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Comment by irjustin | Hacker News Reader

All of the power sources failed because in the de-regulation of the power grid[0] allowed looser operating temperature tolerances.

The point is, as you allude to, is the wind turbine is absolutely an easy narrative to "blame someone else" instead of "us" being the problem.

So, the current party in power, blames wind/green energy, which then effectively shrinks wind's scope overall, leaving the old infrastructure which is still inadequate.

The thing that frustrates all of us is - the general public is blind that the root problem was never solved. A cold snap like this won't happen in 10-20 years and by then all the politicians will have "blamed green, successfully squashed/fixed it all" and moved on claiming they won.

There needs to be a fight, investigations are the starting point for sure.

[0] https://www.cnbc.com/2021/02/17/how-the-texas-power-grid-fai....

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>the de-regulation of the power grid[0] allowed looser operating temperature tolerances.

Absolutely silly tolerances, mind you. Texas was colder in 1930.

> the wind turbine is absolutely an easy narrative to "blame someone else" instead of "us" being the problem.

It's not only an easy narrative. It's an easy picture. It's easy to imagine a wind turbine frozen stuck. It's harder to imagine how extreme cold affects, say, a nuclear power plant.

It's fundamentally populist because nobody has to explain how it works. It's also obviously wrong: there are wind turbines in Canada. It's the kind of thing that allows people to think they understand, without any deference to an authoritative source of information.

It's a low-trust theory that suggests a United States in transition to a low-trust society[1], and that's the worst part.

1: https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2019/07/22/the-state-of...

> It's harder to imagine how extreme cold affects, say, a nuclear power plant.

From what I can tell, there are only two nuclear power plants in Texas, providing about 2.5 GW of power. But one of them is currently shut down because of a problem with a feedwater pump:

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/policy/energy/how-and-why...

> United States in transition to a low-trust society

Trust, like rainforests, is a resource that can be exploited, sold to the highest bidder, and destroyed. Leaving those who benefited from the externlities worse off.

You say "low-trust society" like it's a bad thing. And it probably is, at least the interpersonal trust that your reference cites. But it also makes the point that trust in government is much lower, which is much more deserved and less of a problem than interpersonal trust issues.

I wonder if there's any analogy to "zero-trust" in IT security[0] that seems to be all the rage now. Put another way, is it possible that the current situations could be a crucible that re-forms trust in a better way? (Like building some sort of "trust but verify" culture, along with whatever technology and social institutions to facilitate.)

Sorry if that seems overly philosophical - just musing.

[0] https://www.cloudflare.com/learning/security/glossary/what-i...

It's all culture war. Wind turbines are sissy energy, diesel is manly energy.

Both failed, unpreparedness all around, but focusing attention on culture war shibboleths is perfect for deflecting attention.

Nuclear is the only superior energy

Indeed. The Texas nuclear power stations are the only ones to solve the US problem for the next 100.000 years. The wind would blow nuclear over the whole mid east, straight to NY. Palo Verde or Diablo are not in such a superior position.

Once upon a time, black lives were important, every death of the pandemic was the personal kill count of the president.. There used to be hilarious mask debates.

Then the elections got over, and nobody gives a shit.. some would think the real root cause of the pain of these issues was actually just not being in power..

Reader, don't mind the musings of this spectators outside perspective of American politics.. I can't vote in the US, so for all practical purposes not human from an Americans perspective..

Your observation is bang on. Biden just had a town hall on CNN where he said minority communities are more concerned with black-on-black or hispanic-on-hispanic crime than they are police violence. Had his predecessor said such a thing? We'd never hear the end of it. But few even know this town hall even happened. [0]

[0]: https://twitter.com/MarkDice/status/1361877410371657738

Edit: Case and point despite posting a video of Biden saying this, my post is being downvoted into the same memory hole as this town hall.

You're being downvoted because you mischaracterized (I'm being generous with that word) what Biden said. You might refocus your attention on the word "just".

And complaining about downvotes, particularly legitimate uses of the downvote, is frowned on here.

Well, BLM has served its purpose, elections are over. Ofcourse he doesn't want to deal with the actual issues in any real way. I think if you get a black person to be president for 2 terms that would solve everything ;)

And yet Texas has built massive amounts of windmills with government subsidies. That’s a fun narrative for people on one side of the cultural divide, but not true.

This alone does not say much. Texas is not 100% one cultural side. In last presidential elections it was 52-46. 46% is large chunk of population.

It does say much because the TX state leadership is very much one sided, and very vocal.

Nahh... true politicians recognize what’s needed, but they are more than happy to run a narrative that suits them and their voters.

I mean, Texas has been leading in wind energy. If they really thought it was sissy energy would they have done that?

Just like Biden talked about student loan forgiveness and now we’re what? Less than a month post inauguration and he’s like “nah, we’re not doing that”.

I heard that its because Texas is one of the few (perhaps only) states that can't just get power from other grids. That, and many other reasons, but if they are set up in such a way that prevents them from leveraging other grids....woof.

That was a political decision made intentionally to prevent federal oversight of their power grid. I have read they have a few connections though.

Yes, which means they've frozen the state out of spite and secessionism.

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