There are many good reasons to discontinue current UK net zero policies. I have concentrate on the following for some years now:
1They are de industrialising the UK, losing us jobs, investment and prosperity
2 They are undermining tax revenues we need, sending the tax payments abroad to the suppliers of the energy and goods. Banning UK oil and gas loses us billions in tax which we pay instead to Qatar and the US
3 They are undermining national security, making us import dependent for energy, steel, petrochemicals and other essentials.
4.They are contradictory in their own terms. Importing more boosts world CO 2.
5. Battery cars and heat pumps running on gas fired electricity from the grid does not cut CO 2. It cuts living standards burdening households with big bills to acquire and run these items.
Some of you wish to argue that net zero is a scam, human CO 2 does not warm the planet, or UK CO 2 is too small to make much difference, or human CO 2 is only one influence on climate which might be offset by others including water vapour and natural CO 2. I have given space to these opinions but still think the easiest way to stop the bad policies is to advance views 1-5 which climate activists find difficult to answer.
August 26, 2025
Good morning.
They are not suited to a modern civilized society which requires safe, reliable and affordable supply. None these so called ‘renewables’ do not deliver.
They are however suited to local use such as Sakara Gold where, as he informs us, his electric car is charged. This gives him something that traditional energy production cannot provide – and independent or supplement means to power his home and his car. The cost of which is borne by him and not the taxpayer.
August 26, 2025
Wind power is very expensive then add on the cost of back up or batteries it is even more expensive. It is not even that low in CO2 output when construction, maint. and back up is allowed for. They do not even last that long. Solar in the UK also has the additional problem that you get nearly all the energy in day time amd v. little in winter. Exactly the wrong time for most demand.
August 26, 2025
Battery depreciation for each charge and discharge can be higher than the value of any electricity stored. Also circa 30% of the electrical energy is wasted as heat in the voltage conversion, storage as chemical energy in the battery and the reverse voltage conversion. Even more if stored for a long time as you get natural battery discharge even while not in use.
August 26, 2025
Also, China (followed by USA) is now becoming the leader in Renewable Energy – both in terms of providing its own renewable energy and selling renewable tech / services. Big business.
From a business perspective (not a greeny perspective) why do you think the Chinese have got it so wrong?!
Not forgetting the Chinese want to be in control of their own energy. Surely, wanting to own your own energy as opposed to relying on dodgy regimes and price fluctuations is something important to consider in the future of one’s economy (without busing the economy either which I fully agree with anti-Net-Zeroites about).
August 26, 2025
Trump has banned wind farms. Famously he is drilling.
The Chinese have a market for their Green stuff, so economically they have not ‘got it wrong’. The6 react to western demand. They don’t use the green stuff themselves.
August 26, 2025
‘They don’t use the green stuff themselves’: China: 189 GW of solar power, 150 GW of wind power (2023).
To put things into perspective,
the EU27 has 260 GW of solar power and 231 GW of wind power (2024),
the USA 240 GW of solar power, 145 GW of wind power (2022),
the UK 14.4 GW of solar power, 30 GW of wind power (2023).
This GW is obviously potential, it will depend whether there is Sun and wind to transform this power (GW) into energy (GWh).
(Sources: wikipedia Solar energy in …, Wind energy in …)
August 27, 2025
China still has quite some way to go in terms of energy transformation. It surpassed the UK for per capita emissions in 2014, and it accounts for over half the global total coal consumption, and continyes to invest in new coal capacity. It has about 20 times our population, so it is way behind on renewables as a share of energy input, especially when you account for significant volumes that are “installed” but not grid connected, often the result of surplus production that didn’t find an export market, and the effects of lower wind speeds. Its solar yields are mostly better than ours (except in areas of high pollution), but solar installations must now include battery storage (thus helping with another area of surplus production due to the global EV market expanding much less than forecast).
August 26, 2025
@Lifelogic,
Are you serious about the Right getting back into power – or just letting off steam?!
If letting off steam, fair enough.
But if you say what you say trying to get the Right back into power then you need to focus more on what is RELATABLE to voters in general.
Said with tough love (I want to get the Tories / the Right back into power)
August 26, 2025
The Tories are now the left.
August 26, 2025
Have you got anything positive to say?!
I say what I say as I am going to try and become a Tory MP if things go my way (very small chance they will but no harm in having a go! – there are lots of people here better qualified than me but they don’t seem to want to have a go – and about at least a million people in the country more qualified than me but none of them will have a go).
I am optimistic about our great country’s future but without optimism then we’re more doomed for sure.
So cheer up, please.
August 27, 2025
Ed M
Good on you for at least trying, but politics is a frustrating occupation most of the time.
From my own experience and what I have seen at Local Council level, after attending numerous meetings as a representative for a voluntary local charity (where people are not paid)
August 27, 2025
yeah, left to history.
August 27, 2025
@Berkshire Alan,
Thanks!
It’s about patriotism. And patriotism isn’t just about duty (it is), patriotism is also just a beautiful thing. To help (in whatever small way one can): 1. People get good jobs and help create stable, strong economy in general 2. Lower taxation 3. Greatly lower immigration (not to be mean but we simply can’t afford) 4. Help those in the arts / culture, sport, preserving nature / natural world etc 5. And a strong economy so that we can all have better health care(through mix of private and public), education (not more universities but education that properly meets the needs of our population in general), armed forces and so on. And focused on creating UK as world’s second Silicon Valley (in Cambridge – London – Oxford area) and to try and replicate a (British) German-like car industry in the north of England).
And just to try and allow people to be as normal and British as one can be (patriotic, family-minded, work ethic, good sense of humour, healthy competition, depend on self and family instead of state, sovereign but good relations with our neighbours, safety net for the truly vulnerable who really can’t look after themselves / need a break / ladder to help become responsible for selves again etc).
August 26, 2025
Going largely off grid with a large solar installation imposes a variety of costs borne by the rest of us. Older installations under the FiT scheme attract very large payments for all generation with a bonus for 50% of production for deemed export. That is billed to the rest of us. Likewise the cost of the more recent Solar Export Guarantee scheme, even when the wholesale calue of electricity is negative. Solar surpluses lead to extra grid balancing costs, again paid by the rest of us, as other generation is curtailed and special measures undertaken to avoid a Spanish style blackout.
Then there is the fact that the grid remains the supplier of last resort during the night and periods of Dunkelflaute and particularly in winter. Such last resort supply is for the entire household demand, and comes just when the grid is most stretched, so it makes use of all the grid capacity and backup generation capacity. Yet the basis for charging for this is that a significant chunk of the cost is smoothed into per kWh charges over a year, which are not paid in full by a home with solar. This is such a problem in Australia that they are considering higher standing charges for homes with solar, and premium rates for grid power. In the Netherlands they will be charging for solar exports.
August 26, 2025
Your five points are valid. Society and democracy were never advanced by making ourselves poorer. The disadvantaged were not supported when the economy was nacent. The flight to cave life is a negative force.
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If we care to look, there are readily available ways to clean up our small piece of the planet.
1. We have the means to power our economy beneath our feet and sea, while we develope better means of reliable constant power. SMRs , better described as land based power generators that have worked in ships and boats for many decades, are only in need of adaption to land based use. Rolls Royce will do this for other nations when ignored by its own.
2. Assuming we are allowed the power at little environmental cost the next challenge is to reduce drastically and rewrite the tax book, with two aims in mind. First to create wealtb for the nation and then to allow the retention of much more individual wealth for the express purpose for making all those life decisions that people are better at than government of any colour. Government can look after defence, our borders, policing, the genuinely disadvantaged in society. A financially secure, self reliant population can look after themselves. Failure, in this information aware society, will see the really enterprising element of the population, making those decisions for themselves at a cost to the nation. Many already are.
3. Government, having destructively tinkered with education since WW2, usually for misbegotten political ends, should drive for maximum excellence within the capacity of all individuals.
4. We should insist as a sovereign nation that we remain total masters of our own law, while acknowledging international norms of behaviour, without making ourselves subject to them.
The details of the very necessary re- jiging of the UK would require a book, but the above gives an outline of immediate need.
August 26, 2025
Very well put AG!
August 26, 2025
You can advance any arguments you wish – it’s your blog. But that doesn’t make the other arguments any less relevant to the debate.
Your arguments, if successful, will just lead to a watering-down of the Net Zero SCAM – which is what Badenough and Coutinho are aiming for, so they don’t offend all the LibCONs in the Not-a-Conservative-Party ranks.
However, that means that all the so-called scientific arguments underpinning the nonsense will remain unchallenged and the basic UN Policy and the WEF’s Great Reset will continue to be implemented, albeit slightly slower.
Personally, I prefer to challenge the policy, not the effects of the policy.
August 26, 2025
I tend to agree, the net zero policy is clearly a scam/fraud/religion, a vast exaggeration at best. Surely we should state and demand the truth on this and also demand that people like Cameron, Ed Miliband and now Baroness Theresa May take the blame for this suicidal lunacy.
Just as we know that the Covid Vaccinated were far more likely to die and to catch Covid and less likely to have live births (see the figures from Japan and the Czech Republic) and to demand the release of the hidden UK figures. We should demand the truth and blame those at fault. The more jabs you had the worse that stats got!
August 26, 2025
Trump has challenged the IPCC by withdrawing funding and refusing permission for NASA and NOAA to contribute scientific studies and sarellite data analysis to their work. It is interesting to observe the response: the IPCC has managed to cobble together some extra finance from green billionaires who clearly see it as in their interests, and it has decided to give considerable prominence to weather attribution studies, spearheaded by the high priestess Fredi Otto from Oxford University. You will be hearing a lot more shrill climate propaganda from the BBC and other compliant media.
At a superficial level the propaganda works. People are cowed when Miliband threatens Lear-like “what they are I know not, but they shall be the terrors of the earth”. The overwhelming majority still think that major climate change is a significant threat and that net zero can cure it. Only when they are asked how much they are willing to sacrifice to avoid the threat do they begin to demur. The cost argument cuts through, especially when made personal.
The green religion is one of the modern articles of faith without which you may not secure a job and certainly not advancement in many walks of life, not least the legal profession. It will take a reeducation process not dissimilar to post war Germany to change that. We see the consequences in the legal fightback against removing the EPA’s CO2 Endangerment finding, despite the excellent scientific report refuting it from Curry, Christy, Koonin, McKitrick and Spencer. We can expect the judges and quangocrats will behave similarly here. They regard it as similar to attempting to repeal the law of gravity. Only by emphasizing the economic gravity of their posture can they be dealt with.
August 26, 2025
I prefer to win. I’m sick of ‘winning the argument and losing the vote’.
August 27, 2025
Men, it has been well said, think in herds; it will be seen that they go mad in herds, while they only recover their senses slowly, and one by one.
Charles Mackay
We need pragmatic ways to end the green tyranny.
August 27, 2025
JR has presented the way to beat the greens, by choking them on their own objectives.
August 26, 2025
Probably one of the most important reasons other than cost:
We now on many days seem to be importing about 25% of our electricity via inter-connectors from other Countries.
This is a huge security risk to our Country, because when those Countries want extra power for whatever reason, they will use what they have first and cheapest, and we will be last in line.
A Country without sufficient power of its own cannot function properly when electricity is rationed or cut off.
I well remember the 3 day week some 40-50 years ago when electricity was rationed on a regular basis to industry, then it was an internal situation due to a miners strike, so to a degree it was in part manageable because of pre planned shut downs, managed on a rota basis, when it comes or does not come in from abroad, you have a very different set of problems, especially as so much is now dependent upon computers, electronic payments, stock control, even traffic lights, etc, etc.
Just imagine the chaos, think it cannot happen, think again.
We are slowly
August 26, 2025
Indeed though when traffic lights do fail (certainly in London) the traffic actually flows far better as they are set up to ration traffic flow and to assist the cash cow camera muggings.
August 26, 2025
Precisely…spread the risk and work towards self reliance
August 26, 2025
‘ I have given space to these opinions but still think the easiest way to stop the bad policies is to advance views 1-5 which climate activists find difficult to answer.’
The politicians pursuing the policies do not bother to answer questions. They just plough on regardless.
So I do not think questions will stop the policies. Removing the politicians may eventually do so, but they will have already done a lot of damage before that happens.
August 26, 2025
The damage being done and worse than wasted cost is vast.
August 26, 2025
We are slowly sacrificing our Country on the alter of crazy Net Zero policies.
I have no problem with trying to get there with alternatives, if they are cost effective, reliable, and available, but to force the aim and policy through with immovable target dates, is just madness.
We now have Reading Council looking to increase car Parking charges in the Town based on the cars emission values.
The level chosen 151 or above, so my car which is ULEZ complient, will be charged extra when it is standing still parked with no engine running.
I wonder what the traders think, more business to the out of Town traders !
Most people do not go shopping on a bike, least of all pensioners !.
August 26, 2025
CO2 does warm the climate (all other thousands of factors being the same) but only very slightly and A. the other thousands of things will never all be the same and B. a bit more atmospheric CO2 plant, crop and tree food and indeed being very slightly warmer are both net positives.
The title “Why net zero policies are wrong” should be “why net zero policies are economic, environmental and defensive suicide and totally insanity especially for the UK”.
The chopping down of forests in America then drying this and importing it on diesel ships and burning this “young coal” at Drax is total insanity. Far worse than burning old coal there in cost, CO2 and even in environmental terms too.
August 26, 2025
“Battery cars and heat pumps running on gas fired electricity from the grid does not cut CO 2. It cuts living standards burdening households with big bills to acquire and run these items.”
Indeed, and even if running off Wind Power (when the wind is blowing that is it still make no sense even in CO2 terms. When you consider the vast up grades to the grid and generating capacity plus the back up needed and all the fossil fuel energy that goes into this and the construction of vastly more wind capacity (circa 10x to cope with the vastly increased peak winter demand of heat pumps if we all switched).
Note too that this vastly costly and pointless investment would only used on a few cold days and totally wasted for the rest of the year. Switching to heat pumps would also be vastly expensive and waste our valuable existing gas grid network that copes very well with this increased winter demand for heating!
The policy is pure insanity on so very many levels.
August 26, 2025
Morning John. You are 100% correct in your analysis but until the whole shooting match is acknowledged as being a scam government will keep feeding the beast.
Alk the points especially deindustrialising Britain are well made but are the actual desired outcome of Milibrain and his cohorts.
Why would this or indeed the rump of tory government change policy when it’s working so
well.
We’ve had 17 years since the ruinous climate change act was passed i believe and policy is no longer in the remit of the elected government but handed over to the left wing judiciary. The same with asylum policy.
It is going to take a Trumpian type leader to kill this mess and the vested interests won’t go quietly.
August 26, 2025
Professor William Happer is perhaps the best person to turn to to debunk this mad group think religion or scam.
YouTube · Institute of Public Affairs
The Crusade Against Carbon Dioxide | Professor William …
YouTube · Institute of Public Affairs
28 Sept 2023
This is a crusade, this is not science, we’re talking about, this is a religious Crusade and crusades have a way of ending badly.
YouTube · Old Guard Summit
“CO2 , The Gas of Life”-Dr. William Happer
YouTube · Old Guard Summit
and others.
August 26, 2025
Excellent articles yesterday and today in Conservativewoman debunking the whole WE/UN Agenda 30 which forms he basis if the climate change hoax.
It too refers to the uniparties around Europe and America which are signed up to these policies but due to Trump are questioning their legitimacy.
The world is waking up to the skulduggery of the elite and only just in time.
God bless Trump.
August 26, 2025
+1 on Net Zero and indeed on the net harm Covid Vaccines and on hopefully on preventing world war three too.
August 26, 2025
Alas, Sir John’s points 1-5 are easy to answer if you’re a climate catastrophist. You just ignore them as irrelevant compared with “saving the planet”.
You point out the evidence is overwhelming, and cite wildfires, polar bears, hurricanes, heatwaves, floods and anything else the BBC has wobblies about.
Then you go on the attack and demand to know what sort of moral pervert thinks mere money is more important than our children’s futures. You add that Sir John (who when you last looked wasn’t scientifically qualified) is denying “the science” accepted by all scientists except a tiny handful of crackpots paid to lie by Big Energy.
There you are. Job done.
August 26, 2025
Sorry Sir J, but I disagree with your last para. You have given the ‘political gravey-train’ response to this issue. The PROBLEM is the ‘Settled Science’ position taken by all parties, save Reform. Why? If you accept this is the problem then you can expend decades on how to address the problem while spending (and stealing) billions of tax payers money on trying to find a solution.
The PROBLEM is what needs to be addressed; is there really substantially, anthropogenic caused global warming through release of CO2. This is not settled science, there are a large number of science academics, normally retired, who do not think so.
Reply Go ahead and win that argument. I m not stopping you!
August 26, 2025
Reply to reply: I’d love to think this was about ‘winning arguments’, SJR, but it isn’t. The only way is to do the same as Trump and win power. Then dismantle the Net Zero horror show before it becomes irreversibly harmful.
August 26, 2025
+1
August 27, 2025
You win power by winning the argument.
Do you know of another way in a democracy?
August 26, 2025
Indeed and these sensible often retired scientists like Prof. William Happer are surely right, the BBC types totally deluded or bought perhaps. Yes it warms but v. little on balance a bit more CO2 and even a bit warmer is a net good. We have had ice ages on earth with far, far higher atmospheric CO2 levels than current levels. Their modelling does not even “predict” the past climate!
August 26, 2025
Reply: If we addressed the correct problem, viz ‘are humans the main cause of global warming through CO2 emissions?’, we wouldn’t have to discuss HOW to address the methods stopping CO2 emissions. The science is not settled and needs checking. Since a non scientist politician made a movie about climate science, the ‘fear industry’ jumped into action and saw a way to fleece the gullible masses.
For the last thirty years we’ve been taken for a very expensive ride, this needs to stop now, for the UK, or we’re going to be bankrupted by charlatans.
August 26, 2025
If you want to stop the climate activists in their tracks, they need to feel the direct consequences of their creeds and actions on a personal level instead of projecting their sick fantasies on the rest of us.
August 27, 2025
Yes they should show us how to do it. Be disconnected from the grid and surrender phones cars etc.
at least they would persuade us that they are honest.
August 26, 2025
Taken alongside other policies and laws enacted over decades, the points raised not only show how wrong net zero is, but the whole fiasco just seems part and parcel of a deliberate act of self harm.
I doubt anyone would be against having cleaner, greener and cheaper energy, but net zero policy seems to be none of those things, just a race to the bottom.
The rush to it without the technology being in place to deliver makes no sense.
My suspicions are always aroused when those with equal qualification, experience and working knowledge are shut down and shut out of the public sphere on any given topic.
As for sending ‘celebrities’ (half of whom don’t have two brain cells to rub together) to deliver the message, oh please, we don’t all live our lives by the doings and sayings of such people.
August 26, 2025
Sir JR, you can see the reality, many of us out here can see the reality. Why can’t supposed intelligent MP’s see the reality?
August 26, 2025
Carbon offsets – we can thank John Prescott for those which are just a means to offshore production and impoverish us.
If carbon is bad we need to reduce our use, from wherever it hails. If we do not need to reduce its use, then we can produce our own carbon from the North Sea and industrial processes (including fertilizer and steel),
August 26, 2025
I think you are right to concentrate on those arguments.
Your point 4 (importing more increases world CO2) is a key one, because a lot of activist types and organisations think any sacrifice (but preferably not hurting them personally!) is acceptable in order to reduce CO2. When confronted with the fact that their/others’ sacrifices make it worse, some of them may become less convinced. The argument is even more effective with moderately brainwashed folks (BBC viewers), who probably recognise some of the economic danage being done.
August 26, 2025
Indeed. 1. A bit more CO2 is ot a problem, 2. Their policies actually do not decrease CO2 anyway EVs and exporting high energy industries and importing young coal (wood) to burn at Drax all cause more CO2 not less. 3. to reduce CO2 world cooperation is needed and this will not happen.
4. Even if CO2 were a problem (it is not) then “adaptation” to climate changes if needed – be it hotter or colder, wetter or drier, calmer or windier… would be a far better strategy and a far better use of the money!
How many more reasons are needed? Any 1 is sufficient and all 4 are true!
August 26, 2025
If the Climate Change Act was repealed, Sir John’s views 1-5 could be brought into effect, and individuals could conduct their lives in relation to the proclaimed threat of AGW in a manner of their choice. The likely response of the climate activists in high office could be summarised as “but, but, but…we know best!” They ought to be asked in turn why they wish to control people’s lives when it it difficult to see any tangible net benefit from Net Zero.
The same could have been asked of the Chinese when they were controlling and micro-managing ordinary peasant’s lives via the Great Leap Forward, but that’s another question.
August 26, 2025
You say that the climate activists don’t answer the points you make. They don’t care. They think that the “climate crisis” is more important.
August 26, 2025
Sir John
Agreed
The way to change the World is not by maliciously punishing what is probably just a few percent of the World population, only to contradict your position by encouraging greater output of World emissions elsewhere on the Planet.
Punishing people with punitive taxes for the sake of political ideology that isn’t supported by logic or common sense.
The way to change is to create the wealth to fund change. Passing UK wealth, UK taxpayer money to alternative Foreign Government controlled outlets is not changing the Worlds emissions, it ensuring the UK cant respond, and doesn’t have a future.
Taxpayer money leaving the UK to prop up Foreign Governments, does nothing for all the weaselly words other than impoverish and fight the people of the UK.
We must stop using taxpayer money to subsides political manipulation.
The answer is consumer choice and a open and level playing field for all.
I believe the UK and its people have the abilities and the wherewithal to be able to respond to a changing World and prosper if only we had a Parliament that remembers its job, to keep us safe. A Parliament instead of perpetually fighting the people, more so with their bogus ideology and started working with and for us all we would be ahead of the game. This Socialist/Marxist WEF doctrine is anti the many for the indulgence of the few.
August 26, 2025
A further thought on the nonsense of our Parliament dishing out malicious punishment of the many to favour a few, for a sound-bite headline.
The Taxpayer is being forced to fund people that have the money to make their own choices i.e those that cant afford things are forced to give their money to those that can. The UK EV subsidy now stands at £3,750, that is more money than many can even contemplate on using to buy their own transport just to get to work so as they then can be taxed for it to then give others – ‘A’ star for lunacy. That is without discussing it is the taxpayer that is funding EV fuelling stations. Where actual Fuel stations are funded by those using them
It was interesting to note that when the Chinese primarily State owned car manufacturers learnt they were to be excluded from this taxpayer give away, guess what they did? The lowered the price of cars the sell in the UK by £3,750. Is that a competitive market place at play?
August 26, 2025
Since the year 2000, the correlation between the Earth’s recently declining albedo and its temperature is quite extraordinary. Declining albedo since 2014 has been caused by falling global levels of air pollution, which means less of the sun’s energy is being reflected back into space, thus raising temperatures. Net Zero is as pointless as it is expensive.
August 26, 2025
We could go back to letting shipping burn high sulphur fuels which might reverse the trend.
August 26, 2025
Sir John, you are right to argue that the practical arguments are easier to make but we still need proper investigation and scientific argument over the role of CO2, which after all is the whole basis of the Net Zero fantasy.
CO2 is a greenhouse gas, but its effect become saturated a higher levels (what we have now) and an increase leads to very little warming. There is a good interview between Dr Steve Koonin and Dr John Robson which covers this https://climatediscussionnexus.com/videos/steven-koonin-on-the-unsettled-science-of-climate/. The problem has always been with the computer models which feed climate alarmism.
August 26, 2025
Sir John
It is easy to agree with your points, they point to growing the country to cope with changes. You are suggesting it is possible, and it is, to grow and prosper and compete in a changing World.
The UK Parliament has a different view to the Nation, their whole thesis on change is to take money from the taxpayer send it abroad for it never to return. Parliament wants to turn the UK into a poverty stricken desert unable to respond or chase a future.
NetZero maybe today’s sound-bite, but hat if tomorrows is different? They, Parliament, no one else, have expelled the means, the money. All their NetZero aspirations are based on being beholden to the whims of foreign government whom they have handed our wealth to. When the money dries up and it will if you have ejected the means to earn how accommodating will these foreign powers be when they have issues of their own.
The UK’s Parliaments destruction is not just with the de deindustrialisation its also with the person in the mirror, the taxpayer. The taxpayer is no longer permitted by Parliament to be resilient and self-reliant taking care of them-selves, love-ones, contributing to society. Their lives, earnings, future have been cancelled, slaves to the political ideology of Parliament .
August 26, 2025
The economic argument alone is not working sufficiently fast to prevent the economic and social disaster that Net Zero will bring. The reason is because the climate activists’ argument in return is that there is no economic cost or human deprivation that is too high a price to pay to save the planet. Hence PM May’s Net Zero by 2050 legislation had no costing as the cost to achieve it was simply immaterial. Since gas generated electricity is now back to prices below that for renewables after the Ukraine war price spike DESNZ and the ES&NZ Select Committee are now concentrating on renewables providing energy security by no longer needing to buy fossil fuels from petrostates. But they ignore that most of our gas is from the North Sea (still, and could be increased) and Norway and that there is no energy security when our energy infrastructure, turbines and solar panel etc., and the metals and minerals for cables, batteries, motors and generators etc, plus devices such as evs and heat pumps are supplied by a country whom our security services describe as “hostile”. They also ignore that vast expanses of wind turbines in the North Sea with their extensive cabling is un-defendable against above and underwater drones. It is therefore necessary to inform the public that the real science shows that anthropogenic emissions of greenhouse gases will not cause the planet to boil and burn as this is the final argument against the far left’s CAGW scam to impoverish and control as well as being simply the truth!
August 26, 2025
How many politicians and their families benefit financially, directly of indirectly, from this scam?
August 26, 2025
Sor John, I am grateful to you for raising the need to debate Net Zero. As an engineer and as someone that has read widely about the subject of Climate and the propaganda about man made climate change, I am aware of what is true and what is simply lies when it comes to humanities impact on global climate. An increasing number of real scientists and among them Nobel prize winning scientists are coming out and stating man man climate change is not real. The present fixation with CO2 being the control knob of global temperatures is not true.
Sadly an increasing amount of our taxes are being wasted on projects that have no economic value and will have no impact positive or negative on global climate conditions.
The present government advancing £22billion into developing carbon capture and storage is a prime example of them throwing good money after bad on something that will never change the CO2 balance in the atmosphere.
It all hinges on Henry’s law and partial pressures of CO2 in solution in our oceans and the intimate balance that saturation level has on CO2 in the atmosphere. The total volume of CO2 in our oceans is 50 times more than is in the atmosphere.
Carbon capture i.e. CO2 collection, is akin to asking a man to bucket water out of the ocean, tip it into the local river and claiming a change in the level of the ocean will occur if enough buckets are deployed.
We must stop doing the insane and start focusing on real threats to humanity. CO2 is a positive to mankind not a negative, we would benefit from having more of it in the atmosphere not less.
August 26, 2025
All reasonable points, Sir John, but we are dealing with fanatics who won’t listen to the facts.
!5 years ago, your point was reasonable that we should slow things down. However, with so much more information available now, and books written by respected scientists prove it is a scam.
So the whole thing has to be exploded as complete nonsense. You are still trying to reason with people who won’t see reason. Why are China, India, and Indonesia not doing anything to reduce CO2? Are their scientists less clever than ours in the West? No, they are just as smart and know that Global Warming and Cooling is a natural phenomenon, CO2 is a beneficial gas and cheap, reliable energy is essential for prosperity.
Ed Miliband will bankrupt the UK!
August 26, 2025
Off Topic.
French opposition parties have said they will not back Prime Minister François Bayrou after he called a vote of confidence on 8 September on plans for deep budget cuts. Bayrou, who has led a minority government since last December, called the vote on Monday, warning France was facing a “worrying and therefore decisive moment”. “Yes, it’s risky, but it’s even riskier not to do anything”, he said, in the face of France’s mounting budget deficit.
From the National Rally on the right to the Socialists, Greens and France Unbowed on the left, opposition parties lined up to say they would vote against him.
Bayrou called the vote two days before protests have been called across France to “block everything”.
The Bloquons tout movement, which began on social media but has since been backed by the unions and far left, emerged after Bayrou announced plans in July for almost €44bn (£38bn) in budget cuts.
So the French PM has the balls to cut the spiralling costs before spending gets out of hand. If only Starmer wasn’t such a political eunuch.
August 26, 2025
Oh, and recreating Silicon Valley (and German-car-like industry) here in UK is going to crush taxes as well. As more people in work with higher salaries.
So successfully focusing on High Tech will:
1) To a degree, crush high taxation
2) Even more so, crush high immigration
3) To a degree, crush Net Zero
So the door to the Secret Garden of these three is: High Tech (and German car-like industry).
August 26, 2025
Lastly, Brexit hasn’t served voters as promised. And people no longer want nebulous ideas like Brexit (as they seem the). But instead want down, to-earth, bread-and-butter ones like better jobs as supporting High Tech industry offers. This is not criticising people who support Brexit or who strongly oppose Net Zero but rather the REALITIES of perceptions. You can’t sell a product if you’re not hitting your target audience. This is what I’m really talking about. So this is really about PR / branding. You got to have strong PR / branding otherwise lost cause. And my argument about High Tech offers both strong PR / branding but just as importantly SUBSTANCE too!
August 26, 2025
We won the Brexit Referendum in the face of a massive PR campaign which strayed into coercion and threats.
Brexit means governing yourself which leads to all the rest.
The British people are more sophisticated than you seem to comprehend.
August 26, 2025
Stop getting personal.
This isn’t about you or me but about what’s best for our great country.
Brexit is NOT working as it is meant to be. So have to try and fix the problem instead of head under the sand and lashing out.
August 26, 2025
Also, I never said Brexit had failed (unlike Nigel Farage: ‘Nigel Farage: ‘Brexit has failed’).
I said, ‘Brexit hasn’t served voters as promised’. That’s a lot more positive than Nigel Farage. And I think Brexit can be a success.
What’s your problem (here)?!
And it’s not Nigel Farage who said Brexit has ‘failed’ but lots of Brexiters in so many words.
Again, I never said it had failed. And I still think it can be a success. But if you attack optimists (but not idealists) like me, then what chance does Brexit really have?
August 27, 2025
Ed, we need realists in Parliament, not ‘optimists’.
Brexit, I.e. governing ourselves which is what we have done for 800 years, was sabotaged by ‘nice’ people who don’t want to upset anyone. Who want no losers.
The achievements OF OUR PEOPLE are unequalled. We produce people of John Redwood’s calibre with monotonous regularity – a stunning achievement.
Most of us are disappoints and angry because the political and State class is determined to deny our people an education, the right to earn our own living, the right to own our own homes and to live under our laws – that is our concept of what is just and right.
All analysis of necessity studies what is wrong and going wrong, that is NOT ‘negative’. That is a positive contribution to ensuring it does not happen.
I have worked free of charge as a volunteer for over 40 years to secure the United Kingdom we all love.
Don’t you dare tell me that I am not patriotic, am ‘negative’ and don’t care about my people and my country.
You should read this blog. There are many talented, experienced and informed contributions and John Redwood is himself trying to impart wisdom to all who will listen.
You have much to learn. Learn it and become an asset to our great people.
August 26, 2025
659 criminals were illicitly shipped, into the UK yesterday on the 25th August from France…… 659, and its so easy to cross the channel
August 26, 2025
What I say is not controversial. The oil, gas and investment companies study the likes of Elon Musk and his views on Net Zero, green energy and energy much more than me. My approach is essentially following Elon Musk (but I’m politically more anti Net Zero than him).
August 26, 2025
Lastly, the oil, gas and investment companies understand that ultimately government is beholden to voters who are consumers. And what consumers want now more than anything is decent jobs to pay for their consumption. And this can only be paid for by a stronger and bigger economy that only a stronger High Tech and car industry can pay for to keep people happy and only then will consumers listen to politicians about the need to tackle high net zero costs.
August 26, 2025
Highest tech (AI) is causing massive job losses in the IT and similar industries.
We need plumbers – low tech is where job creation now lies.
August 26, 2025
I agree we need more plumbers.
But whatever you say about AI, AI is currently about less than 1% of the High Tech industry (Apple Inc, IBM, Oracle, Siemens, Google – and lots and lots of smaller companies, including software companies and those building satellites into space and technology for cars and much, much more – and all all the services behind this high tech).
You’re talking nonsense, here, sorry. And full of pessimism. The sort of thing destroying our country.
August 27, 2025
AI is the next Dot Com bubble. Maybe you don’t remember that. When I worked at CDC in the 1970s we discussed AI and renewed it AS ( artificial stupidity).
As Starkey says, people want to believe in miracles. They love magic bullets. something that they don’t understand which will put everything right.
If you follow Musk, see what he has to say about AI. It’s his specialist subject.
August 26, 2025
Lastly, we need to focus on getting Tories into power. Labour don’t care what we think and happily sink our economy with high immigration, Net Zero or whatever. Priority number 1: how to get Tories into power? What are the policies? And how are we going to communicate them effectively? How do we appeal to voters?
August 26, 2025
Ed, you want to get the Tories into power, and then you ask what their policies are. Are you sure that’s the right way round?!
I’d say, let’s get Reform into power because we know what their policies are, and we know that they are opposed to net zero.
August 26, 2025
Fine. Thanks for your answer. It’s a start. Those of us on the right need to be discussing this!
August 26, 2025
as a long-time Conservative activist I gave up on Sir John’s mob after his pals elected
Major.Badenoch has not got a scoobie about what the Bob/Ted/Jean and Jennie are experiencing.
Don’t even start me on the mass meedjia.
My input is quite simple(sorry Sir John) I may not live long enough to see it .Answer REFORM
Sir John:forget the CONS.Put your intellect and experience behind Farage(he need you).
August 26, 2025
Ed M :
It was the Conservative PM May, who made Net Zero by 2050 the law with no proper debate, no vote and no costing. It was PM Johnson who who announced to the World at the UN, “We were the first to send the great puffs of acrid smoke to the heavens on a scale to derange the natural order” and wrote the Net Zero Strategy. It was PM May who signed the UK up to the UN’s Global UN Global Compact for Migration and PM Johnson who allowed immigration to exceed 1m in a single year. And you want the Conservatives to return to power!
August 26, 2025
“…the easiest way to stop the bad policies is to advance views 1-5 which climate activists find difficult to answer.”
Precisely so. (Though the ensuing problem would be that the climate fanatics would then try to invent hypothetical conditions under which those five killer arguments would be outweighed by their basic, erroneous conviction about the ‘evil’ of C2O).
August 26, 2025
So make them do that – if they can.
August 26, 2025
john, agree with all you say.
but its not just carbon pollution, also more complex chemicals.
for instance producing optical fibres generates a range of complex chemicals, and there are choices to be made about how expensive the anti pollution measures used are, versus accepting some level of pollution.
its also an interesting business as quality of product you can produce can be measured and directly impacts price in the market.
the uk was a genuine world leader, could produce the highest quality, and command premium prices on world markets. our shop floor workers invented ways of keeping quality high. this industry has been destroyed in the uk as the state has always demanded the most expensive anti pollution kit, literally as soon as a new chimney technique was invented in some university the state would mandate its use. so costs here were massive, when we are competing against india and china who can produce using worse anti pollution kit than we did in the 1960s. also our hard win leading techniques have leaked abroad.
we should aim to be in the best quartile of anti pollution approaches, and not the absolute best. optical fibres are still made and used, all state intervention here has done is pushed up net world pollution, destroyed jobs here, its is madness.
August 26, 2025
Part of the problem is that the net zero zealots see no way out of the problems they create because they have an entirely blinkered vision that only sees wind, solar, batteries, hydrogen, carbon capture, more grid and interconnectors and demand control as the way of the future. This results in a very costly system requiring massive overbuild and underutilised assets – and still it doesn’t provide a reliable supply.
They have to be offered a way out of their folly, which is one reason why I promote low cost nuclear – aside from the fact that it is genuinely low cost for baseload if properly managed. But even nuclear can’t really be used in isolation – we would still need flexible sources of supply to handle some of the demand variations at lower cost, which is where the zeroes really struggle, as the best option for the UK is clearly unabated gas – which will soon need urgent replacements of elderly CCGT plants.
With all the problems in the wind industry at the moment there is a good chance that AR7 (applications for pre-qualification close tomorrow) may prove disappointing in terms of volume procured. The implication would be that still higher prices will be needed in AR8 to attract more offers, at which point the claim that wind is cheap will start looking highly dubious, and capacity shortage will loom large as old nuclear and CCGT station retire and the wind buildout falls way short.
Really only gas can be built with any speed – and even there order book backlogs may mean something of a wait. But there will need to be a pivot to ensuring it does get built, as even with expedited regulation replacing the ONR it will take time to turn the nuclear ship around.
August 26, 2025
This could be a reply to your questions Sir John from the CCC, DESNZ, Ofgem, Parliament, the BBC, The Guardian, academia and the hundreds of well-funded green think tanks:
1. On the contrary, the just and fair implementation of Net Zero is creating millions of well-paid green jobs all over the country and, as PM Johnson said at the UN, as the first nation to “send the great puffs of acrid smoke to the heavens on a scale to derange the natural order”, we need to be seen to lead the world in saving the planet to absolve us of our guilt. Prosperity only leads to more territorial emissions and saving the planet for our children and grandchildren is far more important than our prosperity.
2. The just and fair transitioning to renewables for our energy means we will not need to import oil and gas and the less oil and gas consumed the more we are doing to save the planet. Essentials will be recovered by implementing a circular economy.
3. Our just and fair transition to renewable energy to save the planet will make us energy secure as we will no longer be dependent upon petro states for our oil and gas. The circular economy means that imports will be severely reduced, For instance, to save the planet steel and glass will be re-cycled and together with rammed earth, wood and stone will be used for buildings and bridges. See the absolute Zero report.
4. To save the planet shipping will be banned thus curbing imports and reducing CO2 emissions. All airports except London, Edinburgh and Belfast will close. See the Absolute Zero report.
5. Trains and active travel will replace personal cars (except for those used by Ministers and other government officials). Buses, trucks and vans will be evs running on batteries charged using renewables when they can. Heating will be controlled with wifi enabled thermostats and smart meters on a country-wide rotating basis as and when the wind is blowing and the sun is shining. The reduced availability of travel and the need for heating, because global temperatures are rapidly rising, will reduce people’s bills whilst saving the planet and making everyone healthier.
Reply Completely detached from reality. It is a de industrialisation pro import policy
August 26, 2025
Surely Absolute net zero requires the closure of London, Edinburgh and Belfast airports need to close too. Aeroplanes need to be dismantled. Same for all cars, all of them. Computers must be banned – They consume vast amounts of energy,
How else will you achieve ABSOLUTE net zero?
August 26, 2025
I see elon is going to fund legal action against uk politicians who hid the child rape gang scandals. I can only wish him the best of luck. as ever his interventions are far better than anything coming from within the uk.
will show the police and CPS up for the clowns they are.
August 27, 2025
+1
August 26, 2025
I’m away.
Thanks to Sir John.
(Don’t mean to be argumentative just enjoy a good debate! All the best)
August 26, 2025
The people imposing the restrictions on us are the one with lots of money they are not on the same level as the average person like starmer and co their tax free frebes are probably more than the average salary
Thanks
August 26, 2025
Sir john
The biggest threat to the world
Is the massive growing population
But no one talks about it or will admit it
Thanks
August 27, 2025
Massive population collapse incoming. China thinks it’s 1/3 of it’s accepted numbers. The people of the sub-continent are the most numerous on earth now.
August 28, 2025
California has adopted the UK’s state intervention approach to reducing carbon emissions in electricity production in the United States. Texas has left it to the free market.
Guess which state imports a large proportion of its electricity, has significantly higher prices, and generates less renewables?