Instead of air conditioning running in your home during heatwaves, the LA Times suggests interviews experts suggesting “investing in a wider network of cooling centers, with transportation to help people get there” instead.
Sammy Roth, LA Times staff writer wrote: “What’s more important: Keeping the lights on 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, or solving the climate crisis?”
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Climate Depot’s Marc Morano: “The LA Times question is not theoretical. Blackouts are happening globally due to the inhuman climate agenda demanding an end to reliable and affordable fossil fuel energy.” See:Bloomberg News: ‘South Africa Beats Climate Goal as Blackouts Slash Emissions’ – ‘Unintentional…power plant breakdowns are reducing industrial activity’
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Swiss president warns nation to prepare for electricity shortages lasting weeks or months
By: Admin – Climate DepotJuly 23, 2023 11:35 PM
BY SAMMY ROTH – STAFF WRITER
What’s more important: Keeping the lights on 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, or solving the climate crisis?
That is in many ways a terrible question, for reasons I’ll discuss shortly. …
It’s a highly technical dispute. But it’s part of a larger conversation about how much blackout risk we consider acceptable in modern society — and whether our expectations should evolve in the name of preventing climate catastrophe.
…
That conversation kicked into high gear in August 2020, when California found itself short on electricity during a heat wave. Just under half a million homes and businesses lost power for as little as 15 minutes and as long as 2½ hours on a Friday evening, when high temperatures kept Californians blasting their air conditioners even as the sun went down and solar farms stopped producing power. The following evening, another 321,000 utility customers went dark for anywhere from eight to 90 minutes.
The rolling outages were short and contained, relatively speaking. But the political reaction was swift and dramatic.
Gov. Gavin Newsom — facing a recall effort and wanting to avoid the fate of his predecessor Gray Davis, who was voted out of office after an energy crisis — suspended air-quality rules to make it easier to run polluting backup generators. The next summer, Newsom issued a similar order preemptively allowing gas plants to exceed air-pollution limits during electric-grid emergencies.
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Gas plants, meanwhile, supplied 42% of California’s electricity last year, according to a federal tally. And in a great irony of the climate era, increasingly extreme weather driven by fossil fuels has made those gas plants more valuable than ever.
But absent major breakthroughs in carbon-capture technology, we’ll eventually need to shutter most if not all of those gas plants to avoid disastrous temperature jumps. Scientists say we need to cut carbon pollution nearly in half by 2030.
…
Could we get started ditching gas sooner — and save some money — by accepting a few more blackouts for the next few years?
It’s a heretical question in power-grid circles. When I posed it to John Moura — director of reliability assessment and performance analysis at the North American Electric Reliability Corp. — he only half-jokingly described it as “a dagger to the heart.” …
After reporting on clean energy for most of the last decade, I’ve increasingly come to the conclusion that solving climate change will require sacrifices — even if only small ones — for the sake of the greater good. Those might include lifestyle changes such as driving less or eating less meat. They might also include accepting that large-scale solar farms will destroy some wildlife habitat, and that rooftop solar panels — despite their higher costs — have an important role to play in cleaning up the grid.
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Maybe learning to live with more power outages shouldn’t be one of those sacrifices.
But at the same time, we might not have a choice.
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The idea of accepting a less dependable electric grid “is uncomfortable for a lot of people, because they correctly point out you may end up in situations where the wealthier you are, the more you’re able to buy your way out of that reliability problem,” Grubert said.
That’s why it’s crucial, Grubert said, for government to be ready to protect society’s most vulnerable when it’s hot and the power goes out. That could include investing in a wider network of cooling centers, with transportation to help people get there.
…
Nearly everyone I interviewed for this story, for instance, highlighted the value of “flexible demand” programs that shift electricity use away from the highest demand times. Families comfortable with 81-degree indoor temperatures, for instance, could get paid to turn up the thermostat a few degrees on the hottest evenings. People with electric cars could be incentivized to charge at a lower cost overnight. Big factories could be required to cut back during stressful moments on the grid.
Eric Hittinger, a public policy professor at Rochester Institute of Technology, said those types of programs could allow gas plants to fire up a lot less — even if we keep some of them around a few more decades to help during the hottest heat spells.
Filed under: emissions, energy, gnd, mkey, reset, wacky
“Just under half a million homes and businesses lost power for as little as 15 minutes and as long as 2½ hours on a Friday evening, when high temperatures kept Californians blasting their air conditioners even as the sun went down and solar farms stopped producing power. “
That statement speaks volumes regarding the FUTILITY of weather dependent ruinables, Solar specifically. No sun, no power. Solar only produces nameplate on clear days that aren’t too warm or cold from 10am until 2pm local time with about a 1.5 hour morning ramp up and 1.5 hour evening ramp down (prior to evening peak) with 16 hours of no production at all. Solar is only useful for Off Grid applications and to recharge evening batteries. It has no place connected to the grid
Well, we now know exactly which buildings/company should be the first targeted for “flexible demand” !
No AC for DC. I like the idea.
Clever… Thanks.
As long as any politician, climate ‘scientist’, high wealth individual, or ‘green’ organization accept twice as much blackout time, I’m all for it.
Those proposing the blackouts, should be the first in line.
Those proposing the blackouts should be the only ones in line.
No no, it is absolutely necessary that their vital work continue uninterrupted, so will they be allowed diesel generators.
Exactly. And notice that incentives don’t apply to “big factories” (who knew there were still factories of any size in California?) They will just be REQUIRED to cut back.
Who pays the factory workers idled during a blackout? The factory owners or the government? Either way the price of goods will go up!
The remaining factories will all be moved to China. The workers vote “incorrectly” and therefore will be fired and sanctioned.
“The grid is going to be a very different system in 2020, 2030,” he [Mr Holliday chief of National Grid] said “We keep thinking that we want it to be there and provide power when we need it. It is going to be much smarter than that.“. [my bold]
How on Earth can these people possibly argue that it is “much smarter” to break down regularly instead of running reliably.
The USA needs a federal election, and it needs it
nowas soon as the Uniparty breaks down. Some of the Europeans have started extricating themselves, and with any luck that trickle will soon be a flood. Probably the hardest done by of all nations are the Brits. The people were way ahead of the game in the Brexit referendum, and their Uniparty has been punishing them ever since.We keep thinking that we want heart monitors, dialysis machines, ventilators, and other equipment in the hospital to work all the time.
We keep thinking that we want cooling pumps to keep running in nuclear power plants.
We keep thinking that we want elevators to keep working and not hold us hostage during a blackout.
We keep thinking that we want manufacturing processes to run continuously so that we don’t end up with tons of ruined product.
We keep thinking that we want the electric fence to hold back the T. Rex in Jurassic Park.
“We keep thinking that we want heart monitors, dialysis machines, ventilators, and other equipment in the hospital to work all the time.”
Not just at the hospital! Lot’s of this goes on in the home today. The push to keep people out of the hospital grows each day. I have a diabetic in-law who has both a dialysis machine and a ventilator at home that runs every day.
Kill the power to her house and she dies. But the CAGW crowd doesn’t care about that. It’s just part of the “sacrifice” required of their religion.
Yep, euthanize or abort both existing and in-utero life. Life matters not when one believes the world is overpopulated
It won’t matter since those are made from plastic which will be gone when fossil fuels are stopped.
Jeez, Carbon dioxide is not a pollutant.
Time to sew politicians lips together
If we sew the politicians together, they will take up less room.
Story tip
Deadly global heatwaves undeniably result of climate crisis, scientists show
The researchers found that greenhouse gas emissions made the heatwaves 2.5C hotter in Europe, 2C hotter in North America, and 1C hotter in China than if humankind had not changed the global atmosphere.
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2023/jul/25/deadly-global-heatwaves-undeniably-result-of-climate-crisis-scientists-attribution
Who needs a thermometer?
Grew up in a town hosting a large girls’ reformatory. A favourite tale told around town was about them girls’ skill with a thermometer. I suggest these climastrologist master berators go visit them.
Apparently a skillfully inserted thermometer gives you more staying power than a blue pill.
…until they break the thermometer…
Just imagine the look on Kerry’s face!
What Kerry needs can’t be printed here…
An enema would be a good start
That might flush his brain out, but never mind – he doesn’t have a brain!
Whenever I see a link to the Guardian, I know not to click on it. It would be more educational to click on the Beano. Sadly even that children’s comic for junior school readers has gone down the Woke track .god help us.
NB never click on the Guardian it gives them undeserved count for their advertising revenue. Just ignore the Woke climate alarm coordinating organisation.
I like to know what the loonies are up to
I don’t know how the system works but some people say that if you archive the web link first and then read the archive, it deprives the site of clicks for advertising purposes.
Who needs The Guardian?
Clearly no one with a functioning brain in Britain does. The Guardian’s penetration of the UK market continues to decline. The continental audience has not woken up to the over Woke Guardian, yet . They will learn.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2023/07/25/the-guardian-turns-to-europe-for-growth-as-uk-sales-decline/
A question to all them committed capitalists who feel they are forever required to give away things to the undeserving. Now that the poor no longer have those senseless dead-end jobs that used to carry 80% of the tax burden;
Any of you smug bastards miss Ayn Rand yet?
To keep the factories open, thereby enabling an economy to function, recommend cutting power to all L A Times facilities, servers, and remaining printing shops, and limitiing internet service to all Times’ web hosts, vpn, and employee connectivity and operations to Midnight to 1 a.m. Pacific Standard Time. This will save the Times 23 hours per day of employee wages, and allow the legacy media employees to learn useful skills (coding perhaps, or sweeping) for the new media as provided by big tech and the CCP. After all, there won’t be all that many jobs at the Ministry of Truth.
It seems there’s a total acceptance with this article and its comments that we are responsible for the heat and all weather in general. What’s that about? Did a few hot days in summer suddenly “convince everyone”?
We had 113F in Malta yesterday and had I not known I would have said it was maybe 98F.
But with all the hype of course people are micro-focusing on the weather.
Even if this were all true, going to the extremes suggested is ridiculous. You don’t sabotage food and keeping the world’s systems running, giving all the dependencies involved, for something we CANNOT control right now as we don’t have the technology and something we will probably find out we CANNOT control in the future when we’ve destroyed everything and gotten nowhere.
It would amuse me to see the reaction once we supposedly achieved our goals if a volcano erupted and set us back to “worse” than where we are now, What would they then suggest? Nuking every volcano?
Cooling centers, indeed.
Cooling centers are powerless to help people during a blackout
Having grown up in central India without electricity, I find it hard to comprehend how air conditioners have suddenly become a necessary appliance.
Its called moving out of the stone age, extending lifespans and free market’s meeting peoples wants and needs. If you don’t want home a/c its OK. But I demand it and am voting against the fools that want to deprive me of it.
Great news comrades!
The chocolate ration has been increased to 20 grams a week and the electricity ration has been increased to 8 hours a day.
(from 25 grams and 9 hours)
Reductio ad absurdum- turn it all off to save carbon! I hope that no one they love is on a ventilator
Feature not Bug
In the UK that will rid the union of about 10million……..
Quote:“The projections suggest there will be 9.1 million people with a major health condition by 2040, a 37% rise in the latest data from 2019.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-66295170
This will be ignored: Solar panels 5x less green than claimed.
Quote:“Based on such data, the IPCC claims solar PV is 48 gCO2/kWh. But, as we’ll see below, a new investigation started by Italian researcher, Enrico Mariutti, suggests that the number is closer to between 170 and 250 gCO2/kWh, depending on the energy mix used to power PV production. If this estimate is accurate, solar would not compare favorably with natural gas, which is around 50 gCO2/kWh with carbon capture, and 400 to 500 without.
https://environmentalprogress.org/big-news/2023/7/3/solar-panels-are-more-carbon-intensive-than-experts-will-admit
As usual, activists advocating doing things to reduce global warming which, even if they are right, can have no effect on it. There is no way that California blackouts can reduce global emissions enough to be measurable, and certainly not enough to affect global temperatures.
This is activists arguing for doing things which, on their own theory, are totally ineffective. But do them, because climate! And don’t ask about cost-effectiveness.
It is a very striking feature of the current climate mania. It is characteristic of religious belief. The actions are not undertaken because of their effects on the supposed problem. They are a public testifying, an exhibition of marks of grace, that one is a member of the elect.
The innumeracy of the LA Times is comical. 42% of the power was supplied by natural gas, which by definition means that 42% of the time there was no ruinable supply available.
During how much of that 42% could there have been more ruinable power available if only there were more bird shredders and slaver panels? Could it be as much as half? Then you still have a blackout 21% of the time!
You know, like ‘occasional blackouts’. Is that 12.6 random seconds out of every minute, 12.6 random minutes out of every hour, or 5 continuous hours every day? Maybe 6.4 days in a row at some point each month?
Who but a selfish MAGA Rethuglican would have a problem with any of those options? Just require big factories to cut back!
We’re supposed to listen to “logic” like this? Incentives to charge your EV at night (when there’s never any solar power and often no wind)?
Obviously the idea would be to incentivize using surplus power. That does sometimes occur at night due to unusual wind generation combined with low demand. But unless you work third shift, most people with EVs are already charging at night.
They apparently didn’t want to have people notice the impracticality of charging during the day when the car is not at home.
If you want to incentivize use of surplus power you need all those EVs plugged in everywhere they are parked—at home, at work, at the mall, at the beach. Then ideally you also incentivize the EV owner to sell back power from the car battery during peak load. Instead of grid-scale batteries, the EV fleet serves as storage.
What sort of challenges need to be overcome to achieve that vision? Building out a grid that supports charging points at every parking spot? It’s already unlikely that there’s enough lithium for every car to be an EV. What is the prospect of there being enough copper for such a grid?
And it may be true that “it never rains in California”, but what happens on the days that it pours? How does this valley girl thinking work in say rainy Seattle, or cold Calgary?
Where are the DC/AC transformers? Roadside?
Yes, inverters and step-up transformers I suppose. The madness never ends.
With ever more “breakdown” points in the infrastructure. Just what is needed – an increasingly unreliable grid because of growth in failure points.
Such a proposal, which has also been fronted by others, stands an excellent chance of becoming the biggest nation-wide waste of electricity since the invention of the heated-filament electric light bulb.
Just look into the AC-DC-AC conversion cycle inefficiencies to charge/store and then discharge electrical energy put into EV batteries . . . the grid is AC-based but all batteries are DC-based. Then add on the electric power required for the battery pack’s thermal management and monitoring/regulating systems. Then add on the self-discharge rate of the EV’s battery pack when it is sitting idle. Then consider that the preponderance of EVs will NOT be charged using home or work PV systems, but instead from remote power plants that lose, on average, 5% of total electrical energy output in the course of distributing electrical power to the homes of end-users.
Of course, all the “greens” and climate change alarmists out there will eventually come to understand that this wasted energy, manifested as thermal energy emitted by the millions and millions of EV batteries, their chargers and the grid circuits will contribute to—you got it!—global warming.
Denier!!
/sarc
Not guilty as, ahem, charged.
/pun-ishment
Yes of course it’s insane. Equally as insane as electrolyzing water to produce hydrogen to be compressed and burnt with a very low overall system efficiency.
But we hardly need to worry about details of something that is impossible.
“climate change alarmists out there will eventually come to understand”
Nope!
“Then ideally you also incentivize the EV owner to sell back power from the car battery during peak load.”
So that your car’s battery is empty when you want to drive home. Right?
Well not to defend an idiotic idea but “incentivize” is a free market concept. You’re free to do what makes sense and is beneficial to you. You’re not forced to do what would leave you stranded.
So it would likely be managed in software to sell surplus power leaving enough capacity to get home with a safety margin. The idea is that you load up on free or even negatively priced power when solar is peaking and then drive home and sell surplus at a profit during peak evening demand.
It’s impractical for all the reasons given. Too much raw material needed, too much conversion loss. But except for those fatal flaws, that’s how it would work.
Yep, lets use “free market principles” to manage government-mandated shortages. Works every time to raise our standards of living.
No – and yes, it´s not even close to be a “98%” maybe. To strieve for blackouts as necessary can only be compared with climate lockdowns … we would rather not do it, but it could be necessary as they say.
The author of the article “You´ll own nothing and you be happy” is from Denmark, the titel have since been rewritten to “Here´s how you city could look like in 2030” but the date is the same. Is this a coincidence “Yes of Course” it is, is it a coincidence that the weather forecast color-maping have changed “Yes of Course” it is. Is it a coincidence that the “nobel-prize winner” Barack Obama recently have installed propane-tanks with the capacity of 2.500 gallons on his ground at Marthas Vinyard “Yes of Course” it is. Is it a coincidence that the nobel-prize-winner John Clauser is being cancelled, hell no, give him Barack Obamas nobel-peace-prize to him to so he have two instead of one, with our inconvenient Pal Al Gores to, it becomes three.
The talks about Blackouts and Climate-lockdowns can be necessary, merely confirms the history of science, science is about power and only a “grain” of the truth. Taken that in concideration we should actually thanks John ” the grifter” Kerry for raising the fraudulent “consensus” with 1 percent-point from 97 to 98%. 98% of the science is about power and only two percent truth.
Asking the privileged elites to give up their 24/7 power is like asking John Kerry to give up his private jets. Not going to happen. What will happen, however, is the rest of us will be told to crowd into cooling centers and warming centers and cooking centers and centers where they have public showers.
Kerry and his politically connected friends will have steak every night. The rest of us can eat cake.
And then they’ll congratulate themselves when the world doesn’t explode in a ball of fire. Perhaps dismantling inconvenient little oddities like the CO2 meters in Hawai’i that would show that all their fear-mongering and power-rationing didn’t stop CO2 from rising steadily the whole time.
It is much worse than “an occasional blackout”.
You need 2x wind and 3x solar name plate generation capacity to equal 1x fossil fuel or nuclear generation capacity.
If you go full zero carbon, this means total output capacity at any given time will be at least 2x of demand and potentially as high as 4x or 5x, because solar PV and wind production at any given time is generally a fraction of name plate capacity as well.
So unlike a 3rd world nation where insufficient generation capacity results in just a few hours of electricity available per day, full reliance on solar PV and wind for net zero electricity means periods of too much as well as periods of not enough – meaning spikes as well as dips. This damages electrical equipment tied to the grid.
The theory of widespread wind and solar PV equaling out – utterly disproven.
Now the idea is if the utilities can control all power use by customers – that they can turn customer usage on and off at their convenience – that this will allow the mountains and deserts of solar PV and wind electricity generation output to be handled.
Unlikely to say the least.
“Now the idea is if the utilities can control all power use by customers – that they can turn customer usage on and off at their convenience –”
Exactly the point of “smart meters”, or were you not aware of them?
The progression looks like this:
Green power is FREE ENERGY!
Over the next 20-30-40 years Green power will save you thousands-hundreds-tens of dollars!
Sure it will cost you a little-some-lots more, but this is for your children!
The wind-sun-tides will ALWAYS be here!
Ok, you may experience the occasional outage with Green power, but it’s worth it!
Your boss will understand if you couldn’t charge your car.
A few extra unpaid “holidays” will be nice when we shut down your workplace.
The concept of power on demand is RACIST! You don’t want to be RACIST do you?
Shut up or we will freeze your credit and give you worthless paper for your bank assets.
Serves ’em right to suffer:
Let’s start by ending electric service to LA Times.
Grey Davis was voted out before the rise of the Magic Mail-In Ballot Machine.
Freaking suicide cult. It’s scary how many credulous acolytes they’ve attracted. And I’m sure the resulting suffering will be blamed on us heretics.
The first places losing power should be state capital, state Congress, local government buildings etc. Last should be hospitals and average citizen’s homes/businesses.
Why aren’t conservatives proposing bills for this.
Why aren’t conservatives proposing bills for this.
I think we know: Because they* are all a bunch of spinless jellyfish.
* (the representatives who should be making these proposals)
I love the part about busing the unlucky to concentrated cooling camps while the fascist overlords relax in comfort in their luxurious fully powered homes.
Cutting off electricity to the LA Times would go a long way towards reducing California’s idiocy on climate and energy matters.
Story tip:
Just Stop Oil dinner disrupted:
https://www.gbnews.com/news/just-stop-oil-revenge-pranksters-josh-pieters-archie-manners-rape-alarms
Looks like the group agrees with JSO goals but opposes their tactics.
We are getting closer to reality in California and the people aren’t worried yet. Highest electricity prices in the nation? Bring it on, we’re rich! Blackouts? What’s a little time without electricity when you’re saving the world? Already CA is a pariah in the business community with its’ laws, lack of legal protection against thieves and rioters, sanctuary status, coddling of the indigent, and taxes above other states causing many to relocate. Now they’re telling manufacturing to plan for random stoppage? Good luck with that.
My recollection is, blackouts usually trigger a looting riot within minutes.
I think it will not be worth it.
Nothing is worse than losing power.
With the occasional weather related outages we now get, it is not possible to have freezers without a backup generator. But the people I really pity are those with “tight” houses or apartments that depend on forced air circulation or air conditioning.
Good story: Many years ago I had a nurse who worked in neonatal ICU doing and experimental MSc that had very tight scheduling. One morning she came in looking like death warmed over. She said the emergency generator at the hospital had failed that night. They had 6 nurses on and 5 babies on respirators, so 5 had manually pumped babies for hours while 1 looked after the rest of the ward. They did not lose a baby. One of the best students I ever had.
The real problem that is chronically overlooked is the poor building designs (oversized and energy hog), overpopulation of the region and the excessive use of night lighting that drowns out the night sky where nobody is and sheer waste of lighting power use.
If they had done it right early on, I wouldn’t be surprised they use at least 50% LESS power than they do now.
All forms of lighting are about 5% of total energy consumption.
Safety lighting Tommy, safety. One only opines if he’s sure of his subject.
Occasional blackouts, supply chain disruptions, rising inflation due to carbon taxes – just all part of our governments doing their best to put us on the slippery slope of social disintegration and rapidly on the path to massive human suffering and early death.
“That could include investing in a wider network of cooling centers, with transportation to help people get there.”
Oh spare me, please. Where do they get such idiots?
michael hart: “Oh spare me, please. Where do they get such idiots?”
They get them from places like Columbia University:
——————————-
Sammy Roth: Columbia University in the City of New York, Bachelor of Arts (BA)Sustainable Development, 2010 – 2014
Activities and Societies: Columbia Daily Spectator, Columbia Aquanauts
Majored in Sustainable Development and minored in American Studies, graduating cum laude. Coursework included environmental law, urban studies, energy development, geographic information systems and environmental economics. Reported and edited for the Columbia Daily Spectator, worked on water conservation projects for the Columbia Aquanauts, an interdisciplinary water club.
——————————-
I have several relatives living in New York State who are also graduates of Columbia University.
Other close relatives live in the Bay Area of California and are graduates of several prestigious universities in that state.
They’ve all bought the propaganda that wind & solar can quickly replace baseload coal and gas-fired capacity if only enough money can be spent fast enough.
Unreliables is one of the very few cases where unlimited OPM won’t get you what you want.
“That’s why it’s crucial, Grubert said, for government to be ready to protect society’s most vulnerable when it’s hot and the power goes out. That could include investing in a wider network of cooling centers, with transportation to help people get there.“
So spending more money on air conditioned public spaces and then unnecessarily transporting millions of people back and forth to “cooling centers” is more efficient that just keeping the lights on?
Lord, save us from the “Smart People”(tm)
Are they honestly proposing that the elderly be shipped from their unpowered homes to “cooling shelters”? I guess they actually believe that old people don’t have anything better to do with their time, then be shipped to far from their homes and then sit around until the city decides it’s ok to turn the power back on?
Gee, at this rate they might even fact check the Clinton WH mantra on LEED certified buildings that brought us a lot of natural-light glass buildings and backup diesel generators to offset their higher power demands.
story tip
Pouring Ice Into Concrete: Builders Adapt to Extreme Heat – WSJ
Any outfit stating that blackouts are the solution to our problems should immediately be removed from the grid so they can set the example.
‘Would an occasional blackout help solve climate change?’ Not if the whole climate change is a hoax. Blackouts are an unfortunate side affect of cutting back on electrical generation capacity thinking green energy will ride in to save the day. Any climate change is mostly a result of natural variables like sun spots, changes in magnetic fluxes, etc. Blackouts are an unnecessary byproduct of stupidity.
But there is a simple solution. Stop voting for idiots.
Alternatively consider that there are more streetlights than politicians. Apply.
Is there a shortage of piano wire?