I am not a conspiracy theorist, it's just a simple case of "follow the money". The fossil fuel industry is a trillion dollar per year business and their interest is to keep it this way. So poisoning the well is a good strategy for them. If you thought about it, it was clear the bird argument was always just a talking point nimby types were fed with, so they have something alarming to repeat and to get outraged, without really caring if it's true. The only thing they cared about is not having wind turbines because of their (weird?) aesthetic preferences and desires to have things stay the same forever. Ironically the bird and animal population overall are struggling with the way things are now and how they want to keep it. But again, they don't really care about that.