In Which I Get Grok To Admit That The Drax UK Wood Burning Power Station Would Be Better Off Converting Back To Coal
I don’t normally engage in online conversations with electricity guzzling silicon processors but someone on X was using Grok to bolster their argument for renewable energy and Grok stated something which I could not allow to go unchallenged. It went like this:
Grok’s reply was what kicked it off:
To which Grok answered:
Then I replied:
As you can see, Grok went off topic and started talking about CO2, which is NOT a pollutant, then came back on topic with a somewhat offhand, confusing and nonsensical reference to particulates and SO2.
So I tried again and this was when Grok finally admitted that converting Drax back to coal would not only reduce CO2 emissions (irrelevant as far as I am concerned) but crucially, it would reduce toxic emissions too:
Grok admitted this on the proviso that Drax was ‘upgraded’. I’m not sure exactly what it meant by this because Drax was fitted with six flue gas desulphurisation units between 1988 and 1996, which would have greatly improved air quality in the surrounding neighbourhood, but maybe retrofitting more modern scrubbers would improve it further still. This would certainly be cheaper, more environmentally friendly and more efficient than burning wood chopped down in the US!
You see, the plasterboard in your house was thanks to an innovation in removing sulphur dioxide from the Drax coal burning power plant!
It ended nicely though. If electricity guzzling silicon chips can be happy, then I swear Grok was indeed quite pleased that the conversation ended satisfactorily!
Didn’t hear anything further from Lady Hope though.
Well done Jaime. I never could see the logic in stopping using coal at Drax (which was built next to a coal field for convenience) and shipping wood chips from abroad to burn instead.
Nice one! What Grok has just said and what President Trump has just said in Scotland are the simple arguments climate sceptics have been making for decades but have been consistently fobbed off.
I wonder if you could get Grok to admit that atmospheric CO2 poses negligible threat to the global climate. Failure to do so would surely indicate GIGO. Maybe just get it to say what difference (if any) unilateral UK Net Zero would make to the global climate.
A further US MAGA development is that they have started the formal process of scrapping the CO2 Endangerment Finding which is based on the fake science that CO2 is a danger to human health. This is roughly the US equivalent of the UK scrapping (if only) the legally-binding fake science-based Climate Change Act: https://wattsupwiththat.com/2025/07/29/skeptics-win-endangerment-finding-axed-truth-finally-prevails-in-the-climate-wars/.
After decades of having our protests fobbed-off, President Trump did a great job of cutting Starmer and von der Leyen down to size across the political board. If they continue to disregard what he said (and what Grok says) we need to challenge them to respond. Daniel Jupp has done a great post on how Trump calmly dismantled everything Starmer believes in (expanded in the comments as well): https://jupplandia.substack.com/p/trump-calmly-dismantles-everything.
I was a bit disappointed that Trump didn’t give the SNP’s John Swinney a hard time but maybe he’s just being diplomatic, biding his time for the right moment.