CheckMate is a weekly newsletter from RMIT FactLab which recaps the latest in the world of fact checking and misinformation, drawing on the work of FactLab and its sister organisation, RMIT ABC Fact Check.
You can read the latest edition below, and subscribe to have the next newsletter delivered straight to your inbox.
CheckMate August 19, 2022
This week, we "fell" misleading claims about millions of trees being cleared in Scotland to make way for renewable energy projects.
We also take aim at incorrect suggestions that Denmark has "banned" COVID-19 vaccines for children, and provide important context for a claim that Asia has just 31 seconds worth of energy stored in batteries.
Did Scotland axe 14 million trees to make way for wind farms?
A US news website with ties to the oil and gas industry has selectively plucked information from a years-old news article about Scotland's efforts to tackle climate change, driving a fresh wave of misinformation about renewable energy.
In recent days, hundreds of social media posts have alleged that 14 million trees were chopped down in Scotland to make way for wind farms.
"Environmental madness", one widely shared tweet reads. "Scotland launched a number of wind turbine projects in an obsessive quest to cash in on renewables.
"The real tragedy is the destruction of 14 million trees, the mind-numbing hypocrisy of climate zealots, a hoax created by the UN."
Other posts, meanwhile, suggest the 14 million trees had been cut down "since 2020".
But that's not the full story.
According to the government agency Forestry and Land Scotland (FLS), 14 million trees were cut down to make way for wind farms in Scotland, but this had occurred over 20 years.
Meanwhile, over the same period (from 2000), 272 million trees were planted across the country.
That crucial fact is missing from an article published this week by the website Energy News Beat, which appears to have driven the recent surge in social media activity.
Notably, the omission comes despite the article drawing heavily on a two-year-old story published by Scottish news site The Herald, in which an FLS spokesman was quoted as saying: "That figure for felled trees should also be contrasted with that for the number of trees planted in Scotland over the years 2000 - 2019, a total of 272,000,000, and renewable energy developments fit well with this."
He added: "The amount of woodland removed across Scotland's national forests and land, managed by FLS, for wind farm development is not even 1 per cent of the total woodland area", while the 14 million trees were a commercial crop that would ultimately have been felled for timber.
In an email to CheckMate, an FLS spokesman also explained that the 272 million trees planted did not include restock planting on commercial sites. In addition, the Scottish government requires that developers that fell trees to make way for wind farms must carry out compensatory planting elsewhere.
"On average, FLS will plant 25 million trees every year as restock planting of commercial crops," he said.
Notably, the Energy News Beat story was copied verbatim from the website CFACT.org, which belongs to the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow, a US-based organisation that rejects the scientific consensus on climate change.
The executive publisher of Energy News Beat, Stuart Turley, is also the president and CEO of Sandstone Group, which describes itself as an energy data and finance consultancy "working with companies all throughout the energy value chain".
According to LinkedIn, both he and the company's former managing director (who co-hosts Energy News Beat's podcast) work for the King Operating Corporation, a "privately held Texas oil and gas company".
No, Denmark hasn't banned COVID-19 jab for under 18s
A number of popular social media posts have claimed that Denmark has banned COVID-19 vaccines for children due to safety concerns.
"BANNED or REJECTED in other countries, yet SAFE to administer in Australia?" reads one Telegram post. "Denmark has decided that it's not suitable for kids under the age of 18!"
That post was just one of many to feature an article taken from a well-known conspiracy website with the headline "Denmark bans vax for youth under 18".
However, that overstates the Danish authorities' position.
Certainly, the Danish government's vaccination plan for autumn and winter (2022-23) states that COVID-19 jabs will not be offered to under 18s — although, crucially, there are exceptions for children with medical conditions.
Meanwhile, boosters will typically only be offered to people aged over 50.
In an email to CheckMate, a spokeswoman for the Danish Health Authority said it was "not reasonable to describe the government's decision as a ban".
Nor was it correct to say its decision was based on vaccine safety concerns, she added.
Describing the current seasonal plan as "tentative", the spokeswoman said authorities were not aiming to stop COVID-19 infections but to prevent serious illness or worse.
She told CheckMate the government had reviewed the current evidence and concluded that age was "the primary independent risk factor" for extreme outcomes, so was focusing its efforts on the most at-risk groups.
Ultimately, the decision largely boiled down to the fact that the under-50s population was already "expected to have significant immunity, both as a result of previous infection and previous vaccination".
"On this basis, and due to the fact that very few persons under the age of 50 are at risk of running a serious course of COVID-19 disease, the Danish Health Authority does not currently plan on recommending vaccination to persons under the age of 18 as a group," the spokeswoman said.
Why Advance Australia's battery claim falls flat
Political lobby group Advance Australia has misinterpreted battery storage data for Asia to suggest that Australia cannot rely on battery storage to meet its energy needs.
"Energy Minister Chris Bowen claims battery storage is the key to our renewable-induced energy woes," the group wrote in a Facebook post to its 90,000 followers.
"Reality disagrees, just look at Asia, they have just 31 seconds of battery storage."
But that claim ignores important context, RMIT FactLab has found, with experts dismissing it as a "misinterpretation of the facts".
As Lachlan Blackhall, who heads the Battery Storage and Grid Integration Program at the Australian National University, explained: "The claim is misleading because battery storage is not intended to provide full backup.
"We would never power the entire grid from batteries and, within this context, calculating the duration of battery backup is misleading."
Professor Blackhall said that pumped hydropower, for example, provides a much longer duration of energy storage and accounts for more than 97 per cent of the world's electricity storage.
In addition, the International Energy Agency reports there is significant pumped hydro development across Asia, with China and India among leading countries globally in pumped hydropower storage capability.
"So, a far better calculation, if you were thinking about total energy storage, would be to calculate pumped hydro alongside battery storage," Professor Blackhall said.
Iain MacGill, co-director of UNSW's Centre for Energy and Environmental Markets, told FactLab that the deployment of batteries was "growing rapidly from a small base", and that it was "not surprising" they could not supply energy to the whole grid.
"I don't think anyone claims that batteries alone will successfully address the challenges of integrating high penetrations of wind and solar," Professor MacGill said, noting that energy storage — including pumped hydro — was just one of several ways to manage variations in renewable power supply.
Critically, a key benefit of batteries was their ability to respond, within a fraction of a second, to imbalances in the electricity network.
While this "balancing" function has traditionally fallen to fossil fuel electricity producers, the Australian Energy Market Operator has forecast that batteries will play "an even greater role" in the electricity system than coal-fired power plants.
Andrew Hastie says Labor commissioned no ships while the Coalition commissioned 70. Is that correct?
The Coalition has been locked in a war of words with the new Labor government over defence procurement.
Following accusations by Defence Minister Richard Marles that the previous government had left a "capability gap" in the wake of the scrapped French submarine contract, Shadow Defence Minister Andrew Hastie countered that Labor had done likewise when it left office.
"Mr Marles talked about capability gaps. Well, when Labor left government, they hadn't commissioned a single ship. [During] our period of government, we commissioned up to 70 ships, including the Guardian class, so we've been getting on with the job."
But RMIT ABC Fact Check this week found that claim didn't hold water.
While the word "commission" can carry distinct military and political definitions, under no common definition could the Coalition be said to be responsible for 70 ships and Labor responsible for none.
Applying the military definition, which means to enter service, the Coalition tallied just over 20 ships, while Labor had entered into service the landing ship HMAS Choules, which was purchased from the UK.
If "commission" also includes entering into a contract to build, that would bring the Coalition's tally to just under 50 ships.
Meanwhile, there are multiple instances of Labor ordering the construction of auxiliary vessels for the navy, as well as for the customs service (now Australian Border Force).
And if "commission" also means to simply signal an intent to acquire, it's possible the Coalition tally would extend beyond 70 ships, including those already delivered, and those with a build contract.
But experts were adamant that such early work does not qualify under the definition of "commission", and, in any event, Labor also signalled its intent to acquire ships during its time in office.
Edited by Ellen McCutchan and David Campbell
Got a fact that needs checking? Tweet us @ABCFactCheck or send us an email at factcheck@rmit.edu.au
