Global warming

I've been to Bangladesh, supposedly it's India with a turbo strapped on.

Ultimately it's over population that has been its greatest pressure since foundation, despite climate extremes there.

I've also lived in deserts where people have had cave dwelling civilisation for millennia. There's a very strong ignorance in Ireland about how people live in other lands. There was actually no shortage of food in Ethiopia as a whole when LiveAid happened, just as there was no shortage of food in Ireland in the 1840s when millions starved.

Such starvations were domestic political policies.

Yes, the mass starvation begat mass emigration that really didn't relent until the 1990s, although I had to emigrate again after the Greens fantastic bank guarantee. I'm sure they thought Ireland was too crowded.

The saddest thing is that Greens simply won't lead by example and expire to "save the planet".

As someone said earlier in this thread, the earth has seen lots of climate extremes and extinctions and it will be fine after humanity is gone.

Sorry but of all the global warming stupidity this argument stands out on top. Air quality and emissions is not the only issue we face in the environmental crisis and although they are often rolled into one, there are many important environemntal issues we need to focus on locally like replenishing fish stocks and marine diversity, tree planting,increasing our sustainable energy reserves, rewilding and reducing plastic usage, and also drawing less on international goods from mega companies like amazon, shein etc. Many of these overlap and have the added benefit of reducing carbon emissions.

And as for the 'only chinese and indians should have to do anything' , why should this issue only be based on some arbitrarily drawn lines? If we combine the EU as one, the emissions will be on par with them. Does Ireland then matter or does it not seeing as we have arbitrarily jumped from now just 1% of emissions on our own to what 25% of global emissions in our economic block? If shanghai seceeded from China and thus only represented a few percentage points of global emissions, is it now off the hook same as little old ireland?When of course in reality there is no material difference in the damage being done to the planet. All countries will and must change and EU is quite noticeably leading as an exemplar in many of those aspects while maintaining good quality of life. We get nowhere when we only look out for ourselves because only the planet suffers.

So it's just twisted logic without coherence.

Nuclear has significant issues, predominantly based around lead times and cost overruns. Countries with mature nuclear sectors have a chance to overcome them but not Ireland where it answers none of our climate issues.

Farming needs to be sustainable and none polluting. Neither is the case for the current model Ireland is following so it is appropriate to seek change to make it both sustainable and non polluting. If we don't we eventually face famine when our soil simple stops producing and fossil fuel based fertilizers become to expensive to produce, as they recently did during COVID. Famines happen when food prices spike to levels at which people cannot pay and then we get conflict and civil disorder and eventually wars.

Complaining about people trying to find solutions isn't helping anyone. The current growth in anti Green feeling is both a consequence of a rise in right wing politics and the simple fact that people resist change even when it's essential.

@shoog just wondering- where do you sit with the renewables needing backup issue?
Renewables need a way to store excess energy for when we have very low solar and wind output- so what’s the answer to this?
At the moment it’s coal oil and gas and will hopefully just be gas in the near future.

All generating capacity needs backups ( a very large issue for nuclear especially if you only have a few reactors). If you have a good spread of renewables and some grid scale storage the amount of backup you have to draw on is relatively small on an annual basis. If your primary objective is to reduce emissions renewables offer a way to get our emissions down to around 20% of current levels with gas been used to fill the gap, which is well within our obligations.

I think renewables with gas backup out to 2050 is the best strategy to met our emissions targets.

Another interesting element to this is conservation and reduction. The subsidizing of CFL light bulbs in the early 2000 helped remove the need to install a lot of new generating capacity. Similarly the support for domestic PV is helping to reduce the need for increased primary generating capacity. People with PV tend to manage their usage to use off peak grid electricity and in many cases are virtually self sufficient in electricity for much of the year.

There has to be a broad spectrum approach to addressing our energy needs.

ok so you agree fossil fuels will be part of our generating portfolio out to 2050.

Why then would we not be trying to secure our own supplies of NG out to 2050 considering Corrib is now past its peak?

Please don't blame the abject failure of FFG to develop a housing policy on the Greens - it's an embarrassing distraction.

Sorry now, but how is it not cost effective for Ireland to develop its own gas reserves which you’ve admitted we will need for the next 26 years?
Firstly all exploration costs are taken on by the companies that carry out the exploration so there’s no cost there- do you agree with that?