"Green" policies are destroying this country

Not to the extent that countries with burgeoning middle classes, like ours, do.

Justifying it by claiming that as we are only a little country, that it doesn’t make any difference, is wrong.

The point I’m trying to make is I believe it is up to each of us, individually and collectively, to do our best to avoid excessive consumption therefore depleting the earth’s resources faster than we really need to.

Unfortunately, it seems the majority of people here believe impressing their peers with their newer, bigger, flashier houses and cars is much more important.

Some chap from Climate Committee on RTE earlier saying we all need to installing heat pumps and that 70%+ of housing is suitable. Load of bollix I was thinking. And no skin off his nose if loads people are left shivering and paying high bills after substantial installation costs. Not elected and won't affect their pay & perks. Heat pumps might work in new passive house designs but for most of us, an expensive delusion.

The link between extreme weather and the warmer planet is well documented.

Really? More frequent extreme heat has been detected. Most of what people consider to be extreme weather events are not predicted to show detectable increases this century, even under the implausibly bad RCP8.5 scenario. My source: Table 12.12 of AR6. Happy to look at yours, if you have any.

No. Just common sense. If you’re running out of something you need but that can’t be replaced. Do you use more of it or try and save it?

I hate to break it to you, the planet is running out of oxygen, we should all stop breathing now to conserve it. As the Saudi minister said, The stone age did not end because the world ran out of stones, the oil age will not end because we run out of oil. Careful, you are veering into Malthusian thinking, this is the root of the modern environmental movement (Late 60's/early 70s Club of Romes Limits to Growth, complete with unskilled computer models generating forecasts and Paul Ehrlich), prior to that period "the science" the great and the good in society bought into and promoted was eugenics, World War II happened, "the science" was memory holed and morphed into the environmental movement.

Everything you see around you today, did not exist in its current form 1 million years ago, not even 100,000 years ago, in another million years all that you see today will be wiped out as happened in the past, all of it, the buildings, the landscape, even the climate will be different. The island we call Ireland, will have moved from its current location on earth. The planet will be fine, all the materials we have used to date will be recycled back into the ground. Will there still be humans? I will leave that question in the hands of God. Nothing we do today, will change that outcome. Nothing in life is static, we adapt using the resources available to us.

The consumption model set out by green policy central planning and in the time frames envisaged can only happen with the greatest known expansion of mining across the planet. The quantities of material needed, especially materials like copper are staggering. Despite their King Canute like attempts, no politician can create legislation that overrides the laws of physics, this is one of several reasons the European green deal is failing. The capital structure that exists to support our standard of living must be maintained, otherwise we run down capital reserves, go bankrupt and must rebuild it again. Think of it this way, to grow food you need to maintain seed stock, without those reserves you have nothing to plant each season. The governments in both Britain and Ireland have set us on a future of energy scarcity by preventing us retrieving new oil and gas and limiting our access in future to this primary energy, once the reserves are run down we become even more dependent on countries such as Russia.

ESRI don't believe that, they are guns for hire, they should be criticized for their sloppy work. It is much worse, they took the lazy option and used an alarmist template that has been used by several other groups pushing the same narrative, they got paid and the eNGO got their headlines. Here is something from the lancet: Mortality risk attributable to high and low ambient temperature: a multicountry observational study showing the fraction of all-cause mortality attributable to moderate and extreme hot and cold temperature by country. Tuns out moderate cold is not good for extended life expectancy.

There are many reasons to call bullsh!t on this junk from the ESRI. How many people form Northern Europe take vacations in the Mediterranean region every year? Is the eNGO suggesting Irish people not take holidays in the Canary Islands to reduce their mortality risk?

You can see why the Greens are pushing for hate speech laws in fairness…..they've been peddling a loooot of porkies!!!

Except Ireland isn't reducing emissions just by itself. Ireland is reducing emissions in concert with its partners in the EU.

Are you the one saying that the EU reducing emissions will not have an impact? Ireland is playing its rightful part in those efforts.

Yes, that's the correct. Neither Ireland nor the EU will have any impact.

Carbon emissions in the U.S. declined by 2.7% from 2022, and emissions
in the European Union fell by 6.6%. But, across Asia Pacific, emissions
jumped 4.9%, an increase equivalent to triple the combined decline in
the U.S. and EU.

(source).

Irelands emissions have decreased by 1.2% since 1990 (source). Not bad given a 45% population increase, but it is not contributing meaningfully to global emissions reductions. More to the point, our targets for further decreases are being missed left, right and centre, and will be shambolic by 2030 let alone 2050. The problem is that we and the EU, led by the Germans, have set off on a path of pure folly if we were actually serious about curbing emissions with all the tools available.

I love those responses as well, really shows a lack of understanding among some people

Scientists: The ice sheet is melting at a faster rate than we predicted

Random X'er: Yeah but if it stops melting faster and instead starts melting at this new rate we will be fine so we should continue to burn the oil. Also the greenland ice sheet is the only one on the planet so what's the problem?

Mass starvation would reduce the global carbon footprint

So all is going according to plan

Assuming that the statistic of reduced food output is true, important to note that no proof of this was provided, if we allow climate change to continue along the current trajectory there won't be any people left to eat the food so the point is moot

That's not all good. The impact of reduced fertiliser use over the last few years (cost, changes to regulations, fertiliser database in place) is a reduction in yields. Grass growth is down across the country (not directly linked to just fertiliser, but the shambolic weather for the last 12 months too). The result is farmers feeding harvested crops in places already that should be kept for the winter. The second round of grass harvests are yielding poorly (as the first round did) and there's already talk of a fodder deficit this winter. A push to sow more clover and reduce chemical N has also happened, but that too now is proving problematic as the weather impacts how clover is working. This will lead to culling of animals that wouldn't have been planned for, and leads to reduced output next year and the year after. On a macro scale, this will lead to a value reduction of our exports in this area. Tillage crops haven't begun to be harvested yet bar a few odd spots of winter cereals. Yields there are expected to be below average. Too early to tell how spring cops will fare.

Reducing N is good to meet targets, but bad in other aspects. A balance needs to be found.

But we have been reducing Nitrogen based fertilisers (and replacing them with other fertilisers) without any attributed impact to food production here. There's no reason to assume it would be any different on a larger scale

Also the shambolic weather the last 12 months that you mention is down to climate change so, by your logic, helping the climate should improve our food production

I see you've completely missed the point, again. Yet again, the evangelist promoting fear get it completely wrong and then try to double down on it with a scary headline.