Foreword by Toby Young, Editor-in-Chief, Daily Sceptic

If there’s a theme running through Chris’s work it is that the climate agenda is a thinly disguised power grab by the lanyard classes, determined to assert control over the unruly masses who are proving stubbornly reluctant to give up their sentimental attachment to freedom. You want to choose what car to buy and what speed to drive it? No way, you knuckle-dragging petrol-head. You’ll buy an over-priced, doesn’t-retain-its-value EV and go no faster than 20mph. Enjoy steak and chips? Sorry, mush, it’s a plant-based diet for you from now on. Unwilling to give up your gas boiler? Tough. You’ll be forced to install a ‘heat’ pump that costs £25,000 and doesn’t actually heat your house. …

Chris’s work is needed more than ever – and this book is a fantastic introduction to it. Reading it will make you angry – and you should be angry, very angry. But you’ll also be very entertained.

Introduction

April 7th 2026 was the day the great climate crisis invention backing the political Net Zero fantasy finally hit the hard rocks of reality. That was the day a group of scientists working on a new assessment report for the United Nations-backed Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) admitted that a set of computer model assumptions commonly known as RCP8.5 were “implausible”. The official admission sent shock waves through the elite worlds of climate scientists and collectivist politicians as well as heaping lasting shame on all the helpful messengers in mainstream media. The RCP8.5 assumptions have been a key computer input ‘pathway’ promoting the evidence-lite climate crisis since 2011. Almost every climate Armageddon story whether it be less tasty beer in future (yes, the BBC wrote that one), disappearing polar ice (take a bow, Sir David Attenborough, King Charles and the late Pope Francis) or increasing air turbulence has the fingerprints of RCP8.5 all over it.

The April 7th bombshell meant they were all officially junk.

This book shows that almost everything you have read or heard over the last 15 years in mainstream science, politics and media about future fireball Earth is little more than fake pseudoscientific drivel designed to drive populations to accept all the horrendous collectivist restrictions imposed by an insane, wicked rush to remove hydrocarbons from modern and developing industrial economies. …

RCP8.5 started life as a high-emissions worst case scenario, but its ability to throw off click-bait tales of climate doom led to it becoming a ‘business-as-usual’ pathway. When science grants need organising, green subsidies need collecting and politicians require their virtue to be signalled, who cared that children were sent to bed crying with tales of temperatures rising 5°C or more from a 1850–1900 baseline. Gulf stream shutting down by 2025 (yes, another BBC classic ‘scientists say’ nonsense story), millions of homes being flooded by metres of rising sea levels, sixth mass extinction well on its way – all justified junk to keep the Net Zero money rolling in.

The fact that life without multi-use hydrocarbons would be unimaginably bad, in fact fatal to billions of people, was ignored. Who cared to note that without hydrocarbon-produced fertiliser, half the world’s population would slowly die of starvation leading to endemic warfare as survivors fought for limited resources. In 2024, a newly elected, hard-Left Labour Government packed with Net Zero zealots stopped new drilling for oil and gas in the still plentiful North Sea. Concrete was poured down holes already drilled on land to help release the potentially vast supplies of valuable natural gas that lie beneath the ground in impoverished and deindustrialised areas of England. At the beginning of 2025, 200 members of the British Parliament were prepared to vote for a private member’s bill that would have cut all hydrocarbon use in the UK to just 10% within a decade, barely enough to sustain emergency services.

Such is the level of stupidity and ignorance, these legislating lunatics probably assumed that if their horror-show of a bill became law, they would still be able to pick up their soy lattes on their way to shop for organic hummus in Waitrose.

Chapter 1: Hydrocarbons

In the developing world, hydrocarbons promise an end to endemic hunger, healthier populations and longer and more prosperous lifespans. There is no better word than wicked to describe shutting the door on all these civilising benefits.

Almost all the proposed energy replacements are little short of risible. Implausible, no less. A modern economy cannot run on the breezes and beams since the power is intermittent. There is no viable solution to solving the on/off problem, something that the Net Zero zealots will never admit. Battery backup will only ever be measured in minutes when required at scale, hydrogen is expensive to produce and dangerous with it while tidal power is often horrendously expensive. Nuclear power is useful base load but fails the football half-time kettle boiling test when electricity demand suddenly spikes.

Only gas and oil can currently run a modern electricity grid if security, safety and price are given the highest priority. As we have seen in many countries around the world over the last 20 years including the UK and Germany, wind and solar are little more than expensive add-ons that have led to soaring electricity costs and subsequent job-destroying deindustrialisation. Activists often stress that wind and solar are ‘free’, a concept so stupid and lacking in economic insight that despair in human intelligence is the only response. Hydrocarbons offer enormous kinetic power that harnessed over the last 300 years has transformed human societies in ways our ancestors would have found almost impossible to believe.

At the start of the 18th Century, most people barely moved outside the village they were born in. Now they can travel relatively cheaply to almost any part of the world that takes their fancy. Despite the emotional strictures of Messrs Windsor, Packham, Attenborough and Monbiot, are they really going to give that up, along with proper heat, food, sanitation and medicine when the desperate truth about Net Zero is finally understood?

We cannot do without hydrocarbons whether it be the energy they provide or the countless uses made of petrochemicals. They will be around for a very long time; many might argue they have a glittering future.

Chapter 2: Climate Science

Not to put too fine a point on it, humanity owes a great deal to the beneficence that nature bestows in the form of plentiful hydrocarbons, as the last chapter showed. But wait, some hold the opinion that using them will cause Earth to be cast into eternal ecological damnation, possibly the day after tomorrow. If this is true, none can disagree and we must embrace starvation, hard manual labour, outdoor composted lavvies, reduced populations and misery all round by leaving the stuff in the ground.

The sins of the Industrial Revolution will be purged and Gaia will be saved.

All we need is conclusive proof that humans control the climate thermostat by slapping steak on the BBQ (coal fired, of course) and flying to Fuengirola. But regrettably, all we get is a tissue of lies, misinformation, cherry-picking and political shenanigans, all bound up in a preposterous statement that 97% of scientists believe most recent warming is caused by humans.

Like the Roman Pontiffs of old, the science is declared ex cathedra to be settled. Some activists like wind grifter Dale Vince and climate comedy turn Jim Dale (more in ‘Climate Clots and Comedians’) argue that it should be a criminal offence to debate the matter. As we shall see, the entire ‘settled’ science con, embraced by mainstream media, politicians and activist scientists, does little more than reveal the deep and depressing depths to which scientific integrity has fallen. …

The long-time climate sceptic and geological scientist Dr Ian Plimer is fond of noting that there is not a single science paper that proves conclusively the current opinions around anthropogenic global warming. If there was, you would not hear the last of it, he adds. It is a true and at the same time an easy statement to make. The atmosphere of the Earth and its reactions with the land and the oceans is chaotic and non-linear. In parts it is little understood and thus unmeasurable for all important climatic intents and purposes.

The more we look, the more we learn about the complex ways that uneven amounts of heat are transferred from the tropics to the poles by currents of every kind. This is the primary cause of weather. With the knowledge we have, it is impossible to attribute human cause to individual weather events or long-term climate change given the huge variations produced by natural forces. It just is, and anyone who tells you otherwise should consider a new career renting space in Mystic Meg’s tent at the local fairground.

So, activists use computer models to provide their so-called evidence, but these, as their dismal record over 40 years shows, give us little real guidance. As the growing scandal of the implausible RCP8.5 pathway reveals, they are often worse than useless. Models tell us nothing, but observations provide vital information about what has actually happened.

To that end, Dr Plimer notes that the number of geologists who believe in anthropogenic global warming can be counted on the fingers of a sawmill worker’s hand. In their studies, geologists can see the past, notably how the Earth has changed over the 600 million years back to when life as we know it today started to form.

Looking at the record of CO2 and temperatures going back to the Cambrian epoch, we see little connection over the 600 million years. Sometimes they rise and fall together; often they do not. There is no evidence in the record that suggests a strong, unbreakable connection – something that the current opinion on human-caused global warming surely demands.

Furthermore, it is interesting to note that the atmospheric CO2 level was much higher in the past, with the average over 600 million years probably around 2,700 parts per million (ppm). That is nearly seven times higher than the current denuded level of 420 ppm. Far from spending pointless billions of pounds on CO2 ‘capture’, it might be better to hope it rises a little longer. Plants have evolved to grow efficiently in much higher CO2 levels, and over the last 40 years a tad more food in the atmosphere has led to a sensational but largely unreported 15% ‘greening’ of the Earth.

Chapter 3: UK Met Office

Those who wonder how low scientific integrity can go at the UK Met Office must continue to wonder. Surely by now it would have withdrawn its 2018 UK Climate Projections (UKCP18) report when it used only a RCP8.5 computer pathway to suggest UK summer temperatures could rise 5.1°C by 2070. Preferably with the fulsome apology for all the harm and concern caused after the IPCC ruled the notorious pathway was “implausible”. No chance. In fact, it seems to be doubling down.

The glorious 2026 summer in the UK was just too good a chance for the state-funded meteorologist not to promote weather for the Net Zero cause. “Embarrassingly duped by activists,” was science journalist Matt Ridley’s recent comment, and who can dispute his opinion. In late June, the Met Office produced a short clip showing how it imagined a weather forecast would look in 2056.

The broadcast was said to use a “plausible scenario” showing temperatures reaching 45°C in 30 years’ time, along with nine consecutive days where 40°C was recorded somewhere in England. Not bad going considering the only time the temperature has edged over 40°C in England was in July 2022 alongside the runway at RAF Coningsby when it seems Typhoon jets were landing. “This scenario is not a forecast of a specific event, but a scientifically plausible illustration designed to help us understand how risks could change as the climate warms,” informed the Met Office. By using Met Office climate projections…  “it is a stark realisation to see the maximum temperature reach 45°C”, added the operation’s Chief Scientist Professor Stephen Belcher.

What a load of old bull. Although the Met Office does not specifically identify where the projections came from, they are remarkably similar to UKCP18, a report that should be lying in the bin and not continuing to scare the living daylights out of the general population. The imagined weather forecast was nothing less than shameful agitprop.

Chapter 5: Climate Clots and Comedians

Where to start?

Right at the beginning of the great climate hysteria, a former public school boy and BBC employee was full of newly discovered truths that the world was on the verge of an environmental catastrophe. Inevitably, a home at the Guardian soon beckoned where he told readers in July 1999 that “global warming meant that flying across the Atlantic is now as unacceptable as child abuse”. The global “meltdown” was said to have begun. “Long predicted and long denied, the effects of climate change are arriving faster than even the gloomiest prophets expected,” he preached. Always ahead of his time, such sentiments of fast impending doom became standard slop for almost every activist seeking to whip up tears and fears for the future of Planet Earth. The Right Charlie obviously took note in 2009 when he gave the world 96 months before the eco fairies took it all away.

Of course, our long-time hectoring hero is George Monbiot. In 1999, he wrote that Arctic ecosystems were collapsing, the melting ice was wiping out the feeding grounds of whales and walruses, while polar bears and seal populations appear to have halved. “Appear” is doing a lot of heavy lifting in the story. These days it is a tad more accurate to say that polar bear numbers appear to be at record levels.

Like many extreme activists back in the day, Monbiot had yet to learn the lesson to keep actual dates out of predictions of impending doom. Explaining that I might have got the year wrong for the Day of Judgement never did much for the credibility of the Jeremiah as he sheepishly led followers down the mountain. “The imminent total destruction of the world’s coral reefs is not a scare story but a fact,” Monbiot reported in June 1999. Thankfully, nobody told the corals, which have been around for hundreds of millions of years surviving through almost every change in the climate imaginable. For the last five years, corals on the Great Barrier Reef, the largest coral collection in the world, have been at all-time highs since detailed observations began nearly 50 years ago. Monbiot seems clueless about Nature. Corals can obviously withstand changes in sea surface temperatures, atmospheric storms and attack from other creatures.

Another article that has not worn well was written in December 2002, when Monbiot suggested that within as little as 10 years, “the world will be faced with a choice: arable farming either continues to feed the world’s animals, or it continues to feed the world’s people. It cannot do both”. Of course it did do both, helped by a subsequent 10% growth in global vegetation boosted by extra atmospheric supplies of hydrocarbon-produced CO2. Generally, Monbiot does not seem very keen on farming, claiming in July 2022 that we needed to switch out of it in favour of some ghastly factory processed muck. Human kibble, anyone.

These days Our George has aged and a Messiah complex seems to have taken hold. He still draws an adoring crowd in the usual ‘progressive’ echo chambers, but his closed mind and increasingly neo-Malthusian attachment to Net Zero is starting to catch up with him. He has not had to seriously debate his implausible claims for years, at least since he added his name to the hilarious 2018 Guardian letter which, with stupendous pomposity, stated that he and other signatories would no longer “lend their credibility” to debate over whether human-triggered climate change is real. Among other giants of broadcast media declaring that they had no further interest in the time-honoured process of debating conflicting scientific opinions were Jonathan Porritt, Caroline Lucas, Clive Lewis and Mark Maslin.

Like most hardcore activists, Monbiot has fled Twitter, now X under Elon Musk’s control, seemingly horrified by the unwelcome outbreak of free speech. In a long rambling goodbye to his half a million followers, he observed that intelligent conversation had been drowned out by a “tsunami of stupidity”.

The less charitable might conclude that there are only so many times a man can put up with being called a bit of a berk. …

When politics and science clash, the BBC is one of the first to kick the scientific process of relentless inquiry into touch. During the Covid pandemic, its reporting was abysmal. The dangers of the virus were relentlessly overhyped, junk computer models were given an undeserved prominence, while alternative medical views were ruthlessly suppressed. Climate science is a different subject, but the playbook is the same.

In January 2006, Roger Harrabin, the BBC chief climate activist at the time, held a one-day seminar to discuss how broadcasters should report on climate change. It was attended by 28 senior BBC executives and editors along with a number of invited climate catastrophising sympathisers. The meeting was kept secret for years, but it was crucial in plotting future editorial guidelines. The late Christopher Booker, a leading climate sceptic writer at the time, commented on the meeting’s agreed guidelines: “Its obligations to remain impartial could be put aside, it argued, on the grounds that the official orthodoxy was now so overwhelmingly accepted that any dissent from it could be dismissed as too insignificant to be worthy of notice.”

How many millions have died down the ages when some tinpot dictator, conquering general, cult leader or local mafia chief first pinned that type of notice up in the public square.

But a few pesky free speech voices did manage to get on air in the following years, so in 2018 Fran Unsworth, the BBC’s head of news, cracked down hard on all remaining dissent. Staff were told that climate science should not be presented as requiring balance from opposing viewpoints. Anyone disputing the ‘consensus’ around climate science was effectively banned from the BBC.

The result of the banning order has been appalling. As we have seen, the “implausible” ruling from the IPCC has junked much of its reporting on climate science over 15 years. A failure to inquire, debate and follow the scientific process condemned the BBC to being just another useful idiot promoting a Net Zero fantasy. …

For years, Bob Ward tied climate and Net Zero sceptical journalists up with pettifogging complaints to various UK media regulatory bodies. It is doubtful if anyone was any the wiser after his blubbings to the Beak, but of course for the writers involved and their employers, the lengthy process of having to deal with his whining was the real punishment. Ward works out of the Net Zero activist nest at the London School of Economics known as the Grantham Institute. Both the academic department and Ward’s own salary depend on the largesse of billionaire green investor Jeremy Grantham. These days the scope for regulatory mischief has diminished with free speech and sceptical commentary having moved into the less regulated social media environment.

Ward’s great shtick is a claim to follow the science. As a constant presence on mainstream media, he rails against “deniers” who he claims fail to look at the data. One must not be too unkind, but it seems his own writings and broadcasts rarely extend to actually debating his understanding of the complex subject. In fact, it might even be wondered if he is able to identify a climate scientist.

Ahead of the British General Election in July 2024, an open letter to all politicians called for an ambitious and accelerated programme of climate policies. Signed by 408 climate activists, the BBC hailed it “the most distinguished“ of the country’s scientists. Ward, who organised the petition, posted on X: “Be ambitious on climate, scientists urge parties.”

Scientists you say. The first ‘scientist’ in the alphabetical list was an Associate Professor of Accounting, the second was a geographer specialising in “disaster risk reduction”, while the third was an archaeologist.