“Landman” BS on Renewable Energy

4 min readDec 5, 2024

Scott Burdick <scottburdick.com@gmail.com>

Susan and I were happily watching Billy Bob Thornton’s newest escapist romp called “Landman” on Paramount Plus, when out of nowhere I was smacked in the face by a pretty startling cow-pie of disinformation. I’m used to such false self-serving corporate propaganda on social media, political ads, late-night informercials, nutty uncles, and the like, but it was hard to believe such a dangerous lie actually made it onto a network television show with such a big Hollywood star as it’s spokesperson.

Since Billy Bob’s false diatribe has quickly become a social media meme and even spread by at least one U.S. Senator, I thought I’d debunk it here for those one or two people left who think that facts actually matter.

Here’s what good old Billy Bob’s oil-company fixer character said in response to a question about wind turbines. “Do you have any idea how much diesel they have to burn to mix the concrete or make that steel? Or haul this sh-t out here, and put it together with a 450 foot crane? You want to guess how much oil it takes to lubricate that f-ing 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…”

Fact Check:

A typical two-megawatt wind turbine takes about nine-months to generate enough electricity to equal the carbon burned to manufacture, transport, build, and operate it over its 25-year life.

So, Billy Bob’s statement that “it won’t offset the carbon footprint of making it” is not just slightly incorrect, but false by a magnitude of 25 to 1.

The same is true of his implied statement on solar panels and electric cars.

Yes, the materials for solar panels and electric car batteries must be mined, constructed, transported, and all the rest (just like petroleum, coal, natural gas, and all carbon-based energy sources), but when you calculate the carbon-cost over time, these renewable sources come out way ahead in calculating the overall effect on the climate in terms of both the emissions of carbon into the atmosphere and the amount of pollution itself.

Even when charging an electric car off a power grid run with coal, petroleum, or natural gas (and adding in the carbon cost of building it) the electric car’s life-time carbon footprint is significantly less compared to the cost of an internal combustion engine vehicle. If you charge your car off of your own self-generated power like solar panels that don’t even need extra power lines to transport (as Susan and I do), the carbon footprint goes WAY down. And this will only improve as battery and solar technologies advance at an amazing pace literally every year.

A significant advantage of EVs compared to conventional gasoline vehicles is their energy efficiency. EVs use approximately 87%–91% of the energy from the battery and regenerative braking to propel the vehicle. Gasoline vehicles only convert about 16–25% of the energy from gasoline into movement (averaging highway and city driving).

Not to mention what leases for wind turbines mean for farmers in Texas, Iowa, and rural America. Or all the jobs in the many new electric battery, solar, and car manufacturers across the country. Are we going to allow China to corner the market on these revolutionary technologies that were born in the United States?

With climate change threatening future generations with disaster, why do you think this television show would include such blatant falsehoods? I did notice that a good number of the commercials on Paramount Plus were from oil companies trying to improve their image, but I’m sure that has nothing to do with it…

Here’s some links to the details and numbers and charts below so you can fact-check my facts.

https://www.epa.gov/greenvehicles/electric-vehicle-myths

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0960148111002254

https://www.ourenergypolicy.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/turbines.pdf

https://scholarship.law.columbia.edu/sabin_climate_change/217/