My LinkedIn algorithm is kicking up quite a few anti-Net Zero tracts at the minute. Needless to say, the vast majority come from people with little or no professional or educational expertise in the area, and most are zombie arguments rehashed from the populist press. If I’m in the mood, I play a bit of whack-a-mole, but like that game, eventually you have to walk away.

Now here’s an admission. I love it when a ‘reply guy’ gets triggered by one of my pro-Net Zero posts. Why? Because a. the anti-arguments are so hackneyed they barely take a moment’s thought to debunk, and b. the algorithm loves it. One of my standard posts will get a few hundred views, a ‘controversial’ one will get thousands. In an attention economy, that’s a big difference.

Likewise, I assume many if not most of the anti- posts are simply rage bait, designed to get people like me commenting angrily to boost their original post to more eyeballs. But this begs the question as to who they are trying to appeal to? My latest one was from a ‘resting’ software salesman – what potential employer is going to say “yes, that man is anti-renewables, I’ll immediately give him a post heading up our software sales!”? Is all publicity really good publicity?

And here’s the rub. A comment I made debunking the “1% fallacy” yesterday got seen by 20 times as many people as those who heard my original podcast on the subject. So on one level, I’m falling for the trap of boosting the zombie myth, but on another, I’m getting my counter-argument to a much wider audience. It feels a bit grubby, but what choice do I have?