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Ex-Head of MI6 Calls For Immediate End to Moratorium on Fracking

by Toby Young
4 March 2022 2:28 PM

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.

Tags: FrackingNet ZeroPlanet NormalPutinRussiaSir Richard Dearlove

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39 Comments
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rtaylor
rtaylor
3 years ago

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.

7
-1
TheyLiveAndWeLockdown
TheyLiveAndWeLockdown
3 years ago

What if The Earth identifies as Mars?

6
0
rtaylor
rtaylor
3 years ago
Reply to  TheyLiveAndWeLockdown

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…

10
0
Rogerborg
Rogerborg
3 years ago
Reply to  rtaylor

Trans-Venereans are real Venereans.

2
0
Matt Mounsey
Matt Mounsey
3 years ago
Reply to  Rogerborg

As long as their not spreading Venereal diseases I say leave them to it.

3
0
Beowulf
Beowulf
3 years ago
Reply to  TheyLiveAndWeLockdown

What if Pluto takes offense at being called a “dwarf” planet?

5
0
John Dee
John Dee
3 years ago
Reply to  Beowulf

PORG – planet of restricted growth.

1
0
watersider
watersider
3 years ago
Reply to  Beowulf

Has Uranus been reinstated as a planet?

2
0
godders
godders
3 years ago
Reply to  TheyLiveAndWeLockdown

Brilliant solution and entirely logical by prevailing standards!

2
0
huxleypiggles
huxleypiggles
3 years ago

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?

31
-1
TheyLiveAndWeLockdown
TheyLiveAndWeLockdown
3 years ago
Reply to  huxleypiggles

Complete the sentence
“in a time of universal deceit”…

8
0
huxleypiggles
huxleypiggles
3 years ago
Reply to  TheyLiveAndWeLockdown

Indeed.

1
0
Milo
Milo
3 years ago
Reply to  huxleypiggles

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.

7
0
Nessimmersion
Nessimmersion
3 years ago
Reply to  Milo

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.

2
0
Aleajactaest
Aleajactaest
3 years ago

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.

6
0
Moist Von Lipwig
Moist Von Lipwig
3 years ago

The problem of Net Zero can be easily solved by shoving it up the arse of Kim Jong Johnson, great fat communist fraud.

12
0
Robin Guenier
Robin Guenier
3 years ago

‘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.  

25
0
TheyLiveAndWeLockdown
TheyLiveAndWeLockdown
3 years ago
Reply to  Robin Guenier

I applaud whenever someone who applauds net zero carbon stops creating plantfood from their lungs.

10
0
Rogerborg
Rogerborg
3 years ago
Reply to  Robin Guenier

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.

12
0
Robin Guenier
Robin Guenier
3 years ago
Reply to  Rogerborg

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‘?

1
0
huxleypiggles
huxleypiggles
3 years ago
Reply to  Robin Guenier

You are missing the point – we don’t need any emissions reduction.

Unless you believe in the global warming scam.

Do you?

4
-1
Robin Guenier
Robin Guenier
3 years ago
Reply to  huxleypiggles

I’m agnostic about the science of AGW. But I do know that net-zero is a dangerous and pointless policy.

3
0
J4mes
J4mes
3 years ago

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.

19
0
rtaylor
rtaylor
3 years ago
Reply to  J4mes

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.

14
0
James Kreis
James Kreis
3 years ago
Reply to  rtaylor

and the former Australian wicket keeper Rodney Marsh just 24 hours earlier.

1
0
Rogerborg
Rogerborg
3 years ago
Reply to  J4mes

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

11
0
J4mes
J4mes
3 years ago
Reply to  Rogerborg

Oh dear indeed. I formally withdraw my labelling of him as a legend.

3
0
John Dee
John Dee
3 years ago
Reply to  J4mes

From leg-end to bell-end. Not to speak ill of the dead, of course.

2
0
Milo
Milo
3 years ago
Reply to  Rogerborg

Maybe he got one of the jabs from the bad batches???

0
0
Milo
Milo
3 years ago
Reply to  J4mes

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

2
0
Rogerborg
Rogerborg
3 years ago

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.

18
0
rtaylor
rtaylor
3 years ago
Reply to  Rogerborg

My houseplants agree.

6
0
ImpObs
ImpObs
3 years ago
Reply to  Rogerborg

Plant lives matter!

6
0
John Dee
John Dee
3 years ago

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’.

4
0
James Kreis
James Kreis
3 years ago

Sir Richard ‘dodgy dossier’ Dearlove. No thanks.

3
0
watersider
watersider
3 years ago

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.

0
0
godders
godders
3 years ago

Good old Mrs Thatcher! All that black gold now going to waste!

0
0
10navigator
10navigator
3 years ago

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.”

2
0
RTSC
RTSC
3 years ago

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.

1
0

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