youtu.be/qMUUbmblMsM?si=qo70… Watch Beef Plan Movement interview with Deputy Michael Fitzmaurice and Nadaline Webster. Our farm emissions are massively overstated and need to be rectified. Farmers will be shocked by the scale of this issue.

The new Dutch government is essentially to bin the green agenda entirely: Cuts to farming gone. Fuel taxes cut. Subsidies for heat pumps and insulation gone. Electric car subsidies cancelled. 4 new Nuclear plants. They're tossing the whole thing in the trash.

It is an increasingly frequent feature of EU regulations that there is a clause seeking standing for environmental activists to sue individual farmers. It in included in the Industrial Emissions Directive and although was removed at an early stage, was also included in the proposed Nature Restoration Regulation. What we as farmers need to consider is whether we should be seeking standing to sue individual environmentalists and activist groups where they are seeking to do harm to farmers on the basis of incorrect information. Take the Hen Harrier designations as an example. Thge interference in private property rights is justified on the legal basis that it is a 'proportionate means of achieving a legitimate aim'. Environmental activists lobbied in Europe for this directive and ran public (mis)information campaigns to get it across the line. Affected farmer incomes were decimated along with the value of their land. The result for the Hen Harrier? Numbers have declined further. The environmentalists seemed to respond to this news by switching seamlessly to blaming Coillte and other bodies for the decline. Here's the rub though. If there is a problem that has a substantial or majority root cause and you address that substantial or majority root cause correctly, the problem improves. If you address that substantial or majority root cause incorrectly or (as is more common) fail to address the correct root cause, the problem does not improve and often gets worse. What accountability is there for environmentalists who advocate to do immense harm to a group of individuals on the basis of their personal beliefs or agenda rather than a strong evidence basis? There is none. And I believe that there should be. Many environmental activists are pushing hard on reducing or eliminating livestock agriculture. That is not an evidence based position. It is an ideological position. They are going to do immense harm not only to individual farmers but also to the people whose food security and diets they are so recklessly interfering with. If you want to hold me accountable for harm I do, fair enough. But then in return, you must also be accountable for the harm you do. The proposed harm being done to farmers on the basis of incorrect figures is enormous. We need both the figures to be corrected and those who are leveraging incorrect figures or insufficient data to do harm to be held to account. amazon.de/dp/B0CQDH5JRW

Link to Beef Plan Movement interview with atmospheric physicist Dr.Richard Lindzen . Very interesting points made here. youtube.com/watch?v=bfuCS4XF…

It's funny how much denial there is around the emissions figures from agriculture being wrong - which they are. This is just a fact and here are the ways in which they are wrong: 1) Overestimated - in Ireland, the volume of actual methane that comes from cows is overestimated by around 20%. 2) Over-multiplied - across the globe the volume of methane is multiplied to give a CO2 equivalent figure which the IPCC say overstates the warming by methane from cattle by 300 - 400%. 3) The CO2 that produces the methane is counted as being returned to the atmosphere as both CO2 and methane which is incorrect. But that's just the methane. We also have: 4) Emissions from non-agricultural activities is included in 'agriculture' - such as commercial use of fertilisers by forestry, sporting facilities (like golf courses), amenity facilities, County Councils etc. 5) Every farm creates both removals and emissions. Only emissions from livestock, fertiliser and agricultural transport are counted in 'agriculture'. All the removals are counted in LULUCF (Land Use, Land Use Change & Forestry). So as an example, grass growing in a field is in LULUCF. But the second a cow eats it, it moves into 'agriculture'. 6) The 'decarbonisation' exception in reporting guidelines means that farmers who provide fuels to other sectors (such as cattle carcasses being used for biofuels in transport) are not recognised for the contributions they make already in 'decarbonising' other sectors because they are 'invisible'. Try for a second to imagine how you would feel if you were treated this way by your government. All the good you do is either invisible or in another sector where it doesn't count. All the bad you do is over-estimated, over-multiplied and double-counted. Farmers have every right to be angry. And every right to seek to have it corrected. And every right not to be taxed, denied essential services or otherwise penalised on the basis of figures that we know are wrong. And yes, I do know what I'm talking about. I spent 18 months researching and writing a book about it. For those in Ireland who would like to order the paperback and can't get it on the UK Amazon store, you can get it here: amazon.de/dp/B0CQDH5JRW

A very interesting letter to the editor @IrishTimes today on #climate and #Sustainability @drdairy50 @fleroy1974 @JoannaBlythman @KOSullivanIT @dpcarrington

Farmers and climate science irishtimes.com/opinion/lette…