Are Texas Blackouts a Warning About the Follow-on Effects of Climate Change? (seattletimes.com) 363
This week in America, "continent-spanning winter storms triggered blackouts in Texas, Oklahoma, Mississippi and several other states," reports the New York Times. But that was just the beginning...
One-third of oil production in the nation was halted. Drinking-water systems in Ohio were knocked offline. Road networks nationwide were paralyzed and vaccination efforts in 20 states were disrupted.
The crisis carries a profound warning. As climate change brings more frequent and intense storms, floods, heat waves, wildfires and other extreme events, it is placing growing stress on the foundations of the country's economy: Its network of roads and railways, drinking-water systems, power plants, electrical grids, industrial waste sites and even homes. Failures in just one sector can set off a domino effect of breakdowns in hard-to-predict ways....
Sewer systems are overflowing more often as powerful rainstorms exceed their design capacity. Coastal homes and highways are collapsing as intensified runoff erodes cliffs. Coal ash, the toxic residue produced by coal-burning plants, is spilling into rivers as floods overwhelm barriers meant to hold it back. Homes once beyond the reach of wildfires are burning in blazes they were never designed to withstand... The vulnerabilities show up in power lines, natural-gas plants, nuclear reactors and myriad other systems. Higher storm surges can knock out coastal power infrastructure. Deeper droughts can reduce water supplies for hydroelectric dams. Severe heat waves can reduce the efficiency of fossil-fuel generators, transmission lines and even solar panels at precisely the moment that demand soars because everyone cranks up their air-conditioners...
As freezing temperatures struck Texas, a glitch at one of two reactors at a South Texas nuclear plant, which serves 2 million homes, triggered a shutdown. The cause: Sensing lines connected to the plant's water pumps had frozen, said Victor Dricks, a spokesman for the federal Nuclear Regulatory Agency. It's also common for extreme heat to disrupt nuclear power. The issue is that the water used to cool reactors can become too warm to use, forcing shutdowns. Flooding is another risk. After a tsunami led to several meltdowns at Japan's Fukushima Daiichi power plant in 2011, the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission told the 60 or so working nuclear plants in the United States, many decades old, to evaluate their flood risk to account for climate change. Ninety percent showed at least one type of flood risk that exceeded what the plant was designed to handle. The greatest risk came from heavy rain and snowfall exceeding the design parameters at 53 plants.
"All these issues are converging," said Robert D. Bullard, a professor at Texas Southern University who studies wealth and racial disparities related to the environment.
"And there's simply no place in this country that's not going to have to deal with climate change."
The crisis carries a profound warning. As climate change brings more frequent and intense storms, floods, heat waves, wildfires and other extreme events, it is placing growing stress on the foundations of the country's economy: Its network of roads and railways, drinking-water systems, power plants, electrical grids, industrial waste sites and even homes. Failures in just one sector can set off a domino effect of breakdowns in hard-to-predict ways....
Sewer systems are overflowing more often as powerful rainstorms exceed their design capacity. Coastal homes and highways are collapsing as intensified runoff erodes cliffs. Coal ash, the toxic residue produced by coal-burning plants, is spilling into rivers as floods overwhelm barriers meant to hold it back. Homes once beyond the reach of wildfires are burning in blazes they were never designed to withstand... The vulnerabilities show up in power lines, natural-gas plants, nuclear reactors and myriad other systems. Higher storm surges can knock out coastal power infrastructure. Deeper droughts can reduce water supplies for hydroelectric dams. Severe heat waves can reduce the efficiency of fossil-fuel generators, transmission lines and even solar panels at precisely the moment that demand soars because everyone cranks up their air-conditioners...
As freezing temperatures struck Texas, a glitch at one of two reactors at a South Texas nuclear plant, which serves 2 million homes, triggered a shutdown. The cause: Sensing lines connected to the plant's water pumps had frozen, said Victor Dricks, a spokesman for the federal Nuclear Regulatory Agency. It's also common for extreme heat to disrupt nuclear power. The issue is that the water used to cool reactors can become too warm to use, forcing shutdowns. Flooding is another risk. After a tsunami led to several meltdowns at Japan's Fukushima Daiichi power plant in 2011, the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission told the 60 or so working nuclear plants in the United States, many decades old, to evaluate their flood risk to account for climate change. Ninety percent showed at least one type of flood risk that exceeded what the plant was designed to handle. The greatest risk came from heavy rain and snowfall exceeding the design parameters at 53 plants.
"All these issues are converging," said Robert D. Bullard, a professor at Texas Southern University who studies wealth and racial disparities related to the environment.
"And there's simply no place in this country that's not going to have to deal with climate change."
Yes climate change AND.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Yes climate change AND.. (Score:4, Insightful)
Conservatives in general and, more specifically, libertarians always go on and on about governements being, at best, the embodiment of incompetence and, at worst, pure evil. But they always carefully avoid the elephant in the room: The people actually forming the governement are there because THEY put them there.
Tyranical dictatorship is evil: Blame the governement. Democratic republic is evil: Blame the person in the mirror.
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Authoritarian regimes are best because you don't have to make decisions about your life.
Never let any opportunity to push your terrible way of thinking on other people go to waste.
Texas is your new 9/11.
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Everyone on here going to extremes, or using gross generalizations to push their political talking points should just stop. This situation is fairly simple: should Texas winterize everything? Probably not. Do they need to winterize their power plants? Yes. Do they need to winterize all of their fossil fuel production? Probably not. Does our power grid need to be modernized? Yes. (See Trump, and the coal lobby, and their cancellation of the Seams Grid Modernization study. Which would've helped in this case t
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Actually it's quite common. Every tyranny is democratic. From DPRK to DRC. All democracies. And it's known since Plato that democracy leads to tyranny.
Just because something calls it self democratic that does not mean it is democratic anymore than a jar of honey contains actual honey. Honey is one of the most faked food products on earth and Democracy is one of the most faked systems of government on earth.
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Re: Yes climate change AND.. (Score:2)
Well, that is deliberate.
That way they can don a government skin whenever they do unpopular things, and later, use that to make you hate the very institution that is 1. your voice, and 2. the very thing that makes it a democracy..
At the heart of the issue, they are anti-democratic. And given the size of their think tanks, I'd go so far as to call them white collar daylight enemy combattants. I mean if Russia or China woukd wreck your democracy that much, their nukes would be the only thing preventing you fr
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In 2011 the Texas Attorney General (who is now the governor of Texas) sued the federal government so that Texas wouldn't be required to winterize their power grid. He claimed that he did it to "protect Texas jobs", but that is just more of the same old bullshit, fighting against the fictitious "job killing regulations".
The only thing he was really trying to protect was the profits of the electric utility companies.
Where I live, it is just as cold, or colder, than Texas and I'm having no such problems. You
Re: Yes climate change AND.. (Score:3, Informative)
I never got that "keeo the little guy down".
Unless some lobbyist buys himself some regulation, regulation IS the voice of the little guy.
And the quite visible hand of the market.
You know, America says it brinds democracy everywhere, but lobbyism is the definition of anti-democratic "advanced persistent threats".
Regulation in a democracy is only bad, if it's not the will of the people. And if it isn't, you have to follow the old boys' connections to whose will it is. (Remember: Lobbyists nowadays only bribe,
Errata: (I'm, sorry it's late...) (Score:2)
s/keeos/keeps/
s/brinds/brings/
Re: Yes climate change AND.. (Score:5, Interesting)
The idea of regulations keeping the little guy down come in the way of overhead. If there is a ton of red tape you'll have to hire people to do all the paperwork. If you make it super hard to conduct business in your industry with excessive regulation, only the big fish can actually afford to stay in compliance.
At the super low end of the scale, here is another example and an anecdotal story as well. I knew a guy from Texas that was a trademan of some sort and he moved to California. I honestly thought he was a loser at the time and didn't actually believe he had any real skills. He said getting licensed in California was way to costly.
He eventually moved back to Texas and shit you not, was able to immediately start working and made a pretty good life for his wife and kid. I was quite surprised to say the least.
There are pros and cons to everything. When I remodeled my townhouse I had a licensed contractor do the windows but my flooring, tiling and painting I paid cash to some well recommended people that worked for cash. They did a great job and it cost a lot less then what an actual contractor would of needed to charge.
Re: Yes climate change AND.. (Score:4, Insightful)
When I remodeled my townhouse I had a licensed contractor do the windows but my flooring, tiling and painting I paid cash to some well recommended people that worked for cash. They did a great job and it cost a lot less then what an actual contractor would of needed to charge.
It's all good until one of them gets hurt and sues you
Re: Yes climate change AND.. (Score:5, Insightful)
I never got that "keep the little guy down".
Unless some lobbyist buys himself some regulation, regulation IS the voice of the little guy.
There are exceptions though. Sometimes the licensing is a good requirement. E.g. an architect needs plans to be sign off that a building's plans meet safety codes.
Some states though do throw up unnecessary hurdles. E.g. many states require a cosmetology license to braid hair. The result is that the 'little guy' or gal who wants to braid people's hair in a "Free market" state like Idaho or Montana has to undergo 2,000 hours of training. There is no risk of injury when braiding hair so it's really nothing more than an obstacle for poor people to compete against the affluent hair stylist who can afford the 2,000 hour training program.
Or you can throw up small-guy legislation that says something like "All small businesses must offer 90 days paid maternity\paternity leave." That's probably a good law for workers. But it disproportionately harms the small employers. If you have 1 employee and they take 90 days off --- paid that's half of your payroll that you are spending and not getting any work done for 3 months. If you are someone like Microsoft you can shift 1 employee's responsibilities to 90 other people or hire 1 more person out of 100 and increase your payroll by 1%.
I can offer a real world example for our business. This isn't government regulation, this is private regulation. One of our clients requires all vendors to have $10 million in a specific type of liability insurance. If you do $100 million in business every year or $1 million in business every year the cost is a couple thousand per year for the insurance policy. That's an easier cost to absorb for the $100m company than a $1m company. If you are a freelancer it could be 10% of your gross income for the year.
I can list another example that's actually government regulation. In order to hire someone in a state we want to hire a freelancer in you have to have a state approved workerman's comp policy for them. But the minimum cost is $180 for a policy. We only need them to do a day's work so that drives up the cost of hiring that person substantially because we'll have this stupid policy that we only need for one day. So it's cheaper to hire a payroll company to hire them on our behalf and charge us a fee. It's good to require workman's comp insurance. It's poor regulation though to not offer a state policy that's purely a percent of work performed like our state that just includes it in the Business and Operations tax for gross receipts.
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There is no risk of injury when braiding hair
You clearly don't have a sister. I'm certain the mental trauma from an imperfect hair cut 20 years ago still keep her up at night.
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Regulation is often not the voice of the little guy, since what drives regulation is too commonly dependent on political power derived from large campaign donations. That said, levelling the playing field is seldom done better than under the guise of a democracy. Naturally, advantage is still to the wealthy and powerful, but there is often ample consideration for the wellbeing of the have-nots.
There is a a non sequitur to the Texas emergency electrical outage that may escape us:
1)An event of this magnitude
Re: Yes climate change AND.. (Score:4, Insightful)
Why aren't most roads privately owned? When a corporation builds a new estate why not let them own the roads and be responsible for maintaining them? The residents can pay a subscription to use them, and the company can repair them, clear them when necessary etc.
The reason is because roads are essential public infrastructure and you are completely fucked if you can't afford to use the roads leading to and from your house, or the owner of the road decides it's not worth maintaining any more. Imagine the rent for your road to work going up to $5000/day, like the price of electricity just did in Texas.
Electricity should be like roads. Essential public infrastructure. If a company wants to own it they can, but they have a public service mandate and strict limits on what they can charge.
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As far as I can tell, the people with the outlandish electric bills mostly subscribe to a wholesale provider named Griddy. Legislators are already on top of this, and it is unlikely folks will be held accountable for these outlandish charges.
If you've received such a charge on your bill, shut off autopay on your account and wait it out.
Hotels, retailers, AirBnbs, gas stations, and propane purveyors are all being looked at for illegal price gouging during the emergency.
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You know in rural America a lot of roads are private right? Its very very common for groups of neighbors to share ownership and responsibility for many miles of road to access their properties.
You can usually tell because the signage will be white rather than green.
people form covenant agreements, if you want to use the road you agree to pay your portion of its upkeep. You enter into this agreement when you purchase these properties. Of course you are not 'forced to' but than your property is likely land lo
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regulation IS the voice of the little guy
You and your blanket generalizations. Kind of depends on who, what, how and why... doesn't it??
Re:Yes climate change AND..AND (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Yes climate change AND.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Nobody wants to invest in redundancy or prevention when everything is working.
"Why do we have an extra $10,000 server that isn't doing anything!?"
2 years later
"Why is our service down!? We're losing $100,000,000 of dollars per day!"
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Regulation is...
I don't think that all regulations can be generalized to be one thing or another. Some do keep the little guy down, others are for the good of the people. Some are both and others are neither.
So I think support of blind deregulation is just as silly of a stance as regulating everything. So, I agree with you, but don't think the pendulum should swing the other way - regulate where it makes sense (which I think it does in the case of energy grids, since they provide a service to the public that is arguabl
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Yes climate change AND.. (Score:5, Insightful)
BTW the texas power seperation was desgined back when Texas had a Democrat governor
Texas has not had a Democratic governor since 1995. That was twenty-five years ago.
When a solidly Republican state has to search back 25 years to find a Democrat to blame for their troubles, you know they're stretching.
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Re:Yes and Cruz shows how his ilk will address it (Score:4, Insightful)
While attributing the temperature in Texas to climate change is tricky
To address climate change in a democracy, we need public support, which requires credibility.
Saying "Cold weather is caused by warming" does not build that credibility.
It may even be true. But the "polar vortex" is an ex post facto explanation, not a prediction. The scientific consensus last fall was not that warming would cause the 2020-21 winter to be extra cold.
A better explanation than "warming" for the cold weather is that the current cold snap is within the range of expected temperature fluctuations. Much of Texas experienced even colder temperatures as recently as 1989.
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This is tedious. The effect of changes in the polar vortex has been modeled and predicted, as have the higher dynamics in temperature in both directions.
There is just no room for discussion anymore, discourse is only happening bout details.
But I’m sure you are currently busy discussing what the proper color of your Covid mask is to avoid wearing one.
Re:Yes and Cruz shows how his ilk will address it (Score:4, Interesting)
There were many people concerned with a weakening and changing jet stream due to much warmer temperatures in the arctic which has temps exceeding 110F over the summer. This means the jetstream is no longer keeping the cold air in the arctic regions during the winter. This was predicted a long time ago. People just aren't listening. This is why people stopped calling it global warming, because people are too stupid to understand that global warming means parts of the earth will indeed be colder and weather more chaotic but the overall average temp will be higher.
These have been predictions since the very beginning. People will find any excuse to deny that it is happening, meanwhile the cost of mitigation rises exponentially and you go from needing to relocate a few houses to entire cities.
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Wasn't "expected" by the people who were without power and had running water freezing in their houses. So I'm not sure who you're saying "expected" it.
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Temperatures in Houston hit 10F last week.
In 1989, Houston had a low of 7F. There were similar lows in earlier decades.
Re:Yes and Cruz shows how his ilk will address it (Score:5, Interesting)
Why do you think they stopped calling it Global Warming (the scientific definition of the observed trend) and started calling it climate change?
Because idiots couldn't understand that a change in Global Average temperature didn't mean it was going to get warmer everywhere. It's more energy in the system trying to find a new stability by bouncing between extremes.
The polar vortex is most definitely a consequence of climate change. The climate models predicted the increased energy would cause winters with a high pressure parked over the western US and Rockies that would block normal weather flows. Which has been happening consistently for the last few years. The result is significantly reduced rainfall in the west but the consequence of this big high pressure (one I don't know if the models predicted) is it destabilizes the polar jetstream and shifts arctic weather south in the US.
Climate change is a really complicated thing, massive amounts of energy is being poured into what was a system balanced for the last 10,000 years or so. This energy will cause lots of weird things as the system tried to re-balance against the new input and that's going to take a long time, even if we stoped adding CO2 tomorrow.
Re:Yes and Cruz shows how his ilk will address it (Score:4, Interesting)
The universe does not care whether its laws are intuitive to you or not. They just exist, independently of whose there to see them and his/her ability to model them. In fact, our most precise model to date, quantum mechanics, is certainly not intuitive at all.
Science is is nothing more than post facto explanation. It turns out that it the laws of the universe do not change over time, then it can also be used as a reliable predictor, but it's not its primary role. Its primary role is to understand how things work, not make prediction. You can make reliable prediction without understanding how things work and with a model that is obviously wrong from a physical point of view. Modern machine learning (especially deep learning) does exactly that.
Democracy is only able to make decision as intelligent as the majority of its members. So if poor decisions are made, its not because the models are "not credible", it's because the majority is not educated enough to understand the models, and maybe too stupid to realize how important it is to raise its comprehension skills up to the level where they can be used to make better decisions.
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Now, now, give ol' gutless Ted some credit. He was just trying to help his family [9cache.com]. But in another regard, he is a trailblazer [9cache.com].
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Indeed. So when the tornadoes and hurricanes are whirling, the forests are ablaze, food is scarce, and clean water is nonexistent, at what point will people realize there is no safe place. If money was as powerful as people believe, there wouldn't be any climate change. There wouldn't be any pandemics. There wouldn't be any pestilence.
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Do you see people changing their behavior?
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Re:Yes and Cruz shows how his ilk will address it (Score:4, Insightful)
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I'm happy to see in your sig that you are learning,
Probably racism too- if you ask this guy (Score:3, Insightful)
Wow. (Score:3, Insightful)
Next time, please put this at the top of the summary instead of the bottom. Thousands of people wasted 10 seconds each before they got to the punchline.
Is studying wealth and racial disparities (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Is studying wealth and racial disparities (Score:5, Insightful)
inherently worthless and/or worthy of ridicule?
I think people were expecting a real scientists, but TFS quotes a guy with a Ph.D. in Sociology. And yes sociology and Professor Bullard are, IMHO, worthy of ridicule. But why was that quote put in the Summary? Is editordavid trolling us? Bullard was just one of many academics that the article authors went to for comments, and most are more respectable.
The real science is not controversial. A small increase in average global temperature leads to a larger increase in extreme events. This is easy to show to anyone with a good grasp of even high-school level chemistry or physics.
The bigger issue is political: many vital parts of the national infrastructure are inadequately prepared for extreme events as it is. How do you fix that? Capitalism is good at preparing for expected short-term risks, but not for the bigger and rarer events. Ditto for politicians, who find it hard to think past the next election. We need wise regulators, who are capable of thinking past short term profits or party politics.
Why is Sociology worthy of ridicule? (Score:3)
As for politics, the only real solution is government regulation. Private companies can and will profit from the disasters they create, as they're doing right now. One of the oil men just came out and said this is like hitting the jackpot for him. But people have been conditioned to fear and mistrust government. People who recognized this pattern need to push back on it in our daily lives with our friends and family. Government is what you make
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Shouldn't we study how our society exists and is organized?
Yes, as we should study history and art. But we should not pretend it is science.
As for politics, the only real solution is government regulation.
Of course. But preferably by legislation and an independent authority to enforce it. Not one whose leader is appointed by each government of the day, and directed by it.
Re: Why is Sociology worthy of ridicule? (Score:3)
Where there are models and predictions, you have a science and not a humanity.
Now, you can argue sociology hadn't done this. That would be fair, if your argument is backed up. No problem.
It is also worth noting that mathematics is a humanity, as are archaeology anf astronomy. These are worth taking seriously. One may conclude from this that being a humanity does not imply loss of rigour. That is a distinct argument.
Re:Why is Sociology worthy of ridicule? (Score:4, Informative)
Shouldn't we study how our society exists and is organized?
Yes, as we should study history and art. But we should not pretend it is science.
I used to think this way. Then I ready some books on sociological research and learned that it actually is possible to study inherently squishy subjects in a disciplined and rigorous way. It's actually much, much harder than to study, say, physics, where it's vastly easier to design reproducible experiments. But "harder" is not the same as "impossible". There are some enormously clever and careful people doing sociological research. There are also plenty of second-rate brains -- which is no different in physics. The one difference is that the second-raters in the hard sciences tend to do less damage to their fields of study.
Bottom line, while you're right that there is a fair amount of junk sociology out there, there's also a fair amount of brilliant work, and you're absolutely wrong that sociology is not a science.
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"Capitalism is good at preparing for expected short-term risks"
Actual capitalism can handle long-term risks. However, the median businessman has no idea how capitalism works, and at the 90th percentile is actively opposed.
Re: Is studying wealth and racial disparities (Score:3)
Did you miss ALL the news about the polar vortex disruption this year? A warming stratosphere causes it, and we've been taking about it for weeks.
https://m.slashdot.org/story/3... [slashdot.org]
https://www.usatoday.com/story... [usatoday.com]
https://www.severe-weather.eu/... [severe-weather.eu]
Re:Does anyone actually say that? (Score:4, Informative)
Having more extreme cold weather events is a predictable and in fact predicted consequence of global warming.
More energy in a chaotic system means more chaotic outputs.
Those cold weather events will also be more likely to be followed by more extreme hot weather events, which means more flooding.
Re:Wow. (Score:4, Informative)
Why are you scared by somebody studying the world as it is?
A civil engineer would be a better source.
design for stress not minimal conditions (Score:3)
Public utilities need to be designed for stress scenarios
beyond their typical design parameters. Texas has done
many things to a minimal level to save money and do it on the cheap.
I know of snow loading problems were discovered at the
Comanche nuclear power plant near Dallas occurred during this.
In a colder climate they would have used a more robust design approach.
TX politicos tried to blame green energy when the truth is a lot closer
to their "build it on the cheap" approach to things that should be
"build to take a beating and keep on working" mentality.
Regulations and requirements exist for a reason. Keep those R&R robust.
Hopefully there will be retrofitting, but it's going to be expensive and time consuming.
Re: design for stress not minimal conditions (Score:2)
Funny how wind works just fine everywhere else, including places much colder than Texas.
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You know why? They didn't buy the defroster package on wind turbines. Also they didn't freeze up such that they couldn't spin, they apply the BRAKES to them so they don't self-destruct from the unbalanced loading on the blades.
In the colder parts of the world, you still need to stop the turbines when you defrost them, otherwise you run the risk of sending chunks of ice thousands of feet away. Once the ice is gone, you release the brake and off they go.
If you didn't buy the defrosting package, well you ha
Re:design for stress not minimal conditions (Score:5, Informative)
...Except that traditional energy sources, including one of the reactors of a nuclear plant were basically fucked by this weather event exactly as badly, or many cases worse than the wind turbines. If the original coal plants that the wind turbines replaced some years ago had still been in operation, they would likely be just as broken down (remember they were decades old) as the rest of Texas infrastructure.
The question of what caused the issues in Texas last week was dominated by the broad failure to heed the cold-protection warnings they were given in 2011. The wind turbines delivered a little bit more than was predicted as the emergency was beginning.
Had the Texas "leadership" winterized as suggested by the 2011 report, the gas lines would not have frozen, the wind turbines would have similar protections as in every other northern region, the cooling water sensors for the nuc plants would not have frozen up, and much of the attendant issues with water/food supply would have been far smaller.
I contend that as intrinsically distributed sources, wind turbines and photovoltaic would be more resilient: Some turbines would ice up, some would not. Some PV fields would have issues, some would not. Traditional sources are far more concentrated in effect. Drop one or a few and you've lost a significant fraction of your overall system.
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Hmm, the summary (and I've read much the same elsewhere) says,
It does sound like it really was a glitch and the plant didn't need to go down, but it says something if they're cheap on sensors maintenance.
Re:design for stress not minimal conditions (Score:4, Informative)
Double that for more safety factor and you're still looking at 20k - nowhere near your 293million.
No. (Score:5, Insightful)
They are a warning about the disadvantages of being anti-social and caring only about profit and your ego.
Climate destruction is just a side-effect of that.
'Environmental Justice' is a thing? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re: 'Environmental Justice' is a thing? (Score:4, Insightful)
What's scientific about calling yourself the "father of environmental justice?"
Stop with the hysterics we get with every storm (Score:3, Insightful)
Stop with the hysteria already. Cold winters happen, they have happened before, and will happen again.
This isn't the first time Texas got frozen.
I don't know why people pretend to be so shocked by it.
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This isn't the first time Texas got frozen. I don't know why people pretend to be so shocked by it.
I've seen ice storm after ice storm hit Oklahoma/North Texas. The only thing shocking is how dependent they are on such precarious sources of power.
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This isn't the first time Texas got frozen. I don't know why people pretend to be so shocked by it.
I've seen ice storm after ice storm hit Oklahoma/North Texas. The only thing shocking is how dependent they are on such precarious sources of power.
Ice storms are the worst, they weigh down power lines and tree branches. When the branches break they take out the lines.
Visually though they are beautiful, everything looks like glass
70+ people are dead (Score:5, Insightful)
If anything we're not being hysterical enough.
That's hypothermia for you (Score:3)
There's nothing curious about it. You should steer clear of the conspiracy stuff, it'll rot your brain.
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it does however make it seems like it was the parents fault, and not the fault of the power company, so there is that.
As for how the 3 year old survived, who knows? It could be as simple as he had more covers. But that said, the 11 year old died of hypothermia. The media knows this but won't say it outright until a formal report is lodged.
That won't stop a ton of people from trying to get you to think that the kid died some other way. You're picking up on that, and you should be watching out for it.
This looks bad for the right wing in American. They're going to be trying their best to make it sound like every death was inevitable and not the fault of the power outages. You're going to see a lot of propaganda trying to sell you on that narrative, especially if you hang around any right wing media outlets. That's what you need to watch for, that manipulation used to get you to stop thinking of more gov't regulation of the power grid.
I'm not buying or selling anything. The fact is that carbon monoxide deaths happen in nearly every bad storm with power outages.
Here's one such event from Texas last week:
https://www.wave3.com/2021/02/... [wave3.com]
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I don't know why people pretend to be so shocked by it.
Because the power was out?
My power went out three times in the last 12 months. The longest outage was four days.
I could buy a backup generator, but I perceive the outage risk to be low while the mitigation cost is high.
Same thing happened in Texas.
Re:Stop with the hysterics we get with every storm (Score:5, Insightful)
It's fairly shocking to hear about how often the power goes out in the fifth richest country in the world.
The more advanced we become... (Score:3)
the more fragile we become as well. When you rely on power, water, sewage and trash all being handled by a 3rd party and 99% of the time it's good, things are wonderful. That 1% that cannot be effectively planned for is what we are seeing.
We've had horrible weather events for all of our history and they were bad then just as they are now. In different ways but also the same ways. I'm positive bad weather has caused crop failure and people died. When it's really cold out and the power goes off, people die. The same is true when it gets to hot.
That happened a couple years back in the South East I think. Power was off for a day or two and a heatwave hit at the same time. People died.
Really, what most of us are missing I think is, in the past, more people would of likely died then today given the same weather events.
Best you can do is stock pile as much water and rotate through it. Same with staple foods. I wish I was better at this myself. A backup generator or battery generator would also be nice, but are costly and not all of us can safely store diesel for the generator nor can we afford the power bank to run the house.
Eventually though, because we live in a society that is so inter-dependent on each other for survival, you would likely run out of water and food. Depends where you live and how connected you are with your neighbors.
Thousands of preppers say: (Score:3)
"I warned you! I warned you, but did you listen to me? Oh no, you knew it all, didn't you? Oh, it's just a harmless little bunny, isn't it? Well, it's always the same. I always told them, but do they listen to me? Oooh, no..."
Re: (Score:2)
Love it when the label of "prepper is thrown as insult and then people whine about supplies during emergencies like this pandemic... I even had masks for this pandemic over 10 years old that are better than N95. Not stupid to have couple months of food and water, nor masks for some pandemic, power generator, camping stove with gas cylinders... great for tornado or hurricane or blizzard aftermath, great for floods...
Quit being a mocking fool later finding yourself without stuff that is very cheap and plent
Re:Thousands of preppers say: (Score:5, Informative)
Let's be honest, if you live in Texas, you should expect this kind of power outage, and be prepared for it.
If you live anywhere with cold weather, you should be prepared for your primary heating methods to be disconnected. Because it will be.
Re: (Score:3)
If you live anywhere with cold weather, you should be prepared for your primary heating methods to be disconnected. Because it will be.
I mean sure, if you live in a 3rd world country I would agree with you. That said I can't think of any time in the past 30 years I've been without utilities for more than a couple of hours.
Re: (Score:3)
"If you live anywhere with cold weather, you should be prepared for your primary heating methods to be disconnected. Because it will be."
Where I live, phone, electricity, cable, fiber, water, gas.. everything is buried 6 feet under, way below the freezing point.
No interruption of anything the last 50 years.
No preppers anywhere.
nonsense, has happened decades ago and before (Score:5, Insightful)
In 1989 and 2011 same kind of bad storm and some of the same power plants failed... 1989 one was much worse than now, by the way.
Saying this *weather* is somehow indicative of climate change is just sensationalism and bullshit. It happened decades ago, happened a century ago...it's just weather and for 30+ years the power plants haven't learned a damn thing.
2011+30 = 2041 (Score:3)
Texans do not learn even if it takes 10 years; as today proves, but apparently what was a "30 year" problem as some say (I think is likely BS, it probably used to be a 50 year...) just happened in TEN YEARS not 30.
These 100 year events are repeating often becoming 10 to 20 year events. Just as the optimistic climate scientists were saying decades ago and actually following more closely the "negative" scientists that people wanted to believe were biased alarmists.
Reality is that 3/4 of people have an optimi
Re:2011+30 = 2041 (Score:4, Interesting)
One bad freeze every 15 years or so in Texas is the truth. The list of *severe* Texas freezes also include 1962 and 1983. The very worst one by far was the "The Great Arctic Outbreak of 1899" by the way...
One thing I've learned in my almost 60 years is that younger people want to think, amplified by media coverage, is that every disaster is something new and the worst thing that ever happened.
This cold spell in Texas is indicative of exactly nothing as far as climate is concerned.
No. (Score:5, Interesting)
They are a warning about shitty infrastructure, abysmal planning and using egg carton and plywood instead of bricks and glass wool isolation to build houses.
Ok, given, this is a tough winter and infrastructure can fall epic stile, especially in fragile high tech societies that really heavily on electricity. But that doesn't free the authorities from their responsibility and that doesn't mean Texas infrastructure isn't way behind the curve.
Wasn't Houston flooded a few years back because of non-existent canalisation? How can a frozen pipe burst open a roof inn a house that's meant for living in?
Bottom line: please update your building code, this is painful to watch. How many times more do you guys want tornadoes blowing away your homes and fires burning them down every odd year? ... Seriously, this isn't rocket science.
Re: (Score:2)
How can a frozen pipe burst open a roof inn a house that's meant for living in?
I've really wondered why these people have pipes in their roof.
Re: (Score:2)
Or the slab leak has already happened, and the replacement pipe was run through the attic.
Re: (Score:2)
Bottom line: please update your building code, this is painful to watch. How many times more do you guys want tornadoes blowing away your homes and fires burning them down every odd year? ... Seriously, this isn't rocket science.
Trick is to make everyone live in RVs. Tornadoes? Drive over the state line. Fires? Drive over the state line. Republican president? Drive over the Canadian border.
Nope. It is a warning about BAD politics (Score:2)
the far right and left extremists are out for themselves and their friends.
Even now, the blackouts from California and Texas, along with the Pandemic should be showing the many issues.
Hell, politicians continues to speak of how bad our deficits/debt and infrastructure is, but are they doing ANYTHING about it? NOPE.
Made to a cost, not a standard (Score:2, Interesting)
Most things in this world relate to profit (not made to a standard), with infrastructure not being immune.
Nuclear power stations that can have water intakes freeze up, seems like an example.
Microplastics being everywhere as we prefer cost over anything else.
We need to start thinking of the future and making "things" to a standard, not a cost. Doing so gives a much better buffer against disaster, looks into the future and marks a fundamental change away from greed. Climate change does result in wider varianc
Re:Made to a cost, not a standard (Score:5, Insightful)
Robustness is inefficient.
Inefficient systems get out-competed by efficient systems when everything is operating nominally. Then when the shit hits the fan, there's no backup.
This is the situation the Invisible Hand will lead to again and again. It finds a local maximum, with no regard for the consequences if the scenario changes.
Re:Made to a cost, not a standard (Score:5, Insightful)
As long as the item/service is built to a standard
That's the problem, any attempt regulate will be shot down by the Right.
Many people have long argued for long term costs to be included in consideration, but free marketeers hate having to prepare for more than the next quarter.
Are Texas Blackouts a Warning ... (Score:5, Insightful)
Are Texas Blackouts a Warning About the Follow-on Effects of Climate Change?
No, they are a warning about the consequences of allowing a bunch of deregulation obsessed free market fundamentalists to run an electrical grid with no guiding principle except maximising profit to the detriment of all else.
Climate vs Weather (Score:2)
And again, these people screaming about climate change are mistaking weather events for climate.
Basically, the difference to these people is as follows.
If it doesn't help them push their climate agenda, it's weather.
If he's something they can use to push their climate agenda, it's climate!
Re:Climate vs Weather (Score:4, Informative)
So you don't believe in climate change?
Or you don't understand that climate change directly effects weather patterns?
To be clear, to attribute this disaster to climate change, you would need to look at the frequency and severity of these kinds of storms/events. If they have become more frequent and/or more severe, then you can safely say it is a probable result of climate change.
No the Texas Blackouts are proof (Score:3)
Government FAILURE, not climate change (Score:5, Insightful)
This storm was not a "hundred year" storm, it was a ten year storm. Ten years ago it was almost as bad, just a little bit warmer.
This entire fiasco happened because of three things:
1) Ercot, Texas's main power organization (they do not do power for the El Paso area to the west, and a small eastern portion of Texas), decided that Texas was warm enough that it did not need to properly winterize their power generation equipment, mainly natural gas. They saved millions of dollars by doing this. And put 90% of the state at risk.
2) Texas's power grid is not well connected to the other two power grids. So if Ercot screws up, no one else can help them out. This was mainly done because Texas did not like the federal government regulating them, so they opted for their own power grid and thought they would never need any help.
3) The Republican party voted AGAINST a Democrat bill to require Ercot to winterize. Again, too much 'regulation' for the conservative anti-regulation to like.
Regulations, they save you from major screw ups from greedy corporations. Hint, all corporations are greedy.
Just a lack of investment (Score:3)
Betteridge's law of headlines (Score:3)
Re: No (Score:2)
Arw there any *republicans* left in that party?
Hell, are there any actual conservatives (people who don't want [the good] things to be changed) left?
Isn't it just the post-Dick-Cheney neo"con" libertarians?