LinkedIn Climate/Energy Debate: An Exchange of Note

By Hans Wolkers -- June 8, 2023

“Oil industry lobbyists are not worthwhile humans. It’s not a real job, it is corruption and beneath contempt. Taking bribe money to spread propaganda that results in genocide is sub human.” Tom Trounce (below)

I recently had an ‘interesting’ discussion on social media with a strong advocate for (dilute, intermittent) ‘renewable’ energies. My critic, an angry foe of fossil fuels, didn’t present solid arguments but only ad hominems, followed by trash talk. Such is the unfortunate part of debating climate/energy issues on LinkedIn, where certain (brainwashed?) alarmists work to discredit and marginalize their opponents.

Tom Trounce was the bad guy. His profile at LinkedIn advertises:

What? Improving lives, compassion, integrity. Judge for yourself by his social media comments below.

“This feed is being boycotted by trolls (lobbyists paid by the oil industry, same as big Ag, and big tobacco aggressively tried to disseminate false science as well before finally being made to pay up). The best thing to do is block the trolls so they dont get into your feed. There are a few in the thread below

John Wickens
John Casiano
Rob Bradley
Hans Wolkers”

… I have no intention of convincing any troll paid by the Oil industry to spew propagandized fake science, to change their stance.

… [Hans,] maybe try reading the thread again, then try using reason. It’s a gift. Also, Oil industry lobbyists are not worthwhile humans. It’s not a real job, it is corruption and beneath contempt. Taking bribe money to spread propaganda that results in genocide is sub human

I’m sorry to say that Hans is a climate denier posing as an environmentalist. Maybe he is funded by Shell.

more nonsense. When compared to oil and gas, the negative environmental impact from renewables is negligible. CO2 ppm and CH4 ppm is the only metric that measure large scale, long term environmental destruction.

‘Black List’ Renewables

Tom Trounce is clearly not aware of the many scientific papers on the devastating impacts on man, nature, and environment from ‘renewables’. I posted this eight-point list (with two added for this post) for his review. Every single point is backed-up by references to make the point. Trounce’s reaction was just more canceling and calling names like ‘climate denier’ (how cheap and unscientific). No arguments whatsoever….

1. Production of renewables costs a lot of energy and metals, about 10+ times more than fossil, which are extracted with great environmental and natural damage. They contain many materials that are not renewable: https://energy.glex.no/feature-stories/area-and-material-consumption

2. Renewables have a low energy density and therefore take up an extremely large amount of space: windmills more than 300 times as many as a nuclear power plant. (https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-022-25341-9). Windmills are therefore often at the expense of nature: forests in Germany and Scotland, the North Sea…

3. Windmills have a major impact on birds, bats, but especially insects. In Germany, in areas with windmills, insects were found to have decreased by as much as 85%.

4. There are large amounts of balsa wood in the blades, –> deforestation in the tropics.

5. At sea, they kill birds, but also displace them, resulting in a dramatically shrinking habitat, especially bird fishing grounds

6. Wind turbines have large impact on sea currents with large consequences (https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0160830)

7. The blades wear out and this is how particulate matter and the toxic bisphenol A are released.

8. The lifespan is short, the costs are high if you include all costs: cabling, backup or storage.

9. Recycling is still a problem.

10. Recently in the US: many mysterious whale deaths corresponding to offshore wind development

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Let the debate continue. It is worth a few bad apples to reach the rational middle that will welcome good arguments to quell whatever tinge of ‘climate anxiety’ they might have.