Two years ago, over a seven-week period, I researched and studied everything I could find on 'Climate Change.' On one side of the argument all I heard was, "The debate is over," and it seemed to me that I had not heard any debates at all. That made me suspicious.

A team from a University in Denmark had gone to the arctic with a drilling rig and had bored down …… THREE MILES! That's one hell of a long ice core sample. Brought up in sections and then examined and analyzed, it told the story of the Earth's climate over thousands of years. Represented as a chart, it shows one unavoidable fact and that is that climate has always been changing. Yo-yoing from drought to freezing, our blue planet has seen it all long before our human tribe walked upright on its surface.

The Danish Professor who led the team made the comment that, "The last hundred years of stable climate has been a notable exception to the trend." What was laudable about their research was that they began with an open mind and did not resort to computer modeling to try to prove a point. Bones, sediment and plant life frozen into the ice a thousand years ago told the whole story of what temperatures and conditions were like then. The depth of any one ice section gave it's age. 

But mapping climate over such a long period was only one part of the puzzle. The question was, what caused it to fluctuate wildly? This is where they had to depart from pure evidence-based science and rely instead on the laws of probability. The biggest single influence on everything in our solar system is the sun and it has always been so. The impact of mankind's activities is minuscule by comparison. When the sun is active we get freezing and the opposite occurs when it is less active. Certainly lunar cycles determine the tides but the sun up there decides our climate.   

On the other side of the debate, most of what I saw was bluff and bluster presented as absolute dogma. Anyone that deigned to question any part of it was damned as a 'denier.' Personal insults and ad hominem attacks were directed against those who did not get in line and offer one hundred per cent support for the dubious theory of man-made climate change. Having seen the same strategy from the dishonest anti-smoking crowd, I made up my mind. The next step was to follow the money trail to see what they were up to, only to discover there's billions to made from their lies. So for me now, the debate is truly over and the whole carbon-tax thing is a racket. 

However, that still leaves two problems. Out idiot leader Dame Enda, was lukewarm on Ireland's commitments in Paris and naturally the Green crowd were out in force since calling him a fucking disgrace and an embarrassment. They are right of course, but not in this instance. It seems Enda must have had prior knowledge of a poll reported this morning in the Irish Independent. It showed that, "Less than half of population believes climate change is a serious problem." It appears I am not the only denier in this rain sodden country.

But the second problem, as the true Danish science shows, is that the climate is indeed changing. While mankind is not responsible for that, we will have to find ways to cope with it. My own theory, from all that I have read, is that global freezing is the stronger possibility and I think my grandchildren might just see the beginnings of that. If it happens it will be sufficiently gradual to allow them to adapt and when that time comes, it will be an expensive operation if everyone is to survive it.

In the meantime, there are the extremes of weather like we are experiencing this weekend. Atlantic storms such as "Desmond"  are, and have always been, a feature of our geographic location. But in the past we did have more clear-cut seasons so the weather patterns over time that go to make up climate are probably in change. What we need to know however, is that this is normal. One hundred and fifty million kilometers away there is a fiery nuclear ball over our heads that is hyper-active and constantly changing and long may it be so.

So having given this more thought in the light of this morning's newspaper poll, I think I have a democratic solution to it. Those who subscribe to the hockey-puck theory should be made to pay huge carbon-taxes while those who don't are exempt. I mean, you can't tax the sun so there's no money to be made there.