Well,
I guess we can perhaps forgive the author of said article.
From a buying point if few, a mainframe and a Hollerith machine are no difference.
The 'punching card' machines at that time were the bleeding edge of computing. And a mainframe as we define the term right now is the supreme computing power in a single machine.
So for a stupid journalist: that is definitely the exact same thing.
If you had ever read a steam punk novel, you would know that bleeding edge mainframes run on compressed air, holes in metal cards and rarely on an electromagnetic gate to sort/move a card to a certain output.
So yes, the nazi/IBM machines of that time were Mainframes.

For everything you do - or don't do - in your live, there is only one responsible for: that is you.

Strictly speaking "off peak" is just another name for "base load".
In germany we have two systems: high demand, called HT, and low demand, called NT. The other system is called peak/off peak, it is more for industrial customers.
Both systems simply divide the day in two 12h periods of high (HT/peak) prices/usage and low (NT/off peak) prices/usage.

Then the base load plants increase their level of output. Eventually a new base load plant is build. However in modern times, like right now, I assume a load following plant will take the burden, as new plants don't really distinguish anymore between the two operation modes. Especially as "base load" plants get replaced by solar/wind.

It would increase the range of latitudes for food production
It would not. northern and southern latitudes unusable for food production have the dreaded polar day and polar night cycle.
It is irrelevant as it leaves a band of deserts closer to the equator anyway.
and mitigate future ice ages
Wow ... a thing that might destroy your own property or that of your children - and where you have full control about by reducing CO2 production - is less important than a thing that will happen in 100,000 years and you have no control about?

What is unpredictive with "climate change"?
Increase CO2 levels: global temperatures goes up, pretty simple to predict!

Depends.

If it is running 24h: yes. The 24h/365d plants need to cover it at night

If it is only running at daytime: no. The load following plants have to feed it.

Does the factory change load between day and night? Then at night it is fed by base load plants and at day time partly by base load plants and what exceeds that load by load following plants.

my stepson had to ask me what a good program would be to use if he wanted to write an essay.
Reply to This my stepson had to ask me what a good program would be to use if he wanted to write an essay.
Actually, the sad thing in our days is: there is no good program for that.

I believe if I need to do that I would use the very simple "TextEdit.app" on my Mac.

Modern Word-Processors like Word and the OpenOffice variant are completely unusable imho.

How can it be that you need a training to use a simple "program" ?????

There are no "base load" consumers.

There is only base load feed ins into the grid.

The largeness has nothing to do with it anyway.

Draw a curve on a sheet of paper from left to right, going high and down.

Mark left side with 0:00 and right side with 24:00.

The lowest valley on this curve is base load. The highest is peak load. The amount of energy/power a consumer is drawing has nothing to to with it (nor the question if he is able to "drop" it on request)

... we know that Assyrian or more precisely Sumerian is tricky.

hm, that is strange. for a turbine it does not really mater (laymen term) how much yield it has to get from 0% to 100%.

Even a state-of-the-art turbine needs at least 10 minutes to come to full power from cold shutdown.
No. It should always be in the 1 - 3 minutes range. There is no difference between "cold" and "warm" for a turbine anyway.
Perhaps you refer to 30 years old turbines with strange side effects?

The (gas turbine) power plants I have visited all proclaim a full start up from 0% to 100% in about a minute.

In germany Computer Science is a topic in "high school" since 30 years.

Actually I belonged to the first class in my federate state who took it.

Or do you mean with "mandatory" that it is mandatory for pupils? If so: that is retarded.

Open cycle gas turbines can ramp at approximately 10% of rating per minute, with a cold start delay of approximately 10 minutes.

Gas turbines can do a cold start to 100% output in less than 5 mins, usually 3 mins.
On load change they react in the range of 5 to 10 seconds. Per minute they should be able to change 30% and more.
You other numbers are more or less in the correct range, but either outdated or just "your guesses".

E.G. Most existing combined cycle gas turbines can ramp at approximately 3% of rating per minute, with a 60 minute start up delay from warm, or 3 hours from cold.
That makes no sense. Combined cycle means: it is a gas turbine, followed by an "conventional" plant.
The gas turbine part is as fast as any other gas turbine. Only the "combined cycle" part is as slow as any other coal/gas plant.
Both parts are combined, but from a grid operator point of view they are "two plants".

You can't just turn up the power output when the wind stops. It takes days to adjust. Same for goal.
No, it doesn't. Neither of both do. I suggest to red a wikipedia article about it.
The reaction time of a modern coal plant is in the range of 5% - 10% of its maximum capacity over a timeframe of 15 minutes.

You perhaps mix up cold start/warm start cycles of coal plants (and nuclear plants) with their adaptability of those plants.

Coal power plants take days to change output ... wow and how does it work that in the morning all coal plants power up and in the evening/early night power down?

I suggest you google how quickly coal plants react on demand ... ... you also need a steadier baseload component ...
Base load is the minimum amount of power you always feed into the grid, regardless of demand. You can do that with any power source you wish. Traditionally that are "special" coal/nuclear plants. Special in the way that they react very slowly to demand change, they are built like that, as they are not supposed to change. That has nothing to do with wind or solar plants.