- BitsBlog - https://bitsblog.com -

Nightly Ramble: The Real Hoax; The Blackout Five Years Ago; More

  • Are we really expected to accept Nancy Pelosi flip-flopping [1]so quickly, from “Drilling is a hoax’ to ‘have the vote’?  Sorry, Nancy… Hans Christian Andersen you’re not. His fairy tales had more truth in them than yours.
  • In the same vein, I note with interest a story in Useless Toady [2]. It interested me because I have vivid memories of that day; We’d planned on going on vacation. Fostoria, OH if I’m not mistaken. we went despite ourselves, figuring the whole way was divided highway and freeway. Still, we saw some areas that hadn’t recoveed from that blackout. Is it really five years gone, now?

    Five years after the worst blackout in U.S. history, the nation’s electrical system is far better equipped to prevent another big outage, but significant shortcomings remain, federal officials, grid operators and consultants agree.
    Since the blackout on Aug. 14, 2003, which affected 50 million people in the Northeast, Midwest and part of Canada, federal regulators have approved standards for upkeep of the power grid. And utilities have new systems to monitor the network.”I can definitively say the events that led to the 2003 blackout are much less likely to occur,” says Rick Sergel, head of the North American Electric Reliability Corp. (NERC), which enforces the new rules

    Well I’ll allow that sounds good.

    But there are still concerns:

    The USA still doesn’t have enough power plants and transmission lines to meet surging demand for electricity, which strains the grid, says Branko Terzic, an energy adviser for Deloitte Services and a former Federal Energy Regulatory Commission member. Utilities have canceled plans for dozens of coal plants amid global-warming concerns; environmentalists have opposed new transmission lines.

    Well, this goes to the same kind of non-thinking that has us in a box over oil just now. Insta-Glenn sees the same story and quips:

    Should I buy a generator?

    I doubt it’d do any good. Look; in a sane world a generator would be a great thing to have. Yet, what do you propose running that generator on? Gasoline? Natural Gas? LP? All of it takes drilling, and the enviro-whackjobs have us bottled up there, too. And I’ll bet he’ll annoy someone’s idea of neighborhood noise limits, too.  I’m telling you, folks these people will have us with horses and candles, before they’re through. Guess who they’ll be voting for this cycle?

  • I  remarked about Detroit earlier today, asking why in the hell anyone would want to live there. Apparently, nobody does, if the real-estate values [3]are of any indication. Should we mention the obvious, that the place is Democrat party run? And again I ask… Guess who the people still in Detroit will be voting for this cycle?
  • Whatever happened to Russian pragmatism and their habit of planning the bleep out of everything? One gets the idea they didn’t plan this one [4]out too well.
  • Trade Deficit is down, [5] and our exports hit a record. Apparently part of the overall slowdown recently. But ths demonstrates pretty well that the free market model works best.
  • I’m going to start posting a  photo of the day, as a part of these Nightly Rambles. They’ll all be mine of course. The first one we’ll do is from Fair Haven, NY, along about this time last year. those are long-burning red road flares they’ve surrounded the bay with. A memorable evening.

    FairHaven NY Night of Fire 2007 [6]

    FairHaven NY Night of Fire 2007