"Green" policies are destroying this country

prunudo

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120671835#Comment_120671835

Too bloody long.

Akrasia

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120671856#Comment_120671856

Data centres don't have to be the bad guys. If there was on site BESS as well as generation capacity they could actually contribute to grid stability

https://www.energy-storage.news/microsoft-wants-to-replicate-proven-data-centre-battery-storage-project-worldwide/

JRant

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120671925#Comment_120671925

There are multiple options already open to DCs. Fast frequency response using onsite UPSs have been around for a bit now and DS3 payments are quite lucrative. The problem is Eamonn and Co don't want them using diesel gens to run during high demand because of emissions. They no longer want them building dispatchable gas plants because of emissions, yet no other alternatives are available.

200mg

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120671925#Comment_120671925

Would be a far better idea to move to solid state drives that would reduce power consumption by about 70%

JRant

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120671961#Comment_120671961

Solid state drives for what?

200mg

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120671969#Comment_120671969

https://www.techcentral.ie/data-centres-that-switch-from-hdds-to-ssds-use-70-less-power/

40k is a pop is the issue atm for the largest drives.

Akrasia

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120671961#Comment_120671961

Or, they can do both

Akrasia

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120671971#Comment_120671971

I think another problem is that HDDs go bad sector by sector, while SSDs just stop working and are very difficult to recover when they go pop

200mg

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120672026#Comment_120672026

Nope fault tolerance built in bad sectors on an SSD are marked as such and drive performs normally. There not sectors in an SSD but keeping it simple. You can even defrag modern SSDS not that you would need to does not affect drive life.

Akrasia

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120672035#Comment_120672035

I may not have looked this up in several years

200mg

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120672053#Comment_120672053

No bother It's serious interesting tech some big wig in the HDD industry said by say 2030 they will make the last HDD and move entirely to SSD/NVME.

That's all she wrote for peat briquette production in Ireland.

https://www.shannonside.ie/news/last-remaining-irish-peat-briquette-plant-to-close-today-224602

With a carbon tax of nearly 90 eur a tonne and increasing annually, the days of briquette use look to be drawing to a close

Pa ElGrande

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120671961#Comment_120671961

That's sales markitecture. In the context of data centers, NVMe SSDs require faster peripheral buses, faster CPUs with more cores, more and faster memory and faster input ports. Don't forget density and cooling requirements. Because the SSD price per megabyte is higher than spinning drives many storage systems now use compression and de-duplication to reduce that cost per MB (needs more CPU cycles). In addition SSDs, use wear leveling to compensate for the degradation caused by write operations. Some of the largest capacity drives use triple level cell (TLC) and wear out much faster under high write conditions and are treated as consumables like batteries that degrade over time. Do they SSDs reduce power consumption? - that depends on how you measure it, taking in the entire system, I doubt power demand goes down with these systems, efficiency improves, so the cost and time of processing an IO operation (e.g. every time you search google you are generating IO operations) may be reduced, but that is offset by the increase in demand for more compute cycles. SSD are more reliable under normal operation than HDDs, i.e. you need to replace them less often, depending on workload profile they may not last as long in a large environment.

FYI. Unrelated to SSD/HDD, the Chinese had a big push for 5G, the telecom operators found that the power consumption was much higher that previous generations and they were losing money when demand was low, they switched back to 4G in rural locations or switch off 5G coverage outside peak demand. Next time you hear about 5G, look into power consumption of the support infrastructure required.

One word of warning about using SSDs that applies even to home users, do not use them for long term data archival. Put simply your data is held on the SSD by an electrical charge, when that charge dissipates your data is gone or parts of it missing (i.e. corrupt files). It's not a problem if your SSD powered off for 24 hours or 30 days, but leave an SSD on the shelf for a year and go back to read your data, there is a high chance data is corrupt or gone. With mechanical spinning drives (HDDs), this does not happen, and if parts fail there is a good chance you can recover your data intact (it will cost you), with SSDs data recovery success is much reduced. If you want to geek out go the slide temperatures and data retention, the table is the number of weeks the drive is rated to retain data when powered off, it also varies with temperature.

Furze99

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120672704#Comment_120672704

Ah sure, we'll import them instead and let someone else carry the carbon costs.

If Bord na Móna / ESB hadn't burnt so much bog in highly inefficient electricity generation over decades, we could have easily had a sustainable briquette and horticultural products for many decades to come.

charlie14

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120672704#Comment_120672704

The problem with using coercive taxation and regulations to further your political ideology is that you will hit a tipping point where you will seriously piss off the electorate. I doubt there are many Shannonsiders, or those further afield, that have not had a wtf moment seeing woodchip from Brazil being shipped 7,000 kilometres to Offaly to be burned in a power plant all supposedly for the sake of global emissions. Even An Taisce has called it absurd.

That this woodchip is coming from Brazil, a country that is increasing their cattle herds by 24 million while greens here were threatening to bring down the government if they didn`t get their way on culling cattle, a country has now given the green light to even more deforestation and mining in the Amazon only adds to that wtf

The history of coalition governments, especially those involving three parties or more, is that when one is holding a gun to the others heads early on in a term having no wish for another general election they keep their heads down hoping to ride out the disquiet and it will lessen the closer they get to the end of their term. The closer that end of term gets, usually from the mid point on, that changes when they realise the potential future for them should they continue doing so.

Even for your own shining light, Germany, that is now evident. The green party there proposal obliging homeowners to replace gas and oil fired central heating is being blocked by a government partner as unaffordable parentalism. In the EU parliament, with the realisation of how the wind is blowing from the recent election result in the Netherlands, with EU elections due next year the Agri Committee of the EU Parliament have voter by a 2/3 majority to completely reject the Nature Restoration Law (NSL)

Meanwhile here we have a Green Party who talk a lot about global emissions yet act as if we are somehow living in our own little biosphere, are still calling for this NSL to be passed here. It really is politics of the surreal.

Larbre34

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120671856#Comment_120671856

So then why would we blindly accept that the same Government's approach to climate, carbon budgeting and eco-diversification is joined up, sustainable and not massively damaging to growth and livelihoods?

I love the way Da Cor has brainwashed himself into thinking nothing is reversible based on no evidence at all.

In my lifetime, this nation of people and by extension the State, have reversed position on a whole host of social and economic sacred cows because it was the right thing to do. The pro-life lobby and the conservative catholic groups couldn't have been more shocked when their ivory towers came crashing down with them in it, so certain were they of their eternal omnipotence.

There is a clear coming together of rural interests in Ireland, horrified at everything from domestic peat extraction to the prospect of herd culls (anyone remember the abolition of the milk quota just 8 years ago and the herd INCREASING 40% in the 7 years to 2020??!😂😂)

Ordinary people are sad, sick and tired of the whole endless changing of the goal posts. The EU Commission can sign up to all the glossy paged deals it wishes and even the Member States can transpose them into national policy, but they aren't worth the felled rain forest they are printed on if there is no buy-in from the people.

Herewith, an article on precisely this matter, with an EU-wide perspective, just a week old and from no less an august newswire than Reuters.

https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/europe-hits-resistance-race-finalise-green-laws-2023-05-25/

If the zealots think this is a settled matter, they really have another thing coming.

Larbre34

https://www.thejournal.ie/eu-nature-law-ossian-smyth-scaremongering-6083487-Jun2023/

Oh deary me, surely not trouble in paradise.

Surely not the centre right parties in Europe getting very skittish about the votes they could lose on the back of this crap.

Furze99

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120673497#Comment_120673497

Yeah but the zealots will load the burden on the ordinary citizen as the easy defenceless targets. The big players in industry, farming, aviation etc will keep their free rides.

marno21

https://m.independent.ie/irish-news/politics/poll-shock-for-toxic-greens-as-nearly-half-the-public-dont-want-election-until-2025/a2144974434.html

These eejits are now the most transfer toxic party according to the latest Indo poll. 48% of people won’t even give them a preference now.

FF + FG’s continued backing to the nonsense they come up with will cost them votes in the election. A lot of FF/FG voters, especially outside the cities, are allergic to their shite.

WishUWereHere

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120674142#Comment_120674142

Not forgetting countries who ignore their ‘targets’ including china & India, with a combined population of between 2.5 & 3 billion population.

tom1ie

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120674360#Comment_120674360

Yeah but you’d hop FFG voters will have the sense not to vote for SF.

tom1ie

Wonder how long it will be before the green fools are trying to ban charcoal and bbqs 😂😂

PommieBast

@tom1ie

Yeah but you’d hop FFG voters will have the sense not to vote for SF.

I voted FG in 2020 but to put it mildly it involved some serious lip-biting. Not sure I could bring myself to vote SF but as an option they are no more senseless than the other parties likley to get TDs.

Wonder how long it will be before the green fools are trying to ban charcoal and bbqs 😂😂

ssh.. Don't give them ideas...

Pa ElGrande

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120674360#Comment_120674360

The irony is the people who are negatively affected by Green policies don't vote Green. With no Green representation in those areas, voters can only take out any frustration on FG/FF. Unfortunately the other political parties, bar some independents are just as heavily bought in to the EU green agenda.

With unemployment numbers like this, government parties are not likely to take much of a hit, so changes are going to come down to transfer management, which could still potentially leave the Greens as king makers in another coalition. The more affluent people are the more likely they will vote Green since their primary needs are catered for, it is the squeezed middle that will make the difference, and cost of living may be the deciding factor in the next election.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120673257#Comment_120673257

Biomass is a cod, no argument there.

Larbre34

You can't be kingmaker with no or maybe one two seats.

Without transfers, that's where they are. Even in a 175 seat Dáil next time out.

tom1ie

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120674860#Comment_120674860

Problem is even if the greens get decimated at the next election the reduction in carbon is enshrined in law- until a party comes along and says it will disband this law, we are stuck with this carbon reduction/ tax increase environment.

Larbre34

Stranger things have happened to court a few votes.

Besides, we will, as always, be taking our lead from the prevailing winds in Europe, which as the article I linked earlier describes, are getting stronger.

If the centre parties across the continent need to pull back the extremity of some policies in order to stem the tide of outflow to the right and far-right, well the environmental and migration issues are two very juicy bits of low hanging fruit.

JRant

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120675085#Comment_120675085

The winds of change are definitely starting to be felt across Europe. Greta and her merry band of space cadets have lost their shine are the serious people are starting to take back control. It's going to take a few years to undo a lot of the harm the current lot of greens have done.

PommieBast

For now I am sitting with popcorn watching the spat between the FDP and Grüne.