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PG&E to cut power to 800k customers across California early Wednesday morning

35 points by Merrill 7y ago

9HZZRfNlpR 7y ago
I wonder if because of all these forest fires in California the people living there have a huge co2 footprint? Since it's electric lines causing the fire, it can be seen as human made for sure.
- thrax 7y ago
  The connection you are trying to make is somewhat unclear. Yes, forest dwellers probably have a higher carbon footprint, but probably not much more than a wealthy city dweller. People living in the forests actually reduce the near term impact of forest fires because people don't like their stuff burning up, so they have fires put out which reduces carbon in the short term, but in the long term creates conditions for devastating megafires.
  - 9HZZRfNlpR 7y ago
    I was more thinking about some of the fires that got international attention and as I understood it was because lines often short out causing fires. I don't live in America so I wasn't trying to make a connection between homeless people if that's what you thought, if anything I blamed the modern city person because they use and consume the electricity so it counts as their co2 impact.
- diafygi 7y ago
  Forest fires don't have much of a carbon footprint because all the carbon (e.g. vegetation) is already part of the carbon cycle. Your carbon footprint is determined by how much carbon you're adding (e.g. burning gas that was previously sequestered deep underground) to the carbon cycle. I suppose if a bunch of plastic got burned in the forest fire, that would technically be adding a carbon footprint, but it's likely negligible.
  - 9HZZRfNlpR 7y ago
    Forest fire still releases massive amount at once. Takes 50 yrs to grow back and even then who guarantees its the right amount you have released because of human activity caused fires.
ncmncm 7y ago
Power is out here. Not a trace of wind. This is just corporate spite. "Look what you made us do!"
- thrax 7y ago
  Partly that but also partly "we spent that sweet infrastructure money on other stuff so we have to turn things off now because our infrastructure is decrepit and we learned that we get sued when our transformers explode and cause fires, so we are, again, passing the inconvenience on to consumers.
- onfire 7y ago
  Oh come on, as a consumer you do have to choose a bit between "I want it...cheap!" and "I want to sue you to rebuild when you giving me what I want inevitably causes a fire." We should expect fires. We should expect more if we run spark generating machines through the forest. That's fine. Just raise the rates to cover the insurance cost.

35 points by Merrill 7y ago

I wonder if because of all these forest fires in California the people living there have a huge co2 footprint? Since it's electric lines causing the fire, it can be seen as human made for sure.

thrax 7y ago
The connection you are trying to make is somewhat unclear. Yes, forest dwellers probably have a higher carbon footprint, but probably not much more than a wealthy city dweller. People living in the forests actually reduce the near term impact of forest fires because people don't like their stuff burning up, so they have fires put out which reduces carbon in the short term, but in the long term creates conditions for devastating megafires.
- 9HZZRfNlpR 7y ago
  I was more thinking about some of the fires that got international attention and as I understood it was because lines often short out causing fires. I don't live in America so I wasn't trying to make a connection between homeless people if that's what you thought, if anything I blamed the modern city person because they use and consume the electricity so it counts as their co2 impact.
diafygi 7y ago
Forest fires don't have much of a carbon footprint because all the carbon (e.g. vegetation) is already part of the carbon cycle. Your carbon footprint is determined by how much carbon you're adding (e.g. burning gas that was previously sequestered deep underground) to the carbon cycle. I suppose if a bunch of plastic got burned in the forest fire, that would technically be adding a carbon footprint, but it's likely negligible.
- 9HZZRfNlpR 7y ago
  Forest fire still releases massive amount at once. Takes 50 yrs to grow back and even then who guarantees its the right amount you have released because of human activity caused fires.

ncmncm 7y ago

Power is out here. Not a trace of wind. This is just corporate spite. "Look what you made us do!"

thrax 7y ago
Partly that but also partly "we spent that sweet infrastructure money on other stuff so we have to turn things off now because our infrastructure is decrepit and we learned that we get sued when our transformers explode and cause fires, so we are, again, passing the inconvenience on to consumers.
onfire 7y ago
Oh come on, as a consumer you do have to choose a bit between "I want it...cheap!" and "I want to sue you to rebuild when you giving me what I want inevitably causes a fire." We should expect fires. We should expect more if we run spark generating machines through the forest. That's fine. Just raise the rates to cover the insurance cost.