17 February 2021
Much of the language of anti-renewable energy discourse occurs through visuals. It’s relatively important on social media; pictures travel much faster than words.
Wind turbines, in particular, lend themselves to this style of misinformation. They’re physically significant in and of themselves. And one of the longest running visuals used to attack renewables is a picture of a helicopter spraying some unidentified fluid onto an ice-covered wind turbine.
It has been around since at least 2015. It was, in fact, shared then by Liberal MP Craig Kelly, and I wrote about it back then, here at RenewEconomy. By my calculations in that post, the wind turbine cancels out the emissions from the helicopter de-icing the blades within 20 minutes (Kelly claimed it would take decades).