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Early Sunday morning, all of mainland Argentina lost power in an "unprecedented" blackout event that left most of the country's 44 million citizens in the dark until the evening. The blackout also extended to Uruguay (which is connected to Argentina's power grid) and limited parts of Chile. Although the exact cause of the blackout is still being investigated, Argentina experienced heavy rains over the weekend, and there is reason to believe that the inclement weather played a starring role in the largest blackout in recent history.
Extreme weather events are a leading cause of blackouts around the world, and the blackout in Argentina is a reminder that our electric grids aren't ready to handle the increasing intensity of storms resulting from climate change. Although the United States isn't likely to see a nationwide blackout like the one that hit Argentina, localized blackouts in the United States have increased in both frequency and duration in recent years. This is due in no small part to massive forest fires, snow storms, tornadoes, and hurricanes that cause localized blackouts often affecting tens of thousands of people.
"There is clear evidence that extreme weather events have increased over the past 20 years, and so have the number of outages and the number of customer hours out of service," says Alison Silverstein, an independent energy consultant and previous advisor to the chairman of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. "We need to accept this and do a better job at helping customers and communities survive these growing outages and threats."
https://www.wired.com/story/argentinas-blackout-and-the-storm-battered-future-of-the-grid/
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 24 2019, @02:04PM (1 child)
Like so many stories before it, it is a thinly veiled jab at Trump. No mention of mismanagement within the Argentine power industry.
Where do you think SN gets its stories from? I wouldn't be surprised if the editors intentionally pick out stories guaranteed to stir up the shit. 80 comment stories, even on a low quality submission like this gives more utility to the readers than a story that ends up attracting 0.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 24 2019, @07:20PM
Granted, Trump is a blowhard and the amounts of methane he spews while talking out of his ass are likely prodigious, but I don't see how this has anything do with Trump, or even the Trump administration.
I'm sure there are issues with the Argentine power grid, just as there are with the US grid.
More power outages caused by weather-related damage is certainly an issue. But that's an issue to take up with the folks who run the interconnected power grids in the US, not the Federal government -- and certainly not our jackass-in-chief.
The above includes a not-so-thinly veiled jab at moron. TFS (didn't read TFA) isn't that at all. Do you see the difference now?