{"id":299573,"date":"2024-02-03T10:49:24","date_gmt":"2024-02-03T09:49:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?p=299573"},"modified":"2024-02-03T10:49:27","modified_gmt":"2024-02-03T09:49:27","slug":"in-the-land-of-net-zero-the-man-in-the-diesel-tank-is-king","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?p=299573","title":{"rendered":"In the Land of Net Zero, The Man in the Diesel Tank is King"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

From The Daily Sceptic<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

BY\u00a0GUY DE LA B\u00c9DOY\u00c8RE<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Gwythian Prins is quite right to express his concerns about the impact of Net Zero on the U.K.\u2019s national security in a piece published the other day on this site, \u2018Net Zero Threatens National Security<\/a>\u2018.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019ve been racking my brains to think of a time in human history when a kingdom or state consciously chose to retro-equip its army with inferior technology or compromise its capability by seeking to introduce unreliable equipment. And I can\u2019t think of one \u2013 what can I think of is all those who lost because they didn\u2019t keep up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Back in the middle of the 16th century BC, northern ancient Egypt was controlled by a group called the \u2018shepherd kings\u2019 or Hyksos. They\u2019d invaded from what is now Syria and pushed back native rulers, establishing their own regime. They\u2019d achieved this with one very simple tactic: they had chariots.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Now, the Hyksos chariots were a bit cumbersome and seem to have had four warriors in them. But when the Egyptians didn\u2019t have chariots, the Hyksos behemoths were cutting edge.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When an Egyptian leader called Ahmose materialised on a cometh-the-moment, cometh-the-man basis, he didn\u2019t try to push the Hyksos out with slower and more cumbersome chariots. Indeed, the Egyptians didn\u2019t have any chariots.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So they started making chariots. And what\u2019s more, they made their chariots smaller, lighter and faster so that they could fight a Bronze Age Blitzkrieg <\/em>war. Ahmose led these vehicles into battle and, just like Heinz Guderian\u2019s Blitzkrieg war of 1940, he pulverised the Hyksos whose chariots had become obsolete in an instant.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The blistering Ahmose established the 18th Dynasty, reunified Egypt and ushered in its greatest line of kings who presided over an unprecedented era of wealth, power, and \u2013 most important of all \u2013 national security.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of the last of the kings of that dynasty was Tutankhamun in the late 14th century BC, whose tomb was famously found almost intact in 1922. On his body was an iron dagger, made of iron from a meteorite. At this time this spectacularly hard metal, which cut through bronze like a wire through cheese, was beyond the wit of man to smelt. Only a king could own one.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Within a few centuries the secret of the high temperatures needed had been discovered and humanity, for good or ill, entered the Iron Age. No-one went to war with a Bronze Age sword after that unless he wanted to lose or be conquered. The Roman Empire was an Iron Age state.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When the Romans went to war against the Carthaginians in the First Punic War (264-241 BC) they were not a naval power, even though the Carthaginians were. The Romans used a wrecked Carthaginian ship as a template and built their own, adding improvements in the form of the corvus<\/em> boarding ramp. Yes, it was trial and error, but they won their first engagement with the Carthaginians in the Battle of Mylae in 260 BC because their ships were better.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It was a long and hard struggle with catastrophes along the way, but Rome won that war, and the next two wars against Carthage and ended up as the most powerful naval force in the Mediterranean.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There are so many other stories like this that I could go on for hours. The principle is always the same and the dynamic is the process of technological development, which at its fastest is and always has been driven by warfare. The unavoidable fact that it is impossible to stand still or diminish the effectiveness of a nation\u2019s armed forces without making that nation a sitting duck for a more ambitious nation\u2019s greed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yes, of course arms reduction treaties can and do exist, and they\u2019ve been a mechanism for trying to inhibit the recklessness of unrestrained militarisation by encouraging mutual compliance in stepping back. They can and do work \u2013 up to a point. But there has never been a situation where everyone is prepared to play ball at the same time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the world of realpolitik there is simply no conceivable possibility of any serious nation unilaterally trying to cripple its capacity either to manufacture the raw materials or the hardware with which to defend itself, and expecting to survive. Extraordinarily though, that is quite literally what seems to be happening in Britain today.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There is no future for Net Zero in warfare, the armed forces or manufacturing. We cannot defend ourselves with electric tanks made of papier-mach\u00e9 <\/em>steel, to use them as a metaphor for any other aspect of military technology.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We can\u2019t have a situation in which during a war our factories are at the mercy of windpower generated by turbines in the middle of a sea beyond us to defend in a meaningful way or can\u2019t function at full bore simply because it\u2019s a cloudy day. Nor can we depend on an energy source that isn\u2019t up to the job, however much of it we have, just as in the same way the Bronze Age fizzled out in the face of iron.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It might be better for all of us if we were all susceptible to such limiting factors, but the world doesn\u2019t work like that. The \u2018enemy\u2019, whomever that turns out to be and whenever that is, will kit itself out with whatever will make it most likely that it wins and seizes what it wants, whether that is territory or resources or just power. And if that means the enemy goes to war with faster, more reliable and more powerful equipment then that\u2019s exactly what its troops will have to hand.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Look at how the Germans spent years preparing themselves for 1939. That they ended up losing isn\u2019t the point. In 1939-40 they were streets ahead of other European countries, which is why their advance was terrifyingly fast. They lost in 1945 because by then the Allies (which means the U.S.) had poured unlimited resources into record-breaking technological development and manufacturing capability on an unprecedented scale. The Germans probably had some of the best equipment, but they couldn\u2019t produce it in sufficient quantities, despite resorting to synthetic oil. And that\u2019s just as important as the equipment itself. The Tiger tank might have been as good as ten Shermans, but the Allies had eleven Shermans.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It may be an unpalatable aspect of human society, but if there\u2019s anything that history tells you, it is what people are like. And in a world of nation states, you must be in a position to defend yourself. I hope beyond anything else there isn\u2019t going to be a war, but one of the best ways of making sure there is one is to make yourself look like a pushover.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Cyber assaults are all too likely in the future. That\u2019s a whole other story too, but it won\u2019t change the fact that if we ever need to pull ourselves together and fight back then we\u2019ll have to kiss Net Zero goodbye on the spot. The only question now is whether it\u2019s already too late.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Here\u2019s hoping we don\u2019t have to find out the hard way.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Gwythian Prins is quite right to express his concerns about the impact of Net Zero on the U.K.\u2019s national security in a piece published the other day on this site, \u2018Net Zero Threatens National Security\u2018.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":121246920,"featured_media":299576,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_coblocks_attr":"","_coblocks_dimensions":"","_coblocks_responsive_height":"","_coblocks_accordion_ie_support":"","_crdt_document":"","advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"Gwythian Prins is quite right to express his concerns about the impact of Net Zero on the U.K.\u2019s national security in a piece published the other day on this site, \u2018Net Zero Threatens National Security\u2018.","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[691826695,691826696,691821105,691818154,691819094],"class_list":{"0":"post-299573","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","6":"hentry","7":"category-uncategorized","8":"tag-army","9":"tag-egypt","10":"tag-national-security","11":"tag-net-zero","12":"tag-renewable-green-energy","14":"fallback-thumbnail"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/02\/OIG-2023-11-10T193255.362.jpeg?fit=1024%2C1024&ssl=1","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/paxLW1-1fVP","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":291903,"url":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?p=291903","url_meta":{"origin":299573,"position":0},"title":"Archimedes\u2019 Fulcrum: Time\u2019s up for Net Zero","author":"uwe.roland.gross","date":"19\/12\/2023","format":false,"excerpt":"In\u00a0Archimedes\u2019 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. 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