Ireland will experience more frequent extreme heat, impacting over larger areas of the country with temperatures exceeding 30 degrees, climate scientists at Maynooth University (MU) have said.
They have developed much more accurate prediction models on the extent of Irish heatwaves, which will be more challenging than relatively isolated temperature spikes in the past. They indicate heatwaves have doubled in area in more recent times.
Their findings based on weather station data indicate the urgent need for “societal adaptation to increasing extreme temperature events, that will have profound implications for public health, agriculture, economic stability and infrastructure resilience,” said lead researcher Prof Andrew Parnell.
They estimate that a temperature of more than 34 degrees – a value not yet recorded in Ireland – changed from a 1 in 1,600-year event to a 1 in 28-year event between 1942 and 2020.
A “temperature event” of 33 degrees in Dublin’s Phoenix Park has gone from being a once in 180-years event in 1942 to a once in nine-years event in 2020, they forecast. Read Kevin O'Sullivan's full report @irishtimesnews link in bio.
As the UK heads to the polls later this week in a general election likely to topple the Conservative Party, spare a moment to consider Rishi Sunaks’ latest gambit to appeal to London’s voters. With a cynically titled “Backing Drivers Bill”, Sunak promised, if returned to government, to scrap measures introduced to address London’s appalling air pollution and congestion, saying “we are the party on the side of drivers”.
This Tory rhetoric represents a new form of anti-politics which seeks to make a political virtue of selfishness, carelessness and greed. The merits of London’s Ultra Low Emission Zone and its clear success to date – a reduction in traffic-related nitrogen dioxide emissions of 20 per cent since 2019, alongside significant, long-term health improvements – are swept to one side. Instead, anti-climate populism relies on triggering emotions like resentment, anger and fear.
Ireland is not immune to the political phenomenon of short-termism and reactionary populism. We saw Fine Gael’s Regina Doherty cynically lash out against a supposed “spaghetti junction of cycle lanes” during the European Parliament elections to try to tap into Dublin voters’ frustrations with traffic congestion. Now, the newly appointed junior minister at the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment, Emer Higgins, has asked Dublin City Council to stall the implementation of the Dublin Transport Plan until 2025, presumably so that Fine Gael can capitalise on the frustrations of Dubliners without having to actually do anything about them.
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Fatherhood and politics have crossed over even on the most unexpected occasion, Michael McGrath says. “There really is never getting away from politics. I remember one time we took the kids on the annual Santa visit. The visit was all going fine. Santa asked their names and ages and what they were looking for. And then he just turns to them and says, ‘you should tell your dad now that Santa does not agree with any water charges. There should be no charges for water. Do you hear me now?’ And the kids said yes.
“And there was I, on the one hand smiling, and on the other hand gritting my teeth,” he explains, laughing at the recollection.
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I think my daughter who recently turned 11 has developed misophonia (strong and negative reactions to sounds most people do not notice). For a couple of years, she has been very sensitive to certain sounds.
Firstly, her younger sister’s breathing – who can be a bit nasal – used to bother her a lot to the point it affected their relationship. We had to put them in separate bedrooms and since then the problem has subsided.
However, last year, my daughter took issue with her teacher’s voice, to the point it caused her great anxiety, anger and frustration while affecting her ability to concentrate. We got through the year hoping it would pass, but after only a couple of weeks into this academic year she had the same issue with the new teacher’s voice. It has now spread to her mother’s voice and, on rare occasions, mine.
I know, at face value, this may seem trivial or normal not to like voices of authority, but the scale of distress it causes my daughter is extreme. She struggles to calm herself, fidgets to try to regulate and, at home, inevitably lashes out at her mother.
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The underlying sense that November’s US presidential election presents a stark choice between a democratic and autocratic future was reflected in a stunning supreme court decision on Monday that found presidents were immune from prosecution for “official” acts.
In a major legal victory for Donald Trump, the court found he was entitled to at least partial immunity from charges he faces of attempting to subvert the result of the 2020 presidential election.
While the court did not grant the absolute immunity sought by the former president, its finding by a six-three majority – on conservative-liberal lines – expanded the notional presidential suite of powers to a degree that astonished some legal scholars. But the most striking response was that of a member of the court, Justice Sonia Sotomayor, who signed off with a blistering critique of the finding of her six conservative colleagues: “With fear for our democracy, I dissent.”
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Hage Geingob died in early February. This was neither a personal tragedy nor a political earthquake. He was 82 and had led a very full life. And the country he ruled, Namibia, has a population roughly half the size of Ireland’s.
What was significant about his death was that he was the only serving elected head of government older than Joe Biden. That guttering torch had passed to the American president.
The ageing process affects individuals in different ways. Back in February, I did a public event in Dublin with Bernie Sanders, who is 82 – a year older than Biden. He was, in public and private, razor sharp and mentally vigorous. The same is true of our own president Michael D. Higgins who, at 83, is also older than Biden.
But neither of these men is running a country. Moreover, neither is aspiring to be still running that global superpower when he is 86, as Biden would be were he to be re-elected. And Biden, even before his disastrous debate with Donald Trump last week, was very obviously not – or at least not always – razor sharp and mentally vigorous. He is patently too old for the immense task he faces.
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Tuesday’s top stories:
👉 Future employment of people guilty of serious crimes of ‘limited concern’ when sentencing, judge says
✈️ Aer Lingus leases aircraft and crews to reduce disruption
🏘️ Pricing of ‘affordable homes’ at €475,000 defended by council
☁️ July begins ‘cooler than normal’ as ‘airy’ chill sets in for the week
📖 The Big Read: Michael McGrath: ‘We’ve ended up with seven children, but we had loss along the way’
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Blathnaid Raleigh, who was raped by Johnny Moran (26) of Mullingar in 2019, spoke to media following Moran's sentencing on Monday. Click the link in our bio to read more from today's hearing
Inflation has increased by 1.5 per cent in the 12 months to June and risen by 0.3 per cent since May, data from the Central Statistics Office shows.
This compares with inflation of 2 per cent in Ireland in the 12 months to May and an annual increase of 6 per cent in the EU Harmonised Index of Consumer Prices (HICP) for the euro zone in the same period.
Looking at the components of the flash HICP for Ireland in June, energy prices are estimated to have fallen by 1 per cent in the month and decreased by 5.6 per cent over the 12 months to June.
Food prices are estimated to have fallen by 0.1 per cent in the last month and increased by 2 per cent in the last 12 months.
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It’s odd sometimes the things that stick in your mind. When I think back 20 years to the one and only time I met Cathal Lombard, what I remember most clearly is good biscuits. At the start of our interview, his mother walked into the living room carrying a serving tray and the biscuits were laid out on a plate, foil-wrapped and artfully presented, along with the good china cups and saucers.
The warmth of the welcome may have stayed with me because it was my first day back at work after my own mother died, and she always did the same thing for visitors. Mrs Lombard seemed so proud of her son. A year earlier, he was barely known outside of Cork. When I met him, he was heading to the Olympics in Athens as the fastest non-African in the world over 10,000m. He knew that people were sceptical about him. But while we sipped tea and ate the good biscuits, he tried to explain how he’d managed to do it. It was one of the most incredible sporting stories I’d ever heard. The only problem was, it turned out, that none of it was true.
At that time – the late spring of 2004 – I’d fallen out of love with my job as a sportswriter for the former Sunday Tribune. Sport is supposed to stretch the limits of our credulity, but the experience of writing about Michelle de Bruin had taught me to doubt everything. Raining on other people’s parades wasn’t something that came naturally to me and the job was turning me into a misanthrope.
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The thing about going on holiday with small children is that you should not go on holiday with small children. If you do go on holiday with small children, you will find yourself engaged in an arduous enterprise that a friend of mine calls “parenting with fewer resources”. So, you should probably limit your holidays to locations in which the resources are specifically kid-targeted.
What I’m trying to say is we just spent a week in Center Parcs, Co Longford. It was a week of doing lots of what my daughter calls, “actibities”. Center Parcs is a sort of tame forest in which 450-odd lodges have been built in a circle around a) a large water park called the Subtropical Swimming Paradise and b) an ersatz village square featuring shops and themed restaurants. There is also an artificial lake across which people zip line, milling their arms, eerily silent. You are sort of in nature but you are also emphatically not in nature; what you are actually in is a sort of widely-distributed modular hotel, a hotel with lots of trees in it.
Everywhere you go, in Center Parcs, you meet past, present and future versions of yourself. Here you are with slightly younger kids: your past. Here you are with slightly older kids: your future.The atomic structure varies only slightly. Around the tired, inevitable nuclei of Mum and Dad orbit posses of excited little electrons, crying, shouting, sulking, pointing at squirrels.
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One mystery about Thursday evening’s US presidential debate is why President Joe Biden’s team agreed to it. An incumbent president, burdened with more responsibilities than even the fittest 40-year-old person could cope with could – should – simply have said no.
Speculation arose that this was a ploy by some to engineer a pre-convention failure so bad that it would force Biden to step down and be replaced by a younger and more image-friendly candidate. Even Machiavelli would be impressed with this.
Biden’s team knows that he has been a pretty competent president in most domains. But if you make a hundred decisions in complex global or domestic situations, 10 of them are going to be wrong by chance.
They let him enter this disastrous debate because they could see the real competence behind the superficialities of television appearances. They were, however, blind to what the rest of us could see with dismay and which made Biden fare so badly.
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