THE political project, UK Net Zero by 2050, was undemocratically adopted by the UK government in 2019. Yet the science of so-called greenhouse gases is well known and there is no reason to reduce emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2), methane (CH4), or nitrous oxide (N2O) because of radiation absorption rates. Adding to or removing these naturally occurring gases from the atmosphere will make little difference to the temperature or the climate. Water vapour (H2O) is claimed to be a much stronger greenhouse gas than CO2, CH4 or N2O, but cannot be regulated because it occurs naturally in vast quantities. Because of the nature of absorption of infrared radiation, most of the temperature change has already occurred, and increasing CO2, CH4, N2O concentrations will not lead to significant changes in air temperatures. This is because absorption is logarithmic (Beer-Lambert Law of attenuation) – a law of diminishing returns. And there are many other variables which affect temperatures.

The ocean is a huge heat sink (carrying heat away from the source) which moderates the global surface air temperature and absorbs CO2 (Henry’s Law). Cloud cover can have significant effects on air temperatures and provide negative feedback in the climate system, stabilising the temperature to some extent. And changes in the sun and solar radiation can have significant effects. All of this science has been empirically derived, either in the laboratory (e.g. Henry’s Law, Beer-Lambert Law of attenuation), observed in reliable proxies (solar cycles) or by direct observation (e.g. changes in the sun, changes in sunspots or changes in solar ‘wind’ radiation). These and many other influences on the surface air temperature of the Earth are not captured by the climate modellers, and so, faulty, inaccurate models are produced which provide projections (not forecasts) far into the future where uncertainties are huge.

However, if the models are so poorly designed, the output is not likely to be able to predict anything realistic. The real problem is that the data for these faulty models also suffers from poor quality, unjustified data adjustments, infilling missing data to make the data fit the theory, and merging of known poorquality weather-station data with good quality data. Tampering with data is fraudulent, and the known bad data should have been excluded, but this is apparently routinely used in climatology and raises questions from scientists with concerns about the climate change narrative. For example, some 96 per cent of U.S. weather stations were found to be incorrectly or poorly sited (e.g. near artificial sources of heat such as air conditioning outlets, on concrete pads, close to buildings or car parks in urban heat islands) leading to artificial increases in measured temperatures. Loss of Russian weather stations from the data set, instrument changes, relocation of weather stations, population growth and land-use changes artificially increased calculated global average surface-air temperatures.

These are basic mistakes in data collection, data handling and data analysis, and they are misleading. Yet most of our politicians seem unable to grasp these important basic scientific facts and simply concentrate on very expensive, unreliable, variable and intermittent so-called renewables and the non-existent hydrogen energy system by spending £22bn on carbon capture and storage. Is this the hole in the finances Labour spoke about? Net Zero is a pointless crusade which will achieve nothing for the climate but gives the government an excuse to harm our farmers, damage our electrical supply system and hike our energy bills, hurting us all. It is time for a rethink on Net Zero because the science does not support it in any way.

● Dr Mike Simpson has a PhD in physical chemistry.