Chancellor Rachel Reeves has told Parliament how the government will fund the £15bn Defence Investment Plan, reallocating capital budgets across Whitehall, with roads and energy spending among the areas reduced and £4.7bn still to be confirmed at the autumn Budget.
Opening her written statement with the line that “the first job of any government is to keep people safe,” Rachel Reeves confirmed the additional £15 billion for defence between 2026-27 and 2029-30, which she said would take the Ministry of Defence’s budget to almost £298 billion across the four years and amount to more than £60 billion more on defence over the period than under the previous government’s plans, framing the increase as proof that national security is “central to our economic security.”
The Chancellor said the package amounted to “more money for UK defence, spent more effectively,” and that it had been funded by reprioritising public spending within the government’s fiscal rules and, she said, without taking resources from day-to-day spending on frontline services, drawing primarily on a reallocation of capital budgets from across government departments.
Of the total, £10.3 billion has been identified now, with a further £4.7 billion to be confirmed at the autumn Budget, and the Treasury said departments would look for efficiencies, cancel or delay lower-priority programmes and sell off underused land and buildings, while remaining, in the Chancellor’s words, “ruthlessly focussed on value for money for the taxpayer.”
Two departments with large capital budgets have been asked to contribute the most, with the Department for Transport providing up to £700 million of savings from roads funding and the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero finding a further £2 billion, which the government said it would deliver while continuing to “protect the clean power mission” and to fund renewable and nuclear construction. A one per cent reduction in departmental capital budgets across Whitehall accounts for a further £4 billion of the package over the four years.
Alongside those savings, the government said £3.4 billion of additional spending power had been generated by removing burdens from the defence budget, including the Treasury taking on £2.4 billion of costs for ongoing international commitments such as Ukraine security guarantees in the event of a ceasefire, together with income from rationalising the Ministry of Defence estate and from the department reprioritising its own spending. Taken with £11.6 billion of new cash, the Treasury said, this brought the total to £15 billion.
The statement set out what the money would buy, restating the headline commitments in the plan, among them more than £5 billion for drones and autonomous systems, £8.6 billion for the Global Combat Air Programme with Italy and Japan, £11 billion for munitions and at least six new energetics factories, £3.2 billion for space and £64 billion for renewing the nuclear deterrent.
The government said the investment would take Britain to 2.7% of GDP on core NATO defence spending from 2027-28.
The Chancellor also announced what she described as a reset of financial management at the Ministry of Defence, with budget-holders made accountable to the department’s permanent secretary, a commitment to recover £250 million of fraud by the end of the decade and annual updates to Parliament on how the plan is being delivered. Reeves said the government was “committed to fiscal sustainability” and acting within its “iron-clad fiscal rules,” and with £4.7 billion of the funding still to be confirmed at the Budget and the steeper climb towards 3.5% of GDP resting on decisions at a future spending review, the statement fixes the immediate four-year total while leaving some of the longer-term funding to be settled later, with NATO allies due to review the trajectory of their spending in 2029.
We need to stop talking about money & percentages. The only metric that matters is:
Is our nuclear deterrent secure and working?
Can we close the GIUK gap to Russia?
Can we deploy a full armoured division to eastern Europe?
Is our air space secure & our aircraft able to support our allies?
I suspect the answer to these questions is 0 out of 4.
The constant talk of a percentage of GDP is pointless as it always depends on what the GDP actually is. GDP flatlines, so does spending. Your other comments are spot on.
Percentage of GDP is the only way of comparing different sized economies military spending. Poland is spending ~ £36 billion on defence but that’s 4.8% of gdp.
And somehow has a shit load more kit than we do. Even taking nuclear out of the equation.
They have no navy, nuclear deterrent and are still operating Warsaw pact era equipment.
Apart from autonomous armour/logistics and the 72 Boxer-mounted howitzers, that’s it for the British Army. No new armoured vehicles such as a Patria 6×6 or a tracked IVF, and CH3 numbers remain at 148. However, the army does appear to be getting substantial battlefield technology and thousands of drones of all types, so it’s a bit of a curate’s egg, really.
None of which matters if no fuel can get to Poland
Stop press! It looks like we will get Patria 6x6s after all.
And the army is getting an extra 3,000 regulars increasing from an authorised establishment of 73,000 to 76,000. That’s the equivalent of 4 or 5 battalions/regiments. A small but valuable increment. Most of the new posts I would think will be RA/AAC, to handle the increased number of UAVs, but hope there is some emphasis on CSS echelons, which have been hard hit in every defence review for two decades.
Y’know we could remove one rail line, just one, HS2 and fund the armed forces and defence properly
You won’t see any of the money spent back.
What, you think we could dig it up and get our money back? That’s almost as silly as thinking we could save money by “stopping the boats”.
Yes…I still support HS2 despite the calamity over it’s cost.
It’s there now, needs to be made us of and not just left!!
Here we go again with the under used land nonsense. The if the land was purchased under covenant in ww1 and ww2 that if would be offered to the original owner at market value. Crichel Down Rules also state that land compulsory purchased also has to be offered to the original owner at the market value for the original use of the land. The state won’t see any uplift in value. This comes around every 10 years or so and each government discovers why it hasn’t been sold for 80 years.
So after all the turmoil they picked the middle options at £15 billion vs £12 or £18 billion.
I bet Sir Kier wished he got here several months ago, might still have a job.
The MoD has got a pretty decent settlement at the end of the day. If they don’t piss it up the wall they can do a lot with it, so far all the cut capabilities seem to be sensible. Just have to wait and see if there is anything bigger but I suspect we know most of it now.
My only real disappointment is no ABM GBAD, Not enough F35A and as yet no more E7’s.
Its still a 10 billion cut and sees forces housing deteriorate further.
The forces housing cuts/delays just don’t make sense, recruitment and retention is already an issue, this was a major step forward to helping with the retention issue. If it was social housing they wouldn’t struggle to find the funding.
That’s the choice every government has made for 30 years.
It’s still hard to see what has taken so long in producing this DIP, the majority of the stuff was in the works already, so many the key aspects were in the works prior to this government.
I don’t think people would have seen it as particularly bad DIP if it had have come out 18 months ago near the start of labours term, to commit and order what conservatives had delayed, but two years after they entered power, over a year after the SDR it clearly doesn’t live upto and after a bunch of cuts which clearly aren’t being replaced it just makes it all a bit ridiculous, so much drama over so little, but that is the ruling class in general now, regardless of who people vote for.
I think the DIP is actuslly a pretty good piece of work. What stood out for me is what a massive, complex tapestry defence actually is, with multiple strands each with their own specific and usually overdue requirements.
Somebody did a fine job of pulling it all together and reconciling the standard tug-of-war between the services and between competing claims within each service. Not surprising that it took a year to do really.
On the plus side, it is a very long time since any UK government gave defence an extra £15 bn and boosted defence spend to 2.7% of GDP. Plus there are very few cuts involved.
Credit where credit’s due I think.
And it was a relief to read clear, well-explained English, with a minimum of the standard MOD guff about leaner but more lethal, world-leading kit, etc.
I found this on page 45 “75. Next decade we will invest in additional aircraft to increase the mass of the RAF’s
combat air force” Guessing more F35’s? then E7’s when they can free up more funds?
An easy throw away comment.
They also intend to increase INCREASE!!!!! Gasps for air….the Army to 76k between 2030 and 2035.
All so convenient…….”they” won’t be around.
That increase would properly enable 4 Brigade, a REAL enhancement to the Army.
How does that work when you can’t properly equip and modernise what you have within the funding profile. Then again, easy to push things into next parliament when you’re unlikely to be the ones in power.
It is billed as a ten-year plan, but only the first 4 years to 2029 are covered by the new defence vote of £15bn. The plan for the remaining years is set out but it is up to the successor government to allocate the funds. That seems sensible enough. The next Government, of whichever party/parties, will face the same NATO-wide commitment to 3.5% of GDP and the spotlight will be on them to find the additional.monies required.
‘…the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero finding a further £2 billion’
And there is plenty more where that came from!
No excuse now for the defence funding shortfall…armed forces personnel paying the price in sub standard accommodation as usual.
What an absolute disgrace!
Not while Miliband is there, for someone who never took Labour to win an election it’s crazy the power he has within the party, seemingly more power than the guy who actually brought the party back to power after 14 years.
No doubt true.
The aberration of net zero may very well be this country’s doom.
We’re lucky it isn’t Net Zero getting to 3.5% of GDP
Yes. They take far too much of our money as it is, money that we require for national security.
‘In the period 2002 to the present, the total cost to the electricity consumer of those renewable electricity subsidy schemes that we can quantify has amounted to approximately £220 billion (in 2024 prices), equivalent to nearly £8,000 per household.
The annual subsidy cost is currently £25.8 billion a year, a sum equivalent to nearly fifty per cent of UK annual spending on defence.
Subsidy to renewable electricity generators now comprises about 40% of the total cost of electricity supply in the United Kingdom.’
Not sure if you’ve been living in the UK for the last week or so, mate. But I’ve been down in the south and feeling the heat in person.
Climate change isn’t just some made-up hoax (as you like to claim so regularly). We’ve just had a once in 87,000 year heatwave, only four years after similarly severe ones in 2022.
I am proud to live in a nation which takes these issues seriously, and will always stand against those such as yourself who oppose net zero, more out of dislike for “environmental nonsense” than desire to use the money elsewhere.
You must be my Great Aunt Sally…a complete misrepresentation.
If you had actually bothered to read anything that I have written on this subject you would see that I am a fully paid up believer in climate change.
But the frankly mad idea that achieving net zero or anything close to it will make any difference is not supported by any scientific evidence.
It is supported only by models based on.extreme scenarios, the most extreme of which has now been jettisoned by the U.N. as implausible.
Human-caused climate change due to CO2 emissions is supported by well over 99% of climate scientists and innumerable scientific papers. Saying that it “is not supported by any scientific evidence” is merely an admission that you have not looked at any scientific evidence.
The most recent IPCC report, the result of over 200 climate scientists combining the data from over 15,000 scientific papers, is the culmination of this. And it is very clear on this subject.
The reason the most extreme scenarios have been jettisoned is *because we have limited emissions*. If we had continued business-as-usual, as you suggest, they would very much remain in play.
The government propaganda claim is, in fact, 97%.
But it would be, wouldn’t it?
‘(IPCC) Government representatives propose authors and contributors, participate in the review process, and help reach a consensus on the report’s major findings.’
But the scientific method is not about consensus but, rather, about debate. And, quite rightly, there is no scientific consensus other than that the climate is changing (but it always has) and that human activity may very well play a small (quite possibly insignificant) part in that.
‘The Union of Concerned Scientists says of the IPCC process “it would be clearly unrealistic to aim for unanimous agreement on every aspect of the report.’”
Who, precisely, do you think is engaging in propaganda? Do you believe that the government wants to spend vast quantities on replacing oil, gas, and coal for, as you would have us believe, no reason? Do you believe that the overwhelming majority of climate scientists are so incompetent as to have failed to see that this has nothing to do with humanity (despite global temperatures mysteriously starting to leap just after the industrial revolution). Or do you believe they are so corrupt as to collude in what would surely be the greatest hoax in the history of humanity?
I am intimately familiar with the scientific method. And it is based upon the principle that empirical evidence reigns supreme. Find me a physicist that disagrees that light is formed by electromagnetic waves. Find me a chemist that disagrees with the existence of atoms. Find me a biologist that disagrees with evolution. Science is perfectly capable of reaching (near) consensus when the evidence is clear.
There is clear empirical evidence linking global temperatures to atmospheric CO2 concentration. There is clear evidence that atmospheric CO2 concentration has risen sharply and significantly since the industrial revolution. There is clear evidence that this CO2 has come from human activities. There isn’t room for debate on these subjects, because the debating has been done. Scientists have done experiments, have quantified sources and sinks of emissions, have measured CO2 levels far in the past using glacier cores.
I would encourage anyone who is uncertain about what to believe here to read page six of the glorious book “Sustainable energy – without the hot air” by FRS David Mackay. He lays it out more eloquently than I can, with clear images and references:
“Some “sceptics” have asserted that the recent increase in CO2 concentration is a natural phenomenon. Does “sceptic” mean “a person who has not even glanced at the data”? Don’t you
think, just possibly, something may have happened between 1800AD and
2000AD? Something that was not part of the natural processes present in
the preceding thousand years?
Something did happen, and it was called the Industrial Revolution.” (with reference to a *very* clear graph)
You haven’t read anything that I have referenced, have you?
If you like empirical evidence, then you really should share my views:
‘Empirical studies, including those that account more explicitly for natural variability, often suggest lower values, sometimes around 2.2 ± 0.5 °C, or even as low as 1.1 ± 0.4 °C if long-term solar luminosity varies significantly and if additional solar-related mechanisms influence the climate system—mechanisms not included in current models. If ECS (equilibrium climate sensitivity) is lower than commonly assumed, projected 21st-century warming would be substantially reduced under all SSP scenarios.’
Nicola Scafetta 11 Feb 2026
Governments, businesses use ‘net zero’ for more power, profit. That is why they push it so hard and the bonkets ‘oceans are boiling’ U.N. is complicit.
‘The push for net zero has become a new arena for class conflict, where the powerful profit and the rest suffer. Nicholas Beuret’s incisive critique…’Or Something Worse’ exposes the bleak realities of the transition to a carbon-neutral economy.
Greening the economy has become a one-sided war, as governments and businesses squeeze the living standards of ordinary people….
Claims of sustainability disguise a zero-sum battle where the powerful profit and everyone else foots the bill. Green growth was supposed to bring increased wealth for all. Instead, work has been degraded, energy bills have soared, and the most basic necessities have become expensive and scarce.’
The idea that emissions control has allowed the most extreme scenario to be jettisoned is plainly dotty. It has been jettisoned because its assumptions always were implausible. And yet the quixotic pursuit of net zero is very much based on that implausible scenario.
Real and recent verifiable scientific evidence indicates:
‘One of the most striking features of Earth’s climate history is its rhythmic natural structure. Throughout the Holocene, we observe:
multidecadal oscillations (~60 years),
centennial fluctuations,
millennial‑scale cycles such as the Eddy cycle,
and the Hallstatt–Bray cycle.
These patterns appear in ice cores, marine sediments, tree rings, and historical documents. They also correlate with solar and astronomical proxies. These cycles are not speculative; they are among the most robust features of paleoclimate research.
Yet current GCMs (climate models) do not reproduce these oscillations with the correct amplitude or timing.
This is not a minor detail. If models cannot capture the natural background variability of the climate system, then attribution regarding the global warming from 1850–1900 to the present becomes inherently uncertain, because any unmodeled natural contribution to the warming (for example due to solar activity increase during the same period) necessarily reduces the fraction of warming that can be confidently assigned to anthropogenic forcings.
And if the anthropogenic contribution to past warming is smaller than assumed, then its contribution to future warming — and therefore the associated climate risk — must also be proportionally reduced.’
Nicolas Scafetta March 2026
1. This is not significant. There are clear bounds on the uncertainty that these natural oscillations can introduce. (hint, they are pretty low). This is why Nicolas Scafetta has been slowly forced to attribute less and less of the total climate impact onto oscillations, as the temperature continues to rise beyond any fluctuations in the past 2000 years(or longer). Even if anthropogenic effects were only to contribute 50% of current warming, that would still be highly concerning and not a basis for business-as-usual.
2. Nicolas Scafetta has been effectively discredited. His papers are found to contain numerous methodological errors and reach conclusions that are not reproducible by other groups.
If you (and Nicolas) were to be honest with yourselves, you would come to the conclusion that you are putting the cart before the horse. You have come to a (very desirable and convenient) conclusion that global warming is nothing to be concerned about, and then attempted to find evidence, create models, tweak parameters to make that viewpoint feel and seem credible. It is not. You are misleading yourself and others by believing what you want to believe, rather than what is supported by evidence.
You are quick to criticise referenced work and yet produce nothing in the way of references yourself, something you have in common with every other net zero enthusiast on here and elsewhere.
Scafetta is by no means alone:
‘Paleoclimate data have informed contemporary climate science, and could do so more extensively. Quaternary data record glacial–interglacial cycles paced by variations in Earth’s orbit. Faster climate changes include repeated warming–cooling (Dansgaard–Oeschger) cycles during glacial times as well as abrupt glacial terminations…Climate models reproduce some key features of past climate change but not others, including patterns of orbitally forced precipitation changes and linkages between different modes of climate variability.’
‘Science involves observations of phenomena, followed by tests of hypotheses that might explain them. Quantitative models enable hypothesis testing. The imperative of future prediction in climate science, however, has inverted this process. Models have been developed first, without considering their application to conditions different from present.’
‘The roles of human and climate change influences on ecosystems during the Holocene, especially the past 3 kyr, remain muddled. Disentangling them will require explicit hypothesis testing and rigorous data analysis.’
Paleoclimate Perspectives on Contemporary Climate Change 2025
You do not produce any evidence because all you have is discredited climate models based on an extreme scenario now dismissed by all as ‘implausible’.
And this dismal government has similarly based its deleterious net zero policy on that exact same ‘implausible’ scenario. I am not alone in finding this to be at best eccentric. The security of the nation has been and is being severely damaged by this policy aberration.
The reasons I have not yet attached references is twofold:
1. The comment section does not allow links. It’s possible that all of your quotes are just made up, though I am taking it on good faith that they are not.
2. There is such a wealth of research and evidence supporting my position that it is hard to choose any single source to cite.
The obvious source is the IPCC Sixth Assessment Report: Climate Change 2021: The Physical Science Basis. This is one of the most reliable sources one is likely to encounter, as it takes into account thousands of peer-reviewed papers. You will, no doubt, call it biased by some global conspiracy.
If one wants proof that global CO2 levels are far higher than in the past 800,000 years, one can read “Revision of the EPICA Dome C CO2 record from 800 to 600 kyr before present” by Bereiter et al. If one wants proof that they are increasing faster now than they ever have during this time period, read “Centennial-scale changes in the global carbon cycle during the last deglaciation” by Marcott et al.
If one wants evidence that the CO2 emissions from the industrial revolution are causing a global effect, look no further than “No evidence for globally coherent warm and cold periods over the preindustrial Common Era” by Neukom et al. If one doubts the dangers of climate change, read “The Impact of Climate Change on the World’s Marine Ecosystems” by Hoegh-Guldberg and Bruno.
I could literally go on here for days and days and days. This is one of the most well-researched topics of the 21st century.
In contrast, one does not need to look far to find challenges to your sources. Reading reviews of Nicolas Scafetti’s work on PubPeer immediately reveals a list of flaws and corrections to his works, from old to recent. In particular, a paper published by Scafetti in 2012 suggested a “harmonic model” based on 20 and 60 year oscillations, which indicated that no further significant warming would be recorded until 2030. This prediction has been shown to be abjectly wrong, with actual measurements lying squarely within the IPCC’s predicted values.
Your extract from “Paleoclimate Perspectives on Contemporary Climate Change 2025” appears to be trying to insinuate that human actions are not the cause of climate change, which does not appear to be the true opinions of the authors. Regardless, it is simply opinion.
If anyone is interested to know exactly where Monro is incorrect about his complaints surrounding climate models (I must note, one of the most recent avenues of disbelief he has had surrounding climate change, and incompatible with earlier beliefs), I direct you to the excellent website RealClimate. There is a page titled “Scenarios, schmenarios…” that will adequately answer your queries.
It is very easy to post references. You just have to have some to post:
Connolly, Roman, Willie Soon, Michael Connolly et al. (2021) How much has the Sun influenced Northern Hemisphere temperature trends? An ongoing debate Research in Astronomy and Astrophysics 21(6) doi: 10.1088/1674-4527/21/6/131
Crisp, David & Dolman, Han (A.J.) & Tanhua, Toste & Mckinley, Galen & Hauck, Judith & Bastos, Ana & Sitch, Stephen & Eggleston, Simon & Aich, Valentin. (2022). How Well Do We Understand the Land‐Ocean‐Atmosphere Carbon Cycle?. Reviews of Geophysics. 60. 10.1029/2021RG000736.
Hausfather et al. (2019) “Evaluating the Performance of Past Climate Model Projections” Geophysical Research Letters 47(1) Hausfather, Z. and G. Peters (2020b) RCP8.5 is a problematic scenario for near-term emissions. Proceedings of the National. Academy of Sciences 117, 27791–27792 (2020)
And so on and so forth…
In summary, this government’s lethal net zero policy aim is based on the RCP 8.5 scenario.
‘A sizeable portion of recent studies on future climate impacts have focused on a warming scenario called “RCP8.5”.
‘In the paper detailing the RCP8.5 scenario, Dr Keywan Riahi and colleagues described RCP8.5 as depicting “a high-emission business as usual scenario”. They meant that it was on the higher end of “business as usual” baseline scenarios in the literature, but their description of RCP8.5 as “business as usual” ended up sticking without any of the accompanying nuance.
As Riahi tells Carbon Brief:
“RCP8.5 is, because of its assumptions of high population and slow technological progress, on the higher end of the range of possible baseline scenarios…I wished I would have been clearer with what I meant by business as usual in that paragraph.”
The high-end nature of the RCP8.5 relative to other no-policy baselines was poorly communicated to the wider scientific community, and RCP8.5 – being the only available RCP scenario with no climate policy included – came to be widely referred to as the “business as usual” outcome in hundreds of different papers published in the aftermath of the IPCC AR5.’
RCP8.5 has now been jettisoned by the U.N. and everyone else.
‘On the high-end of the range, the CMIP6 high emission levels (quantified by SSP5-8.5) have become implausible…many CMIP6 emission trajectories have become inconsistent with observed trends during the 2020-30 period.’
RCP8.5 is the basis for this hopeless government’s ‘net zero’ lunacy.
Consequently the entire net zero boondoggle no longer has any justification whatsoever…
And it is that policy, amongst others, that is preventing Britain from responding to a now very dangerous geopolitical environment.
This is truly entertaining. One might recall that earlier, I said that the most pessimistic models have been removed because of climate policies. Well, guess what, as you state yourself: RCP 8.5 assumed business-as-usual. To the credit of many governments (including and especially the UK) business has not been as usual. So obviously the projection is removed. It was based on a worst-case prediction of human behaviour, and human behaviour was not worst-case.
As an aside, the government’s policy is obviously not based in a single projection from a single model. It is based on the IPCC’s predictions and possible scenarios, which take into account many different models with many different underlying assumptions. This has a historical track record of predicting a range of values that have then been proven to be accurate in later years.
Nb. I will only be replying to a single comment thread and only outside of working hours, because I actually have things to do, apparently unlike you. Please limit yourself to salient points, rather than your typical tactic of producing pages of (incorrect and irrelevant) quotes and opinions.
Similarly, I notice that my references given have been roundly ignored. Please respond to them and show how they do not contradict your position (you will not be able to). I shall then do the same to yours.
IPCC reports are funded by 195 governments, a majority of whom would like free money from the wealthy minority.
Your problem starts with your idea of ‘settled science’. Science is never settled.
As ‘Neukom et al’ points out
‘the spatiotemporal coherence of climate epochs earlier in the Common Era has yet to be robustly tested.’
So nobody knows…but they have a pretty good idea:
Berglund, B.E. 2003. Human impact and climate changes – synchronous events and a causal link?
Chepstow-Lusty, A.J., Bennett, K.D., Fjeldsa, J., Kendall, A., Galiano, W. and Herrera, A.T. 1998. Tracing 4,000 years of environmental history in the Cuzco Area, Peru, from the pollen record.
Ma, Z., Li, H., Xia, M., Ku, T., Peng, Z., Chen, Y. and Zhang, Z. 2003. Paleotemperature changes over the past 3000 years in eastern Beijing, China: A reconstruction based on Mg/Sr records in a stalagmite.
And so on and so forth
With regard to Bereiter et al, Marcott et al
‘While the exact forcings of abrupt CO2 changes remain unclear, our findings point to a mechanism operating at sub-centennial timescales that is ultimately linked to Northern Hemisphere climate shifts…’
Rapid atmospheric CO2 rise during Heinrich Stadials, Wendt et al 2022
So nobody knows…but they have a pretty good idea:
‘Since 1750, additions to the atmospheric CO2 concentration derived from natural emission sources associated with biological processes are about 4.5 times larger than the contribution from fossil fuel emissions (e.g., 22.9 ppm per year from nature, 5.2 ppm per year from fossil fuel combustion).’
Refined Reservoir Routing (RRR) and Its Application to Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide Balance,Koutsoyiannis, 2024
‘CO2 also lags temperature by ~~800 years in the ice core record, on a longer time scale.
Atmospheric CO2 lags temperature at all measured time scales.’
The Phase Relation between Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide and Global Temperature, Global and Planetary Change, Volume 100, Humlum, Stordahl, and Solheim
So the science isn’t settled at all and the most alarmist scenario upon which this government’s pursuit of net zero is based has been jettisoned.
A logical mind must therefore conclude, based on the evidence, that that net zero policy itself should also be jettisoned, most particularly if it threatens the short to medium term security of this country.
Great to have clean air…if anyone is around to breathe it…
‘A residence time of only 4 years for all CO2 molecules, regardless of origin, is consistent with the conclusion that nature is dominant in driving changes in CO2 concentration. Fossil fuel emissions serve only a minor role.
Since 1750, additions to the atmospheric CO2 concentration derived from natural emission sources associated with biological processes are about 4.5 times larger than the contribution from fossil fuel emissions (e.g., 22.9 ppm per year from nature, 5.2 ppm per year from fossil fuel combustion).’
Refined Reservoir Routing (RRR) and Its Application to Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide Balance,Koutsoyiannis, 2024
‘Temperature, among other factors, drives atmospheric CO2 much more than CO2 drives temperature. The rate of change dCO2/dt is closely correlated with temperature and thus atmospheric CO2 LAGS temperature by ~9 months in the modern data record
CO2 also lags temperature by ~~800 years in the ice core record, on a longer time scale.
Atmospheric CO2 lags temperature at all measured time scales.’
The Phase Relation between Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide and Global Temperature, Global and Planetary Change, Volume 100, Humlum, Stordahl, and Solheim
‘15,000 years ago, the Earth started warming abruptly after ~ 100,000 years of an “ice age”; this is known as a glacial termination. The large ice sheets, which covered significant parts of North America and Europe, began melting as a result. A climatic optimum known as the “Bölling-Allerød” was reached shortly thereafter, around 14,700 before present. However, starting at about 12,800 BP, the Earth returned very quickly into near glacial conditions (i.e. cold, dry and windy), and stayed there for about 1,200 years: this is known as the Younger Dryas (YD), since it is the most recent interval where a plant characteristic of cold climates, Dryas Octopetala, was found in Scandinavia.
The most spectacular aspect of the YD is that it ended extremely abruptly (around 11,600 years ago), and although the date cannot be known exactly, it is estimated from the annually-banded Greenland ice-core that the annual-mean temperature increased by as much as 10°C in 10 years.
There are many other examples of abrupt climate change in the last 50,000 years, which bear the rather cryptic names of Heinrich, and Dansgaard/Oeschger events.’
Colombia University
‘Data collected by modern instruments date back only a century or so, leaving natural recorders of environmental change, or paleoclimate records, as the primary way to learn about past climate conditions. Understanding how climate naturally varied over thousands and millions of years teaches us how Earth’s climate system works and sheds light on current, human-induced changes.
Lake and ocean sediments, glacial ice, coral skeletons, tree rings, and pollen grains are among the climate archives or proxies scientists use to reconstruct past climate. Analyses of the data in these proxies reveal what past conditions were like on Earth and the timing of specific climate events such as periods of heavier rainfall and extreme drought.
We know from paleoclimate studies that Earth’s climate is continually changing. Massive ice sheets covered much of the Northern Hemisphere 20,000 years ago, while some 50 million years ago, levels of atmospheric greenhouse gases were so high that polar ice sheets completely melted.’
Paleoclimatology
where we are today is unthinkable from only a few years ago, this all dates back to the US inspired ukraine revolution in 2014, massive mistake, millions will die unles the west finds a solution acceptable to russia
Re your ‘US inspired ukraine revolution in 2014’. There was no such thing Boris.
I think millions will die unless the West stands up to Russia.
I think this should mean the restoration of Ukraine’s 2014 borders and restoring democracy in Belarus (the current legitimate government is in exile in Lithuania).
Don’t be silly, all you need to know is that in the aftermath of the Obama/burden inspired revolution, the bidens made $millions from Ukrainian oligarchs
It ain’t rocket science
How’s the weather today in St Petersburg. How many post do you have to make to avoid being sent to the front!?
Oh no, not the russian bot response, nobody ever expects the russian bot response
Have you ever had an original thought in your head, just one ?
Ironic that the Russian shill is on about original thoughts…
Which russian ship are you talking about, your dad ,?
Two numbers to note: £11b to replace what we have gifted to Ukraine – ammunition I presume replacement army vehicles.
Army numbers to be increased to 76,000
Ukraine aid and its replacement should not have come out of the defence budget at all, Munitions and RCH155 should have been directly Treasury funded.
Paul,
If £11bn is for replacing kit gifted to Ukraine then the £15bn of DIP is really only a £4bn net positive improvement.
Yeh, you are right. Actually I think I took the wrong number anyway. I think vehicles are in a different pot to ammunition. It’s difficult to sort out; probably because the army themselves are still figuring out numbers and types.
One of the main issues with the DIP is that it isn’t the 10 year plan it was supposed to be, it’s mostly only set out funding to the end of this decade, so the next 3-4 years. One of the issues that has made defence planning and procurement so inefficient is short treasury cycles and requirements to hit in year funding targets rather than 10 year targets rather than the SDRs 10 year plan. No doubt caused by the Treasury’s refusal to work with defence (does not want to confirm it will not hit 3.5% by 2035), but with the additional year to deliver a document that should have been with the SDR it’s pretty ridiculous how vague and short sighted the document is. The document is worth reading to see how it’s really not worth reading due to how vague and short term it is. Had they have done a 10 year plan most would probably be much more pleased with what could be delivered in the next decade.
According to Lord Dannatt, £4 billion of this is reannounced cash. Whip out the nuclear deterrent and we are still barely over 2%. Its pathetic.
What a bunch of doommongers we are! Along comes a PM and Chancellor, who so many here love to hate, giving defence a 27% budget increase and a jump to 2.7% of GDP. And that is just over the next 4 years. This is good news chaps, pint is half full, it is the best defence settlement for many years!
I suppose if you’re one of those who have been bandying about the ‘Rachel from accounts’ slur and similar epithets about Starmer, it’s maybe time to give your head a wobble: the unlikely pair have actually extracted the cash from a reluctant cabinet and even more reluctant backbenchers, so not do bad an innings really.
Aheck of a lot more than previous PMs and Chancellors have achieved over the previous 14 years, when the armed forces got pretty much shredded in the political quest for tax cuts gor the better-off.
Now being reported the money for this plan has not been identified yet so will be leaving Burnham a £15b black hole! Sound familiar?