Ennis Data Centre’s 66 gas generators ‘threat to Local Health’ – expert

Ennis Data Centre will add ‘nearly 1%’ to Ireland’s nitrous oxide emissions

A gas plant consisting of 66 generators required under the planning permission for the Ennis data centre is a ‘threat to local health’, the public will be told at a forthcoming Press Conference.

Organised by members of the local community as well as an alliance of local and national environmental groups, Professor David Carpenter of the Institute for Health and the Environment at the University at Albany will outline the effects of the 66 diesel generators that are required for the data centre backup power. According to the environmental impact report (EPIR) submitted by the applicant during the planning process, nearly 1% of Ireland’s total nitrous oxide (NOx) emissions are predicted to come from this development. read full story / add a comment

Clare County Council Decision to Approve 66 Diesel Generators for Data Centre 'Threatens Ennis Residents Health'

Ennis Data Centre and Gas Plant ‘totally unsustainable’

‘The plans to build one of the largest data centres in the country here in Ennis brings with it an additional threat to the health of people here as the plans include a gas burning plant that will only make the air quality here worse than it already is, leading to asthma and other respiratory problems.’

Despite the concerns of local residents, multiple environmental groups, as well as Eirgrid , Clare county council has made the abhorrent decision to give planning permission to an unknown company (Art Data Centres Ltd.) to construct a data centre on the Tulla Rd, Ennis which will consume as much electricity as 200,000 homes and emit 657,000 tonnes of CO2 annually.

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Pre-design public consultation to seek community input before route is designed.
DLR Connector' route to link Nutgrove Dundrum, Kilmacud, Stillorgan area, St Augustine’s, Deansgrange, Monkstown, Dún Laoghaire areas.

Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown County Council is launching pre-design public consultation on a new east-west walking and cycling route called the 'DLR Connector'.

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Transport Minister Eamon Ryan has allocated €240m to walking and cycling projects, including to low-quality projects which are already designed, and new projects to be designed using old design standards.

This is in stark contrast to the UK where cycling route design guidance was updated before the extra funding was announced and before it was allocated. Funding was linked to higher-standards.

While the cycling infrastructure in the UK is far from perfect, the quality of projects in London and elsewhere has started to far surpass the quality of street changes built in Ireland. The higher standard infrastructure in the UK includes Dutch-style designs which the National Transport Authority has resisted implementing. read full story / add a comment

On April 26th, the Dundrum Climate Vigil group celebrated one year of climate action since its first vigil took place on Main Street Dundrum on that date in 2019. read full story / add a comment

A public consultation on a review of sustainable transport policy is set to this Friday 28th Feb at 5:30pm after the deadline was extended.

The Department of Transport, Tourism and Sport said that the review was started after a commitment in the May 2016 Programme for a Partnership Government “to ensure services are sustainable into the future and are meeting the needs of a modern economy”. read full story / add a comment

The exploitation of tax funds for private personal gains by state sector employees, particularly at universities.UCC as example.
The public is funding things like applications for human gene patents. This means that we all have to pay to have access to our genetic coding and bodies. The people applying for the patents stand to benefit personally in any future income generated by such patents because despite being paid a publicly funded salary, the universities also pay the employee a percentage in future. read full story / add a comment

The case is made for the provision of free public transport in every major town and city worldwide for a multitude of reasons. It has always been a good idea and should have been done a long time ago, but now with three major issues of our time; resource depletion, including oil, pollution and the climate crisis; they make it imperative that we move to such a system, both to conserve dwindling supplies of cheap energy, to reduce the use of vast mineral resources to make hundreds of millions of cars and to dramatically reduce our carbon emissions because climate change is happening faster than expected. The Earth's climate has turned out to be more sensitive and complex than anticipated as evidenced by the recent dramatic record breaking summer ice melts in the Arctic1 in 2007, 2008, 2012 and basically every year since then. With such a large change in the albedo or reflectivity over a huge area of the Arctic, this signifies the jump into positive feedback of the climate system, although it is not the only positive feedback. Combined with preliminary reports that frozen methane is beginning to be released from the Arctic sea floor and tundra and given that methane is 20 times more powerful as a greenhouse gas, it is clear we are probably at the point of things running out of control. Emissions need to be cut drastically, starting about 20 years ago. read full story / add a comment

Environmental and transport campaigners have set a plan in motion to liberate Dublin’s South William Street from cars for the day.

As the above photograph, provide by the group shows, South William Street is currently closed to through motor traffic. IrishCycle.com understands that the group of protesters will not get in the way of local access, including cars exiting from the Brown Thomas Car Park. read full story / add a comment

A draft of Cork’s transport plan for the next 20 years includes policies which would decrease the percentage of people who cycle in the “the real capital” from 2.8% in 2016 to 1.3% in 2036.

“Hard not to look at this figures and wince,” the Cork cycling Campaign said on Twitter. ( https://twitter.com/CorkCyclingCrew/status/1142116392466100224?s=20 ) “#CMATS ‘idealised’ scenario wants to see cycling modal share fall to 1.3% in Cork.”

The public consultation for the plan, the Cork Metropolitan Area Transport Strategy, runs until Friday.
https://www.nationaltransport.ie/consultations/consultation-on-cork-metropolitan-area-draft-transport-strategy-2040/ read full story / add a comment

Irish Cement Factory’s burning Aughinish red mud ‘not fully assessed’
Details of green house gas reductions not justified in burning waste

The assessment of the use of toxic waste including red mud from Aughinish Aluminum as a fuel for the Irish Cement factory in Limerick has not been properly assessed, according to the environmental charity Friends of the Irish Environment. read full story / add a comment

Call for Oral Hearing for Galway City Ring Road

On the last day for submissions on the proposed Galway City Ring Road, environmentalists have called on An Bord Pleanala to hold an Oral Hearing.

According to Friends of the Irish Environment, the project will undermine national policy in Smarter Travel - A Sustainable Transport Future and its target to reduce work-related commuting by car from 65% to 45%. The environmental charity alleges that because the road will encourage greater use of private motor vehicles in Galway over the period up to and beyond 2050, it is also contrary to the Climate Action and Low Carbon Development Act 2015 which set a national objective of transition to a low carbon climate resilient and environmentally sustainable economy. read full story / add a comment

First images showing the detour the National Transport Authority plans to provide for cycling after they remove cycle lanes in Rathmines, the most used arterial cycle route in Dublin.

As IrishCycle.com website reported previously, traffic counts show that in the AM peak last year, there was 1,637 bicycles and 1,325 cars/van, even with the traffic counts happening in November. read full story / add a comment

OPEN LETTER: A call for more funding for walking and cycling is needed, but that call to date has lacked clarity on the quality needed and that is having practical effects. read full story / add a comment

NEWS-IN-BRIEF: Derry’s Foyle Film Festival is to host a screening of the Dutch cycling documentary Why We Cycle.

The screening which is being run in conjunction with Cycle Derry and Cyclist.ie is this Sunday, November 18 at 3.30pm in the Nerve Centre.

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A Dún Laoghaire–Rathdown area branch of the Dublin cycling Campaign is to be trialed under the name DLR cycling.

We have decided to develop a DLR cycling Advocacy Group to help form a better level of engagement between the cycling community and the councillors and officials of Dun Laoghaire Rathdown County Council.

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There have been numerous attempts to frame the Assad regime with launching and carrying out chemical attacks in Syria. All of them so far have either been fake or carried out by the so called 'Rebels' and terrorists largely backed by Washington, London and Paris through their proxies in Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey before it turned away from the US after it organised an attempted coup against Erdogan.

In all cases the chemical attacks and talk of them has been used by the US and it's allies as an excuse to bomb Syria. There is absolute no reason and motive for Assad to use chemical weapons either now or in the past. At this stage he has won the war in Syria and expelled most of the terrorists or done deals with them and arranged for them to be bused out. From a logical and motive point of view it would be insane for him to do this. He would gain zero. On the other hand it makes perfect sense not so much for the terrorists who are just pawns in a bigger game, but perfect sense for the US because Syria has been on their target since at least 2001 and they have wanted regime change from the start. They have also been humiliated that their terrorists have been defeated and their regional plans thwarted. This turn-around happened largely happened after Syria invited Russia into Syria to help in the war effort and it represents the fist time since the breakup of the Soviet Union that Russia has been able to get up of it's knee and challenge the destructive insanity of the US. And so this gives some background to the report below that appeared on RT.

“Foreign specialists” have arrived in Syria and may stage a chemical attack using chlorine in “the next two days,” the Russian Defense Ministry said. This will be filmed for international media to frame Damascus forces.

Defense Ministry Spokesman Major General Igor Konashenkov said the operation is planned to unfold in the village of Kafr Zita in Syria’s northwestern Hama Province in “the next two days.”

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Dutch documentary 'Why We Cycle' is getting its Dublin premiere this Monday June 11, and Sligo premiere on Thursday June 14.

“It is not a film about policy and strategy. Instead, it is more of a manifesto, showing people why they should want to aspire a cycling society,” said Marco te Brömmelstroet (aka cycling Professor), a producer of the documentary, when interviewed by Carlton Reid of bikebiz.com. read full story / add a comment

Seven Bar, Bridge Street, Galway @7pm

Chairing the discussion will be Lorna Siggins, Western and Marine Correspondent with The Irish Times and the panel will include:

Catherine Connolly TD
Padraic O’Donoghue Chartered Engineer, Professor of Civil Engineering at NUIG
Shane Foran, Galway cycling Campaign Policy and Research Officer and representative on Galway City Community Network
Brian Connolly, Regional Manager, Bus Éireann
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Waterford City is to host the first Irish screening of the Dutch cycling documentary, Why We Cycle, tomorrow evening.

The screening — which is free — is to take place at Greyfriars Municipal Art Gallery this Thursday at 7pm as part of the launch of the Waterford cycling Campaign. read full story / add a comment