"Green" policies are destroying this country

Multiple pumped storage systems combined with HVDC interconnects means that its a viable proposal. There is a general rule of thumb which make solar and wind considerably more robust than either alone - if its calm its generally fair and sunny, if its dull then the wind is generally blowing. This is sufficiently true to cover 90% of situations. You always keep gas peaker stations in reserve for those times when it is both dull and calm. Its also a truism that its rarely both dull and calm across the continent of Europe at the same time.

These solutions work - but they work better the more area they cover.

I am also pragmatic even about Nuclear, if there were a way to make nuclear impossible to blow up catastrophically and generate no high level radiactive waste then I would certainly reconsider my objections to it. If they were ever able to get a fast breeder reactor to work reliably then I would be an advocate for building a few in order to eat down the high level waste we have accumulated from 80years of conventional nuclear. China has been working on small compact sodium salt pellet reactors which would be intrinsically safer than all conventional fission reactors (though they still generate high level waste), and if they ever perfect them they may represent a sector for nuclear. The problem with all nuclear so far is its association with Nuclear Arms and the fact that all programs had the secondary purpose of generating weapons grade Plutonium as a byproduct - which pushed them into a dangerous design area.

Some one who cannot see a problem cannot discuss solutions. And there end my discussion with you.

A lot of predictions there.

No harm in speculating and some of it may come true but it's not now and never was "easy being green".

The fact remains that going by the IT poll we know that at least 85% said they would support parties whose manifesto includes steps to address climate change.

That is FF,FG,SF,LAB and GP. I don't have the time or inclination to check up all the smaller parties and Independents.

No matter who ends up in the next government lifestyle change is coming and some of it won't be pretty.

We can beat the GP about the head and shoulders for sport if we like but that's only a side show.

Manifests are written to be all things to everyone.

Why do you believe FF and FG were so eager to get the Greens to sign up. Because they were in such admiration of the Greens political savvy ? The are the two parties in Ireland that invented political savvy. The Greens are now out front and center on energy supply. Do you actually believe neither FG or FF recognise the danger of this 70% energy from wind power somewhere down the line leaving us with rolling blackouts, or leaving us that we will be indefinitely at the mercy of others for energy. Do you not think perhaps they may have not noticed Germany`s problems with Russian gas.

FF and FG will do what they have always done, what every major party in a coalition government does, they claim credit for successes. For problems the minority party are the mud guard. You don`t have to look to far back to see how that has worked. The Labour party went from at one point thinking the could lead a government to now polling less than the Greens because of a water charges policy that wasn`t even theirs. It was that of FG the major party in that government.

I think it was you that mentioned the Social Democrats. In opposition the were all over health, came up with Slainte Care which everyone signed up to yet when offered the post of Minister for Health in the present government they baulked. In politics, like everything else, it is wise to be careful on what you wish for.

Composting sterilizes whatever you put in it.

Young people are full of dreams and can be easily persuaded by the next big fad. Older people tend to have heard all this rhetoric before and see it as tax raising exercise while only paying lip service to actual green policies. That's the big difference between the two cohorts IMO.

We've been hearing about a metro system for Dublin for that last 20 years and not a single track has been laid in that time. They want people to move away from cars while at the same time keep increasing fares making them economically inferior, not to mention the practical difficulties in trying to plan a journey using public transport in this country.

This idea that people should just accept any aul guff the government come out with because it has "green" in the title is not how democracy works I'm afraid.

THat you think nuclear incidents all end in chernobyl style meltdowns or fukushima's post-earthquake-tsunami leaking is absurd.

Reactor technology has moved on from those kind of designs a long long time ago. Modern reactors dont even need power to contain the reaction, its akin to air-brakes, when the power goes, the brakes start. Passive containment procedures are the new normal - nuclear meltdowns do not happen with modern reactors. (They barely even happen with older ones either, save for a soviet clusterf*ck)

Ha .. imagine backing up an opinion with a reference from people who actually know what they are talking about .. in video format.. from a CONSUMER video platform.. oh my!

such and old argument, the Australians have more Natural Gas than they know what to do with

"Australia holds 70 trillion cubic feet (Tcf) of proven gas reserves as of 2017, ranking 27th in the world and accounting for about 1% of the world's total natural gas reserves of 6,923 Tcf. Australia has proven reserves equivalent to 43.9 times its annual consumption."

Knowing this they are still building the biggest battery banks on the planet, with more on tow

Natural gas plants risk being stranded .. this is not just a green issue its financially insane

also what do you think the interconnectors are for ?

The manifesto may be a much abused document but still every party will have a section about climate change. Not necessarily because they are especially enthusiastic regarding the issue but because they know they will have to fulfil our international obligations if they get into power.

You are correct about the "mudguard" effect and the second part of the IPSOS/MRBI poll linked in another post above serves to underline the somewhat muddled approach of the Irish electorate to climate mitigation policy.

Apparently there really is more mileage left in the "mudguard" but eventually one would hope that voters will wake up and realise that they are being misled.

I didn't mention the Soc Dems.

This has all the looks of “if only the sheeple would listen to me” post about it. In terms of planning and producing a plan, it needs to go beyond politics and indeed the lifetime of an individual Dail. One of the challenges to the political system of the vote shifting away from the two formerly largest parties is that it creates a lot of volatility. That in turn produces scenarios where people look for someone to blame when things don’t go the way they think they should go. Small parties are always the easy targets in this scenario.  The question is, however, in a scenario where say SF and others turn out to be the core of government will they continue to be their populist selves or do what's right for the country on this?