It's a 3 course food-for-thought keeper from Dick Mills (Westergaard site):

http://www.y2ktimebomb.com/PP/RC/dm9902.htm

-- Arnie Rimmer (Arnie_Rimmer@usa.net), January 15, 1999

Answers

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-- Arnie Rimmer (Arnie_Rimmer@usa.net), January 15, 1999.

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Yep Arnie,

That Dick Mills knows his stuff. Knows his stuff!

So does that Rick Cowles. And in his CBN interview, http://www.cbn.org/y2k/cowles .htm,

Mr. Cowles says, "You're going to see isolated dark spots here and there. You're going to see brown spots here and there. But you're going to see more light spots than brown or black spots."

Doesn't sound much like the G. North/Infomagic 'total national blackout' to me. And who knows more about the power grid and Y2K, Dick Mills and Rick Cowles, or Gary North and Infomagic, whoever that might be?

-- Barney Fife (nipit@the.bud), January 15, 1999.

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I think we ought to wait until the time comes to talk about who is right and who is wrong. While I don't particularly like Dick Mills, I do have a lot of respect for what Rick Cowles has to say. Personally, I think Rick is giving too high of a chance of all the nukes remaining online. And neither Rick nor Dick can guarentee that the coal and oil is going to make it to where it's needed, especially the oil. That leaves hydro and we are not having a very wet winter out here in California.

Bob

-- Bob Benson (appysys@inreach.com), January 15, 1999.

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Barney,

So you agree with Rick Cowles that we're "going to see dark spots here and there" and that we're "going to see brown spots here and there"?

That sounds serious enough to me to prepare for. January temperatures in some lattitudes can kill if there's no heat. Humans can only live three of four days without water.

I would bet, though, that if Arnie had said without attribution the same quote by Rick Cowles you're agreeing with, that you would have called Arnie a "doomer".

-- Kevin (mixesmusic@worldnet.att.net), January 15, 1999.

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Blockquote off...

Dan

-- Dan (DanTCC@Yahoo.com), January 15, 1999.

I'm not really sure where the positive interpretation of Mills came from. I understand that he has the opinion that widespread outages will be highly unlikely. I understand he does not expect "Balkanisation" or "islanding". I just don't see where he gets the optimism for the "unlikely" on "islanding". He also seems to think that it is nearly impossible for an entire regional SCADA to go belly up. I wish I was able to share this optimism. I didn't see anything there that will allow me to decrease my active preps. Nor did I see anything there to allow me to decrease my passive preps (education, storage of specific tool types, etc).

As I read his piece, I begin to wonder if he hasn't done what he once indicated NERC had done, which was to set the "executive summary" up as a positive, or confidence building statement, and put the unhappy news in the body.

CR

-- Chuck, night driver (rienzoo@en.com), January 15, 1999.