Environment
Archived Posts from this Category
The importance of Bees
Posted by info on 30 Jul 2010 | Tagged as: Environment
An european honey bee. He needs your help.
Bees are probably are most important insect, to the extent that if they vanished, it is estimated that mankind would probably perish within 3-4 years.
The reason for this is simple: as bees jump from plant to plant, they pollinate those plants, causing them to re-produce. Without plants, we have no food, without food, well…
It’s all the more worrying then that our bee population is experiencing ongoing decline. This is a worldwide phenomenon, caused by the spread of new pests, weather changes, and destruction of the countryside.
The Irish Bee Keeping Association have currently launched an initiative to re-introduce 200,000 bees into Ireland. The Department of the Environment has provided for €300k funding to assist in this.
As individuals, we can also help.
Bees love wild flowers, the kind that spring up around your house when you don’t cut your grass for a couple of weeks. If you can leave a small patch of grass around your house uncut, or let a border grow out a bit, you’d be helping to maintain and grow our bee population.
FG’s trip to Brussels
Posted by info on 24 Jul 2010 | Tagged as: Environment
A percolation test hole, which tests the ability of the soil to hold a septic tank. We have over 400k septic tanks in Ireland, compared to just 80k in the whole of Scotland.
The 7 members of Fine Gael who recently travelled to Brussels to consult with Environment Commissioner Janez Potocnik regarding soil percolation testing in Co. Leitrim appear to be amazed that the Water Frame Directive does not contain prescriptive measures in relation to how soil percolation tests should be carried out in this jurisdiction.
Had they even a cursory knowledge of the application of EU Law, this trip would have been unnecessary, as EU Directives are never prescriptive in this way, and instead establish standards which must be met and time frames in which they must be met.
Moreover, any of the members of the delegation could have simply read the Water Framework Directive, copies of which are available from Leitrim County Council and the EU Commission’s web site.
As things stand, Ireland is in breach of the Water Framework Directive and has been prosecuted by the European Court of Justice as a result. The statutory agency that is responsible for rectifying this situation, and ensuring that Local Authorities meet the standards that are laid out in the Water Framework Directive, is the Environmental Protection Agency.
The Environmental Protection Agency has in turn issued Codes of Practice in relation to testing for water percolation quality, and the Minister for the Environment has instructed County Managers to implement these standards. This has been the norm for Ministers for the Environment in successive Governments, given that it would be absurd for a Minister for the Environment to reject the findings of an agency that has statutory responsibility for water quality.
The current Minister for the Environment has never expressed any view in relation to percolation testing. He is not an engineer or expert in soil science, and must rely on the expertise that is available to him. He has therefore instructed County Managers to adopt the Codes of Practice as published by the EPA.
During his recent visit to Carrigallen, he made it clear to the elected members of Leitrim County Council, including those who recently went to Brussels, that he has no issue with the use of technology to achieve the standards required by the Water Framework Directive, but that this was a matter for the EPA.
As is their want at the moment, Fine Gael has chosen to ignore this, and instead engage in populist ranting about ‘driving people of the land’.
This, sadly, is typical of the quality of debate that attaches to important issues like water quality, and makes you wonder what, if any, environmental standards we would have if these matters were decided by local politicians rather than the EU Commission.
Council get it wrong over Boleybrack Mountain
Posted by info on 25 Feb 2010 | Tagged as: Environment
Press Release
The Green Party / Comhaontas Glas – (Sligo/Leitrim/Roscommon Group)
Garreth McDaid Tel.: 087 6885867 Email: info@slrgreens.com
____________________________________________________________________
For Immediate Release:
Feb 24 2009
Local Greens welcome decision on Boleybrack
Leitrim Green Party representative, Garreth McDaid, has welcomed the decision of the High Court to prevent Leitrim County Council from carrying out any further works on the protected site on Boleybrack Mountain.
The Council have been ordered by the Court both to cease ongoing works, to take remedial action and to pay the legal costs of the applicants, the Cavan Leitrim Environmental Awareness Network (CLEAN).
Speaking after the decision, Mr. McDaid said the case raises serious questions about the Council’s commitment to preserving natural heritage in the county, and about their knowledge of EU Environmental Law.
“The fact that the Council pursued this case, exposing themselves to costs which will now have to be taken from their already meagre budget, when it was quite clear that they were in breach of numerous instruments of both EU and National Law, raises serious questions about their attitude to environmental protection.”
“At a time when value must be derived from every euro of the Council’s budget, wasting thousands of euro on defending the indefensible cannot be tolerated.”
“The elected members of the Council must also bear their share of responsibility for this fiasco. Rather than insist that the County Manager uphold the law, they repeatedly lobbied for the continuation of the works, which raises serious questions about their competence in the area of EU Law.”
“On the other hand, the members of CLEAN deserve enormous credit for pursuing this matter, particularly when they were subjected to constant vilification by the elected members of Leitrim County Council, and given they huge financial risk that was involved in this case.”
ENDS
More about the Boleybrack Mountain SAC here
How Climate Change myths come to pass
Posted by info on 15 Feb 2010 | Tagged as: Environment
This is a good video that explains how some of the more widely used arguments used to deny Global Warming come to pass, and how they are utterly without foundation.
Scientific Journal ‘Nature’ rubbishes ‘Climategate’
Posted by info on 03 Dec 2009 | Tagged as: Environment
Arguably the world’s most respected scientific journal, Naure, has rubbished the claims that the emails stolen from the CRU Unit at East Anglia University demonstrate some sort of conspiracy on the part of Climate Change scientists.
Extract:
“Nothing in the e-mails undermines the scientific case that global warming is real — or that human activities are almost certainly the cause. That case is supported by multiple, robust lines of evidence, including several that are completely independent of the climate reconstructions debated in the e-mails.”
More about the history of Nature here.
Climate Change Challenge
Posted by info on 27 Nov 2009 | Tagged as: Environment
A gentleman called Neil Foster who lives in the constituency has contacted me re. the recent hacking of email files from the Climate Research Unit at East Anglia University.
Neil claims the following in relation to the information in these emails:
“…the IPCC is now an obsolete organisation following the revelations, sadly not reported in this country for some reason, that they have been manipulating data in a fraudulent attempt to prove the case for AGW (AGW means Anthropogenic Global Warming, or in simple terms, Global Warming caused by Humans as opposed to Natural Global Warming - Garreth).
This is basically a case of criminal fraud and governments around the world who do not press for a full investigation of this would, in my opinion, be complicit in the crime.
I have sent you a great deal of info on this matter (Note: Neil has never contacted me before - Garreth) which you have chosen, understandably, to ignore due to your whole ideology being based on these lies.
It’s about time you stood up and admitted you have been conned. Do the right thing and bring some honour back into the political system instead of burying your heads in the sand and clinging to discredited IPCC reports as evidence of AGW. To do so shows a level of delusion or complete denial of the increasing evidence that this is the biggest hoax to be perpetrated on humanity.”
In response to this, I will issue the following challenge to Neil, or indeed anyone who happens to come across this post.
If Neil, or anyone, can send me any information or data from the emails that were stolen from the East Anglia CRU that disproves any specific scientific finding referred to in the most recent IPCC report (which establishes a probability of 90% that Global Warming is caused by human activity 4th IPCC Report 2007) , I will donate €500 to a charity of Neil’s choice.
And just not to waste anyone’s time:
The reference to a ‘trick’ in Phil Jones 10 year old email re. the use paleo-data to reconstruct past temperatures doesn’t count. See below for why.
What do the hacked CRU emails tell us?
And…
The IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) does not prepare scientific data in relation to Climate Change. It is a UN body that reviews available scientific data in order to provide meaningful information to policy makers. From the IPCC website:
The IPCC “…reviews and assesses the most recent scientific, technical and socio-economic information produced worldwide relevant to the understanding of climate change. It does not conduct any research nor does it monitor climate related data or parameters.”
And…
“The work of the organization is therefore policy-relevant and yet policy-neutral, never policy-prescriptive.”
And…
Some of Neil’s other conspiracy theories are expounded on these links:
Garrett Fitzgerald & The Bilderbergs
Neil blows the lid on Mikhael Gorbachev’s plot to poison us all with CFL bulbs
How the Pentagon planned 9/11 and why President Obama must meet Charlie Sheen (the actor)
Neil compares the Green Party to Hitler and Stalin
Neil claims that Swine Flu is all part of a New World Order plot to reduce the world’s population