Beware the global warming mantra

During the height of the Celtic Tiger, many politicians and commentators repeated the mantra that the banks were capitalised and the fundamentals were sound.

Even when the banking system was headed for a collapse, they kept repeating the mantra because they simply weren’t capable of facing reality. Global warming alarmism and its associated mitigation strategies are headed for a fate similar to the property bubble but our Government and State agencies are not going to deviate from their “decarbonisation” agenda one little bit. Too many careers and billions of taxpayers’ euro have been invested promoting wind turbines and carbon taxes, yet all the while the whole process has bypassed proper democratic accountability as required by the Aarhus Convention. The Government’s renewable energy programme (NREAP) is currently the subject of a legal challenge.

The majority of politicians and green-minded media commentators foolishly believe that we can legislate for outside temperatures citing extreme weather events as proof of (anthropogenic) global warming. Weather events such as our recent cold spring, wet summers or freezing winters are perfectly consistent with natural variability of the climate system and are not exclusively limited to man-made global warming. But you can take your pick.

Victoria White (Irish Examiner, May 9) cites the theory that the low level of sea ice in the Arctic last year affected the position of the jet stream this year, resulting in our coldest spring for many decades.

Climate change alarmists should stop citing any theory so long as is it man-made because Arctic sea ice through 2013 in fact exceeds the average extent over the previous decade (2000-’09). There is more ice at the Arctic today than at the same time in many previous years. Arctic sea ice extent fluctuates with the seasons, and temperature-monitoring satellites during May 2013 record that planet Earth is currently just +0.07°C from the norm. If anything, there is a global trend of cooling over the past decade. The UN’s Aarhus Compliance Committee has already ruled that Ireland and the EU are in breach of the Aarhus Convention — meaning that the fundamentals are not sound.

So-called renewable energy bears all the hallmarks of another property bubble in the making. Current policies ensure we will pay a heavy price, and not just in our electricity bills.

Ultan Murphy

Castlemartyr

Co Cork