An opinion piece published a few days ago cited parts of a 2016 paper published by researchers from the University of Maryland and other institutions in the US, which said that solar power plants could cause a “photovoltaic heat island” effect.
This issue was picked up by Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Tainan city councilors, who used it as a theme for a question-and-answer session.
The councilors stretched the research findings out of proportion by saying the heat island effect created by solar panels is the cause of Tainan’s long-term drought, lack of rainfall and record temperatures.
The KMT councilors who spoke on this issue included Wang Jia-jen (王家貞), Tsai Yu-hui (蔡育輝), Tsai Chung-hao (蔡宗豪), Lin Yen-chu (林燕祝) and Lee Chung-tsen (李中岑).
Without having carefully studied the research methodology, scale and time span of the research paper, they applied its findings to Tainan and denigrated solar energy as a cause of the drought.
The way they distorted the development of solar energy is staggering.
Academics from institutions including National Taiwan University, National Cheng Kung University and Academia Sinica reviewed the research paper and agreed to be interviewed by the Science Media Center Taiwan.
They said that the research was done in an arid desert with conditions quite different from Taiwan’s climate. They said that with such big environmental differences, the research results measured in one place cannot be directly applied to the other.
Meteorologist Peng Chi-ming (彭啟明) said that the drought in southern Taiwan is mainly because several typhoons over the past few years slipped past Taiwan, resulting in less rainfall than the historic average.
The academic community does not agree that the US research findings can be arbitrarily applied to Taiwan.
These councilors and the media that followed their lead by heavily covering the story have taken overseas research out of context, either out of ignorance or by deliberately omitting the differences in geography, climate, hydrology, environment and other conditions.
It is hard to avoid wondering what political intentions they might have for doing so.
The councilors’ right and power to supervise government officials should be respected, but they should desist from cherry-picking and citing things out of context with no understanding of the science.
If the councilors want to resolve the drought crisis, they should use practical action to help farmers coordinate the available water resources, and support the development of water reclamation and desalination plants, rather than spouting useless rhetoric in the council chamber.
Hsu Jui-yuan is a Tainan resident with a master’s degree in civil engineering.
Translated by Julian Clegg
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