Professor Myles Allen:

More accurate measurement can be addressed and there is a lot of work going on in Ireland to improve the accuracy of these estimates, which is commendable. Progress can be made there. There is an inaccuracy, one that is completely avoidable, which is reporting stuff in a way that does not reflect impact on global temperature. That is what I have been focusing on. It is this completely avoidable error that results from reporting methane as if it is carbon dioxide equivalent. That is something we can fix.

Dealing with the uncertainties Ms Webster has just spoken about will take time and a lot of effort in terms of pinning down these sources and sinks better.

We could fix the problem of not reporting the warming impact tomorrow. It requires exactly the same inputs to calculate the warming impact of Mr. Hourigan's farm as are required to calculate the nominal carbon footprint. Therefore, it is possible to calculate on a farm-by-farm level the impact on global temperature. If that were to be done, it would be interesting for Ireland's farmers. They would discover the things they could do to help reduce global temperatures. If they were planning on doing something like massive herd expansion, they would realise that would have an extremely negative impact on global temperatures and they might be discouraged from doing it. It would be an enlightening exercise for everybody.

As I keep emphasising, this issue with reporting is not a problem we need to have. It is straightforward to calculate the warming impact from exactly the same inputs we use already to calculate carbon footprint.