I heard an extraordinary news report last week. It was about heathland on fire in Scotland. The reporter said that the wind turbines in the area had to be turned off as they were fanning the flames.

I was half listening at the time. Something about the report didn’t sit easily with me. The penny has just dropped. Wind turbines can’t fan the flames! The wind makes the blades go round. It’s not the the blades going round that creates the wind.

The turbines, if anything, reduce the power of the wind and so help to stop the spread of flames. Maybe the reporter got it wrong (they very often do) and the turbines were switched off because they were taking in smoke into their engine systems and getting damaged or something like that, but they were not fanning the flames!