New Fracking Opinion Report is a sexed up version of his 2013 report

Bottomline the POSITIVE phrase is in the old report, but NOT the new one based on the same data !
“Many participants OFTEN spoke for the relative merits of domestic unconventionals, with energy security, domestic production, and shorter transport distances seen as their main benefits. ”
..see that word “often” ..it wasn’t just an odd comment

– Context and Perspective are everything
It’s quite important that the interviews were conducted more than 2 years ago now.. Issues move fast and there has been election since then
– It is relevant that it was Laurence Williams masters thesis work published at the the end of 2013 and that he then moved to SPRU and has taken the same data and made this 2015 paper.
Could even be or not that he scored 2 grants for overlapping work.

– The context is also that Universities and SPRU Brighton in particular are hotbeds in greenism.
.. The thing is they are likely to be involved in Green energy research projects so hava bias towards them
That same Durham department had quite a few research programmes about Photovoltaics, Geo-Energy, Nuclear Energy, Biofuels, Energy Storage for Low Carbon Grids, Green Growth Diagnostics for Africa, Smarter Grid etc whereas they don’t have any research about developing fracking.

I note there is another new report  Framing Fracking: Which Frames Are Heard in English Planning and Environmental Policy and Practice? by Chris Hilson

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What is the public’s opinion on fracking ?
Certainly not robustly opposed nor robustly supporting..various results have been obtained
Does it he public’s opinion matter that much ? Informing them is good. But if you give people vetos they’ll aways vote against change, you’d never get anything done, yet the same people then have a different one after it’s started
.. or if the questions are framed properly. eg Of the last 10 years of US shale which successful projects should taken down ?

– We know Guido reported Greenpeace had to hide their poll results earlier this year
“Hoping to demonstrate that pro-fracking parliamentary candidates could lose their seats, the far-left pressure group commissioned Com Res to survey the British public’s attitude towards hydraulic fracturing. The results? 65% of the Great British Public ARE NOT opposed to fracking. ”
– OK Guido is being tricky he added the 43% who would vote for a pro fracking guy to the 22% don’t knows vs the 35% against…note the question”vote for a pro fracking guy ”

– In January YouGov poll for the Sunday Times – support for shale gas at 35% and opposition at 41.
– February’s DECC attitudes survey found only 24% of the UK public support shale gas extraction.”
.. however that is also spin cos DECC stress NO/Yes are about the same but the don’t knows are much larger at 44%
The DECC poll is not a very good polling system says the expert
I reckon, they must be using skewed questions to get things like “Solar sees 81% in favour” ..most people know they are paying a subsidy for their neighbours panels.
– A 2013 report from Nottingham Uni spoke of continuing growth in fracking support due to cheap fuel perception.

 

Bish’s comment :
“Remarkably, almost nobody seems to have thought that a new industry in their area would bring any benefits at all. ”
is contradicted by an earlier report SAME data, SAME author
– A POSITIVE phrase is in the old report, but NOT the new one based on the same data !
“Many participants OFTEN spoke for the relative merits of domestic unconventionals, with energy security, domestic production, and shorter transport distances seen as their main benefits. ” pg 84-85 Jan 2014
..see that word “often” ..it wasn’t just an odd comment. ..is the change “sexing up” ?

 

other contexts

 

– Proper questions

eg Of the last 10 years of US shale which successful projectscshould not have taken place ?

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The above came from looking at this BH post 

My first comment was

New Focus Group study about opinions on  Fracking from SPRU
by Laurence WilliamsHang on it’s a reprint of older research from 2013 ..Whilst I searched for other focus group projects i find this one from Durham University  published in Jan 2014
WILLIAMS, LAURENCE,JOHN (2014) Framing Fracking: Public responses to potential unconventional fossil fuel exploitation in the North of England. Masters thesis
and when I check the new paper I can see that it’s the same data and none comes from after September 2013

page 84-85 gives an indication of engineer type support
“Many participants often spoke for the relative merits of domestic unconventionals, with energy security, domestic production, and shorter transport distances seen as their main benefits. However, on balance, the majority of those who were willing
to accept unconventionals as a good response to any looming energy ‘crisis’ were only able
to do so because abstract and global environmental discourse left them feeling alienated.
On the other hand those that were persuaded by environmental politics….”
– Does he mean they feel alienated by the domination by GreenReligion calling them deniers ?
– What’s he mean by \\looming energy ‘crisis’// ?

I’ve seen that paragraph before from 16 Dec 2013  Durham U magazine; which is a summary of the  focus group research  … “Many participants spoke for the relative merits of shale gas, with energy security and the apparently self-evident logics of more general domestic production often highlighted. However, for the majority this resulted from a feeling of  alienation  generated by abstract and global environmental discourse. On the other hand…..
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– SPRU is based in BRIGHTON green-loony central
– They chose the Guardian as the place to launch their fracking opinion research 1year ago
– 1000 green fantasies on their blog page eg “that during the weekend before, 8% of the UK’s electricity generation had come from solar”
… they mean not 48 hours but rather 7.8% of daytime electricity, on 21 June 2014 estimated by the solar trade association.
– on their About us “The aim of our research is to identify ways of achieving the transition to sustainable, low carbon energy systems … core partner in the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research…”
– Their latest Facebook post ” the government’s radical decision to scrap the UK zero carbon homes target .. how this major setback will affect the UK’s low-carbon future. ”
– some might suspect bias.