DEAR SIR: Congratulations to Thomas Hubert on his article in raising the issue of methane and explaining that it has nothing to do with global warming.

Dr Paul Corbett (UN advisor) on a recent visit to Ireland stated that “the environment was controlled by large corporations and governments and if anything went wrong, the farmer was blamed”.

He could have added that the farmer had no money to take them on and it was a popular thing to do.

I would like to raise just two issues for the present.

Firstly, the UN and IPCC state that ruminants are responsible for 18% of the world’s carbon emissions.

One of the world’s top environment scientists, Prof Frank Mitloehner from UC Davis California, challenged them.

He researched their base figures for making their calculations under today’s conditions, returned them and their recalculations and found it to be 2.8% and not 18% – a massive difference.

Secondly, the greenhouse gases hydrogen and oxygen form humidity (moisture in the air) which is always present. It absorbs energy in two wide bands.

On the other hand, methane can only absorb energy in two very narrow bands which happen to be in the middle of the humidity bands which have the energy absorbed when the methane is released by ruminants and so there is no energy there that methane can absorb.

Methane, therefore, has no part to play in global warming so please stop blaming farmers and their ruminants on this issue.