Archive for: August 2009
CBC weather panic — Steve Murphy weighs in
CTV Anchor Steve Murphy writes:
Have you had an opportunity to watch Cindy Day’s very measured approach to forecasting these recent storms? Cindy constantly stresses that tropical cyclones are extremely difficult to predict with precision, especially when they are several days away. Her forecasts employ likely and anticipated storm tracks and include ranges for rainfall and wind speeds. A review of last week’s coverage would confirm that Cindy Day’s prognosis for Hurricane Bill was remarkably accurate even several days ahead of time. Our news coverage of the arrival of the storm focused mainly on surf conditions and danger from the waves. There are several good sources for weather information in Nova Scotia but we believe Cindy Day’s forecasts on CTV are the most consistently reliable.
It was CBC Radio that peaked contrarian‘s ire. Steve’s point (or Cindy’s) about the unpredictability of tropical cyclones is right on the money. This raises the question why we insist on talking about these storms five or six days out.
CBC weather panic — feedback
After hectoring us for five days about Bill, a hurricane that was actually a tropical storm, the media took an only slightly more restrained approach to Danny, a weak tropical storm that actually appears to be a half-day rain shower. CBC still wrung its hands for much of the week, but didn’t cancel regular programs. Many contrarian readers responded to the hype, starting after the jump with CW.
NSP meets its customers – feedback
Getting this done (or almost done), together with pressing client chores, have kept contrarian from blogging much these last two weeks, leaving a backlog of unacknowledged feedback on the NS Power customer consultation, and the recent outbreak of hurricane hysteria. After the jump, reader feedback on NS Power.
CBC weather panic – (cont.)
Tropical storm Danny is currently a ‘disorganized’ system that may or may not become a hurricane, ‘albeit a weak one.’
By contrarian‘s back-of-the-envelope calculations, it lies roughly 2300 km south-southwest of Halifax. At its present speed of 17 km/hr, it could reach Nova Scotia in a just under six days—if it traveled in a straight line, which it won’t.
But that’s close enough for the weather hysterics at CBC News to warn that it “could strengthen into a hurricane and affect Atlantic Canada by the weekend.” Gee, maybe they should cancel normal programming.
This continues a policy established last winter, when the first hint of a suggestion of a rumor of a snow flurry launched local CBC stations into full panic. Lock your doors! Stay off the roads! Snowflakes have been spotted in East Green Harbour, and they’re Headed This Way! Call 1-800-582-5526 to cancel all planned events.
Abetted by Environment Canada’s lengthening and bewildering menu of ominous Alerts, Advisories, Watches, Warnings, and Special Weather Statements, CBC forecasts go from zero to shrill faster than you can batten a hatch.
For the love of Pete, cut it out. Over-warning about weather and wolves is just as dangerous as under-warning. Someone is going to get hurt or die because more and more citizens are simply tuning this crap out.
I know it’s summertime, but please, push back your chair, get out of your office, and go find some real news. Stop predicting possible but unlikely news five days before it fails to happen.
UPDATE: The Herald gets in on the act.
What’s happened to America
Salon columnist Glenn Greenwald offers a blood-curdling precis of the just released (but still redacted) CIA Inspector General’s report (.pdf) on the agency’s torture techniques. He concludes:
The fact that we are not really bothered any more by taking helpless detainees in our custody and (a) threatening to blow their brains out, torture them with drills, rape their mothers, and murder their children; (b) choking them until they pass out; (c) pouring water down their throats to drown them; (d) hanging them by their arms until their shoulders are dislocated; (e) blowing smoke in their face until they vomit; (f) putting them in diapers, dousing them with cold water, and leaving them on a concrete floor to induce hypothermia; and (g) beating them with the butt of a rifle — all things that we have always condemend as “torture” and which our laws explicitly criminalize as felonies (“torture means. . . the threat of imminent death; or the threat that another person will imminently be subjected to death, severe physical pain or suffering . . .”) — reveals better than all the words in the world could how degraded, barbaric and depraved a society becomes when it lifts the taboo on torturing captives.
Liveblog: NSP meets its customers – Day 2
2:35
NSP President Rob Bennett has wrapped up the session with a brief thank you to the consumer participants and expert panelists. The session ended about an hour early to give participants time to get home before Hurricane Bill hits. Before leaving Truro, the consumer participants will fill out a questionnaire touching on various energy issues. They filled out an a second survey before coming to the session. Comparing the two will give NSP policy planners some insight into whether and how an informed discussion can move public opinion on energy issues.
2:25
One of the consumer breakout groups expressed alarm about the growing enthusiasm for biomass, and the increased pressure for clear-cutting it would create. The consensus among the panelists is that biomass should be used, but selectively, and without being blind to the potential problems. Recovering energy from farming and fishing byproducts that are normally discarded as waste was cited as a beneficial use of biomass power.
2:10
Consumer question: Why is there a law in Nova Scotia banning nuclear power and is Nova Scotia Power doing anything to change this?
Allan Crandlemire, Executive Director, Conserve Nova Scotia: “The ban has been in place for more than 20 years, and probably relates to Nova Scotia’s historic commitment to coal mining and coal-fired generation.”
Janet Janet Ashworth, alternative energy co-ordinator for the Ecology Actiuon Centre: “I would be very concerned about the health implications of nuclear power, starting with the health and environmental issues around uranium mining.”
Crandlemire: “The question of whether we have the option to consider it is very different from the question of whether we should choose nuclear. I am not advoicating that we go nuclear. I was trying to outline the histoical reasons why we have a ban on even considering it.”
if it is true that we have to move out to renewable sources
1:45
Consumer question: What is the potential for tidal power production?
Richardson said the pilot tidal projects now underway are an attempt to resolve two questions: which of two types of tidal turbines is bests uited for our needs, and what happend when you turn a single tidal generator into a tiday energy farm with many connected turbines. “If you asked me today, I think the potential would be in the 100-200 megawatt range, about 10 percent of our power production.”
1:30 p.m.
Having completed the breakout discussion groups, the energy forum has now reconvened with an expert panel taking questions from the customer participants. The first question dealt with the capital cost required to meet the government’s 2015 renewable energy targets, and would this cost be passed on to customers. Alan Richardson, NSP vice president of commercial services, responded:
The cost will be substantial, certainly In the hundreds of millions. There is some uncertainty about the amount because there are choices to be made about which path we will take to move us away from fossil fuels and become much cleaner. This will affect customer power bills. Customer power bills are a function of our costs, because we are a regulated utility. We present to the UARB what we think our costs will be, and the UARB either agrees or disagrees, and sets our rates.
We think we can keep the capital costs within the range of inflation, but about half of our costs are fuel. There is some variability because of unknowns in the cost of fuels.
12:15
One group takes a dim view of burning agricultural and forest wastes to produce biomass power: “I’m afraid when the run out of garbage, they’re going to move on to the good stuff. If they build those machines, they will want to use them.”
11:50
The consumer view in a nutshell:
Wind is great. Solar is great. Tidal is great. We need these things. But how are we going to pay for them? [Nova Scotia Power] are not reinvesting profits in these things, they’re paying themselves.
11:15
NSP President Rob Bennett on the company’s biggest challenge: “How do we move to new sources of fuel without driving energy prices to high we wreck the economy. I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about this, and I’m convinced we can do it. The government has set a goal of 25 percent renewable energy by 2015. I think it’s a very reasonable goal. In fact, I’d like to see us shoot for 30 percent so we have some safety margin.”
(Bennett was speaking conversationally during a break. Although he and other NSP officials are observing the consumer sessions, together with a variety of industry experts, they are not participating. Only customers and CRA facilitators take part. Some company officials and technical experts will be questioned by the forum participants in a panel discussion this afternoon.)
10:40
In the three sessions I’ve visited so far, the participants’ keen interest in conservation is surpassed only by their irritation at rising electricity costs. Politicians deal with this contradiction by pandering to both positions, but NSP doesn’t have that luxury. To curb its use of dirty coal, the company will have to bring on more expensive power sources.
This contradiction, it seems to me, is one of the biggest obstacles to sound environmental policy. Nova Scotians are concerned about the environment, and want steps taken to prevent climate change, but not so concerned that they are ready to endure increased costs or personal inconvenience.
10:25
A surprising number of participants in one session said they try to use their dishwashers and washing machines only at night, when power is cheaper. In fact, except for a small group of NSP customers who have electrical heat storage units and smart meters, electricity is not cheaper at night, although it costs far less for NSP to produce. Shifting peak power consumption to off-peak hours is one of NSP’s biggest conservation opportunities. The discussion suggests that time-of-day rates could drive that transition.
10:20 a.m.
In each of the five morning breakout sessions, 20 customers are discussing energy conservation and value. Facilitators from Corporate Research Associates, a Halifax communications firm, began the session by asking what participants had done to conserve electricity.
Almost all participants claimed to have done something: from changing to compact fluorescent bulbs (“except in the bathroom, where my wife wouldn’t let me change them”), installing programmable thermostats, to buying a solar water heater for a swimming pool.
“I got rid of my teenager,” said a woman from Tatamagouche. “The change in electrical since he’s moved out is amazing!”
Saturday 10:00 a.m.
The customers taking part in Nova Scotia Power’s consumer forum in Truro were drawn from a 5,000-person online panel the company has assembled for periodic survey purposes. A demographically balanced subset of 1,000 members this group was asked about their interest in participating, and about 300 responded. The 99 people taking part in today’s session came from that group.
The idea was to capture a mix of ages, incomes, and region of the province that reflects NSP’s customer base. My impression, after eavesdropping on the first few minutes of the morening breakout sessions, is that the group is unrepresentative in at least one respect: The participants seem unusually interested in energy policy, and keen to learn more.
Live blog of Friday evening’s session here.
Contrarian weather forecast
Let the blogosphere note that on Friday morning, contrarian bet a friend that Hurricane Bill would not rank among the 10 highest wind speeds recorded in Nova Scotia in 2009. As of this morning, the bet is looking pretty safe.
Environment Canada and the CBC need to realize that the shrill, cover-your-ass forecasts they adopted in the wake Hurricane Juan are just as dangerous as under-predicting. EC and CBC cry wolf so often, and so predictably, citizens simply tune them out.
This is a topic contrarian will return to. Reader comments welcome.
Liveblog: NSP meets its customers – Day 1
9:15
Roberta Bondar poses with charmed NSP flacks.
My old Daily News chum David Rodenhiser, now laboring in NSP communications, asked Bondar if she had any startling revelations in space.
Many of them. One is that Buck Rogers was a myth. We romanticize space. It’s a very difficult environment. It’s very hard. It’s hard on the body. But you can’t beat the view.
8:40 p.m.:
A surprisingly witty keynote speech by Roberta Bondar began with several slides of Hurricane Bill. These days Bondar makes her living as a professional speaker, but this isn’t shaping up to be a canned speech. Moneyquote:
The Challenger disaster happened because communications failed.
Anyone who has read William Langewiesche’s brilliant account of the Columbia disaster in the Atlantic, knows that communications brought it down, too. More specifically, an intellectually dishonest PowerPoint presentation lulled top NASA executives into the false belief that there was no problem with the shuttle. When junior engineers tried to sound the alarm, their superiors shut them down.
People didn’t want to hear that a piece of foam might have caused damage. How could a piece of foam the size of a football not do damage when it was flying by at 1000 miles an hour.
Bondar’s view of consumers’ and citizens’ roles in energy policy:
You have to listen; you have to hear; you have to learn; and if you don’t, you may be the reason communications will fail. If we avoid something, we will never learn how things can change.
—
Friday, 8:20 p.m.: Nova Scotia Power’s community forum is underway in Truro, and I’ll be live blogging the event in this space tonight and tomorrow, adding observations as they occur to me.
NSP President Rob Bennet kicked off the session with a mercifully short explanation of its purpose: to discuss “the challenges and choices we face, as we move away from coal, not only as a company but as a province.”
Not only as a company, but as a province. This is something critics of NSP need to realize. Nova Scotia’s environmental performance is inextricably connected to Nova Scotia Power’s environmental performance. Like it or not, we’re in this together.
Contrarian will live-blog NS Power customer forum
On February 12, 1891, the latest of many interruptions in his household’s supply of coal gas moved Samuel Langhorne Clemens, AKA Mark Twain, to write the Hartford Gas and Electric Company.
“Dear Sirs,” he began. “Some day you will move me almost to the verge of irritation by your chuckle-headed Goddamned fashion of shutting your Goddamned gas off without giving any notice to your Goddamned parishioners. Several times you have come within an ace of smothering half of this household in their beds and blowing up the other half by this idiotic, not to say criminal, custom of yours. And it has happened again today. Haven’t you a telephone? Ys, S L Clemens”
Executives of Nova Scotia Power can be thankful Twain died 99 years ago, and never lived in Nova Scotia. Between Hurricane Juan in 2003 and the Utility and Review Board hearings last month, the utility has suffered more than enough assaults on its reputation without suffering Twain’s caustic tongue.
Reputation matters to most companies. It matters much more if you’re charged with managing a costly transition to climate friendly power production for customers who demand environmental responsibility, but show little appetite for the higher power bills it will require.
This weekend, for the third time in six years, Nova Scotia Power will gather 100 or so of its customers for a Customer Energy Forum, essentially an informed discussion of the energy policy issues facing the company. The idea is to give a representative sample of customers a bit more information about the nuts and bolts of these policy changes, and see how this influences their preferred solutions. You can see a brief account of the results of previous sessions here and here, and you can read the backgrounder booklet NSP produced for forum participants here.
At the company’s invitation, I will observe the event and live blog the session throughout the day Saturday. Coming to grips with climate change poses problems that are technically intricate, politically onerous, and potentially the most difficult our generation will face. I am keen to see how NSP officials and technical experts frame the issues, and how typical customers respond.
Watch for one or two posts Friday evening, and frequent posts throughout the day Saturday.
[Disclosure: NSP will reimburse my expenses and pay me a fee for live-blogging this event. Company officials will not see my posts before they go live. Our agreement requires that my posts "will be fair and factual," words that may prove a little slipperier than power company officials imagine. All in all, I think it's an interesting leap of faith on the company's part, but I expect to take some criticism for entering into a financial arrangement with a story subject. Maybe one or both of us, or you, dear readers, will conclude it was a mistake, but the Internet has changed everything about communications, and on balance, I think it's an experiment worth trying.]
Local lapses in CBC Radio’s iPhone app explained
This month, Apple approved a free CBC Radio app that offers yet another reason to own an iPhone. It will prove a boon to radio listeners not tied to their radios all day.
The CBC Radio app will give iPhone or iPod users live audio streams from of Radio 1, 2, and 3 (the corp’s net-based, indy-oriented network). It will let users listen in any time zone, so when Atlantic Canadians miss a national program, they have four chances to catch up.
Want to listen to a local show in real time? Pick it off the station menu (below left), our use the “find-your-location” feature.
It also offers archived episodes of many CBC Radio shows. Miss an episode of Spark (currently contrarian‘s favorite CBC program)? It’s there on your phone, on demand, whenever you want it.
You can do most of these things on the CBC website, too, but the iPhone app interface is so much cleaner and easier to navigate than the website, many listeners will reach for the phone.
As initially released, the program has a few startling lapses. There are no Maritime locations listed on the Radio One station menu, and the find-your-location function directs Nova Scotiams to Ottawa or Goose Bay, of all places.
It turns out that CBC is in the process of converting all its streaming audio feeds from Windows Media to MP3 format. (That’s a good thing; the CBC’s streaming audio files have tended to be balky.)
Jonathan Carrigan, the CBC’s Product Development Manager for Digital Programming & Business Development, says the missing stations will be added as soon as their streams are converted to MP3. This will require one ore more upgrades to the app, and these will be coming “very soon,” he says. Once the audio stream conversions are complete, Carrigan promises more upgrades, and more features.
