LAT: Heat's Grip Too Much for Southern California Grid

[DeepModem Mom]

Heat's Grip Too Much for Southland Grid
By Elizabeth Douglass and Marc Lifsher, Times Staff Writers


The West's deadly heat wave brought record temperatures and several power plant failures Thursday, triggering Southern California's first electricity supply emergency in more than two years and hinting at problems the region could face on sweltering days this summer.

Blackouts were threatened for a few hours Thursday afternoon as air conditioners kicked into high gear — setting power use records in the Southland — but utility customers largely escaped disruptions. Although state utilities expect to have enough electricity to meet demand today, the prospect of continued hot and humid weather prompted California power officials to urge energy conservation to avoid shortages.

Across Western states, some 200 heat records have been broken in the last 10 days, according to the National Weather Service. In Phoenix, which hit 111 degrees Thursday, local authorities raised the heat-related death toll to 19. In Las Vegas, where there have been six deaths, the high of 109 degrees marked only the second day in the last week that the peak dipped below 115.

Two Los Angeles County temperature records were broken Thursday, said Stuart Seto, weather specialist for the National Weather Service. Woodland Hills posted 106 degrees Thursday, beating its old record of 104 in 1990, and Chatsworth posted 105 degrees, breaking its record of 103 degrees in 1988, he said....

***

Power officials...struggled to keep a power shortage from escalating into blackouts....


http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-power22jul22,0,7770007.story?coll=la-home-business

[SleeplessinSoCal]

1. We're doing our bit. No AC yet. But then we're only into the upper 80s.

[phusion]

2. Usually how I am...

But here in Albuquerque it's been upper 90s. Also, this house I've moved into is extremely inefficient and I've been having to run the swamp cooler most of the day. Sucks...

[hecate77]

5. Swamp coolers are pretty efficient as far as energy use is concerned

Its the refrigerated air units that eat up the power. 90s in Albuquerque is pretty normal this time of year, though. Once the monsoons start, the temp doesn't go up as much. In all my years in Albuquerque, we only had one year without monsoons. It was just too hot for them.

Do you have a window or door open a crack when you run the swamp cooler? If not, it doesn't work as well, since it depends heavily on air flow. Just mentioning that since I didn't know it at first either and didn't get as good of cooling as I could have.

Now, we live in California, so we have to use refrigerated air or nothing, since it is too humid for swamp coolers.

[donco6]

25. I'd be dyin' without my swamp cooler.

Thanks to Denver's dry air, I can at least survive. But there are days when it just can't quite keep up - when it's 104 at 3:00 p

[DrRang]

19. Same in Los Lunas, high night temps

Hi Phusion--
Yeah, it's Sweatsville with just one window evap unit. We live in an old adobe house with cottonwoods for shade and usually we don't need artificial cooling but this year is different. If you ever read the Abq. Journal--I avoid it when possible--for about a year and a half, the Today-Average-Record temperature bars on the weather page have been showing significantly higher than average nighttime temps, which is supposed to be a hallmark of global warming.

[cliss]

3. Wow. Phoenix at 111 degrees.

As I"m reading this, I'm thinking of Bush, when asked about Global Warming. He said, "it's silly science".

[tinrobot]

4. 111 is nothing for Phoenix

They regularly approach 120 almost every summer.

(Which is one of the big reasons why I moved out of Phoenix.)

[Angry Girl]

8. It was 115 here last week.....

Stay in or stay wet!

Personal misters at MistyMate.com! :-)

[kestrel91316]

6. Hey, we made news! Woodland Hills 106!!!

Today it felt like 110. Somebody said it was 107 and that was around 1 PM, before peak heat. Boy, are we paying now for the nice spring we had.

[vickitulsa]

7. I wonder if we are seeing beyond the immediate threat

of such dangerously high temps and power grid failures to the far more frightening "Big Picture" these trends point to in the future. I suspect most DUers do, since from what I've seen so far, this is rather an above-average bunch of folks.

Here in Tulsa, we're under a heat advisory until tomorrow evening. That will likely be extended, however; and I know there are heat advisories being issued all across the country.

I recall hearing a researcher say a few years ago that "all weather is global." Reports I've heard in just the last few DAYS on the Weather Channel concerning the steady increase in Earth's mean temperatures globally are quite alarming.

But then all this global warming stuff isn't proven to be "sound science" yet, is it??...... Reckon W is noticing any trend in the weather toward higher temps when he's out jogging and biking and getting red-faced like we saw him in that photo yesterday?

Not that he'd admit it if he did....

[dbt]

10. Hello from Swelterin' Arkansas, vickitulsa!

(In case nobody's said it yet--or even if they have--welcome to The DU!)

One has to wonder if the Enron Method is still at work in California. In other words, did the demand itself cause the outages or were supplies being withheld AGAIN to drive prices up?

[vickitulsa]

12. Thanks and howdy to you as well

:hi: :)

Yeah, I heard Little Rock was right up there with northeast OK on the thermometer yesterday. *Whew* I'm moppin' sweat and being careful to avoid heat exhaustion as my AC units threaten to burn up in this relentless humid heat wave.

I don't know a LOT about how things are going in CA, but I supposed that the officials there got wise to the Enron style tricks being played when the blackouts and rolling blackouts were announced far fewer times last year than the one before. Or am I misremembering?

Either way, I can almost see the "energy industry" CEOs -- and CFO's -- salivating as the temps rise above 100 in so many regions and stay there. So many opportunities to cheat and gouge, and all summer to do it....

[annabanana]

13. They THINK they've got the "lock" on the Big Picture..

And it looks like what they WANT it to look like..
I'm glad you found us vickitulsa, I suspect you're a rare breed out there in Oklahoma. Have you joined the Oklahoma forum yet?

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topics&forum=173

Welcome back to the real America! (and, of course, to DU)
:toast:

[vickitulsa]

24. Thanks Annabanana

for both your welcomes. ;)

I might be a rare breed in this maddeningly red state, but I'm not alone, I know that much. My brother is even more radical than I am ... but then he's a pharmacist and therefore has better background education for the science end of things I have to work to keep up with. Just imagine the effects of climate change on human health he has seen over three decades in a major hospital pharmacy. He explains a lot of the hard science issues to me when I need it, and the many fine Websites that are out there have helped me out with visualizations and detailed explanations.

I see Handpuppet has posted some good links for more info on climate change, and doing a search using "global warming" or "climate change" provides a long list of sites on the topic. I like the many NOAA sites, and the USGS provides some great imagery, maps, etc. Always helps me to see graphics, and animations are superb learning aids.

Here's a good one I use: http://www.usgcrp.gov

That's the U.S. Global Change Research Program site -- not a bad place to start exploring this topic.

I pay attention to weather news and research developments and conclusions as much if not more than I follow global political news. Ultimately, global climate change will force everyone to respond to its impact even if they don't study or understand the background information.

The trends these days are not only clear to the scientific community, they are showing a classic case of "snowballing." And I don't mean we're just getting a lot of winter storms!

I cringe to think how much damage W's idiotic pronouncement on climate change has done, since an awful lot of people, unthinking loyalists who trust him still (for whatever unfathomable reasons of their own) have probably shrugged off concerns about this very important issue.

We could very well be in a lot more danger from unchecked human compounding and escalation of global climate change than we are from the disintegration of this WH administration.

When Jacques Cousteau warned in 1976 that we humans only had about 10 more years to take the drastic steps necessary to avoid irreversible calamity for the planet's oceans, I did not see sufficient attention being paid to his alert. In a seven-page letter to members of The Cousteau Society that year he offered up a detailed description of the inevitable fate we faced if the oceans were overpolluted by humans and overheated by climate change. There is a tipping point, he warned -- a sort of deadline by which time humankind must have begun to turn the trend toward self-destruction around. Beyond that point, which he estimated to be the mid-1980's, any efforts to put the brakes on the procession toward catastrophe would be virtually futile and certain to fall short of complete success.

I was only 26 then, and ten years in the future seemed to me like a long time away; but I understood the threat and grew alarmed. I was even more shaken when people I talked to about this received the news casually. I tried to spread the word, to advance the very serious warnings of a man most people, scientists included, respected and believed when it came to issues concerning the Earth's oceans.

As I understand it from Cousteau, when our planet's oceans die, human life on this big blue marble also perishes -- it's that simple, for all practical purposes. Earth is a big BLUE marble when seen from space because of the presence of the vast oceans which cover so much of the planet surface. And it's blue AND GREEN when seen from space because the green is foliage or crops on land.

It really scares me to view the actual satellite images and see the way the BROWN is overtaking the GREEN on the land masses of Earth. The increasing deforestation and desertification of the continents on our delicately balanced planet is at once obvious and very sobering.

Oh, and just yesterday, Anna, I read some posts at the Oklahoma section of DU -- thanks for mentioning that; I do plan to spend some more time there very soon and hopefully visit with some fellow Okies. Problem today is, we're expecting a high of at least 104 here in Tulsa, with a heat index of 115 or so. And when it gets THAT hot, the motorhome I live in is like a tin can baking in the sun and is just too warm inside for me to run my PC -- or even be comfortable. So I shut the ole computer down and go over to my brother's place to enjoy the cool comfort of his home! Even my dogs get all happy when they see we're pulling into the driveway at his house. Haha.

As someone else indicated in a post on this thread, it might be funny if only these climate change matters weren't so serious. Too easy IMO for any of us to make jokes about it or just casually discuss "the weather" as if what we're having now is not truly abnormal. I read on one Website, "Climate is what we expect; weather is what we get." Hmmmm ... I'm still thinking about that one....

**SALUTE** DUers, you're a fine lot! :D

[Neshanic]

9. This is maybe unusually hot for CA, but I lived in AZ for 26 years..

and this is not completely out of the norm. The three nuclear plants outside Phoenix are all running, and there is no power issue here, although one did shut down two weeks ago, and is up and running again. SoCal gets some of it from us, but their problem is not enough generation.

The monsoons were a but late, and now the temperatures have eased into the 104 range. It's all normal. If the monsoon did not come this year, THEN I would be worried.

[theHandpuppet]

11. There's nothing "normal" about what's going on here

Y'know, I'm always bemused when reading yet another report on the globe's record-breaking weather reports, because inevitably someone will rush in to assure us that everything is "normal". It's a "normal" heat wave, a "normal" hurricane season, a "normal" drought. Anyone here can search the archive for any DU thread regarding recent record-setting extremes around the globe and they will see exactly what I'm talking about. It's a pattern with these threads, and its predictable. Why this is so I will leave to the conjecture of others.

At this point I hesitate to yet again rebut another poster who assures us that everything is just "normal" when the stated facts point elsewhere, but at the same time I have seen to many of these threads die because a couple of posters rush in to assure us that everything is "normal", no worries, wait until the end of the year to judge. Not more than a few weeks ago I debated a poster who insisted this hurricane season falls within "normal" parameters and that we should wait until December to judge whether or not it is of historical proportions, when the fact is it is ALREADY of historical proportions. Again, why the assurances and denials every time a discussion such as this arises is a matter I will leave for others to ponder. The facts speak for themselves.

http://www.noaanews.noaa.gov/stories2005/s2479.htm
NOAA: "Rising humidity levels are pushing into southern California, Arizona, Nevada, Utah, New Mexico and Colorado as a result of the seasonal monsoon surge and the remnants of Hurricane Emily," said Craig Schmidt, meteorologist and public dissemination chief with the NOAA National Weather Service Western Region in Salt Lake City. While temperatures will lower slightly as a result of increasing clouds in the region, Schmidt emphasized that temperatures will remain above average throughout the region."

http://www.noaanews.noaa.gov/stories2005/s2478.htm
The NOAA Climate Prediction Center's Seasonal Outlook released today calls for the August through October temperatures to be above normal along the West coast, in the Southwest, the west-central Plains, and western and southern Texas. South Florida and much of the deep South are also expected to have above normal temperatures during the period. Rainfall is expected to be above normal along the south Atlantic coast from Virginia through Florida; while below normal rainfall is expected throughout the Great Basin and the Southwest.

http://www.weather.com/multimedia/index.html?clip=2544&collection=topstory&from=wxcenter_video
July 05 most active hurricane season

http://www.met.rdg.ac.uk/~brugge/world.html
World Weather News July 2005

While globally....
http://www.whatdoesitmean.com/index20.htm

[Boomer]

21. Extremes across the board

The word "warming" is so misleading for the large numbers of people who haven't bothered to read the scientific discussion of global climate change.

Although the overall indicator of our changing climate is mean global temperature, which is rising, the specific weather manifestations are not just heat. Global warming results in more *extremes* of weather: record-breaking heat, drought, rainfall, floods.

As theHandpuppet has noted, the naysayers are quick to emerge in any discussion of anomalous weather that supports the predictions of extreme weather due to global warming. "Nothing to see here. Move along."

It would be funny if it weren't so dangerous for us to ignore what is already happening.

[Neshanic]

22. Where did I say that there is no global warming?

Of course I believe in global warming. It's a fact. I just stated that these temperatures are not out of the normal range for us this year. Could it be that it should be 114 instead of 115? Do you live here? Yes, maybe it should be 114 or 112 or 110, but living here in the desert it is hard to tell abberation in the hottest time of the year historically. Is there global warming going on here? Of course.

Concerning CA, they are having a heat wave. Global warming? I'm thinking so. Electricity generation concerned, California has not built to what it should, and has mooched off the rest of the west for water also, which our governor will probably agree to, as we had to go head to head with them for our share. If it was not for Palo Verde Nuclear, SoCal would of have more of a rough time than they ever thought.

One thing that Californians forget is that THEY are in a desert, we do not. Yes, point to our golf courses in Phoenix, they are easy targets, but the majority will be watered will effluent in 5 five years. almost half now are. Our open spaces are likewise. We use water more carfully than California ever thought of.

Our guy Babbitt crafted water use laws that are models. Notice how everything in California is on spray irrigation? Not here. You can't have turf in the right of way here. Anywhere. CA sprays thousands of acres of grass along roads and in medians, watering the asphalt. Our plants are on drip irrigation, developed years ago in Israel. California has no guidelines, baseline, nor requirements for any wise water use for drip irrigation, reclaimed water, or allowed plants and prohibited plants. Go to the Arizona Department of Water Resouces and see. California just goes on spraying everything in sight with water. Ask a SoCal landscape architect about drip irrigation and he cocks his head like a spaniel.

I'll give you history. In 1977 we had a 500 year flood. The next year, another, that threatened to break every dam on the Salt river and innundate Phoenix. So that was out of the norm, but the summers then were 114, 118...

[vickitulsa]

28. My favorite guy at the Weather Channel

was explaining a lot of this stuff about those temps even up to 120 degrees and the like in AZ being not abnormal. When he said that, I recalled hearing most years about the record temps for AZ and maybe some parts of southern CA, like around Needles. Have been hearing numbers in the "one teens" and even over 120 for some time. Absolutely amazing to me. I think he said Las Vegas broke their all time record high yesterday with 117 degrees? **Whew**

I noted our record high for yesterday here in Tulsa was 109, and it was in 1974. I remember that summer!!

Sounds like AZ has done a much better job of planning and managing its irrigation and other water systems than CA has (not to knock you Californians, I love ya's!). I've always wondered how southern Cal can expect to keep building new housing communities out where they do (in the deserts, and on hillsides in fire danger areas) when it requires so much of northern Cal's water to keep them going. ?? Just a puzzlement to me, I don't know that much about it and of course I don't live there, though I have spent a couple of summers in CA. First one was 1964 and second time was in 1974. That last time I rode my ten-speed bicycle cross country, from just south of San Juan Cappistrano, the mission where the swallows flock, about 100 or 150 miles north, along the coastal highway. Man, what a trip!

Went almost directly from there to Alaska, to work on the TransAlaska Pipeline construction project. Biking those hot mountains in CA in June was sweaty work, and the thought of Alaska's climate really appealed to me after that. I'd always wanted to go to AK anyway! It met all my expectations -- and more. But it's a delicate environment, too, even the subarctic regions. The permafrost, the icepack, the glaciers ...

Now when I see the increasing melting of permafrost and glaciers in that beautiful state, with glacier melt occurring even in Washington state too!, I worry. And the calving of the icebergs in the arctic is the sort of thing I don't see how W can hear about and still deny global warming is real.

Maybe if one of those huge calved pieces bonks into the Bush family estate at Kennebunkport, he'll reconsider, eh?..... Nah....

[kestrel91316]

34. We have grass in the medians here in CA???????

They look like untended weeds to me.............

[Neshanic]

35. Yes you do...Thousand Oaks has wall to wall turf, and in medians.

Also turf in the medians of Santa Monica for the upgrade of the streetscape through West Hollywood. At times the median is just 2 feet wide and there is turf, daylilies, and all manner of planting that sucks enormous amounts of water.

Westlake Village, Santa Barbara, it's all over, just look around. That grass is just for looks.

You have no law in California that prohibits turf in medians and right of ways. You also have no drip irrigation to speak of. Your massive freeway interchanges carpeted with ice plant and the impact sprinkler heads with 50 foot throws show that you have no concept of wise landscape irrigtion use.

[kestrel91316]

36. Oh sorry, I was thinking freeways, you meant streets.

[kestrel91316]

37. You are right about the TERRIBLE waste of water in landscaping here......

but there is a very slow, gradual trend toward xeriscaping, I have noticed. They can't do it fast enough to suit me. And while they are at it, they should pass laws like they have in Tucson prohibiting front lawns. This IS a desert, after all. But these spoiled people would scream and whine and have a fit and sue and it would never happen.

[doubleplusgood]

18. "their problem is not enough generation"

No. They have plenty of power generation (& freeways, houses, aqueducts, reservoirs, etc.). Southern California's problem, like many other places, is too many people. L.A. county alone has more than 10,000,000 population. At some point, we have to realize that we just can't build ourselves out of population-growth-generated problems.

[Endangered Specie]

14. Price Gouging in 3...2...1....

[SoCalDem]

15. Precisely why essential services should NEVER EVER

be in private hands.. each community should own and control the facilities to produce and or deliver electricity, gas, water and other essential services.
Privatizing them makes the poor and least able to afford it, easy prey, and makes ordinary spikes in temperature, or shortages in fuel, opportunities to gouge.

f you are the person in charge of natural gas delivery/transmission, and your community is in a cold climate, then it's YOUR job to see that there is adequate stores in reserve so that the prices remain stable year-round..same for other public necessities.

We have GOT to somehow strip away private ownership of these essentials, and start thinking about community again.

This would also eliminate a lot of the "greedy bastardization" that's rampant, since the people who would actually do the work, would just be public servants, and not fat-cat CEOs.

This is not a new idea.. It's the way things used to be.Communities would band together sometimes to form co-ops, but they were owned and operated by the people right there.Not owned by Texas FOWs.

[Demeter]

16. I'm trying to feel sympathetic, but

What do you expect, living in a desert?

[SoCalDem]

17. and more and more people means less for each person

Services are not built up as fast as homes..

Right now in our town there are THREE HUGE apartment complexes going in. These are high-end developments, and the extra people who will come here will need water, electricity, schools..they will use the sewer system..

I see NO evidence of any new improvements that would boost overall capacity.. These new people will just futher tax and create needs for higher prices on the services we now have.

Our town has gone from less than 30K to over 160K in 25 years..

[DrRang]

20. HIgh desert climate is now acting like low desert climate. n/t

[Neshanic]

23. No sympathy wanted, but what untouched glade do you live in?

[Demeter]

31. Michigan

If you want water, trees, 4 seasons, and resources, there are worse places. I'm in Ann Arbor, a good place for a single mother(except for the difficulty in meeting eligible males, but with children, that's a given anywhere). Clean, safe, Democratic, reasonably solvent, still has some public services, and lots of resources out of the University.

[Puzzler]

26. One thing to keep in mind...

... when looking at weather stats, is that when they say "record breaking", they frequently mean a record breaker for that particular date, and not the highest (or lowest) temperature ever recorded in the area.

-P

[Zorra]

27. "Across Western states, some 200 heat records have been broken

in the last 10 days...."

And yet the Bu*h administration repeatedly continues to nullify environmental regulations specifically designed to curtail man-made global warming.

How stupid can this administration be?

They are deliberately killing possibly themselves, and almost definitely their own children and grandchildren, for money. (Not to mention us and our kids too, but we already know that they don't care about us).

[pfitz59]

29. There are simple solutions........

http://www.eere.energy.gov/solar/sh_use_space.html

Space Heating and Cooling

Just as solar energy can provide hot water for a building, it can heat the air in the building, as well. By using passive solar systems or more elaborate active solar systems, solar energy can help heat or cool buildings. A solar heating system can consist of passive systems, active systems, or a combination of both.


Bush* and Cheney incorpoarte these technologies in both of their FAUX-"ranches". Too bad most Duh-mericans are clueless!

[shanti]

30. it looks like

socal is getting a taste of norcal's (sacramento) summer heat. we're used to 100+ temps here, but it doesn't make it any easier to handle. last weekend i was out and about, and the temp measure 109. believe me, when it's like that, all you can think about is getting inside an air conditioned room! it's just miserable! dehydration is the most important thing to watch for, and i've gotten heat stroke twice - not fun!

at 10am, it's still nice and cool. :-)

[Prisoner_Number_Six]

32. I thought someone had been hired to fix this

What was his name again? Ahnold something?

Apparently not too good at his job. You Californians should think about replacing him with someone a tad bit more competent...

[Lisa]

33. that's one potential impact of global warming which wasn't considered ...

... until fairly recently.

Higher temperatures lead to more demand for energy, for air conditioning etc. In the 1980s and early 90s, the "conventional wisdom" suggested that annual energy use would drop in a warmer climate, due to less need for winter heating. Some of the industry types even began to trumpet this as a GOOD thing! Most of the experts weren't looking at this issue that closely -- sure, people were aware that extreme heat waves (like the one experienced by Chicago) could result in deaths, but unfortunately it wasn't seen as being a priority issue. (Possibly the fact that so many of the casualties were poor and/or elderly played a role.)

We now realize that there's a nasty interaction between higher summer temperatures and air pollution. The heat increases the rate of chemical reactions which produce smog ... and the need for electricity results in more fossil fuels being burned. Parts of Canada, for example, rely on those coal-fired thermal generating plants in the States when power demand peaks (so Ontario is getting even more pollution with the prevailing winds).

Bottom line -- more people will get sick and die. Especially lower-income people who can't afford air conditioning, or are unable to move to places with better air quality and buildings which are designed for extreme weather, like Bush's custom-designed ranch house. There are still a lot of places on the continent where most of the housing stock doesn't have air conditioning (I'm thinking of my own west-coast town as an example), and we just can't cope with unexpectedly-high temperatures. Even in warmer areas we've gotten used to churning out architecture which is totally reliant on artificial lighting, heating/cooling, and ventilation -- I have worked/lived in places like this myself. And when there's a blackout, it's unbearable.