Re: (ReacTor) Five SFF Books Featuring Frigid, Icy Worlds

Lynn McGuire wrote:

On 7/17/2024 3:05 PM, William Hyde wrote:

Paul S Person wrote:

On Tue, 16 Jul 2024 19:47:12 -0600, John Savard
<quadibloc@servername.invalid> wrote:
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On Mon, 15 Jul 2024 14:15:08 -0000 (UTC), jdnicoll@panix.com (James
Nicoll) wrote:
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Five SFF Books Featuring Frigid, Icy Worlds
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Celebrate the coldest summer of the rest of your life with some
frosty SF and fantasy novels!
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https://reactormag.com/five-sff-books-featuring-frigid-icy-worlds/

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I could comment that your posting is itself a dystopian SF story,
about a world where giant oil companies have managed to control the
political system and hypnotize the populace so as to prevent any
effective response to global warming...
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if it weren't for the fact that it seems like calling that scenario
"fiction" has already proven to be over-optimistic.

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One of the two theories I have seen on why the Texas electrical system
died again (if that actually happened;

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According to news stories I have seen, some parts of Texas are not scheduled to regain power until July 19.
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When I lived in College Station, TX, I experienced more power outages per unit time than I have anywhere else (the situation here is deteriorating, though) but it was never gone for more than a few hours.
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William Hyde

 Out of the 2.3 million electric meters that were down in the Houston area (3 million meters total), only 40,000 remain disconnected as of today.  That is awesome compared to Hurricane Ike which had major areas without power for up to six weeks.

That is awesome compared to Ike.
It is also, however, lousy for any state, and especially for a wealthy state just crammed with talented engineers.
When I left Texas the Brazos county engineer was on the point of being turfed out of his job for being not conservative enough.  It seems a strange criterion to use.
At the same time people here should have been turfed out for being neither competent nor sober.  A strange lack of criterion to use, but heck, only seven people died.

https://www.chron.com/news/article/houston-power-outages-beryl-19579186.php

Ah the Chronicle.  I used to devour that paper.  Couldn't figure out at first why they payed so much attention to the Lt gov.

 Those electric meters are polled every five minutes, they know which meters are down.
 My family and I were on our whole house generator from Monday at 5 am to Wednesday at 4 pm.  If constant electricity is important to you then you need to get an automatic whole house generator.  It is not unusual for us to get a monthly power outage of more than a minute, the generator starts and is making power within ten seconds.

My local infrastructure is close to the worst in the province.  I lose power about three times a year, but the nearest main arteries (200 feet away) never do.

 Putting stuff underground does not work well on the Gulf Coast due to the high water table.  Plus, nobody around here is willing to pay the 10X cost of underground distribution lines and transmission lines.

It doesn't work well here either, I am told.  And people here are no more eager to pay extra now that electrical transmission is in private hands.
William Hyde