The Epic of Gilgamesh posted:

My friend, we've created this wasteland.
What shall we tell the gods when we get back home?

Arglebargle III posted:

The Epic of Gilgamesh posted:

My friend, we've created this wasteland.
What shall we tell the gods when we get back home?

Trabisnikof posted:

Saying “I refuse to believe in the scientific models of climate change impacts because it makes me feel bad” is climate denialism not “optimism.”

quote:

The Epic of Gilgamesh posted:

My friend, we've created this wasteland.
What shall we tell the gods when we get back home?

Martian posted:

Yes, the planet got destroyed, but for a beautiful moment in time we created a lot of value for shareholders.

TACD posted:

There will be a widespread movement within our lifetimes denying that Arctic ice ever existed.

quote:

California Braces for More Blackouts as Heat Wave Persists

By Mark Chediak, Brian Eckhouse, and David R Baker
August 15, 2020, 10:24 AM EDT Updated on August 15, 2020, 3:36 PM EDT

California is bracing for more power outages after as many as 2 million residents were plunged into darkness late Friday in the state’s first rolling blackouts since the 2001 energy crisis.

Grid operators in the state have issued a warning that they may be short on power supplies again starting at 5 p.m. local time. It comes as a heat wave is expected to blanket California through the middle of next week, sending temperatures soaring past 110 degrees Fahrenheit (43 degrees Celsius) in some areas.

“We’re seeing a once-in-a-decade heat wave,” said Brian Bartholomew, an analyst at BloombergNEF. What happened Friday “could be a preview of the actions the state’s grid operator may need to take in the days ahead.”

The sudden and largely unannounced outages in California began after a power plant malfunctioned and are a stark reminder of the fragility of power grids in the face of extreme weather. Searing heat has gripped cities around the globe in recent weeks, including Brussels, Paris and New York. Earlier this month, violent winds in the U.S. Midwest and a tropical storm in the Northeast left millions with power, in some cases for as long as a week.

California grid operators said that a 500-megawatt generator tripped offline unexpectedly during peak demand hours Friday and that a 750 megawatt unit that was out of service didn’t return until after the peak hit. If both had been in service, grid operators wouldn’t have had to call for outages, said Anne Gonzales, a spokeswoman for grid manager California Independent System Operator.

“We did call on all of our reserves,” she said. “There was record breaking heat. At 7:30 p.m, the sun was going down and the demand was holding. There is nothing nefarious going on here. We are just trying to run the grid. The peak demand was steady in late hours and we had thousands of megawatts of solar reducing their output as the sun set.”

The heat and the blackouts are hitting at an especially vulnerable time for the region with Covid-19 forcing people to remain at home. Less than a year ago but before the pandemic, regional utilities deliberately cut off power to millions of customers in an effort to prevent their power lines from igniting wildfires amid unusually strong winds — another consequence of increasingly extreme weather brought on in part by climate change.

Friday’s outages in California started at about 6:30 p.m., when the state’s grid operator determined through a complex calculation that power reserves had fallen below a critical threshold and called a Stage 3 grid emergency, which triggers what it describes as “load interruption.”

The last time such a declaration was made during the electricity crisis of 2000 and 2001, hundreds of thousands of homes and businesses took turns going dark, power prices surged to a record and the state’s largest utility was forced into bankruptcy.

Late Friday, the state’s system operator put the call out to the state’s utilities to cut demand by about 1,000 megawatts. That’s enough to power about 750,000 homes, by California ISO’s estimates, affecting more than 2 million people based on the average household size.

...

Arglebargle III posted:

Man too bad southern california doesn't have sunlight virtually year-round.

If it did some solar power would be really helpful with the mid-day air conditioning.

Complications posted:

It's not daytime power usage that's the problem, it's evening usage (7PM on) when the solar power is winding down. Apparently a couple power plants had a fuckup and the state was short on power generation to the tune of about a gigawatt.

Tekne posted:

Climate change is so powerful it transported the Arctic to the worst case fire scenario for 2050.
https://twitter.com/washingtonpost/status/1294861606791372800

MightyBigMinus posted:

re-read the quoted half of the article argle.

california's heavy usage of solar basically "caused" this problem, or more accurately setup the conditions for there to be insufficient margin for error.

don't get me wrong, i don't "blame" solar in some kind of "therefore its bad and we should do less of it" sense, merely that handling the 5pm - 8pm ramp is our next big challenge to tackle. thats why so many solar plants going forward are being quoted as "solar+4" projects where if you're building a 200MW array you're also building 800MWh's of battery.

imho the real solution will come from better demand response, V2H, and widespread residential batteries. here's a company already doing cool things: https://www.energyhub.com/

Martian posted:

You know what, this once I'm just not going to click on that link

toggle posted:

Gone on, do it. It's inevitable

Sundae posted:

Surely they can't be irrig--

davebo posted:

I'm no golfer, but once the grass is grown why not just let it die? Then you just cut it once and it stays that length. If people are super uptight about green grass just paint it.

Pobrecito posted:

Good news!!


https://twitter.com/alexckaufman/status/1295812448163962883

LeeMajors posted:

Controlled opposition while the world burns. Frack.

V. Illych L. posted:

Pobrecito posted:

Good news!!


https://twitter.com/alexckaufman/status/1295812448163962883

MightyBigMinus posted:

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-08-15/two-million-californians-go-dark-and-more-heat-is-coming


not only is the US a failed/failing state, but the state of california within it is also actively crumbling.

the grid is going to get less and less reliable and people with money are increasingly going to e-horde by buying bigger batteries. a 95% reliable grid for the masses with sufficient backups to be 100% reliable for anyone with money works fine in lots of other countries.

tuyop posted:

I'm looking for a picture that was posted a few months back. It's like, a series of trophy shots of fishermen proudly holding up ever-shrinking catches over the years. Anyone remember what I'm talking about? It's so perfect.

Mameluke posted:

So uhh do David Geffen, Notch, et al. have their own generators? a separate power grid? what is the mechanism by which they avoid living in the third-world country outside beverly hills?

Shyrka posted:

Not exactly a picture but this article has a progression of pictures over the years at the same place which is pretty startling.

https://www.npr.org/sections/krulwich/2014/02/05/257046530/big-fish-stories-getting-littler

MightyBigMinus posted:

there's a huuuge market for "whole house" generators already: https://www.homedepot.com/b/Outdoors-Outdoor-Power-Equipment-Generators-Whole-House-Generators/N-5yc1vZbx9s

any rich persons house is almost sure to have one, and if not its <$10k away.

and thats not even getting into the solar+batteries fad

anyone who can afford a hot tub or an above ground pool can afford a generator. everyone else, welp, summer months from 5pm to 9pm ur just gonna have to take a nap in the shade till the power's back.