Abstract
Our review and analysis of anti-offshore wind rhetoric in the 118th Congress from January 1 to July 16, 2023, uncovered 441 claims about why offshore wind and other forms of renewable energy are bad. Most fall under categories identified in the emerging scholarly literature on “discourses of climate delay.” Many of them rise to the level of misinformation, falling into tactics identified in the FLICC categorization of misinformation tactics. Several do not fall into these typologies, being specific to the U.S. Congress or emerging types.
In the main section of the briefing, we review five major claims that have been leveled against the effort to deploy offshore wind on the East Coast of the United States. Three argued against wind itself. These are that offshore wind development is responsible for whale injuries and deaths, that harm to military readiness and navigation will be unmanageable, and that tourism and fishing industries will be irreparably harmed by the development of offshore wind. Two more sets of claims attack renewable energy more generally. Those were that being an intermittent source of energy, wind turbines (and other renewable energy sources) are unreliable and therefore not helpful to fighting climate change, and that offshore wind is bad because it is associated with Joe Biden and the environmentalist elite.
For each major claim, we review who raised it, and what they claimed. We go on to examine what the claims were based on (Were they biased? Were facts cherry picked?). We then connect each to the frameworks mentioned above-- What types of established discourses are these examples of (Emphasizing the downsides, Appealing to Well-being, Cherry-picking)? Finally, we provide initial
refutations of the claims, examining what are the problems with the claims. A full set of the 441
claims is provided in a supplemental online Appendix.