"Green" policies are destroying this country

I'd happily have a nuke in my county. If you're on the east coast Sellafield and Hinkley point are practically in your back yard anyway. As for the price per kWh -- we could start with the price the UK is paying for Hinkley Point ... it would cheaper than the price we just agreed for onshore wind for the next 18 years!

Who's purpose is served by turning rural Ireland into bog with roaming packs of wolves? Essentially the Irish government is intent on turning the countryside into a reservation.

Rewetting and restoring bogs makes sense but the wolves thing never did and has been shot down. Like any of these proposed ideas it will not be as extensive as some hope for nor as bad as others claim.

We have been rats in the experimental maze run by Exxon Mobil et al for the last 50 years. That's how long they have known that their product was terraforming the planet but they lied and disinformed and delayed action to begin transitioning until now. We wasted decades.

Europe is running out of water. There are global food shortages and crop failures. It's possibly going to be the hottest ever day today in ireland and we're only 1/3rd of the way into the warming we are locked into because of that inaction.

Our plan is to build tens of GW of offshore wind capacity and solar over the next 10-15 years and to upgrade the grid to include battery storage.

There is a small risk of energy shortages during the transition. But as we have seen with Russia invading Ukraine, security is an illusion and we need to be able to handle some disruption for the long term.

Not to mention the problem of the fossil fuel industry being one of the biggest emitters of methane just in the process of extracting the oil gas and coal, before we even get to the point where it is ready to be burnt as fuel

Whiddy island? Sure stick it in with the oil reserves what could possibly go wrong!

With the droughts in Europe now are there contingency plans in place for food shortages, crop failures, and general lack of water? I know the experts here will say these droughts happen all the time but this one seems particularly bad and one would imagine they'll only get far worse in coming years.

We get lots of rain here but we also import lots of food and animal feed so things may get pretty bad before we know it, even if it's true that Eamon Ryan is flying business class.

Spoken like a true alarmist.

"Europe is running out of water."

No it isn't, it's having a temporary drought.

"There are global food shortages and crop failures."

BS. I already posted the 2022 World Food Report on this thread. Almost all food security issues are to do with political and economic stability, not climate. The last round of food shortages was due to the global financial crisis caused by malinvestment in property markets. The current one is due to the Ukraine war. There's no doubt in my mind that an upcoming one could be caused by malinvestment in "green" energy.

"It's possibly going to be the hottest ever day today in ireland and we're only 1/3rd of the way into the warming we are locked into because of that inaction."

And plucky little Ireland is going to solve that single-handedly, is it? (Not that it's a problem -- god be with the days when a pleasant summer wasn't turned into a horror story by doom mongers).

What I said about batteries is secondary school chemistry. You could try countering it instead of accusing me of being a "know all". I am not even slightly anti-renewables. I am against malinvestment that will reduce our economic resilience. Yes, I am anti-Green because they are the classic "green on the outside, red on the inside" authoritarian ideologues who will happily ruin us economically in pursuit of their agenda.

My solution for Ireland is very different to a solution for the world which, unless you're Eamon Ryan with delusions of grandeur, makes sense for a tiny nation that contributes 0.1% of global emissions. I would continue with the plan for offshore wind, but have stringent caps on the strike prices we are prepared to pay. If it can't be built at a reasonable price, we don't want it.

Meanwhile I would build Shannon LNG a.s.a.p, invest in gas-fired electricity generation, reverse the decision on offshore hydrocarbon exploration and go looking for indigenous supplies of oil and gas. I'd be on the lookout for whatever way the rest of the world lands on low carbon energy and be prepared to begin a transition when it's clear what way the wind is blowing. I would NOT engage in the ridiculous delusion that Ireland is going to lead the world in this area.

Why on earth would you think that ?

A reliable energy source with no CO2 emissions and no multiples of nameplate capacity compared to an intermittent unreliable one with no idea of how many multiples of nameplate capacity that would be required for the same price, is a bit of a no brainer imho.

"The drought in Europe is so bad that parts of the Rhine, a key industry transport route for Europe, is down to less than 2 feet and the barges draft is 3".

Unless you're attributing this to climate change, what's your point? Scare tactics? The shallows of the Rhein fall to low levels every year. Yes, this year is extreme but far from unprecedented.

The lowest levels ever recorded on the upper Rhein were in 1585.

The upper Rhine gets its low water season in winter when all the precipitation falls as snow. The lower Rhine, in the pluvial regime, has low water in later summer and autumn. Here are "laufenstein" on the Rhein in 1901:

Laufenstein ("run stones") and Hungersteine ("hunger stones") were the names given to the boulders that appeared at low water. Inhabitants on the Elbe carved the drought years into the stones -- 1417, 1616, 1707, 1746, 1790, 1800, 1811, 1830, 1842, 1868, 1892, and 1893.

"Wenn du mich siehst dan weine ... when you see me, then cry!"

The 20th century was a period of historically unusual high flows. The lowest flows were during the Little Ice Age.

Refs:

• https://www.rhineforecast.com/kaub/
• https://www.hist.unibe.ch/e11168/e52524/e69145/e186327/e188630/27_Pfister-al-LowWaters-HSJ06_ger.pdf
• https://www.iksr.org/fileadmin/user_upload/DKDM/Dokumente/Fachberichte/EN/rp_En_0248.pdf

LOL. Accuses people of using anecdotal evidence ... and then trots out a boatload of anecdotal evidence. Plus, the mandatory little jibe:

Is this the so-called "crisis" ? ...

Climate change is significant. It is not an "existential crisis". An existential crisis, by definition, is one that threatens existence. I'm getting thoroughly fed up with people who trot out "muh existential crisis" whenever they are asked pertinent questions. This is the TINA response. It's a pathetic tactic to shut down challenges to questionable policy decisions on the basis that all action -- no matter how costly and ineffectual -- is justified by the "crisis". It really isn't. Policy responses have to:

• actually achieve something,
• yield a greater benefit than the same resources expended elsewhere.

You had the heating on in June?

I think we've found the soft link in the chain

Kilkenny had 27 days over 25 degrees in 1995, I'll leave this here... Bunch of scaremongers