Tired of the dysfunctional blame game (San Antonio, Austin: moving, bill, electricity)

[elnina]

Originally Posted by Guineas

Having lived in Texas, I realize everything is “once in a lifetime”. The Super Bowl blizzard was once in a lifetime too. 1995 was once in a lifetime too. Texans must have short lifetimes.

Right! Once in a lifetime? Hardly.

The majority of the problems generators experienced in 2011 resulted from failures of the very same type of equipment that failed in the earlier (1989) event and in many cases, these failures were experienced by the same generators.
Twenty six power generators that failed during a 2011 winter storm also failed during a similar 1989 storm.
State officials have failed to ensure that power plants across Texas can operate in extreme winter conditions despite three decades of warnings and multiple examples of the same facilities failing storm after storm, according to regulatory documents uncovered by WFAA.
https://www.wfaa.com/article/news/lo...3-19aa4f4f4690

[As Above So Below...]

Originally Posted by elnina

Statistics mean not much to nature. It's probably time to ditch statistical significance. There are many misconceptions. The more sources you look at, the more different results you get.

The fact remains that the frequency of extreme snowstorms has increased over the past century. Approximately twice as many extreme U.S. snowstorms occurred in the latter half of the 20th century than the first.

Rising global average temperature is associated with widespread changes in weather patterns. Scientific studies indicate that extreme weather events such as heat waves and large storms are likely to become more frequent or more intense with human-induced climate change.
Many extreme temperature conditions are becoming more common. Unusually hot summer nights have become more common at an even faster rate.
https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/news/clima...xtreme-snow-us

How many meteorological statistics have you actually looked at?

This isn’t the first time Houston and other parts of Texas have seen this. It’s rare, but it has happened.

I’m a believer in human caused climate change but pointing the finger at it for every single weather event is also ridiculous. This especially true when we can point to events from 100 years ago and show similar trends.

[USDefault]

Originally Posted by ParaguaneroSwag

Who cares about reading that a rover landed on mars when you can read about the state of Texas being slaughtered? The media feeds people what they want

This would be a nationwide story no matter what state. California blackouts got huge coverage. Any state that has millions of people without power, in every major city, followed up by no water, massive amount of pipes bursting, hospitals unable to flush toilets -- it's getting coverage.


Finally, there is no "blame game." Texas owns this failure, period, end of story. Can't blame "the feds" or "the left." For many years now Texans have voted in the legislators who repeatedly voted for an unregulated energy grid that was purposefully kept separate from her fellow states, and thus from federal regulation which would have helped lessen this disaster. And there were multiple warnings, going back decades, a hard Texas freeze would result in systemic grid failure. All of it, ignored. I say again, Texans own this.

[KathrynAragon]

Originally Posted by Guineas

Having lived in Texas, I realize everything is “once in a lifetime”. The Super Bowl blizzard was once in a lifetime too. 1995 was once in a lifetime too. Texans must have short lifetimes.

How's this for a lifetime - here in NE Texas, temperatures plummeted to the lowest EVER recorded. Ever. And by far. And stayed there for days.

Also, this was the first time in recorded history that every single one of the 254 counties in Texas were under a winter storm warning.

So yeah, considering that records have been kept for far longer than a lifetime I'd say this was a once in a lifetime event.

For instance, everyone keeps talking about the Super Bowl blizzard a few years ago, and 1995, and 1989. I lived in Texas during those events, but not in the cities directly affected. I was barely effected at all, just a coupla hours down the road.

This was a universal event for the state of Texas.

[Guineas]

Originally Posted by KathrynAragon

This was a universal event for the state of Texas.

It was a universal event for much of the Midwest and nearby states like Oklahoma. Most states did just fine with nowhere near the disaster seen in Texas.

[USDefault]

Originally Posted by Guineas

It was a universal event for much of the Midwest and nearby states like Oklahoma. Most states did just fine with nowhere near the disaster seen in Texas.

^ This.

Two BS arguments fail miserably. The first is how “unique” and/or “severe” the cold was. Nonsense. Texas has had multiple instances of power generation going down due to cold. As well as direct, specific guidance to winterize. It was, of course, ignored. And this will happen again. Yet none of the states adjacent to Texas had anywhere near the outages and damage. Heck, neither did El Paso, which winterized.

Second BS argument is how “expensive” it will be to winterize gauges and equipment. Yes, it will have a cost. But the winterizing cost is a mere fraction of the ~ $20 billion it will cost to repair the current damage. If El Paso can adequately prepare its power facilities, so can Dallas, Houston, Austin, etc. Penny-wise, pound-foolish.

[Mikala43]

Originally Posted by Guineas

It was a universal event for much of the Midwest and nearby states like Oklahoma. Most states did just fine with nowhere near the disaster seen in Texas.

Because that is their normal weather.

You don't build freeze safe systems in Hawaii, because their is no point, and you don't install AC in areas where the temp rarely goes above 80.

It was an extremely rare event for texas, BUT they were told they needed to "upgrade" their systems for cold snaps and they didn't. So now it will probably be legislated.

[As Above So Below...]

Originally Posted by USDefault

^ This.

Two BS arguments fail miserably. The first is how “unique” and/or “severe” the cold was. Nonsense. Texas has had multiple instances of power generation going down due to cold. As well as direct, specific guidance to winterize. It was, of course, ignored. And this will happen again. Yet none of the states adjacent to Texas had anywhere near the outages and damage. Heck, neither did El Paso, which winterized.

Second BS argument is how “expensive” it will be to winterize gauges and equipment. Yes, it will have a cost. But the winterizing cost is a mere fraction of the ~ $20 billion it will cost to repair the current damage. If El Paso can adequately prepare its power facilities, so can Dallas, Houston, Austin, etc. Penny-wise, pound-foolish.

Yeah pretty much that.

[KathrynAragon]

Originally Posted by Guineas

It was a universal event for much of the Midwest and nearby states like Oklahoma. Most states did just fine with nowhere near the disaster seen in Texas.

I haven't tracked other records in other states or even most other regions of Texas, but here in the Tyler area this winter storm broke many records - not just daily records, but ALL TIME records. So yeah, it was a huge event here.

Even so, we're just about done with the drama here, thank goodness.

[KathrynAragon]

Originally Posted by USDefault

^ This.

Two BS arguments fail miserably. The first is how “unique” and/or “severe” the cold was. Nonsense. Texas has had multiple instances of power generation going down due to cold. As well as direct, specific guidance to winterize. It was, of course, ignored. And this will happen again. Yet none of the states adjacent to Texas had anywhere near the outages and damage. Heck, neither did El Paso, which winterized.

Second BS argument is how “expensive” it will be to winterize gauges and equipment. Yes, it will have a cost. But the winterizing cost is a mere fraction of the ~ $20 billion it will cost to repair the current damage. If El Paso can adequately prepare its power facilities, so can Dallas, Houston, Austin, etc. Penny-wise, pound-foolish.

OMG. Look, I'm not going to engage in an argument about expenses or winterizing or whatever. What I AM going to do though is repeat that for me, a person who has lived in Texas for 30 years, this was a record breaking event of epic proportions. Sort of like when I was a kid living in Virginia during that huge snow storm that slammed the east coast (early 70s, maybe 1973). Wow, that was a wild weather event that broke records up and down the east coast. Same with this one.

As I've stated repeatedly on many threads, this winter storm broke all time temperature records across the state of Texas, and every single Texas county was, for the first time in history, under a winter storm warning.

It was a big deal.