What a superb effort - you must have the patience of a saint! If you've not already passed this farce to your MP, do. It's vital they hear how near pointless the regulator is. Keep up the good work - any new books on the horizon?
I spoke to people who'd put in complaints to IPSO during the process (and a very helpful former employee). The story was always the same; the members of the Committee will always allow as much latitude to they paper as they conceivably can. We're not ever going to get IPSO to grasp the recurrent problem of climate misinformation in the populist press. A real worry.
I copied the article and pasted it into Claude. I then asked it 'Please identify the errors in this article, published in August 2025'. It replied by quoting much of a previous post I had made on my website (carboncommentary.com) in September 2025. I then asked it to 'Please run your analysis again without using the CarbonCommentary article' and it came back with a list of errors, including one important data source which I hadn't seen that provided a much clearer correction of one of Mr Neil's assertions.
Hello Brian, I think Private Eye should definitely carry a piece on how wholly inadequate IPSO is in demanding a press that carries accurate commentary. Funded by the newspapers it 'regulates', it seems subservient to their requests for complete freedom to publish misleading articles.
Thanks for providing clarity and a shame not more headway with Neil & Co mandated ammendments. To mispresent with intention is a travesty. To be poorly informed is no less forgiveable given how much corroborative evidence there must be on most things. We need to call slack and erroneous journalism out. Perhpas IPSO need to be better funded from central goverment so they can tackle more cases - or perhpas a public crowdfunding campaign is permitted so IPSO can seek better journalistic integrity. Truth matters and is becomming the most divisive issue of this age. I think alot of people would see this as a worthy cause. Glad Claude appears to have been impartial and that's reassuring given that we are all inclined to believe a lot of what AI throws at us. This one probably also needs to be carefully monitored.
Good morning Jonathan. Thanks for writing. It probably wouldn't work but I wonder whether there is a case for a small group of us reading the billionaire press each day and writing complaints to IPSO about each error, misstatement or lie? Although my individual action hasn't resulted in a positive IPSO decision, the substantial work the Daily Mail had to do to fight it off may just possibly mean that it will be more careful with Andrew Neil's articles in the future. If we complained persistently every time we saw an error, it might affect the tone of newspaper articles.
There are two examples of this on the IPSO website. One woman writes frequent complaints about a Scottish newspapers articles on Palestine. He sometimes wins. Another person keeps an eye on the Express website for inaccuracies and often succeeds. Perhaps a group of us could do the same about climate and renewables?
Not a bad idea Chris. Billionaires, prsesumably, because you feel many of their organisations report with self interest that runs contrary to public interest. Perhaps we would need to document a process for how we might do this and who would be targeted ? We would need to develop some Google alert notifications, agree which media sites we would focus on and a procedure for how we would corroborate any counter view.. the latter being something you have developed with some expertise but others, myself included, might struggle.
Jonathan, I think we could focus on the Mail, Sun, Times, Telegraph, Express and Spectator. That's where antagonism to climate action is part of the editorial line. A group of us could each acquire subscriptions to one of these papers and do a quick search each time it is published. Then we could jointly write a complaint, focusing on the one thing IPSO will notice: plain, undeniable factual errors. If you'd be interested in being part of such a group, we should have a chat. If anybody else would like to join in (and enjoy it), please do get in touch!
In the U.S. we rely on freedom of speech to refute articles that we disagree with, as Mr. Goodall has done here. I prefer that to having some sort of overseer like IPSO, which will inevitably have its own biases and inefficiencies. I generally appreciate Mr. Goodall’s commentaries and hope that he is not subject to censorship by IPSO or anyone else.
I'm a political moderate in the U.S. who has views that range from very conservative on some issues to "liberal" or "libertarian" on other issues, according to "conventional wisdom."
I have a background in civil/environmental engineering and economics, as well as a lifelong appreciation for environmental protection and enhancement. As such, I regard climate change as a serious threat, even if the precise nature of it cannot be "proven" to everyone's satisfaction with 100% certainty.
I regard the transition from fossil fuels to a combination of renewables, conservation, and nuclear as being inevitable. Based on my understanding of the advantages of market economics within a framework set by government, I think that the primary mechanism for making that transition fairly and efficiently should be a tax on carbon emissions that is phased-in on a schedule that enables individuals and corporations to make rational economic decisions to prepare for it. In that regard, I am impressed by the many cases that you describe of private and governmental projects (mostly in Europe) working to find cost-effective alternatives to fossil fuels, prompted by substantial taxes on carbon emissions.
As to the matter of support by the media for various environmental policies, I see it as a mixed bag between right and left, although with an insufficient number in the "sensible center." In the U.S., there are plenty of left-leaning media, such as the New York Times, the Huffington Post, and public radio and television. We also have plenty of opportunity for commentary by the Manchester Guardian, as I trust that those of you in the UK do.
I regularly read the Wall Street Journal and agree with its conservative "biases" about 70% of the time. However, I am disgusted by its general indifference or outright opposition to environmental values -- even when those such as climate change threaten the "economic" values about which they are rightly concerned.
I will end by noting that one of the Wall Street Journal's "Opinion Page" columnists with whom I particularly agree is Holman Jenkins. Although he joins the WSJ editorial board in being skeptical about many of the governmental policies that have been adopted or proposed to combat "climate change," he rightly acknowledges that the best way to go about it would be through taxes on carbon emissions rather than a myriad of government restrictions and subsidies targeted to politically favored interests. You and he and I are largely in agreement.
I would like to reiterate Shirley’s comment and thank you for your work.
In 2009 I made a formal complaint about a Bjorn Lomborg article in the Daily Telegraph with the headline ‘Global warming will save millions of live’. I complained that it fundamentally misrepresented the academic article to which it referred. I think the official body then was the Press Complaints Commission and after lengthy email exchanges they arrived at an exasperating conclusion: My case was dismissed because anyone could have done what I did (pay £25 to download the article, read through 12 pages of dense academic text, and conclude that the article was misleading). You’re right that we need better safeguards than this on press accuracy
The costs of renewables are what is driving up the costs of UK energy from:-
1) Driving up the cost of gas generation as renewables walks it off the grid.
2) The cost of grid upgrades were two years ago costed at 58bn and now revised to 89bn.
3) Renewables, EV's and heat pumps are causing problems at the low voltage network level, creating potential local overloads and risking local transformers.
Then of course if you do get rid of gas, or it shuts down due to no longer being economic can anyone tell us what will supply peak winter load when we have a blocking winter high when temperatures plummet, demand soars, there's virtually no wind and solar can only scrape together about 2% of demand at best?
Any clues how you intend to do that with renewables?
Thank you for writing. Your arguments against rapid electrification based on renewables are well made. It has been disruptive, will probably get worse and - so far- has not reduced the price of electricity to consumers. People like me who want the transition to occur as fast as possible have indeed to accept that we are seeing higher costs as a result. I believe this will be temporary and modelling suggests that we are likely to start seeing reductions in transmission and other major network costs from about 2030 onwards. And the wholesale cost of renewables, particularly solar, is also on a continuing downward slope.
You ask particularly about periods of low wind and little sun. As you say, these times can last one, two or three weeks. In these periods I see little alternative to using hydrogen as the backup power source in high latitude countries such as the UK, either in turbines or fuel cells. This will start expensive, and we shouldn't deny this, but a full transition needs a replacement for natural gas. And I accept your point that low utilisation will mean high capital costs per MWh of electricity produced. This may have to mean state ownership.
Sadly beliefs are not facts there are quite a few points I'd take issue with there.
1) Renewables are getting cheaper.
They hit a low around the time of AR5 when the government claimed they were below £44/MWH and in that auction round got zero bids
Since then (2023) capital costs have gone up and the auction prices have gone up, in AR7 is was about £91/MWH for wind and £65/MWH for solar. future auction rounds look to be going higher.
Secondly, renewables carry none of the costs to the system that they cause, from the increase in gas generation prices, curtailment and capacity costs, problems managing grid stability and frequency response, reactive load management, voltage support which have caused quite a lot of problems and costs elsewhere and of course the need for batteries and other storage which is not required with a 80%+ dispatchable system.
That's before we get to the grid costs for renewables which two years ago they estimated at 58bn, two weeks ago NESO had upped that to 89bn, all largely attributable to renewables.
2) How much renewables?
Because you want to remove gas from the generation mix, how are you going to determine how much winter margin you have?
We know wind farms have about 40-55% load factor over a year, solar probably a bit less overall and a lot less in winter.
But you cannot plan a grid on yearly averages. You may get at any one time 90% of rated output on a very windy sunny day or as little as 5% or less in a winter blocking high.
The latter is almost certainly going to coincide with a winter blocking high and sky rocketing demand.
Now normally you could make do with twice as much renewables as average demand but under that there is going to be times of excess and shortfall, if that's very short term then you can use batteries and pumped storage to smooth that out (but additional costs directly attributable to renewables)
However, in winter the solar almost disappears and in summer wind speeds are often low, so do you need three times average demand or four times?
Then we have the blocking high, no solar to speak of and very little wind, are you intending to build ten or twenty times in the hope of covering that?
In my previous post I covered hydrogen and why that's neither economic nor engineering practical.
So we are left with how much renewables do you actually need, how do you calculate it and how do you cope with extremes?
1) Too much wind and solar for an extended period and all storage is full, just waste it? You could try to export some but likely other countries may have an excess too. Just shut down and accept the large losses?
2) Blocking high, no solar almost no wind and huge demand, storage runs out in days, no gas plants and probably other countries seeing the same so minimal amounts to import?
I cannot see a reliable means of calculating a renewables capacity that is economic given one option leaves us with long periods of gross excess and the other periods of unbridgeable shortage without very expensive solutions.
So unlike you I don't see bills coming down from 2030 I just see them going up and up, and so do all the AI models I've tested on this.
What a superb effort - you must have the patience of a saint! If you've not already passed this farce to your MP, do. It's vital they hear how near pointless the regulator is. Keep up the good work - any new books on the horizon?
Hello Andrew, thank you for writing.
I spoke to people who'd put in complaints to IPSO during the process (and a very helpful former employee). The story was always the same; the members of the Committee will always allow as much latitude to they paper as they conceivably can. We're not ever going to get IPSO to grasp the recurrent problem of climate misinformation in the populist press. A real worry.
Great share ! Are you ok to share the prompt(s) you've been using to assess the article ? Thanks !
Philippe,
Thank you for writing.
I copied the article and pasted it into Claude. I then asked it 'Please identify the errors in this article, published in August 2025'. It replied by quoting much of a previous post I had made on my website (carboncommentary.com) in September 2025. I then asked it to 'Please run your analysis again without using the CarbonCommentary article' and it came back with a list of errors, including one important data source which I hadn't seen that provided a much clearer correction of one of Mr Neil's assertions.
Thanks Chris for your quick answer
Would Private Eye like this story?
Hello Brian, I think Private Eye should definitely carry a piece on how wholly inadequate IPSO is in demanding a press that carries accurate commentary. Funded by the newspapers it 'regulates', it seems subservient to their requests for complete freedom to publish misleading articles.
A sad litany.
I once complained to IPSO (the 'Enemies of the people' headline).
Basically I learned that IPSO is not independent as the name implies, and it is not a regulator.
Press/media regulation needs a thorough overhaul.
Hello JLH, couldn't agree more. The populist press has distorted the public understanding of 'net zero' to the point where a sensible debate on climate is impossible. Pilita Clark has a good article in the FT about this today:https://giftarticle.ft.com/giftarticle/actions/redeem/e86789f7-d642-4304-80d2-e7c805219810
Thanks for providing clarity and a shame not more headway with Neil & Co mandated ammendments. To mispresent with intention is a travesty. To be poorly informed is no less forgiveable given how much corroborative evidence there must be on most things. We need to call slack and erroneous journalism out. Perhpas IPSO need to be better funded from central goverment so they can tackle more cases - or perhpas a public crowdfunding campaign is permitted so IPSO can seek better journalistic integrity. Truth matters and is becomming the most divisive issue of this age. I think alot of people would see this as a worthy cause. Glad Claude appears to have been impartial and that's reassuring given that we are all inclined to believe a lot of what AI throws at us. This one probably also needs to be carefully monitored.
Good morning Jonathan. Thanks for writing. It probably wouldn't work but I wonder whether there is a case for a small group of us reading the billionaire press each day and writing complaints to IPSO about each error, misstatement or lie? Although my individual action hasn't resulted in a positive IPSO decision, the substantial work the Daily Mail had to do to fight it off may just possibly mean that it will be more careful with Andrew Neil's articles in the future. If we complained persistently every time we saw an error, it might affect the tone of newspaper articles.
There are two examples of this on the IPSO website. One woman writes frequent complaints about a Scottish newspapers articles on Palestine. He sometimes wins. Another person keeps an eye on the Express website for inaccuracies and often succeeds. Perhaps a group of us could do the same about climate and renewables?
Not a bad idea Chris. Billionaires, prsesumably, because you feel many of their organisations report with self interest that runs contrary to public interest. Perhaps we would need to document a process for how we might do this and who would be targeted ? We would need to develop some Google alert notifications, agree which media sites we would focus on and a procedure for how we would corroborate any counter view.. the latter being something you have developed with some expertise but others, myself included, might struggle.
Jonathan, I think we could focus on the Mail, Sun, Times, Telegraph, Express and Spectator. That's where antagonism to climate action is part of the editorial line. A group of us could each acquire subscriptions to one of these papers and do a quick search each time it is published. Then we could jointly write a complaint, focusing on the one thing IPSO will notice: plain, undeniable factual errors. If you'd be interested in being part of such a group, we should have a chat. If anybody else would like to join in (and enjoy it), please do get in touch!
In the U.S. we rely on freedom of speech to refute articles that we disagree with, as Mr. Goodall has done here. I prefer that to having some sort of overseer like IPSO, which will inevitably have its own biases and inefficiencies. I generally appreciate Mr. Goodall’s commentaries and hope that he is not subject to censorship by IPSO or anyone else.
Hello Carlton. I couldn’t agree more that it would be better to have
a vigorous and combative press that created full debate on vital
issues such as climate. But in the UK, as I suspect in the US, the
bulk of the mainstream press is controlled by a small number of
ultra-rich proprietors with a single agenda. Proper debate is
impossible, which is why some form of regulation is probably
inevitable. Here, that regulation is extraordinarily burdensome and
time-consuming. I was also told I couldn’t comment before the
decision was published. (I’ve just broken that injunction in order
to get my retaliation in first).
As I said, in my view UK energy policy is deeply flawed. We need
loud voices striving to reset our direction. But erroneous and
vituperative essays, such as Mr Neil’s in August of last year, do
need to be corrected. Unfortunately my reach is a minute fraction
of that available to him and the media he influences. So regulation
may be necessary.
I'm a political moderate in the U.S. who has views that range from very conservative on some issues to "liberal" or "libertarian" on other issues, according to "conventional wisdom."
I have a background in civil/environmental engineering and economics, as well as a lifelong appreciation for environmental protection and enhancement. As such, I regard climate change as a serious threat, even if the precise nature of it cannot be "proven" to everyone's satisfaction with 100% certainty.
I regard the transition from fossil fuels to a combination of renewables, conservation, and nuclear as being inevitable. Based on my understanding of the advantages of market economics within a framework set by government, I think that the primary mechanism for making that transition fairly and efficiently should be a tax on carbon emissions that is phased-in on a schedule that enables individuals and corporations to make rational economic decisions to prepare for it. In that regard, I am impressed by the many cases that you describe of private and governmental projects (mostly in Europe) working to find cost-effective alternatives to fossil fuels, prompted by substantial taxes on carbon emissions.
As to the matter of support by the media for various environmental policies, I see it as a mixed bag between right and left, although with an insufficient number in the "sensible center." In the U.S., there are plenty of left-leaning media, such as the New York Times, the Huffington Post, and public radio and television. We also have plenty of opportunity for commentary by the Manchester Guardian, as I trust that those of you in the UK do.
I regularly read the Wall Street Journal and agree with its conservative "biases" about 70% of the time. However, I am disgusted by its general indifference or outright opposition to environmental values -- even when those such as climate change threaten the "economic" values about which they are rightly concerned.
I will end by noting that one of the Wall Street Journal's "Opinion Page" columnists with whom I particularly agree is Holman Jenkins. Although he joins the WSJ editorial board in being skeptical about many of the governmental policies that have been adopted or proposed to combat "climate change," he rightly acknowledges that the best way to go about it would be through taxes on carbon emissions rather than a myriad of government restrictions and subsidies targeted to politically favored interests. You and he and I are largely in agreement.
Thank you, Chris, for your commitment and work. Disappointing result but important to try. Please keep up the good work.
I would like to reiterate Shirley’s comment and thank you for your work.
In 2009 I made a formal complaint about a Bjorn Lomborg article in the Daily Telegraph with the headline ‘Global warming will save millions of live’. I complained that it fundamentally misrepresented the academic article to which it referred. I think the official body then was the Press Complaints Commission and after lengthy email exchanges they arrived at an exasperating conclusion: My case was dismissed because anyone could have done what I did (pay £25 to download the article, read through 12 pages of dense academic text, and conclude that the article was misleading). You’re right that we need better safeguards than this on press accuracy
Hello Michael, good to hear from you. Perhaps like you, I was hugely
surprised how time-consuming and repetitive the interchanges with
IPSO were. That, combined with repeated delays in the Mail’s response
meant it has taken almost a year for the decision to be issued.
This isn’t a satisfactory process on any level, any more than it was
when the PCC was in charge.
The costs of renewables are what is driving up the costs of UK energy from:-
1) Driving up the cost of gas generation as renewables walks it off the grid.
2) The cost of grid upgrades were two years ago costed at 58bn and now revised to 89bn.
3) Renewables, EV's and heat pumps are causing problems at the low voltage network level, creating potential local overloads and risking local transformers.
Then of course if you do get rid of gas, or it shuts down due to no longer being economic can anyone tell us what will supply peak winter load when we have a blocking winter high when temperatures plummet, demand soars, there's virtually no wind and solar can only scrape together about 2% of demand at best?
Any clues how you intend to do that with renewables?
Hello NuclearBadger,
Thank you for writing. Your arguments against rapid electrification based on renewables are well made. It has been disruptive, will probably get worse and - so far- has not reduced the price of electricity to consumers. People like me who want the transition to occur as fast as possible have indeed to accept that we are seeing higher costs as a result. I believe this will be temporary and modelling suggests that we are likely to start seeing reductions in transmission and other major network costs from about 2030 onwards. And the wholesale cost of renewables, particularly solar, is also on a continuing downward slope.
You ask particularly about periods of low wind and little sun. As you say, these times can last one, two or three weeks. In these periods I see little alternative to using hydrogen as the backup power source in high latitude countries such as the UK, either in turbines or fuel cells. This will start expensive, and we shouldn't deny this, but a full transition needs a replacement for natural gas. And I accept your point that low utilisation will mean high capital costs per MWh of electricity produced. This may have to mean state ownership.
Hi Chris,
Sadly beliefs are not facts there are quite a few points I'd take issue with there.
1) Renewables are getting cheaper.
They hit a low around the time of AR5 when the government claimed they were below £44/MWH and in that auction round got zero bids
Since then (2023) capital costs have gone up and the auction prices have gone up, in AR7 is was about £91/MWH for wind and £65/MWH for solar. future auction rounds look to be going higher.
Secondly, renewables carry none of the costs to the system that they cause, from the increase in gas generation prices, curtailment and capacity costs, problems managing grid stability and frequency response, reactive load management, voltage support which have caused quite a lot of problems and costs elsewhere and of course the need for batteries and other storage which is not required with a 80%+ dispatchable system.
That's before we get to the grid costs for renewables which two years ago they estimated at 58bn, two weeks ago NESO had upped that to 89bn, all largely attributable to renewables.
2) How much renewables?
Because you want to remove gas from the generation mix, how are you going to determine how much winter margin you have?
We know wind farms have about 40-55% load factor over a year, solar probably a bit less overall and a lot less in winter.
But you cannot plan a grid on yearly averages. You may get at any one time 90% of rated output on a very windy sunny day or as little as 5% or less in a winter blocking high.
The latter is almost certainly going to coincide with a winter blocking high and sky rocketing demand.
Now normally you could make do with twice as much renewables as average demand but under that there is going to be times of excess and shortfall, if that's very short term then you can use batteries and pumped storage to smooth that out (but additional costs directly attributable to renewables)
However, in winter the solar almost disappears and in summer wind speeds are often low, so do you need three times average demand or four times?
Then we have the blocking high, no solar to speak of and very little wind, are you intending to build ten or twenty times in the hope of covering that?
In my previous post I covered hydrogen and why that's neither economic nor engineering practical.
So we are left with how much renewables do you actually need, how do you calculate it and how do you cope with extremes?
1) Too much wind and solar for an extended period and all storage is full, just waste it? You could try to export some but likely other countries may have an excess too. Just shut down and accept the large losses?
2) Blocking high, no solar almost no wind and huge demand, storage runs out in days, no gas plants and probably other countries seeing the same so minimal amounts to import?
I cannot see a reliable means of calculating a renewables capacity that is economic given one option leaves us with long periods of gross excess and the other periods of unbridgeable shortage without very expensive solutions.
So unlike you I don't see bills coming down from 2030 I just see them going up and up, and so do all the AI models I've tested on this.
Don't rely on AI.
We neither want or need wind (and solar) generation.
Only due to technically illiterate politicians do we have so.much.
Renewables are second and third rate generation technologies, and completely unsuited for grid supply.
Thank you Chris, for doing this work.
We need more sane people like you, to stand up for sanity.
Hello Shirley, thank you for the comment. I’m not complaining, but
the whole process of pursuing the complaint took hundreds of
hours work. The interchanges with the perfectly competent staff
at IPSO were frequent and detailed. Anyway, I’ll know better next
time!