If you watch RTÉ at all, you’ll know that one of their favorite hobby-horse issues to discuss is that of climate change.
In an article yesterday (which you can read below) I went through how RTÉ is partnered with a climate activist group called Covering Climate Now.
Attempts to pin any weather remotely outside the norm on “climate change” has zero rooting in science. @Ben_Scallan comments.#gript #stormbarra #stormbara #red #warning #met #eireannhttps://t.co/JqDZ0X3qzo
— gript (@griptmedia) December 7, 2021
Their managing director even issued a groveling formal apology to the general public recently for not linking certain weather events to climate change, promising to do so in future.
They’re so fixated on climate change, that it’s literally the second sub-category of news on their website (beaten only by Covid-19). It’s their thing.
So, when Miriam O’Callaghan invited Maynooth Climatology Professor Peter Thorne onto Prime Time to discuss Storm Barra, it didn’t take a genius to predict what the very first question was going to be about.
“Professor Thorne,” said O’Callaghan.
“Are we going to see more storms like this because of climate change?”
However, the answer wasn’t quite what she was expecting. Thorne proceeded to say there was “no real evidence” that storms have become more frequent, and no evidence that there’s any human influence on storms.
“This is one of the areas where we really have very low-confidence,” said Thorne.
“The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change says we have low confidence, firstly that they [storms] have become more frequent – there’s no real evidence of that. And there’s no real evidence of a human influence to it…globally the picture is very ambivalent, and regionally it’s even more uncertain.”
Yikes. Not quite what they had in mind when they invited him on I’m guessing.
Better luck next time RTÉ – I’m sure next week we’ll have a piece about how changing your socks too much causes earthquakes, or some other such piece of hard science.