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Texas power issues. Wind farms getting iced up (Part II)... 38

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I grew-up in Northern Michigan and until I was five years old, we had no electricity nor running water. We heated our house with a fireplace and a wood-fired cook stove in the kitchen. My father rigged-up some lights connected to a couple of truck batteries that he recharged from his truck every few days. We had three light bulbs, one in my parents bedroom, one in the kitchen and one in the privy, out back. My mother was lucky, at least her water pump was inside the house in the kitchen. She also had a gasoline powered Maytag washing machine and an old Army surplus sound-powered, hand cranked telephone connected to my grandparent's house next door (we were the elites in the neighborhood).

John R. Baker, P.E. (ret)
EX-Product 'Evangelist'
Irvine, CA
Siemens PLM:
UG/NX Museum:

The secret of life is not finding someone to live with
It's finding someone you can't live without
 
How was CO gas taught in your youth John?

Thinking back I only got switched on to it while a teenager in the army.
 
:) It's sound a bit like our summerhouse when I was little we made the dishes with water from the Boltic sea and there was a hand pumped fresh water well beside the road where we could get drinking water or we hade to take it with us from town, and the toilet was in the outhouse no water, no light. :)
But we hade electricity. it was in the early 70's.

John with all your stories it's sound like you are a 100 years old ;-)
I appreciate you telling them.

Best Regards A

“Logic will get you from A to Z; imagination will get you everywhere.“
Albert Einstein
 
No, only 73, but there are places in America where people are still living very low-tech lives. At least I was born in a Hospital, my wife, who's 74, was born in a log cabin:

Log_Cabin_ugdm3e.jpg

March 1970 (Minolta SRT-101)

And up until about 10 or 15 years ago, it was still being used by various family members as a hunting cabin or sometimes when someone just needed a place to live for awhile. However, it finally had to be taken down as the current cousin who owns the property, and has her own modern day house on that same piece of land, was forced by her insurance company to render the building unusable as they considered it a safety hazard and wouldn't write her liability insurance:

Log_Cabin-02_nwpqfp.jpg

June 2019 (Sony a6000)

John R. Baker, P.E. (ret)
EX-Product 'Evangelist'
Irvine, CA
Siemens PLM:
UG/NX Museum:

The secret of life is not finding someone to live with
It's finding someone you can't live without
 
That reminds me that I saw a headline (I did not read it as I did not have time), about some community that was condeming homes that were off the grid. It sounded believable for some zellots, but I thought how narrow minded public officels are at times. That many homes in the past had no electric service, and the requirements for GFCI, are demanding parsite loads.

I guess we can't go back.
 
In the case of this cabin, the only thing keeping it from NOT collapsing was that one of the cousins had run about a quarter inch diameter steel cable anchored to one wall and tied to the opposite one with a big turnbuckle in the middle to keep tension on the cables. It set up near the ceiling so you could walk under it. Finally on day, either the cable broke or one of the anchor points let loose and it half fell down by itself. It only took a few good pulls with the 4X4 pickup to do the rest.

John R. Baker, P.E. (ret)
EX-'Product Evangelist'
Irvine, CA
Siemens PLM:
UG/NX Museum:

The secret of life is not finding someone to live with
It's finding someone you can't live without
 
Then it was time.
 
I quoted you directly...You have not disproven the 10 deaths in Harris County due to hypothermia...

I never attempted to disprove that the deaths were due to hypothermia, nor did I mention alcoholism or addiction. I simply stated three very common causes of hypothermia at those temps.

0-32F is often referred to as a "safe cold" bc the risk of damaging oneself is pretty low, usually the biggest concerns are staying dry and hydrated. Many folks enjoy camping in it, and the various parks' services usually dont require cold-weather training or permits until below 0F when risk increases significantly. I worked wilderness rescue for almost a decade and really enjoy being out in that westher. When I lived in Alaska the local Cub Scouts actually had a merit badge for camping at -40F which IIRC required them to be out ten nights.

Bottom line for me is that we will always have folks both unprepared for and unwilling to react to minor inconveniences, and those inconveniences are simply a fact of life.
 
Like the power outage in DC?
 
CWB1
I am not shore how you can expect people in Texas to be prepared for this minor inconveniences?
When power / gas companies in Texas are both unprepared and unwilling to do something about this "minor inconveniences" because they only happens every hundred years.

I do not think dying is a minor inconvenience. :-(
And these inconveniences are obviously only a fact of life in some places, here they are not.

Best Regards A


“Logic will get you from A to Z; imagination will get you everywhere.“
Albert Einstein
 
Question: Why is it that people who do not prepare for bad things to happen, expect that other people have prepared for them?
 
Those in the 'know' should be prepared for this and you should not have the huge loss of life... you'd expect this from a third world country, not the US.

Rather than think climate change and the corona virus as science, think of it as the wrath of God. Feel any better?

-Dik
 
Because they are not engineers, so they have to trust the engineers that design stuff for them to do their job right. Most people think having a candle and a box of matches, or a flashlight is all they'll need when the lights go out, but I'll bet they don't even have those handy, if at all and the flashlight battery is dead.
 
Well this is how my day started. I had several e-mails asking why the power went off yesterday.
Then I saw this news story.
Capture_gr2ddp.png


Gee I wonder why.
 
I can only answer for how I look at it.

The short answer is we do not have to.

The long.
It has to do with, what is considered the norm where you live.
But above all because I expect to get what I ordered and paid for.
If I have paid for an electrical connection and someone who is to supply electricity, it is included in the contract that they must do it 100%.
The same thing with water or heat if they can not deliver in the usual way, they can drive out tanks with water.
Deliveries are made 99.9% of the time and if the deliveries are not made due to maintenance or something else, they tell you in advance so that you can prepare for it.
Those who have chosen to have their own wells, power supply or heating or to be completely without, they are prepared for it in the way necessary.

Here it is not acceptable from a societal perspective either, if things do not work as it should or people die because of it.
We also pay a lot of taxes here, so we expect to get "what we pay for" that and it is better that people work and pay taxes than, that they are at home and try to take care of all of this "minor inconveniences".

Best Regards A



“Logic will get you from A to Z; imagination will get you everywhere.“
Albert Einstein
 
Question: Why is it that people who do not prepare for bad things to happen, expect that other people have prepared for them?

This is part of participation in civil society. Life is social. Chances are I won't cook my last meal and the last time my *ss is wiped, before I die, it won't be by me. Quite similar to my first meal and it's result. Edit: I'll have cooked a lot and wiped a lot in between /edit. If I'm gonna submit to the violent hegemony of the state, it should at least be for an equitable distribution of social goods instead of as fodder for capitalists.
 

It comes from having uneducated politicians and civil servants... seems to be the norm, these days.

Rather than think climate change and the corona virus as science, think of it as the wrath of God. Feel any better?

-Dik
 
I am not shore how you can expect people in Texas to be prepared for this minor inconveniences?
If I have paid for an electrical connection and someone who is to supply electricity, it is included in the contract that they must do it 100%....We also pay a lot of taxes here, so we expect to get "what we pay for"

You pay roughly double what we do stateside for most everything, resulting in half the net worth from age 18-death and a low standard of living that most Americans would never settle for. I'd probably expect 110% availability if I still lived in the EU but to each their own and I very happily don't. I'll gladly take a day or three inconvenience on occasion for the cost savings which allows me to lead a much better life. If I end up in a pinch I have many welcoming friends nearby who wont be so afflicted plus ready sources of power/heat/food at any public building, shelter, grocery, most gas stations, and many employers including my own. Having lived in the third world I can assure you that stateside this truly was a minor inconvenience at worst, and Dik's comment somewhere between truly terrible and simply ignorant.

Question: Why is it that people who do not prepare for bad things to happen, expect that other people have prepared for them?

Because the US education system today is run by the poorly educated and controlled by those with a vested interest in not teaching the concept of Americanism? Because many are spoiled rotten by some combination of modern technology, parents who gave them too easy of a life, or other factors? Take your pick, we can probably list 1M reasons.
 
and you have half a million Covid deaths to show for it, and for most people, a quality of life that is non-existant.

Rather than think climate change and the corona virus as science, think of it as the wrath of God. Feel any better?

-Dik
 
Dik,

You need to check the Covid-19 deaths per capita and vaccine rollouts of the U.S. vs Europe before you drag the pandemic into your regular anti-U.S. and anti-capitalism rants.
 
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