Net Zero threatens national security
By Paul Homewood
London, 31 January – As the EU shifts its spending priorities from the Net Zero agenda to investing in defence, a prominent expert on national security has called for the UK to go back to coal, oil and gas and to start fracking.
"These are the only domestic energy sources that do not leave the country’s energy security at the mercy of enemy states," Professor Gwythian Prins has warned.
Professor Prins, formerly head of the Mackinder Programme at the London School of Economics, and an adviser to NATO and the Ministry of Defence, warns that our lack of secure energy supplies risks leaving us dangerously exposed.
“All offshore energy supplies are vulnerable, and we have insufficient naval power to protect them. Reliance on piped gas from Norway, LNG shipments from America or the Middle East, or the output of rigs and windfarms on our own continental shelf is therefore irresponsible.”
Professor Prins notes that Germany, usually seen as an environmental leader, has already taken the first steps down this road, building super-efficient ‘ultrasupercritical’ coal-fired power stations in response to the deepening energy security crisis and the disaster of their green energy transition.
"We must follow Berlin’s lead. If we can’t defend our offshore assets, we must exploit our onshore ones, and that means firm power from coal, oil and gas. But we must move quickly. We need a new seriousness about our energy security situation in Government. New Zero is a luxury belief that we can no longer afford and must jettison quickly."
Professor Prins’ comments are set out in an article entitled ‘The Net Zero Music Stops’, which is published today by Net Zero Watch. 
Contact
Prof. Gwythian Prins gwythianprins@gmail.com
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NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT 
While the good professor is correct, the ECONOMICS professor ignores the elephant in the room. The contraction of the economy required to achieve Net Zero means you won’t have money for a navy. Or any military. And, since you have disarmed your citizenry . . . uhh, subjects . . . you will have no defense against invasion. Your friends in France and Denmark and Norway are not going to just stare lovingly at Pastoral England.
Pol Pot emptied Cambodian cities, killing perhaps 2 million people. Net Zero will empty London, most of whom will also die.
“History doesn’t repeat itself, but it often rhymes.” — Mark Twain
If you want your military to have weapons, they are better made using resources within the country. So it would be worthwhile having a second look at the government plans for Port Talbot, if only so personel can get around on bicycles.
But that would require joined up thinking, a list of requirements, and planning. :)
Aside from not being able to make virgin steel, already we do not make infantry assault rifles, artillery barrels, complete shells or have a factory to make tanks or heavy armoured vehicles.
We haven’t got a Navy Type 23 frigates are over 30 years old* and two are currently in the Red Sea, Richmond and Lancaster. We don’t have enough F35s or sailors to get both Aircraft Carrier at sea simultaneously.They were both still in Portsmouth at the beginning of the week.
*My son drives a car of the same age and it requires maintenance constantly and breaks down two or three times a year requiring a week in the dockyard. I don’t think the Type 23s will be different.
The aircraft carrier problem is not planes or sailors but the lack of a fleet to protect them. Cheap missiles could take them out without a screen which is why the US have carrier flotillas. We should just sell them to the US and have done with it. And we could spend the money on multi-purpose frigates and destroyers as our sparkly new - and expensive – anti-aircraft ships are not able to launch any surface to surface missiles so in the Red Sea are pretty useless. so Typhoon have to fly 3000miles with 2 refuels instead.
I think that there are less than 40 F35Bs with about 30 outstanding. The carriers have been going to sea with civilian workers which isn’t possible in the Red Sea/Yemen.
But 6 Type 45 and 11 Type 23 aren’t enough to do anything worthwhile.
Types 26 and 31 are years away yet
Not the first time in our history we’ve neglected our armed forces and lived to regret it.
Empty London , most of whom will die. Hmm….so this Net Zero thing does have an upside as long as the right people in London die.
PI despair to say this but our next energy secretary will be ed millband, he of the climate change act.
Milliband seems to be an eco fanatic. Maybe as distraction therapy from destroying his more capable brothers career. We should lobby Starmer to shift him to a ministry where he can do less damage!!
Miliband can’t even eat a bacon sandwich like a normal human being. And don’t start me discussing his Great Edstone….
Unfortunately Starmer seems to fully support Milliband and his idiotic net zero plans. He is still assuring us all that he’ll make Britain’s electricity supply “carbon free” by 2030.
That says all you need to know about Kneeler Flip Flop Starmer if he thinks in just SIX years electricity will be carbon free. the man is a Grade A idiot and still thinks that some women have penises.
And I think it is far from a done deal that Labour will win anything like a huge majority as there is no jeopardy in what you say in a poll.
Whilst claiming to aim for Net Zero the UK govt is involved in a 4 month exercise where 90000 grown men and women are charging around Europe, playing at soldiers, burning vast quantities of diesel fuel and using huge amounts of explosives whose decomposition products are CO, CO2 and NO2 as well as no doubt, similar amounts of toxic uranium dust . Supposed to make Putin cower in his Kremlin bunker . “that’ll be the day” – (John Wayne , The Searchers)
Ah, but wait until all the tanks, SP guns, AFVs and trucks are battery powered – then it will be much better….
Wind and Solar and a complicated expanded grid controlled by electronics build and programed by a potential enemy can not be protected from rockets, drones or hackers.
Meanwhile
Don’t think storage covered the downturn. DESNZ are lying about biomass. The real reasons are economic: CFD generation was effectively subject to a huge tax in the summer which became a small subsidy once the Winter Baseload price took effect in October.
Good to see this working with the new comment plugin.
Well it worked when I was setting the comment up, providing the embedded map. But not after submitting. Perhaps I needed to give it a caption like this
Perhaps it needs some behind the scenes tinkering to make it work:
https://developer.wordpress.org/advanced-administration/wordpress/oembed/