Right, and this is what makes it such a frivolous talking point. I mean, if it really were the case that the expenditures of oil were indeed at scales that overwhelmed any advantages of wind, that would be a legit argument.
But to make that case you'd actually have to do the next step of assessing the relative scales of how much oil gets used in the creation of windmill components compared to an alternative case where the energy is generated with traditional fossil fuel infrastructure.
I feel like if we're going to bring up the fossil fuel inputs into the creation of critical components for windmills, the mandatory next sentence has to be an acknowledgment of the relative scales of consumption in both cases. Otherwise it's a throwaway line with no context and no clear upshot.
The easy argument for this is that switching everything to electric and then powering it with oil, would require significantly less oil (maybe 50-60%) that the status quo.
We should switch, even if we don't convert to renewables. (Which we absolutely should)
Well, also one can debunk these claims by just looking at the money.
If oil inputs were so massive, the cost of a turbine (or by implication the electricity it generates) should be MUCH higher. Just guessing, but probably orders of magnitude higher.
Well... technically... some people are starting to https://www.energy.gov/eere/wind/articles/carbon-rivers-make... but this also produces energy and compared to the amount of electricity they produce during their lifetime this carebon can only be incredibly negligible
> Carbon Rivers’ recycling uses pyrolysis—a process during which organic components of a composite (e.g., resins or polymers) are broken down with intense heat in the absence of oxygen and separated from the inorganic fiberglass reinforcement.
