Texas freezes over (while Ted Cruz flies to Cancún)

[The Brain]

Wait, what? Sweden?

Nevertheless, images of ice-covered wind turbines, taken in Sweden in 2014, were shared widely among conservatives on social media as proof of the frailty of clean energy.

One of your wind turbines got covered in ice in 2014.

Oh no.

Anyway.

[Grey Fox]

Ridiculous and disgraceful. And we cannot even blame the Feds for it since we have jealously kept them out of having any influence over the Texas power grid.

On the flip side, we purposely located one of our failover data centers in Dallas due to the separate power grid.

Tell your boss to put it in Quebec. Seperate Power grid & actual government oversight.

In Texas government is an oversight.

The difference a word can make!

[The Minsky Moment]

Any opinion on Perry's statement about Texans happily enduring blackouts in order to keep the Feds out of their businesses?

He has a point given the kind of idiot that was running the Department of Energy c. 2017-2019.

There are 3 kinds of stupid: stupid, really fucking stupid, and Rick Perry stupid.

[Valmy]

Well that's not fair. Perry is also very corrupt.

[Valmy]

Oh no.

Anyway.

It proves wind energy cannot work as soon as it gets to 0C. Fortunately it has never gotten that cold in Sweden since then.

[The Minsky Moment]

Donald Trump Jr with a rambling video to defend Cruz.

https://twitter.com/DonaldJTrumpJr/status/1362539576963837952?s=20

My favorite bit: "Now, if I were a Trump ... which I am ... I would come up with a nickname, like 'Cancun Cruz.'"

With friends like these ...

[Razgovory]

My mom watches MSNBC 27/7 and apparently they are predicting the end of Cruz's career.  She asked me if I thought this was the end of Ted Cruz.  I said "no, people didn't like Cruz that well to begin with.  If they tolerate him now they'll tolerate him in 4 years."  She asked me if I thought this was important (the Cruz trip not the power outage).  Again I said "No.  Nobody will care about this in six months.".

Cable news is a bane on this country.

[The Minsky Moment]

It proves wind energy cannot work as soon as it gets to 0C. Fortunately it has never gotten that cold in Sweden since then.

The Dear Leader has said that wind power does not work, causes cancer, and makes your penis small (really - the wind causes shrinkage).  Also Scandinavians are all nasty people. Except for those wonderful manly Norwegians. 

[alfred russel]

Any opinion on Perry's statement about Texans happily enduring blackouts in order to keep the Feds out of their businesses?

He has a point given the kind of idiot that was running the Department of Energy c. 2017-2019.

There are 3 kinds of stupid: stupid, really fucking stupid, and Rick Perry stupid.

There is something to be said about our total dysfunction of government here.

Someone upthread mentioned that Cruz could be displaying leadership by lobbying the government for more resources, or Senators for some legislative relief action. You might think that Cruz would lobby senior levels of Health and Human Services for the pandemic issue, and Energy for the power one, but of course there isn't any approved leadership for those roles because the Senate hasn't approved the nominations. Legislative relief action is undermined because the Senate is in recess.

I went back and checked the dates the HHS secretary got approved under Clinton and Bush 2: January 22 and February 2.

For Energy, it was January 22 and January 20.

It used to be a bipartisan priority to get new administrations up and running, but now it is deeply partisan--McConnell even suggested that he would block all Biden cabinet positions if he kept a senate majority. Schumer doesn't even seem to care: they just halted all confirmations for an impeachment trial with a preordained outcome and now are taking a week's recess. We will start next week with only 7 people confirmed. I suspect the pace of confirmations is an all time slow pace.

Cruz is probably the single most obstructionist senator in the body so he gets zero pass for the current dysfunction, but it is still worth nothing the dysfunction.

[Legbiter]

Is this Texas cold snap a once in a 1000 years event? Those will blindside you (Laki and Heimaey eruptions here) but if this happens every 10-20 years you'd think the energy grid would be robust enough to handle it much better.

[Admiral Yi]

Is this Texas cold snap a once in a 1000 years event? Those will blindside you (Laki and Heimaey eruptions here) but if this happens every 10-20 years you'd think the energy grid would be robust enough to handle it much better.

I did see this is the first time the weather service has ever issued a winter weather advisory for Texas.  Or winter storm warning, one of those.

[Valmy]

We get a winter storm someplace every year, just usually not over the entire state like this and certainly not for multiple days at a time like this. Dallas and farther north get winter storms from time to time.

[Josquius]

Did I read right here, texas' power grid isn't linked up to the rest of the US?

[The Brain]

Did I read right here, texas' power grid isn't linked up to the rest of the US?

They don't want Communist electrons to mess with their purity of essence.

[Agelastus]

Did I read right here, texas' power grid isn't linked up to the rest of the US?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Texas_Interconnection

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_Reliability_Council_of_Texas

https://www.texastribune.org/2011/02/08/texplainer-why-does-texas-have-its-own-power-grid/

Looks like an accident of history combined with the desire of local companies to avoid Federal Regulation that either became State Policy under Republican and Democrat governors or something that they didn't care about.

Texas does have three connections to Mexico and 2 to the Eastern Interconnection according to what I have read just now.