How a dubious claim about whales went from fringe argument to presidential policy

On his first day in office, Donald Trump signed an executive order halting offshore wind turbine licences. In the order, he cited potential damage to marine mammals.

So what? Worries about wind turbines killing whales have moved from fringe argument to presidential policy, even though there is almost no evidence to support them.

As part of a new project, Hot Air, Tortoise has identified nearly 300 online actors posting content on climate change that ranges from scepticism to outright misinformation. Their output has been organised in a database designed to show how this material spreads.

We identified three main categories of climate scepticism:

Denial – climate change is not happening;

Delay – climate change might be real, but lawmakers need to slow down the roll-out of green policies (whales and turbines fall into this pot); and

Control – climate policy is a way for the government to control the population.

Anatomy of a whale. While there have long been concerns about the impact offshore wind turbines could have on marine life, it was the author Michael Shellenberger, an unsuccessful candidate for governor of California, who made turbines into a cause for climate policy sceptics.

Step one. Shellenberger wrote a blog post in January 2023 about the North Atlantic right whale, one of the most endangered large whale species and one that has experienced a so-called “unusual mortality event” since 2017. The US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) estimates only 370 of the right whales remain. In his blog post, Shellenberger links these depleting numbers, with little evidence, to the construction of wind turbines.

Step two. Shellenberger’s blog post was tweeted by former Greenpeace member and energy industry consultant Patrick Moore and viewed more than 150,000 times. Moore was then invited to discuss it on Fox News and clips of the interview were shared by Steve Milloy, who served on the Environmental Protection Agency’s transition team for Trump’s first term in office.

Step three. Shellenberger, Moore and Milloy have posted 112 times about whales since 2021. These posts have been viewed at least 6.3 million times. Two years after Shellenberger’s blog post, the president signed his executive order.

The truth. The NOAA makes clear that any suggestion that wind turbines cause whale deaths is unproven. The US Department of Energy in 2023 also said there was no evidence of whale deaths from turbines.

The Hot Air dataset also shows that

• climate-sceptic posts grew in number by 24 per cent on YouTube and by 40 per cent on X between 2021 and 2024; and
• claims that climate change is an instrument of government control now represent about 37 per cent of climate-sceptic posts on YouTube and more than 40 per cent on X.

What’s more… Most experts agree that the biggest danger to whales is getting struck by boats or tangled in fishing nets. It is unlikely that Trump, in honour of the North Atlantic right whale, will be declaring war on fishing anytime soon.

To learn more and use our interactive database, visit the Hot Air page.

Additional reporting by Pierre Reibel

This article was amended after publication to correct Patrick Moore's job title. Although Moore describes himself as a co-founder of Greenpeace, he is not. When he became a Phyllis Cormack crew member in 1971, Greenpeace had already existed for a year.