Tommy Norris Landman Alternative Energy Rant

You want to get a liberal fired up? Just quote Billy Bob Thornton's character in Landman Tommy Norris.  Right or Wrong liberals hate Tommy's take on the necessity of the Oil and Gas Industry and absurdity of alternative energy wind farms. 

Rebecca: What are those? 

Tommy: Wind turbines. 

Rebecca: Out here? 

Tommy: Everywhere. 

Rebecca: Green energy starting to push out the oil industry? 

Tommy: Let's go. I want to show you something.

Rebecca: God, they're massive. 

Tommy: 400 feet tall. The concrete foundation covers a third of an acre and goes down into ground 12 feet. 

Rebecca: Who owns them? 

Tommy: Oil companies. We use them to power the wells. No electricity out here. We're off the grid. 

Rebecca: They use clean energy to power the oil wells? 

Tommy: They use alternative energy. There's nothing clean about this. 

Rebecca: Ah. Please, Mr. Oilman, tell me how the wind is bad for the environment. 

Tommy: Do you have any idea how much diesel they had to burn to mix that much concrete?

Or make that steel and haul this shit out here and put it together with a 450-foot crane? 

You want to guess how much oil it takes to lubricate that fսcking thing? Or winterize it? In its 20-year lifespan, it won't offset the carbon footprint of making it. 

And don't get me started on solar panels and the lithium in your Tesla battery. 

And never mind the fact that, if the whole world decided to go electric tomorrow, we don't have the transmission lines to get the electricity to the cities. It'd take 30 years if we started tomorrow. 

And, unfortunately, for your grandkids, we have a 120-year, petroleum-based infrastructure. Our whole lives depend on it. 

And, hell, it's in everything. That road we came in on. The wheels on every car ever made, including yours. It's in tennis rackets and lipstick and refrigerators and antihistamines. Pretty much anything plastic. Your cell phone case, artificial heart valves. Any kind of clothing that's not made with animal or plant fibers. Soap, fսcking hand lotion, garbage bags, fishing boats. 

You name it. 

Every fսcking thing. 

And you know what the kicker is? 

We're gonna run out of it before we find its replacement. 

Rebecca: It's the thing that's gonna kill us all... as a species. 

Tommy: No, the thing that's gonna kill us all is running out before we find an alternative. 

And believe me, if Exxon thought them fսcking things right there were the future, they'd be putting them all over the goddamn place. 

Getting oil out of the ground's the most dangerous job in the world. We don't do it 'cause we like it. We do it 'cause we run out of options. 

And you're out here trying to find something to blame for the danger besides your boss. There ain't nobody to blame but the demand that we keep pumping it.

Cedar's Take

So here's the odd thing. If you ask Google about the monolog Google's AI is very quick to tell you that "According to energy experts and fact-checkers highlighted by groups like the Power Alliance, Tommy's claims contain major inaccuracies.

Wind turbines typically pay back the energy and carbon footprint used to manufacture and install them within 6 to 12 months.

While wind turbines do use some lubricants, the amount is minimal compared to the fossil fuels they offset during decades of clean electricity generation.

Most consensus online views the scene as a reflection of common oil-patch rhetoric rather than actual life-cycle science.

Google then asks if you'd like to watch the YouTube video of the scene or a transcript of the dialog but when you say transcript it won't provide it and offers "Would you like to know more about the energy payback time of wind turbines or discuss other fact-checks from the show?"