The 'Leading UK Scientists' Letter Urging Abandonment of North Sea is Ideology Masquerading as Science

The "scientific establishment" has "spoken with one voice" to oppose North Sea drilling and back “cheap” renewables, according to the Financial Times

The Financial Times reported on Good Friday that “more than 65 leading UK scientists” had signed an open letter, published as a Google Doc, urging the Government to abandon new North Sea oil and gas drilling in favour of renewables. “Here is the scientific establishment speaking with one voice,” the FT tells us, warning against the supposed folly of extracting what remains of Britain’s hydrocarbon resources and to choose renewables that, according to the scientist-signatories, provide both energy security and “cheaper solutions [that] we have already, that we know work”.

Catherine McBride OBE is the co-author of the recently published report for the Great British Business Council on Britain’s climate policy-induced de-industrialisation and a plan to reverse it. Also on Good Friday she published a Substack article on X titled ‘What the Greens, most MPs and the FT don’t understand about the North Sea oil and gas‘.

To point out that the “FT is nothing more than the Guardian with stock prices these days”, a “once mighty publications fallen into the abyss of wokery” would be only to shoot the messenger bearing the familiar pink newsprint. Let’s now turn to the message itself, lest one stand accused of employing ad hominem tactics.

What the so-called ‘consensus’ scientists say

The open letter from the 65 “scientists” declares with solemn authority: “Extracting North Sea fossil fuels will threaten lives and livelihoods.” It asserts that “around 90% of North Sea oil and gas has already been extracted”, that additional production “is unlikely to move prices”, and that the world already possesses “more global reserves of oil and gas than we can safely burn if we are to limit global temperature rise to below 2°C”.