Why Texans are freezing their asses off

winn dixie's Avatar
Why Texans are freezing their asses off?

Cause its cold!
  • Tiny
  • 02-18-2021, 07:18 PM
Why Texans are freezing their asses off?

Cause its cold! Originally Posted by winn dixie
I may be reading more into your post than I should, but we've become a nation of pussies. A few people die in a cold spell, or a demonstration at the capitol, or some black lives matter protests, and people are mad as hell. So what, shit happens. None of this is shit compared to a big earthquake in Central America or Turkey, or an African genocide. We're blessed.

But admittedly this is easy for me to say. I've got food and water stockpiled, lots of warm clothes, sleeping bags, and my power hasn't gone out.

If my pipes burst I'd probably have a different attitude. There will be huge insurance losses.
I may be reading more into your post than I should, but we've become a nation of pussies. A few people die in a cold spell, or a demonstration at the capitol, or some black lives matter protests, and people are mad as hell. So what, shit happens. None of this is shit compared to a big earthquake in Central America or Turkey, or an African genocide. We're blessed.

But admittedly this is easy for me to say. I've got food and water stockpiled, lots of warm clothes, sleeping bags, and my power hasn't gone out.

If my pipes burst I'd probably have a different attitude. There will be huge insurance losses. Originally Posted by Tiny
I have lived on the Gulf Coast my entire 74 years, I have never seen it this cold.

We will survive. The truth is, it’s not much different than when a Hurricane blows in. And I have been through countless numbers of those.
  • Tiny
  • 02-18-2021, 08:03 PM
We will survive. The truth is, it’s not much different than when a Hurricane blows in. And I have been through countless numbers of those. Originally Posted by Jackie S
And we'll be better prepared next time.
HedonistForever's Avatar
And we'll be better prepared next time. Originally Posted by Tiny

Don't count on it. Beto and AOC are all over MSM saying this is all a direct result of climate change and if we don't institute "their plan" immediately, which if you haven't heard, is doing away with the kind of power that stopped the entire state of Texas from being without power today completely in , what are we, down to 9 years now, no preparations will help us.


The end is near.


But hey, look at the good side, we'll have 20 million new citizens in 8 years just in time for the end. YAHOOO!
HedonistForever's Avatar
One other thing Hedonist, from the table I linked too above, 9.4% of California's in state power generation was from nuclear in 2018. They're going to do away with nuclear by 2025. This sounds like a mistake to me, as nuclear is a reliable energy source that works all the time, not just when weather permits. Originally Posted by Tiny

As much as I am loathe to bring Bill Gates into this discussion, he had some interesting things to say on 60 minutes ( and some really stupid stuff to on cows ) about his "new" nuclear power plants and said what I have always believed, that new innovations like the kind of plants he is talking about, is the only thing that can possibly get us carbon neutral by 2050 but according to AOC and the other fanatics, that's 20 years to late.


We need to start building nuclear today.
lustylad's Avatar
I found today's WSJ editorial illuminating. I was surprised to read that wind turbines were supplying 42% of your electric needs just prior to the storm hitting Texas. I believe that was a weekly (7-day) average, not a single day level.

The editorial contains two very informative graphs that do not copy and paste, so if you subscribe to the WSJ then click on the link below to view them.

Hope you guys have plenty of blankets!


Texas Spins Into the Wind

An electricity grid that relies on renewables also needs nuclear or coal power.


By The Editorial Board
Updated Feb. 17, 2021 9:39 pm ET


While millions of Texans remain without power for a third day, the wind industry and its advocates are spinning a fable that gas, coal and nuclear plants—not their frozen turbines—are to blame. PolitiFact proclaims “Natural gas, not wind turbines, main driver of Texas power shortage.” Climate-change conformity is hard for the media to resist, but we don’t mind. So here are the facts to cut through the spin.

Texas energy regulators were already warning of rolling blackouts late last week as temperatures in western Texas plunged into the 20s, causing wind turbines to freeze. Natural gas and coal-fired plants ramped up to cover the wind power shortfall as demand for electricity increased with falling temperatures.

Some readers have questioned our reporting Wednesday ("The Political Making of a Texas Power Outage") that wind’s share of electricity generation in Texas plunged to 8% from 42%. How can that be, they wonder, when the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (Ercot) has reported that it counts on wind to meet only 10% of its winter capacity.

Ercot’s disclosure is slippery. Start with the term “capacity,” which means potential maximum output. This is different than actual power generation. Texas has a total winter capacity of about 83,000 megawatts (MW) including all power sources. Total power demand and generation, however, at their peak are usually only around 57,000 MW. Regulators build slack into the system.

Texas has about 30,000 MW of wind capacity, but winds aren’t constant or predictable. Winds this past month have generated between about 600 and 22,500 MW. Regulators don’t count on wind to provide much more than 10% or so of the grid’s total capacity since they can’t command turbines to increase power like they can coal and gas plants.

Wind turbines at times this month have generated more than half of the Texas power generation, though this is only about a quarter of the system’s power capacity. Last week wind generation plunged as demand surged. Fossil-fuel generation increased and covered the supply gap. Thus between the mornings of Feb. 7 and Feb. 11, wind as a share of the state’s electricity fell to 8% from 42%, according to the Energy Information Administration (EIA).

Gas-fired plants produced 43,800 MW of power Sunday night and coal plants chipped in 10,800 MW—about two to three times what they usually generate at their peak on any given winter day—after wind power had largely vanished. In other words, gas and coal plants held up in the frosty conditions far better than wind turbines did.

It wasn’t until temperatures plunged into the single digits early Monday morning that some conventional power plants including nuclear started to have problems, which was the same time that demand surged for heating. Gas plants also ran low on fuel as pipelines froze and more was diverted for heating.

“It appears that a lot of the generation that has gone offline today has been primarily due to issues on the natural gas system,” Electric Reliability Council of Texas senior director Dan Woodfin said Tuesday. The wind industry and its friends are citing this statement as exoneration. But note he used the word “today.” Most wind power had already dropped offline last week.

Gas generation fell by about one-third between late Sunday night and Tuesday, but even then was running two to three times higher than usual before the Arctic blast. Gas power nearly made up for the shortfall in wind, though it wasn’t enough to cover surging demand.

Between 12 a.m. on Feb. 8 and Feb. 16, wind power plunged 93% while coal increased 47% and gas 450%, according to the EIA. Yet the renewable industry and its media mouthpieces are tarring gas, coal and nuclear because they didn’t operate at 100% of their expected potential during the Arctic blast even though wind turbines failed nearly 100%.

The policy point here is that an electricity grid that depends increasingly on subsidized but unreliable wind and solar needs baseload power to weather surges in demand. Natural gas is crucial but it also isn’t as reliable as nuclear and coal power.

Politicians and regulators don’t want to admit this because they have been taking nuclear and coal plants offline to please the lords of climate change. But the public pays the price when blackouts occur because climate obeisance has made the grid too fragile. We’ve warned about this for years, and here we are.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/texas-s...d-11613605698?
lustylad's Avatar
This is from a buddy in Houston who's high up with a gas pipeline company. Oncor (power company) and ERCOT (outfit that controls the electric grid in Texas) in their infinite wisdom decided that compressors on gas pipelines and compressors at the inlets to gas plants were not essential, so blacked them out. They also shut off electricity to wells in the Permian Basin. The effect of all this was to shut off production wells and salt water disposal wells.

So basically a lot of the gas production infrastructure went off line. And it's not so easy to get things going again as when the wells and the compressors and the gas plants stop operating, things freeze up.

So anyway as a result the gas fired power plants were deprived of fuel, so they had to shut down. And just like the gas plants and the compressors and the wells, getting them going again in freezing conditions can be problematic.

In summary, according to my friend, shutting off the power to the oilfield and gas plants generated a chain reaction that resulted in the gas fired power plants going down. He said he and colleagues begged Oncor and ERCOT not to shut off the electricity, because they knew what was going to happen. Undoubtedly people working for other midstream companies were doing the same.

These people just had no common sense. Yes, we need to maintain power to hospitals, etc. But when they cut off the fuel source for the power plants, they put us in a position where that may happen anyway. Originally Posted by Tiny

A lot of reporting by so-called journalists was also lacking in common sense. Many of them blamed "frozen gas pipelines". Since natural gas liquefies at around -260 degrees Fahrenheit and freezes at -296 degrees Fahrenheit, this explanation didn't seem very plausible. I suspected the problem had more to do with the pipeline pumping stations and compressors failing. Thanks for confirming. Hard to believe they were turned off by ERCOT... what a clusterfuck!
Little Monster's Avatar
It's actually about 62% of Texas' electricity that comes from fossil fuels and nuclear. The rest comes from renewables. As to incompetent conservatives, you might contrast Austin and Lubbock. Austin is deep blue and Lubbock is deep red. Both cities own and control the power grids. Lubbock had the foresight to convert at least one of its power plants to run off of both fuel oil and natural gas, so it can keep going if gas supplies are limited. On Tuesday, 29,000 individuals, about 10% of the population of the county, was without power for an average of 30 minutes: https://www.lubbockonline.com/story/...rm/6773482002/
Can you say that about Austin?

Blue states on average pay a lot more for electricity:

https://www.eia.gov/electricity/state/ Originally Posted by Tiny
Sorry but you are still wrong sir. Between 80 and 90 percent of Texas power is from gas, coal, nuclear.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.tex...wer-storm/amp/

https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2021/02/16/b...alds-citibank/

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.nbc...mp/ncna1258185

Bottom line is Texaswas ilprepared due to lack of leadership. Other places that are used to this type of weather do a much better job weathering their infrastructure.

Funny how when things go wrong the right just points fingers and almost never come up with solutions of their own. Nope they just take trips to Cancun and be the hypocrites that they are.

As far as comparing Austin to Lubbock goes, that is comparing Apples to oranges. What is Lubbocks population compared to Austin's. Dallas is a conservative area and guess what, they are in the same boat as Austin if not worse.


So for example, if someone ( little monster ) said





That wouldn't be true? Might even be considered a lie if one continued to repeat it after being informed of the real numbers? Originally Posted by HedonistForever
As long as I have literature backing what I say I will continue to repeat the facts over and over again. If you wanna continue to parrot the made up lies that you believe then that is your ignorance.
Little Monster's Avatar
I found today's WSJ editorial illuminating. I was surprised to read that wind turbines were supplying 42% of your electric needs just prior to the storm hitting Texas. I believe that was a weekly (7-day) average, not a single day level.
didn’t operate at 100% of their expected potential during the Arctic blast even though wind turbines failed nearly 100%.
Originally Posted by lustylad
And I am not surprised by how misinformed you always prove to be, and the dumb shit you believe. 10% is nowhere near 42% smart one. These Texas conservatives pride themselves on being a "gas state" as they put it. And we are witnessing just how well that works out
lustylad's Avatar
And I am not surprised by how misinformed you always prove to be, and the dumb shit you believe. 10% is nowhere near 42% smart one... Originally Posted by Little Monster
What the fuck are you babbling incoherently about? You have no idea what you're talking about. It's obvious you didn't read or comprehend the WSJ, which is much more reliable than any of your LSM propaganda links.

Word of advice - Intelligent people don't toss out numbers without defining them. What is being measured? Capacity or supply? Projected or historical usage? Over what period (a day, week, month or year)?

Now go back and read the WSJ article (in my post #37) again and try to pay attention this time.

For someone who is constantly wrong, how did you get so cocky? Is it a defense mechanism for being corrected all the time?
  • oeb11
  • 02-19-2021, 07:00 AM
LL - Thanks for your contribution!
The WSJ is hardly a John birch publication - that the marxist ideologue LM denies the published FACTS
Ignore LM - for such fanatics - it is Ideology Uber Alles
and will continue to be -even in the face of freezing 'climate change' and living in a home with broken water pipes and no heat.

amazing teh strength of Ideology on self-delusion.
WTF's Avatar
  • WTF
  • 02-19-2021, 07:05 AM
LexusLover's Avatar
I don't think I'm buying that, that it costs a huge amount of money to winterize a power plant. Originally Posted by Tiny
I suppose one should recognize a flaw in the "planning" stage of the decision making: "global warming"!

If one actually believes that the Earth will continue to get "warmer" FOREVER, then "winterizing" anything is "wasteful" and "unnecessary"!

The LUNATICS on here who fantasize their world physical history to meet their "agenda" and "politics" speculation are a symptom of the same who have invaded this State (Texas) to create their dream-world utopia they fled from ruin.

When San Antonio got 19 inches of snow and the airport only had two deicing vehicles and only one worked .... it should have been a valuable insight into PLANNING. But that was before the invasion of "know-it-alls"!
  • oeb11
  • 02-19-2021, 07:19 AM
Thank you - LL
the Fanatics are about Ideology Uber Alles.

The delusion and denial are ridiculously evident in their DPST "managed thought processes"!