For several decades, the focus of climate campaigning has been on securing international deals such as the recent Paris Agreement.  To achieve this, campaigners within each country expend a lot of energy trying to push reluctant national governments into honouring and extending agreed international action plans. But are national governments …

It is hard to know what, if anything, Donald Trump really thinks about climate change.  In many public speeches he has claimed that climate change is a hoax.  On the other hand, this did not stop him applying to build a sea wall to protect his golf course on the …

The scale of economic dishonesty in the wake of the Brexit result last year takes “fake news” to stratospheric levels.  In this, both sides of the Brexit argument are equally culpable.  The slightest hint of economic bad news is pounced upon by the “Remoaners” as proof that the UK economy …

The political row that recently broke out between the Scottish National Party and the Labour/Tory opposition obscures a far more troubling problem for the British economy. The SNP were accused of lying about oil revenues in the run up to the 2014 independence referendum.  They had claimed tax receipts of …

Ten out of the last eleven recessions – including the great crash of 2008 – were preceded by a spike in oil prices.  Now, after several years of not-really-that-cheap oil prices, the Paris-based International Energy Agency (IEA) is predicting a serious global oil shortage by 2020. According to the IEA’s …

Of all of the ways the fracking industry might be brought to an abrupt end, the most innocuous may yet prove to be the most effective. The fracking industry already struggles to turn a profit in all but the sweetest of sweet spots in geologically favourable US shale plays.  But …

West Texan shale oil is booming once more, according to Ambrose Evans-Pritchard in the Telegraph: “The Opec oil cartel is waking up to an unpleasant surprise. Shale output from the Permian Basin in Texas is expanding faster than the world thought humanly possible. “The scale threatens to neutralise output cuts …

The already delayed plan to install smart meters across the UK took another blow this week as the technology proved to be considerably less smart than has been touted.  According to Mark Thompson at the Yorkshire Post: “Big Six provider SSE said it had launched an urgent investigation into the …

Perhaps the most despicable thing about climate change denial is that the science behind the greenhouse effect is long established.  As I noted in my book – The Consciousness of Sheep: “French mathematician and physicist, Joseph Fourier, first discovered the ‘greenhouse effect’ in 1824, when he discovered that gases such …

Since the unexpected oil price crash in 2014, and the stubborn refusal of the markets to push oil prices much above $50 per barrel, the oil industry has resorted to the equivalent of whistling in the dark.  Industry press releases result in glaring headlines announcing the discovery of another century …