Financial Times Descends To Promoting Alarmist Rubbish
On Friday April 3rd, the Financial Times published ‘An open letter to UK party leaders‘ urging the government to abandon any more North Sea drilling for oil. It is unclear to whom this letter was sent
Paul Homewood at Not A Lot Of People Know That picked up on the story yesterday and commented:
“Here is the scientific establishment speaking with one voice,” the FT tells us, warning against the supposed folly of extracting what remains of Britain’s hydrocarbon resources and to choose renewables that, according to the scientist-signatories, provide both energy security and “cheaper solutions [that] we have already, that we know work”.
This is the text of the letter:
As climate scientists, we know that worsening climate impacts have been mainly caused by burning fossil fuels. Humans have already heated our planet by more than 1.3°C, and cutting carbon emissions to net zero is the only way to halt this, limiting spiralling harms and costs.
Yet, in the context of the second global fossil fuel shock in four years – the last driven by Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, the latest by Trump’s war against Iran – we yet again hear suggestions that the solution actually lies with more fossil fuels, and more drilling in the North Sea.
This is despite evidence that around 90% of North Sea oil and gas has already been extracted, and that the scale of international oil and gas markets mean more North Sea oil and gas is unlikely to move prices.
We have more global reserves of oil and gas than we can safely burn if we are to limit global temperature rise to below 2°C. And the likely lifetime emissions from two proposed new oil and gas fields in the North Sea would be more than most individual nations emit in a year. But the volatility of oil and gas prices have also caused our energy and food bills to rocket – twice.
And the Climate Change Committee has shown that the cost of hitting net zero is less than the cost of just one fossil fuel price shock. Many nations realised last time around that energy security lies with renewables, not imported fossil fuels whose price is vulnerable to the actions of the world’s most authoritarian and least reliable leaders.
UK national security experts warn climate change and loss of biodiversity threaten a food supply crisis; we already have rising prices and increasingly empty supermarket shelves, with shortages of fresh fruit and vegetables particularly.
Farmers in the UK have seen some of the worst harvests in recent years; some of their colleagues around the world, producing the two fifths of our food that we import, have seen their livelihoods decimated by extremes of heat, drought, fire and flood.
We will soon exceed the ambitious 1.5°C Paris goal. Any overshoot pushes our climate further out of balance, threatening catastrophic tipping points, including ones that could plunge the UK into a much colder climate in which we would struggle even to grow our own food.
As climate scientists, we urge leaders to look to the cheaper solutions we have already, that we know work, and stop pushing for more of the “medicine” that has already made us so ill.
The letter can be seen here docs.google.com
Below is the list of signatories to the letter. The Financial Times described them as ‘more than 65 leading UK scientists‘, and from that I would have expected many of the names to be readily recognisable. Instead I’d heard of none of them.
Dr Ella Gilbert FRMetS, climate scientist & presenter
Prof Ed Hawkins MBE, University of Reading
Dr Georgia Hole, Durham University
Shidrati Ali
Ms Anna C, NHS
Marlen Kolbe, UBC Vancouver
Dr Matt Patterson, University of St Andrews
Professor Chris Hilson, University of Reading
Mx Helena Key, independent
Prof Bill McGuire, University College London
Dr Mark Harrison, University of Exeter
Dr David Powlson, Emeritus Scientist, Rothamsted Research
Dr Jean O’Dwyer, University College Cork
Dr Sepeedeh Saleh, University of Liverpool
Dr Sarah Ollier, Worldsphere
Prof Martin Siegert, University of Exeter
Dr Raj Tiwari, University of Hertfordshire
Dr Jake Aylmer, University of Reading
Dr Dan Hodson, University of Reading
Hannah Picton, University of Edinburgh
Dr Joanne Jordan, University of Manchester
Selena Georgiou, University of Edinburgh
Dr Susana Hancock, International Cryosphere Climate Initiative
Professor Ian Hall FLSW, Cardiff University
Mr Steve DeVeaux, ParaCode
Dr Marte Hofsteenge, Utrecht University
Dr Mehnaz Rashid, Teesside University
Laura Anderson, Abertay University and the University of Dundee
Professor Richard Allan, University of Reading
Dr David Bott, WMG, The University of Warwick
Jonathan Vicente dos Santos Ferreira
Professor Simon Lewis, University College London
Prof. Dr. Gerald Jurasinski, University of Greifswald, Germany
Mr Michael Field, Cardiff Metropolitan University
Dr Alice Booth, Royal Academy of Engineering
Prof. Ian Brooks, University of Leeds
Dr Lindy Williams, retired
Dr Christina Schmidt, British Antarctic Survey
Dr Alexander J. Baker, University of Reading and National Centre for Atmospheric Science
Mr Sebastian Berghald, KU Leuven
Professor Kirsty Penkman, University of York
Mr Chris Ormandy, Wiltshire Psychology Service
Dr Lori-Ann Foley, Open University
Dr Regan Mudhar, Postdoctoral Researcher
Gaurav Madan, Research Scientist
Mr. William McFarlane Smith, University of Cambridge
Mr Mark Francis, Community Energy Horsham
Dr Grant Macdonald, Durham University
Dr Sarah Connors, European Space Agency
Dr Pauline Sophie Heinrichs, King’s College London
Dr Joseph W Gallear, Rothamsted research
Dr John King, retired – formerly British Antarctic Survey
Dr Amelia Bond, UKCEH
Emeritus Professor Chris Clark, University of Sheffield
Dr Tom Lachlan-Cope, retired
Anne Masters-Parmar, Lancashire Wildlife Trust
Dr Denis Sergeev, University of Bristol
Dr Tim Trent, University of Leicester
Prof Sylvia Knight, Royal Meteorological Society
Dr Rebecca Dell, University of Cambridge
Prof Dr Hans Schaefers, Univ. of Applied Sciences Hamburg Germany
Dr James Kirkham, International Cryosphere Climate Initiative
Dr Anna Jones, retired – formerly British Antarctic Survey
Mr Alistair Gould, The Carbon Free Group CIC
Dr Bo Huang, Norwegian University of Science and Technology
Dr Raphael Köhler, Alfred Wegener Institute
Margaret Morgan, Colorado State University
Stacy Gilbert
Dr Svitlana Krakovska, Ukrainian Hydrometeorological Institute
Dr Juan C. Rocha, Stockholm University
Katharina Blazytko, ICE-4, Forschungszentrum Jülich, Germany
Mr Mark Hehlen, University of Cambridge
Professor Ian Willis, University of Cambridge
Professor Neil Arnold, University of Cambridge
Prof Bryn Hubbard, Aberystwyth University
Dr Maya Jakes, University of Southampton
Professor Saul Humphrey, Saul D Humphrey LLP
Dr Michel Tsamados, University College London
Dr Alex Megann, National Oceanography Centre
Professor Sharon Robinson, University of Woollongong
Dr Iain Willis, TransZero
Dr Carlos Peralta, Skyfora
Dr Charlie Wartnaby, University of Cambridge
Dr Zosia Staniaszek, CICERO
Dr Rhidian Thomas, University of Reading
Dr Freya Muir, European Space Agency / Future Earth
Dr Elia Valentini, University of Essex
Dr Zibiah Loakthar, University of Essex
Dr Nicolas Geeraert, University of Essex
Dr Jane Hindley, University of Essex
Many of these names represent organisations I’ve never heard of, and several have no or vague qualifiers after their names, so they could be the tea lady or the cleaner for all we know.
Who for instance are Shidrati Ali, Ms Anna C, Jonathan Vicente dos Santos Ferreira and Gaurav Madan?
To claim they are all ‘climate scientists’ is about as ridiculous as it gets.
The first name; Dr Ella Gilbert FRMetS, I googled to see what she had presented, but found nothing. I did find her LinkedIn profile, where she describes herself as ‘a climate scientist and multi-award-winning presenter’, but no other information about her awards or what she had presented.
There was a post on her LinkedIn dated October 31st last year, where she says she is leaving academia after suffering some kind of mental breakdown, to focus on spreading the word about ‘climate change’.
Sounds to me like she is suffering from ‘climate anxiety’ and is going to become an activist.
The LinkedIn post is here: linkedin.com
One name on the list; Dr John King, retired – formerly British Antarctic Survey, should not be confused with former UK Government Chief Scientific Adviser David King, who infamously commented that if the human race were to survive, people would need to move to Antarctica, because the rest of the planet would become too hot to live in.
Paul Homewood further commented:
It’s full of inaccuracies and outright lies, such as repeating the CCC’s fake claims about the cost of Net Zero.
It’s also full of the usual trite nonsense, such as a “food supply crisis”, ignoring the FACT that food output hits record highs year after year. Never mind the catastrophe which would accompany the end of chemical fertilisers.
Their assessment of the economics of North Sea oil could have been written by Ed Miliband and ignores the reality that importing oil and gas is fundamentally more expensive. Nor do they address the simple fact that the UK will still be using oil and gas for decades to come.
All we are left with is the meaningless Paris goal, which the rest of the world has been ignoring ever since. Nothing we do as a country will make the slightest difference, so why is the FT publishing this propaganda?
That is the 64,000 dollar question, and shows just how far once-respected media outlets have fallen.
The Financial Times article can be seen here ft.com, and Paul Homewood’s article can be seen here notalotofpeopleknowthat
Header image: Asendia UK
About the author: Andy Rowlands is a British university graduate in space science and Principia Scientific International researcher, writer and editor who co-edited the 2019 climate science book ‘The Sky Dragon Slayers: Victory Lap‘