Author Archives: John Gibbons
On a wing and a prayer
Airlines are forever telling us that aviation is just a teeny weeny contributor to greenhouse gases, nothing to be bothered about really. The figure of 2% of total emissions being attributable to flying is frequently quoted in defence of our … Continue reading
Posted in Energy, Global Warming, Irish Focus, Sustainability
Tagged Aer Lingus, aviation, carbon, CO2, emissions, pollution, travel
3 Comments
Minor drama over Major Emergencies
A number of years ago, a Fianna Fail junior minister, Joe Jacob got himself into a right tangle in an interview with RTE’s Marian Finucane. The subject was Ireland’s preparedness in the event of an incident at Sellafield. The minister … Continue reading
Posted in Global Warming, Irish Focus, Sustainability
Tagged emergency, iodine, Joe Jacob, Marian Finucane, Sellafield
2 Comments
Food shortages come home to roost
It’s been said that a recession is when your neighbour loses his job; a depression is when it’s your job that goes. This comes to mind as reports have been pouring in over the last while about soaring food prices … Continue reading
Posted in Global Warming, Habitat/Species, Sustainability
Tagged China, climate change, food crisis, hunger, poverty, Wal-Mart
6 Comments
Let them eat cake
It takes around 230 kg of corn to feed a child in the ‘developing world’ for a year, according to UN estimates. By a ghoulish coincidence, that’s around the same amount of corn as is needed to produce enough biofuel … Continue reading
Posted in Energy, Global Warming, Sustainability
Tagged Biofuels, Bush, climate change, famine, hunger, Oil
5 Comments
Some like it hot?
Climate sceptic Bjorn Lomborg was in Dublin last Friday telling the folks at the IMI national management conference that everything’s just honky dory on the climate front – a business-as-usual message that was no doubt eagerly lapped up by that … Continue reading
Posted in Energy, Global Warming, Sustainability
Tagged Arctic, climate change, GISS, global warming, ice melting, IMI, James Hansen, Lomborg, NASA
4 Comments
The sweet smell of excess
‘Fused with idealism, heritage moulded to modernity, classicism reinterpreted through originality…inspired by a search for balance and harmony in a chaotic and contradictory world’ The above verbiage is taken verbatim from the current Aer Lingus Sky Shopping magazine. It’s describing … Continue reading
Posted in Global Warming, Irish Focus, Sustainability
Tagged climate change, David Beckham, Kate Moss, marketing, perfume, Sustainability
4 Comments
ESB finally sees the light
Ireland, it appears, is at last starting to get serious about tackling our huge energy requirements, and the dagger that our massive dependence on imports of oil and gas in particular holds to our collective throat. We are reckoned in … Continue reading
Posted in Energy, Global Warming, Irish Focus, Nuclear, Sustainability
Tagged climate change, CO2, Coal, Eamon Ryan, ESB, Ireland, Moneypoint, Peak Oil
3 Comments
Watch out, Gaia’s about…
At 88, James Lovelock is for many people the Grandfather of the modern ecology movement. He today is admired and despised by people in the general ‘green’ movement in about equal measure. Apart from a highly successful career as a … Continue reading
Posted in Global Warming, Habitat/Species, Irish Focus, Sustainability
Tagged climate change, Gaia, global warming, James Lovelock, overpopulation
2 Comments
Forty shades of brown?
Climate change is set to change the very face of Ireland in the coming decades. This is the conclusion of a study published to coincide with St. Patrick’s Day. The study is called ‘Changing Shades Of Green – The environmental … Continue reading
Posted in Energy, Global Warming, Habitat/Species, Irish Focus, Sustainability
9 Comments
The most dangerous man in Europe?
Gordon Brown gets it. Kevin Rudd gets it. John McCain gets it. Bertie Ahern (sort of) gets it. For goodness sake, even George W Bush is beginning to get it. It, of course, is the realisation sweeping the world that … Continue reading
Posted in Energy, Global Warming, Habitat/Species, Sustainability
Tagged climate, climate hoax, CO2, global warming, Keeling Curve, Vaclav Klaus
3 Comments
Ssssh, don’t mention the ‘E’ word
There’s an episode of the 1970s comedy, Fawlty Towers, in which German visitors come to stay in the hotel. Basil Fawlty goes to great lengths to avoid any references to World War 2 (it was then barely 30 years after … Continue reading
Posted in Global Warming, Habitat/Species, Irish Focus, Sustainability
Tagged Basil Fawlty, climate change, collapse, extinction, Sustainability
2 Comments
Drowning in an ocean of rubbish
Nobody likes living near a rubbish dump. Fewer things are quicker at getting Irish people out to protest than the prospect of a new dump or incinerator opening anywhere near them. Earlier today, around 400 people in Nobber, Co. Meath … Continue reading
Posted in Global Warming, Habitat/Species, Sustainability
4 Comments
Feast or famine
Food, or more precisely the lack of food, is deeply ingrained in the Irish psyche. Small wonder, having been victims of the worst western European famine of the last 250 years. In today’s world of plenty, where the local Tesco … Continue reading
Posted in Global Warming, Habitat/Species, Irish Focus, Sustainability
Tagged Biofuels, famine, farming, food shortage, hunger, Irish, wheat
4 Comments
