DEAR SIR: The June bank holiday weekend’s exodus from Dublin airport saw 350,000 passengers take to the air. Each of these passengers will produce approximately 1t of CO2 emissions. That’s 350,000t of CO2 emissions over a few days and Minister Eamon Ryan has declared his intention to facilitate and help in any way he can. What hypocrisy.

Recently, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) had its annual conference. It never even mentioned the pollution fest at Dublin Airport. It, and Minister Ryan, doesn’t even count CO2 from planes. It got a free pass. As expected, the EPA had a pop at livestock (endorsed by Minister Ryan), saying that methane emissions from livestock must be reduced by 30%, i.e a cut in livestock numbers by 30%.

This is based, in my view, on their belief that methane from livestock is causing global warming, in the same way that methane from mining/industry is causing global warming.

It never even mentioned the pollution fest at Dublin Airport. It, and Minister Ryan, doesn’t even count CO2 from planes

They have both refused to listen to climate scientists like Profs Allen and Mitloehner, who are blue in the face from telling us that methane from ruminants is part of a natural cycle (the carbon cycle), unlike methane from industry which is a one-way ticket. All university curriculum teach this. As Prof Allen says, “this is uncontested science”.

However, the EPA and Minister Ryan do contest it and in my opinion, take the view that methane from ruminants is the very same as methane from industry, i.e every tonne of methane goes up into the atmosphere and causes global warming. It is permanent and cumulative. In consequence of this stance, I have some questions for the EPA and Minister Ryan.

Ruminants have been on this planet for 40m years. In that time, there have been billions of ruminants and they have emitted billions of tonnes of methane, none of which is around anymore.

Where is all that methane gone? Why didn’t it cause global warming? Why didn’t it fry the planet? How did we have ice-ages when all this was going on?

My answer: The carbon cycle. It recycled all the methane so the methane from those ruminants was neutral in its effect on global temperature.

However, the EPA and Minister Ryan do contest it and in my opinion, take the view that methane from ruminants is the very same as methane from industry

The same is true today – methane from ruminants is neutral in its effect on global temperature. To quote Prof Allen of Oxford University: “Achieving climate neutrality in terms of metric equivalent emissions could mean eliminating practices such as ruminant agriculture, that are not actually causing global warming.”

Now that we have established that the carbon cycle has functioned perfectly up to now, otherwise we wouldn’t be here, I can only conclude that the EPA, Minister Ryan and crucially, the president of the IFA (he seems happy to go along with the blame the cow narrative) and many others have decided the carbon cycle has ceased functioning.

My questions for these people are: when did the carbon cycle stop functioning? Why, after millions of years, did it stop functioning?