Sir, – It’s disappointing to see that the environmental lobby persists in accusing anyone who views are not aligned with theirs as being “right-wing, climate change denialists”. The most recent example of this is the article by Sadhbh O’Neill last week, which in part was in response to a discussion between members of the Beef Plan Movement and Prof Richard Lindzen (“Why is climate misinformation going unchallenged among farmers?”, Opinion, March 12th).
Prof Lindzen has authored over 200 papers in over 60 years of research as an atmospheric physicist and in the discussion he highlighted that given the saturation of CO2 in the atmosphere, the worst-case scenario of warming that can be attributed to methane is approximately 0.4 Celsius.
Since ruminants account for only 11 per cent of atmospheric methane; if you kill every cow, sheep, goat, deer and giraffe (along with 200 other species) on the planet, you will achieve a cooling of about 0.04 Celsius over the next 50 years. This calls into question the fixation the green lobby have on removing all the cows from the island of Ireland.
This isn’t right-wing ideology, this is science and the fact that the environmentalists are trying to stifle discussion around the science of climate change is worrying. What is even more concerning is the proposal that people need to be “inoculated” against these types of discussions, as if scientific debate is a virus that the simple country folk could be infected with or misled.
The reality is that although the response to climate change should be science led, this is not always the case. For example, in her article Sadhbh O’Neill admits that methane is more accurately captured using GWP* (GWP Star, global warming potential) instead of the currently used GWP100, but that it should not be adopted because one scientist suggests adopting it could have “unethical consequences” for the developing world. How can we really solve a problem unless we capture it as accurately as possible? Given that one of the biggest risks of climate change is global food security, I think it is unethical that Irish environmentalists want to reduce the amount of food Ireland produces, particularly if they acknowledge that the decision is based on sub-optimal science.
I do agree with your columnist that Ireland’s response to climate change will have an impact on the next election. Ireland didn’t vote for a Green Party-led government in the last election but that is what we got, simply because the Green Party found themselves in the same position as Jackie Healy-Rae in 1997.
Eamon Ryan has not had the honour of being taoiseach or tánaiste, but he arguably has had more influence on this Government’s policy than the two of them combined.
In particular, he has significantly increased the funding to the NGOs that support his views and, as a result, alternate views rarely get a chance to be heard. For this reason I think it is disingenuous for Sadhbh O’Neill to suggest that people should only get their information from established broadcasters or print media, given the dominance the NGOs such as Friends of the Earth have on them.
Voluntary organisations like the Beef Plan Movement don’t have the same access to mainstream publications, but that doesn’t mean their views are any less scientific. – Yours, etc,
EMMANUEL O’DEA,
Beef Plan Movement,
Summerhill,
Co Meath.