Archimedes’ Fulcrum: Time’s up for Net Zero

From Net Zero Watch

By Gwythian Prins

In Archimedes’ Fulcrum, Professor Gwythian Prins argues that, in the aftermath of the almost complete failure of the 28th COP climate conference, time is up for Net Zero. Instead, he says we need climate policy “as if the environment really mattered” and shows how small legislative changes could have a major impact on the UK’s prospects.

Professor Prins, a security and energy expert with decades of experience, says that in our increasingly unstable world ‘luxury beliefs’, chief among them Net Zero, must be jettisoned as a matter of urgency. “Its time is over” he says, as COP28 has made clear.

The paper strips everything back to first principles. It reviews the axiomatic flaws in the science of global warming, and explains how the climate change ‘disease’ has been misdiagnosed. It then goes on to consider the decarbonisation ‘medicine’ that has been prescribed and finds that a green energy transition is impossible, transgressing the laws of physics and engineering.

As a result, the medicine is going to be worse than the disease; policies advanced in good faith in a bid to protect Nature will have the opposite effect. As Professor Prins explains:

The harder Net Zero is pushed, the more it fails. The more it fails, the more it damages the environment, social trust and harmony. It’s high time to supplant eco-religion with reason and evidence. What is to be done? At this geopolitically tense moment, fortune favours the bold. The simplest way is the safest way because it is the most decisive way. That is Archimedes’ Fulcrum – a way to deliver a thermodynamically competent energy transition as if the environment really mattered. Be prepared for some surprises.