Asked to hold a press conference on the EU trade deal, Donald Trump didn’t hold back his distaste for the press, and he used the event to make some particularly unhinged claims about renewable energy. “Windmills are a con job. If you’ve ever been around windmills, they make the whales loco. They drive the whales crazy. They cause horrendous death for birds,” he said, “Birds, they kill all the birds. If you look at windmills, they kill all the birds, and if you’re living near them, they’re coming into your bedroom or they’re falling on your children.”

As unbelievable as it may sound, Trump is far from the first public figure to suggest wind farms can drive whales “loco.” Conspiracy theories surrounding renewable energy—especially wind power—have a long history. While they might originate in specific communities, there is now a global pattern to the suspicion with which some people approach renewable energy.

He is, however, the most public and combative, and as a result, his comments have prompted numerous fact-checks, reminding us how absurd his claims sound when stated so bluntly. In reality, they are an acceleration of existing sentiments among a vocal minority: many fossil fuel supporters share Trump’s views, albeit more quietly. Instead of brash claims at a press conference, you will instead find a detailed analysis of why wind turbines are driving fish nuts.

The link between “windmills” and climate denial has been around for so long that it’s become shorthand for some. But the comparison of turbines to medieval grain mills echoes a longer history of moral panic, one where every shift in technology brings new fears. In the 19th century, opponents of the telephone imagined it could spread bacteria and plague over wires. Both examples, old and new, serve as examples of when progress changes how people live and power flows through the world; those resistant to the changes it might bring will find new ways to fight back.

New research, however, shows that this fear runs much deeper than simple misinformation. Once part of someone’s worldview, it cannot be changed with fact-checks or comforting noises from scientists. It is instead an existential issue, one that governments, businesses, and institutions must reckon with if the energy transition is to occur in the time we have.

Roots and Amplification of Anti-Wind Conspiracy Theories

Climate science has issued warnings since at least the 1950s that CO2 emissions could cause “irreversible” and “relatively imminent” changes to the planet’s climate, but the initial movement towards renewable energy was cast as an effort to break the grip of the fossil fuel lobby. In The Simpsons, Springfield residents were confronted with the potential of fossil fuel power companies to crush people under their weight when Mr Burns, in a bid to take over the city’s energy supply, built a tower so tall that it blotted out the sun and forced everyone to buy his nuclear energy. That was, of course, a cartoon and an exaggeration. But it reflected a legitimate fear that fossil fuel companies would try to hold off on renewable energy for as long as possible.

The suspicions were not unfounded. In 2004, then–Australian Prime Minister John Howard gathered a group of fossil fuel executives together to form a government-backed Low Emissions Technology Advisory Group. Fossil fuel industry members of the group banded together under the cover of reducing emissions to develop strategies to slow down the growth of renewables and maintain the fossil fuel industry’s dominance.

Wind farms also became a target of misinformation as they were built, with physical objections both to their construction and operations. Coal mines, oil fields, and nuclear plants are typically hidden from public view. They are also physically remote, so the impacts of their construction and operation are not immediately visible to the public. Wind turbines, by contrast, have to be placed where the wind is best, which often means high up on ridgelines, along open plains, or in prominent positions where they can be seen from miles around. This visibility and their sheer scale, a looming immovable object in the distance where once there was perhaps a small farm, have made them an easy target for people to project their fears.

An early and infamous example was the idea of “wind turbine syndrome,” a range of maladies that turbines were supposed to be causing people living near them. The effects included headaches, nausea, tinnitus, difficulty sleeping, dizziness, anxiety, stress, depression, fatigue, and muscle pain. These symptoms, which came to be labeled a “non-disease” by the medical profession, were not supported by evidence, but that didn’t stop the idea from being circulated in the media for years.

The most comprehensive picture of wind turbine opposition and its causes came from a study led by Kevin Winter, an academic at the University of Sussex. The team built and circulated a survey of 4,169 German residents and analyzed the results to understand wind farm opposition.