"Green" policies are destroying this country

Scientists look beyond climate change and El Nino for other factors that heat up Earth

https://phys.org/news/2023-08-scientists-climate-el-nino-factors.html

We have no plans to spread our generation across multiple sources.

Our only generation plan is wind, with vague hopes that solar may add something now and then. Or as Eamon Ryan said, that one day in the future there may be a Summer`s day when solar could supply our needs.

Egypt and Turkey are not short of sunlight, yet both are building their first nuclear plants.

If there is one thing that cannot be said about those lads and lassies, it`s that they are ever short on ideas on how to suck on the taxpayer teat for funding.

This has been addressed comprehensively in the other thread linked above.

Ireland is not a suitable location for one of those plants and even if the planning for one started today, would take decades to complete if it didn't stall at one of the many political, logistical and economic hurdles along the way

And the drip drip of missed targets continues apace. According to the Biz Post today the Department of the Environment warned that EU 2025 plastic recycliing targets may not be met. Irish people produce nearly twice as much plastic waste per capita as the EU average. Personal anecdote: my waste recycler (Panda) require recyclable waste to be placed unbagged in a green bin. I don't comply because they don't provide a wind-proof bin that would save me and others from having to pick loose rubbish up off the street on the not infrequent occasions where there's a howling gale. In another country they'd refuse to collect my waste. Here I just bag it and they've never said nothing. I strongly suspect it's because they're not recycling the waste at all.

Nope. I'm saying that our best chance of success is to continue on with our current strategy, that already has political agreement, that utilises our natural advantages to harness our own natural resources.

There is nobody seriously proposing a nuclear plant in Ireland. Until some consortium comes up with a credible proposal it's nothing but a distraction. And even if there was a consortium announced tomorrow. It's a minimum 20 years before the first mw of nuclear power would be generated in Ireland so we have no choice but to continue building renewables

The latest buzzwords from the regulators is "flexible" demand. Which, from what can gather, basically means the ability to cut off customers whenever they need and you are left to your own devices. It's a crazy strategy and will drive investment out of the country. No manufacturing or mission critical site is going to settle for non-firm supply agreements.

You're pinning all your cards on large scale corporations, we will have no more control than we do at present, buying from outside sources. Same goes for hoping they reduce prices, corporations only care about their shareholders, not their customers.

For those who argue that going nuclear would be too slow and too costly i would counter that 1: it will be much faster if an agreed type (or types) of nuclear power plant can be set as standard so all the hurdles put in front by objectors (too stringent planning permission rules, too high safety levels (like NO risk)) can be overcome and 2: we simply follow China's path in which the costs of new nuclear power plants are on average 50% cheaper compared the west.

And of course the most important argument FOR nuclear power is its proven record of reliability, input/output (unlike solar/wind). Im not saying Ireland should necessarily jump in this boat. There is an argument (or arguments) against it, mainly economy of scale. However, we should remain on friendly terms with the UK whose connectors Ireland will continue to need no matter what political landscape or energy source (gas, oil, LNG, nuclear and even wind).

And we can watch developments in nuclear like SMRs play out in the real world before moving on that front.

Oh, and keep the coal accessable just in case we need it..

Matt Cooper had a bit about EVs yesterday. Saying that the growth in EVs is slowing specifying charging infrastructure and EV price being the main things turning people off. I'd be one who wouldn't dream of buying an EV at the minute due to the price of them. Then there was a comment that the cost to run an EV is risen by a much bigger factor owning to electricity price rises vs. petrol/diesel. Anyone have graphs or anything to show that?

And that is precisely why climate scientists are (hopefully)mostly interested in long term trends (unlike the media), the shortest being 20-30 years before jumping to conclusions. This in light of certain one off weather occurences (like volcanoes) or natural variability). I never see anything about ocean volcanoes in the news. For good reason, not as spectacular as land ones and certainly not as alarming as our original sin Co2 emissions which of course is a guilt ridden moral horse that never finishes the race..

Anyone interested in counter arguments against the msm narrative do have a look at this informative website:

https://wattsupwiththat.com/

Possibly they would need to look at much longer term trends? Like 10s of thousands of years, given the length of interglacial periods?

Perhaps you should have read the post I was adressing before jumping in.

It was in relation to some scientists expressing the opinion that other scientists have missed something that is adding to climate change.

Sounds as if some of those scientific lads and lassies, having missed out on the funding merry-go-round, are looking to edge there way in with just more theorising.

Thanks. Good points. I see what you mean re 20-30 year cycles.

'From what I can gather'

You're gathering things wrong

Flexible demand is already a big part of grid management. Large industrial customers can get paid to shift their demand to off-peak time. The rollout of smart meters is specifically to allow for demand based pricing to smooth out the demand curve in the residential sector, but commercial and industrial users will be mad to not install energy storage facilities to allow them to exploit cheaper off peak power and avoid more expensive peak prices.

For grid operators, it's much easier to cater for a flexible grid that can use power when it's available instead of them trying to constantly match supply with demand. Up to now, we have not had the technology to have demand based pricing for most electricity consumers. That is what smart meters are for.

The current daily demand curve is unbalanced. Very low demand at night, very high demand between 4 and 7pm with demand falling from 7 pm until the start of the next working day Monday to Friday, This requires that the grid turn off capacity at night time and off peak bring generators online during the day, match projected demand at peak times, and then reduce supply again for the rest of the day.

It would be much better to have higher demand at night and during the early part of the day, with a much lower peak between 4-7pm

How will demand based pricing work in the future? Will it involve cutting people off at peak times? Absolutely not. This is not part of the model.

What is in the model, is short term storage gets built in to flatten out the curve. Electricity is more expensive at peak times, so industrial commercial and residential users will save money by charging their batteries at night, and then drawing from those batteries during peak times thereby flattening the 24 hour demand curve.