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Richard Stead's avatar

Along the lines that our beloved government so often gets things wrong, I find confidence in my conviction that the CO2 "problem" is a fraud and a hoax. CO2 is vital for the growth of vegetation, and as a result, I would suppose, the world is getting greener. since the amount in the atmosphere has increased.

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Paul Chambers's avatar

As Prof Dieter Helm has noted, atmospheric CO2 concentration has risen by 2ppm per year for decades and this trend has not changed since the UK Climate Change Act or the Net Zero overlay. So the benefit of this policy is zero.

However, the costs are massive. Subsidies (Renewables obligation, Contracts for Difference, Feed in Tariffs) for wind, solar and burning trees is c £12bn per year per the OBR. UK electricity prices for businesses are the highest in the world, reflecting these subsidies and the intermittent nature of wind and solar which necessitates duplicate capacity since cost competitive grid scale storage has yet to be invented.

Importing energy intensive commodities like steel and chemicals while closing UK capacity simply shifts the emissions while compromising our industrial capability and devastating communities that rely on these plants.

Building wind turbines and pylons in our wild places like Snowdonia is environmental vandalism of the worst kind.

And Electric vehicles are not zero CO2, the emissions come during manufacture so are similarly shifted in time and space.

Time to shut down net zero before more damage is done.

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