Letter: IPCC report on land use

DEAR SIR: Congratulations to Jim O’Brien on his letter in last week’s edition, pointing out the “flaws” in the IPCC report on land use. I hope the Government takes full cognisance of these flaws.

Today’s up-to-date science shows that methane and nitrous oxide are not greenhouse gases.

The IPCC and UN state that ruminants are responsible for 18% of the world’s carbon – this has now shown to be 2.8%, indicating that all calculations have been made using the wrong base figures.

I would also like to point out that ruminants eat grass, they give out carbon dioxide (like ourselves) and the grass takes up the carbon, creating a cycle. In fact, if we had more carbon in the world, we could produce more food.

Last week I observed a photograph of planes flying over Europe: 2,482 could be counted out of the 12,906 planes actually in the air. Yet the latest IPCC report proposes reductions in cattle numbers in order to save the planet.

We know that our agricultural exports were the main contributor to our economic crisis recovery and yet Government action shows it intends to destroy our beef industry and close down rural Ireland – closing Garda stations, post offices and schools; increasing the cost of essential private transport, while reducing public transport in rural areas.

The Government is now assigning the most generous support in the world to convince people to change to electric cars, using electricity produced from fossil fuels.

The UN adviser, Dr P Corbet, when speaking in Limerick, stated that “the environment is controlled by large corporations and governments, and if anything goes wrong worldwide, they blame the farmer” because the farmer hasn’t got the resources to take them on.

The climate industry is worth over $1.5tn a year and it has control of the press.

On raising the issue with our researchers, we are told “it is policy”. The mass hysteria based on misinformation will cause us to take the wrong action.

I suggest we need to reduce the use of fossil fuels, remove plastic from the sea and ensure none is added to the existing pile, or we won’t have fish in our diet for the future.

We should encourage production of dairy and beef in the low carbon footprint areas where the cattle are fed on grass instead of importing hundreds of thousands of tonnes of beef across the world at 10 times our carbon footprint, and continue to feed the population on a balanced, clean, non-processed food diet for our health.

I ask: is our Government so tied up with propaganda and stupid enough to kill off our main agricultural industry and destroy rural Ireland based on mostly misinformation fed to our population by the “climate industry”?