Interesting pictures...

[Broithe]

 

[Broithe]

 

[Broithe]

 

[spudfan]

Send him up!!

[Broithe]

13 minutes ago, spudfan said:

Send him up!!

Sod that...

 

[Mike 84C]

I wondered what that heap was for a moment! How many years till burning peat is banned? I'm waiting for the green brigade to get Wood and Anthracite banned over here.

[Broithe]

 

[Broithe]

If you enjoy doing the landscape and aren't keen on complicated trackwork or buildings.

 

[Broithe]

 

 

[Broithe]

 

[Broithe]

 

[Rush and Lusk]

Those ESB Anglia vans are delightful 

[Broithe]

If you only have a bit of track and one tunnel portal, but loads of spare trees.

And you only have to paint the carriage roofs.

[Broithe]

There could well be items of a railway interest amongst this stash.

 

[Horsetan]

On 6/8/2022 at 9:34 PM, Mike 84C said:

I wondered what that heap was for a moment! How many years till burning peat is banned? I'm waiting for the green brigade to get Wood and Anthracite banned over here.

Be careful what you wish for.

Meanwhile, I still add tetraethyl lead to the petrol for the oul Citroën.

[Irishswissernie]

I don't know how much of Ireland is covered by wind turbines but over here you can't shift round the coasts/inshore for them. The Missus and I were down at Blyth yesterday and here she is posing in front of one. No she isn't a dwarf !

[popeye]

They are a bloody eyesore in the landscape and we seem to be getting more and more of

them but the way fuel prices are going I might need one in the back garden. 

[Mike 84C]

I hate the sight of them but agree with you Popeye. I think the government should reinstate grants and feed in tariffs for domestic properties. But lots of hot air about what they want to happen but pay for it yourselves. Really, joe public is paying the price for decades of political dithering and indiscion. Sorry politics but in these strange times hard to avoid them. 

OOPS, should have put solar panels after grants and feed in tariffs. Brain going faster then fingers.

[Broithe]

Energy, ancient and modern.

[skinner75]

Ireland should seriously look at offshore wave power - we are ideally suited for it, being on the edge of the Atlantic and all that.

No unsightly-ness that you get with the windfarms - they are placed around 5km offshore, and are barely visible from the shore. Unlike wind, they will provide power on calm days, as they use the swell of the sea.

I reckon the Germans are looking at us wondering why the hell we haven't got them in place already!

[Georgeconna]

1 hour ago, Broithe said:

Energy, ancient and modern.

Thats your quaint little field in a quiet corner in the whest that portrayed in the Media when in reality this is near industrial harvesting.

Awful stuff to burn TBH.

[skinner75]

As you say George, that is pretty much industrial harvesting, apart from the poor sods (pardon the pun) having to stack the turf by hand for drying out.

Get rid of the machine cutting, and see how many people would still like to go out and hand cut the sods - very, very few I would imagine! Not too nostalgic for that part of it I reckon

 

[Mike 84C]

Sounds  nostalgic, like working down a coal mine. At least cutting turf they would get a mobile signal.

[Broithe]

 

[jhb171achill]

On 26/8/2022 at 3:54 PM, Broithe said:

There could well be items of a railway interest amongst this stash.

 

Fascinating stuff - worth a lot of browsing. Not too much railway in it, but glimpses of wagons (and early carriages) on the quays here and there.

A book on the railways of the port and the interconnecting Dublin lines would be a must-read, but the amount of research needed to cover it even half-adequately would be daunting in the extreme!

[spudfan]

On 30/8/2022 at 12:43 PM, skinner75 said:

As you say George, that is pretty much industrial harvesting, apart from the poor sods (pardon the pun) having to stack the turf by hand for drying out.

Get rid of the machine cutting, and see how many people would still like to go out and hand cut the sods - very, very few I would imagine! Not too nostalgic for that part of it I reckon

 

Used to do this with the father in law (now sadly deceased). He would cut and I would "hole", This meant he would cut the turf two wide with the "slane" and I would grab the aforementioned turf and sling them out. Then there was the footing. Did it for years.

On the subject of the windmills etc I think it is ironic that with the push for electric cars we are being warned of a shortage of..electricity this year and perhaps into the future. We are told that data centres have a back up system that they can use if they have to go off grid, namely diesel generators. We might have hosepipe bans yet data centres will continue to use water as they need. That is why they are here, we have water.

China builds new railroad into Mongolia to extract coal to fuel power stations to produce goods we buy including parts for our "green" electric cars.

We are against nuclear power generated in Ireland yet it is O.K. to let someone else generate it so that we can import it via an interconnector.

I am so glad we have people in power who understand all of this because I don't. I could not sleep last night as I felt guilty that the tree house I built for the girls many years ago has not been registered with the RTB. 

[popeye]

On 30/8/2022 at 10:44 AM, Broithe said:

Energy, ancient and modern.

I think the way things are going we will all be back on the turf and coal.

[Horsetan]

On 2/9/2022 at 7:42 PM, spudfan said:

.....We are against nuclear power generated in Ireland yet it is O.K. to let someone else generate it so that we can import it via an interconnector.

I am so glad we have people in power who understand all of this because I don't. ...

'Tis the same in Britain: people don't really care where things come from if they're out of sight, out of mind. Then again, importing half the country's food leaves it quite vulnerable when things go wrong. 

Transport for London thinks that an Ultra Low Emission Zone is an answer, but the leaded petrol emissions from my 34-year-old gets blown back into the Zone, so I'm not sure there's that much difference... Why should I buy a new electric car (which took a whole new set of resources) when there's nothing wrong with my decades-old one (no new resources required)?

The data centres thing is a bit mad. All that componentry constantly at work probably generates quite a bit of heat, as well as being a significant drain on  electricity. 

[GSR 800]

1 hour ago, Horsetan said:

'Tis the same in Britain: people don't really care where things come from if they're out of sight, out of mind. Then again, importing half the country's food leaves it quite vulnerable when things go wrong. 

Thats what the Battle of the Atlantic (and the Royal Navy generally) was for.

[Broithe]

 

[Andreas Weniger]

On 8/30/2022 at 1:04 PM, skinner75 said:

.......

I reckon the Germans are looking at us wondering why the hell we haven't got them in place already!

In Germany, it would take 20 years to implement / approve this. We - NO our government and also many citizens preferred to believe in the "good Russians" and to rely on cheap gas. Here in the Black Forest, water reservoirs for hydroelectric power plants were rejected - because they disturb the environment - they were only visible from the plane.....  The solar industry outsourced to China... There is no longer a large solar manufacturer in Germany. In Baden Württemberg, only 3 wind turbines were built this year due to lengthy approvals and appeals...
Questions ????
I also only heat with gas ...  I didn't think about it either (my new heating system is 4 years old), but now I'm also very sceptical about the future.

[spudfan]

On 2/9/2022 at 7:42 PM, spudfan said:

Used to do this with the father in law (now sadly deceased). He would cut and I would "hole", This meant he would cut the turf two wide with the "slane" and I would grab the aforementioned turf and sling them out. Then there was the footing. Did it for years.

On the subject of the windmills etc I think it is ironic that with the push for electric cars we are being warned of a shortage of..electricity this year and perhaps into the future. We are told that data centres have a back up system that they can use if they have to go off grid, namely diesel generators. We might have hosepipe bans yet data centres will continue to use water as they need. That is why they are here, we have water.

China builds new railroad into Mongolia to extract coal to fuel power stations to produce goods we buy including parts for our "green" electric cars.

We are against nuclear power generated in Ireland yet it is O.K. to let someone else generate it so that we can import it via an interconnector.

I am so glad we have people in power who understand all of this because I don't. I could not sleep last night as I felt guilty that the tree house I built for the girls many years ago has not been registered with the RTB. 

And update. To fuel power stations in China To produce solar panels and parts for electric cars among other things..The Green Party don't want us burning coal in our fireplaces yet will push the solar panel and EV thing. Do they not know how they are made and how the energy is produced that the factories use?

Mongolian heavy haul coal railway opens | News | Railway Gazette International

 

Edited September 16, 2022 by spudfan

[jhb171achill]

There's one pretty large elephant in the room, and that is the world population. Without doubt, fossil fuels are finite, and without doubt they pollute and add to global warming, which is real. Without doubt, it's better (if we can) to walk or cycle. Without doubt, it's better to grow our own food and not import.

However, not all can do any of these things, no matter what Green parties in every country say. Public transport will cost so much that taxes will go up massively to support that alone - if it is provided with as comprehensive and frequent cover as people would need to replicate the life of travel freedom they already have. Battery powered cars are fine if you live on an island the size of ours, but travelling across America? Canada? Russia? Australia? Mainland Europe? No, just no. The tech is nowhere close to being good enough to enable the same flexibility that a petrol or diesel (or even hybrid) car gives us - and even if it was, the cost of these cars is beyond most people's budgets. I, for one, will never be able to afford one. So, governments subsidise the price of them to satisfy emissions targets - watch the tax bill go higher again. Also, the environmental as well as fiscal cost of making the batteries is huge - and LITHIUM is as finite as coal!

The elephant in the room is this; while we can mitigate much of what we do, we cannot solve it entirely, and that is for one reason and one only.

There are FAR TOO MANY PEOPLE on the planet.

In 1700, the world's population ws 600 million. In 1900 it was 2 billion - over three tyimes as many in only two centuries - and there have been humans on the planet for tens of thousands of years.

In 2000 it was 6 billion - three times THAT in just ONE hundred years.

Today, just over 20 years later, it is almost 8 billion; or 30% more than only 20 years ago. Some predictions suggest that it will reach 10 billion within ten years.

A population of that quantity of two-legged mammals on this planet is simply not sustainable, no matter what way we look at it or organise society.

Just think about all of that. Exponential growth, thus exponential need for food and commodities - and FUEL. The food production methods - cattle emissions - is yet another driver of global warming as well as smoke from fuel. I'm sure there are others too.

No, I've no solution, because I don't think there is one at this stage. Mother Nature will stage a "correction" at some stage - that's the way she works, and then we can whinge all we like. Sobering thoughts, as we tuck into our air-imported kiwi fruits for dessert.

[skinner75]

Don't worry, a proper pandemic will come along and make a major population correction - Covid wasn't it by a long, long way. One with 20~50% mortality rate would solve a lot of the worlds problems...

[jhb171achill]

23 minutes ago, skinner75 said:

Don't worry, a proper pandemic will come along and make a major population correction - Covid wasn't it by a long, long way. One with 20~50% mortality rate would solve a lot of the worlds problems...

Genuinely, that IS what will happen - it actually HAS to be what happens. And 50% as a bare minimum, I'm afraid, possibly added to by 50% of the planet becoming uninhabitable, through either being too hot and dry, too stormy, or submerged. In such a scenario, a 50% reduction in numbers would solve nothing - it would have to be a very great deal more.

Gloomy and apocalypic as it sounds......... that's what nature does.

Edited September 16, 2022 by jhb171achill