There follow a guest post by John Fernley, a retired scientist who was a Research Fellow at University College London working on Atomic Physics and subsequently a director of a wind energy development company. He says that while there are clear reasons for the U.K. to pedal slowly to Net Zero, with most scientists supporting the concept of anthropogenic global warming it is not realistic to expect governments to abandon it altogether.
Most countries have now committed to reducing their CO2 emissions to Net Zero; Germany by 2045, the USA, Japan and Europe, including the U.K., by 2050, China by 2060 and India by 2070. Under these circumstances, I suggested in the Daily Sceptic on March 11th that climate sceptics should accept the direction of travel and focus their time and energy on trying to ensure the Government puts forward reasonable policies in order to achieve Net Zero.
From the comments on my article, it seems that some climate sceptics still believe it is realistic to persuade the Government to abandon Net Zero. I would certainly agree that the Government needs to slow down the timetable for Net Zero and it needs to ignore the claims about ‘climate emergency’ and ‘the clock is ticking and we are at one minute to midnight’. If these claims are true then we are all doomed anyway because it was clear from COP26 that China and the other countries of the developing world, which between them produce 63% of global CO2 emissions, have no intention of reducing their emissions in the near future.
Our Government needs to consider carefully which policies will work and which won’t. For example, I listened to Any Question on the radio on Saturday April 2nd and the panellists from all the political parties blithely talked about generating ever more energy from wind. This is madness. If we become too dependent on wind energy then when we have spells of weather with low wind speeds there will be power cuts and our homes will be without light and heat.
