Analysis: Off shore windfarms being abandoned in droves throughout wor...

12y ago Dec 5, 2013 at 3:28 PM

Off shore windfarms being abandoned in droves throughout world—too expensive to build & operate—don’t work. (cont) http://t.co/YAm3DsC3lN

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AI Analysis

Machine-generated analysis of the post above on 2026-02-27. Not written by the author of the post.

Danger Level

None

Narcissistic State

Grandiose

Authorship

Uncertain

Intensity

38%

This post is primarily significant as a case study in motivated reasoning at the intersection of private financial interest and public disinformation. On December 5, 2013, Trump's legal challenge against the Aberdeen Bay offshore wind farm was actively before the Court of Session—a fight directly tied to the commercial value of his Menie Estate golf resort. The post's central claim ("abandoned in droves throughout world") was empirically inverted: 2013 was a record year for global offshore wind, posting 20% capacity growth in the first half of the year alone across 15 countries. The claim's directional inversion of documented reality suggests motivated cognition rather than ordinary ignorance. The rhetorical apparatus—hyperbole, three-part dismissal, vague social proof, deferred authority via link—constructs the appearance of principled economic critique while concealing its origin in personal financial exposure worth tens of millions of pounds. The day's coordinated posting cluster (four separate wind/climate tweets attacking Vattenfall and Alex Salmond by name) confirms this as a deliberate narrative campaign. The grandiose framing compensates psychologically for an adverse legal trajectory Trump would lose at every level through the UK Supreme Court in 2015. Authorship is likely aide-assisted but Trump-directed. No cognitive aberrations relative to 2013 baseline; no danger indicators present. The post's academic value lies in documenting the early, relatively low-stakes deployment of a rhetorical pattern—disguising self-interest as public truth-telling—that would later operate at national and global scale.

Authorship Analysis

Uncertain

Indicators:

10:28 AM EST posting time — business hours, mild aide indicator
(cont) link format suggests TweetLonger or aide-managed publishing workflow
No typos, no ALL CAPS, no emotional punctuation — slightly more polished than authentic Trump style
Content directly aligned with active personal legal battle — strong Trump directional input
Em-dash construction and declarative cadence consistent with Trump's 2013 Twitter patterns

Psychological Profile

▶ State

Grandiose State

Trigger: Narcissistic Injury — Defeat (Active Court of Session hearing (November 2013) on Trump's challenge to Aberdeen Bay offshore wind farm planning consent; adverse legal trajectory following May 2013 filing)

Sentiment

-0.55

▶ Clinical

Malignant Narcissism:

Narcissistic

50%

Antisocial

35%

Paranoid

20%

Sadism

10%

Defense Mechanisms:

rationalizationdistortionsplitting

Cognitive Complexity:

Complexity

33%

Parasocial Techniques:

Appeal to populist anti-establishment sentiment: renewable energy framed as elite waste of public moneyShared grievance construction: taxpayer funds squandered on technology 'that doesn't work'Epistemic flattery: followers positioned as savvy truth-seekers alongside Trump against credulous ideologues

Danger Assessment

None

Gaslighting Detected:

Industry misrepresented as universally failing when 2013 was a documented record expansion year globally
Technology described as 'don't work' despite large-scale operational generation across Northern Europe
Attacks on the credibility of a sector's basic viability without citing evidence, expecting followers to accept claim on authority alone

Reality Distortions:

'Abandoned in droves throughout world' directly inverts the documented 2013 offshore wind expansion trajectory (+20% global capacity growth H1 2013)
'Don't work' dismisses confirmed operational performance of 6,500 MW of installed capacity across 15 countries
The framing omits entirely that Trump held direct financial interests motivating his opposition

Fact Checks (3)

"Offshore windfarms being abandoned in droves throughout world"

False

2013 was a record year for global offshore wind. H1 2013 saw approximately 20% capacity growth. Fifteen countries hosted 6,500 MW of installed capacity. The UK alone exceeded 3,400 MW. Germany, Belgium, and Denmark were all reporting growth. No credible source documents widespread abandonment in this period; the industry was expanding, not contracting.

"Too expensive to build and operate"

Half True

Offshore wind LCOE in Europe was genuinely elevated in 2013 (approximately €114–190/MWh in Germany versus €70–85 for fossil fuels). However, 'too expensive' elides the distinction between costly and unviable, ignores carbon externality costs unpriced in fossil fuel comparisons, omits the industry's documented declining cost curve, and conflates economic challenge with technical failure.

"Don't work"

False

Offshore wind farms were generating substantial, documented electricity across the UK, Denmark, Germany, Belgium and other European markets in 2013 with well-understood operational performance records. The technology functioned as designed. This claim misrepresents technical viability to mean economic preferability.

Receipts

No contradictions with other posts detected yet.

Psychological Analysis: Trump Tweet, December 5, 2013

Post ID: x_408618799941033984 | Platform: Twitter | Age at posting: 67

Situational Context: Active Litigation as Primary Frame

This post cannot be interpreted in isolation from its material context. As of December 5, 2013, Trump's legal challenge against the European Offshore Wind Deployment Centre (Aberdeen Bay, Vattenfall) was actively before the Court of Session in Edinburgh—the hearing had commenced in November 2013. Trump had acquired 1,400 acres at Menie Estate, Aberdeenshire, in 2006 for a £1.2 billion golf resort development; Vattenfall's planned 11-turbine array, sited approximately 3.5 km offshore and visible from the resort, posed a direct commercial threat to the property's aesthetic appeal and marketable value. The legal challenge—filed May 2013, rejected February 2014, lost on appeal June 2015, and unanimously rejected by the UK Supreme Court December 2015—would ultimately cost the Trump Organization $290,000 in Scottish government legal fees.

The post appears amid a same-day cluster of tweets directly naming Vattenfall, attacking First Minister Alex Salmond personally, and making sweeping claims against climate change policy. This coordination reveals a two-track campaign: legal combat in court, narrative warfare in public. The post under analysis represents the generalized "proof of concept" prong—establishing that offshore wind fails everywhere, thus retrospectively validating his opposition as prophetic realism rather than self-interested NIMBY litigation.

Authorship Attribution

Local time: 15:28 UTC = 10:28 AM EST (Trump's likely location: New York or possibly Florida), firmly within business hours. The "(cont)" link format indicates use of a tweet-extending service (TweetLonger or similar), a workflow pattern more consistent with aide-managed publishing pipelines than Trump's characteristic impulsive late-night posting. The structure is slightly more polished than his unfiltered stream-of-consciousness style—declarative assertions without typos, no ALL CAPS, no emotional punctuation.

However, the content aligns precisely with his active personal legal fight; the companion tweets on the same day targeting Vattenfall and Salmond by name suggest Trump was directing, if not originating, this messaging. The em-dash construction and short punchy cadence are consistent with his 2013 patterns. Assessment: Aide-assisted execution, likely with Trump's strong directional input. The more emotionally charged Vattenfall/Salmond tweets have higher Trump-authenticity markers; this more generalized framing reads as either aide-drafted from Trump's talking points, or Trump's own content processed through a publishing tool. Confidence: medium.

Level 1: Dispositional Traits (Big Five)

Extraversion (high, assertiveness facet): Declarative certainty with no hedging—"abandoned in droves," "don't work"—projects commanding authority on a complex technical topic.
Agreeableness (very low): Zero acknowledgment of contrary evidence, no nuance, wholesale dismissal of an industry that in 2013 was posting record growth figures. Trust and tender-mindedness facets absent.
Conscientiousness (moderate, goal-directed only): The post serves a clear strategic purpose—building the public narrative for his legal position—but there is no deliberative fact-checking. Goal-pursuit without epistemic care.
Openness (very low): Binary framing throughout: offshore wind universally fails everywhere, no exceptions, no complexity admitted.
Neuroticism (moderate, inferred): The intensity of the day's coordinated anti-wind posting cluster—four tweets targeting the same issue in different registers—suggests underlying anxiety about the adverse legal trajectory.

Level 2: Characteristic Adaptations

Agency motives dominate (power, autonomy, control): The post functions to preserve Trump's commercial control over his resort's visual environment by delegitimizing the technology threatening it at the level of global public opinion. There is no communion content whatsoever—no concern for affected communities, workers, or environmental trade-offs.

The most clinically notable feature is the structural disguise of private financial motivation as public truth-telling. The schema reads: "I possess business acumen that ideologues lack. Expensive failures obvious to any competent businessman are being funded by credulous public money. I am performing a civic service by exposing them." This schema enables self-interested behavior to be internally experienced and externally presented as epistemically superior practical wisdom—a pattern that will recur across Trump's later public communications at much larger scale.

Level 3: Narrative Identity

Protagonist role: The pragmatic truth-teller exposing costly policy failures that ideologically captured advocates refuse to acknowledge
Identity claims: Implicit expertise in capital allocation and real-world project viability; the "builder" who knows what works versus what is "phony"
Contamination sequence (implicit): Good money being destroyed by technology "that doesn't work," enabled by politicians like Salmond who "forced phony extension" of failed projects
Contrasting other: Offshore wind proponents, Vattenfall, the Scottish government, Alex Salmond—cast as ideologically captured, financially naive, or corrupt ("phony")
Redemption narrative (aspirational): If global abandonment can be established as empirical fact, Trump's legal opposition is retrospectively reframed as prophetic realism

Level 4: Clinical Indicators

Trigger: Combined narcissistic injury and financial threat. The Court of Session hearing had commenced in November 2013 under adverse conditions; Trump had already lost earlier procedural battles. The day's coordinated anti-wind messaging represents escalating narrative compensation as judicial validation receded.

Narcissistic state: Grandiose. The claim of global abandonment "in droves throughout [the] world" is grossly disproportionate to documented industry reality and functions as an expansion of self-justification as real-world legal prospects contracted.

Defense mechanisms:

Rationalization (neurotic): Pseudo-economic argument ("too expensive") constructed to make financially self-interested opposition appear as dispassionate fiscal analysis
Distortion (pathological): 2013 was a record year for global offshore wind capacity (+20% H1 alone, 15 countries, 6,500 MW installed); this is presented as universal abandonment
Splitting (immature): The technology is characterized as universally failed ("don't work") with no acknowledgment of the gigawatts operating successfully across Northern Europe

Motivated reasoning at scale: The core claim is not merely mistaken—it is directionally inverted from contemporaneous evidence. This level of inversion is characteristic of motivated cognition, not ordinary ignorance. The claim was selected for its utility to Trump's legal/narrative position, not its correspondence to reality.

Rhetorical Analysis

Hyperbole: "in droves throughout world"—implies universal consensus pattern contradicted by documented expansion
Three-part dismissal: "too expensive to build / too expensive to operate / don't work"—false comprehensiveness creates the rhetorical appearance of thorough analysis
Vague social proof: "throughout world" invokes global consensus without citing any specific case
Authority by reference: The "(cont)" link implies external sourcing and evidential support while making verification difficult for casual followers
Strategic ambiguity: Framing private financial interest as general economic principle insulates the argument from conflict-of-interest criticism

Fact Verification

Claim	Verdict	Evidence
"Offshore windfarms being abandoned in droves throughout world"	False	2013 was a record year for global offshore wind. H1 2013 saw approximately 20% capacity growth. Fifteen countries hosted 6,500 MW of installed capacity. The UK alone exceeded 3,400 MW. Germany, Belgium, and Denmark were all reporting growth. No credible source documents widespread abandonment in this period; the industry was expanding, not contracting.
"Too expensive to build and operate"	Half True	Offshore wind LCOE in Europe was genuinely elevated in 2013 (approximately €114–190/MWh in Germany versus €70–85 for fossil fuels). However, 'too expensive' elides the distinction between costly and unviable, ignores carbon externality costs unpriced in fossil fuel comparisons, omits the industry's documented declining cost curve, and conflates economic challenge with technical failure.
"Don't work"	False	Offshore wind farms were generating substantial, documented electricity across the UK, Denmark, Germany, Belgium and other European markets in 2013 with well-understood operational performance records. The technology functioned as designed. This claim misrepresents technical viability to mean economic preferability.

Overall Veracity: 17%

Danger Assessment

No danger indicators present. This is a commercial/policy dispute conducted through rhetorical misrepresentation, not incitement.