Raging Bootleg Fire in Oregon threatens vital Northern California power grid lines

[NNadir]

I noticed on the Supply Page for the CAISO , which reports real time data on the status of the power grid in California, that Northern California, Southern California and the VEA (part of the Nevada grid) are all under warning status for the grids.

Here is the text of one of the warning notices:

Current Active Notice(s)

CAISO Grid WARNING NOTICE [202102550]

The California ISO hereby issues a CAISO Grid WARNING Notice,
effective 07/10/2021 17:00 through 07/10/2021 21:00.

Reason:
CAISO has lost resources due to fire and is anticipating hig|h loads.

CAISO is forecasting a resources deficiency with all available resources in use or forecasted to be in
use for the specified time period. If not already declared, CAISO may request the Reliability
Coordinator to declare an EEA-1.

If the Emergency Demand Response Programs are dispatched, then CAISO may request the
Reliability Coordinator to declare an EEA-2.

Conservation efforts are encouraged for the time period specified in this notice. Energy Market
Participants are encouraged to offer additional Supplemental Energy and Ancillary Service bids.

Refer to the CAISO System Emergency Fact Sheet
(http://www.caiso.com/Documents/SystemAlertsWarningsandEmergenciesFactSheet.pdf) for
additional detail.

Monitor system conditions on Today's Outlook
(http://www.caiso.com/TodaysOutlook/Pages/default.aspx) and check with local electric utilities for
additional information.

Notice issued at: 07/10/2021 12:33

Famously the West Coast is and has been experiencing extreme temperatures, and the notice refers to fires.

The fires are described in this news item:

Raging Bootleg Fire in Oregon threatens vital Northern California power grid lines

The text of the CBS News item:

With soaring temperatures already pushing California's power grid to the limit, utility officials were keeping a weary eye on the Bootleg Fire that is raging out of control in southern Oregon and threatening Path 66 — a vital electric line corridor linking the state with the Oregon power grid.


The fast-growing wildfire has prompted mandatory evacuations, threatening about 3,000 homes. Pushed by strong winds, the fire's burn zone in Klamath County has grown to more than 61 square miles. There was no containment, CBS SF Bay Area reports.

"The fire will continue to move unchecked in all direction with unstable air conditions and extremely dry fuels," the National Forest Service said...

...CAISO and other grid operators were monitoring the fire as it was burning in the proximity of the California Oregon Intertie — also known as Path 66. It's a corridor of three parallel 500kV power lines that connects the power grids of Oregon and California.

The three lines are owned by PG&E, PacifiCorp, the Western Area Power Administration and the Transmission Agency of Northern California. PG&E officials on Friday activated the utility's Emergency Operations Center to monitor the situation and manage any eventualities...

...and so on...

Some people, I would be one of them, believe that the extreme temperatures which have been causing extreme droughts and extreme fires are extremely tied to the complete and total failure of humanity to address climate change.

It's now 109°F, (43°C) in Bakersfield, CA, with highs predicted to exceed 110°F through Wednesday of this week.

As of 18:10 PDT (6:10 PM PDT), the California Grid is reporting the following status, with extra special note of all that so called "renewable energy:"

40,427 MW
Current demand

12,497 MW
Current renewables

6,340 MW
Current solar

4,297 MW
Current wind

Interestingly, the supply page makes no note in these prominently displayed headlines of the power source that is currently dominating the power supply in California, easily outstripping both magical solar and wind combined. That would be dangerous natural gas. Dangerous natural gas is providing 21,430 MW of power. You have to look at the fine print.

Why speak of unpleasant things? Sweep 'em under the rug...we're "green."

Dangerous natural gas is composed largely of the powerful climate forcing gas methane, which is combusted to drive turbines whereupon the powerful climate forcing gas methane is converted to the less powerful climate forcing gas, the dangerous fossil fuel waste carbon dioxide. Although molecule for molecule, methane is a more powerful climate forcing gas, some people, I would be one of them, believe that the extreme West Coast temperatures are driven more by carbon dioxide than methane, since there is far more carbon dioxide in our international fossil fuel waste dump, the planetary atmosphere, than methane.

The removal of the dangerous fossil fuel waste carbon dioxide from the waste dump, the planetary atmosphere, will require producing all of the energy now being generated to keep the air conditioners in California running, plus the energy to reverse the entropy that burning the dangerous natural gas produced. The energy to do this will be required to be generated by future generations who will be living in a burned out wasteland, in which all of the world's best ores have been mined and dumped, much of it in connection with "renewable energy."

Good luck kids...we have been so sure you could do it "by 2050" or "by 2045" or "by whatever year it is when we'll be dead and won't be concerned with our failure to care about you" that we didn't bother to do it ourselves.

Speaking "by 'such and such'" a year, "by 2024" the Diablo Canyon Nuclear Plant, which is not driving climate change but is, as of this writing producing 2,266 MW of climate change gas free power, will be shutting down because of appeals to fear and ignorance, coupled to extreme wishful thinking and a healthy dollop of denial, a situation that if it had prevailed today would mean that California would be providing 21,430 + 2,266 MW = 23,596 MW of electricity by burning dangerous natural gas and dumping the dangerous natural gas waste carbon dioxide directly into the atmosphere.

In two small buildings, the Diablo Canyon nuclear plant is producing more energy that can be provided by three truck lines from burning Oregon. It operates on 12 acres of land as a physical plant, situated on a 700 acre plot of largely undisturbed marine chaparral.

As of 18:25 PDT (6:25 PM PDT), today California has dumped 1,738,530 metric tons of the dangerous fossil fuel carbon dioxide into the planetary atmosphere to power its grid, which unsurprisingly in the age of celebration of lies, is described as "green." It dumped 10,892 tons in the last five minutes.

The state is laced with ton upon ton upon ton upon ton of copper wires to hook all this "green" stuff together. One hopes they don't melt.

History will not forgive us, nor should it.

[rockfordfile]

1. Here's to the firefighters, who are fighting the fires

[Hugh_Lebowski]

2. I think reasonable people can debate just how much more nuclear power we should be building

But shutting down Diablo Canyon, or ANY other currently functioning US nuclear power plant ... is fucking insanity, given the facts on the ground (and the atmosphere).

As I've mentioned, my first cousin (one of only two of those I have in the world), a Cal Poly Engineering School Master's graduate, worked his ENTIRE career as an engineer there (recently retired), and his wife still works there.

He's as liberal as anyone here on DU ... and he thinks it's absolutely ridiculous to be shutting that place down.

[NNadir]

3. I don't see how any such debate can be characterized as "reasonable."

Cities in Canada, God Dammit! Canada!!! are bursting into flame because of extreme hot weather.

People cannot survive without air conditioning; they can literally die by stepping outside, from heat.

It is, to me, completely unreasonable that we are not all screaming to build nuclear reactors the way Henry Kaiser built Liberty Ships in World War II.

We have sufficient plutonium isolated to make a great start, and certainly enough plutonium in used nuclear fuel to meet world energy demand for an indefinite period, a period of centuries in breed and burn settings using isolated uranium and dumped thorium.

Multiple companies have developed breed and burn reactors. They are almost "off the shelf" available. Regrettably, many of them are sodium cooled, but we could rapidly better options with a concerted effort, just like the US went from biplanes in the 1935s to B-29s in 1944.

We should be building "breed and burn" nuclear reactors on an emergency basis, since the technology exists.

From my perspective any "debate" about doing so is entirely unreasonable.

Closing Diablo Canyon is, of course, a crime against humanity, but on scale it's rather like comparing the bombing of Guernica to the firebombing of Tokyo.

We have clearly been out of time for at least 20 years, but right now the entire world is literally on fire. One would need to be as stupid as Donald Trump to not see it.

I don't see anything "reasonable" about a debate on this topic.

[Hugh_Lebowski]

4. You know NNadir, when a man of science like yourself starts out a post with obvious hyperbole like

"Cities in Canada, God Dammit! Canada!!! are bursting into flame because of extreme hot weather."

It undermines your authority a little bit. I'm just saying.

And I didn't say we shouldn't be building SOME additional nuclear power facilities, I just said one can reasonably debate 'How much'.

Don't we still have a bit of a problem with a giant global infrastructure and sunk costs reliant upon portable liquid fuels? Diesel trucks, trains, ships, tractors, harvesters, earth-movers ... as well as planes that require highly concentrated hydrocarbons?

Can nuclear power solve this particular conundrum? Honest question. You don't seem a fan of 'batteries', so ...

[NNadir]

5. You call it hyperbole. By contrast, I consider it a statement of fact.

The New York Times, which is, I admit, often hyperbolic in claiming that we need to elevate Fukushima over all other energy disasters, including the death of 7 million people per year from air pollution, and indeed climate change, used the word erased in their headline:

Heat Wave Spread Fire That ‘Erased’ Canadian Town

OK, perhaps it's a little hyperbole to say "city" rather than "town," but it's not like Lytton is the only community destroyed in heat wave generated fires, but it is North of the Canadian border, which makes a little, um, indicative of a reality, no?

I have no affection for our "giant global infrastructure" because our "giant global infrastructure" is killing us, literally. It's rather like my father's statement that he "needed" a cigarette when he had lung cancer.

As for "authority," I don't have any. If I did have any, things would be very different.

I have spent my entire adult life considering this problem with careful attention to some of the engineering details, beginning with the constituents of used nuclear fuel. I have considered heat networks, supercritical water desalination, Heather Willauer's beautiful approach to making jet fuel using ion exchange and the CO2 in seawater, (which is only a "starting point" ), the solubility of an array of transition elements in liquid actinides, reverse Allam cycles, air driven Brayton cycles to destroy ambient methane, HFC's, CFCs, N2O, SF6 etc., flows in thermochemical water splitting cycles, Rankine cycles...ad nauseum...

I shared these ideas with my rather well educated little brat recently who informed his mother they were "elegant." (Maybe she'll forgive me for all this time spent in the basement reading obscure scientific papers.) Things will be far worse for his world than they were for mine, and it is my hope he, among many other highly educated people in his magnificent generation, can understand and address the urgency, be a "great generation," something clearly in them after our generation's insipid worship of our "giant infrastructure," for which history will not forgive us.

We're still all talking about how we'd like to go to Mars with Elon Musk, while they're facing a burning Earth.

If I had "authority," I would declare "war" on our "giant global infrastructure," maybe beginning at the ironically military base at Camp Pendleton, which happens to be right next to the 4000 tons of used nuclear fuel at San Onofre. I'd build one or two small 5 or 10 MW nuclear reactors using the disgusting California "giant infrastructure" electrical grid, and use to power generated by these these to begin electrochemically refining the 4000 tons of used nuclear fuel there, on site, and let the heat network and network of additional reactors run on that refined fuel, right up into the mountains in Eastern Pendleton, refining seawater, providing water, clean energy, right out into the Imperial Valley.

There are literally hundreds of other places where similar things could be done, Indian Point on the Hudson River, Humbolt, the Long Island Sound in Connecticut, even (gasp) Fukushima, the subject of stupid hyperbole, if ever there was stupid hyperbole.

Perhaps my statements seem like hyperbole because all I ever hear is hyperbole. In the age of the celebration of the lie, both on the right and, sadly, even on the left, hyperbole has become the only means of discourse. It's our language.

Humanity is at a crossroad, a desperate crossroad. A hyperbola has two paths on two arms, two that rise and two that sink. Which path should we follow?

A town in Canada burst into flame after experiencing temperatures higher than 43°C. That's a fact.

Facts matter.

There is hell to pay that even under this extreme, we still don't get it, that it can be considered hyperbole to note it.

Maybe you think after a lifetime now approaching its end, decades of very hard work, and the realization of what might have been and isn't, I need to be cute and careful in my considerations, and engage in "debates." To what purpose, should I "debate" with what is alleged to be "reason" with allegedly "reasonable" people about "how much" nuclear power should be built? To me, the question is very similar to the question of "debating" how many people should receive Covid vaccinations. I do, rather arrogantly, claim that I know far more than most people about nuclear energy, and therefore concede that my views are therefore esoteric, but to me the question of "how much" nuclear power should be built is rather obvious.

We should call in the Marine's (base) and places like it, and built as much nuclear infrastructure as we can build, as fast as we can build it, eliminating our "giant infrastructure" as fast as it can be replaced.

OK boomer?

[Hugh_Lebowski]

6. I don't think the place burst into flames simply from the heat of the sun

That's the point I was making. Something started the fire(s) ... a tossed cigarette, a campfire that wasn't put out properly, a trailer chain dragging on the asphalt kicking up sparks, someone pulling over onto dry grass, a kid playing with matches or a magnifying glass, etc.

The ambient heat then would've caused the conflagration to be more intense and difficult to extinguish. You're a scientist, you know it's hyperbolic to imply a city (or town) just spontaneously burst into flames from 109.4F weather. Phoenix, where I live, gets hotter than this, regularly, and the place doesn't burst into flames even in 116F weather.

Also ... what ARE we to do about all the ships, trains, semi trucks, tractors, harvesters, and airplanes, and similar heavy equipment type stuff ... that need liquid (hydrocarbon) fuels?

And what about passenger cars? You don't see to be real big on batteries, but maybe I misread you at some point.

I can't even believe people are wasting time and resources on space travel right now, not even the NASA project (cool as it is to fly a drone on Mars) seems remotely prudent to me. And we do need a Manhattan Project level effort here to combat climate change. Couldn't agree more.

I'd also add that more than anything, we need negative population growth (esp. in developed countries), and to adjust our world economy to NOT be 100% dependent on perpetual growth ... THAT, IMHO, is the single biggest driver of the crisis.

As an aside, I'm sorry to be the bad guy, but I don't want people migrating from countries with lower emissions to countries of higher emissions (unless they're scientists coming to help), frankly. I'm fundamentally opposed to people migrating to the USA from Central America (for example) to 'find a better life'. Not cause I dislike them, not at all. But because of what it means for the climate when they do so. It's not 'a good thing' in my eyes.

Anyways, I appreciate your passion and respect your opinion my man. Thanks for sharing.

[NNadir]

21. As for your serious questions...

...I have addressed many of those in various writings, most in the Science forum, and eslewhere.

I'm not big on batteries, to be sure, but I'm even less big on the entire car CULTure, if you must know. People argue that they need cars, but don't stop to ask themselves why they "need" cars.

The car CULTure is not sustainable, period, and all the stupid rhetoric we hear among the bourgeoisie cannot change that. It's a matter of physics. The invention of the automobile to solve the terrible problem of horse manure in cities and the terrible problem of railroad robber barons created a nearly irretrievable environmental problem.

I am not willing to concede that the future of humanity should be subject to our "need" to "drive" to Walmart.

As for ships; the Navy has been running nuclear powered ships, big ships and small ships for better than half a century. About 10% of climate change is derived from marine traffic. It is easily solved with old technology developed in the 1950's and 1960s.

I have written at length about the wonder fuel DME probably hundreds of times for tractors and other necessary self propelled vehicles, ambulances and fire trucks for instance. There are probably tens of thousands of papers that have been written about it via the hydrogenation of carbon dioxide.

Google scholar gives 37,700 hits in less than one second for the search terms, "dimethyl ether" fuel.

I have also written about thermochemical water and carbon dioxide splitting cycles, the latter equivalent to the first via the water gas reaction. There are also probably many thousands, if not tens of thousands of papers on this topic. In fact, I just ran google scholar on the search term "thermochemical cycle" and generated 9800 hits in less than a second.

It is well understood that negative population growth is observed in precisely those areas where people are secure in their homes, well educated, well fed and well employed. This might suggest that the issue is poverty.

I will not dignify a remark about how poor people in poor countries have no right to live like us because they're not us with a response to it.

I will say this:

Guess what? The citizens of China and India did not agree to remain desperately poor so that smug North Americans can sit around and brag about how wonderful they are because they drive one of Elon Musk's cars for the oblivious and the indifferent.

If you care about "over population" you might start by caring about poverty, worldwide poverty, not just poverty among the homeless in LA.

Sorry, but I would not agree that a citizen of Honduras has any fewer human rights than I do. There's no reason that they should remain impoverished so I have someone to pick raspberries for a raspberry jubilee at a high end restaurant.

I do not know the ignition source of the Lytton fire and didn't imply that I did. However, if one pours gasoline over a building without lighting it, and walks away, and it then catches fire, it will likely burst into flame. One would not be remiss in claiming that the burst was caused by the gasoline. I say heat caused the Lytton fire. If you do not agree, I cannot help you.

I really don't need to defend this, but you do not have any information that solar heat didn't ignite the fire any more than I have that it did.

If one looks at reaction curves in a thermodynamic setting, and one recognizes their statistical nature, which implies that the activation energy of a thermodynamically favorable reaction may be locally observed on a molecular level initiating a chain reaction - thermodynamically favorable chain reactions are the class of reactions in which all fires belong - one can then grasp that fires are not always necessarily caused by flames, or even sparks. If one enters the term "spontaneous combustion" into Google Scholar, one will get 36,000 hits in less than one second, many, if not most referring to coal fires. Adding the term "biomass" reduces the number of hits to around 4000.

Here's just one among them: Laboratory Investigation on the Spontaneous Combustion of a Lignocellulosic Biomass and Its Suppression by Chemical Inhibitors (Yibo Tang and Jinqiang Zhou Energy & Fuels 2020 34 (4), 4693-4702)

But I didn't say that the ignition source was the sun; I said the town burst into flame, and, maybe I'm being stupid, but I contend that drying an geographical area filled with biomass, which certainly doesn't include Phoenix as an example, at high temperatures will cause any ignition source (activation energy in thermodynamics) to cause the flames to burst rather than smolder.

It is a fact that the combustion of the town of Lytton was extreme, and I consider it a fact, even if you question it, that the word "burst into flame" is appropriate and does not consist of hyperbole.

Facts matter.

[Hugh_Lebowski]

22. Dimethyl Ether ... I shall investigate this at your behest ...

Last edited Mon Jul 12, 2021, 12:52 AM - Edit history (1)

But as far as this part goes:

"I will not dignify a remark about how poor people in poor countries have no right to live like us because they're not us with a response to it.

I will say this:

Guess what? The citizens of China and India did not agree to remain desperately poor so that smug North Americans can sit around and brag about how wonderful they are because they drive one of Elon Musk's cars for the oblivious and the indifferent.

If you care about "over population" you might start by caring about poverty, worldwide poverty, not just poverty among the homeless in LA.

Sorry, but I would not agree that a citizen of Honduras has any fewer human rights than I do. There's no reason that they should remain impoverished so I have someone to pick raspberries for a raspberry jubilee at a high end restaurant."

At NO POINT did I say "poor people in poor countries have no right to live like us because they're not us", or really ANYTHING you just asserted. That's literally strawman after strawman after strawman on your part.

Anyways, so is it your position that ALL the 6B+ people currently existing on this planet could totally be existing at the 'standard of living' that we have in North America ... while we still, as a world population, effectively combat climate change ... with our 'happy motoring' culture (that you, separately in this SAME POST, admonish as foolish) ... if we'd just build many, many dozens of nuclear power plants, and that this goal of elevating the standard of living to 'USA' levels for 6B residents of the planet ... is one we need (and should) to simultaneously pursue?

Cause honestly if you think that is ANY WAY SHAPE OR FORM 'practical', then I have to discount anything I've ever seen you try to argue on these boards. To not put too fine a point on it ... there's no fucking way.

The entire FIRST world needs to be willing to accept a REDUCTION in standard of living, or this planet is screwed. We can argue about the 'fairness' factor, whether 'Mericans' deserve a better standard of living than Hondurans, but if you actually care about the long-term outcome, you'd argue that we need to live more like Hondurans here in the USA, not that we should import Hondurans here to live like us.

The PROBLEM ... is the actions of the 'First World' ... but the solution is NOT importing people from 2nd and 3rd World countries ... to the First World, to build up the population of the First World, with its inherently energy-profligate ways.

I honestly can't even believe you're remotely serious about this argument you've posited above.

[hunter]

24. "energy-profligate ways" are not the path to happiness...

... but HUGE amounts of energy are already required to support the current human population, even those living in extreme poverty.

Most of this energy is now supplied by fossil fuels.

If we quit fossil fuels without resort to nuclear power it's likely those people living in extreme poverty will be among the first to die. A certain number of the very wealthy will be eaten as well.

Nuclear power is the only technology we have that can entirely displace fossil fuels without some rather extreme economic disruptions. Wind and solar power can't accomplish that for the simple reason that the sun doesn't always shine and the wind doesn't always blow.

As an aside, Dimethyl Ether is an excellent synthetic fuel which can be used for transportation, cooking, heating, electricity generation, etc., anyplace electricity from the grid is limited or not available. DME can be sold in refillable bottles like propane. Enjoy your BBQ.

DME is probably not the best choice for airlines, but those could be powered by other synthetic "carbon neutral" fuels very similar to current petroleum based jet fuels.

[MineralMan]

8. I find it interesting that you mention your "little brat" in the post above.

Below, I replied to your initial post, linking climate change to global population growth. That is the root cause of it, regardless of technological causes. Demand by the global population for energy, for whatever reason, is why we are burning so much fossil fuel.

I bring this up because you have apparently contributed to the growth of the global population, by your own admission.

I did not. In 1965, I made a pledge not to reproduce, due to the clear impact of global population grown. I have fulfilled that pledge. I have no "little brats." At age 75, I'm certain that I will not add any offspring to the flood of humanity. Yet, global population continues to grow, does it not?

Think on that, if you please.

[NNadir]

11. You're just a great guy. The best. Stupendous. Fabulous.

I care about the future because I've had to look the future in the eye.

You're absolutely the best however, because you never needed to be so bothered.

[MineralMan]

13. Bending the facts do not change them, I'm afraid.

[NNadir]

15. Please don't talk to me about "facts" OK?

Stick to reading wills and arranging moving trucks. You're good at that.

[MineralMan]

16. LOL! You have cut me to the quick...

[MineralMan]

7. Hyperbole doesn't solve our problems. It never has.

You appear to like nuclear power plants. I lived in San Luis Obispo County when Diablo Canyon was built. To say it was not universally wanted would be an extreme understatement. The arguments against nuclear power generation are still as valid as they were back in the 1970s. We still have no plan to safely dispose of nuclear waste. Nobody has come up with a feasible way to do that, and perhaps never will.

Carbon dioxide is, indeed, a global warming gas. Every living thing that breathes oxygen produces that gas. So, increased population increases the amount of that gas in the atmosphere. It also increases the demand for natural gas and other fossil fuel power plants, along with the need for transportation, which still is powered, in one way or another by fossil fuel power generation, whether the vehicle burns that fossil fuel or charges its batteries with power from a fossil fuel-powered generating plant.

You actually offer no real solution with your hyperbolic claims. Rants do not create solutions. They merely focus on one aspect of the problem. The bottom line is that population growth has fueled climate change. That is the root cause of it. Everything else is a secondary result of there being almost 8 billion people on this planet. All of those people must eat and seek shelter that protects them from weather extremes. To do those things, they must exchange their labor for tokens they can spend to meet their needs.

Everything has its origins in human needs, for better or worse.

Nuclear power generation is not the solution. You mentioned Fukushima, as well you might, but you dismissed it as if it didn't illustrate the danger of that method of generating electricity. That's patently ridiculous, actually.

[NNadir]

9. Well, besides ranting, I spent a lot of time opening technical papers and science books.

I appreciate your remarks, similar many of which I've heard repeatedly over many decades, but the appreciation of them is not appreciation of them as insight, but rather as denial.

I could of course, rant about the concerns of old people in my generation, but my "rants" are concerned with what we are leaving for future generations. My generation should get out of the way if all we can say is "we need fossil fuels."

I could, of course, talk endlessly about "wills" for example, but I am more concerned what we are willing to a future generation, a burned out world - if you consider that "hyperbole" I couldn't care less - and extreme climate change.

You care about "Fukushima" - a concern that I regard as hyperbole in the extreme to the point of nonsense - since I read scientific literature like this report from one of the most prestigious medical journals in the world, Lancet:

It is the most recent full report from the Global Burden of Disease Report, a survey of all causes of death and disability from environmental and lifestyle risks: Global, regional, and national comparative risk assessment of 79 behavioural, environmental and occupational, and metabolic risks or clusters of risks, 1990–2015: a systematic analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study 2015 (Lancet 2016; 388: 1659–724) One can easily locate in this open sourced document compiled by an international consortium of medical and scientific professionals how many people die from causes related to air pollution, particulates, ozone, etc.

If your read it carefully, to the point of looking for all the deaths associated with radiation from the big bogeyman at Fukushima with the 70 million people who died from air pollution, you might come up with a different definition of hyperbole.

You are aware that the natural disaster at Fukushima, 20,000 people died from seawater. How many from radiation? Any idea? Buildings collapsed as a result of the tsunami. Would be hyperbolic to state in my wise old age that buildings in coastal cities are "too dangerous?" People drowned in their cars from the tsunami's water. Would it be too hyperbolic to say that driving cars in coastal cities is "too dangerous?"

Excuse me if I dismiss your rhetoric, which I've been hearing for ten years ever since Fukushima from people who want to add judgements as to whether or not I have considered the "solution."

I have yet to hear from any bourgeois consumer type that the problem is "just" population who has agreed to commit suicide as a result.

Thank you, by the way, for informing me with your wisdom how carbon dioxide is made by living things. I am a working scientist who has engaged in many thousands of scientific projects in a long life. I have of course, considered the matter at the level of mitochondrial proteomics using high resolution mass spec, but I'm very impressed, in an amused sort of way, that you seem to feel the solution might be to simply acknowledge respiration as a source of carbon dioxide and be done with it.

The problem is a wee bit more complex, but I won't bother you with it.

You once lived near Diablo Canyon, so you're some kind of expert, I guess, in spite of an extremely uninformed understanding of how it works.

You know, I'm an old man too. At least I have the guts and insight to feel grief for what we have done to future generations, who will not, and should not forgive us.

If that escapes you, that's hardly my problem, but given climate change, it is the problem of every living thing.

[MineralMan]

12. I'm afraid your viewpoint is far too narrow for me

to take seriously. You are talking about technical issues, which are important of course. But you ignore the fundamental issue that drives it all. Science often sees things from a very narrow perspective, focused on a particular discipline. That is what I'm seeing in your rant.

[NNadir]

17. I'm afraid that your viewpoint lacks any depth, and then is of very little interest to a scientist.

Science and engineering drive the world. If you consider yourself too wise to appreciate it, if somehow, you consider yourself "above it" or to "see it" for what it is, well then, you are in no position to judge it.

I do not work in the nuclear industry, but I am an expert in it. I work in the pharmaceutical industry where we save lives, except of course, as we're seeing in the case of Covid, the lives of people who regard themselves as "above science."

You would, of course, have to know some science, to know how broad and deep it is, but if you don't, at least don't feel that you have some right to denigrate what it says.

Nuclear energy saves lives.

Prevented Mortality and Greenhouse Gas Emissions from Historical and Projected Nuclear Power (Pushker A. Kharecha* and James E. Hansen Environ. Sci. Technol., 2013, 47 (9), pp 4889–4895)

It follows as a corollary that anti-science, anti-nuclear rhetoric kills people.;

[hunter]

19. Whether or not you have children...

... I'll bet you'd like to skip the part where global warming kills billions of humans in the most horrible ways imaginable.

There's no possibility at all that natural gas power plants with supplemental wind and solar power will prevent that, or even reduce the suffering. To the extent it's profitable, these hybrid power systems will make things much worse.

There is more than enough natural gas in the ground to destroy the earth's environment as we know it.

I traveled with several prominent (at the time) anti-nuclear activists and met Jerry Brown at one of the Diablo Canyon anti-nuclear rallies when he proclaimed "No new nukes!"

He was wrong about nuclear power. I was wrong about nuclear power.

The amount of natural gas burned since then has done tremendous damage to the earth and killed millions of people, more so than nuclear power, more so then nuclear weapons development.

And it's only going to get worse.

[Elessar Zappa]

10. Good post.

Nuclear energy is a huge part of the solution. As a millennial I confess to being a little angry at previous generations for causing and not addressing this mess. Hopefully my generation will get to work and do what’s necessary to slow down the coming apocalypse.

[NNadir]

14. I have great hopes for your generation. We have dumped a tragedy on you, for which I feel ashamed.

The fact is however, that greatness is nearly impossible without great challenges.

If nothing else, at least we left you with information. If you separate it from disinformation, and you have it in you to do that, you will succeed.

[Hortensis]

18. Reportedly the fire has so far reduced power to CA by "up to 5500 megawatts."

Not that I know what that means in practical terms.

[NNadir]

20. Today, as a practical matter, it doesn't mean much.

The wind is blowing, which is not good for controlling fires, but makes wind turbines less useless. California's peak wind capacity is on the order of 6000 MW, and as of 14:00 PDT, (1:00 PM PDT), it was producing 3,097 MW or roughly 50% of peak capacity.

If however, the wind turbines were operating at 511 MW, on a work day as opposed to a weekend, as they were at 10:40 am two days ago, or less than 10% of rated capacity, the situation would be different.

The peak demand for today, a Sunday, is predicted by CAISO to be around 38,107 MW. In my limited experience, the predicted peak is usually close to the observed peak. Tomorrow's peak is predicted to be around 40,375 MW. Of course, all power systems do keep reserves, but when the reserves are tested, emergencies result.

Unlike yesterday, no emergencies have been declared today.

The reserves in California are less predictable because they depend on the weather and the position of the sun. Peaks are almost always observed around the time the sun is falling and solar power is declining.

Those are the times that California burns gas. Whether there is enough gas capacity is another question. The economics of reliable plants is affected by brief periods when electricity becomes worthless because the wind is blowing while the sun is shining. This drives up power prices because the O&M charges still apply. (This is why Germany and Denmark have the highest consumer electricity prices in the OECD.)

Whether or not 5500 MW is a big whack depends on the weather. If the wind is blowing, maybe it won't be a big deal. In the case of Dunkelflaute, it will be a big deal. The situation is likely to get more dire as the summer proceeds, since the Lake Oroville reservoir is likely to go off line in August because of extreme drought, the drought relating to the fact that all the caterwauling about so called "renewable energy" over the last half a century did nothing to address climate change.

The live CAISO website is here: California ISO

[Hortensis]

23. Thanks for the explanation. Power conservation warning issued

for this evening due to "unreliable" transmission lines. We lived in California for decades, annual wildfires like earthquakes a fact of life, but the fires were nothing like this.

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