Former Conservative Defence Minister Tobias Ellwood MP has made the astonishing claim that changes in sea temperature due to climate change have severely limited Britain’s effectiveness as a naval power. Last week he told Talk TV that “our Type-45 destroyers can now not operate in parts of the world because the water is now too warm now because the engines can’t stay cool”. Did Ellwood let slip a major defence secret in that British warships shut down when local temperatures rise a degree or two, or did he just don a sandwich board and mangle a story to promote a dystopian Net Zero collectivist project? In other words, is he a knave, or just a bit of a berk?
Ellwood was being interviewed on Talk TV’s lunchtime CrossTalk programme following the fiasco at COP28. Your own correspondent was also invited to appear, and the segment can be viewed below starting at around 1hr 52 mins. Time was short and the Conservative MP used it to repeat the rarely challenged mantras that the climate was in crisis, and humanity faced an existential threat. And, it seems, state-of-the-art warships costing hundreds of millions of pounds are apparently immobilised by local weather.
So can the British navy only rule the waves if the sea temperature remains more or less constant? In fact, Ellwood could be referencing a story back to 2016 when it was discovered that Type-45 destroyers stopped working in waters much warmer than Portsmouth harbour. At the time, this was seen as a major design fault. Far from being connected to climate change, it was simply a matter of the installation of the wrong kit, notably a vital turbine intercooler. At the time, the Daily Mail explained that the design fault meant two Rolls Royce turbines slowed down in warmer waters such as the Persian Gulf, and they could not generate sufficient power to run the ship. As a short term fix, all six Type-45 vessels were fitted with extra back-up diesel generators.
Perhaps Ellwood, who was chairman of the Parliamentary Defence Select Committee from 2020-2023, did not get the memo from the Department of Defence in September 2022, noting that HMS Dauntless was back at base after three months testing her new engines “to the limit”. The trials were said to have “gone well”, and delivered a ship “which is now faster, more reliable, greener and ready to embark future weapons”. Again, the question must be asked: Is Ellwood simply making up climate scare stories on a congested TV slot knowing there is no time for him to be pressed on the matter, or does he know something about these trials that is not public knowledge?
One suspects the former since climate alarmists have long become used to spouting doomsday tall tales without the need to explain the science or their underlying political motives. Francis Menton from the Manhattan Contrarian recently wrote about the motives of many energy transition and climate change advocates. As between the options that the advocate is completely incompetent or an intentional fraudster, it might be better to be merely incompetent. “However, often the misdirection is so blatant that it borders on impossible to believe that the author could be so stupid as to actually believe what he or she is saying”, he observed.
The situation is only likely to get worse in the wake of the COP28 fiasco and a growing realisation among general populations that Net Zero is an insane objective that will cause massive economic and societal harm across the world. Dr. Friederike Otto peers into her crystal ball climate model and claims to be able to link individual weather events to long-term changes in the climate. Commenting on COP28, she said, “with every vague verb, every empty promise in the final text, millions of people will enter the frontline of climate change and many will die”. Meanwhile the Guardian reports that some scientists are calling for the power to prescribe climate policy. This power would extend to overseeing policy implementation in the 195 states signed up to COP. Sonia Seneviratne, an IPCC vice chair and co-ordinating lead author since 2012, said: “As climate change becomes worse and worse, it is becoming more difficult to be policy relevant without being prescriptive”.
There is democratic push back against Net Zero in many countries, but the U.K. is singularly ill-served by its current political representatives. Conservative MPs like Tobias Ellwood are fully supportive of the collectivist project, and share many of the society-changing, woke goals of the opposition Labour party. It is no surprise that Ellwood, along with hundreds of clueless MPs, spout climate tosh on every occasion, and have happily nodded through some of the most prescriptive and destructive Net Zero laws on the planet.
Chris Morrison is the Daily Sceptic’s Environment Editor
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Excellent, Guy.
(btw, I always liked your contributions to Time Team – a programme I don’t think I ever missed an episode of).
Oh it’s THAT Guy?!
I’m a fan. <3
Maybe he shaved with Hanlon’s razor in preparation for his address? Lovely piece thank you!
“Indeed, David Attenborough has already expressed his wish that aspects of the lockdown become permanent, like working from home”.
Thank goodness he did not follow that path all his working life! It would have been hard to make all those wonderful wildlife programs in his living room.
I mean, fair enough, maybe people should be given the option of working from home if they want to. The OPTION. Not the enforced norm.
Exactly it shouldn’t be forced. All of this “new normal” is chilling.
David Attenborough is the man who has stated several times that the world population must be reduced to 500 Million to save the planet.
Nice man.
Let us all encourage him to set an example by going to Dignitas, now that Matt Hancock says it is OK to do so.
There is some excellent research, over sixty years old, which predicts how people will continue to believe in ideas and ideologies even when they are incontravertibly disproven: https://www.hughwillbourn.com/post/cc-no-2-covid-brexit-and-flying-saucers
“In the other lies some sort of chance to learn to live with the virus crisis and use self-determination to overcome it within the context of all the other challenges we face.”
Yep, just like we do with the flu while so many go about spreading the virus over the winter months with probably no thought about the thousands who die from it.
RIGHT?!?!
Queen Victoria and Prince Albert’s visionary politicians carefully constructed a lower middle class, to tackle the exponential need for clerks, as industry overlook agriculture. They were cleverly imbued with a total lack of leadership, and injected with a fear of losing status, and a non- financial work ethic, and an obsession with what the neighbours thought. They were not designed to run the country, nor become its largest socio demographic group…..
Great article!
Question on Line 1, with its accurate observation that “All states progress towards totalitarianism.” That being so, why do anything less than work for the abolition of the state?
Excellent article Guy – but deeply sad and worrying that such a thing needs to be written at all! The supine population of the UK, content to wallow at home drinking and occasionally lumbering to the door (their non-supine moment :)) to clap the NHS, mostly reacts not one jot to the assault on its freedoms, the rise of the police state, the power grab by the politicians and the dissembling of various medical scientists. What the hell does the future hold?
Exactly when will people wake up to what’s going on?!?!
“Mendicant friars”! Love it Guy.
As a German, although far too young to have experienced it myself, I welcome you calling it Reich and comparing strategies and propaganda. Funny, the British are so obsessed with How Hitler came to power, just yesterday there was yet another program on BBC4, so how come they do not recognise the signs?
Exactly
I thought he fell short in his appraisal of how Germany became a totalitarian state as a result of the Great War. Wrong. It was the (calculated) result of the imposition of the conditions of the Treaty of Versailles on Germany, which conditions were designed specifically to crush Germany to the point where the populace would be prone to unite under a charismatic leader – thus creating WWII – also a calculated specific outcome, and which outcome created the conditions for a post-war “youth movement” and the whole “sex, drugs and rock’n’roll” philosophy of the 60’s and beyond, which helped with tipping the balance away from the Christian base of the culture and making personal gratification the basis; along with Feminism to destroy the relationship between men and women, to destroy the family, to destroy the role of men i n in society. All this “gender fluidity” is the direct, calculated, outcome of all that. People who have no idea who they are, or what their responsibilities as created beings are, or what their obligations to others and the greater society are, can have the angst and anger and despair created in them, through the loss of connection to their true selves, exploited and used to forward the totalitarian agenda …….
Do we have a disciple of Lyndon LaRouche on our hands here?
ABSOLUTELY TRUE GUY. LITTLE LEFTY LUVVIE WORKING AT MY LOCAL ASDA TRIED TO TELL ME I HAD TO WEAR A MASK TO ENTER THE STORE. TOLD HER SHE WAS JUST LIKE THE BLOODY GESTAPO, SHE TRIED THE OLD WATERWORKS AND SAID SHE WAS JUST TRYING TO SUPPORT HER CHILDREN THROUGH PANDEMIC. HA VERY LIKELY SHEEP, NICE TRY BUT BRITAIN IS NOT A FASCIST COMMUNIST STATE JUST YET
OK actually I do think you were an asshole there. She’s not the one who makes the rules it’s our government. Totalitarian control what’s going on and you should be fighting the government on it (I’ll gladly join you) not taking it out on a mother. And to actually make her cry it’s not her fault the government has taken everyone’s rights away!
Noone is going to see what is going on until its too late! It’s scary seeing how people’s rights have eroded and freedoms taken away for a virus with a 99.7% survival rate