Occasionally – not as frequently as I should – I search Google Scholar for topics that interest me. So it was the other day when I typed in “Wind farms community effects” or similar into the search box. In ecology, a community is the animals and plants and other taxa that live in a certain habitat. And it is known that putting a wind farm on top of that habitat can change its community – a story for another day.

Of course, there are other kinds of communities too, so the major drawback of using that search term is that you end up with a lot of chaff about human communities. Thus it was that I came across by chance a paper with an extraordinary title:

Anticipating and defusing the role of conspiracy beliefs in shaping opposition to wind farms

The very title seemed to imply that there was no good reason to oppose a wind farm, and that only a conspiracy ideationist would do so. I mean, can you imagine…

Anticipating and defusing the role of conspiracy beliefs in shaping support for wind farms

?

I can’t. But I would think there should be no a priori reason to assume support or opposition is either right or wrong, or that either position requires conspiracy beliefs.

Suitably horrified, I decided to read the paper to see just what sort of conspiracy beliefs the authors had in mind. Had NASA, perhaps, faked the moon landing?

The authors (Winter et al) got in my bad books right away, with the very first sentence of the Abstract:

Reaching net-zero targets requires massive increases in wind energy production, but efforts to build wind farms can meet stern local opposition.

Not a valid assumption, I would say. The results:

…we found moderate-to-large relationships between various indices of conspiracy beliefs and wind farm opposition. Indeed, the relationship between wind farm opposition and conspiracy beliefs was many times greater than its relationship with age, gender, education and political orientation.

OK, so what outré conspiracy beliefs did the wind farm opposers adhere to? For that we have to turn to the Supplementary. To what degree do you agree with the following propositions, on a scale from 1 to 7?

1. There are many very important things happening in the world about which the public is not informed.

2. Those at the top do whatever they want.

3. A few powerful groups of people determine the destiny of millions.

4. There are secret organizations that have great influence on political decisions.

5. I think that the various conspiracy theories circulating in the media are absolute nonsense. (R)

6. Politicians and other leaders are nothing but the string puppets of powers operating in the background.

7. Most people do not recognize to what extent our life is determined by conspiracies that are concocted in secret.

8. There is no good reason to distrust governments, intelligence agencies, or the media. (R)

9. International intelligence agencies have their hands in our everyday life to a much larger degree than people assume.

10. Secret organizations can manipulate people psychologically so that they do not notice how their life is being controlled by others.

11. There are certain political circles with secret agendas that are very influential.

12. Most people do not see how much our lives are determined by plots hatched in secret.

(Note the two reversed questions, there just to check if you were still awake.)

I don’t know about you, but I probably scored quite highly on the conspiracy ideation index. Then again, if there was a referendum on a wind farm development near me, I would vote “no.” As if! We don’t get referenda in the UK. It’s almost as if our lives are determined by a secret cabal of billionaires operating from a well-appointed bunker, whose intention is to return us to a good old-fashioned state of serfdom.

Anyway… where was I before I had a minor attack of conspiracism…?

Oh yes. Remember the title? It included the rather loaded word ‘defusing.’ Let’s defuse those conspiracy beliefs and make the little serfs think in the approved manner. How should we do that? From the Abstract once more:

Information provision increased support, even among those high in conspiracy mentality. However, information provision was less effective when it was presented as a debate (that is, including negative arguments) and among participants who endorsed specific conspiracy theories about wind farms.

OK, let’s hear about the effective information provision – the stuff that came without opposition. What sort of things were the participants told? They were given 7 factoids; factoid 1, for example, reads as follows (translated by the paper’s authors from the German):

1.) Can the wind turbines contribute to climate protection? The potential for electricity generation by the five planned wind turbines is about 40 million kilowatt hours per year. This corresponds to a CO2 saving of about 24,000 tons compared to conventional energy sources. Thus, the planned turbines will make a significant contribution to climate protection in the region.

Regardless of what you think about Net Zero and the CO₂ savings from wind power, the final sentence rather lets the item down. Perhaps a nuance has been lost in translation; but there is no prospect at all for the new wind farm to protect the region’s climate. According to factoid 2, the wind farm “ …increases local supply security…”; it respects “all regulations regarding the distance of wind turbines from populated areas, as well as nature and species protection” according to factoid 6.

Kudos to the authors though, because in their balanced information provision, they made some sceptical talking points, such as:

Wind turbines pose a risk to certain bird species and the construction will drive some animal species out of their natural environment.

At this point the information becomes less effective at changing minds, perhaps because it more accurately reflects the actual facts. The authors lament,

…it is sobering that the positive effects of supportive evidence could be neutralized by counterarguments.

What to do? The last part of the Abstract has the answer:

Thus, the data suggest preventive measures are more realistic than informational interventions to curb the potentially negative impact of conspiracy beliefs.

Yes, rather than allow the people to see both sides of the argument and make up their own minds, they prefer to employ the “inoculation” and “pre-bunking” strategies of one of the channel’s favourite guests, Professor Lewandowsky.

It is somewhat hurtful to think that, in some researchers’ minds, wind farms are an unalloyed good that can only be opposed by those of us with psychological conditions. Whereas, in some sceptics’ minds, wind farms can only be supported by those of us with psychological conditions. (Not true. I don’t believe that. I’m just reframing it for you to show how arrogant it sounds.) Where does this lack of awareness come from?

If only the authors had heard of the Fable of the Dog and the Wolf, perhaps they too could reframe their thinking to what we might call a “noninformative” prior. Or perhaps they know it well, and think that the wolf in the tale has fallen victim to conspiracy theorising and needs to be pre-bunked or inoculated or dosed up with Mogadon.

Featured Image

A wind farm that was opposed to destruction. (Not true. The photo shows a heap of bits of turbine blades and towers at Sweetwater, Texas, that are cluttering the place up because they are impossible to recycle.)