Sir, - Damian Byrne is correct in his assertion (February 21st) that he never claimed (February 7th) that climate change is a "completely unsubstantiated argument." Since, however, he has now quoted me twice, perhaps I might now be afforded an opportunity to attempt to clarify at least one of a number of misapprehensions under which Mr Byrne appears to be labouring, to the great detriment of accuracy within this debate.
It was, in fact, my initial linkage of the Shannon flooding to climate change and the need for economic reform (January 31st) that Mr Byrne finds "apocalyptic and unsubstantiated." In his first letter Mr Byrne maintained that such an idea is the result of "environmental prejudice", curiously (and somewhat oxymoronically) "indicative of intellectual vacuum". His principal misapprehension appears to have been generated by my use of the term "extreme weather".
The fact of the matter is that "extreme weather" is a statistical designation for those meteorological events which fall outside the norms established by historical record. If Mr Byrne were to contact Met Eireann, I am sure they would confirm that the rainfall I was referring to was indeed, in Irish terms, statistically an extreme event. Similarly, I am sure they would confirm that the misery in Orissa last year, the mudslides in Colombia, the storm damage in France over Christmas, and the current appalling disaster in Mozambique were, or are, all the result of statistically extreme weather.
If Mr Byrne is as well informed of the UN climate change process as he claims to be, then he knows well that the climate change treaty is predicated on the need to economically induce abatement of fossil-fuel emissions, and that this need is driven by the overwhelming majority of scientific opinion that worse weather is to come. That is why we have a climate change treaty in the first place. None of the heads of state who signed the treaty, are, as far as I am aware, "bearded, sandal-wearing environmentalists", and I fail to see what difference it would make if they were.
Science prides itself on its avoidance of value-laden subjective opinion. Mr Byrne, apparently, is not so scrupulous. - Yours, etc.,
Patrick Finnegan, Blackrock, Co Dublin.