Numerology

No power for 2 days.
No water since yesterday.
Smelled gas inside and outside the house so called 9-1-1 — they never came.
Sat outside for three hours with three dogs until we finally reached center point emergency line.
Technicians come out — major gas leak

— Alex Stuckey 🐘 (@alexdstuckey) February 17, 2021

"Clean" energy comprises about 10% of Texas energy sources. We were actually proud of having so much wind power. Until this week.

Conversely, Texas oil and gas accounts for about 2% of Texas employment, and yet Abott and Crenshaw blamed Biden’s cancellation of the Trans-Canada pipeline (which nobody needs; gas is going back down to $50 bbl soon enough) and halting drilling on federal land (of which the only significant portions in Texas are Big Bend National Park and the Big Thicket, neither known for their oil fields) for the death of jobs in Texas.  In the future, of course; kinda like the idea of the Green. New Deal, which is all it is (just as all the New Deal was, a framework for legislation, nothing more).

So 2% wags the dog because Texas is still oil wells in the back yard (virtually true in my childhood, but that was 60 years ago, and it was pretty much over then, too.  Definitely over now.), and 10% is all the energy we produce with renewables, but that’s enough for a scapegoat. The major failures of coal, natural gas, and nuclear plants to provide energy in winter cannot be mentioned.

Gotta say, I really miss living in places where the power grids are prepared to deal with weather

— Alex Stuckey 🐘 (@alexdstuckey) February 17, 2021

So do I. I remember an “arctic blast” some 40 years ago; temperatures in single digits, wrapping myself in a flannel shirt under a wool sweater, all of which should have been too hot for a normal Texas winter even with snow, and wasn’t near warm enough (I even wore flannel lined blue jeans).  But the heat didn’t go out.  I grew up in Texas, and don’t remember power outages in the worst weather.  In Houston in the last 20 years we’ve lost power so many times I’ve lost count.  All, it occurs to me now, since power was “deregulated.”  

This really is a failed state.