One Reason for the Blackout Maybe . . . Enviro Wackos {Or just wacko ?}

http://www.newsmax.com ^ | Thursday, Aug 14, 2003 | Alan Caruba

[ATOMIC_PUNK]

One Reason for the Blackout Maybe . . . Enviro Wackos

Alan Caruba
Thursday, Aug 14, 2003

There's a very fundamental reason for the latest blackout on the East Coast.

The United States of America needs more power facilities.

I'm not talking about ten thousand windmills on the coast of Massachusetts or seventy square miles of solar collectors in Vermont. I'm talking about burning coal and using natural gas. I'm talking about hydroelectric plants and, yes, nuclear-based plants.

All of them gloriously producing electricity.

Reality pulled the plug from Ottawa to Detroit, from Toledo to Hartford, from Cleveland to New York City.

Millions of New Yorkers had to walk across the bridges to the other Boroughs to get home. Major cities just flat out shut down. No electricity. No elevator service. No cell phones. No traffic lights.

NO NOTHING!

We live in a technological society that is totally dependent on electricity and it isn't produced by putting forty hamsters on a treadmill.

You have to burn coal. You have to use natural gas. You have to tap rolling water for hydroelectricity. You need to build clean, non-polluting nuclear plants.

Americans, in general, are so dumb they just can't imagine not having enough electricity for everything they need to do.

The reason California experienced so many energy problems was that the stupid Californians would not allow power plants to be built and thought they could just keep buying electricity from Colorado, Nevada, Oregon, Washington, and even Canada. No!

You can't have a massive immigration surge and not expect to use more damned electricity. It's a commodity and, when it gets scarce, the price goes UP.

There's a reason why California doesn't have enough power plants, nor any other State in this great republic of ours. It's called environmentalism.

It goes something like this; the Environmental Protection Agency is so busy levying huge fines on existing and older power plants that there is no incentive to build new ones.

It goes like this; the stupid attorney generals of Eastern States sue Western ones, blaming them for the air quality and crying, 'We can't get in compliance with the EPA because you people want to heat your homes and stuff."

If that doesn't stop a power plant, there's the old reliable Endangered Species Act or there's wetlands regulations. Or the Greens will run around and say that building a power plant anywhere is unfair to the poor people who may live anywhere near it.

Listen up, you dumb Americans!

There are over 280 million of us and all of us, except for those who live in cardboard boxes under a bridge, want to have our air conditioning work in the summer and our furnace work in the winter.

We expect the food in our refrigerator to stay frozen. We expect to turn on our computers, our lights, and, God help us, our television sets.

The latest blackout was a warning that, so long as this nation continues to go along with idiotic and malevolent environmentalists and their lies about darned near everything, we are going to have more and worse blackouts.

Who needs terrorists? Our national security is entirely dependent on safe, reliable and abundant energy.

Maybe 8-14-03 needs to be added to 9-11-01 as a reminder of that? Environmentalists have been attacking the economic and energy base of this nation for decades.

Call it the Californication of America.

Alan Caruba is the author of "Warning Signs", published by Merril Press. His weekly column is posted on www.anxietycenter.com, the Internet site of The National Anxiety Center.

[ATOMIC_PUNK]

Maybe 8-14-03 needs to be added to 9-11-01 as a reminder of that? Environmentalists have been attacking the economic and energy base of this nation for decades.

Im sorry but to compare this with 911 to me is just wacko altogether! looks to me like there wasnt any looting and only a few fights over damn phones theres no comparison if you cant live without electric for a few hours god help you if terrorist do attack a power grid !

[Russell Scott]

Nuclear power. Clean, safe, and cheap. Just ask France, the one thing they got right.

[Sgt_Schultze]

Doesn't New York have a brand-spanking new nuclear power plant that Cuomo idled before it even went online? New York coulda used that juice.

[ATOMIC_PUNK]

Nuclear power. Clean, safe, and cheap.

I agree but we might kill a cockroach or 2
Building them that would'nt be good for special interest groups and enviroMENTAL wackos.

Next there will be legislation on lightning and floods.

We have people here in cincinnati freaking out over this running and buying generators and groceries and were not even affected with this outage.

And the local media are PANIC MONGERS with coverage from wall to wall its ridiculous

[japaneseghost]

Frankly, I don't think it's the enviros or terrorism - I think it's the Air Intel Agency doing an "exercise" during time of war to make sure the civilian agencies can handle the job in case of real terrorism.

Enviros would have left a note - on the Internet.

Al-Quaida never does just one job at a time - at least 2 at the same time, they try for as many as possible (9/11).

Just loved Dubbya's poker face tonight at 8:30 - like he was so upset.

CAN TEXANS LIE? /off sarcasm

[ATOMIC_PUNK]

The barf bag is to your left please place your seat in an upright position and put away your tray tables

Bump

[Alberta's Child]

The author of this article is a jackass.

The state of New York has sufficient capacity to meet the demand for power even in a 100-degree heat wave. This blackout was NOT caused by a lack of generating capacity.

This dumb sh!t can't even tell the difference between a local blackout caused by a lack of power and a catastrophic failure across an entire energy grid.

[mhking]

Freakin' moron.

[Alberta's Child]

Oh, yeah . . .

All the nuclear power plants in the affected area were shut down today just as quickly as coal-fired plants and natural gas plants were.

The only plants that appear to have been unaffected are the hydroelectric plants.

[rockinonritalin]

Press conference just recently with officials from Niagara Mohawk in Syracuse... Indicated that power facilities properly took themselves offline to avoid damage. I don't think this blackout was a result of lack of power generating facilities.

[Mike4Freedom]

The value of history. Those of us old enough remember multiple wide spread power failures in the past. This one looks just like November 1965. That one was caused by a mis-set overload relay in the Niagara region that caused a cascade of true overloads all over the grid. It took about 12 or so hours to restart NYC, as I remember.

Many individual generators ran away up to 4 times normal frequency when they lost their electrical load. I hope this time there was quicker response in blowing the steam pressure.

The worst part of this is being old enough to remember that blackout and hearing all the idiots on television talking about terrorism as if this was not a normal type of failure with precedent.

[Aquamarine]

Could a WORM have gotten into their systems?

[Walnut]

why so pessamistic? how about it was just the lighting strike. it happens . and I'm not defending the enviromental--- weinies either. sometimes stuff happens.

[hedgetrimmer]

But beyond that, two questions left unanswered since the 2000-01 energy crisis cast shadows over the state's medium and long-term electricity outlook:

Who will build power plants, and why? Conservation efforts and a slow economy cut electricity demand and helped end California's last energy crisis. But an economic revival and steady population growth will eventually boost demand, and older power plants will shut because of pollution rules and competitive pressures. Investors won't pony up billions of dollars for new plants without clear rules that limit risks.

Not everyone wants to rush to build more plants. Green activists stress the importance of reducing energy use and shifting load to renewable wind, solar and geothermal power sources. ... Sagging gas prices helped California escape the crisis in 2001, but recently prices have jumped to $6 per million Btus. Relief may be a long way off. On June 10, Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan told a Congressional hearing on the natural gas market that "we are not apt to return to earlier periods of relative abundance and low prices anytime soon."

With uncharacteristic clarity, Greenspan explained that "in the United States, rising demand for natural gas, especially as a clean-burning source of electric power, is pressing against a supply essentially restricted to North American production."

To get out of that bind, the United States needs to tap natural gas reserves overseas, he added. Most of those reserves are in Russia and the Middle East and must be chilled and compressed into liquid form to be shipped to the United States. Handling that flow of liquefied natural gas "will require a major expansion of LNG terminal import capacity," he said.

That will cost billions of dollars, and won't happen soon and almost certainly not in California, which has no existing facilities. Public opposition recently prompted the Vallejo City Council to reject a plan for a LNG terminal at the former Mare Island Naval Shipyard. Other California communities aren't likely to be more welcoming, so several energy companies have set their sights on the West Coast of Mexico as a host for new LNG facilities. But no project has the needed permits, and imports remain years away.

[Diogenesis]

Could it be the sun?

[SAJ]

Yucca Mountain. Not a perfect solution, but only environazis insist on perfection in an imperfect world.

[DCBryan1]

"Preliminary causes of the outage could have been caused by a squirrel, lightning, or terrorism."

What about lightning-fast terrorist squirrels?

[The UnVeiled Lady]

I would like to ask the wacko's if they want to do without A/C?

lesson here.... DRILL ANWR