THIS WEEK, WE heard from our readers on topics ranging from water and bees to government failures. Have something to say? See our letter guidelines here. 

Upholding life > downloading bytes

[Data centres used almost one billion litres of water last year, but another industry used far more]

Thanks for the article on data centres and how much water is used by them.

As a retired refrigeration engineer this is of interest to me, since water has very unique properties which can make it ideal for industrial heat exchange/rejection.

I studied evaporative water cooling as theory in college in the 1980s, and was fascinated by the principles of latent heat, both of fusion and vaporisation, especially where water is concerned.

As it turned out, water has amazing properties; let me give you an example, (apologies if you already know this).

Supposing we had 10 litres of ice at 0°C that we wanted to melt into a litre of water, but still at 0°C. The energy required to do this is 1kW/hr approx.

This is the same amount of energy that if added again to the now melted ice water at 0°C, would bring it close to boiling point, about 80°C.

As a student I was fascinated by this, how could this be?

The answer was latent heat, or the ‘hidden energy’ involved in phase changing, whereby a material transitions between solid, liquid or gaseous states.

It turns out that latent heat is exactly the property of water which is exploited to its advantage by the data centres in reverse.

The phase change it uses is that of liquid water to gaseous water (steam).

In a location where air temperatures are relatively low and stable and where water is abundant, it makes complete sense for industry to make use of the low hanging energy fruit that is evaporative cooling; until, however, water becomes a scarce resource, since in the hierarchy of human needs, upholding life is more important than downloading bytes.

Although we haven’t yet reached a stage in Ireland where lives are threatened by competing needs for water, we still have a duty to consider active fostering and a better stewardship of our natural resources.

To that end, the data industry needs to up its game, as does industry and society in general.

Worldwide, Ireland is seen as the ‘Emerald Isle’. But in reality, how green is that Isle

Keep up the good work, where would we be without ye?
Ciaran Sherry

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Save the bees

['Pockets of nature' every 200 metres promised in new national plan to save bees and butterflies]

The famous quote stating that if bees disappear, humans have only four years to live was attributed to Albert Einstein, but he never said these words. Rather it was in a Canadian beekeepers’ journal in the 1940s.

I was so gladdened to sit in my garden Friday evening and observe at least 20 bees among the old English lavender and the lamb’s ears. I haven’t observed such a sight for several years, and hopefully it is a sign of better times to come.

Aidan Hampson,
Dublin 5

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Branding over results

Open the social media accounts of the governing coalition parties and the formula is familiar: smiling faces, staged visits, ribbon-cuttings, announcements about announcements. Politics as content. Governance as branding. 

What you rarely see is the thing that actually matters: results. A politician’s face is not a policy. A post won’t reduce waiting lists. A selfie video helps nobody. Government wasn’t built to run a marketing feed. It was built to solve problems. Build homes. Cut waiting lists. Deliver functioning public services.

Instead, we get consultations, working groups, action plans, reviews and an endless parade of political theatre marching from one news cycle to the next, while the problems remain exactly where they are. 

Take the National Children’s Hospital. Promised for 2016, then 2018, then 2020 — “unless an asteroid hits the planet”, as the health minister put it. Eighteen missed deadlines and €2.2 billion later, the Oireachtas committee chair called it “a disaster from start to finish”. That project alone tells you everything about the gap between what gets promised at a podium and what gets delivered on the ground.

We’ve already paid for the reports, the consultations, the frameworks. Irish politics has mastered the language of promotion, but it has not learned the discipline of delivery.

Until our leaders put the public’s needs ahead of self-promotion, public trust will keep doing exactly what it is already doing: draining away, in plain sight, one photo-op at a time.

Alan Kelly,
Kildare

***

Bad cess to him

[Ireland should embrace being the land of the piseog]

Enjoy reading Lise’s columns of observational commentary on Irish society and the why and whereof about ‘the way we are’.

Interesting and amusing perspectives, well written. Long may her column continue.

Richard O, 
Armagh

Editor’s Response

The ratio of praise to complaint in any editor or journalist’s inbox is never quite where we would like it to be so we really appreciate these letters. 

Indeed, Lise’s column with The Journal will continue to be a mainstay of our week every Wednesday. A fabulous political commentator and cultural journalist at different times in her career, we are fortunate to be publishing her first observational column – as Richard has, eh, observed here. 

She is one of a stable of new writers who have recently signed up to contribute regularly to The Journal. You may also have noticed veteran political correspondent Gavan Reilly return to these pages with his Politics in Numbers series, alongside Marion McKeone’s dispatches from America. On Friday mornings, Emer McLysaght tells us what latest trend to run a mile from, while on Mondays Paddy Comyn answers readers’ questions in his Car Clinic.

These are just a few examples of new content which will be published every week. If you don’t have an account with The Journal, you’ll be asked to sign in to be able to read these articles. Having an account and using it when reading The Journal supports our work, and also helps us improve your reading experience. You can read more about how and why here. 

Would you like to have a letter published? See guidelines for submission here.