Crossing

Posted on

A quick post during a very busy day, which still has at least 9 hours to run.

Feeling a little overwhelmed by all that needs to be done, and taking some comfort from this little guy we spotted on (and safely removed from) the Brandfontein road last week.

If he can do it (with a bit of help), then surely I can, too.

One big positive is a big negative on a follow up test for the Boy Wonder. Still another 2 minutes to run on the LFT next to me as I type, but it’s not going to chuck up another line in the next 120 seconds, and that’s very good news.

Aside from his viral load, he continues to improve healthwise as well, although he has now developed a very viralesque rash on his face and chest, which is – as ever with Covid – equal parts weird and interesting.

El Niño Is Coming – and the World Isn’t Prepared

Posted on

That’s the title of this Wired article, and it makes scary reading.

I have no doubt that climate change is a very real thing, but I have often commented that I am regularly unimpressed by the hyperbole and drama with which the news stories around it are presented.

This one seems a little different.

Current forecasts suggest that La Niña will continue into early 2023, making it – fortuitously for us – one of the longest on record (it began in Spring 2020). Then, the equatorial Pacific will begin to warm again. Whether or not it becomes hot enough for a fully fledged El Niño to develop, 2023 has a very good chance – without the cooling influence of La Niña – of being the hottest year on record.

Sure, there are predictions of hurricanes and crop failure, of food shortages and economic impacts, of power outages and ever increasing temperatures, but there’s no embellishment: just facts and indications of what we might expect.

It still doesn’t sound good.

I was less sure about climate change 15 years ago. I was put off by the constantly incorrect predictions and yes, probably swayed by peer pressure when it came to believing (or not believing) what was going on. But if I hadn’t changed my mind about climate change before 2020 (I had, but…) then Covid sealed the deal for me. Not because I believe that the latter was due to the former, but because I watched experts being experts and sharing their expert knowledge, and it being shot down because of poor reporting or just sheer bloody ignorance.

Now I know how those climatologists felt.

The worst bit about knowing that this is happening is not being able to do anything about it. Because it really doesn’t matter how much good stuff like recycling and switching off our geysers that you or I do, when (e.g.) China is building another 15GW-worth of coal-fired power stations in the first six months of 2023 and (e.g.) India is reopening more than 100 coal mines to make more electricity. While collective effort at a local level probably assisted with some degree of relief during our awful drought in Cape Town, it’s absolutely laughable to try to get consumers to behave more responsibly when it comes to climate change when Jinping and Modi are chucking out more CO2 than ever before.

We don’t even have enough electricity to go around, but we’re being told (and paid) by Europe to shut down our 18 coal-fired plants, which at full capacity (ha!) amount to about 45GW of generation capacity. Meanwhile, China is operating over 1,100 coal-fired stations for 1,110GW. And all the emissions that come with them.

Until that sort of dichotomy is rectified, (and I understand how depressing and pessimistic this sounds) it feels utterly pointless to try and “do our bit” on a personal level.

Laze

Posted on

Yesterday was a lot of fun, and I was very pleasantly surprised not to wake up with a bit of a hangover this morning. Still, today is a scorcher, and so it was always going to be about lazing around the pool, watching the football and getting into my new Randall Munroe book.

There are copious leftovers (a fact which has definitely not escaped the beagle), there is some very good red wine on its delicious second day, and there is some very cold beer in the fridge.

Oh, and the footy runs from 2:30 til midnight. So why not allow myself to indulge a little?

P.S. The boy is still slowly improving. Thanks for your messages of concern.

It’s that day again

Posted on

I’m having the day off the blog today, so this was written earlier.

We were planning a big afternoon with a lot of friends, but then something else showed up which has changed all that.

Yep. A stonkingly strong positive (I know these things are qualitative rather than quantitative, but sometimes, they can be both) which our son has imported from Egypt along with the super cool Tutankhamen bottle opener he brought back for the bar.

He’s doing ok. He could be better. A rather sad end to an amazing adventure.

We will still enjoy ourselves today. There is lamb, there are roast potatoes, there is Yorkshire pudding.

Whatever you’re up to today, have a great day.

88:88

Posted on

An absolute treat for us Chez 6000 today, as we might be lucky enough to go the whole day without a power cut. But that’s more down to luck than anything else. The country is on Stage 3, which would generally mean about six hours off for most people. But in Cape Town, they’ve managed (for the moment) to reduce that to Stage 1:

The 180-megawatt Steenbras Hydro Pump Station (SHPS) consists of four turbines that are used to generate electricity. During peak electricity demand, it channels water from Upper Steenbras to Lower Steenbras, through the turbine generator, to create electricity.

When electricity usage is low, usually between 11pm and 7am, the turbines pump the water back to the Upper Steenbras Dam to be re-used the next day. In this way, SHPS operates like a battery. The amount of electricity that it can generate in one day is limited by the capacity of the lower reservoir.

Thus about two-thirds of the water used to generate power during the day is pumped back at night to the upper Steenbras reservoir to create more space for continual utilisation of the power station.

It’s more like charging the cellphone battery at night for usage during the following day. Cape Town is the only city in South Africa to own and operate a large pumped hydroelectric scheme. 

And then, thanks to the way that the timetable works, we have been fortunate enough to not be scheduled for any cuts in Stage 1 today.

Woohoo.

And there are rumours that Eskom has been saving up emergency reserve capacity over the past few day in order to give us relief from loadshedding for tomorrow as well:

Eskom chief operating officer Jan Oberholzer says that Eskom will do its best to keep the lights on for Christmas but warned that things could change very quickly.

“It is our intention not to have load shedding on Christmas Day; however, we are monitoring the situation,” he said.

The current outlook, barring any challenges over the next day or so, is that emergency reserves will have to be used to keep load shedding at bay. The intention is to keep load shedding suspended for at least ‘large parts’ of Christmas, he said.

Two days without blackouts. Aren’t we fortunate?

Look, I’ve taken the outrageously bold step of resetting all the clocks in the house. There’s no point in doing that usually, because they will all need resetting 4 hours later. But with (possibly) two days off, I’m going to indulge myself and be able to glance at the oven, bedroom clock or the microwave and get an accurate assessment of the time, rather than the usual 88:88.

I’m happy that we’re loadshedding free for these couple of days. It does help. But I’m also mindful that we need to avoid normalising this situation, or even celebrating it in some kind of weird Stockholm Syndrome way. We shouldn’t have to be hoping to have electricity. It should be there.

But this situation isn’t going to change any time soon:

At least, not for the better…