Arjen Kamphuis

Comment Threads

• Jay commented on What have we learned?
  this deeply engrained culture of "we only buy electricity from isolated big power sources," That's not entirely a cultural issue. Converting low voltage DC off a solar array to high voltage AC for the transmission grid requires some capital expense (not huge for a single site, but fairly big compared to the average customer's electric bill) and incurs some energy loss....
• heteromeles commented on What have we learned?
  Entirely true, but I have to reveal some personal information to give an idea of the scale of the "ingrained culture" issue. My local provider is SDG&E. Their liability over the 2007 Cedar wildfire (sparked by their powerlines swinging together during a high wind) is somewhere in the neighborhood of $500 million in property losses and death compensation. SDG&E wants to pass that on to their customers, a plan which has been vigorously protested. SDG&E was also partner to some, erm, inadvisable upgrades to the San Onofre nuclear power plant, resulting in the permanent closure of station and a cost...
• ocschwar commented on What have we learned?
  Here is the United States, there's been an almost-sufficient amount of media attention paid to the 50th anniversary of a church bombing in Birmingham, Alabama in 1963, in which 4 young girls were murdered. That was the 11th bombing in Birmingham that year. Local papers were printing the quip "Bombingham." Nobody panicked. There are some things to learn from teh contrast....
• paws4thot commented on What have we learned?
  You mean the bit where the meedja didn't promptly mock up the week's front pages reading variations on "OH NOES, Haz Beed Terrorist Attack in $location" (quarter of the World away)?...
• mmorgoroth commented on What have we learned?
  I ask a slightly different question. Assume that we are an organization like Contact (The Culture books by Iain M Banks). We are genuinely looking for a strategy for intervening in unpleasant societies that are an affront to all decent folk. What lessons would we learn from the interventions in Iraq,Afghanistan and Libya? What strategy will work if we wish to improve life in N Korea ? Syria ?...