Right, and this is what makes it such a frivolous talking point. I mean, if it really were the case that the expenditures of oil were indeed at scales that overwhelmed any advantages of wind, that would be a legit argument.

But to make that case you'd actually have to do the next step of assessing the relative scales of how much oil gets used in the creation of windmill components compared to an alternative case where the energy is generated with traditional fossil fuel infrastructure.

I feel like if we're going to bring up the fossil fuel inputs into the creation of critical components for windmills, the mandatory next sentence has to be an acknowledgment of the relative scales of consumption in both cases. Otherwise it's a throwaway line with no context and no clear upshot.