Don't blame the Texas power grid's problems on anyone or anything other than the fact the their grid is owned and run independent of the rest of the country by greedy fools who don't care about their customers, only their profits. And is controlled by the same people who control Texas oil. Greedy, self serving oligarchs, who's first response to that disaster was to RAISE PRICES and blame the people!
And whether you/we like it or not, we must find a way to transition from oil. I'm sitting here on the border to Canada in December, experiencing temperatures in the 40's and 50's until this week. We should have a foot of snow on the ground by now, the lakes should be frozen. Nether have happened. And I see every year it is getting warmer without a doubt. I grew up in norther NY. I remember temperatures of -35 below 0 F. Weeks of it! Not any more. I don't think it hit 0 last winter. 10 day forecast is for temperatures in the low to mid 30's F. NOT normal! So you tell me how we fix this. I too thought Natural gas was a viable choice. But it's main byproduct of combustion is CO2, so it solves nothing. So yeah, let's build more pipelines that break and leak and poison the earth, you know, like the one they told the Native Americans that it wouldn't leak into their lake..... and did within a year! Sorry, your solution is no solution.
But hey! We all know what's coming. New! Improved nukes! Ohhh yes, there is a big push on right now. claims of "clean energy" being bandied about. Well, just how clean are they? What will we do with the waste they produce? What about the THOUSANDS of tons of waste currently sitting in decaying temporary containers while nothing is being done to create a long term solution? Do you know the half-life of that waste? 10's of thousands of years. Lets say one form has half life of 5 thousand years that means that in 5000 years, 1/2 of the radioactive energy is spent. And 1/2 of what's left will be spent in another 5000 years, and so on until it's no longer dangerous. Some have a half life of 230,000 years...... And it's all sitting above ground in laughable man made containment.
Fusion power is still 20-40 years into the future before ONE fully functional power plant is built. And you think "green"energy is expensive? Wait till we get the bill for fusion! Ohh without a doubt it should be cheaper to produce, but do you really believe for even one second that will translate to affordable energy for us? If you do, i got s perpetual motion machine I'll sell ya cheap!
There are options for energy. Not the best there could be without a doubt. But what is also without doubt is that oil and gas emissions are destroying our ecology. Yes, green energy is going to be costly and a lot of that is because the same people who own oil and gas, own the largest renewable energy companies, you know, they same one's with there puppets in congress defending oil and gas........ which helps keep things like solar etc expensive. A win win for those deep pockets!
And I'm at the mercy of those companies as well as you are. I'm paying almost double to heat my home this winter compared to last.
And if you think "the other political party" has any answers, your dead wrong! They will suck on the oil tit until it runs completely dry before they relent, so don't you believe for one minute that they have any good answers!
We're closer in thought than you may think, I don't care what party is in charge, as long as they do the right thing.
Yeah, the Texas grid is a complicated subject and you're pretty much on target.
IF they had done the proper winter prep and
IF they hadn't
tried to use an unreliable energy as the buffer/reserve as a part of the total power available, the problems might have been avoided. I say might, simply because we just don't have that kind of cold for that long of time and building standard just don't take that rare event in setting the standards. The last time it was anywhere close was the winter of 90-91and it never went sub-zero. The Governor did really nothing to prevent this from happening. The reorganization of the people that 'manage' the grid was just fluff. I've already made changes to prevent what happened last time.
My biggest problem in how this is being handled is getting the cart before the horse. If electric cars are to be the mainstay, you don't expand charging stations and home charging stations without expanding generating capacity that will more than cover the demand
at all times, not just in good weather. It must also cover household use.....duh....... and as time goes, modern life imposes more power demands. We haven't talked about the manufacturing demand.
Trying to force tech before it's ready is never good. If the current path is followed, just expect every single thing to go up in cost. The cost is pervasive and everywhere. Increased energy costs in just manufacturing and transportation of the products is more than enough to throw the economy into trouble and it's the poorest that will suffer the most.
Manufacturing the 'green tech' is NOT very green in a lot of cases. China is the biggest manufacturer of a very large percentage of this tech. China is the largest polluter in the world. It has the most coal-fired plants in the world and most of that is the 'dirtiest' coal usage.
They have plans for 20+ nuke plants. We all know that the govt there doesn't give a damn about the environment. Just imagine what they will do with the spent fuel! I sure as hell hope the design for the new plants is not the one/s I read a few years ago. Redundancy is VERY limited to save money. That's VERY dangerous.
Uncle Hymie, Admirial Hyman Rickover, the father of the Naval nuke plant, had the design in mind to be 'sailor proof'. Vast amount of efficiency was given up to sorta achieve that.............NOTHING is 'sailor proof! LOL!
We do have to do something on many avenues, but they need be logical and based on science, not 'feelings'....referring to the fools in charge, not you. There are MANY things we can do now or in the very near future that can start to make an impact. Carbon capture, alternative building materials, doing away with subsidies for making ethanol(great for race cars running 100% but just plain stupid), utilizing spent nuke power plant fuel, increasing fuel efficiency of vehicles with INTELLIGENT methods, simple tree planting, stop clear harvesting the rain forests............just to name just a very short list.
Unless we get visited by friendly aliens with advanced energy tech, fusion will be in our future. We just have to get there before throwing out the baby with the bath water. The current 'green tech' just will not get us there. It's not going to get us there before the gulf current changes and throw us into an ice age. We're not going to have to worry about flooding out coastal cities!
Oh the irony! With growing organically all those years, I was a HUGE polluter. With as much compost I made over the years, just think of all the co2 I put into the atmosphere
The newest generations of nuclear power pretty much deal with the problems of safety and waste products. You seem to be interested in this, have you read "Storms of My Grandchildren by Dr. James Hansen? He does decent job of clarifying the nuclear option. The way I read the current mess, we are pretty much where he predicted in about 1980 that we would be absent major changes in business as usual. So far, what has been accomplished appears to be far too little, and maybe too late.
Bottom line IMO is that if the world does not get off conventional coal generation (coal generation with carbon recovery would be tolerable) as soon as bloody possible (no sign of that, the opposite actually), eliminate all direct and indirect subsidies for all fossil fuels asap, force major changes in energy efficiency, implement major incentives for development and implementation of carbon free energy, and get on with installation of modern tech nuclear, future generations are going to find themselves in serious trouble.
So far, I would say that there is little evidence that these tasks have much chance of needed global implementation, or of long term support by voters in so called western democracies.
Yup!
This has to be a worldwide effort. Doing away with the stupid compliance exemption of the Kyoto Protocol for 'developing countries' has to be done away with India and China being the top polluters in the world should be one thing to do, but then there's the compliance. Good luck with China's government on getting that done.
We just have to do it. It's gonna 'hurt' no matter what. My preference is to have the least amount of pain possible, but I just don't see that with ALL the current fools in charge.........NOT talking about the US fools either! LOL!
We all have political opinions but we leave them at the front door of this house.
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A big part of all contests is how you interpret the rules. 
for Helping the Vets, ya. 100 in my Book
