FYI: I did an in-depth interview with Rick Cowles (a top Y2K/electric power expert). It's now online at:

http://www.cbn.org/y2k/cowles.asp

Drew Parkhill

-- Drew Parkhill (y2k@cbn.org), January 05, 1999

Answers

Drew,

I just finished reading your interview with Rick Cowles. Great job and thanks for your efforts!

-- Bryan (bhuie@aristotle.net), January 05, 1999.

Well worth reading.

-- Nigel Arnot (nra@maxwell.ph.kcl.ac.uk), January 06, 1999.

Drew,

Great work! Keep us informed.

-- Kevin (mixesmusic@worldnet.att.net), January 06, 1999.

While it is nearly impossible to realistically forecast the impact on utilities of supply-chain disruptions to items on which they depend, it appears that Rick's estimate of two-week disruptions followed by recovery and then later capacity issues does not factor in significant supply-chain exposure (fuel delivery, notably), with exception of possible nuke plant shutdowns.

However, he does not declare himself (wisely, since speculation would be without evidence) on the level of recovery that will follow likely disruption. Still, reading between the lines, he seems to expect a lengthy period (six months? that is, between 1/1 and summer) of confusion and disruption, varying by region.

Is this just my reading or others as well? Drew, your comments?

I will run this post on Rick's forum, hoping for his direct response.

-- BigDog (BigDog@duffer.com), January 06, 1999.

Good interview. The warm and fuzzy conclusions at the end can be reached only by ignoring so much of what was discussed in the interview. Whether it is the supply chain, or the vast water control infrastructures necessary for hydro to work, or the impact of rolling blackout on small businesses, or the deadly impact upon electrical devices subjected to insufficient voltage thereby creating further impact upon small businesses.

If one considers any of these long term impacts, if one considers the very high probabilities of impacts of large scale banking failures and large scale impacts of govt, Fed thru county, failures, etc. what are the contingency plans necessary to ensure the various impacted utilities will even have the manpower necessary to minimally fix any problems?

Will a worker show up if he/she has had no fresh water for a week? Will he/she show up if the belly is _really hungry. Will the worker show up if he/she is concerned about the family's safety and well being? Will the worker show up if there is no gas for the car? Will a worker be _able to get to the problem area physically, due to lack of gas in the company truck, or traffic jams on freeways, or a riot right in the middle are the fix area? Will streams and river flow feedback devices function correctly in order that reservoirs do not overflow or become empty, in hydro systems? In hydro systems, are the embedded system controller valves at the dam going to default to open or closed? Will someone be able to measure snow pack and snow pack melt rates? Will there be feedback to the water engineers if a huge thunderstorm hits a big watershed, allowing the engineers to compensate for a 40 foot reservoir rise in 24 hours?

Impossible to accurately answer, but still important. How much impact due to rolling blackouts and brown outs, some sustained in duration, some not, can be sustained by society before the accumulated impacts have a very long term negative affect upon society?

Any warm and fuzzy conclusions regarding y2k impact can only be reached if one isolates the logic process from the Big Picture.

I'm hoping PG&E (& other utilities) gets it together, but I sure am not going to center my personal planning on that hope.

-- Mitchell Barnes (spanda@inreach.com), January 06, 1999.

Big Dog,

Rick answered your questions in his forum (as no doubt you've seen). Of course he's right- there's no way to forecast- or even reasonably speculate- on the length & severity of power problems. The number of variables is simply too high to even attempt to rationally estimate what the outcomes might be. I can come up with any one of a thousand scenarios, all of which are plausible, and none of which may happen. I don't mean to duck the question, but it's almost akin to asking where the stock market will be in 2020. It really can't be done.

Drew

-- Drew Parkhill (y2k@cbn.org), January 06, 1999.

Drew: Good job with the interview. You asked Rick just about everything I would have asked him as well. This is one reason that I prefer the written media to TV - you have an opportunity to look at things more in depth than is otherwise possible.

It's been a bit funny watching CNN struggle with this. This week we got 'a whole mini-series' - in 2 minute segments. Very laughable, very sad, very annoying and yet they probably exceeded the attention span of the average American viewer. I imagine that the production conversations went something like "But Bob, you just can't explain Y2K in 2 minutes" "How much time do you need" "Oh, if we're succinct, about 472 hours ought to do it" "Boil it down" "To how much?" "12 minutes" "12 minutes!?" "Yes Jim and no more than 2 minutes at a time, then stretch it over 3 days and choose your slot times so that absolutely no one will ever see more than 6 minutes of the entire series" "Oh, and Jim.." "Yes, Bob" "I don't want to hear the words 'fractional reserve banking' and whatever you do, stay at least 18 minutes on either side of the Citibank spots. They're not real happy about stuff you know" "Yeah Bob, I know"

Thanks again Drew. Your efforts are greatly appreciated. This interview, along with the Vanity Fair article has been some of the best journalism I've seen recently.

-- Arnie Rimmer (Arnie_Rimmer@usa.net), January 07, 1999.

Great job, Drew.

Any chance of syndicating your article? It needs a wider audience (no offense to CBN's audience).

-- Steve Hartsman (hartsman@ticon.net), January 07, 1999.

Well, as I said in the other thread, thanks to all of you who said thanks. The interview has proven enormously popular (to those who could actually get through to read it).

Arnie, you're quite right (IMHO) that Y2K lends itself much more to print than to TV. TV doesn't do depth well, and particularly on technical subjects. Comparing the Cowles interview to the VF article (which I thought was very well done) was a high compliment- thanks very much! I'm glad you thought I asked him things you would have asked him- believe me, it could have gone on even longer as there was other material to cover, but you have to draw the line somewhere.

Steve, there is the possibility that the interview will appear in another form, but I can't say anything more at this point. That said, though, I should point out that it got very wide play on the Net- it was picked up by Y2K News, Sanger, Yahoo, WorldNetDaily, Roleigh Martin, Gary North & maybe some others I don't even know about. So it's gotten fairly spread out beyond just one or two sites.

Thanks again for the kind words, everybody. It helps make the loooong hours spent on it worthwhile.

Drew Parkhill/CBN News

-- Drew Parkhill (y2k@cbn.org), January 09, 1999.