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California issues first rolling blackouts since 2001

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Re: California issues first rolling blackouts since 2001

#181

Post by pstuart »

p1mrx wrote: post #56

We're going to need lots of power grid upgrades over the next few decades, for all the new air conditioning (climate change), and the electrification of heat and transportation (trying to avoid climate change.) Are these upgrades even in the planning phase? People will be hesitant to migrate away from fossil fuels if they can't trust the alternative.

Air conditioning should be powered on site when possible.

In a different timeline we would have programs for zero interest loans for solar power installations with payments managed through the power company (trading paying for power to paying for the loan to generate the power).

Re: California issues first rolling blackouts since 2001

#182

Post by jessaustin »

scarface74 wrote: post #172
jessaustin wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The orange one has done his share of awful things (like every president), but if this virus hadn't appeared we would very much still be in the "sports team" situation. We will certainly destroy ourselves by other means before "the deficit" affects us in the least. It never stopped us from buying more weaponry; now that there is obviously something else on which to spend money suddenly we should worry about it?

No we wouldn’t and by pretending anything Trump has done even pre-Covid is both trying to see “both sides” not to get flagged by HN and to say that all Republicans are just as malicious, corrupt and incompetent as his administration has been and is a lazy argument. I went out of my way not to paint all Republicans since 1980 with the same brush. Before Trump, a Republican administration supported both the Voting Righ…

Well, Trump hasn't killed a million Iraqis for no reason.

Re: California issues first rolling blackouts since 2001

#184

Post by baddox »

flukus wrote: post #174
awillen wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If only there were some precedent we could look to where huge numbers of people were out of work and the government killed two birds with one stone by employing a lot of them on major infrastructure projects. And what if those infrastructure projects, like improvements to roads, bridges and national parks, were largely outside and thus relatively safe even in today's climate of Covid-19. It seems like we might go int…

Problem is most unemployed people don't have the specialized skill set to contribute to these projects and those that do aren't unemployed. The unskilled labor these projects require has mostly been automated over the last 100 years by robotic tools like excavators. Basically every problem we used to be able to throw manpower at now has similar automation and the same sorts of projects would now be done by far fewer…

So where are all the automatic bridge-building machines? Isn’t our bridge infrastructure famously poor?

Re: California issues first rolling blackouts since 2001

#185

Post by rayiner »

awillen wrote: post #169
cipher_system wrote: post #10

I wish the massive financial bailout money could be used to build and improve infrastructure. There doesn't seem to be a lack of money but it never seem to do anything useful.

If only there were some precedent we could look to where huge numbers of people were out of work and the government killed two birds with one stone by employing a lot of them on major infrastructure projects. And what if those infrastructure projects, like improvements to roads, bridges and national parks, were largely outside and thus relatively safe even in today's climate of Covid-19. It seems like we might go int…

Yeah, great precedent of big government intervention in the economy: https://www.npr.org/transcripts/526655831

> The Public Works Administration program and housing was primarily designed to provide housing to white middle-class/lower-middle class families. The progressive aspect of it was that some projects were built for African-Americans as well. But it was explicitly segregated. And in many cases, it segregated neighborhoods that had never known segregation before. So this went on throughout the country. Of the...

> ROTHSTEIN: The second major one was the Federal Housing Administration, which was established in 1934, the year after the Public Works Administration. And the Federal Housing Administration is well known today by many people as an agency that would not insure mortgages for African-Americans. It redlined communities. That was a minor part of what the federal government - what the FHA did in order to segregate metropolitan areas.

See also: https://historynewsnetwork.org/article/3800

Re: California issues first rolling blackouts since 2001

#186

Post by nemo44x »

CWuestefeld wrote: post #164
jeffbee wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Texas generates more power than it needs (which is good because I seem to recall they also aren't tied to grids of neighboring states?). California doesn't. California banks on the probability that it can import power from Oregon, Washington, Nevada, and Arizona, and that all those states won't have one big correlated, synchronized demand peak, which of course is just stochastic. Sometimes you get the worst case.

Texas generates more power than it needs And despite whatever stereotypes you might have about Texas, it produces more power from renewable sources (beside hydro) than any other state in America, by a pretty fair margin. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_by_electri...

Texas seems to get hate for some reason but everyone I know that lives there (and many have moved from California) love it. I’ve been many times and I haven’t found much to dislike other than I prefer the structure of East Coast cities and towns, which is a personal preference.

Texas is affordable, welcoming, and plays to its strengths. It seems like the land of opportunity today and it makes sense it is growing so fast. It seems like I hear jealousy about it in terms of it being a moderate to slightly conservative state overall.

Re: California issues first rolling blackouts since 2001

#187

Post by TheOtherHobbes »

rayiner wrote: post #185
awillen wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If only there were some precedent we could look to where huge numbers of people were out of work and the government killed two birds with one stone by employing a lot of them on major infrastructure projects. And what if those infrastructure projects, like improvements to roads, bridges and national parks, were largely outside and thus relatively safe even in today's climate of Covid-19. It seems like we might go int…

Yeah, great precedent of big government intervention in the economy: https://www.npr.org/transcripts/526655831 > The Public Works Administration program and housing was primarily designed to provide housing to white middle-class/lower-middle class families. The progressive aspect of it was that some projects were built for African-Americans as well. But it was explicitly segregated. And in many cases, it segregated n…

That was nearly 90 years ago.

Redlining was made illegal under federal law - i.e. by the government - in the 70s, not least because the private sector had absolutely no interest in doing anything to stop it.

Re: California issues first rolling blackouts since 2001

#188

Post by tomschlick »

awillen wrote: post #180
flukus wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Problem is most unemployed people don't have the specialized skill set to contribute to these projects and those that do aren't unemployed. The unskilled labor these projects require has mostly been automated over the last 100 years by robotic tools like excavators. Basically every problem we used to be able to throw manpower at now has similar automation and the same sorts of projects would now be done by far fewer…

I won't even pretend to know enough about construction/infrastructure to know what's required to work on it, but there have got to be jobs that can be created that don't require technical skills. I've been reading that lots of people are now going to national parks because other stuff is closed, and they're leaving lots of trash - hire people to pick it up. Roads have potholes, and I can't believe that fixing those r…

> I can't believe that fixing those requires that specialized of a skill set.

No but it does require manual labor and a lot of people consider it beneath them these days to do that. Couple it with many people getting paid more to be on unemployment than they made while working and its a recipe for laziness.

Re: California issues first rolling blackouts since 2001

#189

Post by nemo44x »

scarface74 wrote: post #134
nemo44x wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s a huge state with a lot of people with a massive heatwave covering a lot of it. It’s easy to rag on California lately but it’s still American’s living there and I feel bad for them.

What makes California different than Texas? I don’t have a dog in the fight, I live on the east coast.

I think California in general has an identity crisis right now - a victim of its own success.

It is probably the most unequal place in America in terms of wealth and income. But yet it is almost in denial about that.

It is a huge polluter but refuses to really take action outside of token policies. Nuclear reactors might be a bit too much risk considering the seismic activity - but thorium reactors could be safely deployed. Regardless, sprawl is everywhere and it’s all cars with almost no viable public transit. If you take California public transit it’s almost never by choice.

It wants to punitively tax the wealthy and even those with some good fortune in a successful startup,(new wealth tax proposal is evidence) but these are the biggest revenue sources and they are leaving, like NYC to escape the taxes. The new proposal would tax you even AFTER you leave - good luck!

They keep looking for tax revenue to prop up their pretty bad public school system but yet have the most regressive property tax law in the nation. NIMBY and “I was here first” mentality is rampant for such an inclusionary place.

The weather is nice.

Re: California issues first rolling blackouts since 2001

#190

Post by TheOtherHobbes »

roughly wrote: post #128
spaetzleesser wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. Instead of using cheap money to drive up asset prices it would be nice if it actually got used for something useful.

This is because one of our two political parties doesn’t believe that government spending should exist, and is iffy about the concept of government overall. Because of that, the only body able to respond to crises is the Federal Reserve, and the only lever they have is the money supply. We’ve had multiple trillion dollars worth of infrastructure repairs we need to do and nearly sub-zero borrowing rates for the last d…

Spending on infrastructure is Keynesian - genuinely Keynesian, not the faux-Keynesian of bailouts, which are often labelled Keynesian with various degrees of good/bad faith.

Keynesianism is absolutely taboo in a plutocratic neoliberal economy - possibly because it's a credible reason for increasing taxation. And there's nothing a plutocracy hates more than having to pay more tax.

As you point out, in rational terms this is self-harming nonsense. Countries need repairs and they also need physical infrastructure investment. The 50s saw the Interstate system, the 60s saw generous funding for computer and IT R&D as well as other basic science, but since Reagan public spending for the public good has become unacceptable - largely because it "costs money."

As if creating jobs and valuable physical infrastructure is somehow an unreasonable expense and not basic common sense.

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