"Green" policies are destroying this country

Anyone who thinks installing 6-800 turbines, some as close as 10km to the coast, from Killiney to Gorey won't have an impact on the horizon or vistas is naive. Bare in mind, these turbines are huge, with tip heights above 200m and bigger, thats almost as high as Bray head.

Now the question is, are we willing to accept their visul impact as a trade off for cleaner energy production. Only time will tell, personally think it will be very intrusive and much worse than many imagine. But, put it this way, I'd rather them at sea than in the Wicklow hills.

We can still be energy efficient without putting windfarms in the countries most popular bay though.

We can do both.

But lets see what happens.

For a bit of balance it could equally be said that you are falling into the trap of thinking that everyone who invest in green technology is a climate change activist

Everyone is falling into the trap that the companies that build these need more money, an awful lot more money, before they will turn a sod.

What worked in a zero interest rate environment doesn't work when rates are at 4%, at 5%. And how we laughed and sniggered at Truss and her "unfunded" budget, but let's wait and see what happens if the govts concede to Orsted and the rest of the offshore developers. These projects are fantasy at this stage, whether west coast or Dublin Bay.

Yeah and that's why they will definitely fail outside of Dublin

It would be definitive proof if the green party were the only party willing to tackle climate change but as previously stated they are not the only party with such proposals

Not yet

That's an extraordinary claim -- one that fails to meet the most basic evidentiary test:

(sources: IMF and GIS)

Anyone vaguely familiar with the history of oil can easily explain the swings in the that graph. The oil industry has always been cyclical -- high prices spur investment, leading to gluts and reduced investment. The twin Arab oil embargos of the 1970s spurred both massive investment and recession, ultimately leading to a collapse in oil prices. Investment dawdled through the 80s and early 90s, until economic growh picked up and oil started to suffer from under-investment. Investment then rocketed, and the shale boom started in the mid 2000s. Even the recession and price drops caused by the GFC in 2008 hardly dented investment. What did finally do it was the Saudis putting the squeeze on US producers by flooding the markets in 2014 leading to a price collapse. This was further exacerbated by Covid. Now we are back at the bottom of the classic investment cycle. Investment has started to recover, however this time round there are new political roadblocks:

(source: Reuters)

Based on their actions in government (before the Greens were part of it) what exactly makes you think any of our other parties will actually make serious, costly, decisions on climate change? Once the Greens are destroyed in the next election, and all the low hanging fruit of things like BER renovations that actually benefit people have been plucked, none of FF/FG/SF will be pushing other measures.

Our government has made a lot of committments on paper, yes. In reality we're breaking almost all of them already, and will only break more.

Follow the actual, real world figures here and not politicians promises.

Ireland's co2 emissions have remained largely static since 2010, despite all of the great talk. They've actually increased the last 3 years in a row, by 12.3% last year alone: https://www.irishexaminer.com/business/economy/arid-41139556.html

This is because none of our political parties other than the Greens actually really care about this issue. Its not a vote winner, because 97%+ of the Irish population doesn't prioritise it.

How does one even begin to respond to this nuttiness? There's an inhabited band around the world where temps regularly reach minus 50°C. So what? There are permanent human settlements from 78°N to 55°S and everywhere in between. There are very few places in the world that don't have killer temperatures at some time of year. A regular mild winter right here in Ireland will kill you quite efficiently. The whole planet is "effectively uninhabitable for us humans" until we do stuff like, you know ... wear clothes, light fires, turn on the aircon etc.

I've no idea what "science" you're reading. Sounds more like a warning sign on a nudist beach in Svalbard or pamphlets from your local chapter of the cult of doom. It's a sign of our irrational times that you actually expect this guff to be taken seriously.

Things that can't be done won't be done. It's about the most ironclad of iron laws. Neither government diktat nor courts of law can conjure the impossible.

For people who don't get it, I strongly recommend the following podcast episode. It's about one apartment building in New York grappling with "Rule 97", a barmy law passed by the city legislature in 2019 requiring every building in the city to progressively cut emissions, reaching 80% by 2040. As a microcosm of green policies everywhere, it's illuminating. Struggling building residents (mostly young families and retirees on fixed incomes) will have to come up with at least $20,000 per apartment. However, engineers have said the required retrofit simply isn't possible at all. Even if it were, the city's grid couldn't provide the power for electrification. And even if it could, all the local power generation is from fossil fuels anyway, having shut down their local nuke at Indian Point which used to provide a third of the city's power with zero emissions. Pure madness -- the only saving grace is the iron law: things that can't happen won't happen.