Danny Healy-Rae (Kerry, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I am sorry that I do not agree with anything that has been said here tonight. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration, NASA, admits that climate change occurs because of changes in the Earth's solar orbit and not because of human activity. For more than 60 years, NASA has known that changes occurring to the planetary weather patterns are completely natural and normal. The space agency has, for whatever reason, chosen to let the man-made global warming hoax persist and spread to the detriment of human freedom. Farmers who have cattle were supposed to be causing massive methane gas emissions. Now the very professor who told us that 15 years ago is admitting that he exaggerated by two thirds. In yesterday's NASA papers, this was highlighted, and it was referred to in a television programme yesterday. At times, the Earth is 5 million km closer to the sun than at other times and that is what causes the dramatic changes in our temperature and weather. At different tilts, the Earth's seasons become much more extreme while at lower tilts, they become much milder. If we had to sum the whole thing up in one simple phrase, it would be that the biggest factor influencing weather and climate patterns on Earth is the sun. Depending on the position of the Earth and the sun at any given time, climate conditions will vary dramatically and even create drastic abnormalities that defy everything that humans thought they knew about how the Earth worked.

There was a lot of talk about history yesterday evening and we are glad that the Minister for Education and Skills will listen to people who wanted history to remain as a core subject for the junior certificate, but if we go back in history, the weather changed dramatically at different times. The 1730s was the wettest decade in history. In the 1740s, two years of incessant rain resulted in a famine that caused more than a third of Ireland's population to die. There was a heavy snowfall in 1917, when it snowed for two months, with up to 52 mm even in Cork. There was severe flooding in Dublin in 1802 and the big wind in 1839, which blew most of the country asunder. Before the Famine in the 1840s, there was unusually wet weather. In 1903, there was a very severe storm during which 2,000 trees were uprooted in Birr, 4,000 in Kilkenny and 2,000 in the Phoenix Park. In October 1927, nine fishermen were lost off Mayo in a storm and ten more were lost off Galway.

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