General election 2020 (6 Viewers)

[hermie]

This article made me very angry: Green Party emission demands could cost €40 billion

The headline figure of 40 billion and a scary mention of nuclear energy frontload the piece. The fact that we will spend 60 billion on fossil fuels in the same period is buried and obfuscated. And apparently the UCC expert only mentions nuclear in passing. It's the kind of article that will have doubters up in arms. Very bad from RTE

 

[magicbastarder]

one thing i don't hear much of - and i've read conflicting reports of how efficient it is - is why electrolysis of water is not being considered. a (superficial) reading of it would suggest that it would allow you to create the ultimate battery, and allows you to separate point of generation from point of energy consumption. maybe hydrogen is a bastard to transport?

you'd be able to generate oodles of hydrogen on the west coast using wind power, without worrying about demand on the grid, and burn/use up the hydrogen in a more controlled fashion than wind usually allows for.

 

[ernesto]

one thing i don't hear much of - and i've read conflicting reports of how efficient it is - is why electrolysis of water is not being considered. a (superficial) reading of it would suggest that it would allow you to create the ultimate battery, and allows you to separate point of generation from point of energy consumption. maybe hydrogen is a bastard to transport?

you'd be able to generate oodles of hydrogen on the west coast using wind power, without worrying about demand on the grid, and burn/use up the hydrogen in a more controlled fashion than wind usually allows for.

Hydrogen hybrids seem to be very popular in a lot of other countries.
Hydrogen could be piped in like gas aswell so supply / storage not a huge issue

 

[Anthony]

This article made me very angry: Green Party emission demands could cost €40 billion

The headline figure of 40 billion and a scary mention of nuclear energy frontload the piece. The fact that we will spend 60 billion on fossil fuels in the same period is buried and obfuscated. And apparently the UCC expert only mentions nuclear in passing. It's the kind of article that will have doubters up in arms. Very bad from RTE

I heard an article on Morning Ireland that was pushing that headline. Every guest they had on took a very measured approach to the thing but the djs (djs?) keep hammering away at the doom headline. It was embarrassing.

 

[Lili Marlene]

I've read something about the problem with the Irish coastline and wind power is that the water is very deep and offshore wind is usually in shallow water?

I've also seen it spelt out fairly comprehensively that the issue is the entire framing of the argument - we need a total break from from GDP being used as the measure of everything, even a 100% renewable energy grid won't fix the problems when all we're trying to do ultimately is grow GDP forever. Basically the problem is capitalism, as usual.

 

[hermie]

I heard an article on Morning Ireland that was pushing that headline. Every guest they had on took a very measured approach to the thing but the djs (djs?) keep hammering away at the doom headline. It was embarrassing.

The framing of the argument is just so poor. It's not balanced at all. The savings from moving away from fossil fuels will continue beyond the 10 year period. No mention of that. The economic cost (not to mention other impacts) of climate change down the line will be cataclysmic. No mention of that. We will already be pumping billions into the economy anyway as a result of Covid-19 just making sure that greeners solutions get priority should be a part of that. Again not a mention. Why is the national broadcaster behaving like a tabloid rag?

 

[ann post]

Why is the national broadcaster behaving like a tabloid rag?

Kinda getting concerning. Notable in the RTE debates where the presenter actually more or less said the words 'yeah we'll talk about your climate thing later' to Euron Ryanjoy. Somehow they are saying that wether we sink or swim on climate is entirely in the hands of the greens and if the greens werent there we wouldn't have to deal with this climate crap.

Covid kinda proved money is fake anywhoo.

 

[egg_]

Was this Gavin Jennings on Morning Ireland? I actually know him a little bit from eating together in the house of a mutual friend ... what are the rules about haranguing people about their work in a very middle-class dinner party situation?

 

[7 - No tomorrow]

Was this Gavin Jennings on Morning Ireland? I actually know him a little bit from eating together in the house of a mutual friend ... what are the rules about haranguing people about their work in a very middle-class dinner party situation?

Dude is a brawler when it comes to it - argument wise

He's lost his cool more than once on air

I say go for it though

 

[magicbastarder]

I've read something about the problem with the Irish coastline and wind power is that the water is very deep and offshore wind is usually in shallow water?

aha, makes sense - i've seen huge banks of windmills in the north sea, and that'd be a lot shallower than a lot of our atlantic seaboard (says me who's an expert on how much sea there is)

 

[egg_]

Much more high-energy wave action on our west coast too, which makes the sea a more hostile environment for ... well, for anything. See the Cliffs of Moher

 

[Space]

I did a case study in college on artificial surfing reefs and how they can be used for both coastal erosion protection and also some form of energy production. I was mostly leaning towards protection and surfing reefs and climate change so need to read up on the energy side of things again but the west coast of Ireland is ripe I reckon.

 

[magicbastarder]

i guess the issue of leccy being turned into hydrogen doesn't necessarily need the wind turbines to be in the sea, but i wouldn't exactly welcome banks of them on the wild atlantic wind turbine way.

 

[ann post]

i guess the issue of leccy being turned into hydrogen doesn't necessarily need the wind turbines to be in the sea, but i wouldn't exactly welcome banks of them on the wild atlantic wind turbine way.

testing in a number of locations. interviewed these maybe 2 years ago?

GENCOMM H2 energy storage - University of Galway

www.nuigalway.ie

 

[Cormcolash]

Why is the national broadcaster behaving like a tabloid rag?

Because that's what they are, for the government? It's almost as if they're going to have Leo on the late late show tonight.

 

[Cormcolash]

Was this Gavin Jennings on Morning Ireland? I actually know him a little bit from eating together in the house of a mutual friend ... what are the rules about haranguing people about their work in a very middle-class dinner party situation?

Every tv show or film I've ever seen says it's an absolute necessity

 

[Cormcolash]

First off, does anyone have a realistic problem with modern nuclear energy? Note use of the word modern, i.e assuming safe waste disposal/storage amongst other things. I can only think of one real argument against nuclear power that doesn't basically consist of 'people don't like it'.

Second, I don't know the ins and outs of off-shore wind turbines, but I do know that the water depth off the West Coast isn't all deep. There is a big drop naturally once we hit the continental shelf, and the shelf comes relatively close to Kerry and Mayo, but that leaves coastlines off Galway, Clare, Limerick, Sligo, Donegal, where the water wouldn't be that deep. Surely there are suitable areas to work with in that large amount of water.
And then of course guess what, there's an entirely different sea off the East Coast that doesn't have as deep water and isn't as vulnerable to stormy weather. So what's the problem with that?
Now the North Sea off England is an extremely shallow sea in areas, but some parts of the Irish Sea would be almost as shallow, the Irish Sea isn't particularly deep.

Third, that Hydrogen stuff has a lot of potential, particularly if as somebody mentioned it can be synthesised on a large scale using renewable powered methods (which I think a lot of people are working on actually); but, at the moment, something like 90%+ of Hydrogen power is generated using fossil fuels, with CO2 as the main waste product.
As far as I know the main reason Hydrogen hasn't already been more widely adopted for transport is that the infrastructure required for it, in terms of storage and transport, is much more expensive than what we already have, because as Hydrogen is extremely volatile it needs to processed in a particular way to be safe for commercial use. Again there's a lot of potential there, and it's economic issues that are currently holding it back.

Also, there is a lot of work being done on effective solar power too. Cue all the "We live in Ireland" laughs etc., but it looks like we're not far at all off being able to generate effective solar power even in shit weather. Seems that most of the issue is the efficiency and design of the power conversion cells which again is probably coming back to the current economic cost.

So basically what I'm saying is that countries aren't adopting these things because of what we all know, which is that oil and coal are still far cheaper than them (excluding the nuclear argument). And look at the price of oil right now, sure they'd be paying you to take it off them.
Anyway if I'm making a point with all this, it's that if we want to go for cleaner energy now, we need to take an economic hit to do it. Which I'm all in favour of. But see it all boils back down to capitalism again, because the rich people don't want to take that hit. The biggest change all of it would make is probably that cars would be come less affordable, but hey guess what, that could be majorly offset by taking the car insurance racket down, but hey guess what, who can see any of that happening any time soon.

Transition to cleaner energy now involving big investment in clean energies, longer term mitigation of the climate crisis, and accompanying economic 'hardship'
or keep using oil and shit now, developing green technologies until they are more 'economically affordable', not really giving a shit about looming climate disaster because hey "the economy" oh oops we're all underwater.
Guess which one the current political system is going to choose?

 

[magicbastarder]

First off, does anyone have a realistic problem with modern nuclear energy? Note use of the word modern, i.e assuming safe waste disposal/storage amongst other things. I can only think of one real argument against nuclear power that doesn't basically consist of 'people don't like it'.

there is a method of using nuclear power to generate energy which creates a small fraction of the waste that standard methods do, and which (IIRC) cannot melt down. the main issue is no-one has ever really put any money into developing it as a working reality, as that would take billions upon billions to do.
we have the reactors we have beause they became the known quantity after years of reactors being used to generate fissile materials for atomic bombs, rather than to generate electricity.

that is based on an article i read about ten years ago, must check to see if my memory is accurate.

 

[Cormcolash]

there is a method of using nuclear power to generate energy which creates a small fraction of the waste that standard methods do, and which (IIRC) cannot melt down. the main issue is no-one has ever really put any money into developing it as a working reality, as that would take billions upon billions to do.
we have the reactors we have beause they became the known quantity after years of reactors being used to generate fissile materials for atomic bombs, rather than to generate electricity.

that is based on an article i read about ten years ago, must check to see if my memory is accurate.

Even as it is nuclear power generates fuck all waste, as long as it is safely disposed of it wouldn't be any real problem by the time we could fully switch to renewables.

 

[magicbastarder]

i think what i'm talking about might be a molten salt reactor, of which there seems only to have been one (and did generate some issues many years after shutdown):

Molten-Salt Reactor Experiment - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

but there seem to be many reasons to think it's worth a try again:

Liquid fluoride thorium reactor - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

• LFTRs are cleaner: as a fully recycling system, the discharge wastes from a LFTR are predominantly fission products, most of which (83%) have relatively short half lives in hours or days[63] compared to longer-lived actinide wastes of conventional nuclear power plants.[57] This results in a significant reduction in the needed waste containment period in a geologic repository. The remaining 17% of waste products require only 300 years until reaching background levels.[63] The radiotoxicity of the thorium fuel cycle waste is about 10,000 times less than that of one through uranium fuel.[8]