose the Coastal Virginia Offshore Energy Project. The group alleged the wind project threatens the endangered North Atlantic right whale.35

October 31–November 12, 2021

CFACT attended the twenty-sixth session of the Conference of the Parties (COP26) in Glasgow, Scotland.36 According to Peter Murphy, one of CFACT’s representatives shown in the official provisional list of registered participants (PLOP), CFACT activists handed out copies of Marc Morano‘s Climate Hustle 2 film during the event.37

Murphy wrote:38

“CFACT got to ask the only question permitted by NGOs. I stepped forward and asked them to comment about scientific findings which show that increased carbon emissions actually boost crop yields, which have led to record harvests for feeding the world. This would mean that CO2 isn’t just a ‘problem,’ but a benefit to helping feed the world. The panelists were having none of it — with one of them saying that any impact from CO2 has only a’negative’ effects, particularly on Africa, the region he represented.

Call that real climate denial.”

Listed CFACT representatives included:

April 6, 2021

Ronald Stein wrote an article at CFACT arguing “products from fossil fuels are lifesaving, and one of the best ways out of poverty.”39

“In the poor world, replacing fossil fuels with new intermittent electricity sources like wind and solar power is hard because most people desperately want much more power at lower cost, not fickle power at high cost,” Stein claimed.40

He also argued against electric vehicles (EVs), saying “exotic minerals and metals for EV batteries, wind turbines, solar panels, and fossil fuels are functionally irreplaceable, but there is a worldwide abundance of fossil fuels in virtually every country, but the minerals and metals for a ‘green’ society are limited to a few countries.”41

As DeSmog has noted in itspast debunking of similar statements by anti-EV campaigns, “gas-powered vehicles require some of the same ‘toxic’ rare earth metals” as EVs, while EVs are overall much cleaner than the alternative even when the production stage is considered.42

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we usually try not to cover the same issue in back-to-back posts, but while yesterday we connected some dots between industry-backed disinformation organizations and front groups opposing offshore wind, today they're connecting them for us.

On Monday evening, the New York Post ran a story headlined "Fishermen, activists protest offshore wind farms near Montauk, cite recent whale deaths." According to the Post's Josh Christenson, "the coalition, organized by the _{Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow}_, sent out three boats to South Fork Wind Farm, roughly 20 miles from both Martha’s Vineyard and Montauk, NY, holding signs that read 'STOP WINDMILLS SAVE WHALES' while shouting through a bullhorn at machinery operators to halt construction."

but "coalition" is certainly being generous, as the accompanying video and photos show a total of nine people, at least two of whom are Marc Morano and Craig Rucker of dark money-backed CFACT (and two more who may also be CFACT staff, although it's hard to tell).

Eight of them appeared to be on a pretty luxurious powerboat, and on another small boat, one lone guy who was just barely able to unfurl his banners as the video-recording drone whizzed by. Unlike the other boat, this one at least had fishing poles.

It’s unclear who or where the "professional New Jersey fishermen" were that the NYPost described as participating in the protest against the South Fork Wind Farm between the shores of Martha's Vineyard and Montauk, NY (100 miles north of NJ and 20 miles off the coast of Rhode Island.)

There does not appear to be footage of a professional fishing vessel participating in this embarrassing display.

Maybe we're just cynical, but it sure looks like a bunch of fossil fools booked a pleasure cruise in the ritzy-est part of Long Island, brought along a couple friends and banners calling wind turbines "windmills," and convinced the super-legitimate journalists over at Rupert Murdoch's NY Post to cover it

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post reuters?!

neW ORLEANS — Pumping carbon dioxide into the air makes the planet greener; the United Nations puts out fake science about climate change to control the global energy market; and wind and solar energy are simply “dumb.”

These are among the messages that flowed from the America First Energy Conference in New Orleans this week, hosted by some of the country’s most vocal climate change doubters — and attended by a handful of Trump administration officials.

The second annual conference, organized by the conservative think tank the Heartland Institute, pulled together speakers from JunkScience, the Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow, and the Center For Industrial Progress, along with officials from the US Department of the Interior and the White House for panels that included “Carbon Taxes, Cap & Trade, and Other Bad Ideas,” “Fiduciary Malpractice: The Sustainable Investment Movement,” and “Why CO2 Emissions Are Not Creating A Climate Crisis.”

The day-long conference reflected the political rise of global warming skeptics in Donald Trump’s America that is occurring despite mounting scientific evidence — including from US government agencies — that burning oil, coal and natural gas is heating the planet and leading to drought, floods, wildfires and more frequent powerful storms.

A similar conference blasting the link between fossil fuels and climate change last year drew then-Environmental Protection Agency chief Scott Pruitt, who was appointed by Trump to reverse Obama-era climate initiatives and roll back regulations hindering drillers and miners, but who has since resigned amid a flurry of ethical controversies.

The US officials who joined included White House special assistant Brooke Rollins, Interior Department Assistant Secretary Joe Balash, and Jason Funes,an assistant in the office of external affairs at Interior. They praised the administration’s moves to clear the way for oil industry activity, and steered clear of commenting on climate change.

But their presence gave climate change doubters at the conference a boost: “It’s a step in the right direction,” said self-described climate change doubter Roy Spencer, a principal research scientist at the University of Alabama, referring to the US officials in attendance.

In an email, Interior Department spokeswoman Heather Swift said department officials “speak at thousands of conferences every year and share ideas with a diverse group of individuals.” A White House spokesperson did not immediately comment.

Tim Huelskamp, president and CEO of the Heartland Institute, said the views presented at the conference — once on the fringes of US politics — would be proven right.

“The leftist claims about sea level rise are overblown, overstated or frankly just wrong,” he said in an interview. Regarding the United Nations’ findings on climate change, he said it was “fake science” motivated by a desire for “power and control.”

“Coming Soon!”

Evidence of sea level rise, however, is strewn across the state that hosted the conference.

New Orleans has been ravaged repeatedly by hurricanes that scientists say will become stronger and more frequent due to climate change. And the rest of Louisiana is losing coastline at one of the fastest rates on the planet due to sea level rise and encroaching industry, according to the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration.

“It’s a nice world they live in,” said Steve Cochran, campaign director of Restore the Mississippi River Delta, an environmental consortium involved in coastal restoration programs, referring to the attendees at the America First Energy Conference. “It’s not the world we live in.”

The Governor’s Office of Louisiana, a state that has earmarked tens of billions of dollars to fend off coastal erosion and relocate a Native American tribe from a sinking offshore island, did not respond to requests for comment about the conference.

In the conference exhibit hall, the words “Coming Soon!” in big orange letters framed a Heartland Institute advertisement for the fifth volume in its “Climate Change Reconsidered” book series. Attendees also passed around a book titled “Dumb Energy: A Rant Against Wind and Solar Energy.”

The more than 40 speakers praised Trump for withdrawing from the Paris climate accords, a global agreement to fight climate change mainly by cutting carbon emissions; and for rolling back regulations to allow oil companies to lead the biggest energy surge in the nation’s history.

But they warned that proponents of the US oil and gas boom are still locked in an epic struggle with climate activists in academia and within federal agencies.

“The deep state is real,” said Congressman Clay Higgins, a Louisiana Republican, addressing the conference. “They’re certainly anti-fossil fuel.”

Higgins joked about renewable energy sources, like wind and solar, saying there is probably a conference somewhere in the United States where people are talking about “how the future of the world’s engine will be provided by rainbow dust and unicorn milk.”

David Legates,professor of climatology at the University of Delaware, argued that increased carbon dioxide emissions will not only leave the planet unharmed, but benefit plant life by allowing it to consume water more efficiently.

“So, you would expect, therefore, that this will be a greener planet,” Legates said.

Funes of the Interior Department spoke on a panel called “The Future of Coal, Oil, and Natural Gas,” alongside Joe Leimkuhler, vice president of drilling at LLOG Exploration Co., and Fred Palmer, who joined Heartland in 2016 after retiring from coal company Peabody Energy.

“Oil production under President Trump has increased 2 million barrels per day since the beginning of his administration,” Funes said. “The US is exporting four times as much oil as it exported a decade ago.”

On the sidelines of the conference, Funes said he only attended the conference to speak about the nation’s surging oil production, and he refused to comment about the views of other speakers.

Efforts to reach Balash and Rollins were unsuccessful.

But in the dinner keynote address, Balash embraced the most obvious mutual terrain between the conference organizers and the Trump administration — the US deregulation push.

“Last year, this administration rolled back 22 regulations for every one that it proposed,” Balash said. “Unfortunately, I think we need about a decade of that to get back to a reasonable place.”

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in April, we noticed fisherman Jerry Leeman was impressively adept at anti-offshore wind media relations work, and wondered if he was receiving assistance from professional disinformation operatives. Then last month, we spotted a tell suggesting Leeman was working with none other than Steve Milloy, the template for tobacco shills turned climate deniers, to launch his new fishing lobby group. Now, we’ve spotted another clue that Leeman's career change from the high seas to lobbying for the fishing industry has some big fish on the line.

Yesterday, The Daily Signal, the Heritage Foundation's disinformation website posing as media, announced that "A conservative nonprofit launched by former Vice President Mike Pence is representing 11 conservative groups in supporting fishermen challenging the extensive power of the federal bureaucracy."

the 11 groups filing an amicus curiae brief to tell SCOTUS to deconstruct the administrative state are basically a handy list of the current crop of Koch-world front groups, including "Project 21 Black Leadership Network," the "Young America Foundation" that trains right-wing propagandists, and "Students for Life of America", whoseboard includes the billion-dollar donationrecipient Leonard Leo. (And of course Pence's political career {was revived by Koch cash}_ and the Heritage Foundation has been _{funded by Koch et al}.)

So what do the Koch fronts say to one another? Well, they’re scheming to try to convince the Supreme Court (which Leonard Leo packed) to overturn the Chevron Deference, a long standing judicial precedent giving federal agencies like the EPA and FDA the necessary latitude to enforce the statutes Congress writes. Last year, before the Supreme Court turned "major questions" from right-wing industry dreams into a reality, we and many others explained that SCOTUS may narrow or eliminate the Chevron deference, and severely constrain the federal government's ability to regulate.

SCOTUS didn't go that far with "major questions" last year, but this term, they've taken a case calling for the Chevron ruling to be overturned: Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo. At issue? The federal government's regulation of the fishing industry.

And who should turn up in not one but two stories last May (in Fox and the National Review, a Koch-backed disinfo outlet) as the working-class fisherman who's also able to give quotes about Loper Bright and the regulations being challenged? And who was the podcast guest in *another* Daily Signal piece in June about regulations harming the fishing industry?

That's right — none other than Jerry Leeman! Seems even as he was writing op-eds about how he's "a trawler" who "cannot run a net off the back of my boat with wind turbines obstructing the water column," he was also trawling the murky waters of disinfo media.

:{:{Yet a month later, he}::{:{ reportedly "stepped away" from fishing, and it would seem that's because he landed the most lucrative of all catches: a position in the Koch disinfo machine.}:

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fox

no wholesome fam pix

New fishermen's alliance seeks to fight back against Biden admin's 'hostile' attacks

'Almost no one is standing up for New England’s working families, so NEFSA will,' group's executive director tells Fox News Digital

Thomas Catenacci fox news

Maine lobstermen suing enviornmental group for defamation

Main Lobstermen's Association attorney Kevin Lipson discuss the lawsuit against an environmental group over alleged false claims

EXCLUSIVE: Marine industry stakeholdersare joining forces this week to establish the New England Fishermen Stewardship Association (NEFSA), a first-of-its-kind effort to fight back against federal regulations targeting fishermen. 

NEFSA – the first umbrella organization representing New England fishermen at a national level– fills an "urgent" need because fishermen don't have a large organized lobby or political presence, the group told Fox News Digital. But, they said, the region's fishing industry has faced a regulatory assault that is threatening thousands of small business operators' way of life.

"Fishermen and fishing communities are facing oblivion thanks to their own government," Jerry Leeman, who will serve as NEFSA's executive director, told Fox News Digital. "Hostile regulators are steadily eroding our ability to make a living, while the offshore wind industry threatens the fleet's access to productive fishing grounds and disrupts the aquatic environment." 

According to the group's mission statement, NEFSA is an "alliance of harvesters of our ocean’s food supply" dedicated to educating the public about food management through sound science and best conservation practices with a view toward economic well-being, sustainability and U.S. food security.

BLUE-COLLAR LOBSTERMEN SUE ENVIRONMENTAL GROUP FOR DEFAMATION: 'THE HARM IS INTENTIONAL'

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Maine lobstermen

Maine lobstermen haul in their catch off the state's coast. (Maine Lobstermen's Association/Marketing Collaborative)

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NEFSA will particularly focus on federal regulations enforcing an 82% reduction in haddock landings for commercial fishermen, rules requiring less-effective nets the group says disadvantage American fishermen compared to Canadian competitors, and onerous whale-protection regulations restricting gear lobstermen are allowed to use. The group said it is prepared to pursue litigation as part of its efforts.

While the lobstermen rules were temporarily halted late last year following a successful push from Maine's congressional delegation and industry groups, NEFSA said it remains concerned about the possibility of the regulations returning.

GREEN GROUPS TARGETING BLUE-COLLAR LOBSTERMEN ARE LARGELY FUNDED BY DARK MONEY

And in another example of a regulation NEFSA will seek to protect fishermen from, the National Marine Fisheries Service unexpectedly locked up a vast area off the coast of Massachusetts for three months earlier this year. The rule required fishermen to remove gear from the water and prohibited new gear through Monday.

"Almost no one is standing up for New England’s working families, so NEFSA will," said Leeman.

The Bridges family — which includes fourth, fifth and sixth generation lobstermen — from Corea, Maine, is pictured. Bryan Bridges says if he can't sell lobster, it will cause "extreme hardship" for his family.

The Bridges family, including fourth-, fifth- and sixth-generation lobstermen, from Corea, Maine. Bryan Bridges says if he can't sell lobster, it will cause "extreme hardship" for his family. (Cheryl Clegg/Cheryl Clegg Photography)

While NEFSA states it is not opposed to green energy, the group will fight against offshore wind development in New England waters, which it argues blocks fleet access to productive fishing grounds and disrupts the marine environment. The Biden administration is currently seeking to lease federal waters in Maine and Massachusetts to wind developers.

In previous analyses, the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, which oversees wind leasing in federal waters, has acknowledged that offshore wind development would likely lead to large productive areas being abandoned by commercial fisheries. 

The group also expects to publish a report in the next month highlighting the dangers posed by offshore wind and will platform a whistleblower who has first-hand experience of offshore wind surveys that uncovered the extent to which offshore wind construction would harm the environment.

CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP

NEFSA's board will be nonpartisan, with Republicans, Democrats and independents, and will be composed of scientists, businessmen and fishermen. Allison Hawkes, a wharf-owner and lobster dealer; Ronald Musetti, the co-founder of the Nor’Easter Pound & Market, a restaurant in Northeast Harbor, Maine; and researcher Robert Burke will be among its board members.

Dustin Delano, a fourth-generation lobsterman and vice president of the Maine Lobstermen’s Association, will serve as NEFSA's chief operations officer.

As part of its start, NEFSA will launch a five-figure digital ad campaign in Maine and Massachusetts highlighting its mission.

Thomas Catenacciis a politics writer for Fox News Digital.

via rww

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/offshore-wind-moratorium-whale-deaths_n_642599d9e4b02a8d518d12f0

no pix lnx twt

federal officials have repeatedly stressed that there is no evidence linking offshore wind development along the East Coast to a recent string of whale deaths.

Regardless, GOP lawmakers are citing those deaths in an effort to ban offshore wind — the latest in a growing, misinformation-rich campaign to stymie a ballooning renewable energy sector that stands to compete with America’s powerful oil and gas industry.

:{“The current system in place has allowed offshore wind to move forward too quickly & too recklessly in an attempt to solidify the legacies of green new deal advocates,”Rep. Jeff Van Drew (R-N.J.) wrote in a Twitter thread last week. “They hurt the environment, raise energy prices, & will destroy existing industry.”

Van Drew is part of a group of Republicans who introduced a resolution this month that calls for an immediate federal moratorium on offshore wind leasing and construction activity pending the outcome of an investigation to “determine the true impacts” of this development.}:

The resolution specifically notes that 23 dead whales have washed up along the East Coast since December and accuses regulatory agencies of having “an unclear process for determining all contributing causes of death of whales through necropsies.”

Along with Van Drew, the measure currently has five other GOP co-sponsors: Reps. Marjorie Taylor Green (Ga.), Andy Harris (Md.), Chris Smith (N.J.), Scott Perry (Pa.) and Anthony D’Esposito (N.Y.).

[ pix Offshore wind energy opponents gather during a "Save the Whales" rally on Feb. 19 in Point Pleasant, New Jersey.]

To be clear, there are a lot of unknowns about how offshore wind will impact wildlife and marine ecosystems in the short and long term. Like all other offshore industries, wind development has the potential to disrupt and harm whales and otherwise negatively impact the ocean environment.

But the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and independent scientists have for months been pushing back against sweeping claims that offshore wind activities, including sonar surveys, are to blame for recent whale deaths. Such misinformation has featured prominently on Fox News and other conservative media in recent months.

“When you think about this obsession with green energy — the argument is always like ‘oil and gas is so bad for the environment,’” Fox News host Laura Ingraham said on her show March 10. “How ironic that what they are doing is almost certainly killing large swaths of the whale population.”

Greene, one of Congress’ proudest conspiracy theorists, has peddled similar nonsense. In an interview with Fox News host Sean Hannity in February, she claimed — again, without evidence — that whales are washing up because of “wind farms that are being placed all over the ocean.”

“People are calling the alarms over how [wind farms] are not only killing unknown thousands of bird species but also causing whales to beach themselves at record numbers,” Greene said.

There are only two small wind farms in operation in U.S waters, one off the coast of Rhode Island and another off Virginia. Together, they have just seven turbines and a capacity of 42 megawatts.

More than a dozen other large-scale projects are in various stages of permitting and development, but none are currently under construction — a reality that makes the conservative narrative particularly deceitful.

As part of a broader climate agenda, the Biden administration set a goal of securing 30 gigawatts of offshore wind energy by 2030, enough to power 10 million homes for a year and cut 78 million metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions. So far, it has granted final approval to two major offshore wind projects: the long-stalled Vineyard Wind project off the coast of Massachusetts, and South Fork Wind project off Rhode Island.

The recent whale strandings are part of what federal authorities have classified as an “unusual mortality event” that dates back to 2016.

“At this point, there is no evidence that noise resulting from wind development-related site characterization surveys could potentially cause mortality of whales, and no specific links between recent large whale mortalities and currently ongoing surveys,” reads an FAQ on the NOAA’s website.

Rather, officials have pointed to vessel strikes and entanglement in fishing gear— the two biggest human threats to whales, including humpbacks and the critically endangered North Atlantic right whale.At least 190 humpback whales have died along the East Coast since 2016. Forty percent of the animals that underwent necropsies showed signs of being struck by a boat or an entanglement.

“Since December 1, 2022, injuries consistent with vessel strike were identified in many of the animals necropsied,” Lauren Gaches, spokesperson for NOAA Fisheries, told Inside Climate News this month.

Conservative lawmakers and media outlets are following the lead of fossil fuel-allied groups in exploiting whales to fight offshore wind. As HuffPost reported in November, anti-offshore wind groups, including some of the nation’s most hard-line climate change denial outfits, have branded themselves guardians of the endangered right whale as they threaten legal action against newly approved offshore wind projects.

:{

Meanwhile, these same groups have advocated for increased offshore drilling while remaining silent about the documented threats to whales posed by oil and gas development.}: The NOAA estimates that 22% of the population of the endangered Rice’s whale in the Gulf of Mexico was lost as a result of the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill.

[The Block Island Wind Farm off Rhode Island is the first commercial offshore wind farm in the United States.

Those groups include the Heartland Institute and the Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow, better known as CFACT,both of which have long histories of peddling climate change disinformation and cheerleading for the fossil fuel industry. In one of the more ironic and laughable moves of this anti-wind crusade, Peter Murphy, a senior fellow at CFACT, labeled the Biden administration “deniers” on par with the tobacco industry.

“As with the tabacco [sic] companies of yesteryear that disputed their product caused cancer, the Biden NOAA and climate-change cohorts are deniers, claiming there is ‘no evidence’ off-shore wind sites are harming whales,” Murphy wrote in a March 18 post to CFACT’s website, without presenting evidence to the contrary. “Rather, the agency attributes some of whale fatalities to ‘pre-mortem vessel strike,’ while conceding ‘more research is needed.’”

It is no secret that the tobacco and fossil fuel industries have a shared playbook for downplaying and dismissing the harm they have caused. In fact, a trove of documents compiled in 2016 by the Washington-based Center for International Environmental Law, or CIEL, showed that tobacco and oil giants have worked collaboratively for over half a century, sharing marketing and advertising strategies, research institutes, PR firms and even scientists.

:{

CFACT is a member of the Cooler Heads Coalition, a group of conservative charities and nonprofits “focused on dispelling the myths of global warming,” according to its website. Between 1997 and 2007, CFACT received nearly $600,000 from oil giant ExxonMobil.}:

Few if any oil companies have done more to sow doubt about human-caused climate change than ExxonMobil.

In this July 31, 2010, file photo, a dolphin swims through an oil sheen from the Deepwater Horizon oil spill off East Grand Terre Island, where the Gulf of Mexico meets Barataria Bay, on the Louisiana coast.

In his post, Murphy concluded that “at the very least, there needs to be a moratorium on construction of off-shore wind turbines, which from a climate perspective alone are ineffective and a colossal waste, and now hazardous to the largest mammals on the planet.”

:{

Three days later, Republicans introduced their resolution for an offshore wind moratorium.}:

Among other things, the resolution declares that “Atlantic coast offshore wind leases represent a transformative industrialization of vital environmental and maritime resources of the United States.”

There is no question wind farms will industrialize large swaths of U.S. waters. But one of the biggest threats to global ocean health is the burning of planet-warming fossil fuels. Oceans have absorbed an estimated 93% of the excess heat from human-caused climate change. This ocean warming has come with devastating impacts, from mass bleaching of coral reefs to the collapse of fisheries.

The NOAA notes on its website that whales, including the endangered right whale, are particularly vulnerable to climate change, as warming ocean temperatures impact the availability of zooplankton and other prey.

Without a herculean global effort to shift away from fossil fuels and halt planetary warming, scientists warn the impacts to the ocean and marine life will continue to mount.

“The percentage of animal species exposed to potentially dangerous conditions increases significantly the faster the world warms,” climate scientist Katharine Hayhoe tweeted this month, summarizing a finding of the latest United Nations climate report. “In general, ocean species like coral and tropical species are most at risk.”

Offshore wind could ultimately help rein in fossil fuel emissions and combat the global crisis — if disinformation doesn’t get in the way.

Media Matters, a media watchdog group, published a report last week that found that of the 288 Facebook posts from right-wing media in January and February that mentioned wind energy, a whopping 84% included unsubstantiated claims that offshore wind farms impact whale populations. The most popular post was a clip from Fox News’ Jesse Watterstitled “Wind Surveying is KILLING our Whales.”

Related

Republican Party

renewable energy

Whales

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Climate Deniers Exploit Endangered Whales In Bid To Kill Offshore Wind

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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Over the past several days Fox networks have aired numerous segments insinuating that the recent deaths of whales across New York and New Jersey beaches are due to the development of offshore wind turbines.

There is no evidence to back up these claims.

NOAA Fisheries, the office within the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration responsible for the management of marine life, specifically addressed the question on January 24. NOAA stated that the recent whale deaths are “not related to offshore wind development.” The agency further wrote, “Of the whales examined, about 40 percent had evidence of human interaction, either ship strike or entanglement. Vessel strikes and entanglement in fishing gear are the greatest human threats to large whales.” Indeed, nearly 3,000 ships passed through the Port of New York and New Jersey, near where whale deaths are occurring, in the last year — “a figure that vastly undercounts all the ocean traffic in the region and dwarfs the number of vessels that have anything to do with offshore wind.”

Importantly, NOAA Fisheries noted climate change as a contributing factor in the whale deaths. The world’s oceans are rapidly warming, with temperatures reaching a record high in 2022. This is forcing a change in the migration patterns of marine life, including whales, and “can lead to increased interactions with humans as some whales move closer to near shore habitats,” the agency writes.

Additionally, there aren’t even any wind turbines off of the coast of New Jersey. The whale deaths have also been happening at an increased rate since at least 2016, the NOAA reports, which long predates any offshore wind development in the region.

This is not stopping Fox from promulgating claims that offshore wind is killing these whales

On the January 30 edition of **Tucker Carlson Tonight**, Tucker Carlson sarcastically mocked a Politico article which stated that “there is no evidence the wind work and whale deaths are linked.”

“We have no idea why a dozen whales just turned up dead on the beaches of New Jersey,” Carlson said. “Does it have anything to do with the construction of wind turbines off the coast? ‘That's speculation,’ Politico reported. ‘Probably climate change.’ So the story was ridiculous, but what we didn’t get at first was that Politico was paid to run it.”

Carlson took issue with the fact that the article was featured in a newsletter sponsored by the Natural Resources Defense Council, later calling Politico “prostitutes” for publishing another article sponsored by offshore wind turbine manufacturers. In reality, Politico’s energy newsletters are typically sponsored by energy companies, not environmental groups — with the vast majority of these sponsorships coming from fossil fuel companies.

The next night, Carlson stated that “so-called green NGOs, supported of course by the people they give money to in the Biden administration, are backing the construction of massive offshore wind turbines that appear to bekilling large numbers of whales.” Carlson then hosted a local Republican politician from Nassau County, New York, who called “going all-electric” a “danger to our America,” and stated that “there will always be fossil fuels, at least in my lifetime.”

Carlson’s two recent segments follow a January 13 segment detailing “The Biden whale extinction.” (Another chyron during that episode read “Green New Deal wind farms are killing whales.”)

Questions about offshore wind development were also raised on Fox during the January 31 editions of both America’s Newsroom, with reporter Alexis McAdams stating, “As the whale deaths continue, some lawmakers and activists are calling for a hold on the preparations for offshore wind projects,” and The Story, with guest anchor Trace Gallagher stating, “It's the eighth whale to die along the shore of New Jersey and New York in the last two months, fueling the debate about whether the deaths are natural or maybe related to nearby offshore wind projects and the push to go green.”

Several more such segments covering the whale deaths ran on February 1. On Fox Business’ Varney & Co., correspondent Madison Alworth discussed the costs of offshore wind development without noting the massive economic benefits to local and state communities before stating, “All of this is the cost of this clean energy, but as you heard these conservationists saying it's costing our environment even more, and we're already seeing that expense.”

“Not in my backyard,” concluded host Stuart Varney.

Another segment on The Story began with Gallagher stating that, “The mayors of a dozen New Jersey towns [are] now calling for an immediate halt on plans to build thousands of offshore wind turbines as coastal communities raise concerns about the number of whales washing up dead on nearby beaches and soaring financial costs threaten the push to go green.”

Later, Alworth began a segment on Special Report with Bret Baier by claiming “conservationists say that offshore wind turbines are far from clean and may be doing more harm than good for the environment.” She ended the report by again mentioning the economic costs associated with wind turbines and none of the financial benefits.

Finally, Jesse Watters Primetime ran two segments linking offshore wind development to the whale deaths. In one, Alworth cited “conservationists” concerned with whale deaths saying “this clean energy might not be clean at all,” and she again brought up the economic costs of wind turbines without mentioning their benefits. In the second, host Jesse Watters interviewed ex-Greenpeace Canada member Patrick Moore to rail against renewable energy and complain that Greenpeace has been compromised by wind companies. Watters ended the segment by stating that wind turbines are “not good for the Jersey shore, for the Atlantic Ocean, and, as you said, it's not great for consumers either.”

Fox’s guests are not scientists — they have fossil fuel connections and an interest in blocking renewable energy development

Moore is a climate science denier who has consulted for polluting companies. He also (falsely) claims that he is a founder of Greenpeace, which allows Fox to paint him as a credible guest on climate, energy, and environmental issues.

Watters also tried this trick — obfuscating the credibility of an environmental advocate — in an earlier segment on offshore wind and whale deaths. On January 11, Mike Dean of Protect Our Coast NJ was labeled as an “ocean advocate,” and Dean went on to baselessly blame wind development for whale deaths, declaring, “The harms with these projects and the costs are limitless, and it’s really hard to find any benefits at all.” Fox did not note that Dean’s group appears to be backed by the Caesar Rodney Institute, a libertarian think tank with a history of hostility toward climate and environmental policies. The institute has also received funding from the fossil fuel industry, which has a long history of blocking renewable energy projects.

On the January 13 edition of Tucker Carlson Tonight, Carlson hostedMeghan Lapp, a fisheries liaison for the fishing company Seafreeze. Lapp claimed, without evidence, thatoffshore wind development means “essentially carpet bombing the ocean floor with intense sound.” In fact, Lapp has been appearing on Fox News since at least 2019 insinuating that offshore wind development is killing whales. She even appeared in Carlson’s 2021 anti-wind documentary which was chock full of misinformation and debunked talking points.

What has not been mentioned on Fox, and what has been excellently reported on by climate writer Michael Thomas, is that Lapp is a fossil fuel industry ally. Her campaign to stop offshore wind development has been**:{bankrolled by T:(style="background-color:#ff9900;"):}::{exas Public Policy Foundatio:(style="background-color:#ff6600;"):}:**:{n:(style="background-color:#ff6600;"):}:, a fossil fuel-funded think tank that has fought climate policies tooth and nail. TPPF, of course, has spent decades advocating for offshore oil drilling — choosing to downplay the horrific environmental impacts of that practice while embellishing the impacts of offshore wind development.

Finally, Bonnie Brady of the Long Island Commercial Fishing Association appeared on the aforementioned Varney & Co., The Story, and Special Report segments on February 1. Brady, like Lapp, is being backed by TPPFin her campaign to stop offshore wind development. Last year, both Lapp and Brady appeared in a TPPF film entitled “A Heavy Wind: The Threat to an American Heritage,” which detailed commercial fishermen fighting offshore wind projects.

One recent Fox segment interspersed with their offshore wind coverage illustrates the complete hypocrisy of Fox’s climate-related programming

During Fox’s fearmongering about offshore wind development on February 1, America Reports ran a segment with Sen. Dan Sullivan (R-AK) that sang the praises of the Willow Project, a major oil and gas drilling project in Alaska’s national petroleum reserve. Sullivan called the project “actually really good for our environment,” while Fox anchor John Roberts noted some benefits of the project, including billions in revenue and hundreds of jobs created.

While Roberts did ask a question about climate advocates not wanting to lock the U.S. into more fossil fuel extraction, this segment did not mention the massive environmental costs associated with the project. Environmental advocate and journalist Bill McKibben noted in a recent article on the project that Alaska is “already warming faster than almost any place on the planet.Warming so fast that taxpayers are already having to pony up huge sums of money to relocate coastal villages inland. Emissions from the Willow project’s oil would cause $19.8 billion in climate damages; it would generate $3.4 billion in federal tax revenue, which is…a lot less.”

McKibben also cited a Center for American Progress analysis of the project which found that “allowing the Willow project to proceed would result in double the carbon pollution that all renewable progress on public lands and waters would save by 2030.”

Contrast Fox’s fawning coverage of an oil drilling project with its dismissive, conspiracy theory-laden, and climate denial-infused coverage of offshore wind, and you get a perfect sense of why Fox cannot be trusted on climate and environmental issues. While it’s true that there are valid concerns with offshore wind’s impacts on the environment and local marine life — something that has been taken into consideration by government authorities in reviewing previous offshore wind projects —the reality is that fossil fuel projects are significantly more detrimental to the environment and climate than renewable projects.

You will rarely if ever hear these facts reported on Fox, as the network has time and again proved to be nothing more than a mouthpiece for the fossil fuel industry, and its offshore wind coverage cannot be taken seriously.

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Over the past several days Fox networks have aired numerous segments insinuating that the recent deaths of whales across New York and New Jersey beaches are due to the development of offshore wind turbines.

There is no evidence to back up these claims.

NOAA Fisheries, the office within the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration responsible for the management of marine life, specifically addressed the question on January 24. NOAA stated that the recent whale deaths are “not related to offshore wind development.” The agency further wrote, “Of the whales examined, about 40 percent had evidence of human interaction, either ship strike or entanglement. Vessel strikes and entanglement in fishing gear are the greatest human threats to large whales.” Indeed, nearly 3,000 ships passed through the Port of New York and New Jersey, near where whale deaths are occurring, in the last year — “a figure that vastly undercounts all the ocean traffic in the region and dwarfs the number of vessels that have anything to do with offshore wind.”

Importantly, NOAA Fisheries noted climate change as a contributing factor in the whale deaths. The world’s oceans are rapidly warming, with temperatures reaching a record high in 2022. This is forcing a change in the migration patterns of marine life, including whales, and “can lead to increased interactions with humans as some whales move closer to near shore habitats,” the agency writes.

Additionally, there aren’t even any wind turbines off of the coast of New Jersey. The whale deaths have also been happening at an increased rate since at least 2016, the NOAA reports, which long predates any offshore wind development in the region.

This is not stopping Fox from promulgating claims that offshore wind is killing these whales

On the January 30 edition of **Tucker Carlson Tonight**, Tucker Carlson sarcastically mocked a Politico article which stated that “there is no evidence the wind work and whale deaths are linked.”

“We have no idea why a dozen whales just turned up dead on the beaches of New Jersey,” Carlson said. “Does it have anything to do with the construction of wind turbines off the coast? ‘That's speculation,’ Politico reported. ‘Probably climate change.’ So the story was ridiculous, but what we didn’t get at first was that Politico was paid to run it.”

Carlson took issue with the fact that the article was featured in a newsletter sponsored by the Natural Resources Defense Council, later calling Politico “prostitutes” for publishing another article sponsored by offshore wind turbine manufacturers. In reality, Politico’s energy newsletters are typically sponsored by energy companies, not environmental groups — with the vast majority of these sponsorships coming from fossil fuel companies.

The next night, Carlson stated that “so-called green NGOs, supported of course by the people they give money to in the Biden administration, are backing the construction of massive offshore wind turbines that appear to bekilling large numbers of whales.” Carlson then hosted a local Republican politician from Nassau County, New York, who called “going all-electric” a “danger to our America,” and stated that “there will always be fossil fuels, at least in my lifetime.”

Carlson’s two recent segments follow a January 13 segment detailing “The Biden whale extinction.” (Another chyron during that episode read “Green New Deal wind farms are killing whales.”)

Questions about offshore wind development were also raised on Fox during the January 31 editions of both America’s Newsroom, with reporter Alexis McAdams stating, “As the whale deaths continue, some lawmakers and activists are calling for a hold on the preparations for offshore wind projects,” and The Story, with guest anchor Trace Gallagher stating, “It's the eighth whale to die along the shore of New Jersey and New York in the last two months, fueling the debate about whether the deaths are natural or maybe related to nearby offshore wind projects and the push to go green.”

Several more such segments covering the whale deaths ran on February 1. On Fox Business’ Varney & Co., correspondent Madison Alworth discussed the costs of offshore wind development without noting the massive economic benefits to local and state communities before stating, “All of this is the cost of this clean energy, but as you heard these conservationists saying it's costing our environment even more, and we're already seeing that expense.”

“Not in my backyard,” concluded host Stuart Varney.

Another segment on The Story began with Gallagher stating that, “The mayors of a dozen New Jersey towns [are] now calling for an immediate halt on plans to build thousands of offshore wind turbines as coastal communities raise concerns about the number of whales washing up dead on nearby beaches and soaring financial costs threaten the push to go green.”

Later, Alworth began a segment on Special Report with Bret Baier by claiming “conservationists say that offshore wind turbines are far from clean and may be doing more harm than good for the environment.” She ended the report by again mentioning the economic costs associated with wind turbines and none of the financial benefits.

Finally, Jesse Watters Primetime ran two segments linking offshore wind development to the whale deaths. In one, Alworth cited “conservationists” concerned with whale deaths saying “this clean energy might not be clean at all,” and she again brought up the economic costs of wind turbines without mentioning their benefits. In the second, host Jesse Watters interviewed ex-Greenpeace Canada member Patrick Moore to rail against renewable energy and complain that Greenpeace has been compromised by wind companies. Watters ended the segment by stating that wind turbines are “not good for the Jersey shore, for the Atlantic Ocean, and, as you said, it's not great for consumers either.”

Fox’s guests are not scientists — they have fossil fuel connections and an interest in blocking renewable energy development

Moore is a climate science denier who has consulted for polluting companies. He also (falsely) claims that he is a founder of Greenpeace, which allows Fox to paint him as a credible guest on climate, energy, and environmental issues.

Watters also tried this trick — obfuscating the credibility of an environmental advocate — in an earlier segment on offshore wind and whale deaths. On January 11, Mike Dean of Protect Our Coast NJ was labeled as an “ocean advocate,” and Dean went on to baselessly blame wind development for whale deaths, declaring, “The harms with these projects and the costs are limitless, and it’s really hard to find any benefits at all.” Fox did not note that Dean’s group appears to be backed by the Caesar Rodney Institute, a libertarian think tank with a history of hostility toward climate and environmental policies. The institute has also received funding from the fossil fuel industry, which has a long history of blocking renewable energy projects.

On the January 13 edition of Tucker Carlson Tonight, Carlson hostedMeghan Lapp, a fisheries liaison for the fishing company Seafreeze. Lapp claimed, without evidence, thatoffshore wind development means “essentially carpet bombing the ocean floor with intense sound.” In fact, Lapp has been appearing on Fox News since at least 2019 insinuating that offshore wind development is killing whales. She even appeared in Carlson’s 2021 anti-wind documentary which was chock full of misinformation and debunked talking points.

What has not been mentioned on Fox, and what has been excellently reported on by climate writer Michael Thomas, is that Lapp is a fossil fuel industry ally. Her campaign to stop offshore wind development has been**:{bankrolled by T:(style="background-color:#ff9900;"):}::{exas Public Policy Foundatio:(style="background-color:#ff6600;"):}:**:{n:(style="background-color:#ff6600;"):}:, a fossil fuel-funded think tank that has fought climate policies tooth and nail. TPPF, of course, has spent decades advocating for offshore oil drilling — choosing to downplay the horrific environmental impacts of that practice while embellishing the impacts of offshore wind development.

Finally, Bonnie Brady of the Long Island Commercial Fishing Association appeared on the aforementioned Varney & Co., The Story, and Special Report segments on February 1. Brady, like Lapp, is being backed by TPPFin her campaign to stop offshore wind development. Last year, both Lapp and Brady appeared in a TPPF film entitled “A Heavy Wind: The Threat to an American Heritage,” which detailed commercial fishermen fighting offshore wind projects.

One recent Fox segment interspersed with their offshore wind coverage illustrates the complete hypocrisy of Fox’s climate-related programming

During Fox’s fearmongering about offshore wind development on February 1, America Reports ran a segment with Sen. Dan Sullivan (R-AK) that sang the praises of the Willow Project, a major oil and gas drilling project in Alaska’s national petroleum reserve. Sullivan called the project “actually really good for our environment,” while Fox anchor John Roberts noted some benefits of the project, including billions in revenue and hundreds of jobs created.

While Roberts did ask a question about climate advocates not wanting to lock the U.S. into more fossil fuel extraction, this segment did not mention the massive environmental costs associated with the project. Environmental advocate and journalist Bill McKibben noted in a recent article on the project that Alaska is “already warming faster than almost any place on the planet.Warming so fast that taxpayers are already having to pony up huge sums of money to relocate coastal villages inland. Emissions from the Willow project’s oil would cause $19.8 billion in climate damages; it would generate $3.4 billion in federal tax revenue, which is…a lot less.”

McKibben also cited a Center for American Progress analysis of the project which found that “allowing the Willow project to proceed would result in double the carbon pollution that all renewable progress on public lands and waters would save by 2030.”

Contrast Fox’s fawning coverage of an oil drilling project with its dismissive, conspiracy theory-laden, and climate denial-infused coverage of offshore wind, and you get a perfect sense of why Fox cannot be trusted on climate and environmental issues. While it’s true that there are valid concerns with offshore wind’s impacts on the environment and local marine life — something that has been taken into consideration by government authorities in reviewing previous offshore wind projects —the reality is that fossil fuel projects are significantly more detrimental to the environment and climate than renewable projects.

You will rarely if ever hear these facts reported on Fox, as the network has time and again proved to be nothing more than a mouthpiece for the fossil fuel industry, and its offshore wind coverage cannot be taken seriously.

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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.