THE GREAT "NET ZERO" FALLACY

Having just seen a glossy business commercial on CNN, paid for by the Japanese Government, congratulating themselves for being well on their way to achieving net carbon neutrality by 2050, I thought I should explain why this planet will never achieve this mythical state of equilibrium, at least while human beings still walk the Earth.

For the sake of transparency, I am a committed petrol-head and racer but, I am also torn, as the other half of me is equally committed to the preservation of all life on Earth —our global flora and fauna, so I believe this to be a fair and balanced view.

Before reading this, you should firstly take a minute to ask Siri, Alexa, Bing, or Google: -

"What is the total % volume of CO? in the Earth's atmosphere today?"

After all, believing is hearing it from one's bot, or a heavyweight search engine, right?

All of them will reply: 0.04%, which is an infinitesimally small fraction of 1%, of which just 12%, or 0.0048% of CO? in the atmosphere is supplementary (man-made). Indeed, it has ranged between 0.04-0.05% since the boundary was crossed from the Triassic, to the Jurassic period —200 million years ago, and long before mankind ever existed.

So why are we required to tolerate: -

? Diktats to switch to very expensive, flawed electric vehicles?

? Diktats to move to very expensive, flawed home heating systems (heat pumps)?

? Equalisation of our atmospheric emissions, which are clearly negligible?

? Wind energy generation, that is neither sustainable, or renewable?

? Ultra Low Emission Zones, which are not scientifically validated?

? Carbon taxation?

It would appear there are many ulterior motives at play here, all financial, or the inmates are running the asylum —or both.

This is the official definition of "Net zero"

"Net zero?refers to the balance between the amount of greenhouse gas produced and the amount removed from the atmosphere. We reach?net zero?when the amount we add is no more than the amount taken away."

Today, we have a global population of 7.9+ billion people. At our present rate of growth (83 million pa) the world’s population will increase to approximately 10.3 billion by 2050, all needing to exhale CO? to exist, which is typically absorbed by our ever-decreasing global flora, oceans, and marine algae, each can be characterised as “carbon sink” because they can absorb more carbon than they are able to release.

We also share this planet with 6,495 other species of mammal, 11,000 species of bird and 12,700+ species of reptile, multiplied by many billions, all needing to exhale CO? to exist and all excreting faeces daily, releasing even greater volumes of unaccounted for CO? into the atmosphere. So, Earth's population increases exponentially, while our floral ecosystem (our carbon sink) declines at a similar rate. Even without our supplementary emissions, these facts are indisputable and mean the Earth will never be carbon neutral. Keep in mind the 0.04% figure as you read on.

Remember, "We reach?net zero?when the amount we add is no more than the amount taken away." So far, no corporation, service provider, or industrial manufacturer anywhere in the world has come close to equalising their carbon emissions.

What is required to equalise carbon emissions?

Here's the science: according to the Farquhar—von Caemmerer—Berry "Model of Photosynthetic Carbon Dioxide Response 2017" (equations 2–8), they prove that 8.5 fully mature broad-leaf trees are required to assimilate a single metric ton of CO? per annum. Therefore, if a cement manufacturer produces 32 million metric tonnes of supplementary CO? in a single year, they would need to plant 272 million trees per annum to offset their retrospective, and future (compounded) output for 30 years, totalling 8.16 billion broad-leaf trees —or, cease production and wait 30 years for the first tranche of 272 million trees to fully mature before resuming manufacture.

How much land would be required to plant 272 million trees? the Welsh Woodlands and Timber department stipulate that 395,360 well-spaced, mature, broad-leaf trees (Maple, Oak, Walnut etc) will fill 1 square kilometre of land, or 1,600 trees per hectare; meaning that for this particular cement manufacturer to hit a net zero target, they would need to procure and plant 688 km2 of land per annum, a space the size of the principalities of Monte Carlo and Andorra combined —every single year. So, don't be taken in by a CEO's photo op with shiny spade in hand, planting a few pine trees in a couple of acres of forestry, as this really won't do.

Carbon credits are equally spurious. Being able to purchase government sanctioned tradable certificates representing the right to emit tons of carbon dioxide, offset by far-flung so-called 'environmental projects' e.g. Educational initiatives to teach youngsters in South Sudan how to be more ecologically responsible, which does nothing to mitigate illegal deforestation and degredation there, leading to a loss of rain-forestry at a rate of 1.5–2% annually.

These projects are also impossible to audit, which is reprehensible; it is no more than greenlighting the purchase of a passport to pollute. They're like Bitcoin, they don't really exist but people are prepared to pay big money for them —just like "the emperor's new clothes."

Lets look at why achieving net zero is a practical and ecological impossibility; and with an atmospheric CO? volume of only 0.04%, why should we care anyway?

In the UK alone, it is calculated that for our flora to capture just our mammalian carbon emissions (exhaled and excreted CO?), we would need to plant 478 km2 of broad-leaf trees, which should be close to maturity and meaningfully photosynthesising by 2050. This forestry work should have commenced at the very latest by the end of 2019 to achieve the UK Government's 2050 sink targets, but it is still yet to begin.

Before we look ahead at what would be required to achieve net zero globally, a question needs to be answered: -

How many millions of square kilometres of floral coverage does the world need to assimilate just the natural carbon emissions of 10.3 billion people and the trillions of Earth's wider fauna? Answer —336.647 million km2, or 66% of the Earth's total land mass.

Today, just 31% of the Earth's total land mass is covered in ever diminishing flora.

Okay, now let us play the duplicitously financed NGOs game (IPCC, UNFCCC, UNEP, UNDRR, UNDP, WHO, WMO, WEF) and see what it would take for us to genuinely achieve a true state of global atmospheric equilibrium. Bear in mind that they (NGOs) have a vested interest in perpetuating this grand global warming ruse, because they employ hundreds of thousands of taxpayer-funded people, who would all be out of a job if the truth be known. I suspect the truth will out eventually.

Mankind would need to do without everything that emits excessive CO?. The change required to achieve this would be existential, because we would be living in a world absent all the utilitarian and luxury contrivances we now take for granted —you cannot make a dishwasher without steel, and you cannot make steel without emitting huge quantities of CO?. Blast furnace or electric arc, makes no appreciable difference to the volume of CO? emitted, directly, or indirectly.

Equally, you cannot make an electric vehicle without casting metal components, or mining finite precious Earth minerals, such as cobalt, nickel, and lithium (emphasis on the word 'finite'), or cure carbon fibre without a hot autoclave, which in turn requires heavy air-conditioning to remove the excessive heat from the manufacturing facility, generating even more supplementary CO?. Indeed, according to the Swedish Environmental Research Institute's 2019 update, the manufacture of just the battery component of any BEV emits approximately 13 metric tonnes of CO?, you can add another 9-12 tonnes for the rest of the vehicle before it rolls-off the production line; compared with the manufacture of an entire mid-sized IC powered BMW, which generates approximately 12 tonnes. It (the BMW) will then go on to emit approximately 3.5 tonnes of CO? each year of its life. So, it will actually take several years of use before any BEV makes any meaningful contribution to atmospheric equilibrium, at which point the manufacturers 7-8 year warranty will be expired making the vehicles residual value negligible, because a replacement battery is still tens of thousands of dollars, whereas the BMW will achieve its fair market value all day long.

There are also a few limiting factors to putting all road transportation eggs into the BEV basket: 1. There are not enough finite precious Earth mineral resources to sustain the demand of a global migration from ICE to all BEV (1.4 billion cars).

2. There is nowhere near enough electricity generated in the world to satisfy a global switch to all BEV, it would need to grow by at least 8X. This would require the commissioning of two large reactor nuclear power plants somewhere in the world every two weeks, for the next ten years. At an average cost of $8bn each, this is never going to happen.

Connected car message to Tesla users from Elon Musk, asking them to charge sparingly during times of stress on the state grid: -

Equally, nobody seems to be too concerned about the required standardisation and proliferation of supercharging infrastructure? Or indeed where millions of people that live in apartments with little to no access to off-street parking will be able to charge theirs?

Entire industrial processes and supply chains for pretty much everything manufactured are perpetual sources of massive greenhouse gas emission, this is why I laugh-out-loud every time a business leader, or politician frames the term "net zero" in any form of serious topical discussion or debate, as they are either totally ignorant of the facts, or more likely, they cynically believe everyone else is. Indeed, any business hiding behind contrived green smokescreens such as 'offsetting' should now start to worry, as the public are starting to wise up to their duplicitous attempts at greenwashing and will no doubt call them out for answers.

N.B. Did you know that all sheet glass manufacturers are required to run their hyper-intensive gas-fired 'float glass' plant 24/7/365, as this manufacturing process cannot be restarted if it is shut down? To achieve "net zero" all sheet glass manufacturers would have to cease to exist, meaning the entire built environment, and automotive industry will no longer be able to order glass.

To the future now —It is 2050 and this is what our world would look like if we were truly able to achieve genuine carbon equilibrium (net zero)

Two thirds of the planet's land-mass is now recovered in flora, renewing the Earth's surface to a green state not seen in 10,000 years (prehistoric), when the global human population was less than 100th of 1% of today's (less than 10 million people). Earth's fauna is now beginning to flourish once again, as their habitats are recovered to pre-industrial levels.

However, in 1995, there was a massive (Polar) axial shift, which caused the cells of the Hadley Circulation, a permanent global-scale climate phenomenon, to stretch ten degrees closer to the poles, corroborated by the dedicated Hadley Science team of the U.K. Met Office in August 2022.

As the axial shift occured, Arctic pack ice was observed to stop, suddenly change direction, and accelerate.

There is less gravitation at the equator where its cells rise and draw their energy than at its extremities, so when the planet rotated into its new position beneath them, the Hadley cells remained static in the troposphere —still anchored to the equator, but now s t r e t c h e d like two colossal sheets of elastic, expanded further north and south.

Its effects can now be felt as heat waves and tropical storm tracks in places that previously never experienced them; typically, in Southern Europe, the Southern United States, Mexico, Panama, Chile, the Middle East, Southern Asia and the Northern Australian territories. The Met Office said: "the effect of this Hadley cell expansion is likely to involve expansion of dry regions in the subtropics more towards the poles, an effect which is included in our current climate projections."

This permanent natural climate conveyor phenomenon causes all our deserts and feeds all our rainforests with humidity and precipitation.

Around six thousand years ago, it transformed the Sahara, a region with a humid rainy climate and 67,000km2 inland sea into the largest desert in the world.

It is responsible for pretty much every catastrophic weather event since 1995, including the wild fluctuations in the jet stream since then, as the two are intrinsically linked; often catalysing severe turbulence as it crosses over flight paths erratically, and unexpectedly. Yet, this has been completely ignored by the United Nations and the World Health Organisation, in favour of the unsubstantiated fossil fuelled global warming theory, resulting from our supplementary greenhouse gas emissions, all 0.0048% of them, easily exceeded by a single volcanic eruption, of which there are 50-70 every single year. Remember what I said about perpetuating their government financing?

This Hadley cell expansion is now responsible for the depletion of every major body of water on the 40?? parallel (40°N) including the Mediterranean, which now loses approximately four feet of its million cubic miles of water to vapour every year. For reference: It is also depleting Lake Mead, the Aral Sea, the Caspian Sea, the Red Sea, the Black Sea, and the biblical Dead Sea; it is also responsible for the drought that is sealing of the Panama Canal, heavy rain in the UAE, flooding in Southern Russia etc (this last sentence was added here in April 2024).

It is the cause of all accelerated glacial and permafrost melt, and we have seen a greater prevalence of severe storms (Hurricane Katrina et al); even the recent heavy rainstorms in Qatar during July 2022 —Doha had never seen a single drop of rain during the month of July in their recorded history.

At the same time in Tehran, catastrophic flooding was reported causing landslides that killed at least 22 with 2,600 people displaced (Red Crescent). Iran has never seen more than 0.2mm of precipitation during the entire month of July, ever.

You may have also heard that the Colorado River, the Yangtze River, the Rhine, the Po, the Danube, and the Loire were all drying-up at the same time in 2022, even though they are on different continents. Unfortunately, they are all on the same latitudes as the inland seas that are in the process of being depleted, as the Hadley Circulation passes back and forth over them. Our French cousins say "it is a once in 500 years occurrence." It is more likely to be a once in a millennia occurrence in the 26,000-year cycle of this Earth's 'precession'.

Back to the future

Ignorant of these facts, or with duplicitous ulterior intent, all governments in this dystopian 2050 future (now authoritarian) limit the number of children born each year, because there is insufficient arable land available to feed an unlimited population, as 66% of the Earth's surface has been restored to it's former state. Once again, man lives in a garden of Eden.

80% of livestock farming has ceased, because it contributed 18% of global supplementary CO? emissions. 20% remains to provide dairy produce only; the world has adapted and become mainly vegetarian, although there is now an ample supply of wild livestock, which is hunted for meat —governments turn a blind eye to this as it keeps the animal population in check.

All fossil fuelled flight has ceased, because it contributed 2.5% of global supplementary CO? emissions. Greener SAF, or sustainable aviation fuel was tried but it did not solve the problem, as it still emitted nearly 50% of the emissions of JP-1A kerosene-based jet fuel.

All fossil fuelled shipping has ceased, because it contributed 2.5% of global supplementary CO? emissions.

All fossil fuelled road transport has ceased, because it contributed 16% of global supplementary CO? emissions.

All carbon emission compliance propaganda put out by global industry was recognised as such (propaganda). e.g. French-Swiss Lafarge Holcim (cement) emitted over 32 Million tonnes of CO? in 2019. How could they possibly say with a straight face they had a 2030 net zero plan? Our kids, who would now have to deal with this, will no doubt say —Really?

All heat generating industry has ceased without exception, because it contributed 22% of global supplementary CO? emissions. No more steel, automotive (inc BEV), aerospace, ships, or heavy plant manufacturers, because they all produced massive volumes of CO?. As I write this, I can hear Michael Caine and gang sing: "this is the self-preservation society" as they park their magnificent trio of Mini Coopers' onto the back of a coach transporter for the last time —how right they were.

All trading in stocks and commodities has ceased, the interlinked global market economy, and foreign exchange rate mechanism has failed. Currency values have flat-lined; central banks are forced to agree a new silver and gold standard guaranteed by their bullion reserves. One Pound is again worth one full troy pound (12 oz t) of Sterling silver, anywhere in the world as precious metals are used to barter for goods and services.

Plastic was banned entirely in 2030, because it was strangling our natural ecosystem and could not be recycled effectively, or truly eliminated. Microscopic particles are now found in all drinking and seawater, as well as detected in the stomachs of all of Earth's fauna (including humans). It had become so minute, it was being evaporated with surface water and returned to the Earth in rain droplets, so could not be prevented from entering the food chain, even with micro filtration. There was so much residual plastic waste globally, it had to be repurposed into insulation materials and solid LEGO? formed bricks for housing, not requiring cement to fix together.*

All fossil, and biomass fuelled powerplants have been decommissioned - biomass releases huge quantities of CO? just like coal. “In 2020 greenhouse gas emissions from the burning of biomass for electricity production in the UK's Drax power plant was around 15 million metric tonnes of carbon dioxide.” The UK government says the wood pellets used are imported from the US, so Drax is not emitting any CO? whatsoever, even though the emissions are there for all to see. This government wishes us all to believe that these emissions are legitimately offset to the fuels point of origin —and these guys are hosting COP26! Japan might now want to rethink their boast that they burn biomass to achieve net neutrality, and they definitely need to rethink their plan to dump 1.37 million cubic metres of contaminated radioactive water from the Fukushima nuclear plant into the Pacific Ocean.

All use of wind turbines to generate electricity has ceased, because mankind is unable to balance the cultivation of crops with the need to bury massive, indestructible, carbon Kevlar composite blades in landfill, as arable land is now the most precious commodity in the world.

N.B. Wind turbine blades have a life span of way less than the 20 years stated by the manufacturers, after which they are replaced and cannot be recycled. Even the fabled Siemens recycled solvolysis separation blades are not viable, because they are considerably more expensive to purchase than a brand new blade made from virgin materials.

Each ￡350K blade can lose as much as 50% of its efficiency in as little as 2 years (off-shore) due to what the industry refers to as "leading edge erosion." These blades have a tip speed of 120-180 mph, which causes the aerodynamic leading-edge surface to erode through constant bombardment by fine particulates in the air —dirt, dust, ice, snow, sand, sea water, and rain, smashes into the blade surface at high-speed causing irrecoverable loss of efficiency, which costs more to repair than replace.

Today, in Europe, over 3,000 blades are buried in landfill each year. This number is set to increase significantly as the UK, Belgium, France, and the Netherlands, have all indicated they will grow their offshore wind farms exponentially. In the US about 8,000+ blades are buried every year —and counting.

This hidden, grubby little (massive) secret is now responsible for the contamination of our natural ecosystem with billions of tons of composite materials, including: carbon fibre, Kevlar, and glass fibre, yet our governments continue to extol the virtues of this "clean, renewable energy."

Once the blades are in the ground, they are there essentially forever, because their indestructible composite materials do not break-down and decompose over time. Today, the number of blades disposed of in landfill is equivalent to burying 400 Airbus A380s?AND?over 1,000 Boeing 747s whole (the largest passenger planes in the world) —every single year! See the image of the Caterpillar D11, the largest Dozer they make, dwarfed by the massive turbine blades it is burying. It is required to dig a hole 30ft deep to be able to cover them over.

On-shore wind turbines also require a massive, 68ft diameter base, fabricated using steel rebar and filled with between 600-1000 metric tonnes of concrete, which emits up to 900,000 kg of CO? (each), plus the 194 tons emitted producing the 105 tons of steel (each).

These footings are so massive and deep, once they are decommissioned, the land they occupy will remain unusable for all-time. Yes, operational turbines do not emit CO?, but no, they are certainly not “renewable," or "sustainable," the two most fallaciously used words in the English language.

Back to the future

All subterranean, open-cast, and oceanic mining has ceased, so no more lithium,?nickel,?cobalt, coal, copper, iron ore, tin, gemstones, silver, platinum, or gold. Whatever we have now is all we'll ever have. Anything deemed to be 'precious' is used as currency, because paper notes and digital 'crypto' are worthless.

*All use of cement has ceased. “In 2019 the cement industry was responsible for 8% of the world's carbon emissions” —more than triple that of the entire global aviation industry.

All use of natural gas to heat bake ovens, crucibles, forges, kilns, blast furnaces, homes, and to cook with, has ceased, because they contributed 11% of global supplementary CO? emissions. No autoclaves for curing carbon fibre, and no metal casting of any kind.

N.B. This is the engine compartment of (arguably) the finest car ever made. It is a 1993 McLaren F1 with engine cover lined in pure 24-karat gold, with carbon fibre engine embellishments, and a titanium, super-lightweight exhaust system —My kind of jewellery, fabulous. Designed by Gordon Murray, It houses the first production engine to develop over 100 BHP per litre. It broke the production car land speed record, achieving 243 miles per hour, which was not broken until 12 years later by a Bugatti Veyron with nearly twice the power.

It cost the owner $15M in 2019. In 2050 it is a static display relic as it's use is now illegal.

All use of oil burning stoves and heating systems has ceased.

Use of all fireplaces and log burners has ceased, they are now illegal.

Brazen methane flare emissions from?global oil and gas operations were 5,200 million metric tonnes per annum; this would require the planting of 44.2 billion broad-leaf trees each year to assimilate —exploration for all fossil fuels, their retrieval, and refinement has therefore ceased.

Manufacture of all machines that generate heat has ceased, including all consumer electronic devices, switches, routers, mini-computers, mainframes, supercomputers, and quantum processors —not even 2000 entangled qubits in multiple states of quantum superposition was enough to think our way out of this mess. No more Cloud services, mobile networks, TV, PlayStation, Internet, air-conditioning, refrigeration, and no electric kettles for tea, because together, they contributed 8% of all global supplementary CO? emissions.

Man no longer conducts extra-terrestrial experimentation and exploration. All space station, Mars, and Moon base activities have ceased. Earth now has millions of pieces of space junk orbiting the planet, including thousands of mini-LEO and MEO satellites, originally positioned to propagate Ka, Ku, and V-band spectrum for broadband access, which are now useless, because the Internet is no longer a thing.

Before Mankind's exploration

After Mankind's exploration and trillions spent. It is 2050 and we still cannot even forecast the weather properly. In 1969, Neil Armstrong said: "It's one small step for man" and in 1979, 'Madness' said: "It's one step beyond," —Madness were right.

In conclusion

All of these changes may seem like overkill, but this is truly what a Net zero world must look like to be classified "net zero." It could never happen without losing pretty much all our creature comforts, and I would call out anyone that says otherwise, because they are either ignorant of the facts, or lying. It is important to reiterate that the total volume of CO? in the atmosphere today is still only 0.04%, of which the supplementary volume is 0.0048%, which is unfathomably negligible, and the phrase, ne disingenuous political slogan "net zero" is a preposterous misnomer, because it is proven to be an ecological impossibility.

Therefore

Net zero will never happen, not just because it is an ecological impossibility, it will never happen because mankind does not have the intelligence, maturity, selfless desire, or the courage, to unite as a single collective and transcend its ancient, inexorable desires and prejudices (power, avarice, money, race, religion), to be able to make this existential change; and why would they want to anyway? when the total volume of CO? in the atmosphere today is unfathomably minuscule.

Why 2050? In 2019 Theresa May was forced to step down as Prime Minister. Before leaving office, she thought it would be a lovely idea to set a "net zero" target by 2050 and enshrine this into UK law as her (spiteful) legacy. Politicians tend to lie, or tell us what they think we want to hear; after all, by 2050, most of them will either be retired or dead. They disingenuously wish us to believe they can transform this world into a net zero utopia, when they know it is an impossible pipe dream, or are just too ignorant to realise it.

Worldwide Political Commitment to Change is Disingenuous

Theresa May's 2050 has turned into a rather convenient global political popularity ruse. Many have found themselves "drinking the Kool-Aid" and have jumped onto this preposterous eco-bandwagon, akin to following the Chitty Chitty child-catcher enticing kids with sweets. Joe Biden's erroneous commitment that the US will cut at least 50% of their 2005 greenhouse gas emissions —approximately 3,000 million metric tonnes of CO? per annum by 2031 will fail, and is a case in point, because all of the continuous, brazen flare emissions and careless 24/7/365 methane tank "leakages" by US big oil, and Joe Six-pack with his Ford F series truck, will see to that all by themselves.

Infrared image of a methane tank leaking 24/7/365, which is common throughout the oil producing states of the US and elsewhere. Leaks are invisible to the naked eye, and the 5.2Gt quoted for the global oil and gas industry is merely an estimate, because it is thought to be considerably higher, as methane leaks, and permanent gas flaring is a global problem with many African, Middle Eastern, and Asian producers providing zero mitigation.

List of the 20 largest polluters by country, I have added Oil & Gas at number 3, but it could be much, much worse —O&G may actually be higher than China, if one adds all of the unreported global methane leaks and flares. And yet, all combined and with every other source of CO? emitted, the total volume is still only 0.04%!

Conference of the Parties Summit (COP 26)

Cop 26 will be just another heavily expensed boondoggle cop-out (pun intended), just like the 25 previous iterations, and like the World Economic Forum in Davos, attended in 2019 by 1,500 Rockstar wannabes in private jets —how very carbon neutral of them. Equally, what does it say about commitment to climate change, when recently appointed Secretary of State for Climate, Mr John Kerry, still makes use of heavy US Government state aircraft, as well as his own Gulfstream private jet? Clearly, a czar's power and prestige trumps climate every time.

History of global climate change for the sake of all of those that believe the end is nigh

Ice ages began 2.6 million years ago and persisted until 9,500 BC. During this time the Earth’s climate repeatedly changed between very cold periods, when glaciers covered large parts of the world, and very warm periods, when many of the glaciers melted; the cold periods are called glacials (ice coverings), and the warm periods are called interglacials.

We do not know what causes ice ages, there are many hypotheses, all we do know for sure is they start when summer temperatures in the northern hemisphere fail to rise above freezing for years. Indeed, a new glacial period was thought to have already begun with the crop failures of 1799—1800, two summers characterised by the prevalence of low-pressure systems resembling cyclonic winter weather patterns, but this turned out to be a 'solar minimum' period. **

There were at least 17 cycles between glacial and interglacial. Glacial periods lasted longer, and the last global freeze began about 100,000 years ago and continued until 11,500 years ago —which is where we remain today; our warm period is called the "Holocene interglacial."

Ice age hypotheses: -

Super volcanoes, tectonic activity, ocean current variations, and changes to the Earth's orbital axis (my favourite).

Core samples prove today's warm interglacial period is far cooler than the last one, when global mean (average) surface temperatures were warmer by about 2°C, probably caused by Earth's orbital axis tilt/wobble changing slightly, altering the distribution of solar radiation received on Earth.

It is quite normal for glaciers to recede, even melt entirely in the interglacial periods, which we are now witnessing. It is worth reiterating 100,000 years ago when mankind barely existed and with most of the planet covered in flora —the world was 2°C warmer than it is now. Equally, did you know the 2021 winter in Antarctica (our climate barometer) was the second coldest since records began?

**NASA's climate scientists now believe the present solar maximum may be coming to an end, and we may be about to enter a new solar minimum period, when sun-spot activity is reduced, and solar irradiance values decline radically in kind. This has happened on numerous occasions in recent history (13th 15th 17th and 19th centuries) and was characterised at the time as "small, or mini ice-ages," when global mean (average) surface temperatures plummeted.

You should also know that the next glacial period (ice age) is now somewhat overdue. When it comes, and it will come, the world will be plunged once again into sub-zero temperatures for thousands of years, and mankind's life expectancy will fall to 30 something, as all of Earth's fauna and flora will be decimated —every day will be a fight for survival. Indeed, If the Yellowstone caldera, an active super volcano was to erupt tomorrow, it would block out the sun for years, triggering a new ice age. Luckily, and if it is true to form, it will be another 90,000 years before this happens!

Finally, if we did genuinely achieve net zero CO? without discovering some form of teleportation, converting the entire global population to vegetarian, or being able to manufacture anything without generating heat, we would effectively be consigning ourselves to a new dark-age where digital and paper currency is useless, as there would be no global market economy and travel would become —however far your antique bicycle, longboard, sailing ship, camel, donkey, dog-sled, or horse could carry you.

"Net zero" is never going to happen —does anyone want to put a plastic Tenner on it?

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