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Saw this posted on a friend's feed on Facebook recently. Are the numbers correct, and is the final statement ("A windmill could spin until it falls apart and never generate as much energy as was invested in building it") correct?enter image description here

NeutronStar
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    The key point is "How long until it falls apart" ? – blacksmith37 Mar 26 '19 at 15:28
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    Also, "all mined, transported and produced by hydrocarbons" -- making that a thing of the past is part of the plan, isn't it? – DevSolar Mar 26 '19 at 15:51
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    Working on collecting facts, and it looks like this is false by several orders of magnitude, possibly due to the creator of this meme confusing megawatts and megawatt-hours. – DenisS Mar 26 '19 at 15:54
  • or nevermind, see duplicated question – DenisS Mar 26 '19 at 15:55
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    @DenisS: Yes, I was partway through running the maths from the meme and coming to the same conclusion. Put simply, the sentiment and the maths don't match at all, and the energy payback timescale for a 2MW windmill looks like a matter of a few weeks to me. – Neil Slater Mar 26 '19 at 16:02
  • @DevSolar "making that a thing of the past is part of the plan, isn't it?" The possibility of alternative energy sources doesn't affect the point. – Acccumulation Mar 26 '19 at 22:26
  • @DevSolar if a wind turbine was net negative energy then it wouldn't matter how the inputs were produced, wind turbines would still be net negative energy. – Paul Johnson Mar 30 '19 at 12:41
  • So this is still closed for being a duplicate, but it should be noted that Politifact recently wrote an article about this meme. Long story short, it's false, the meme is a selectively edited paragraph from a passage where they're talking about poorly placed windmills. https://www.politifact.com/facebook-fact-checks/statements/2019/apr/12/facebook-posts/no-professor-didnt-say-windmills-will-never-genera/ – DenisS Apr 15 '19 at 16:05

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