Ok so here’s some spicy and utterly unverifiable tea about the Guardian, the British left-leaning newspaper. There’s nothing anyone can do, but at this point I basically want to hire an investigative journalist about it.
A few years ago, a person we know who was researching bioenergy/biofuels was speaking at an event to a prominent academic and mentioned the Guardian’s rather bizarre, oddly personal campaign against burning wood. It’s weird enough to notice. Every winter the Guardian pumps out several really alarming articles stating that burning wood will kill you, based on papers that fall apart when poked. Why bother?
The academic took the person aside, looked around, and said “you know he’s paid off to do that, right?” But then became uncomfortable and didn’t want to be pressed. Our friend ruminated on it for a long time, noticed the ongoing theme and framing about “woodburners” in the Guardian even more starkly, and pondered on the known forces arrayed against biofuel research.
It’s well-known that international fossil fuel lobbies have strong interest in squelching bioenergy, and certain governments are particularly pushy about it. In short, if you were to commission an editor to “whip up alarm about why biofuel is bad for the environment, we need 6 articles a year” this is exactly the sort of material they’d post. “Get Britain to outlaw woodburners through frightening the public” is a clear goal, but is it about “undermine appetite for biofuel” more generally? Or is there just one rich guy in their social circle who burned themselves on a woodburner once, and this is how they’re spending a small amount of political leverage? Or is it just that an editor themselves wants to do it and specifically directs the staff to construct what support they can find? Or is it just baseless gossip and slander?
This person told Dr Glass and I. I was mostly interested for the mischief, and so I can have a giggle when I see the latest article about WOODBURNERS BEING POISON. It’s amused me for years.
Dr Glass, though, treats it like a crossword. He enjoys tearing apart the studies (they’re never good; they’re intentionally misleading; they usually have some extremely funny thing buried deep in the actual paper, basically like the control group being ‘baking’ and baking being found to be, like, 2x worse than burning wood, so they flipped the charts around) and has a little game about the rhetoric and tone used. It’s enrichment for him, and you might enjoy doing it for yourself. There’s plenty of material. The guardian digs DEEP to find evidence for this campaign, and the studies usually don’t even support themselves, let alone the news article.
I mean, there might be some decent research, is the thing! Cos the thing is! Nobody would argue that indoor pollution is a good thing! Everyone understands on some level that “things that smoke” are bad for you!  it’s an open secret that cooking and baking are mildly and continuously polluting! but in order to keep up this rigourous posting schedule, the Guardian has to send a reporter every time a granny in the Hebrides gets asthma. Below is just lucky dip, it isn’t even sorted.
Anyway there’s today’s amusement. Been going on for years. Nothing to be done about it. No harm in pointing it out. Very funny to see and a puzzle to play with.
