WHEN SCIENCE IS SACRIFICED

It looks like New Scientist magazine is fighting back. Not so long ago its pages were dripping with anxiety and frustration over the way politicians are struggling or refusing to face up to the imminent disaster of climate change. Then came the University of East Anglia's email row - agents of a foreign government hacked into the university's computer and climate change deniers seized on a couple of ambiguous phrases among hundreds of email messages - and the scientific community was suddenly on the back foot. Media "balance" required TV and newspapers to pretend that the deniers and sceptics had just as much right to be heard as the global scientific consensus. Most people just ended up confused.

But New Scientist has a supplement this week on denial, and "Why so many people refuse to believe the truth". It's not just about climate change - it's about any fraudulent and dangerous campaign to undermine scientific evidence for ideological reasons. Darwinism, the dangers of tobacco, 9/11, AIDS and vaccines are also considered.

The issue is relevant to the Lenchwick Windfarm debacle because the opposition to the windfarm is led by a retired scientist. For personal reasons (doesn't want to see a windfarm from the end of his drive) this person is prepared to sacrifice all known scientific principles in order to whip up hysteria and get other people to campaign on his behalf.

It's a very worrying precedent - especially as the newly-elected Tory MP for Redditch is determined to show that she knows nothing whatever about the countryside, rural issues or the VVASP's delusional campaign. She has announced that she will be supporting the handful of home-owners who object to the windfarm (most of them without really knowing why they object) in the face of all evidence. When the planning application from ScottishPower Renewables is submitted, she has said, she will read it and then go to some higher authority in order to bark it down - regardless of whether there are any genuine grounds for objection or not.

So, we have a problem. A growing, international problem. People not just ignoring the evidence, but coming up with false "evidence" of their own that contradicts the real, genuine evidence.

This is what we mean by denial.

The magazine supplement includes a small inset entitled "How to be a denialist". In short, this is what you do:-

1. Allege that there's a conspiracy (e.g. power companies colluding with Europe and/or Gordon Brown to foist useless monstrosities on gentle middle-class country-dwellers)

2. Use fake experts to support your story (see: ASA ruling against VVASP)

3. Cherry-pick the evidence (VVASP website claims to be providing "comprehensive" information when in fact it suppresses or ignores practically all the available information in favour of its own hysterical nonsense)

4. Create impossible standards for your opponents (VVASP's info is claptrap, but supporters are expected to come up with even more research to prove that windpower works; weird, no?)

5. Use logical fallacies (every argument VVASP has advanced)

6. Manufacture doubt (enough said).

The last is where VVASP are at. Their other arguments have been steadily chipped away at, so that only a small fringe of brainwashed dingbats are still shrieking that "windfarms are noisy" and none but the most deranged are still making the "kill the Vale countryside forever" claim. They have successfully fostered doubts about the viability of windpower in a few feeble minds (the "comprehensive" information they provide somehow overlooking a favourable 2005 Oxford University study into the reliability of wind as an energy source for the UK).

But the real doubt lies in their last remaining card - the one they've been playing so desperately, and which the new Tory MP they're so delighted with has offered to wave about on their behalf.

TOO CLOSE.

Well over half a kilometre from the nearest dwelling -

TOO CLOSE!
On land the nookies don't own -

TOO CLOSE!!

When there is ample proof that there will be no noise, harmful effects on health or impact on house prices -

TOO CLOSE!!!

Let's be honest. This isn't a real argument. "Too close" simply means "too close to a couple of bloody-minded, fanatically selfish Tory voters who don't want to see a windfarm, end of".

The doubt they're trying to foster is just that - that maybe, just maybe, a turbine more than half a kilometre away in somebody else's field might be just that little bit too close.

And for that, they're willing to deny us all the clean, green, energy we so desperately need.

They make Vladimir Putin and his control of gas supplies to the West look positively benevolent, don't you feel?

Oh, and by the way, the "Blossom May Walk" to go and find some non-blossom and get a bit red-faced at some invisible turbines coincided with a 70s car rally in the next field. So much for the fabled peace and quiet of the countryside. "This is where they want to build the first turbine," the guide bellowed over the roar of revving engines - "can you imagine the noise that would make?"