I’m a native Southern Californian. I lived in L.A. for 18 years. It doesn’t get that cold in the winter, though I’ll admit to using the heater occasionally. But every year, it seems, there was at least one report of a poor family that couldn’t afford heat who died of carbon monoxide poisoning wile trying to heat their home with a charcoal grill.
I don’t think that the people who can’t afford heat are the ones who will be going out buying new houses with these state-controlled thermostats. But still, who decides how cold is too cold? If someone does get too cold and tries to heat their house with a charcoal grill (perhaps they have one in the back yard, but hasn’t had a chance to buy a space heater), then would not the state be at least partially responsible for any injuries?
It has to be more than that. They built peak-use generators after the first rolling blackouts. They create GHG’s. I don’t know if they’re more efficient but I’m going out on a limb and say no.
Soooooo, prior to the election, Bush was in the California power utility business and that caused the blackouts but when he became President he stopped doing it? OKee Doke. So why are they predicting power problems this year requiring big brother to step in? And by big brother I mean the wackadoo legislators of California.
I’m in LA, which is not part of the deregulation scheme, since the utility is city owned. We didn’t have rolling blackouts during the power crisis, and I haven’t heard of any projections of rolling blackouts in the near future for us (but I could have missed them, I guess).
Why is it that LA is able to avoid rolling blackouts while the other utilities can’t? I’m genuinely asking this question. Has LA been busily constructing plants while the private utilities haven’t done so?
Is it ridiculous to suggest that a private company providing electricity might not necessarily benefit from always providing sufficient power for everyone?
A publicly owned electricity generator will not want to irritate voters by having them periodically melting in the summer.
A privately owned generator, assuming they wish to maximise income from selling electricity over the lifetime of a plant, would presumably like to avoid a situation where they have redundant generating capacity. It seems logical that they would therefore prefer a situation where there is only *adequate *capacity.
Perhaps there’s legislation in place to avoid this apparent contradiction.
Or my argument could be bollocks.
Not at all. Bush was already President. And the artificiality of the power shortage of the time was well known, but the investigations and lawsuits were stopped when the energy industry funded a recall of Grey Davis and got their stooge Schwarzenegger put in instead.
Maybe I was clear. I said it isn’t necessarily the right answer. We don’t have a moratorium on the building of power plants, but I don’t think we’re willing to just build an unlimited number of them to satisfy whatever demand is out there. A balance will have to be struck between the growing demands for power, and the need to reduce greenhouse gases. Your original post implied that we could just build another one whenever we needed more juice.
That this is even being considered is revolting. I like my air conditioning, and already damn sure pay through the nose for it when I want my home to be a normal pleasant temperature. around 70-72 f. Not only do I pay for the service, but taxes, and fuel as well. FPNL thinks that 80 is a good temperature for me to set my thermostat at. I have it set at 70 now, and I’m lazing about in a pair of shorts and nothing else- AND I’M STILL WARM. At 80 I feel sick and I sweat. A lot. The dog sits around panting and laying on the tile to keep cool. I’m NOT going to pay for THAT. I’m damn sure not going to PAY for a service if I cannot control my usage of it. If I could afford it, I’d keep it cooler.
That’s exactly what California did. They built a bunch of peak use generators. While these are not 24/7 365 day power plants they kick out just as much GH gasses as a regular plant. For this reason I call bullshit that they have any real moratorium beyond catering to a bunch of tree hugging nutjobs. And nowhere does this prevent building a nuclear power plant or a solar thermal plant (lots of sunshine in CA).
WTH are you talking about? There’s nothing artificial about the power plant shortage in CA. Power regulation is a state function and CA has been in a tailspin because every Governor since Davis has dropped the ball. Tell me when the last power plant was built in CA?
Nobody’s pointed out the obvious fallout from power shortages. You cut my power and I will install a generator the next day. The idea that California will in any way be able to affect GHG by screwing people is a joke. As it stands now, the state’s transportation system has created the worlds largest parking lot. Automotive dependency is just another nail in the GHG boondoggle California has created. People who can’t afford generators will simply go out and start their cars up to get cool. Or they will drive to the mall to get cool. Barring those options, they’ll simply die of heat exhaustion.
You’re calling bullshit on my post by agreeing with it? I explicitly said there wasn’t a moratorium, so I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about.
When was the last time we built a nuclear power plant? How long does it take to get one approved and built? What do we do in the meantime? Solar isn’t cost effective yet compared with conventional electricity production. You act as if there are no regulations that can’t be ignored and no lack of money to do whatever we want.
I call bullshit on your whole argument, to the extent you are even making one.
If that’s the other choice, then I stand with my original 2 as the only viable ones.
Anyway, I wasn’t necessarily advocating the proposal, but controlling someone’s thermostat isn’t as weird as it sounds when you consider that we already do much worse-- ie, shut the electricity off completely. Controlling the thermostat would be a less intrusive effort on the part of the government, if the “shut it off completely” option is still on the table.
No, they don’t. Given that peaking plants are typically simple-cycle or combined-cycle natural gas turbines, which 1) have a higher gross and net efficiency than a baseload coal plant, and 2) they burn natural gas, which has much less carbon emissions per MBtu of energy, I’m going to say “cite?”
This reminds me back in the late 80s of the debate they had when they were talking about banning smoking on airplanes.
IMPOSSIBLE! Many people screamed. Passengers will simply go in the bathroom and smoke, and possibly cause fires on the toilet paper and paper towels. They fixed that pretty quick: Install smoke detectors in the bathrooms and make simple tampering with the detectors a federal felony punishable by 10 years in the joint.
I see this going the same way. The thermostat would have some kind of sensor which would detect an immediate heat source and if someone was found with a lightbulb near it: then off to the pokey for you…