Churnalism Is Being Used to Sell A Very Dumb Idea Regarding Energy, As Our Media Rot Spreads

John Droz provides some very powerful observations on the weekend's events.

Guest Post from John Droz, Jr. at Critically Thinking About Select Societal Issues.

Because it is unscientific nonsense, I’ve frequently written about Offshore Wind — e.g. see my webpage and a Substack commentary. As a result of this commitment to Science, I’ve been publicly attacked numerous times (e.g., here).

I (and others) are forced to do this as the failures of the media are now legion — and it’s not limited to large outlets like the AP, the New York Times, The Washington Post, NBC, ABC, CBS, NPR, etc.

I was just sent this piece “Our View: It behooves us to pay for wind energy.” (Central Maine is apparently the business name of a Kennebec newspaper.) Read their editorial carefully.

Where to start?

Their entire case is based on “According to the Maine Research Array…” (MeRA).

Who is MeRA? Buried in their deceptive fluff, is an acknowledgment that this is a partnership with the offshore wind developer, Pine Tree Offshore Wind.

This looks like classic industrial wind energy tactics — fund some studies by sympathetic “scientists,” then get in bed with a progressive federal government agency (BOEM), then a progressive State government (Maine, in this case), then get a local liberal news media outlet to write a puff piece in support of the wind project. This brings to mind the famous statement: One lies and the other swears to it!

BTW, the last part is called churnalism, and this piece is a great example of it. A brief definition of churnalism, as applied here, is taking a marketing press release (aka an advertisement) and disguising it as a news story, an objective editorial, etc.

The editorial says pay no attention to the exorbitant ratepayer cost (like pay no attention to the man behind the curtain), as “the long-term value of an investment that will pay handsome environmental and economic dividends.” They provide no objective assessment to support that key assertion.

Note that this is a famous trick of illusionists: distract you from the horrifically expensive cost of offshore wind energy, by getting you to look at this shiny object over here.

“According to the Maine Research Array, the offshore wind project, as envisaged… would strip as much carbon dioxide from the atmosphere each year as if we took more than 100,000 gas-powered cars off the road.” Of course, that is 100% speculation, as there is no accounting for the numerous changes needed to be made to the Grid when this unreliable source of electricity is rudely inserted (e.g., see here).

Yet the Editorial Board doubles down by saying “The environmental case alone is screamingly urgent.” I’d say that the ignorance of this piece is screamingly annoying.

It would be interesting to see how many scientists are on this Editorial Board. I’ll wager that there are none who are genuine independent energy experts — but whatever.

I could go on here, but it seems akin to berating a kindergarten child for their misunderstanding of where babies come from.

My point of mentioning this incompetent media example is that we are inundated with this type of pretentious lecturing. Big surprise: the antidote is Critical Thinking!

This again reinforces the extreme urgency of fixing our K-12 education system, so that our unsuspecting children are not fed this type of propaganda — which is exactly what is happening now.

#Droz #Maine #CriticalThinking #OffshoreWind #Editorial #Education