More foolish posts from you again. You are so leasily...

More foolish posts from you again. You are so leasily fooled.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-08-19/fact-check-checkmate-scotland-trees-windfarms-14-million/101345798

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.

Scotland axed 14 million trees to make way for wind farms - but also planted 272 million others in the same period.(ABC News: Philippa McDonald)

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".