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Re:Rolling blackouts in California have power experts stumped by paloaltokid on Monday August 17, 2020 @04:49PM (#24191887)
Oh god...Marin NIMBYism is really crazy when it comes to that stuff. And there's a lot of conspiracy theory / 5G type stuff that goes on as well. Strange to think that many of the folks who live there are in charge of a lot of the companies on HN (or are senior execs there).
Re:Rolling blackouts in California have power experts stumped by almost_usual on Monday August 17, 2020 @11:21PM (#24194926)
> Strange to think that many of the folks who live there are in charge of a lot of the companies on HN (or are senior execs there).

As someone who lives in Marin I’m not sure where you got this idea. Most people who live in Marin have been there for 20-30+ years and are retired.

They probably paid less than 300k for their home.

Re:Rolling blackouts in California have power experts stumped by dragonwriter on Tuesday August 18, 2020 @03:21AM (#24196083)
> Most people who live in Marin have been there for 20-30+ years and are retired.

64.1% of those in the county 16 or older are in the labor force. Most people living in Marin County are not retired.

https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/marincountycali...

Re:Rolling blackouts in California have power experts stumped by blaser-waffle on Tuesday August 18, 2020 @09:41AM (#24198403)
Most of the homeowners are probably retired and bought it for <300k.

Which is related, but not totally, to who lives there.

Re:Rolling blackouts in California have power experts stumped by Natsu on Tuesday August 18, 2020 @12:27PM (#24200693)
The funny thing about this whole story is that this whole story has a much simpler explanation that doesn't involve any conspiracies at all:

"We told the California Public Utilities Commission of a 4,700-MW need through 2022 and that gap started in 2020. Despite all that, only 3,300 MW was authorized for procurement and none starting until 2021," Berberich said during a special telephone conference the Cal-ISO Board of Governors held Aug. 17, following a weekend during which the grid operator twice conducted rotating blackouts because of high demand and tightening reserves.

https://www.spglobal.com/platts/en/market-insights/latest-ne...

It's weird that none of the 'experts' in the news could figure this out and we've gone to blaming random homeowners, electric lines, 5G and everything else in this story without this information even coming up.

Re:Rolling blackouts in California have power experts stumped by rbanffy on Monday August 17, 2020 @07:10PM (#24193381)
It's clear not enough is being invested in schools, in particular the science curriculum.
Re:Rolling blackouts in California have power experts stumped by bgorman on Tuesday August 18, 2020 @12:51AM (#24195386)
Enough is being invested, it is just being spent extremely poorly. No country gets less per dollar on education than the US. A good start would be supporting school choice so the public school's monopoly and cost structure can be challenged.
Re:Rolling blackouts in California have power experts stumped by jychang on Tuesday August 18, 2020 @02:33AM (#24195858)
Literally every other country in the world has a fully public education that does just fine.

I think the only well known non-US private school system (off the top of my head) are UK commonwealth secondary boarding schools, and those schools are more well known for their abuse than their academic strength.

Pretty much any other country (for example, France, Japan, China, etc) are generally built on a system of publicly funded schools

Re:Rolling blackouts in California have power experts stumped by httpsterio on Tuesday August 18, 2020 @06:23AM (#24197066)
Finland as well, we don't basically have private or boarding schools at all.
Re:Rolling blackouts in California have power experts stumped by rbanffy on Tuesday August 18, 2020 @11:20AM (#24199723)
A good indicator whether public schools are good enough is this - the moment private schools can't compete, then public schools are good enough.

Private for-profit schools can use their money to get political influence and reduce public school funding in order to further its economic advantage.

Re:Rolling blackouts in California have power experts stumped by bgorman on Tuesday August 18, 2020 @12:42PM (#24200889)
All the countries you listed spend way less per student than the US.
Re:Rolling blackouts in California have power experts stumped by duhuh on Tuesday August 18, 2020 @01:58AM (#24195718)
Like the choice we all have in healthcare? No thanks
Re:Rolling blackouts in California have power experts stumped by raxxorrax on Tuesday August 18, 2020 @03:35AM (#24196137)
There is a lot of mysticism around electromagnetism, but I wouldn't want to live under a high voltage line either.

But that would probably be irrelevant for substations and you could isolate lines from populated areas with not problem. I think the issue is probably because there is little will for investments.

Re:Rolling blackouts in California have power experts stumped by davisr on Monday August 17, 2020 @06:24PM (#24192959)
Well, they're not entirely wrong about the 5G. I understand many in this forum won't agree with me. From https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/we-have-no...

  > We Have No Reason to Believe 5G Is Safe

  > The World Health Organization's International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) classified RFR as "possibly carcinogenic to humans" in 2011. Last year, a $30 million study conducted by the U.S. National Toxicology Program (NTP) found “clear evidence” that two years of exposure to cell phone RFR increased cancer in male rats and damaged DNA in rats and mice of both sexes. The Ramazzini Institute in Italy replicated the key finding of the NTP using a different carrier frequency and much weaker exposure to cell phone radiation over the life of the rats.

  > Since 5G is a new technology, there is no research on health effects, so we are “flying blind” to quote a U.S. senator. However, we have considerable evidence about the harmful effects of 2G and 3G. Little is known the effects of exposure to 4G, a 10-year-old technology, because governments have been remiss in funding this research. Meanwhile, we are seeing increases in certain types of head and neck tumors in tumor registries, which may be at least partially attributable to the proliferation of cell phone radiation. These increases are consistent with results from case-control studies of tumor risk in heavy cell phone users.
About the author:

  > Joel M. Moskowitz, PhD, is director of the Center for Family and Community Health in the School of Public Health at the University of California, Berkeley. He has been translating and disseminating the research on wireless radiation health effects since 2009 after he and his colleagues published a review paper that found long-term cell phone users were at greater risk of brain tumors. His Electromagnetic Radiation Safety website has had more than two million page views since 2013. He is an unpaid advisor to the International EMF Scientist Appeal and Physicians for Safe Technology.
Re:Rolling blackouts in California have power experts stumped by Rebelgecko on Monday August 17, 2020 @07:28PM (#24193507)
>two years of exposure to cell phone RFR increased cancer in male rats

If this is the study I'm thinking of, it's suspect for 3 reasons.

1. First off, the study didn't test against 5G. It used 2G and 3G emissions. Even if you believe the study, it doesn't make sense to use it as a reason to stick with 3G instead of 5G.

2. The study tested male rats, female rats, male mice, and female mice. Only male rats were allegedly impacted by radio signals. If 3G is so universally dangerous to living tissue, why did it only impact one of the species tested? And only the males of that species? Sidenote- the mice were actually exposed to more energy than the rats

3. Even though the male rats exposed to 2G and 3G were more likely to get cancer, they also lived longer than unexposed rats. Male rats exposed to 3G lived nearly 10% longer than ones that weren't. If this life extending capability also applies to 5G signals, we should be accelerating 5G deployment.

Re:Rolling blackouts in California have power experts stumped by Natsu on Monday August 17, 2020 @11:33PM (#24194993)
> The study tested male rats, female rats, male mice, and female mice. Only male rats were allegedly impacted by radio signals. If 3G is so universally dangerous to living tissue, why did it only impact one of the species tested?

That's explained pretty well by this -

https://xkcd.com/882/

Re:Rolling blackouts in California have power experts stumped by nrki on Monday August 17, 2020 @06:40PM (#24193105)
Not a great source. Science is based on evidence, not lack of evidence.

A rebuttal to that article appears in the same publication, and adroitly takes apart it's claims: https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/dont-fall-...

Re:Rolling blackouts in California have power experts stumped by davisr on Monday August 17, 2020 @06:54PM (#24193237)
Thanks, I didn't know about this article. I'm not heavily one way or the other, but I think it's important to put all the information out there.
Re:Rolling blackouts in California have power experts stumped by noodlesUK on Monday August 17, 2020 @08:01PM (#24193740)
This particular feeling, of having a compulsion to share scary information without a strong knowledge base, and then retreating to this sort of position “I think it’s important to put all the information out there” is well described, specifically on this topic, by a recent post by Troy hunt.

https://www.troyhunt.com/lets-stop-the-5g-hysteria-understan...

Re:Rolling blackouts in California have power experts stumped by davisr on Monday August 17, 2020 @08:47PM (#24194105)
Well, from me it wasn't a strong compulsion. However, for many reasons (especially about privacy) we ought not to implement 5G. And this wasn't an article about some conspiracy--it was from an expert who is advising we tread cautiously about what we do not know, and that is very good advice.

I don't think anyone can confirm or deny that 5G carries health risks. But, we do have evidence there are health risks with other cellular communication technologies, and we ought to use that as a basis for decision making.

Re:Rolling blackouts in California have power experts stumped by forgotmysn on Monday August 17, 2020 @09:51PM (#24194498)
1. it was strong enough for you to post

2. please try to explain the security issues that 5G presents that aren't present in 4G, 3G, etc.

3. a lack of information is not an excuse to promote doubt and misinformation. part of the reason we haven't been able to measure the long-term effects of cellular radiation is that it takes time to run those studies. please stop promoting lies and undermining trust in the systems that help manage our society

Re:Rolling blackouts in California have power experts stumped by davisr on Tuesday August 18, 2020 @01:08AM (#24195471)
Hi, in response to #2, 5G allows for very fine resolution in location tracking. There are also concerns about the manufacturers of that equipment. I'll direct you to this link for more: https://www.brookings.edu/research/why-5g-requires-new-appro...

In response to #3, I have not posted any lies, and anything that disagrees with your narrative is not automatically FUD. There are serious doubts of 5G on many fronts by many experts, and these doubts should be discussed. However, as I've noticed here, there is a tendency by the group to form an echo chamber. Anything that's not in-group is not allowed, as we see here, where an expert has a serious concern about untested technologies. I wish we were able to have an honest conversation about this.

    > It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.
Let's reverse roles: can you explain some concerns you might have about 5G? How about at the very basic of levels: why do we need poly-gigabit speeds for cell phones, and how could implementing it negatively impact people?
Re:Rolling blackouts in California have power experts stumped by krageon on Tuesday August 18, 2020 @08:02AM (#24197625)
> why do we need

Why not? When we moved from 3G to 4G I felt like it was kind of useless, but now that I have it I definitely enjoy all the things that become possible with it (lower latency everything, mostly). It was the same way moving from ISDN to cable. It's never bad to have better stuff - you'll find a use for it even if you don't have one now.

> can you explain some concerns you might have about 5G

Frankly the only real and reasonable concern to have is that there are very few engineers that roll out 5G networks that aren't Chinese. I'm not opposed to China, but I am opposed to a country's entire infrastructure being built and maintained by another country (that may want to use that to exert political pressure some day).

> there is a tendency by the group to form an echo chamber

In this case I really don't think it's that, it's mostly that you posted information that's just wrong and then you retreated to a (frankly lazy) defense as to why you're spreading misinformation. It makes you come off as the kind of person that's really unpleasant to talk to, because the lies tend to be so sticky and pervasive. It's exhausting to have to revisit every component of what you know just because someone else couldn't be bothered to figure it out for themselves.

Re:Rolling blackouts in California have power experts stumped by davisr on Tuesday August 18, 2020 @10:33AM (#24199016)
I think your comment is off-base. One, because I posted a link to Scientific American, where an expert in the effects of cellular telecommunication on human health wrote an opinion piece on why we should tread cautiously with the rollout of 5G transmitting equipment. I'm not spreading misinformation, I'm not claiming 5G to cause COVID-19, and I'm not saying anything that should be controversial.

However, I do think there is an echo chamber here, and I think that anything that cautions against the cavalier use of untested technology is not permitted, which I think is very dangerous.

What you think is a 'lazy defense' is really just a guy trying to subdue what he could already recognize as a geyser of vitriolic, and frankly wrong, comments. But, hey, this is apparently a place where everyone's opinion counts as fact, and no criticism at all of 5G is allowed.

I'm going to stop commenting now.

Re:Rolling blackouts in California have power experts stumped by bronson on Wednesday August 19, 2020 @09:20PM (#24218881)
> this is apparently a place where everyone's opinion counts as fact

You post a bunch of cherry-picked nonfactual stuff about 5G and then complain that HN doesn't have enough fact-based content?

Re:Rolling blackouts in California have power experts stumped by forgotmysn on Monday August 17, 2020 @09:48PM (#24194485)
if you're not heavy one way or the other, than you probably shouldnt shill the the fake propaganda of one of them
Re:Rolling blackouts in California have power experts stumped by LeoPanthera on Monday August 17, 2020 @06:40PM (#24193097)
Even if Moskowitz has a point, it is difficult to take him seriously when he associates himself with "Physicians for Safe Technology", a group which maintains the belief that Electromagnetic hypersensitivity is a real thing. It is not.

It has no scientific basis and is not a recognized medical condition.

https://www.who.int/peh-emf/publications/facts/fs296/en/

High levels of RF exposure can of course do damage, in the form of burns. Any seasoned amateur radio operator at some point in the progression of their hobby can surely attest to the pain of being "bitten" by an energized RF cable.

But trying to promote the idea that cellphones are dangerous is just scaremongering. You'll absorb more energy in just a few seconds just by standing in a sunbeam.

Re:Rolling blackouts in California have power experts stumped by henearkr on Tuesday August 18, 2020 @01:47AM (#24195671)
All is not just about energy absorbed or burns. There are reports of the space between cells becoming larger (less inter-cellular adhesion) because of RF, and this led to the conclusion that the blood-brain barrier was weakened due to some kinds of RF. I've not dig too much in the subject, but I understand that a leaky BBB would increase inflammation in the brain and penetration of many molecules (including carcinogenic).

I don't know why all the rebuttals focus on energy absorption and absence of ionizing frequencies. Seems like the mechanism of toxicity, if any, has nothing to do with that.

Re:Rolling blackouts in California have power experts stumped by zaarn on Tuesday August 18, 2020 @08:10AM (#24197670)
A lot of the active RF spectra that people are concerned about don't penetrate deep into your body. They're either absorbed by the skin, the fatty tissue underneath or at the least, by the bone in the skull and ribcage. The reason your phone keeps working when your body blocks the signal is that the signal bounces of other surfaces.

Blocking signals with your body becomes more true as frequency (and bandwidth) goes up. 5G Wifi can't even properly penetrate dry wall, not even mentioning all that water and bone in your body.

Beside that, below the infrared spectrum, it is unlikely that much damage is done by common RF signals; the energy in a quanta from that spectrum is too small to effectively do anything but heat molecules up a tiny bit.

Photochemical effects, ie, things like chemical reactions being induced or cells reacting to the light, require atleast about 1Thz to work (low-end IR).

The heating occurs primarly for frequencies between 30 and 120MHz, which is actively used but not by B2C commercial things, it largely involves ham radio, air traffic radio, sea traffic, weather satellites, etc. Things you're likely to be closer to the receiving end of than the high powered sender.

Which also bring to the other issue; the energies in common RF close to you is too low. If you send with 100mW power, the power your body will capture, even if it's the phone right next to your ear, is likely below 10mW of power. Low enough that your native body heat already overpowers it easily.

Re:Rolling blackouts in California have power experts stumped by henearkr on Tuesday August 18, 2020 @11:12AM (#24199624)
Then 4G or Wifi may be worse than 5G. Experiments with inter-cellular adhesion were, among others, at 900MHz and 1800MHz, thus closer to 4G. However I don't know if other frequencies were really investigated (or with the same care, with different effects observed on male and female rodents, etc).

I appreciate that in your brief analysis you are considering several mechanisms of action besides just the heating. There may be many kinds of resonances, at molecular level, supra-molecular, etc. If very little 900/1800MHz suffices to alter BBB, then it is like a trigger to worse things, without the need of much energy. In the animals tested, the amount reaching the brain, at typical GSM levels, had already the observed result. Of course my tone is speculative here, but if the effect was confirmed in humans, it would not need much energy, and just the medium-to-weak signal reaching the brain could be worrisome.

There are not yet any studies on it, but if the effects of 5G on BBB were much stronger than with 900/1800MHz, it may also be the case that much lower signal intensities would still alter noticeably the BBB, even after the attenuation of the body traversal.

I am not a luddite at all, but I do hope that scientists working to certify that 5G is healthy are not hand-waving away the problem only by saying that the energy absorbed is too low or that the body is blocking its intensity. That would mean they did not hear at all about the effect of the mere frequency as a signal on the adhesion between cells.

I really would like to see some study elucidate the mechanism (or the absence thereof, and the flaws of the previous study), maybe some sort of resonance, soon enough to avoid to be in a situation were Wifi/4G/5G would be everywhere yet with dangerous long-term effects on health.

Re:Rolling blackouts in California have power experts stumped by zaarn on Wednesday August 19, 2020 @10:49AM (#24210933)
The issue is that the energy absorbed is literally too low to do anything. We're talking about heating your body up by 0.1 of a centigrade, so little that it is only visible when using extremely sensitive equipment in lab controlled conditions.

I'd worry more about standard heat given off by devices like laptops. The radio emissions aren't gonna do much but the 80C hot air out of the exhaust blowing into your lap is definitely going to do something. There is plenty of studies on the effects of overheating genitals in males.

But back to the topic; the energy is too small. If these radio waves had an effect, being out during a cloudy day would. The energy you get from solar radiation over a day is probably about the same.

Things like DNA breaking apart don't generally happen with this low frequency, largely because they require a bunch of energy to happen. Like ionization, even 1000W of 100MHz radio waves aren't going to make it happen. There is no amount of energy you can dump into a 100MHz transceiver that would cause ionization of atoms. It simply won't happen. Well, they will ionize but not because of the radio waves but because they've heated up enough that they're starting to undergo plasma formation. But that semantic difference is still important.

The sender in your cellphone or the energy you get from your wifi router are too small to be measured and by all acounts of physics, their effects are too small to be reasonably measured even in long term studies. We're talking literaly sub-milliwatt over your entire body. The entire body uses atleast 100Watts to stay alive. <0.1% change in thermal energy.

Re:Rolling blackouts in California have power experts stumped by henearkr on Wednesday August 19, 2020 @12:42PM (#24212460)
I admit that the more I think about your arguments, the more I lean to be convinced. It makes sense.

However, I really hope they find what was the flaw(s) that led to the surprising result on the BBB of rodents.

Re:Rolling blackouts in California have power experts stumped by dekhn on Monday August 17, 2020 @06:31PM (#24193023)
Anything that cites the Ramazzini studies is suspect. They repeatedly make major methodological errors and nobody replicates their results.
Re:Rolling blackouts in California have power experts stumped by aaronAgain on Monday August 17, 2020 @07:03PM (#24193323)
"so we are “flying blind” to quote a U.S. senator. "

Quoting a US senator on technology is not exactly a strong argument. Like arguing about email security and quoting a senator on the technology committee saying he has never sent an email.

https://www.engadget.com/2015-03-09-lindsey-graham-never-sen...

In many cases senators are the least possible informed people on a topic, and are almost certainly not focused on the pure science of an issue. Quoting one of them pretty much means you are trying to sway me by using their position, not research.

Also, nothing that you quoted about 5G actually says it is unsafe. Saying that 2G and 3G are unsafe and that we don't know what 4G does, and that government doesn't want to investigate 5G, and that tumors of a certain type 'may be at least partially attributable' to cell phone radiation, and all of the other slights, all of that doesn't add up to 5G is unsafe.

This is the direct rebut to the article you linked, even from the same site.

https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/dont-fall-...

  > On the strength of epidemiological evidence, cancer fears are dangerously misguided: While American cell-phone usage has grown from virtually zero in 1992 to virtually 100 percent by 2008, there has been no indication that glioma rates have increased proportionally in the same period—a nonrelationship replicated by numerous other studies. 

About the author

  > David Robert Grimes is a cancer researcher, physicist, and John Maddox Prize–winning science writer. He is based at Dublin City University and is a visiting researcher at the University of Oxford. He advises, across Europe, on the public understanding of science, particularly on vaccination policy and combatting cancer misinformation. His first book, The Irrational Ape: Why Flawed Logic Puts Us All at Risk, and How Critical Thinking Can Save the World, is now available from Simon & Schuster UK.
Re:Rolling blackouts in California have power experts stumped by Mister_X on Tuesday August 18, 2020 @04:33AM (#24196429)
Hmm, I was selling and installing a lot of Cell Phones in Silicon Valley in 1983 (C-Tell Cellular, Santa Clara), and we had an office in Sacramento that was doing even better than I was sales wise.

To characterize the nearly ten years of cell phone growth as "virtually zero" makes me seriously question the authors fact checking and thought process.

To whit: "While American cell-phone usage has grown from virtually zero in 1992 to virtually 100 percent by 2008"

Re:Rolling blackouts in California have power experts stumped by uep on Tuesday August 18, 2020 @08:39AM (#24197892)
That's anecdotal evidence. My anecdotal evidence is that I lived in a suburb of a major city on the east coast, and no one I knew had a cellphone until probably the mid-90s.
Re:Rolling blackouts in California have power experts stumped by ponker on Monday August 17, 2020 @08:25PM (#24193952)
> a senator on the technology committee saying he has never sent an email

Senators who don't send emails don't do so because they don't know how to send emails -- they do it because they're doing seriously fucked up stuff and don't want a paper trail. As the fictional drug kingpin Stringer Bell says in The Wire -- "is you taking notes on a criminal fucking conspiracy?"

Re:Rolling blackouts in California have power experts stumped by beders on Tuesday August 18, 2020 @01:50AM (#24195684)
Coulomb barrier - how to overcome it with radiation like that? Exactly, not at the energy levels a cell phone user is subjected to. Why isn't that the end of the story?
Re:Rolling blackouts in California have power experts stumped by zaarn on Tuesday August 18, 2020 @08:15AM (#24197707)
It's like with homeopathy; it's effect cannot be measured beyond base background noise, but plenty of people believe it affects their bodies anyway.