A Green Degree Blog: New Angles On Sustainability

January 7th 2013

Time To Put ‘Context’ Back Into Scientific Reporting: First Stop, Wind Turbines

Before I throw this first post of the new year into top gear, I just want to mention on the side that this isn’t going to be entirely focused on the topic of birds v wind turbines, although of course some of it will, as I’d like to use this opportunity whilst on the subject of context in science, to have a brief but hopefully interesting little poke around in it.

I’m sure many of you have read, or at least heard the debate raging between those who perceive wind turbines to be nothing more than trumped-up avian grinders, doing everything in their power to churn up as many feathered friends of the Earth as they can, or those who, and I’d like to say, with some rationality and understanding of the wider science, believe this to be some seriously outspoken hot air.

The reason I’m choosing to revisit this lovely little topic of conversation is due to a recent article posted in the not-so-environmentally-friendly ‘Spectator’, a well-known paper leaning on the Conservative side of the spectrum, and one which has sparked many angry rebuttals and responses in its time. This one, as I’m sure you can guess already, was aiming to yet again derail our well-earned trust and faith in wind farms worldwide, through the examining of some questionably outdated data on bird and bat deaths in Spain, Germany, Europe and elsewhere, written by what we should rightly assume to be a well-educated and reputable character, Clive Hambler, an Oxford lecturer and graduate in zoology. Seems legit right? Hmmm.

While I do not for one minute want to use this blog as a way to bash this man’s credentials and career, I do want to highlight just one of the biggest issues I, and as you can read in these articles, many others have with his piece; and boy is it a biggy. He’s missing a whole lot of context.

My Response To James Delingpole’s Sensational Outburst On The Recent WWF Wind vs Gas Report

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James Delingpole, the infamous ‘interpreter of interpretations’ recently posted on his Telegraph blog an article on the latest report by the Cambridge Econometrics think tank for the WWF and Greenpeace, which stated that the UK economy would be £20bn better off if it decided to focus more heavily on offshore wind than gas in the coming decades.

It was a report which garnered widespread praise and support from many in the energy field, and detailed effectively how going down George Osborne’s ‘dash for gas’ path would inevitably lose us money in the long run, something many no doubt already had guessed.

However, Delingpole clearly seems to take an almost unbelievably sensational offense to this piece of science, and proceeds to write one of the most overblown and frankly prejudiced pieces of work I’ve come to read in a very long time, and on an influential media site such as the Telegraph to boot. This is my rebuttal to just some of his lamentable points made, many of which come straight out of a similarly acerbic blog from the ‘Eureferendum’ blog which shares his views.

The article instantly starts out by attacking personally and completely irrelevantly the status of the Cambridge Econometrics group and their head, Dr Terry Barker, as follows;

Turning to the source of this wisdom, we find the “think tank” originator named as “Cambridge Econometrics”, but to call it a think tank is something of a misnomer. The company actually describes itself as “an independent consultancy”, its business being the application of economic modelling and data analysis techniques to the needs of clients in business and government.

As to its “independence”, the company is a trading subsidiary of a charity, theCambridge Trust for New Thinking in Economics, which receives income from the company to pursue its registered objects.

What is interesting here is that Cambridge Econometrics seems to be a very profitable company, which, according to theaccounts submitted to the Charity Commission, turns over a cool £2-million-plus each year and giving its effective owner, Dr Terry Barker, a very comfortable living, plus pension. And Dr Barker has a certain amount of baggage. Hiscv says he is:

… the Chairman of Cambridge Econometrics, having founded the company in 1985. He is also Senior Departmental Fellow at the Cambridge Centre for Climate Change Mitigation Research (4CMR), Department of Land Economy, University of Cambridge. He is a member of the Editorial Board of Economic Systems Research, the International Journal of Climate Strategies and Management, the International Journal of Global Warming, and the Scientific Advisory Board of the World Wide Views on Global Warming. He was a member of the Scientific Committee of the Climate Change Congress, Copenhagen, March 2009, and was on the Writing Team of the Synthesis Report of the Congress.This is a warmist personified, which might suggest a certain bias in his approach to the subject of windfarms. And, if that isn’t enough to set an odiferous rat running, we find that the report itself is produced forGreenpeace and WWF-UK, which funded the work.

The Media At It Again - Wind Turbines Cause Climate Warming Now?

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Isn’t the global media just wonderful at blowing things massively and unprecedentedly out of proportion, when the prospect of a big story is just too tantalising to exaggerate.

This time its victim is renewable energy and the wind industry in particular, which recently came into the public eye when a study undertaken by the University of Albany, with Liming Zhou at the head, produced results which suggested large-scale wind farms can affect nighttime temperatures in the local area. Their data seemed to show an increase in temperature by roughly 0.7˚C over the last decade in Texas, explaining this oddity via the influence the turbines can have on air currents and mixing. As they turn, they draw hot air from above down into the colder air below, therefore slightly increasing the temperatures in the region.

Now, they go on to say that this effect is ‘local and small compared to strong year-to-year changes’ and again repeat at the end of the Guardian article, that this is by no means a paper advocating the blocking of wind energy, and that it could easily have positive effects, especially considering this is just one of only two studies ever carried out on the subject, and over just 9 years in one area. The scientific method demands much more information than this.

So in essence, this paper is merely saying that the highly localised region of Texas where these huge, and I repeat huge, wind farms have been erected, seems to experience some increased nighttime temperatures, but only on a small-scale and of much much less amplitude than usual climate variations. An interesting, but by no means worrying or alarming result, but should definitely be considered in future wind policy.

Unfortunately, the media have decided to spin the story a little bit, with science as the tried and tested victim. Outlets such as FOX news and the Telegraph have erupted headlines on the subject, generally following along the lines of ‘Wind Farms Cause The Global Climate To Warm’ and that sort of thing, effectively cherry picking some of the words used in the original study, and adding their own in the process.