I have a PhD in Atmospheric Physics and worked in research in a British university in the 1980s. My job was to analyse satellite data. I could not find the patterns that my supervisor wanted in newly gathered data. Nor could I replicate the claimed patterns found by my predecessor using the same historical data*. (I suspect that he had in fact received his promotion largely as a result of so pleasing the said supervisor with these alleged 'patterns'.) Result: I did not have my research contract renewed and have had to teach physics in secondary schools for the past 24 years. I was looking at solar-terrestrial interactions rather than 'greenhouse gases' but the general point still stands. Make no mistake: The only difference between 'scepticism' in modern Western Academia and disagreeing with Lysenkoist genetics in Stalinist Russia is that there is no actual Gulag that you are sent to. Integrity still kills your scientific career stone dead.

As Drax admits, all this means that to generate nearly the same amount of power from wood as it does from coal will cost between two and three times as much, meaning that its fuel costs will double or treble — so that the only thing to make this possible will be that massive subsidy, which will eventually be worth over £1 billion a year.

This is hardly good news for us electricity users. We have already seen bills go up by over £1 billion a year because we are being forced to subsidise the use of wind farms. In the years to come, with these vast subsidies going to Drax, they will soar ever higher.

Yet while consumers are being hammered, government ministers are delighted by Drax’s decision to convert to wood chips. This is because it will result in a significant contribution towards meeting an EU-imposed target, which commits Britain to producing nearly a third of our electricity from ‘renewables’ within seven years.