Anti-wind misinformation is endangering our fight against climate change

A roundup of the climate conversation across social media this week

Welcome to Climate Monitor, a weekly, data-driven report on the digital strategies polluters and pro-Climate groups are using to shift public opinion and move legislation. Here’s what we found: 

Toplines:

• Wind energy is essential in America’s transition to a clean energy future – but that future is in danger as Americans are being bombarded with baseless misinformation and disinformation about wind turbines on social media

• Texas Parks and Wildlife is running new video ads on Facebook and Instagram in an effort to protect their parks and green spaces

• The “lads” on Instagram are very worried that hops yield being affected by climate change might impact beer quality

• An NYC-based climate influencer is planning speed dating event for people who care about climate action

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Digital Advertising Roundup

Facebook + Instagram 👍

For starters, here were the top 25 climate and energy-related advertisers on Facebook and Instagram last week:

(Click on chart to enlarge)

Top spenders on digital ads in the climate and energy space last week were the American Petroleum Institute and the American Chemistry Council (AKA the plastics lobby). This is a longstanding dynamic.

One new and notable campaign this week comes from Nuclear Matters, a grassroots nuclear energy coalition. They are running ads nationwide on Facebook and Instagram that tout the economic benefits of nuclear energy and direct people to their newsletter to learn more about them.

Another notable campaign came from Texas Parks and Wildlife. They are running ads on Facebook and Instagram across Texas to urge voters to vote for Prop. 14 on Election Day 2023, which would establish the Centennial Parks Conservation Fund for Texas’s national parks.

And finally, the New Jersey League of Conservation Voters is also running new ads on Facebook and Instagram in New Jersey ahead of Election Day. These ads name specific candidates as “the best choices to protect our environmental future.”

Google & YouTube 🎞️

There were several new and noteworthy climate or energy advertisers archived by Google last week. Maine Affordable Energy ($46,400) is continuing to run ads that tell Mainers to vote no on Question 3. The NextGen Climate Action Committee ($10,300) and the Virginia League of Conservation Voters ($12,800) are all running ads for pro-climate candidates in Virginia ahead of their 2023 elections. Clean Jobs for Michigan ($4,800) are running video ads where Michiganders play “This or That” with climate issues. And finally, the American Petroleum Institute ($9,300) is also running ads in Virginia: they are warning Virginians that if they elect progressive candidates, they will be hit with electric vehicle mandates.

Snapchat 🤳

On Snapchat, Patagonia is continuing to run ads in support of local or regional climate organizations like the Dogwood Alliance and Climate Smart Missoula.

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🔦 Spotlight: Anti-wind misinformation is endangering our fight against climate change

Offshore wind power has been a major topic of discussion this year, especially as it has taken a central role in the Biden administration’s push toward a clean energy future. However, at that same time, offshore wind has also become a target for right-wing misinformation and disinformation online.

One of the most notable spreaders of wind misinformation is, of course, Donald Trump. At a South Carolina rally for his campaign last month, Trump claimed that wind turbines were “causing whales to die in numbers never seen before.”

This is, of course, factually inaccurate, and there is no data to suggest it could occur. You can check out a full fact check here >>>

But Trump is far from the only bad-faith actor pushing this false narrative. Another key figure is Michael Shellenberger, a controversial author and journalist who disputes that climate change is any kind of existential threat. In September, he posted a long thread on Twitter/X that claimed to show “proof” that wind turbines funded by the government were killing whales, including a clip from his new anti-wind documentary, Thrown to the Wind. The thread received 15,000+ likes and hundreds of thousands of views.

While Trump and Michael Shellenberger reach a large national audience, a lot of the push to spread online misinformation and anger is focused at the local and regional level (mostly on the East Coast, although there is a growing audience on the West Coast as well). 

For example, fisherman Jerry Leeman – who has been the recent subject of controversy – founded the New England Fishermen Stewardship Association which fights against offshore wind in the Gulf of Maine. They have amassed over 6,000+ followers on Facebook and routinely post anti-wind turbine graphics. 

And they aren’t the only ones executing some kind of social media strategy. Other examples include Protect Our Coast NJ, which rails against the “industrialization of the oceans” and routinely posts awful photos of dead or suffering whales for their 3,600+ Instagram followers, and SaveLBI.org also pushes anti-wind turbine content out to their 1,000+ Twitter followers. 

We found Protect Our Coast NJ actually runs a Facebook group to spur grassroots opposition to offshore wind - and it has over 27,000 members. 

To further contextualize the larger discussion of wind energy online, we ran a search on trending posts in the last six months that mention "offshore wind" or "wind energy" on Facebook. Here’s what we found (red indicates anti-wind, blue indicates pro-wind, and white indicates a neutral stance): 

There are two highly notable trends here. The first is that the Biden administration is evidently centering wind energy when it comes to posting about their climate agenda – and receiving a good amount of interaction, averaging at about 5,000 interactions per top post. 

The second is that we can see wind misinformation proliferating here as well – the NEWSMAX post that received 7,500+ engagements on Facebook is one that attacks an offshore wind facility on the Pacific Ocean.

We also performed the same search on Instagram – here is what we found there: 

Again, President Biden is a top pro-wind poster and has amassed tens of thousands of interactions on those posts. And again, we are seeing anti-wind misinformation spread. Both Michael Shellenberger and Breitbart News posted baseless claims against wind energy and received over 5,000 interactions on Instagram each

It should be noted that much is being done to push back against this misinformation, both with organic social media and with pro-wind digital ads. Two notable examples come from Turn Forward, which is running pro-wind power ads on Facebook and Instagram in the Northeast, and the Offshore Wind Alliance of Delaware and Maryland. The Offshore Wind Alliance of Delaware and Maryland has actually run Facebook and Instagram ads across MD and DE that specifically correct false narratives about wind turbines and animal deaths.

All in all, it is incredibly alarming that despite the fact that this idea that wind turbines kill whales and cause other harms has absolutely no factual basis, groups continue to promote this idea online. And they have amassed thousands of followers and drive traffic to petitions, rallies, and more by doing so. 

These efforts create a pretty dangerous situation: wind energy is essential for America’s efforts to mitigate the impact of climate change and more towards a green energy future – one where whales and truly all of us on the planet are safer. But this anti-wind misinformation and disinformation campaign could put all of that in jeopardy.

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What’s Trending on Social Media

How are climate and energy issues being discussed by Americans on social media? Every week, we conduct a robust keyword search using CrowdTangle for general terms like “climate change,” “global warming,” “fossil fuels,” and over 40 more specific topics (like “electric vehicles,” “gas stoves” and “pipelines”). Here were the 10 top-performing public posts (by # of interactions) related to climate and energy on Facebook last week:

Last week, over 12,000 public Facebook posts mentioned climate or energy issues, and they earned a cumulative 514,400 interactions. 

Conservative accounts and figures, like Conservative News Today and Senator John Kennedy, generated a lot of engagement on Facebook by pushing a narrative that a lot of the GOP likes to talk about: the idea that President Biden has waged “a war on American energy” by moving America towards a green economy.

Another conservative account, the Babylon Bee, also saw a fair amount of engagement this week on their satirical posts about people being happy that California will flood and about the Pope’s support for climate action.

And finally, PragerU posted this. Answers to their post reflected a lot of anti-climate narratives and included universities, the press, politicians, and – from one particularly dismissive Facebook user – jaywalkers. 

Here were the top-performing feed posts (excluding Reels and Stories) related to climate and energy on Instagram last week:

Last week, over 10,200 public Instagram feed posts mentioned climate or energy issues, and they earned a cumulative 4.9 million interactions.

The top three climate-related posts on Instagram this past week (in order) came from @unilad about Greta Thungberg’s arrest at a climate protest in London, @nytopinion about a climate researcher’s view that climate change is increasing rapidly, and @ladbible about the drop in hop yield due to climate change that will allegedly impact beer quality.

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Weekly Reading

Want to go deeper? Here’s a quick roundup of news from the past week at the intersection of climate, digital strategy, and advocacy. 

P.S. Are you signed up for Climate Nexus’ daily newsletter, Hot News? It’s a one-stop shop for everything you need to know in the climate and environmental policy space. Subscribe here>> 

• Climate influencer @BrownGirlGreen is hosting climate-oriented speed dating events for like-minded people to meet in NYC (The Guardian, 10/20)

• The Pope’s mission to spread awareness of climate change amongst religious communities is turning out to be harder than expected (Grist, 10/23)

• Gavin Newsom is publicly embracing his role as the “climate governor” (Politico, 10/23)

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That’s it for this week! If you enjoyed reading this week’s issue, feel free to forward it to a friend or colleague. 

Climate Monitor is a product of the Digital Climate Coalition + FWIW Media. Tips/comments/questions? Email lucy@fwiwmedia.com