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

I read the article but it's still unclear what argument the anti-wind groups use to say _why_ "wind is bad for environment/our children/the economy/greater good"?

Ruins the view, kills birds, noisy is the usual trifecta. Or to quote one site I won't deign to link to, "Protecting the marine environment and ecosystems from the industrialisation of our oceans."

Of course, the same folks have no objections whatsoever to offshore drilling.

Those are the weaker arguments. In the UK, I've heard many more convincing arguments against wind power.

e.g.

- Often wind typically need to be subsidised heavily by the government and are not cost effective over its lifetime.

- Typically wind needs to be backed up by fossil fuel or nuclear power generators as it is unreliable or you need to buy capacity from elsewhere.

I won't pretend to know enough to state whether they are valid arguments or not. But they are potentially much stronger arguments against wind power than the others frequently made.

The problem is the cost of oil is downstream. The reasons why citizens want an alternative is because of those costs. If you added on all the environmental and health costs — all of them — you'd find oil is being subsidized in a different way.

I'm not even antioil in general but I am pro diversification, and think it's absurd to bring up government in that way when a major point of government should be to represent value for the citizens, that might not be represented in the market otherwise.