Changing Shades of Green: The environmental and cultural impacts of climate change in Ireland

Abstract

This report, as the reader will see, follows two distinct but intertwined paths. One path, rooted in science, outlines the ecological impacts of climate change in Ireland. We describe climate changes witnessed in the later decades of the 20th century and the most likely scenarios for change in this current century. We do not offer a primer on climate science, nor do we provide great detail on the methodology used to downscale global climate models for modeling the Irish climate. We instead attempt to tell a simple story of how the Irish climate is likely to change, relying exclusively on peer-reviewed scientific literature. The other path, rooted in culture, describes how these ecological changes may affect the look and feel of the Irish landscape, and how they may affect life in Ireland. These sections do not rely on peer-reviewed literature; they instead rely on an intuitive sense of those things that matter greatly to the Irish. We include discussions of music and poetry because they explain the intense connections between the Irish landscape and Irish culture and how changes to one can affect the other