'Citizens Assembly' and their brainstorms

theaceofspies

This crowd aka the 'Citizens Assembly' must be overdong the Moccas and expressos.

http://www.agriland.ie/farming-news/citizens-assembly-voices-majority-support-for-new-tax-on-agri-emissions/

They should take a drive every now and again into the Irish countryside at the weekends. Expecting Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory theories from their next get together.

Floki

That's hardly surprising when the two agricultural "experts".
One a professor and the other a representative of teagasc brought up the idea of a carbon tax on farmers from the top table and explained that it should provide funding for more carbon friendly schemes.

There was no counter argument. The only idea was that it should not be levied on the processors because it will be passed back to the farmers anyway.
If I was a townie sitting at one of the tables listening to that, I'd vote in favour of it too.
You know to save the earth from climate change and all.

ganmo

Ah but once the politicians get their input it it'll be watered down. I heard George lee on the radio about it and it sounded like taking with one hand and giving back with the other

George Sunsnow

This is a great country altogether for its codology
2 or 3 objectors get 100’s of jobs cancelled in Athenry where they’re badly needed
The government hires 100’s of inspectors to do frankly nonsense board Bia audits on farms yet we see on prime time investigates the other night 1000’s are living in uninspected fire trap slums som either 20 to a room in Dublin and other parts
No inspectors hired for that

This rubbish tax proposal that will have zero impact on the worlds climate,just hardships on farmers
Yeah make max impact on the hard working farmers

Who are this unelected unaccountable quango?

Too many people in this country with nothing better to do than inventing nonsense and fixing things that aren’t broken

kk.man

I could understand the need for the Citizens Assembly with regard to the contentious issue of abortion but this is going too far.
We have one democratically elected Parliament which has two chambers and various committees to debate issues of the day. This is just crazy.

Birdnuts

A very dangerous group who are wholly ignorant about climate science and farming. Their recommendations concerning beef production are particularly idiotic since restricting beef production in Ireland will simply mean more rainforest in South America being destroyed. This is what you get when you have a government run via vested interests and pointless virtue signalling.

Buford T. Justice XIX

Just for a bit of perspective

https://twitter.com/GeorgeHoward6/status/927278884193742849

eeguy

kk.man wrote: »

I could understand the need for the Citizens Assembly with regard to the contentious issue of abortion but this is going too far.
We have one democratically elected Parliament which has two chambers and various committees to debate issues of the day. This is just crazy.

Its a group of nameless, faceless "citizens" formed so politicians don't have to make any difficult, unpopular decisions.

Mac Taylor

Brain F"rts more like......

alps

Some hit on rural Ireland if all of the proposals happened to be acted on...

davidk1394

Unfortunately the urban rural divide is worsening. Over 50% of the worlds population is urbanized since 2012, this means rural dwellers now have to shout louder and harder to get their views across. With the reputation of the IFA in tatters and James Murphy the chairman over renewable energy it's safe to say very little will be done. While I'm all for sustainability and reducing our carbon footprint where are the scientists to give their educated say to the citizens assembly. Instead we hear from Oisin Coghlan from friends of the earth who's all for tax the shíte out of the farmers.

Timmaay

Birdnuts wrote: »

A very dangerous group who are wholly ignorant about climate science and farming. Their recommendations concerning beef production are particularly idiotic since restricting beef production in Ireland will simply mean more rainforest in South America being destroyed. This is what you get when you have a government run via vested interests and pointless virtue signalling.

This I think is the most critical argument here. I don't mind the whole vegetarian/vegan argument, let's say here in Ireland we decide to cut our meal and dairy consumption by a certain amount, through increased taxation at the consumer end, that might actually result in a direct emissions reduction (assuming whatever replaces that meat and dairy produce has a lower carbon intensity).
However both the world population, and the number of middle class people who want to consume more dairy and meat is hugely increasing, and will do for the foreseeable future, and as you pointed out any loss in Irish output will simply be replaced elsewhere, quite possibly rainforest clearing etc.

Tax the consumer, not the producer is what I'm trying to say.

boggerman1

I wouldn't worry too much about this stuff.look ends ran away from what the citizens assembly came up with on abortion cause he didn't like its verdict.

Good loser

That 'professor' from Trinity Matthews has been consistently anti-farmer his whole career. Why the hell did they get him to address the forum; perhaps friends of the earth suggested it?

The opposite of a tax is a grant. Why didn't they suggest buying the 'farmers' out? Then the whole population would be paying for something the whole population gains from.

Say, for instance, every farmer/producer was to cut his gross output by 20%(on the same land area) and be compensated by an income top-up of 20%. Who would object to that solution?

This might mean disposal of 20% of calves at birth. Sheep?
20% of grain being burned in a generating station.
The milk would be back in a quota situation.

Just saying.

gctest50

Buford T. Justice V wrote: »

Just for a bit of perspective

https://twitter.com/GeorgeHoward6/status/927278884193742849

in moving pictures :

yosemitesam1

Good loser wrote: »

That 'professor' from Trinity Matthews has been consistently anti-farmer his whole career. Why the hell did they get him to address the forum; perhaps friends of the earth suggested it?

The opposite of a tax is a grant. Why didn't they suggest buying the 'farmers' out? Then the whole population would be paying for something the whole population gains from.

Say, for instance, every farmer/producer was to cut his gross output by 20%(on the same land area) and be compensated by an income top-up of 20%. Who would object to that solution?

This might mean disposal of 20% of calves at birth. Sheep?
20% of grain being burned in a generating station.
The milk would be back in a quota situation.

Just saying.

Strange researchers who rely on research grants for their livelihoods suggesting more money for research that doesn't need to be done.

Have heard that lead "scientist' from teagasc talk on this subject and he doesn't understand enough to be of any use.
The climate change/emissions problems are being viewed purely as an accounting exercise.
" they allow a credit for this and sure if we can reduce that by a bit while we're at it that'll tick our boxes' is the sort of thinking going on and is how these people come out with nonsense that the west should all be planted, sucklers culled etc.
There's also the big lack of understanding of soil carbon and ignorance of the research which happens to seriously undermine the "green" credentials of the system they've been encouraging for years.

gctest50

More of it here :


https://www.irishtimes.com/news/ireland/irish-news/ireland-will-miss-climate-targets-by-more-than-expected-1.3280630


They got the maths wrong and are unhappy now the date is looming closer :

Ireland committed itself to reducing greenhouse gas emissions in 2020 by 20 per cent from the 2005 baseline

Professor John FitzGerald, the chair of the Climate Change Advisory Council, warned the Government had underestimated the strength of the recovery in the economy.

He said it was clear Ireland was going to miss its emissions targets when the economy started to recover in 2013. “By 2014 it was clear that we were definitely not going to meet our targets, but nothing was done,” he told the assembly.

tractorporn

boggerman1 wrote:

I wouldn't worry too much about this stuff.look ends ran away from what the citizens assembly came up with on abortion cause he didn't like its verdict.

The worry is that farmers are a grand soft target unlike abortion which they will not touch.

I don't have a problem with them bringing in carbon tax on farming as long as they allow credits for grassland and no till tillage sequestering carbon. Studies in the US have shown that a 150 acre farm removes 388tons of carbon out of the atmosphere each year. So most farmers would be carbon neutral already if not carbon negative.

But the clowns we have will probably ignore the fact that carbon is sequestered by the soil and just tax the bejaysus out of us.

_Brian

I think a poster above hit the mail on the head.

This forum is a perfect side step for tue government.
Let them ramble on coming up with “ideas”, anything the government chooses to implement can then be blamed back on these fine upstanding members of the public who are representing our ideas.

It’s a smokescreen for weak governance.

darragh_haven

gctest50 wrote: »

More of it here :


https://www.irishtimes.com/news/ireland/irish-news/ireland-will-miss-climate-targets-by-more-than-expected-1.3280630


They got the maths wrong and are unhappy now the date is looming closer :

For each 1% out the 20% that Ireland doesn't achieve, the Government will be fined 150 million per year.

It's looking like we will be some where between 8% and 12% short of the 20% reduction. So if this happens, we will be fined 1.2 billion (up to 1.8 billion) per year till the Government gets it house in order. But God knows what, (or who) will be in government by the end of 2020.

All this is going to cost a lot of money to the country and they'll target the easy money first.... which they see as the farming community

patsy_mccabe

Does anyone know of our level of exports are taken in account for emissions?
Surely if we produce here, then we save on emissions elsewhere?

kowtow

I have a nagging doubt about the citizens assembly partly because of the very high percentages for / against whatever question was asked. For some reason I keep thinking of this clip:

https://youtu.be/G0ZZJXw4MTA

theaceofspies

darragh_haven wrote: »

For each 1% out the 20% that Ireland doesn't achieve, the Government will be fined 150 million per year.

It's looking like we will be some where between 8% and 12% short of the 20% reduction. So if this happens, we will be fined 1.2 billion (up to 1.8 billion) per year till the Government gets it house in order. But God knows what, (or who) will be in government by the end of 2020.

All this is going to cost a lot of money to the country and they'll target the easy money first.... which they see as the farming community

Who is pocketing this money and what use are they putting it to?

Buford T. Justice XIX

theaceofspies wrote: »

Who is pocketing this money and what use are they putting it to?

Brown Podzol

Buford T. Justice V wrote: »

The amount of flights over France and Germany must almost block out the sun.

Buford T. Justice XIX

Brown Podzol wrote: »

The amount of flights over France and Germany must almost block out the sun.

It's funny though.

Farmers have increased cattle numbers while killing earlier and cows milking more which more or less balances out or a small increase in emissions.

Meanwhile the general population has increased energy demands with higher consumption and more cheap flights, and huge fuel guzzling cars and always available internet.

And it's the farmers causing the problems:rolleyes:

ganmo

I've said it before one very simple way of drastically cutting our greenhouse emissions is to ban paper advertising, leaflets etc

boggerman1

ganmo wrote: »

I've said it before one very simple way of drastically cutting our greenhouse emissions is to ban paper advertising, leaflets etc

Totally agree.had post this morning.7 leaflets all rubbish.straight into the recycling bin

freedominacup

tractorporn wrote: »

But the clowns we have will probably ignore the fact that carbon is sequestered by the soil and just tax the bejaysus out of us.

AFAIK the co2 sequestered by farmland is simply credited to the national account ie Michael O'Learys pedigree sucklers have the same access to the co2 sequestered by Gigginstown estate as his planes do. This is the law we need changed. It would sort out all questions re co2 output from agriculture but would put serious pressure on other industries.

charolais0153

freedominacup wrote: »

AFAIK the co2 sequestered by farmland is simply credited to the national account ie Michael O'Learys pedigree sucklers have the same access to the co2 sequestered by Gigginstown estate as his planes do. This is the law we need changed. It would sort out all questions re co2 output from agriculture but would put serious pressure on other industries.

Would the land still sequester co2 if there was no cows

grassroot1

freedominacup wrote: »

AFAIK the co2 sequestered by farmland is simply credited to the national account ie Michael O'Learys pedigree sucklers have the same access to the co2 sequestered by Gigginstown estate as his planes do. This is the law we need changed. It would sort out all questions re co2 output from agriculture but would put serious pressure on other industries.

Yes and Yes again

Buford T. Justice XIX

charolais0153 wrote: »

Would the land still sequester co2 if there was no cows

There's kinda a problem with that.

Leaving out the whole load of grassland returning firstly to scrub and eventually to forest, the grassland will still be emitting methane as the unavoidable consequence of grass digestion/decomposition is the production of methane.

But the theories seem to point towards building up soil organic matter as being the key to sequestering CO2, generally anyway.

Donegalforever

Presumably they are made up mainly of city slickers and know-all that don't know enough to realise that they know nothing.

Farmer

Funny, on the radio this evening, someone was giving out about how crazy it was exporting Irish milk powder to China.

No mention of beef from Argentina or Brazil, chicken pieces from the far east, the infamous garlic from China, and loads of other fruit, vegetables, flowers - other food for offshore processing - that gets shipped over and back around the world in the name of free trade

Bitten & Hisses

Donegalforever wrote: »

Presumably they are made up mainly of city slickers and know-all that don't know enough to realise that they know nothing.

Given how 80% of them voted to increase petrol and diesel taxes as well as VRT on non-electric vehicles, as well as the nonsense on exiting beef production, there must have been very few rural dwellers in the assembly.

Bitten & Hisses

Farmer wrote: »

Funny, on the radio this evening, someone was giving out about how crazy it was exporting Irish milk powder to China.

No mention of beef from Argentina or Brazil, chicken pieces from the far east, the infamous garlic from China, and loads of other fruit, vegetables, flowers - other food for offshore processing - that gets shipped over and back around the world in the name of free trade

And those same numpties think we should stop producing beef, which will inevitably lead to increased imports from South America.
Chinese imports of powder can at least be justified by the fact that they’re not self sufficient

Bullocks

How does one get onto the citizens assembly ? We could do with a few farmers on it to balance their views

alps

One of the figures that is used by IFA to express or efficiency is that from an emissions point if view, in dairying we are the world most efficient and in beef we are Europe's 5th most efficient.

I would have thought both systems had relative similarity...so where does difference creep in?

gctest50

All they need to do to sort it is to build a nuclear power plant

alps

Bullocks wrote: »

How does one get onto the citizens assembly ? We could do with a few farmers on it to balance their views

Farmers did have their opportunity to present their case at the assembly,,,

https://youtu.be/etpQTrzq2uM

While the presentation is given in a nice guy/like me style, the substance clearly didn't win over the views of the assembly, or in other words, they didn't fall for it.

While it must be seen to be some way impressive, the amount of work that the farming industry has done to measure and mitigate emissions, the elephant in the room clearly has to do with the fact that the cows belch out methane, and we are failing to offset this image.

We can explain all we want about energy efficiencies, in reduction from use of ebi, while we load on more cows to fill the gap of any reductions in emissions, we won't instill belief.

Belief will only won over, when we can either physically reduce the emissions from the cow or show, clearly and without doubt, that sequestration from our grassland offsets the cow emissions, and that the more cows we load on, the more grass we grow, and that the increasing cycle has not only a neutralizing but a reducing effect...

We can't continue to argue around the fringes...

patsy_mccabe

A good read on Irish Grassland's ability to sequester atmospheric carbon.

From what I gather, there is a saturation point where the soil cannot hold anymore carbon, but a lot of soils still have a deficit in this regard and can hold more.

https://www.ria.ie/sites/default/files/potential_of_irish_grassland_soils_to_sequeter_atmosperic_carbon.pdf

To be fair, Teagasc are already on this. Those on the beef genomics scheme would have filled out a Carbon Navigator. This effectively was a measure of the carbon footprint on the national suckler herd. The end goal was that with better cattle breeding, earlier & later grazing, slurry management etc, we could improve things in this regard.

tractorporn

patsy_mccabe wrote:

To be fair, Teagasc are already on this. Those on the beef genomics scheme would have filled out a Carbon Navigator. This effectively was a measure of the carbon footprint on the national suckler herd. The end goal was that with better cattle breeding, earlier & later grazing, slurry management etc, we could improve things in this regard.

Or if you were a conspiracy theorist it's a measure of how much carbon we are producing so they will know how much tax a measure would bring in!

Bullocks

tractorporn wrote: »

Or if you were a conspiracy theorist it's a measure of how much carbon we are producing so they will know how much tax a measure would bring in!

That would be what I was thinking about the carbon navigator .
What's the difference between suckler and dairy cows output does anyone know ?

Floki

patsy_mccabe wrote: »

A good read on Irish Grassland's ability to sequester atmospheric carbon.

From what I gather, there is a saturation point where the soil cannot hold anymore carbon.

I don't agree with this in any way possible.

There's two types of ways you can start a chain reaction of soil catching carbon.
That is in aerobic conditions of the black soil of Ukraine, eastern Russia to Siberia, terra preta of Brazil and then anaerobic conditions of saturated bogland.

The aerobic will beat the anaerobic process in the amount of carbon it can sequester in a given time.
Both soils "grow" and continue catching carbon all the time. The Midlands people know all about this by the depth of bogs and likewise the Ukrainians by the depth of their soils but both by different processes.

Edit: The difference between the black soils of Ukraine and Brazil is one was glacial started the other was homo sapien started.
I think all this is in the teagasc soils handbook page DCLXVI.

_Brian

Quite disgusting that they’re talking about taxing the arses of farmers when cheap ‘n nasty air flights are being flaunted.

https://m.independent.ie/life/travel/travel-news/wow-factor-now-you-can-fly-from-dublin-to-new-york-from-130-36297605.html

Dublin to NY for €130 wil just encourage tons of needless flights polluting the skies for what I’d expect are below cost seats.

Something seriously wrong when the public would rather tax farmers than approach the real issues.

gctest50

Members of the government pictured today bringing the citizens assembly for a walk :

White Clover

This "citizen's assembly" is a joke. I understood that the oireachtas was our "citizen's assembly"?

The Rabbi

White Clover wrote: »

This "citizen's assembly" is a joke. I understood that the oireachtas was our "citizen's assembly"?

I think that it was being set up to reduce the need for the oireachtas,seanad and County Councillors.Or was that some other hairbrained committee?

tractorporn

https://twitter.com/AccidentalP/status/928033531615498240

Saw this and thought it could actually be a conversation between the assembly and farmers!

yosemitesam1

alps wrote: »

Farmers did have their opportunity to present their case at the assembly,,,

https://youtu.be/etpQTrzq2uM

While the presentation is given in a nice guy/like me style, the substance clearly didn't win over the views of the assembly, or in other words, they didn't fall for it.

While it must be seen to be some way impressive, the amount of work that the farming industry has done to measure and mitigate emissions, the elephant in the room clearly has to do with the fact that the cows belch out methane, and we are failing to offset this image.

We can explain all we want about energy efficiencies, in reduction from use of ebi, while we load on more cows to fill the gap of any reductions in emissions, we won't instill belief.

Belief will only won over, when we can either physically reduce the emissions from the cow or show, clearly and without doubt, that sequestration from our grassland offsets the cow emissions, and that the more cows we load on, the more grass we grow, and that the increasing cycle has not only a neutralizing but a reducing effect...

We can't continue to argue around the fringes...

There's issues around methane that need to be addressed properly. It doesn't seem to be as bad as it's made out to be.
There's two ways emissions can be compared, either by global warming potential or global temperature change potential.
It's the first one that's used when people say that methane is 25-30 times worse than carbon dioxide over 100 years. This is also used to calculate that methane emissions are 30% of total GHG emissions.
But by the other measure the total temperature change by methane would be between 3-4 compared to carbon dioxide over 100 years. So it's not really going to be a big driver of temperature increases.

If there was a change to a focus on the temperature change potential, it would put much more focus on industrial activities and developed countries.
It also makes it possible to come up with the potential to increase or maintain cow numbers as a means of producing food and also reducing carbon in the atmosphere.
In most intensive Irish grassland, there is the potential to store over 100t co2/ha if there was less of a reliance on nitrogen and a more diverse sward. Tillage land would be two to three times that at least. So it becomes easier to justify the cow because the methane emissions are much smaller than the amount of carbon absorbed.

As well as keeping people on land, maintaining rural communities + biodiversity. This would be a much better option than planting half the country in forestry because commercial sitka spruce plantations don't sequester carbon compared to grassland if the trees are harvested. Also it means that the soil carbon is changed into a form that's much less stable and would be susceptible to being reduced by possible climate change in the future.

Also, changes in land use have resulted in at least 160 billion tons of carbon emissions in the past 200 years, total fossil fuel burning put out about 320 billion tons of carbon. Annual world emissions are somewhere around 12 billion tons.

Gawddawggonnit

yosemitesam1 wrote: »

In most intensive Irish grassland, there is the potential to store over 100t co2/ha if there was less of a reliance on nitrogen and a more diverse sward.

+1. Agree with all your post.

Paragraph quoted is the rub though.

I wonder how Teagasc will justify the heavy use of artificial N and still keep the dairy train on track...