Don't take my word for it: The Anecdotal Toilet Fallacy

I was reading through a civil and considered comment thread about the proposed King Island Wind Farm - a 200-turbine facility on the small community of King Island, Tasmania.

The head of the newly-formed 'No2Taswind' group, Donald Graham, is active on the thread. Unsurprisingly, the anti-wind group has chosen to utilise the hefty influence of a health scare to induce opposition to the facility. It's sad, because real concerns and valid questions are likely to get drowned out in the fury of an emotionally-charged debate. The controversy is manufactured, and demonstrably overblown.

Recently, No2TasWind hired the services of PR firm Wells and Haslem - the agency through which their website is registered. On their website, under the 'Reality Check' section, they state the following:

"The jury is still out on whether wind farms harm people’s health. Strong anecdotal evidence suggests some people suffer serious health problems within 10km of turbines."

"Strong anecdotal evidence"? I'd never heard of anecdotal evidence referred to as strong before (except in weird, supernatural reincarnation books). Though anecdotal evidence can sometimes be an important part of scientific inquiry, when we encounter it on its own, it is most certainly classified as weak. There is no such thing as 'Strong anecdotal evidence'.

An analogy: Styrofoam has its uses, but you couldn't really use it to build a house. And if you tried to sell it to someone as a replacement for bricks, you probably wouldn't do yourself any favours by calling it "Strong Styrofoam"

The phrase is a telling attempt to load automatic and assumed authority onto a form of evidence that must be taken with several enormous boulders of salt.

With that interesting invention in mind, one comment caught my eye, from the aforementioned Donald Graham, on the aforementioned comment thread:

"If you don’t think these turbines can affect people, explain why the water in the toilet bowls of some of these houses bounces in time with the rotation of the blades past the tower. Just imagine what it is doing to your head. Sound is changes on air pressure, audible and inaudible."

I can only assume that the report of the water in a toilet bouncing rhythmically in unison with the rotation of wind turbine blades is classified as 'Strong Anecdotal Evidence' - a phrase that will surface more regularly in the increasingly chaotic debate around King Island Wind Farm.

The Wind Widget

Though wind's installed capacity does not currently form a large portion of the National Electricity Market's generation fleet, wind power still contributes meaningfully to the electricity market. The potential for wind farms to provide electricity, particularly for smaller rural communities that do not demand the enormous quantities we see in metropolitan areas, is well worth considering.

A map of South Australia's wind resource, via Renewables SA

With that in mind, I threw together a quick Google Sheets widget, based off a live wind farm generation megawatt value hosted on 'MisterVint' - a great website that displays and logs the percent of your electricity that comes from wind energy, on the National Electricity Market. It also provides a state-by-state breakdown.

I had to provide some relatively rough estimations of the instantaneous power consumption - a fridge, for instance, can vary greatly in its power consumption depending whether the compressor is on or off. Still, the averages gives us a good idea of how much we consume, as individuals, and how much power is currently being generated by wind farms on the grid.

Click here to see the plain HTML version, or click here to visit the Google Sheets spreadsheet (you can make a copy and play with the assumptions and calculations yourself, if you like). If you want to embed it on your webpage, copy and paste the code below (adjust the width and height values, in pixels, to get it right):

<iframe width='500' height='300' frameborder='0' src='https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/pub?key=0AqAu73EozSjEdFRYei0tbUN6QTByQjNVM0dvZjUtNUE&single=true&gid=2&output=html&widget=true'></iframe>

Enjoy!



Thoughts on Energy and Power


800 years ago, wind energy powered one of the most significant endeavours in human history. Impossibly brave men stood on the sterns of wooden craft, and traveled to unexplored lands, powered only by the wind in their sails. Their energy source did not deliver consistently. This did not erode their bravery or determination, and they pushed forward into the future, unhindered.

The concept of capturing energy from the movements of the atmosphere has relevance and utility for modern energy systems. It would be a silly conceit to equate modern wind power with the brave explorers of the past, but both share the need to contend with one important feature: a power source that is variable.

Wind energy is often measured as a 'capacity factor' - essentially, how much power came out of your machines, as a percentage of their maximum capacity? It's convenient and quick, but personally, I don't like it. It tries to condense too much information into a single value. It's sort of like changing the resolution of a picture to one pixel by one pixel. It also carries the implicit suggestion that wind farms ought to be generating at 100% capacity all the time. They shouldn't.

Wind turbines don't generate at maximum capacity all the time - on average, their generation is about 35% of their installed capacity. The range of wind speeds that the machine needs to deal with is broad, and so you build a wind turbine with an equally broad capacity. Capacity factor is misleading because the capacity of a wind turbine is stretched high to capture infrequent but important periods of very high wind speeds. It's also frequently mistaken to be an indicator of 'efficiency', which it most definitely is not. 

Permit me to elaborate. Let's say that, on average, you drive your car at 60 km/h. Occasionally, when you're backing into your driveway, you're going at 5 km/h. Sometimes, on the highway, you go at 110 km/h. The maximum speed of your car is 200 km/h. So does your speedometer show you your average speed, as a percentage of your maximum? No. It shows you your current speed, and the distance you've traveled. No one really cares about the 'capacity factor' of their car, because the metric doesn't really tell them anything significant. 

You can measure the electrical equivalent of 'distance' by looking at 'energy' - measured over time, and in 'watt hours'. In South Australia, in FY12, wind energy contributed 3,349,000,000,000 watt hours (3,349 gigawatt hours) to the grid -  26% of total energy generated in the state (see page 16 of this PDF). 

If you stored one year's worth of South Australian wind energy in a battery, it could power one average Australian home for about 19,000 years. It's not a quantity that can be dismissed easily. It's good to think closely about definitions, metrics and measurements, when someone's talking to you about renewable energy. 

The Mutated Phrase Feed

I am confused, a lot of the time. I hate it when people fudge common phrases, yet, I sort of love it. This may seem a horribly conflicted realm in which to dwell, but I relish every second of it.

Twitter has catalysed this joy for me recently, with a real-time stream of hideous, malformed phraseology at my fingertips. A constant, unending litany and pain and joy and suffering and glory. Mmmmm.

Below, I gather this unforgiving river of beautifully misshapen misery. Forgive those who quote the phrase to mock those who use it mistakenly. They know not what they do.

Wreck havoc - To destroy someone's attempts to induce havoc, ie to induce calm (See: Buddha)

Tweets about ""wreck havoc""

Mute point - When someone is trying to make a point without really saying anything (See: Andrew Bolt)

Tweets about ""mute point""

Beyond the pail - Near a bucket (See: Me with a very bad hangover)

Tweets about ""beyond the pail""

Baited breath - Fishy (See: Silvio Burlesconi)

Tweets about ""baited breath""

For all intensive purposes - Someone who is purposefully intense. (See: Gordon Ramsay)

Tweets about ""all intensive purposes""

I could care less - A probabilistic assessment of the likelihood of being able to experience less caring (See: The British Royal Family)

Tweets about ""could care less""

Irregardless - Towards something being regardless. Sort of regardless, but not quite. (See: The Voice)

Tweets about "irregardless"

Things are getting worst - Everything is nearly as bad as it possibly can be. (See: The apocalypse)

Tweets about ""things are getting worst""

I know, I know. I 'blog on wind energy'. I made this, to satisfy that immutable criterion:

Balancing the Scales: Science and Threat

Subterfuge, menace and politics. These things are deeply compelling. You need not linger long on your favourite news program to hear stories of intimidation and drama, breathlessly and urgently thrust at viewers hungry for cunning. 

A frequent casualty in the ever-churning maelstrom of political drama is rational discourse. As soon as powerful individuals with interests in fossil fuels opened their wallets to climate denial, public conversation became horribly disfigured – a cabal of non-expert climate change deniers, furiously and tirelessly disseminating falsehoods across many different forms of media.

The science of climate change has become heavily politicised (source: news.com.au)

Muting science with emotive political manoeuvring has been the modus operandi of the anti-wind lobby for several years. Though much of their lobbying is set on implying that wind energy is a threat to human health, there is no published scientific evidence to suggest that this is the case. Randall Bell, president of the Victorian Landscape Guardians, openly admits a political skew in an interview with Four Corners:

ANDREW FOWLER: For Randall Bell and the Landscape Guardians, the battle against wind farms is no longer purely a scientific argument.

RANDALL BELL: It's always political. It always was. I never got it until very late in life that it was always going to be about votes.

ANDREW FOWLER: So it's a battle. It's a political battle.

RANDALL BELL: Yes.

ANDREW FOWLER: And you use any weapon you can to win that?

RANDALL BELL: Yes.

The deficiencies and logical fallacies inherent in the claims of anti-wind groups are slowly growing more public. As their claims are examined more thoroughly, the need to distract with increasing quantities of drama grows.

'Wind Turbine Syndrome' is borne of individuals heavily divested from standard scientific methodology. A deficiency in scientific rigour is masked through a focus on politics, drama and emotion. 

Recently, the TasWind development on King Island faced the political weaponry of the anti-wind lobby firsthand. The Waubra Foundation, a key player in anti-wind activism across Australia, has become deeply intertwined in the proposal. According to an anonymous and emphatically hyperbolic anti-wind blog, threats to the CEO of the Waubra Foundation's safety were brought to the attention of Tasmanian police. 

The concerns were called actually in by anti-wind groups from North America and Spain. Mark Duchamp, founder of the ‘World Council For Nature’, was behind the email to Tasmanian police:

“She is known worldwide for her devotion to wind farm victims and her awareness campaign, but in her own country she has received multiple threats”

Three articles are referenced as evidence of these threats. It's worth considering their content in some detail. 

"Battle for King Island: Wind energy politics at 20 paces" is a thoughtful piece on the events at King Island, and mentions Sarah Lauriea few times. Nowhere is Laurie threatened, insulted or denigrated. If critiquing the intentions or credentials of a lobbyist were to constitute a threat to safety, then 99% of all media content would be instantaneously criminal. 

"Wind farm fear mongering: It’s enough to make you sick" is an examination of a series of claims made by Laurie in a radio interview. The author, Mike Barnard, deflates the various falsehoods stated by Laurie. He also provides references for his assertions. Nowhere is Laurie threatened, insulted or denigrated.

"Authorities examine complaint against anti-windfarm activist" reports on the CEO of the Waubra Foundation, Sarah Laurie, being the subject of a complaint directed to the NHMRC, for conducting unethical reseach. The Waubra Foundation recently released an official response to the news, replete with conspiracy theories, claims of a "contemporaneous and coordinated press campaign" and an astonishingly unhinged request for a Royal Commission into the complaint. 

These concerns were raised by anti-wind campaigners thousands of kilometres from King Island. Significantly, their concerns were predicated not on unambiguous threats, but on fully-referenced critiques of Laurie's statements, including an article on her own potential misconduct. Compare the articles above to an actual threat [PDF, language warning], sent to climate scientist Phil Jones:

Sent: Sunday, February 07, 2010 5:34 PM

To: p.jones@uea.ac.uk

Subject: Kill youself (sic) scum

Fuck you for your lies and deceit. You deserve to die. And if you don’t take your own life, then I fucking hope someone does it for you.

Some of the more colourful emails sent to climate scientists. (source - Treehugger)

The gulf between real threats of violence and Duchamp’s skewed perception of threat is vast. Climate scientists now have to regularly deal with death threats – a nasty and unforgiveable by-product of the approach of climate change deniers, such as James Delingpole.

James Delingpole recently promoted the 'metaphorical' murder of climate science proponents (source - The Guardian)

A telling example of a real threat can be sourced from the aforementioned Randall Bell. In March this year he issued the following warning to the new premier of Victoria, regarding the two kilometre setback laws currently in place:

“If Dr Napthine reneges on that policy, I’ll break his arms.”

Renewable energy campaigners Yes 2 Renewables called on the Landscape Guardians and the Waubra Foundation to condemn Bell’s remarks. Unsurprisingly, there was no denouncement. If anti-renewable groups throw down their political artillery, their cause may be judged on scientific evidence alone – an outcome they will avoid at all costs.  

Caveys and the Causal Gap - The Problems with Self-Reported Illnesses

We don't like being told that we're liars. This feeling is so powerful that we perceive accusations of falsehood, even when they don't exist. This is startlingly clear in the case of 'Wind Turbine Syndrome' - when you state that someone hasn't produced sufficient evidence to link their symptoms to wind turbines, it's perceived as a direct attack on personal integrity:

@ontariosea @no2spin You know what - this sort of thing is saying those who are suffering r liars. Y wld people leave their homes 4 nothing?
— S.W.A.T (@no2wind) March 16, 2013

A huge quantity of confusion orbits furiously around this concept - people report real illnesses, but apportion blame in the wrong direction, influenced by misinformation from anti-wind groups like the Waubra Foundation. You don't need to lie - you simply need to frame your reports in the right way. 

I decided to perform a little demonstration of this effect, using my pet guinea pig, Mrs Ewan McGregor. I was inspired by Ben Goldacre, whose dead cat Henrietta is a certified professional member of the American Association of Nutritional Consultants - a neat demonstration of how websites can simulate authority, but in reality, have no strong verification or certification process. 

I am the only person who will ever use this stock photo

"It looks as if all you need to be a certified member of the AANC is a name, an address, and a spare $60. You don’t need to be human. You don’t even need to be alive. No exam. No check-up on your qualifications. And no assessment of your practice."

Ill Wind Reporting "looks to uncover and document the many instances of negative effects from wind developments in rural communities". There's a focus on health effects, but they also include 'oil leaks', 'ice throw' and 'unethical behaviour'. Essentially, it serves as a repository of reports of 'wind turbine syndrome'. Note the phrase 'from wind developments', a statement that the reports they list are causally linked to wind energy. 

I was curious to see to what extent they ignored causal relationships - so, I submitted a report based around a common behaviour in guinea pigs - 'rumble strutting', an obscenely cute dominance display, involving a weird vibrating purr and some serious booty popping. 

Mrs Ewan McGregor, chomping down on some Pak Choy.

"I live two kilometres away from a wind turbine in Glebe - ever since the wind turbine started up I have noticed strange behaviour in my pets. I have two guinea pigs. Since the wind turbine started generating, they have been making a low 'rumbling' noise, almost like vibrating. They do this all the time."

Here's the important part: Everything I submitted to their website is true.

- I do live two km away from a wind turbine in Glebe

- My two guinea pigs were born around the same time the wind turbine became operational, so, they have been exhibiting the behaviour since the wind turbine 'started generating' 

- They make low rumbling noises, with regularity.  

I don't need to lie, to implicate a nearby technology. The causal association is simply implied by stating two facts next to each other: "I live near a wind turbine" and "My guinea pigs make strange noises". If you read those two things, and you desperately hate wind energy, you'll fill that causal gap with relish. 

They also give you the option of providing your name and email, so they can 'verify' your submission. I opted out. Despite this, they accepted my report and published it online [PDF or WebCite, if it's taken down], including the adorable picture of her smashing down some veggies. Sneakily, they even listed it as 'VERIFIED' in a friendly green box:

A liberal interpretation of the term 'VERIFIED'

adorable. 

What does it take to supply 'verified' symptoms of 'wind turbine syndrome'? Well, you need a keyboard, an internet connection, and basic literacy skills. Nothing else. Oddly, they also took no issue with me classifying my guinea pigs as 'children' - plenty of the 'health effects' on the website are categorised liberally, presumably to over-inflate each category. 

There's an important point to take away from this. The trick being deployed here is frequently used by groups pushing pseudoscience online. Through an unchecked submission process, combined with a deceptive 'VERIFIED' tag, they simulate a global epidemic of 'wind turbine syndrome':

The formatting and presentation is likely designed to mimic actual maps of disease spread

Unremarkable symptoms leap gleefully over the causal gap, and are assumed to be due to the presence of wind turbines. This reinforces the belief that that wind energy is harmful - a self-sustaining pattern of unjustified health fears. 

This tapestry of fabricated causality breeds fear, anxiety and stress, catalysed by the speed and reach of the internet. The causal gap is no barrier to loudly professing scientific authority. See, for instance, the 'Reaction Report Form' available on the anti-vaccination lobby's masthead website:

"And I really urge anyone who is listening to this, if they or their children have had an adverse reaction to vaccination, please visit the website and fill in the reaction report form, 'cause we need to get these reactions reported."
- Meryl Dorey

The real dangers of websites like Ill Wind Reporting, and the 'Australian Vaccination Network' lie in the possibility that someone might actually head to their website, instead of to a doctor, when looking for the cause of certain symptoms. If they've been misled into attributing their illness to a wind turbine, they run the risk of letting a real problem go unchecked, and there's no doubt they'll object passionately to perceived accusations of lying about their symptoms. 

They're not lying. Their experience is real. Groups that spread pseudoscience and health fears, with no scientific or medical backing, ought to be examined closely and carefully. Websites like 'Ill Wind Reporting' serve only to reinforce unjustified anxiety that should never have existed in the first place. 

[PDF] - The submission page

[PDF] - The published report 

Night terrors

The wind only blows at night so we'll be bankrupt in no time. This is ridiculous!! soc.li/4cCxHQP #indyref
— Colin Walker (@Barlowfarlow) December 6, 2012

Oh no! The wind only blows at night! This is ridiculous!
The sum generation of all NEM-registered wind farms, last summer:

Sorry, haters. To ease your pain, here's dressy cat on a tricycle:

Hugs,

Ketan