A couple of years ago, Gravitas Documentaries produced a 1h. 20m. documentary titled "Juice: How Electricity Explains The World". Its introduction on YouTube reads:
While electricity availability doesn’t guarantee wealth, its absence almost always means poverty. Juice takes viewers to Beirut, Reykjavik, Kolkata, San Juan, Manhattan, and Boulder to tell the human story of electricity and to explain why power equals power. The defining inequality in the world today is the disparity between the electricity rich and the electricity poor. In fact, there are more than 3 billion people on the planet today who are using less electricity than what’s used by an average American refrigerator. Over a three-year period, the Juice team travelled 60,000 miles to gather 40 on-camera interviews with people from seven countries on five continents. Juice shows how electricity explains everything from women’s rights and climate change to Bitcoin mining and indoor marijuana production. Juice explains who has electricity, who’s getting it, and how developing countries all over the world are working to bring their people out of the dark and into the light.
It's a very interesting documentary, and provides a lot of background information about power - specifically electrical power - and its centrality to our entire civilization.
Not content with that, the makers expanded on their original effort and produced a five-part series titled "Juice - The series". It's subtitled "From Texas to Tokyo, this five-part docuseries shows how politicians and corporate avarice weakened our most critical network — and why we need fission to fix it." You can read more about it at the link. I've embedded all five parts below, and highly recommend them.
There's a whole lot of information in those documentaries, and some very sobering reflections on what our world would be without abundant electricity. Worthwhile viewing for everyone, IMHO, not just engineers and business people, because without electricity - or without enough electricity and a reliable grid to supply it - we'll all be caught short.
Peter
12 comments:
Now you know the reason for the green energy push. It is all about equality. Since they can't raise everybody else up to the standard of living in Western nations, they will lower the standard of living in Western nations by limitting the amount of electricity and other energy sources available.
Like fire a very useful thing.
Like fire, Electricity a dangerous thing when abused. Surveillance state requires electricity as an example.
Loss of reliable grid power a problem? Let's look towards South Africa for a recent example.
Doesn't have to be a total grid down scenario to make troubles for you and yours. Chinese style social scores too low and Central Bank Money (that ALSO requires a reliable grid as does Bitcoin) can make it a sorry No power for you this week citizen, until you get the required struggle session in to raise your Social Score.
Texas had a pretty nasty grid situation and plenty of homes were damaged as plumbing froze and such.
But HEY! Were AMERICA! Not a 3rd world *ellhole, right?
Protect your trusted friends and trusted family. Real trouble is near, just ask the CONgress (spelling intentional) about the "Serious Security Threat" facing our country they are chattering about.
Can you say False Flag?
And having 'enough' and 'reliable' are currently questionable in a number of places...including in America!
one thing my dad pointed out back in 1969 with the moon landing. he said inside of 50 years we have gone from horse and buggy to the damn moon. and how ?
the wide spread use of electric power in this country.
and it was WW2 that brought this country out of the funk of the 1930's. the difference if life style before the war and after was just short of amazing. they had electric power at the farm after the war. with electric power this country moved ahead after the war like no other. dave in pa.
“Communism is Soviet Power + Electrification of the Whole Country” — Lenin
Thanks!
I shall begin watching dUring lunch
Juan
I used to work as a product manager in the electrical industry and would talk at conferences. I always made the point we were doing God's work. Refrigerators and freezers are the key to modern food preservation. Keeping the lights on in the hospital is pretty important too.
I used to teach the boyscout merit badge for nuclear science. They were always surprised to learn America had the cheapest and most reliable power in the world. We have been fire trucking that up.
As Jerry Pournelle used to say, the key to a first-world economy is cheap and reliable electric power.
I was a nuke - we could do so much better but the government is involved, IMHO. Smart nuclear (not what we are doing today) is the only long-term viable alternative.
One of the things I think about is how the electrical grid empowers everything, including resistance.
If you assume the paradigm of our national government being... less-than-altruistic, you know they view our side as an existential enemy. In the coming festivities, you can BET the grid will be a target. If the grid works, we can survive just fine out in the country. We'll have refrigeration, lights, comms, and medicine. Can't have that.
If your home and backup plan relies on grid power, you REALLY need to re-think your setup. At the very best, it will likely become intermittent and unreliable, as most Turd-World countries are like that.
"why we need fission to fix it."
This is not a serious comment. We don't need fission, although it would be nice. We are not going to have fission anytime soon either. My background is Aerospace Engineering and Nuclear Engineering. I used to avidly follow every report of "achieved fission" but after forty years of that I'm skeptical. What we really need is nuclear power. But wait, we have that. All we have to do is convince the politicians to get the hell out of the way. No more thirty year lawsuits to block any progress. File every objection you have to the court right now, power grid infrastructure gets expedited hearings and rulings, appeals can still be filed but on an expedited and limited timetable. No last minute "oh we just realized the sand flea lives there" filings. Inexpensive modular reactors can be sited just about anywhere very safely.
@heresolong: I think you're confusing "fission" with "fusion". We already have fission; we've had it since the Trinity test in 1945. We don't yet have fusion.
Electricity is civilization.
A world lit only by fire is the Turd World.
Someone once did the calculations and stated that the amount of energy in the form of electricity and fossil fuels would require 200 slaves working hard for each and every person in a modern society. Without fossil fuels and electricity 90% of us will die. Which is exactly what the 1% elites would like to see happen. As
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