Exposed: The smear tactics against wind and solar 

How do you combat misinformation about climate change?

I'm a waste reduction specialist. I spend a lot of spare time debunking fossil fuel lobbyists who claim that recycling (their) plastic packaging is the solution to creating a more circular economy. The fact is that recycling is only halfway down the chain of priorities, with reduction of waste and refillables being far above. They are relentless, greedy and deliberately misleading people. We are surrounded by conmen.

Combating misinformation always seems to take way more time and energy than it did to put out the misinformation in the first place.

It is like the fossil fuel industry learned from the tobacco industry. They also learned how to make it harder to get caught. If you were making a billion dollars a day from the status quo you would pay a million dollars a day to prevent change.

"Debunking is a hard and thankless job..." I really felt that

I visited a wind farm in Eastern WA where they have a visitor center and give tours. It turns out that the big glass viewing windows on the visitor center killed more birds than the wind turbines on the site.

I’m so glad that you mentioned the dishonesty with picture of the wind turbines in Texas! One proposal which I thought was interesting was to do more “reverse image searching” of memes that gain a lot of traction very quickly. If they’re found to be connected to an older image than the algorithm temporarily stops putting them in front of new viewers until someone can fact check it and ensure that it’s not spreading misinformation.

its now been 6 years after i installed a solar system on my farm . Thats six years of not paying any electricity bill and yet i have all modern amenities . Now am considering adding even more panels.

It's so strange that this video popped up in my recommended! I JUST had to correct my parents after they parroted dis-information about what happened in Texas. They said the grid failure was because the wind turbines froze! I had to explain to them that there are turbines in Alaska, Norway, and even in Oregon where I live, where it freezes every winter! I also explained how the grid actually failed because the Texas power company didn't weatherproof their gas pipelines because they didn't want to spend the money. I also explained that the EPA warned Texas that this exact thing would happen if they got a major winter storm, but it went ignored. I don't think they expected me to be so informed. It's a mind virus. And we all have to do our part to rid the world of this virus!

The fossil fuel industry is strong and good at spreading misinformation. However, what is not mentioned in this video, is that when comes to nuclear energy, which is considered by the IPCC as an important tool against climate change, there is at least the same amount of disinformation spread out there.

In the case of the whole "turbines kill birds" thing, it seems that the fact that people can see them move makes people believe it easier compared to other causes of bird mortality such as power lines, cell towers, cats, windows, and even climate change itself. People generally discount or vastly under-estimate the number of birds killed per year by windows. Up to 1 BILLION a year in the US alone. Compare that to less than 1 million bird deaths per year in the US due to wind turbines.

I understood that Texas's problem wasn't that they used renewables, and more that they didn't adequately protect them against extreme conditions, while also lacking the connection to the rest of the grid to fall back on. What I didn't realize was that the poor weatherization measures were so impactful across the board, and that the fossil fuels were actually impacted significantly harder.

All during this presentation I kept thinking this is great info. Who to share it with? Unfortunately the people I think of who most need to see it (my right wing relatives in Texas) would reject it outright and the information would fall on totally deaf ears (assuming they even listened past the first 5 minutes.) But thank you for putting it together, it is interesting. My one complaint is the focus on mainly Texas and US Right wing conspiracy theories. Unfortunately this is a global problem and focusing on the nuts in the US lets other country’s viewers misconstrue that it’s not a problem in their back yards. But this is a start.

Thank you for your service. The only person I bother arguing w/ is my brother, he likes to do his own research and comes back w/ all the points you listed and I counter him w/ the method you used. He pretends to not hear me, so I say it firmer, and then he acts like I am wrong, so I bring up the info and he asks "yeah, but how do you Know?" and I tell him about the scientific method and then he walks away claiming he needs a cigarette.

Good job DW! Great to see the debunk legends getting the recognition they deserve.

Nuclear energy also generates around 15g CO2/kWh. Plus it doesn't require batteries for storage. I think we should view nuclear power generation as a potential solution if not the solution.

Good video! To a degree, the general public is also responsible: first: many people do not want to hear bad news that they may need to change their lifestyles, and second: better education in real science and physics would make people less susceptible to misinformation and disinformation.

This is why we can't have nice things. Great video. Let's just hope the algorithm doesn't shadowban this. Small channels like mine can't talk about these topics or I risk being tucked away by the algo; keep it up.

The world really needed this. Thank you DW :')

Which countries have gone 100% renewable and switched all their other electricity generators off? How is it going in a place like that?

Very interesting topic. There has been an opinion circulating a lot in Greece that the govt is intentionally setting protected natural areas on fire or allowing them to be destroyed so they'll allow wind turbines to be built. The threat to birds is also mentioned a lot, and the aesthetics of renewables in tourist destinations.

Thank you for this video!! Debunking/Informing is hard work and I appreciate this channel for it immensely!

It's inevitable and a waste of time to battle. Like I'd say videos like these are the best you can do to inform the misinformed but they usually are stubborn in their beliefs and don't believe it anyway. Best thing to do is to ignore them and keep working on renewables, don't let them waste your time.

Kann ich mal sagen, dass ihr einen gewaltig guten Job macht!

Finally, thank you At 3:40 a question I've been asking myself for so long is answered. How long does a wind power station have to run to produce the energy that it took to build and set up. Half a year.

What a great video! I really hope that the EU clamps down on misinformation, like they have on online privacy and other public issues.

this was a masterpiece what the heck! do something like this again

You missed some incredibly important aspects here. First off, correct, the power outage in texas was not caused by renewables. However, it should also be common sense that wind and solar energy really isn't as reliable as it depends on the wind and the sun. So you can't completely rely on it, and for some places it is more efficient than other places. Second, It should also be said that solar energy often takes up large amounts of space. In smaller countries this means less farmland, less nature, less housing/industry. Third, energy and electricity are not the same thing. The power cables required for transporting the required amount of electricity have to be at least 10 times thicker. That also means they all have to be replaced. The production of these cables, the replacing of the current cables, and the removal of (gas) infastructure it is replacing, consumes tremendous amounts of recources and produces gigantic amounts of emission. People often forget this aspect. Fourth, the mining of minerals may not cause as much CO2 etc as fossil fuels do, they do cause extremely heavy ground pollution, making places uninhabitable for centuries. This can't be solved in any way, compared to cleanup possibilities with other kinds of pollution. It's like with arsenic dust. Fourth, money. Every aspect of green energy is very expensive. Partially because it requires way more development, and partially because it's very easy to drive up the price of something so new. Last but not least, lithium. It is very important for the imagined green world people want to see. The reserves aren't looking too bad. However, the biggest concern is if supply can keep up with the demand. And how long it takes for the supplies to run out. Don't get me wrong, I am in favor of green energy. However, in my eyes, the 'green' industry is not a hair better than the fossil industry. We had the chance to do it right this time, to build a truly sustainable and fair industry, and we already screwed up. Just like in the fossil industry, there are questionable mines, forced labor, and weird deals. With the minerals laying mostly in countries where human rights are optional. Maybe even more of this than in the fossil industry. It is also undeniable that the green industry does the same campaigning as the fossil industry. Examples of this are companies motivating people to put solar panels in places where the return rate is lower than the cost. They don't care, it's government subsidized, meaning we are indirectly paying for that. But also the massive hype for electric cars even though they're really not that much better than fossil cars right now. In my eyes, green energy just needs some more time to develop. And we skipped important steps such as nuclear fusion and hydrogen, and aren't investing enougg in nuclear fission. First because of the lobbying from fossil industries, but now also because of green industries.

Thank you for doing this (you said debunking is thankless)… 🙂 “Think tank” actually means “marketing consultancy” in this case…

Dw needs to talk about Ecosia they are a search engine that plants trees

could you please do a video like this one but just about nuclear energy ? ( btw this video was amazing)

Identifying our own biases and fears is something that should be taught at school level so that the next generation does not fall prey to misinformation. ❤

I had heard protests about wind turbines off the coast of RI saying that they would "use up all of the wind" and there wouldn't be enough wind left for sail boats. I laughed out loud. Humanity will not die of global warming but due to massive stupidity. I have little hope.

We should start doing exactly the same. Start spreading the facts. As long and as often as you can. This fire can only be fought with fire. Lets use Social Media for our Advantage, too. You dont need to comment yourself if you dont have anything to add, liking does also help to heat up a topic quite much.

7:36 It is pretty interesting how they show how much of a far-right echo chamber 4chan really is it just being a random circle in that inter connected web

Finally, a renowned news channel who dared to called out these lunatics...

Excellent video. We need more of this to a) Reach the "normal people" (parents, hairdressers, office colleagues, etc.) who are influenced by misinformation and b) reach some die-hard misinformation amplifiers. In fact, some of the latter can come around. A lot of them simply weren't taught how to think critically and how to use reliable sources.

I appreciate the effort you make to keep the truth alive.

If they care about Bird strikes so much, then they shouldn't have any windows in their house. More birds die from flying into windows than wind turbines

Back in 1982 Disney World opened a pavilion "Universe Of Energy" where they showed movies about energy production, including oil, wind and solar. But because real world oil refineries are too grimy and dirty looking, they actually hired a Hollywood effects company to fake the footage to show a pleasant Disney-fied view of an oil refinery. There's a video on YT where Ian Hunter talks about the miniature effects they build for this. Just to say, the misinformation has always been there in some form, but it is much more blatant and intense nowadays

Loved the meta-reportage - on the internet, about the internet

Absolutely fabulous! Too bad broadcasters in other countries don't have the same vision and courage!

I saw a movie about the problems with renewable energy a while back. I got the feeling that part of the problem was businesses who were fraudulently doing things that were supposed to be renewable but weren't really. It was also claimed that it was necessary to have fossil fuel power stations idling in case sun and wind both failed at once and that they couldn't easily switch these off and on so they were producing a lot of CO2. This struck me as dubious. Unfortunately, I can't remember what this movie was called or where I saw it, perhaps you could find a debunk it (or show that the problems are due to business fraud rather than inherent problems with green energy).

Brilliant work. I wondered exactly the same thing about the mass of sludge comments I was seeing in online newspaper comments sections.

Thanks for the video. I retired some old solar panels from my roof after 25 years. When tested they were still producing about half their nominal output. The warranty then was 10 years, whereas new panels I have fitted have a 25 year warranty. Household batteries are a cost, though. They require good management. Fortunately in Australia, 97% of battery composition is recycled.

This was a great video. It shows the importance of media literacy and critical thinking.

I tried to install solar panels in my house, the prices they are asking are crazy, just price gouging, it takes more than twenty years to get your money back, "the battery dies much earlier than that" without a battery it takes 30 years

This is one of the saddest thing of our times. A very few sociopaths turning millions of people against each other, just to make those very few people more profit. More money than they could ever spend. We have to grow as a society and learn a few things: Who are socio and psychopaths. How they truly do not care about other beings. Just themselves. We need to learn how to stop them gaining position and power. We need to learn their tactics, we need to learn how to prevent them turning good willing people against each other. If we would know only these few things, I can guarantee you, our life on this planet would be incredibly better in any way.

Didn't even mention the heavy metal contamination smh 🤦‍♂️

I work for an electric utility, and the biggest issue I've always heard, from people in this industry, is that, short of hydro, no renewable energy sources can handle peak demand, or unexpected demand. Normal everyday energy usage is measurable and can be accounted for. But when everyone goes home, energy demand goes up. That's "peak demand". It's an increase as more people fire up their stoves, plug in their cars, stream their favorite shows, and (depending on the time of year) turn on the heat or turn on the air conditioning/fans. The fairly stable, although elevated, energy usage from the day dips during the travel, and then surges back up to a higher volume until everyone goes to bed and the energy uses dip again. With a dramatic shift of vehicles to electric powered, you're going to have a significant demand during the nighttime hours, which is generally when it is less windy and the sun is definitely not shining. I don't know if those renewables would be able to produce so much power during the day that they could handle the normal load and then have ample leftover energy enough to put it into batteries and keep all of those vehicles charging throughout the night. And that is going to be a LOT of power, if you're talking about replacing every fuel burning vehicle with electric. Airplanes, trains, freight trucks, loaders, mining equipment, ships, busses, personal vehicles, military vehicles, military aircraft, tanks, manufacturing equipment, backup generators, and more. I'm all for using some renewables, but there has to be a way to account for peak demand and unexpected demand on the power grid.

I have always encountered these problems on social media. Thanks for clarifying

My favorite are the gripes about how solar wind turbines blades take up landfill space as if all the hardware involved in oil production and distribution just evaporate into thin air when they are retired.

Very nice video, now make on on nuclear that can actually replace fossil fuels for good, unlike renewables which can never be a grid baseload.

Great stuff! Can you now also expose the smear tactics against nuclear? Especially relevant for the domestic viewers of this German channel

"Have you ever come across any bits of misinformation?" Somebody hold my beer...

The style of material is hilarious. Didn't know that journalists could afford such approach. Great work, DW

Thanks for such interesting & entertaining exposing of renewable energy haters!

Good video! People always should keep their eyes open. And yes, it's all about the money, sometimes people forget about that and are being played with.

We are absolutely going to need recycling for all the decommissioned turbines and solar panels, so we need to include that in equation.

It reminds me of this old Donald Duck comic strip I read as a child. I think it was in a comic about Scrooge McDuck's youth when he travelled around the world looking to get rich. At one put he meets the scientist character (I forgot what his name was) who tells him that he invented a revolutionary new form of transportation called an automobile, and it runes on water. To which Scrooge responds with: "That's great, but can you make it run on oil instead?"

I note that the video didn't address the intermittency of wind and solar. Plenty of respectable engineering channels on RU-vid point this out and recognise that storage and/or peaker gas plants are required. If you wanted to cover the topic fully and respond to the unreliability criticism you ought to be talking about that too. Also, given that this channel originates in Germany, I'd be interested in a run down of the current energy production situation there, especially in light of Russia turning off their gas (or the EU countries opting not to buy it). That would make for an interesting analysis given that we outside of Europe hear conflicting reports.

Thank you for the great work DW!

Most people don't care whether what they believe is true or not. They have picked a side like they would with sports, and they will barrack for it to the end. It's just a big game of, "can I turn this idea into the truth?"

The only point you smartly avoid is the dependency of renewables on weather. This is the biggest (and the only significant) drawback of these technologies. We simply can't go full renewable because of this unpredictability. Germany is a great example - they have enough wind turbines to power an entire country from them, but that rarely happens and other means of electricity production still have to be ready at all times. As a result the overall costs for maintenance are still the same.

There is loads of miss information all over the internet on Facebook and RU-vid some intentional and spread by people who believe it. It's hard to tell someone there wrong it's easy to understand something but it's harder to explain that to somebody else. So it's not always easy to fight your corner. Some time I will try and find A article that debunks there claims but it's like talking to a brick wall sometimes.

The biggest issue with wind and solar is and always been storage. A slightly more honest talk about that would be great, most other problems are essentially solved. Sadly the storage one is also really hard to solve fully with it becoming more problematic the large share of the grid renewables are, as currently we Just solve it with other sources of energy mostly gas but that becomes harder when you dont use other sources anymore.

The entire renewables con needs calling out! Because now we're paying 300 to 400% more for what has been sold to us as the cheapest source of energy!

I remember in Norway, maybe around 15 years ago. The government owned TV channel voiced concern about windmills killing birds

Really appreciate this piece. Solid. But putting in a little break with cat videos? GENIUS! 🤣🤣🤣🤣

Why can’t people change their minds? Is it a sure thing that when presented with facts that contradict your worldview people reject those facts? I know I certainly look for new information that expands my worldview and I don’t think I’m the only one out there. This video reinforced most of my current thinking but I appreciate being armed with more information to assert the benefits of green energy.

Excellent and important video. It's worrying how many people wilfully ignore the consensus of entire fields (climate science, life cycle analysis, etc.) in favour of a convenient lie from social media.

Birds killed by wind turbines - 240k. By skyscrapers and cars - 800k. By cats - 2.4 million

Why aren't more programs like these? Great video!

Why didn't you mentioned about your country Germany who's still digging coals and shutting down nuclear power plants (which is the biggest low carbon energy source) despite investing billions in renewables

Someone told me that volcanos add a lot more CO2 in the atmosphere then humans. I know this is not true by a long shot but everyone else in the room accepted that as a fact, specially because they heard this before. Debunking is really hard work!

Fred Perry jacket, nice! Im a right leaning conservative, and i dont mind solar and wind energy. CCP should be our main focus right now. Eliminate trade, and deficit from this country, they've gone off the handle. This problem is more pressing than climate change right now. Keep up the good innovation. We wont stop the population growth, it will stop itself. Meanwhile, were running into resource issues in various enclaves, its inevitable. We will need a huge breakthrough in order to stop carbon production globally, but we have bigger problems with China, so we cant expect the worlds biggest polluter to slow their carbon footprint without global dictatorship. Which do you prefer, freedom, or a comfortable martial law? Anyway, great study, and great approach to your findings! Albeit, i had a couple gag moments with the left-leaning stuff.. Thanks overall!!

Hey could you talk about recycling of Wind Turbins and Solar Panels ? I know they have been some projects to turn wind blades into bridges (but have only been used on a very small scale) and I believe it is right now not cost efficient to recyclable solar panels . Could you do a video about that ? That would be amazing ! Thanks so much for all your videos.

You didn't really talk about the most difficult thing to solve when it comes to renewable energy - ""cold Dunkelflaute", and here is a video by Sabine who does go through research and some basic numbers to see which of the possible technologies might be the best. But in the end it seems the solution is that on top of renewables + storage you also need somewhat decent percentage of base load in nuclear or gas (since they are lowest emittors). Want to do a video about this?

Simple and effective debunk. I only feel like something's missing about the unreliability of solar panels and wind turbines. The fact that wind or sunlight are not always available is really a problem, because the electricity based on these energies may lack at random times, literally. Though it doesn't mean solar panels and turbines are trash, just that only relying on them would be a mistake. Also keeping energy sources able to deliver electricity on demand remains necessary, and it doesn't even require fossil fuels. Dams and nuclear power plants can do that, maybe even sea turbines in the future.

Both sides of the political spectrum receive huge support from their respective lobbyists, funders, etc. Every technology requires emissions to manufacture, requires emissions to maintain, and requires emissions to recycle or disassemble. Depending on the scale of technology often plays directly into the viability of the technology. For example a 400W-5KW residential wind turbine often won't run more than a year or two because they're typically mounted on top of poles or towers and requires special maintenance crews to repair them. I worked for a company that installed solar street lights with 400W dual-turbine systems. A year later we upgraded the solar panels and disconnected the wind turbines because they're garbage.

Had me at sugar daddies.

Media need to do more content like this. You ask "how to you deal with it?". We can't on our own, we need good media organisations to step up and provide more content like this.

I wish I knew how to deal with the misinformation. It has been a real battle. Great video by the way

There is no need for smear tactics or lies to be against push for solar and wind "future". It is enough to look at current performance in real world of different countries. At this very moment Germany makes power with 700g CO2/kWh(purely coal powered Poland 880g), while France goes by with just 113g CO2/kWh. This numbers fluctuate but pretty much always France with heavy Nuclear reliance plus some wind and solar is 4-5 times better (and it is better since 1970s). The fearmongering about nuclear power caused Germany to move backwards with climate goal and also in being great ally and sponsor for putin and not for its NATO allies and neighbours. And all that after spending some 500+GigaEuro on "green transition", and about highest electricity prices in EU. No smear, just real world realities of power generation and keeping the lights on.

Thank you for this debunking! A fantastic video, about how bad a lot of silly ‘jump to conclusion people’ can be for humanity.

The video doesn't talk about how to store the energy, that is the biggest thing. At the end its actually cheaper but if it is more expensive because of batteries or green hydrogen at the end is a negative in a business perspective.

My solar panels and Powerwalls got he through the 44hr Houston blackout during the Texas winter storm.

If Information is a tool, then the exploitation of an individual's subconscious reaction to the information presented (and whether that individual believes the information is true or false) is an extremely powerful weapon.

About the unreliability part, I was disappointed that you spent that section debunking the Texas outage instead of tackling the very real shortcomings of renewables when they make a significant proportion of the grid. Basically, it means you need a lot of reserve fossil fuel power production to compensate for the lack of solar and wind, which is expensive in infrastructure, and might not be very green overall.

You guys need 3M subs underappreciated channel right here!

This video is hopefully one of the many to come, a whole debunking platform / all encompassing information. Thankyou for doing this :)

The weirdest bit of misinformation I had to hear was a claim that electricity from renewable sources were somehow unsuitable to charge phones. As if an elecron set in motion by friction generated by wind is any different from an electron out of a conventional steam turbine 🙄

You didn't actually address the concerns about the irregular availability of renewable energy. How can we ensure adequate energy storage on a large scale?

My problem with solar being used as a primary energy source is how spatially inefficient it is, you have to clear large plots of land to reach parity with other energy sources.

Wow, an eye opener. People would attack me about solar, wind and hydro because fossil fuels and nuclear energy were the way to go for every argument. I always believed that these were great alternatives and that small maintenance is negligible when it came to them lasting 15 - 25 years. Also, the argument of them turning off and people out of energy is just not feasible because of the fact that energy engineers know what they're doing when one energy is low, there is always back up sources. Wind and Solar is still the way to go as a great alternative and there should be much investment put into it for it to continue innovation, research and development.

In UK. There is an anti solar farm programme being circulated. It goes loss of food growing land to solar farms. At same time the UK are growing 1000's hectares of crops. For bio fuel.

"failure of wind turbines was not the biggest problem" so, DW confesses that failure of wind turbines was a big problem, just not the biggest. hardly a debunking.

great work

Getting happier and happier living in Iowa and using MidAmerican as my energy provider. Nearly 88.5% of my electricity came from wind and solar with a large majority from wind in 2021.

"Debunking is a hard and thankless job," Well, allow me to say thank you. Debunking anti-science nonsense is so important.