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"This sets the tone for the whole book: let’s skip the reasons and just focus on the solutions and hard choices that need to be made." vs. "I won't be buying

by guscost 15y ago

"This sets the tone for the whole book: let’s skip the reasons and just focus on the solutions and hard choices that need to be made." vs. "I won't be buying this book if the opening premise is that the US electric grid is in crisis. This Ars article surely didn't give any justification for that. Must be sensationalism for the purpose of selling books. I've been an engineer in the US electric business for 20 years. It's not in crisis." Hmm, who to believe?

jamesaguilar 15y ago
Any book that advocates policy changes without justifying them ("skip the reasons") is not something I personally am interested in buying.
- dwc 15y ago
  Is this such a book? Or is it discussing implementation issues? There's a very big difference. I read books and articles talking about approaches and likely pitfalls. Of course I also read things that are advocacy. Some are both.
  - jamesaguilar 15y ago
    It's possible the book is just discussing implementation issues. But if it's implementation issues for something that has not been convincingly established to be a problem, it seems like putting the cart before the horse. Why discuss hard choices that need to be made before establishing need? What is the point of such a work?
    - tedivm 15y ago
      The point was that there are so many reasons. Besides climate change a number of issues were brought up such as energy security, conservation, and nationalism. There are dozens, if not hundreds, of books that discuss these reasons. Should this book be forced to repeat the same things that have been said over and over again just for the sake of doing it?
- dkarl 15y ago
  The point is that it would be a rare reader indeed who doesn't believe in one or more justifications for increasing our energy efficiency. The country is so polarized that people from different sides of the aisle won't agree on the color of the sky for fear that the other side will gain some partisan advantage. The concrete issue here is that conservatives have many, many reasons for addressing the energy crisis, but they will not join any fight that requires them to admit the existence of human-caused global warming or admit the validity of any motives couched in environmental language. Those two issues are the kiss of death for any nationwide cooperation on energy issues. Not that there aren't troublemakers on the left as well. Any talk of reducing dependence on other countries is liable to rile up people who think more and more interdependence is the cure to everything. If we all drink from the same well, then nobody will poison it, right? Right. And how dare we treat other countries as scary and unreliable; how offensive is that? If only we were more dependent on them, we would be forced to give up our xenophobia. Discussing motives is a non-starter on either side of this cursed issue. Hell, willingness to set aside that discussion won't be enough; it will take discipline and determination, because opportunistic blowhards will speculate about motives simply to derail any bipartisan cooperation. "Are you sure you want to collaborate with those people? You don't share their kooky, immoral motives, do you?" Energy efficiency has so much polarizing baggage, yet such a broad appeal for a variety of reasons, that setting justifications aside is like declaring a cease-fire. Without it, nobody will stick their heads up and accomplish anything. I'm very happy to see people yadda-yaddaing the justifications. It's the first step towards cooperation.
sebastianavina 15y ago
the same thing was true for mexico 6 years ago, and in 6 years they just built up all the required infraestructure.
- quanticle 15y ago
  Really? There are still many town in Mexico that do not have reliable electricity. Mexico's electric grid is far behind where ours is right now, much less where ours needs to be.
  - sebastianavina 15y ago
    they built a lot of power plants in the last years, from hydroelectric to natural gas ones, they make roads all across mexico, built up a refinery for oil and gas, drilled a lot of new oil wells, and a lot more great infraestructure investment... I'm not talking about little towns getting clean water and electricity, I'm talking about the entire countre... about 8 years ago, Mexico had no oil left, the oil wells where exhausted, the roads where insufficient, the refineries too old, the power grid was overcharged. Now we have a lot of new highways between cities, water treatment plants, power plants, even a couple new deepwater seaports...
dkarl 15y ago
In this review, at least, there's no claim the grid is in crisis. The book's title claims there's an energy crisis. Apparently the book also claims the grid is inefficient, and fixing it up would help address the energy crisis. That comment sounds like a knee-jerk reaction from somebody who didn't even bother reading the review carefully. If he can't even get through a review of the book without flying off the handle over something that wasn't there, it probably isn't any loss if he doesn't read the book itself. Who to believe, indeed.

by guscost 15y ago

jamesaguilar 15y ago

Any book that advocates policy changes without justifying them ("skip the reasons") is not something I personally am interested in buying.

dwc 15y ago
Is this such a book? Or is it discussing implementation issues? There's a very big difference. I read books and articles talking about approaches and likely pitfalls. Of course I also read things that are advocacy. Some are both.
- jamesaguilar 15y ago
  It's possible the book is just discussing implementation issues. But if it's implementation issues for something that has not been convincingly established to be a problem, it seems like putting the cart before the horse. Why discuss hard choices that need to be made before establishing need? What is the point of such a work?
  - tedivm 15y ago
    The point was that there are so many reasons. Besides climate change a number of issues were brought up such as energy security, conservation, and nationalism. There are dozens, if not hundreds, of books that discuss these reasons. Should this book be forced to repeat the same things that have been said over and over again just for the sake of doing it?
dkarl 15y ago
The point is that it would be a rare reader indeed who doesn't believe in one or more justifications for increasing our energy efficiency. The country is so polarized that people from different sides of the aisle won't agree on the color of the sky for fear that the other side will gain some partisan advantage. The concrete issue here is that conservatives have many, many reasons for addressing the energy crisis, but they will not join any fight that requires them to admit the existence of human-caused global warming or admit the validity of any motives couched in environmental language. Those two issues are the kiss of death for any nationwide cooperation on energy issues. Not that there aren't troublemakers on the left as well. Any talk of reducing dependence on other countries is liable to rile up people who think more and more interdependence is the cure to everything. If we all drink from the same well, then nobody will poison it, right? Right. And how dare we treat other countries as scary and unreliable; how offensive is that? If only we were more dependent on them, we would be forced to give up our xenophobia. Discussing motives is a non-starter on either side of this cursed issue. Hell, willingness to set aside that discussion won't be enough; it will take discipline and determination, because opportunistic blowhards will speculate about motives simply to derail any bipartisan cooperation. "Are you sure you want to collaborate with those people? You don't share their kooky, immoral motives, do you?" Energy efficiency has so much polarizing baggage, yet such a broad appeal for a variety of reasons, that setting justifications aside is like declaring a cease-fire. Without it, nobody will stick their heads up and accomplish anything. I'm very happy to see people yadda-yaddaing the justifications. It's the first step towards cooperation.

sebastianavina 15y ago

the same thing was true for mexico 6 years ago, and in 6 years they just built up all the required infraestructure.

quanticle 15y ago
Really? There are still many town in Mexico that do not have reliable electricity. Mexico's electric grid is far behind where ours is right now, much less where ours needs to be.
- sebastianavina 15y ago
  they built a lot of power plants in the last years, from hydroelectric to natural gas ones, they make roads all across mexico, built up a refinery for oil and gas, drilled a lot of new oil wells, and a lot more great infraestructure investment... I'm not talking about little towns getting clean water and electricity, I'm talking about the entire countre... about 8 years ago, Mexico had no oil left, the oil wells where exhausted, the roads where insufficient, the refineries too old, the power grid was overcharged. Now we have a lot of new highways between cities, water treatment plants, power plants, even a couple new deepwater seaports...

dkarl 15y ago

In this review, at least, there's no claim the grid is in crisis. The book's title claims there's an energy crisis. Apparently the book also claims the grid is inefficient, and fixing it up would help address the energy crisis. That comment sounds like a knee-jerk reaction from somebody who didn't even bother reading the review carefully. If he can't even get through a review of the book without flying off the handle over something that wasn't there, it probably isn't any loss if he doesn't read the book itself. Who to believe, indeed.