I read in the news headlines yesterday that recent investigations have revealed that malicious hackers have infiltrated the United States energy grid control systems with the apparent intent of disrupting our national infrastructure. For some reason, this news does not seem to have attracted that much attention, but to me it spells serious trouble.
When the power goes out, business and our livelihood grinds to a halt. Doesn't anyone realize this? If hackers put out the lights, how quickly could we put them back on?
This is yet another good reason for local power generation as opposed to the grid. Add the fact that local power cannot be easily disrupted on a massive scale to the list of benefits of local power: higher efficiency (no transportation loss), lower cost, and more environmentally friendly.
Lastly, are these hackers targeting other areas of our infrastructure, like communications and transportation? I hope for goodness sake that the air traffic control system has not been compromised!
I hope the awful events of Hurricane Katrina never happen again, but with the 2008 hurricane season upon us, New Orleans residents are right to get a little jittery. While its hard to guess how the people who actually lived through that disaster are feeling, the economic indicators of the energy markets are starting to look nervous.
The gulf coast has many refineries and off shore drilling platforms which can be affected by intense hurricanes, and so its unsettling to learn that some of these facilities are getting evacuated ahead of Hurricane Gustav. As a result, oil and natural gas markets are becoming more volatile.
Weather is difficult to predict, and the political, social, and religious sentiments of the Middle East, Africa, Russia, Argentina, and many other oil producing regions are just as tough, if not tougher, to decipher. Wouldn't it be nice if the US could find its own energy sources?
