Sir Richard Dearlove, the former head of MI6, has called on Boris Johnson to “immediately lift the moratorium on fracking” and help Britain’s European partners to ease themselves off Russian gas dependency. Net Zero Watch has more.
In an interview with the Daily Telegraph’s Planet Normal podcast Sir Richard also warns that Britain’s rush to Net Zero was “admirable but its completely unrealistic, its totally unrealistic. We have to reassess the situation.”
“I don’t know what’s come into the government’s heads on [Net Zero] because they’ve just adopted a set of crazy, unattainable objectives,” he said.
In face of Russia’s invasion of the Ukraine, Sir Richard argues that Britain should adopt a gas-to-nuclear policy.
“I applaud the objective, as we all do, to move to Net Zero, but we need a policy that is practical and achievable,” he said. “And of course gas in particular, the sort of quality gas the Americans produce through fracking, is going to be the transfer fuel of the future. And then in addition we must develop small nuclear reactors. The technology exists.”
Sir Richard added that UK shale gas would be essential to help our European partners to divest from Russian gas imports:
“We have to have sufficient gas storage and supplies. What the European powers that are dependent on Russian gas need is a sort of Berlin ‘airlift’ of gas supplies to Europe as quickly and as fast as possible so that we change the energy equation.”
He added:
“Boris Johnson should listen to the warning by of one of Britain’s most eminent national security experts and lift the fracking moratorium with immediate effect. Any further procrastination over developing alternative gas supplies would be deeply irresponsible and in the face of a worsening European war could only embolden Putin’s aggression.”
Worth reading in full.
You can listen to Sir Richard Dearlove on the Planet Normal podcast here.
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Tim Worstall wrote a good piece for the case of fracking here (with references). His debunking of the earthquake tremors from fracking and water contamination set me straight. The only disagree with his linking possible energy production from shale with carbon credits.
What if The Earth identifies as Mars?
Didn’t Mars have a planetary re-assignment last week? It’s prancing around identifying itself as Venus. Astrologers are vexed but daren’t not say anything…
Trans-Venereans are real Venereans.
As long as their not spreading Venereal diseases I say leave them to it.
What if Pluto takes offense at being called a “dwarf” planet?
PORG – planet of restricted growth.
Has Uranus been reinstated as a planet?
Brilliant solution and entirely logical by prevailing standards!
About damn time people in positions of some influence started to speak out.
There is something seriously wrong when talking common sense and stating the bleedin’ obvious becomes newsworthy.
Will anybody listen?
Complete the sentence
“in a time of universal deceit”…
Indeed.
It is too late – was just reading an article about half an hour ago where some government Oil and Coal board [or somesuch similar officious type body] ordered Cuadrilla to pour concrete down its fracking shafts effectively blocking off the shale gas in the North of England for ever. Also in the process putting the kibosh on what would have been bringing over 75,000 much needed skilled jobs to the North of England.
I’ve heard that Cuadrilla are suffering hearing problems at the moment, especially as a probable shift in the narrative is coming.
Just need to put BEIS and all the energy planners to something more suited to them like excavating mines with teaspoons.
I don’t applaud the “objective”. I think you’re all nuts. But it’s a feature not a bug.
You will own nothing and like it. You will be cold and die short, painful lives.
The problem of Net Zero can be easily solved by shoving it up the arse of Kim Jong Johnson, great fat communist fraud.
‘I applaud the objective, as we all do, to move to Net Zero’
No we don’t. Unless the world does likewise, a UK ‘net zero’ policy as well as hugely damaging is completely pointless. And the world is not going to do likewise: most big non-Western countries have no intention of cutting their emissions – and many are intent on increasing them. Yet these countries – comprising about 84% of humanity and all the world’s poorest people – are the source of 75% of global emissions. Without their active participation, which isn’t going to happen, global emission reduction is impossible.
I applaud whenever someone who applauds net zero carbon stops creating plantfood from their lungs.
Sounds rather like you still think the objective is positive.
I do not. I think exactly the opposite. I think the objective should be to put carbon back into the denuded biosphere as though the future of life on earth depended on it – because it does.
Don’t you understand the words ‘No we don’t‘? Or my observation that ‘a UK ‘net zero’ policy as well as hugely damaging is completely pointless‘?
You are missing the point – we don’t need any emissions reduction.
Unless you believe in the global warming scam.
Do you?
I’m agnostic about the science of AGW. But I do know that net-zero is a dangerous and pointless policy.
OT, but cricket legend Shane Warne is the latest sudden unexpected death, suspected heart attack.
Last night saw another spectator ‘medical emergency’ in the crowd of an FA cup football match. Like others before this, we’ll hear nothing about the condition of the person or whether they died.
Never mind, our attention is meant to be on Russia and Ukraine.
Yes I’ve seen video from the Everton game. Sad to hear about the legendary Shane Warne, at just 52 as well. Hopefully we’ll learn more about his death from global warming in the autopsy report.
and the former Australian wicket keeper Rodney Marsh just 24 hours earlier.
Shane “Shut up and get jabbed so that the despotism can end” Warne?
Oh dear. How sad. Never mind.
https://www.skynews.com.au/australia-news/get-vaccinated-and-learn-to-live-with-it-shane-warne/video/9d147b8b2485b98ed164612d2468d6a4
Oh dear indeed. I formally withdraw my labelling of him as a legend.
From leg-end to bell-end. Not to speak ill of the dead, of course.
Maybe he got one of the jabs from the bad batches???
This will now become the norm at large gatherings and sporting events to the extent that no one will so much as blink when it happens in future
I do not applaud the objective of halting the return of desperately needed carbon back into the carbon-based biosphere.
400ppm is still horrifyingly low. We should be aiming for a minimum 1000ppm. Make global greening great again.
My houseplants agree.
Plant lives matter!
Why on earth would Dearlove think our government’s Net Zero aims were ‘admirable’ and yet ‘totally unrealistic’.
By the same token, my wish to win the National Lottery despite not buying a ticket must henceforth be ‘admirable’.
Sir Richard ‘dodgy dossier’ Dearlove. No thanks.
So now we have Dearlove [Strangelove?] and the Aussie Downer involved in British politics.
Presumably everyone on here is familiar with the roles they played in the coup to unseat the legitimate US President Trump and install the puppet Joe O’Bama.
Good old Mrs Thatcher! All that black gold now going to waste!
This article puts me in mind of one of my old maths professors, who, on using the blackboard to develop what to him, was a self-evident proof, would pronounce, “Thus, gentlemen, IPOTARTP applies!” whilst proceeding to emblazon the initials in capitals across the blackboard with a theatrical flourish.
He’d then confide, “It’s Patently Obvious To All Right Thinking People.”
A small breakout of sanity in The Establishment ….. but one who is no longer in a position where he can do much about it. Rather like the retired scientists/medics who have had the guts to speak out about the Covid lunacy.