Asked and answered.
[Emily Litella] Never mind! [/Emily]
Don’t be in such a hurry to capitulate. You may be able to at least salvage your thread title, if not your dignity. You may have just had the wrong angle of attack:
Reeder, will you please stop uncritically passing along articles you pick up on Democratic/liberal/leftist websites? Aren’t you ashamed of yourself?
And Bricker, by the authority vested in me by myself, I am awarding you the decoration of “Hero of the Straight Dope” with oak leaf cluster. Wear it proudly, soldier.
Wow Chefguy, that article would be pretty damning if any of it were true. At the very least it’s more interesting and more plausible than anything Reeder has ever posted here.
This has to be one of the best posts I’ve read in a year, in terms of explaining cause and effect, with cites, regardless of topic or side.
From Reeder:
In a word, no. Considering the fact that it’s not even clear exactly why the chain of events in the Northeast happened, or what the actual engineering root cause failure is, and considering the fact that the timing between the legislation, RFPs, bidding, selection, design, procurement, construction, testing, and “lighting up” could be as much as 3-5 years on a T&D line upgrade, or even if any of these funds whatsoever would have been directed towards that particular line, let alone that portion of the utility system, State, or even Region of the USA (the Amendment was for “loan guarantees” which were completely untargeted and undirected towards any particular portion, aspect, or feature of the grid, and could just as easily all gone to the Oregon-California region, or the Northern Alabama region, both of which had been under some stress at the time of consideration) it is safe to say that this legislation would have had no impact whatsoever on the current blackout situation.
This is almost like saying “Republicans voted down an aid package to Bolivia, which could not be waylaid by Marxist rebels, which led to the same Marxist rebels going hungry, which led to their breaking into the house of someone with a satelite TV, where they saw the trailers for Grind and become so disgusted with American culture they developed a new biological weapon to wipe out the skater culture of Satan. Except they never really voted it down, it was just a procedural mess. Nonetheless, Republicans are still guilty of genocide!” (now there’s a quote from me someone will use out of context. 
)
Independent of which party is guilty… one must wonder how useful politicians in general are… $350 million might have prevented (if done much earlier) way bigger losses in business and emergency problems with the blackout.
Every country its the same thing… X wasnt spent but 2X was lost due to problems that happen later.
I presented it as editorial for discussion. You’re saying it isn’t true without offering anything but your opinion. Anything to back up your claim?
Hindsight is 20/20 and all of that, so I am not looking to point blame. But, we have recently shifted the focus of much of our federal government to making the country more secure. It seems as the whole thing was a deck of cards, which seems like one of the first things that should have been identified as a potential target of terrorism.
Yes, I know DHS scrambled rapidly to protect sensitive areas, and nuclear power plants were never in jeopardy or anything like that. But the fact is that a few nuclear power plants did go offline. The fact is that one transmission line in Ohio caused massive inconvenience for 50 million people.
One of the main reasons the Department of Homeland Security was created was because of the stunning intelligence failures before 9/11. Since 9/11 the federal government has had a wide mandate to identify and secure potential targets. The fact that this has not been accomplished with something so important as the electric grid makes me somewhat more worried about the job that they are doing with other things, like the water and food supply, port and airport security, communication systems, and so forth.
I was told (but can not confirm) that the much-hated G. Gordon Liddy wrote a book/article a while back focusing on key “pinch points” of the American electric power situation, such as:
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Key substations with heavily customized transformer arrays that would be difficult to replace.
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Key main lines and switches that are remote and hard to get to.
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Key rail lines that coal power plants are dependent upon, as well as coal terminals (in fact, I know so much about this I don’t post on it for not wanting to draw attention to it)
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Key power plants that prop up “weak” portions of the grid.
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Major natural gas line bottlenecks, especially at Mississippi, MIssouri, and Ohio River crossings.
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Key oil terminals, tank farms, and refineries.
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Key dams and hydro facilities.
Allegedely, his work is described as a “Terrorists’ Guide to US Vulnerability”. But I can’t find it listed anywhere. I suppose that, if we wanted to, me and about 5 or 6 colleagues could write a similar work for wide distribution, if we wanted to be irresponsible.
It’s in an issue of Omni magazine from the late 1980s/early 1990s (no later than 1990). IIRC, one of Liddy’s recommendations in the article is that if you don’t know who’s responsible, you pick a target you can easily beat the crap out of and invade them to keep America calm while you try and figure out who did it.
According to the book Disruptive Terrorism Victor Santoro, someone with a .22 rifle can take out a powergrid with just a couple of shots in the right places. If the terrorist is able to do enough damage in enough places (according to the book, not all that difficult) it’ll be a long time before the power company gets the lights back on everywhere because they’ll run out of spares long before he runs out of bullets, and getting the spares could take a very long time…
(Note, I make no claims for the accuracy of the claims of Mr. Santoro. Anth’s the expert on the powergrid.)
The novel Footfall by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle contains information similar to the article by Liddy on America’s volunerablitity to attack.
Anthracite:
Have you seen any moves by the government to secure any one of those “pinch points” or to alleviate the “pinchiness”?
The problem with this approach, Chefguy, is that it shifts the burden of proof from the proponent of the claim, where it belongs, to the listener.
When Reeder made his post, I didn’t undertake the research without first asking if it would have any effect. When he agreed to retract and apologize, I felt the payoff would be worth accepting, implicitly, that reversal of the burden of proof, and undertook to document each stage of the legislation.
But that one-time concession on my side should not signal a wholesale departure from the usual process of debate.
Specifically, the mere posting of an article that contains assertions that are themselves undocumented does not, without more, giver the poster standing to say, “Prove me wrong!” It is for the proponent of the claim to provide the evidence, and the more extraordinary the claim, the sturdier the evidence required.
The article you post makes a lor of assertions, but it’s from a website with a known bias, and is light on documentary. You can’t simply post it and expect your opponents to develop a rebuttal. That’s not debate.
- Rick
[small hijack]
**
In other news, the sky seems to be falling.
[/small hijack]
I cannot comment specifically on some things, but in general…the truth is, I’m somewhat worried about portions of the power production network in certain areas. One key thing that people don’t consider is the congestion and weakness of coal deliveries to power plants. Remember that between 50-55% of all US electricity is coal-generated. The majority of coal plants, maybe even as many as 75% of them, only have a single source for large-scale coal deliveries. And since the mid-1990’s, in the effort to reduce inventories related to utility companies switching from being regulated to competitive, an alarming number of coal plants which used to have a “typical” 60-day supply of coal on-site have dropped to 30-day or under supplies. Many coal plants are supplied by a single rail source, with no backup. Let’s look at one State that is my favourite - Arizona. Look at the South - the Apache and Irvington plants are supplied by a single line - the Southern Pacific. Coronado, Springerville, and Cholla are supplied by a single line as well - the BNSF. And Coronado and Springville are sort of on a “dead end”. So, say four key pieces of track are taken out - we have five plants with essentially no coal access to them (Navaho has its own private railway). According to the 1999 EIA figures (sorry, my better ones are on laptop2 and 3), Arizona has a total power production capability of about 16,536 MW Gross. If these five plants go, there is risk to a total of:
400 MW + 1100 MW + 840 MW + 175 MW + 850 MW = 3365 MW. However, this does not tell the whole story, as the generating capability numbers do not tell how much generation is done over the year.
http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/electricity/st_profiles/arizona/az.html#t5
Over the year, coal supplies about 45.2% of Arizona’s electricity. Now, taking out Navaho from the equation (which is about 2400 MW or so, not counted above in my sum), we still end up with perhaps a 35% or so loss of electricity in the State, possibly for some time, if there is a major attack on the rail systems. How long can the plants go without deliveries? I know, but won’t say. It’s worrisome. (plus, it’s not just a matter of the raw power available, but the balancing of load and transmission over the grid, as we have seen…)
In general, there has been no real attempt that I have seen to fix the issues pointed out by Liddy (thanks, Tuckerfan!) in the Omni article. There have been small improvements, and the rail lines are slowly improving. But I would refer people to the non-stop resistance that the DM&E rail line has seen, which is trying to bring a much-needed alternate supply route of coal from Wyoming and Montana to the Mississippi River terminals, and which is having to fight nuisance lawsuit after nuisance lawsuit.
There have been some natural gas line improvements, but some new pinch points have been created in various areas - some of it due to or resulting from the California issue. In fact, I know of not one but two power plants that, in the 1980’s could have reached full capacity on natural gas, but are now prevented from doing so, due to pinch points in the distribution system. This results in nearly 250 MW less capacity than they are capable of - roughly, a possible shortfall of a quarter million homes worth.
Anth, two things that you’re neglecting, I think.
1.) It’s a royal PITA to open a new coal mine, IIRC, and I know that many of the mines which are still in operation are having trouble making ends meet. (Talked to a blacksmith a few weeks back and asked him where he got his coal [I *love* the smell of burning coal, BTW] and he said it was difficult to get, so he buys a truckload whenever he can find some to ensure he always has it on hand.) So, not only does it appear that the supply chains are vulnerable, but also our sources for coal as well. (If there’s only a handful of coal mines in operation, then a well placed strike at just a few of them could have a long lasting effect.)
2.) If the terrorists were able to take out huge hunks of the US powergrid (and despite their successes on 9/11 I really don’t think they’re that smart) at one time, you can bet that if we’ve got a sensible gov’t in DC (sensible in the sense that it knows which side it’s bread is buttered on and that if they don’t act fast, their heads will be on a plate come November) every environmental, legal, and safety regulation will be tossed out of the window in the effort to get things up and running as quickly as possible. (Of course, they’ll have to spend years working to correct this afterwards, but by then it’ll be page 12 news and not giant bold headlines.)
And really, I think it is going to take a massive terror attack to correct the problems with the power grid. We 'Mericans are just too fat and lazy to be bothered with such things unless there is an emergency.
If I had said “Here’s the truth, dammit” then I would agree, but I made no such claim. My purpose is posting was to present an alternate slant on the OP, expressed by someone with (apparently) better resources than I have. If it was my opinion, I would have presented some sort of substantiation. Since Apos presented his own opinion, I assumed that since he seemed to dismiss the entire thing out of hand, he had a reason for doing so. I wasn’t asking him to “prove me wrong”. I was asking him the basis of his opinion.
IMO, dismissing the editorial because it comes from “a website with a known bias” is disingenuous on your part. I have yet to see a news source that doesn’t contain bias of one stripe or another. Would a quotation from Fox have pleased you? Based on the high caliber of your postings, I would say that that is a rhetorical question on my part.
Posters are scolded and excoriated on these forums for posting opinion without basis. I don’t believe that I am out of line for asking that this poster’s opinions be accompanied by some sort of reason for same.
This is not true at all for the US power supply. There is a huge excess of coal capacity available in this country, both in terms of current mine operations which could be ramped up if needed, and in terms of economically and “environmentally” idled mines. Your blacksmith friend most likely is interested in a specific type of low-phosphorus low-sulfur metallurgical anthracite coal, which can be hard(er) to find, but which has nothing to do with the coal power industry, or even coking plants. In fact, there are more than 1550 operating coal mines in the US by my last count, and some States are very eager to streamline opening of new mines and find a market for their coals - such as Illinois and Ohio, which have been shut out of many markets as time goes by, due to the outrageously high sulfur content of their coals.
Maybe, maybe not. There’s no real fast way to bring a missing 3000 MW online in a few months time in any part of the US. Perhaps rail system repairs can be fast-tracked (no pun intended), but this would depend on the nature of the disaster or attack.
Let me clarify what I meant. I know we’ve got tons of coal in this country (I grew up in Ohio, and have toured coal mines there and in West Virginia.), but there’s a strong anti-coal movement among environmentalists. So much so that a planned coal mine operation in TN is being hampered in opening because of it. Folks are also trying to get TVA to switch to using something other than coal in their powerplants, because of air pollution. Last I heard was that employment in the coal mining industry was dropping across the country because the demand for coal was down. Now, obviously you know more about the industry than I do, so I’m not going to try to argue the point because it would be futile on my part (I’ve more important futile things to work on. 
). My point was that it might be easier to take out a mine (kind of difficult, I realize, but not impossible) and cause power disruptions than it would to try and take out a powerplant.
As for the blacksmith, we didn’t get into a discussion as to the type of coal he was using and he seemed to indicate that it was difficult to find coal period. Perhaps that’s because the mines don’t want to deal in small amounts. He stated that it was getting harder and harder for him to find it and that there weren’t many mines operating in this area anymore.
The problem with this approach is that it permits you to present unsubstantiated opinion by proxy. The mere fact that you offer a link, rather than your own opinion, does not remove the burden of proof from you.
Now, if the link is a article that is cited, and offers supporting documentation, you’re not in bad shape. But if the link consists - as this one did - of a series of gratuitous assertions, then you cannot offer it for discussion without some additional support; as my debate teacher was fond of reminding us many years ago, “A gratuitous assertion may be equally gratuitously denied.” So it’s perfectly proper for someone to dismiss a set of gratuitous assertions out of hand.
No matter where an article comes from, it must consist of supported facts, not conclusory allegations and assertions.
However, to answer your question, if a Fox article offered citations to fact, and so did an article from the website you provided, I’d be more inclined to believe the Fox facts – and the New York Times would trump them both, nothwithstanding their recent difficulties.
I say this because websites such as your offering seem all too eager to advance their agenda without a high regard for accuracy. Fox, while undeniably possessed of an agenda, does at least employ people whose responsibility it is to check the facts, and has at least some commitment to journalistic accuracy. It’s not the best, to be sure, but it beats the inaptly named “truthout.org” handily. And the Times, while arguably a hotbed of liberal thought, is much better than Fox in terms of assuring their facts are in order.
To what inferences those facts give rise is, of course, the purpose of debate. In this regard, the Times holds no particular high ground.
- Rick