Texas is the only state than can secede from the union.

CountZero
Full Member

anything that even hints at help from central Federal Government is immediately denounced as Socialist/Communist, even if it comes from a blatantly neo-Fascist government like ex-President Trump’s

Except of course that they went to the federal government for help and are receiving it.

It really is an interesting place demographically and politically- remember for all it has this rep for being republican, right wing, etc, it went 52/46 in the last election, 52/43 in the one before- it really is in play now in elections and is going to stay that way. And the more liberal and cosmopolitan parts are thriving, while the people who talk about secession and Guns God N Gubmint mostly are not.

Unless something changes big time in US politics, it’ll flip and be a democrat state, maybe not in the next election but soon- demographics and the economic state of the state make it as inevitable as anything is in politics. And when it does, man are people going to hate it. Meanwhile, it’ll be the more cosmopolitan, more liberal cities that keep the state working.

And it is all just politics. It’s not about renewables, or even really about grids, it’s about, well… sovereignty, I guess

Guess they done got Brrrexit done?

Poor old Ted, it was his daughters’ fault he had to go to Cancun…

the world is a very different place when it’s that cold

Finishing your lunch sandwich (!) is usually a crunchy affair when outdoors in windchill below -30C, this was in what shelter there was at the time.

Senator Ted Cruz got busted trying to sneak off to Mexico for a holiday where it’s warm, leaving Snowflake, the family dog, at home in freezing temperatures.

Ted Cruz might just be in trouble this time. It's one thing to facilitate an insurrection against America. It's another to leave your constituents without the means to save themselves from the freezing. But to leave #Snowflake alone in the cold and dark…Bridge too far. pic.twitter.com/MFZ2BnlZ7J

— Dr. Paul (@DrPnygard) February 19, 2021

2/ when you’re wrong because that’s when you really need those people to stick with you. Cruz has no such reservoir of unconditional support. No one likes the guy. Even his supporters don’t really like him. And here it shows. Basically everyone is letting him dangle in the wind.

— Josh Marshall (@joshtpm) February 19, 2021

Ted Cruz revels in the perception that he’s an arsehole, he’s made a point of it all through his career. Lots of people voted for him, perhaps thinking that he was their arsehole to be deployed to own the libtards. It came as a shock to them that at the first sign of cold weather, Cruz galloped off to Cancun and left his constituents to it.

From Axios – reminding that the CDC has advised Americans to avoid all travel to Mexico due to the pandemic.

Sooner or later people are going to think “I knew that I was voting for a complete sociopath, but I didn’t expect him to turn on me”.

Texas mayor says “

I love it how is apology was not that he was wrong but that he should have kept it to himself!

I’m in Calgary and we hit -32C on Friday (-45 windchill). That’s headline temperatures even in Canada. However everything is designed for winter and so whilst it’s tough it’s okay.

Having worked fair bit in Alberta (Calgary but also Red Deer and Grand Prairie) I’d say this is true of the infrastructure but people are still stupid (this is world wide not having a go any nation in particular) as every year I was there the first snow resulted in loads of crashes until people got their head into winter mode.

Maximum points for having a dog called Snowflake 😂🙃

Back to mid 20C’s next week in Houston. No doubt they won’t invest in their energy infrastructure and this incident will be forgotten

Sooner or later people are going to think “I knew that I was voting for a complete sociopath, but I didn’t expect him to turn on me”.

No, no they won’t

Don’t park under water pipes in case they burst

Sooner or later people are going to think “I knew that I was voting for a complete sociopath, but I didn’t expect him to turn on me”.

except ‘OMG COMMUNISTS!!!!’!!!!

^ What tyres for ice riding?

Texas is the only state than can secede from the union.

This is a myth. They tried during the American Civil War and it’s a settled matter. No states are allowed to secede.

Amusing that right wing politicians have blamed the increase in wind turbines in Texas for the power outages.

Reason being that it brought attention to the fact that the winterised (I know) modern turbines are working overtime in strong winds, who’d have thought it, and it’s the fossil fuel infrastructure that’s largely failed.

Classic own goal.

Classic own goal.

Classic own coal.
FITY

BBC did an article earlier this week on this

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

Finishing your lunch sandwich (!) is usually a crunchy affair when outdoors in windchill below -30C, this was in what shelter there was at the time.

you need to change your name from Sandwich to Al Fresco. (sorry)

A lot of homes there are wood frame construction with minimal insulation, single glazed, very lightweight cheap structures. They are built to cope with the heat

Not really. American houses are largely the same everywhere. My in laws house is in Wisconsin, it’s about 110 years old. I til recently they didn’t have any insulation at all, just plaster, wood then shiplap. When they had the siding replaced they added insulation. This in a place where -15-20C is totally normal and regular. My sister in law has a water tank with no insulation on it, and no timer so th immersion heater was on basically all the time. My other sister in law has single glazing and (1950s) blown air heating. If you’ve ever had single glazing in the UK you’ll know how cold it gets even in our climate.

But these houses aren’t designed for heat either. Even with insulation the in laws house is punishingly hot in summer. I’ve spent time on hot countries but my god it was roasting in those rooms at the back of the house at night after a hot day.

So even 100 years ago they were desig inf terrible houses that looked great but didn’t work, you were expected just to spend huge sums on heating. I don’t want to call it a racket, but it’s in builders interests to build cheap houses (always has been) and it’s in energy suppliers interests for you to have a poorly insulated house. Only government can regulate. And bad as our governments have been, at least we have minimum insulation standards and stuff like grants for insulation.

I was referring to Texas not houses a thousand mile away. There are many variations in the building codes and design standards across the US to cope with Mother Nature. Seismic codes, tornado zones etc. etc.

Adherence to those codes is pretty high in the last 40 years as they are so litigious over there. They also have a nasty habit of knocking down houses and rebuilding afresh when “re-modelling”. It’s nuts.

Houses appeared pretty similar when I stayed in Texas, but I could be wrong here. I didn’t see many Adobe buildings or those vented terracotta bricks that you get in hot places in Europe.

My then gf was banned from drying other outside though. I did it without realising and my clothes dried faster than if I’d put them in a drier at home.

There are around 140Mn residential properties in the US. I didn’t expect you to visit them all 😉

Adobe buildings

It’s cheaper to build wood framed buildings than adobe. All the wood buildings I’ve lived in have had air vents in the underside of the roof or in the walls near the roof.

My colleague in Dallas told me the temperature will return to a more normal 70 by midweek.

The snow melt will probably cause localised flooding.

Anyone seen the story about Donald Trump Jnr blaming the Texas problems on their Democratic governor?

Several people have pointed out that the Texas governor is a Republican.

Ted Cruz revels in the perception that he’s an arsehole, he’s made a point of it all through his career.

On the plus side, as he was born in Canada, he’s ineligible to be US president.

Supposedly he said that, as a strict Christian, he believes masturbation is a sin. At which point one of his college flatmates popped up and said this was obviously a new belief.

I was referring to Texas not houses a thousand mile away. There are many variations in the building codes and design standards across the US to cope with Mother Nature.

even so, insulation on a house in texas would help keep the conditioned air inside. my house in houston had double glazed windows but gaps round all the outside doors. it was about 80 years old, though. the glazing was probably to help keep the noise out

While Cruz tried to scurry away and that arse wipe trump junior tries to blame the Democrats, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has raised over $3 million for Texas.

https://www.houstonchronicle.com/news/houston-texas/houston/article/Rep-Alexandria-Ocasio-Cortez-visits-Houston-Food-15966130.php

MoreCashThanDash
Full Member

Anyone seen the story about Donald Trump Jnr blaming the Texas problems on their Democratic governor?

Several people have pointed out that the Texas governor is a Republican.

Texas hasn’t had a democrat governor since 1995. And current Republican governor Greg Abbott has been pretty visible, albeit only for going on Fox News to blame wind farms. Not for, y’know, doing his job- both Houston and Dallas’s mayors had been called by the president before Abbott bothered to call them. But hey, at least he didn’t flee the country.

On the plus side, as he was born in Canada, he’s ineligible to be US president.

If one of his parents was a U.S. citizen, then he is a “natural born” citizen and is eligible to be president. His mother was born in the U.S. so Ted Cruz is eligible to be president. I don’t like the guy, but he can definitely run for president.

It's just possible… and bear with me here… that Ted Cruz is not overburdened with self-awareness. https://t.co/BWIB41UOvH

— Charlie Sykes (@SykesCharlie) February 23, 2021

Step aside PizzaGate, QAnon and chemtrails: there's a new conspiracy theory in town (via @toofab)https://t.co/QBbgQ3PXko

— TMZ (@TMZ) February 23, 2021

This might be of interest for those interested in the power failure

https://www.woodmac.com/news/editorial/breaking-down-the-texas-winter-blackouts/full-report/

Just to pull a couple of key stats from that…

People are still reporting that at the lowest renewables production which was about 2gw, “26gw was offline” but the report shows once again that only 7gw was expected to be produced by that method so the biggest underproduction compared to planning was 5gw and for most of the period it was under half that. Most of the “offline” renewables generation was not planned to be online and was not part of ERCOT’s expected production.

Meanwhile for thermal, they planned to produce 62gw from the 70gb total capacity but outages even before the storm brought that down to 56gw, ie a real world shortfall on target of 6gw.

By the peak underproduction, thermal was producing 45gw- a total of 17gw underperformance of which 11gw was caused by the storm and 6gw of which existed before the storm.

TL;DR- the total real renewables underproduction during the storm, was less than the real thermal underproduction before the storm hit. The planned, already known about in advance thermal production shortfall, was more than the greatest amount of renewables shortfall, and would have been even if every thermal power source had continued at full power for the whole storm, rather than losing another 11gw.

This was mostly already known but it puts hard numbers on the failures and proves that they were mostly failures of planning and deregulation while totally disproving the fantasies about renewables causing it.

A lot of homes there are wood frame construction with minimal insulation, single glazed, very lightweight cheap structures. They are built to cope with the heat

A number of my colleagues in Houston lived in old houses that didn’t have a/c, just ceiling fans. I can’t imagine that it would have been fun in summer, but they survived. Our house would have been a nightmare with no a/c, but our un-insulated pipes still froze in the winter.