SO, SCOTLAND is aiming to be 'net-zero' from CO2 emissions by 2045 – that's five years earlier than the UK's designated position. It is a fine ambition – but one that has the potential to steamroller this nation's highly efficient livestock industry.

The only saviour we might yet have is that science will ride to the rescue, but at the current rate of tit-for-tat scientific reports which all seem to contradict each other, that might not happen, or be allowed to happen.

It seems that, despite best efforts, the data can be skewed this way and that. We can remember 10 years ago being told that sea levels would decimate low lying areas in 10 years time. That hasn't happened, but it is a worrying theme that the very basis of those dire threats, yet remain as a mainstay of ecological thinking today on 'climate change.'

There is a lot at stake here. And that might explain why scientists are seen to be tripping over themselves to present the latest 'facts' on climate change – and only the foolhardy would deem that this was altruistic and not some desperate attempt to garner some cash for their institute/university/whacko organisation. The problem is, we are being driven by foolhardy people whose main intention is to capture the latest sound bite and maintain a populist image.

If there is to be change – and almost all agree that there must – let it be driven by sound science and in a controlled and sensible manner.

It must not be driven by ideology, but the big fear is that those who shout loudest appear to be the only ones being heard at the moment. If a Scottish Government of whatever hue wants this in place by 2045, so be it, but it has to accept that it must lay the foundations for it by ensuring both the accuracy of the available data – which is in short supply and sometimes contradictory – and giving clear pointers of how to mitigate against it.

This will include some solid and peer-reviewed research which shows – as we have been led to believe by some reports – that efficient grass-based farming businesses can actually tie up carbon and not emit it. That then will be an argument that must be strongly made and put to the Scottish people.

A failure to do so and for them to be left to be bombarded by the legions of bampots out there, will lead to a decimation of a really worthwhile industry and when the crows start cawing from the supposed clear air from the ramparts that we have become net-zero, we can welcome a climate that has not changed because we have exported that hot and dangerous air elsewhere where it will be out of sight and out of mind.