Poll of the Day > Elected Texas official's power belief...

(+) Yeah! (+)

It'll be a cold day in hell before we need to winterize our power systems, even a little bit.
Welcome to hell Texas.
I hope things get fix as fast as possible and people down there get the help they need.

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Rick Perry literally said "Texans would rather die than receive federal help". For the love of fuck Texas get your shit together.

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They want to secede but get foiled by 3 inches of snow and 20 degree weather.

Something tells me that would be a failed nation.

argonautweakend posted...

3 inches of snow

that it?

Still, without salt trucks in place and ready even that amount makes the roads terrible, especially as it melts and ices

Do the houses down there just not have heating in place?

I actually have no idea how much snow, so that was likely wrong.

But yeah, without salt trucks snow does suck, but they need federal aid for this kind of thing they perhaps wouldn't get if they left the US.

At least in North Texas, 3 inches may be a lowball

https://www.nbcdfw.com/weather/how-much-snow-did-we-get-in-north-texas/2555349/

I ain't taking it back, but my figure pulled from out of my ass to make the texas situation not as bad was wrong. flat out.

Welcome to the Trump state that doesn't believe in global warming and climate change.

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I hope things get fixed now so that people dont have to go through something like this again

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Going from hi tech to something like a third world country must be a massive shock.

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argonautweakend posted...

They want to secede but get foiled by 3 inches of snow and 20 degree weather.

Something tells me that would be a failed nation.

To be fair, many normally-cold areas would be similarly screwed over by the sort of heat and drought conditions that are normal for much of Texas, much like the east coast would be crippled by earthquakes that the west coast would laugh off. Nobody builds infrastructure to withstand environmental conditions they have almost no chance of ever seeing. That'd just be wasteful. This is why climate change is such a problem: it's going to introduce extreme weather events to regions that have never had to be prepared for them, with devastating results.

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Maybe they should elect a Libertarian.

Ha ha just kidding!

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What is happening in Texas is tragic.

The government has let the people down for pride and greed.

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Beto has been leading a volunteer effort to contact seniors in Texas and get them assistance if needed

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Zangulus posted...

Yeah... That's just not true. Texas has had warning this will happen. Repeatedly. They refuse to do anything about it.

Yeah, therein lies the core issue here. Problems on this level may be unprecedented, but they're not completely surprising.

Zangulus posted...

Not to mention calling saving lives just wasteful. Lawls.

It can be. Lives being on the line doesn't automatically take any cost-benefit analysis out of the picture. If the risk is low enough, investing significant resources to mitigate that risk is often unreasonable. There's no sense buying an air conditioner for a home in Alert, for example, even if heat stroke can potentially kill people, because it's extremely unlikely for that risk to ever come to fruition.

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Texas deregulated their power industry to show us how effective it is like we haven't already learned this lesson.

I'm in Houston and was out of power for 36 hrs. It's a bunch of bullshit, this definitely could have been avoided. We knew this storm was coming at least a week before and there was absolutely zero warning from anyone about potential power outages. ERCOT and the Texas government fucked up big time.

Zangulus posted...

Your entire argument falls flat in the face that the Texas government has had knowledge that this can and will happen on a semi regular basis but refuse to acknowledge and prepare.

My argument doesn't really hinge on Texas at all. I'm speaking more broadly. Based on the details you're providing (which I didn't have before), there is indeed no excuse for Texas to have let this happen so badly, and some degree of winter-proofing would have been both reasonable and responsible. More broadly, though, there's no sense in earthquake-proofing houses in a city that hasn't seen an earthquake since it was part of Pangaea. That's what I'm talking about.

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adjl posted...

To be fair, many normally-cold areas would be similarly screwed over by the sort of heat and drought conditions that are normal for much of Texas, much like the east coast would be crippled by earthquakes that the west coast would laugh off. Nobody builds infrastructure to withstand environmental conditions they have almost no chance of ever seeing. That'd just be wasteful. This is why climate change is such a problem: it's going to introduce extreme weather events to regions that have never had to be prepared for them, with devastating results.

Counter-point: West Texas especially gets bad blizzards every year, so their excuse for being ill-prepared isn't very acceptable. Obvious the sharp temperature drops and the sheer levels they are getting hit with as abnormal, but it's more highlighting how Texas' unregulated power industry could have used...you know, regulations, to prevent this. And the general Republican hypocrisy/indifference to the crisis. Watching Cruz get roasted alive today has been delightful.

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These guys really can't handle a tiny bit of snow can they

Jk I know their infrastructure can't handle it because they were never expecting snow in Texas. This is why regulation is not a money-wasting scheme.

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Zangulus posted...

Okay. So youre just arguing things so broadly as to be utterly moot to the topic at hand.

Evidently. I'd thought it was more applicable, but it's not.

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https://i.imgur.com/rZTwCir.jpg

https://i.imgur.com/QQoGLxu.jpg

https://imgur.com/gallery/y9NtEfX

Yellow posted...

These guys really can't handle a tiny bit of snow can they

And they have the gall to call others "snowflakes"!

Aparently Texas has been declared a disaster... huh?

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I figured by now they would all be warm and huddled together in the basement of the Alamo

Zangulus posted...

This is a topic specifically about the tragedy in Texas currently happening. I dig where youre coming from, but it wasnt really applicable to what I was talking about.

Oh, I know it's about Texas, I just hadn't realized how long-standing a problem this was there.

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It now sounds like everybody down there is trying to price gouge each other on the utilities.

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Capitalism, ho!

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The only tragedy in this whole mess is that people are donating millions of dollars to Texas. Don't those freeloaders get enough handouts from the federal government already?
We all know they're not going to vote out ANY of these politicians, so they deserve their "maximum capitalism!" dystopian hellhole.

2 days after things are back to normal, Texans will be back to bitching that any form of government regulation is "socialism".

streamofthesky posted...

The only tragedy in this whole mess is that people are donating millions of dollars to Texas. Don't those freeloaders get enough handouts from the federal government already?
We all know they're not going to vote out ANY of these politicians, so they deserve their "maximum capitalism!" dystopian hellhole.

2 days after things are back to normal, Texans will be back to bitching that any form of government regulation is "socialism".

Well you could be like that or you could swoop in and give a shit to prove you're not the monster they think you are

They might go, "These radical Socialists actually helped us while Ted Cruz went on vacation, that's pretty based, I'm so silly for thinking Ted Cruz gave a shit about me, come to think of it this is all the Republican leadership's fault"

It's not the reason why leftist leaders are helping though, for political points, they're just more compassionate people. More than the "you don't deserve help" mayor at least.

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Zangulus posted...

Yeah, thats part of the rhetoric being spit by their government, that they had no way of knowing this could happen. They did. They didnt care... because of what happened... people with $5,000 a day power bills. They raised the kWh price from $50 to $9000. Thats why they didnt do shit.

How much of an increase is that? I'm thinking it is an 1800% increase, but I think my math is off.

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Yellow posted...

Well you could be like that or you could swoop in and give a shit to prove you're not the monster they think you are

They might go, "These radical Socialists actually helped us while Ted Cruz went on vacation, that's pretty based, I'm so silly for thinking Ted Cruz gave a shit about me, come to think of it this is all the Republican leadership's fault"

None of this will happen. Not one single bit.
Things will have to get MUCH worse before they actually wake up, if they ever even can. Like, desperation level "overthrow the state government" level bad.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sBffNiUOeiA

Zangulus posted...

you need to add another zero...

every $50 is 100% $50 goes into $9000 180 times. Multiply that by 100%

So 18,000% increase. I thought I had it too high as it was.
I'm now wondering which is worse this, a loan shark, or a Ps5 scalper.

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streamofthesky posted...

The only tragedy in this whole mess is that people are donating millions of dollars to Texas. Don't those freeloaders get enough handouts from the federal government already?
We all know they're not going to vote out ANY of these politicians, so they deserve their "maximum capitalism!" dystopian hellhole.

Yeah, Austin, Dallas and the major cities should totally all freeze to death because the hicks in the countryside voted Republican. Makes sense.

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https://tinyurl.com/yhjw4a2r NBC news article

Nothing to see here, just the market working as intended with none of that pesky government regulation.

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Yellow posted...

These guys really can't handle a tiny bit of snow can they

Jk I know their infrastructure can't handle it because they were never expecting snow in Texas. This is why regulation is not a money-wasting scheme.

read my pm

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Wanded posted...

read my pm

Oh sorry bud

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Oh damn, it's Wanded.

Talk about a blast from the past.

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A free market will regulate itself. -Liars

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I'm seeing reports that some gas powered electric plants went down because they ended up cutting power to gas pumps (not owned by them) that fed gas to their plants.

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Playsaver posted...

I'm seeing reports that some gas powered electric plants went down because they ended up cutting power to gas pumps (not owned by them) that fed gas to their plants.

Sounds like those plant managers need to play more Factorio. Lrn2use burner inserters on boilers, nubs.

(For the uninitiated, one of Factorio's power options is to use boilers powered by solid fuels like coal, which must be moved into them via robotic arms. The standard inserters require power to operate, though, so in a brownout/blackout situation, they become unable to add more fuel to the boilers, causing the entire system to shut down until fuel is manually added to the boilers. This can be prevented by using burner inserters, which are less energy-efficient, but operate by burning their own solid fuel, which they can self-insert even in a power outage.)

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Zareth posted...

Yeah, Austin, Dallas and the major cities should totally all freeze to death because the hicks in the countryside voted Republican. Makes sense.

Money being sent in isn't the difference between life and death.
It's the difference between eating a $50K utility bill for the month or not.

If Texans weren't given an easy out and actually had to stare down the literal cost of their anti-regulation far right extremism, they might actually get angry enough to kick the fuckers out of office.
Crazy concept, I know.