"Green" policies are destroying this country

Coolcormack1979

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121263293#Comment_121263293

Too much common sense in that post.should be banned😁

deholleboom

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121261749#Comment_121261749

Yes, it is laughable. It is not uncommon to see the greens display their usual ignorance but you can also turn it around, mirror it. Any ideology can oppose anything on principle and reject even the most basic logical assumptions. You dont have to be a total Ayn Rand style free market absolutist OR a total Marxist totalitarian state proponent to make sensible statements about climate change.

If only the greens would be willing to admit a level of uncertainty about it i for one would be happy to have a conversation about climate change. But since 2006 the debate has been cancelled by one side. That side has become more totalitarian in the last decade and display no tolerance whatsoever, only ignorance. It is a pathetic persistent narrow mindedness and self rightiousness constantly on the attack. No self reflection at all. And then they have the gall to criticise the belligerence of free marketeers, totally unaware of their own stupidity.

Pa ElGrande

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121262953#Comment_121262953

It's works much better when you don't build on a flood plain.

randomname2005

I wonder what our recycling percentage is for bottles and cans given the local drop off point is often too full to use. I think there are many other things that could be done, that would make a bigger difference but not as palatable. We already recycle bottles and cans, so this is just a different way of doing it. people are malleable and will accept the change, do the refund with their shop rather than a separate trip.

Having been to a few festivals in Spain they sell reusable plastic cups for drinks. You didn't get a drink without one. There is no deposit but you can keep it and bring it to the next festival. As a tourist I kept the different ones as souvenirs but it cuts down massively on plastic cups at concerts, games, etc. Locals would bring their old ones with them and reuse them, certainly for most of the summer festival season. An easy change here if it was desired. Just like plastic bags and the charge for them, just force all vendors to use and charge for them. Sell FAI ones at Irish soccer matches, IRFU ones at rugby games, and the like. Easy to reuse and not a massive weight to carry to a game.

From my perspective the biggest offender from a rubbish on the side of the road perspective is take away containers. Imagine if we had a re-usable take away container and had a deposit on it, something meaningful like 5 quid. Could potentially help with the obesity crisis as people might be less likely to impulse buy fast food with the extra up front cost, but would reduce litter. People would not throw it from the car window, or else if it was, others would pick it up for the refund. Yes yes cleaning and sanitising needs to be figured out but I think other areas should be looked at too rather than setting up a massive infrastructure for something that looks reasonably well done by most.

Shoog

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121263704#Comment_121263704

There is no scientific basis to entertain the doubt you speak of. Not going to happen.

Shoog

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121263293#Comment_121263293

Your just not understanding the issues here. I can see you are invested in the concept of dredging but hydrologist will tell you it just shifts the problem.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/jan/30/dredging-rivers-floods-somerset-levels-david-cameron-farmers

The Shannon callows are the literal place that nature has created to deal with rainfall - it always flooded and it always will.

There is no amount of flood defenses that can be practically built in Cork to avoid the events of the last week. It's a bottomless pit into which you can pour all the money available and it's only a matter of time before the problem pops up in a new location that isn't defended - because you simply cannot channalize the whole of the Lee.

This attitude to flooding is a perfect example of the whole attitude to climate change - shift the problem to the poor fool downstream.

ginger22

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121264247#Comment_121264247

And you think that by cutting our carbon emissions it will stop these towns flooding. The mind boggles at the logic.

Shoog

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121264310#Comment_121264310

Because doing nothing certainly will.

elperello

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121262866#Comment_121262866

If it achieves the same here I'll happily put up with the inconvenience.

I'll put it down as my small contribution to the cause.

It's a shame to see so many parts of the country blighted with discarded bottles.

Shoog

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/oct/20/ex-officials-at-un-farming-fao-say-work-on-methane-emissions-was-censored

Farming lobby pressure FAO to minimise impact of cattle on methane emissions, now there's a surprise.

cute geoge

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121264729#Comment_121264729

Cattle numbers across the globe are declining ,yet air travel is for ever increasing ,how does this make sense .

Dredge the rivers and stop making people's lives miserable

roosterman71

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121264247#Comment_121264247

George Monbiot is the hydrologist you decided to hang yourself on. Fair enough. I've a hydrologist in the family (or something like that; she does flood assessments for the EPA as part of planning permission submissions) and she's hung her hat on cleaning rivers being a way to alleviate the worst of the problems. So, ya know, she's fairly clued in. The rain from the last few days isn't a flood. It was heavy rain. And the rivers couldn't cope. I say clean them so they cope better for heavy rain. What logic are you going to use the next time Cork City floods and upstream doesn't? Plant more trees somewhere? Buy a bike?

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121264729#Comment_121264729

Methane impact is negligible. Why on our small island cattle numbers have increased ~300k in number, or ~4% in the last 50 years. Has the methane emissions of the island increased by the same %. If not, then something else is contributing and then blaming cattle is starting from the wrong spot.

creedp

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121264642#Comment_121264642

If people could get over the relatively recent addiction of not being able to cross the road without swigging out of a water bottle it might held reduce this problem. Reduce comes first

InAtFullBack

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121262953#Comment_121262953

You're really tying yourself up in knots and slapping yourself with contradictions here.

The reason for the floods on the scale they are is because rivers are not being dredged. Secondary level geography will teach you about ox bow lakes, etc... and how they form when rivers are left to do as they please.

InAtFullBack

Three fine messes in the east of Laois:

1 - 'Are they more important in Portlaoise than out the country?' - Laois Today

Cllr PJ Kelly had asked for an update on a potential footpath from the Killenard national school to the O’Dempsey’s GAA pitch, something had been proposed and seconded at a meeting in September of last year.

However, the council responded by saying that the NTA (National Transport Authority) is “targeting schemes in highly populated areas where maximum benefit can be achieved from investment funding”.

The response added that “this scheme does not meet the criteria for an Active Travel Scheme due to the current speed limit of 80km/h and low levels of daily usage”.

So much for active travel and encouraging kids and adults into keeping fit - the locals can just take their chances walking and cycling along a narrow road - or perhaps just forgo being active at all. A cynic would conclude that money is being shifted into bigger urban centres ahead of the next elections to help green candidates get elected.

2 - Mystery as €200k funding for Timahoe footpath/cycle lane is taken off the agenda - Laois Today

Funding of €200,000 was applied for in 2021 and granted in early 2022 under the Active Travel scheme for the project – and Cllr McEvoy informed the meeting that he was told in September of last year that the work would begin in October.

He was later told that the work would start in 2023.

“But nothing has happened in 2023,” he told the meeting.

“The NTA is targeting schemes in highly-populated areas where maximum benefit can be achieved from investment funding,” stated the response from Diarmuid Donohue, senior executive engineer in the Active Travel Office.

“This scheme does not meet the criteria for an Active Travel Scheme due to the current speed limit of 80km/h and low levels of daily usage.”

WOW! Just look at that, a copy-and-paste job from the NTA, perhaps the real reason is a copy and paste of my above opinions on why money for green projects are being withdrawn from rural villages.

3- 'I could put my fist through the table with vexation' says Laois councillor over 46-year battle for Ballybrittas sewage system - Laois Today

A Laois County Councillor couldn’t disguise his frustration and anger with Uisce Eireann, over their refusal to provide improved sewerage infrastructure in his local village.

Cllr PJ Kelly, speaking at today’s meeting of Graiguecullen-Portarlington Municipal District in Laois County Council, lashed out at at a response from the council saying “Uisce Eireann do not have plans to provide sewerage infrastructure in Ballybrittas” in response to an update he had sought.

Cllr Kelly said he and his predecessors have been campaigning on this for nearly half a century – but this is the first time they’ve been definitely turned down.

We want clean water they said... more waffle from the greens as usual. But look, there's an empty TFI bus trying to turn a corner in Rhode, Co. Offaly - shows that the greens are incapable of doing much at all let alone when they do anything that it's even remotely good.

InAtFullBack

Dublin company hired to send buses 170km to Wexford for three-minute journey to sod-turning | Independent.ie (archive.ph)

All to look good coming in on a bus. This is what they do with our taxes.

Shoog

Does dredging and desilting prevent flooding?

When used with other flood risk management measures as part of a catchment based approach dredging and desilting can be effective and justified.  In the majority of cases, they are not the most efficient or sustainable ways of reducing flood risk and may actually increase flood risk to downstream communities. .

Natural processes in many rivers means silt will return and accumulate in the same places very quickly, sometimes only weeks after dredging and desilting is carried out, therefore any increase in channel capacity will be short-lived. This is particularly evident in tidal rivers with each tide bringing in new accumulations of silt.

https://environmentagency.blog.gov.uk/2021/12/23/floods-and-dredging/

InAtFullBack you can repeat yourself as many times as you like but it doesn't make what you say true.

As the British body responsible for river management say local small scale dredging maybe appropriate in certain very limited ways but is generally counterproductive and actually cause downstream flooding.

You can thank me later 😄☺️

People such as yourself love dredging in their own local area because it solves their local issues but rarely consider the consequences for those downstream of them.

Intensification of upland farming and building on floodplains have both encouraged silting and rapid water flow to river estuaries, coupled with more intense rain events caused by climate change make these flood events far more common and far more serious.

Management of flooding has to take place on a whole catchment basis and must concentrate on slowing water flow off mountains where the most volume of water is generated. Farmers obscession with dredging are a distraction to the real issues causing the problems.

cute geoge

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121265385#Comment_121265385

Why would you only dredge a small river section ,Dredge the whole river up stream ,down stream and that will releive flooding for the next 30 years

roosterman71

Dredge from the river mouth. If ya just do a bit in the middle it's not worth a shite. Common sense there but I bet if there was a council implementing dredging they'd make a balls of it.

I see flooding in Skerries this evening. Which upland farming intensification is to blame for that?

InAtFullBack

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121265385#Comment_121265385

People such as yourself love dredging in their own local area because it solves their local issues but rarely consider the consequences for those downstream of them.

Which is why along with the last two contributors I advocate for dredging to commence at the point where the river becomes tidal and work back upstream from there. For what it's worth, where I live will never see any flooding issue - so no vested interest, unlike some who virtue signal to the crowd.

Oh, and thanks for the blog link - another 'opinion' piece.

InAtFullBack

@roosterman71

I see flooding in Skerries this evening. Which upland farming intensification is to blame for that?

If it ain't upland farming it's gotta be C02, no doubt.

ps200306

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121264310#Comment_121264310

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121264325#Comment_121264325

You hit the nail on the head. Cutting Irish carbon emissions will achieve exactly the same as doing nothing.

Shoog

It's lovely to see that the fine lads on boards.ie know better than the river management authorities.

I am humbled.

ginger22

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121265942#Comment_121265942

Try asking the people in Midleton "how good a job the river management authorities have done"

Shoog

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121265959#Comment_121265959

Because it rained a month's worth of rain in a day.

Shoog

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121265959#Comment_121265959

Because it rained a month's worth of rain in a day. It could have been even worse if they collected the whole catchments rainfall and accelerated it down to Midlton as fast as they could.

roosterman71

You're the type of lad that when the tap is on full blast, and the plug is only half in ya'd be happy to wet the floor before building higher sides on the sink sooner than pull the plug out.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121265963#Comment_121265963

And if the river was cleaned, it could hold more water before bursting it's banks and get it to the sea quicker.

I find it amazing you don't understand that increasing capacity in the river to what it once was is bad. Yer one step away from saying we should throw more rubbish into rivers to reduce flow as that will prevent more flooding

Shoog

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121266073#Comment_121266073

It doesn't work like that. A cleaned river is faster and more violent. The flood front is significantly worse for those downstream.

The river authorities understand this even if you don't.

...and I wouldn't leave the tap on in the first place. Solve the issue at source.

eightieschewbaccy

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121265959#Comment_121265959

They very much so failed to deliver a relief scheme in time. The major cause of the flood remains the amount of rain that fell in that time. And as a person directly affected, at council level there needs to be a resolution to the multiple causes that led to it happening. But equally, we all need to start taking global warming seriously, it's gonna affect towns across Ireland more and more, that's the reality.

Shoog

An excellent even handed analysis of dredging in local conditions.

https://irishriverproject.com/2022/02/07/floods-dredging/

Not a solution to flooding and only appropriate on small localized applications. Solve the issue in the catchment by land use management.

The real solution to flooding lies with farmers, and typically they are not going to like them. Upland farmers should be paid for flood management works as the most cost effective way to reduce flooding risk.