Posted on 03/03/2021 7:59:19 AM PST by bitt
The Texas blackout is over, and water has also been restored. It didn’t get as much press as the loss of electricity, but water pipes froze and broke across a wide swath of the state, causing inconvenience that for many was greater than the power outage. The ultimate source of both problems was the same: the relevant authorities failed to anticipate record-breaking cold.
One question that I have not seen asked is this: why didn’t the relevant authorities–the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, and whatever municipal governments and private contractors have been responsible for water pipes–anticipate a “worst case” cold snap such as what actually happened?
One obvious possibility is that they were so deluged with propaganda about “climate change,” which just means global warming, that they took elaborate precautions against record-breaking heat, but it didn’t occur to them to guard against unprecedented cold. Is this what happened? I don’t know, but back in the days when we had people known as “investigative reporters,” someone might have looked into it.
(Excerpt) Read more at powerlineblog.com ...
I wonder why we can’t find out how much the Board members for the Electric Reliability Council are paid. I have Googled it several times but regardless of how I structure the question nothing of any import is ever displayed. HMMM
When Katrina made landfall it was a category 3 hurricane. Category 3 is fairly common.
“In a previous job, I worked with a team building chemical-process plants, and were looking at a site, 1/100 year flood potential was the bare minimum, and that was for industry - not urban/housing/residential construction.”
Agree, and the thing, what is 1/100 versus 1/1000 - actually very little difference? It might mean designing heating systems for 100 hours below freezing temperature with a minimum temperature of 10F, versus designing for 130 hours below freezing with a minimum temperature of 5F.
In other words, by the time you’ve designed for 1 in a 100 years, you’re generally 90% of the way to 1 in a 1000 years. Also keep in mind that good data likely doesn’t go back more than 100 years, as engines didn’t even have a written language (in most cases).
So they didn’t plan for once in a century hurricane. Not even one in ten years.
More nuclear power please, and we wouldn’t be a problem.
It is also “renewable”.
They just took the money and let the structures deteriorate into real hazards.
Where’s the stretch in that?
Seems perfectly accurate to me.
Weather is just going to do its thing, especially in Texas. When I first joined the Air Force in 1985, I was home in Arlington for Christmas and New Years leave. I was wearing shorts and a T-shirt. I was home on leave one year later, and my grandmother died on New Years Day in Mesquite (East of Dallas). It was sleet and snow all day and took us 3 hours to get to her house (usually 40 minutes). Good luck controlling a planet’s climate...
Where’s the stretch in that?
ERCOT has been warning the producers about the risk from cold weather for over 30 years, including specific recommendations to winterize after both the 1989 and 2011 storms. The idea that cold weather "didn't occur to them" is so stupid as to be dishonest.
The power producers in ERCOT are for-profit, private companies who know all about winterization. They also know that they compete intensely on price.
They had no incentive to winterize and an big economic incentive not to.
Ignoring those incentives and instead blaming their non-action on ignorance that there could be a cold snap isn't just a stretch, it should be enough to make you ignore every word the author has ever written.
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