50 Million People in Blackout?
The biggest blackout in our history hit last Thursday. According to the media, over 50 million people were denied electricity from some time in the afternoon of 2003 August 14 to some time after that. That is a huge number of people. In fact, I even heard some media say 60 million. That is about 1/6 to 1/5 of the population of our country of over 282 million. If that had happened, it would be a P8 power outage. But did that really happen? I saw a blog from Peter Dutton entitled Jumping to Conclusions that said that the media really hyped up this one. Mr. Dutton said that the figure 50 million is way overinflated, that it was a creation of the media. If so, then media hype strikes again. But was it so?
I did some calculating. I looked up “united states” and “megawatts” on Google™ and found that in 2000, the US used 604,514 megawatts of energy. I heard from Mr. Dutton that the New York Times reported that a total of 61,800 megawatts of energy were lost in the blackout. I divided the 604,514 megawatts by the 2000 US population of 282,421,906 and got that the US consumes this year 2.14046 kilowatts of energy per person. That seems reasonable, since our household consumes 1.5 kilowatts. So I simply divided the 61,800 megawatts by 2.140 and got that 28,872,240 people (or 29 million people) were affected by the blackout. Media hype exposed! So much for the 50 million. This demotes the blackout to P7 and in fact it is not the biggest power blackout in our history. The blackout of 1965 November 9 affected 30 million people in a nation with far fewer people, although that figure could have been hyped also.
Sometimes it pays to check the figures before believing what is in that pile of papers at your doorstep. I thank Peter Dutton of Jumping to Conclusions (like a lemming?) for alerting me to this latest media hype.
By the way, my “P7” and “P8” notation is explained in Logarithms Keep Dr. Brown in Perspective.
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2003/08/20
The Great Power Blackouts of 1965 and 2003
On 2003 August 14, I turned on the evening news expecting to hear the weather. Instead I heard that some news outfits, such as NBC, were broadcasting on emergency power and that there was a power outage. I looked on the Internet and sure enough, the big banner headline on CNN’s site was “BLACKOUT”. It had hit New York State, including my birthplace, Ohio, Detroit and parts of Canada, Pennsylvania, Vermont and Connecticut. Terrorism was ruled out. I would think so. To me this blackout reminds me greatly of the 1965 November 9 blackout.
I was a college sophomore at the time in Rochester, NY. I had just came back from a trip to a Niagara Falls military base to get a physical for Air Force ROTC, which I enrolled in the next year. It was 1700, 5 o’clock, so I went to the dining hall to get something to eat. While I was at the table, the lights started going dim and bright over and over again in a sinusoidal pattern. Then they got dim. Shortly afterwards I saw students with candles in their hands. I went back to my dorm to see if what had happened to the power had hit my dorm. It had. There was no power there. My roommate had a radio and was listening to the radio broadcast. It said tghat New York City was hit by the blackout. It said that Buffalo was hit. After a while it said that Boston was hit. It became apparent to us that this was a huge power blackout. I tried to swtudy in the darkness and figure I was going to have to go to bed early, when the power came back on at around 1930, 7:30 pm. I heard later, though, that power did not come on to New York City until the next morning.
The 2003 blackout affected pretty much the same area, except that it hit Detroit and Cleveland but did not hit Boston. People are now saying that we need to replace our antiquated power system. Because of this blackout? In that case, they should have done something in 1965. People are saying this is the worst power blackout in our history, but they ignore the 1965 blackout, which was a near twin of this one. There is a difference between this one and 1965, however. In 1965 energy was plentiful: there was plenty of coal, natural gas, and nuclear energy, and our nation had yet to hit a peak in oil production (1970). Today in 2003 we face a world wide ultimate oil shortage about 2010 or so, an electric power distribution shortage around 2005, and just this coming winter a natural gas shortage that threatens to double prices. Already (because of a pipeline burst) Phoenix is repeating the scenes of 1973’s oil crisis. I hope the Blackout of 2003 alerts the nation and the world to these upcoming shortages so we can do something about them.
On 2003 August 14, I turned on the evening news expecting to hear the weather. Instead I heard that some news outfits, such as NBC, were broadcasting on emergency power and that there was a power outage. I looked on the Internet and sure enough, the big banner headline on CNN’s site was “BLACKOUT”. It had hit New York State, including my birthplace, Ohio, Detroit and parts of Canada, Pennsylvania, Vermont and Connecticut. Terrorism was ruled out. I would think so. To me this blackout reminds me greatly of the 1965 November 9 blackout.
I was a college sophomore at the time in Rochester, NY. I had just came back from a trip to a Niagara Falls military base to get a physical for Air Force ROTC, which I enrolled in the next year. It was 1700, 5 o’clock, so I went to the dining hall to get something to eat. While I was at the table, the lights started going dim and bright over and over again in a sinusoidal pattern. Then they got dim. Shortly afterwards I saw students with candles in their hands. I went back to my dorm to see if what had happened to the power had hit my dorm. It had. There was no power there. My roommate had a radio and was listening to the radio broadcast. It said tghat New York City was hit by the blackout. It said that Buffalo was hit. After a while it said that Boston was hit. It became apparent to us that this was a huge power blackout. I tried to swtudy in the darkness and figure I was going to have to go to bed early, when the power came back on at around 1930, 7:30 pm. I heard later, though, that power did not come on to New York City until the next morning.
The 2003 blackout affected pretty much the same area, except that it hit Detroit and Cleveland but did not hit Boston. People are now saying that we need to replace our antiquated power system. Because of this blackout? In that case, they should have done something in 1965. People are saying this is the worst power blackout in our history, but they ignore the 1965 blackout, which was a near twin of this one. There is a difference between this one and 1965, however. In 1965 energy was plentiful: there was plenty of coal, natural gas, and nuclear energy, and our nation had yet to hit a peak in oil production (1970). Today in 2003 we face a world wide ultimate oil shortage about 2010 or so, an electric power distribution shortage around 2005, and just this coming winter a natural gas shortage that threatens to double prices. Already (because of a pipeline burst) Phoenix is repeating the scenes of 1973’s oil crisis. I hope the Blackout of 2003 alerts the nation and the world to these upcoming shortages so we can do something about them.
I.(?Am?Kdzqh9q)#Zthv+U>!;Ssleh
Today, 2003 August 20 0900, I wanted to see if there would be any hurricanes in our future. So I went to Weather Underground’s Tropical Page to see if there were any. There weren’t any. So I went down to near the bottom of the page to the link that has the North Atlantic Tropical Outlook to see if any were going to form. When I clicked on that link, I got “I.(?Am?Kdzqh9q)#Zthv+U>!;Ssleh”. That’s right, the answer to the question “Are there going to be any hurricanes soon?” is “I.(?Am?Kdzqh9q)#Zthv+U>!;Ssleh”. Well I certainly don’t want any of those affecting my weather soon. Further, the Weather Underground people got it wrong. “I.(?Am?Kdzqh9q)#Zthv+U>!;Ssleh” is not a prediction of hurricanes. It is a prediction of where our email system is going. Remember that in an earlier blog that I said that eventually spam would become gibberish. In fact, most email will become gibberish. If indeed a ‘cane is coming, then it is a gibbericane, and I see that it has already hit Weather Underground. Ssleh.
Today, 2003 August 20 0900, I wanted to see if there would be any hurricanes in our future. So I went to Weather Underground’s Tropical Page to see if there were any. There weren’t any. So I went down to near the bottom of the page to the link that has the North Atlantic Tropical Outlook to see if any were going to form. When I clicked on that link, I got “I.(?Am?Kdzqh9q)#Zthv+U>!;Ssleh”. That’s right, the answer to the question “Are there going to be any hurricanes soon?” is “I.(?Am?Kdzqh9q)#Zthv+U>!;Ssleh”. Well I certainly don’t want any of those affecting my weather soon. Further, the Weather Underground people got it wrong. “I.(?Am?Kdzqh9q)#Zthv+U>!;Ssleh” is not a prediction of hurricanes. It is a prediction of where our email system is going. Remember that in an earlier blog that I said that eventually spam would become gibberish. In fact, most email will become gibberish. If indeed a ‘cane is coming, then it is a gibbericane, and I see that it has already hit Weather Underground. Ssleh.
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