kathryn.cramer

Comment Threads

• bellinghman commented on News flash: I was wrong
  According to this BBC report:The trade minister, Banri Kaida, told Reuters that the targets could cut demand by an estimated 15m kilowatts for the areas serviced by two utilities Tokyo Electric Power (Tepco) and Tohoku Electric Power. Or in units more familiar - 15 GW, a little more than that loss. That requires a fair bit of economy: Major power users have been asked to cut consumption by 25%, said the trade minister according to the Reuters news agency.Small industrial users are being asked to use 20% less power and households 15-20% less....
• bellinghman commented on News flash: I was wrong
  I suspect it's probably a case of "do it, or we'll do it for you". There's only so much power actually available, and if the load is more than the supply, there'll be brownouts, or the rolling power cuts will continue. On the other hand, if demand can be scaled back voluntarily, that might not happen....
• bellinghman commented on News flash: I was wrong
  Conservatives are more afraid of change. But that's implicit in the very name. The problem for them is that modern life is full of change....
• Charlie Stross commented on News flash: I was wrong
  Let me take a stab: the bulk of emigration to the USA came from nations experiencing some kind of convulsive change, because happy comfortable folks don't usually emigrate. So you had a bunch of people fleeing change. Again, the bulk of pre-mid-19th century emigration came from pre-industrial nations, farmers/peasants looking for land to cultivate: occupations which are inherently conservative (because if you fuck up your agricultural process in such a society you starve to death the next spring). After which we have the forced industrialization of the north-east in the mid to late 19th century, the rise of the robber...
• Charlie Stross commented on News flash: I was wrong
  You're late to the discussion (I was planning on closing in a week ago to avoid the spammers but I've been busy). TL;DR version: coal and oil kill 1.5-2.5 million people a year and are fucking over the climate. We need to get off it. Renewables: hydro has unpleasant failure modes (drowned cities) and flooding valleys generates CH4 emissions like crazy from inundated biomass. Biofuel is a cruel scam that contributes to mass starvation. Wind and solar don't provide power 24x7 so don't do much for base load demand without horrendously expensive large-scale storage systems. Tidal is good in theory,...