Anti green energy lobby hard at work in Texas

[studiot]

My thoughts go out to the recent cold weather in continental North America.

Especially since we in the UK have benefitted with unseasonally warm weather from the outer circulation of this weather system.

So it is sad to see climate science deniers or just the anti green energy lobby hard at work.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-56085733

 

Quote

On Tuesday, the state's principal energy supplier, the Electricity Reliability Council of Texas (Ercot), said the freezing conditions had led to:

• 30GW being taken offline from gas, coal and nuclear sources
• a 16GW loss in capacity in wind and other renewable energy supplies

And this, it said, had severely curtailed its ability to satisfy a peak demand of 69GW over the past few days - a surge even greater than anticipated.

 

[Area54]

13 minutes ago, studiot said:

Especially since we in the UK have benefitted with unseasonally warm weather from the outer circulation of this weather system.

I just note that while Texas was suffering from the polar vortex my wife and I were almost snowed out of our house as we returned from our Covid injections and our neighbouring village was completely isolated for four days, the first time this has happened since 1983. Clearly your choice of Somerset was more sensible than our retreat in the highlands of Scotland.

As to the main thrust of your thread, the arguments of the anti-green lobbly evoke the same question as usual - "Are they really this ignorant, or is this cynical dishonesty?"

[joigus]

I think it's particularly unfortunate that some scientific issues --especially when matters are not completely settled yet, and more dispassionate investigation/discussion is needed-- spill over into general societal contexts. More so when certain models/hypotheses, etc. hit on economic interests. The bigger the economic interests, the worse it is for the unbiased character of the discussion.

We've seen many examples of this. The issue of climate change is a good example. The food industry provides another. And more recently, the COVID crisis.

[swansont]

3 hours ago, Area54 said:

As to the main thrust of your thread, the arguments of the anti-green lobbly evoke the same question as usual - "Are they really this ignorant, or is this cynical dishonesty?"

If by cynically dishonest you mean “do they think their supporters are this stupid” I think the answer is yes. It’s been obvious for a long time that a large swath of the population are far too credulous regarding lies made by politicians and the “news” channels that amplify them.

2 hours ago, joigus said:

I think it's particularly unfortunate that some scientific issues --especially when matters are not completely settled yet, and more dispassionate investigation/discussion is needed-- spill over into general societal contexts. More so when certain models/hypotheses, etc. hit on economic interests. The bigger the economic interests, the worse it is for the unbiased character of the discussion.

We've seen many examples of this. The issue of climate change is a good example. The food industry provides another. And more recently, the COVID crisis.

The issue here is blaming the existence of renewable sources for the shortfall, and using this as a talking point to not “go green” while ignoring the failure of gas and oil. The issue is not having properly protected/winterized the infrastructure. Canada, Norway, Sweden, even Antarctica have wind turbines that work just fine.

edit to add link:

https://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/blaming-the-wind-for-the-mess-in-texas-is-ridiculous

[iNow]

3 hours ago, Area54 said:

Are they really this ignorant, or is this cynical dishonesty?

Yes

[MigL]

If it wasn't for all the accidents and people suffering the cold, I'd find it funny that people in places like Texas have a couple of days of bad weather and they lose their minds.

Try living in Canada or even the American mid-west.
Temperatures last night were -15^o C , and I have a foot of snow outside my door.
Life goes on as normal.

[Phi for All]

3 hours ago, Area54 said:

As to the main thrust of your thread, the arguments of the anti-green lobbly evoke the same question as usual - "Are they really this ignorant, or is this cynical dishonesty?"

Not sure if this is covered by your choices here, but Texas has gone out of their way to avoid selling or exchanging power with other states due to the costs of compliance with federal regulations. They've been beating the "Big Government" drum loudly, so it would be easy to just let them suffer, but it's hard to find properly informed Americans anywhere these days, and many of them would probably recognize reality if they were somehow exposed to it via their "news" source(s). 

[joigus]

1 hour ago, swansont said:

The issue here is blaming the existence of renewable sources for the shortfall, and using this as a talking point to not “go green” while ignoring the failure of gas and oil. The issue is not having properly protected/winterized the infrastructure. Canada, Norway, Sweden, even Antarctica have wind turbines that work just fine.

I completely went on a tangent there. Thank you.

[J.C.MacSwell]

12 hours ago, MigL said:

If it wasn't for all the accidents and people suffering the cold, I'd find it funny that people in places like Texas have a couple of days of bad weather and they lose their minds.

Try living in Canada or even the American mid-west.
Temperatures last night were -15^o C , and I have a foot of snow outside my door.
Life goes on as normal.

...and that's still +5^o F in Texas, at the current exchange rate...

[iNow]

Most of their homes are heated with electric furnaces. No bueno when no power and no water. 

It was nearly -30C here when I woke up earlier this week (-20F), and that was before the windchill which dropped it another 20 degrees below that... but we have LPG and running water still. 

[Janus]

13 hours ago, MigL said:

ITry living in Canada or even the American mid-west.
Temperatures last night were -15^o C , and I have a foot of snow outside my door.
Life goes on as normal.

Reminds me of the time when I was a kid in Northern Minn.

My Dad was driving to work in the early AM.  He began to feel cold, even though the car heater was going full blast, and was starting to wonder what had gone wrong with it, when the weather report came over the radio announcing that the present temperature  in the small town he was passing through at the time was -50° F 

[zapatos]

13 hours ago, MigL said:

If it wasn't for all the accidents and people suffering the cold, I'd find it funny that people in places like Texas have a couple of days of bad weather and they lose their minds.

Try living in Canada or even the American mid-west.
Temperatures last night were -15^o C , and I have a foot of snow outside my door.
Life goes on as normal.

On the flip side I visited Vancouver one summer maybe 15 or 20 years ago and everyone there was losing their minds because of how hot and miserable it was. It was in the upper 80s F. In Texas that's often considered sweater weather.

I live in the American midwest and we own a few alpacas, which are indigenous to the Andes mountains. For the past few nights we had to keep a coat on one because it was so cold outside.

[MigL]

We must all be bored...
We're talking about the weather.

[J.C.MacSwell]

2 minutes ago, MigL said:

We must all be bored...
We're talking about the weather.

One thing I learned in the coldest weather I've ever been out in (at night in January in Northern Alberta) was that spit does not freeze before hitting the ground at -50, as per Jack London's story "Building a Fire". Not even close at -58 F/-50 C. I had believed it up to that point. It didn't even freeze instantly upon hitting the ground. It took more than a few seconds.

[studiot]

On 2/18/2021 at 10:55 AM, Area54 said:

I just note that while Texas was suffering from the polar vortex my wife and I were almost snowed out of our house as we returned from our Covid injections and our neighbouring village was completely isolated for four days, the first time this has happened since 1983. Clearly your choice of Somerset was more sensible than our retreat in the highlands of Scotland.

As to the main thrust of your thread, the arguments of the anti-green lobbly evoke the same question as usual - "Are they really this ignorant, or is this cynical dishonesty?"

Yes I noticed a few days ago that they recorded the lowest UK temperature since 1983, in Braemar.

Whilst we we having few (slightly) frosty nights.
I had actually turned the vegetable patch over, hoping that the frost would break down more of the clay we have round here , but there was not enough frost.

Over the last decade there have been a few times when the temperature with my family in Tayside and Aberdeen has been higher than here, but there is an average 4^oC temperature difference in our favour.
I do like the highlands though. Nearly as good as Lorna Doone and King Arthur country.

🙂

7 hours ago, J.C.MacSwell said:

One thing I learned in the coldest weather I've ever been out in (at night in January in Northern Alberta) was that spit does not freeze before hitting the ground at -50, as per Jack London's story "Building a Fire". Not even close at -58 F/-50 C. I had believed it up to that point. It didn't even freeze instantly upon hitting the ground. It took more than a few seconds.

Jack London ?

Do you like Robert Service  (Songs of the High North amongst others)  ?

Or Roderick Haig-Brown   (Starbuck Valley Winter) ?

 

Edited February 19, 2021 by studiot