Above: Lake Texoma, frozen at Hagerman NWR.
This is an extra-long read, and so, in addition to splitting COVID-related news off again this week, as I have for the better part of a year, news besides the Great Texas Freezeout is also being split off. Take your time and read through all of this, to get nice and angry and politically active.
Besides the actual damages, we're already seeing political damage control and spinning. Rethuglicans are realizing the original "blame wind turbines" isn't really gaining total traction, and that they might have to do more — or at least convincingly pretend to do more.
Meanwhile, some centrists aren't fully getting on line. With that, let's dig in.
• Texas Monthly interviewed energy expert Joshua Rhodes about the situation. It's OK overall, but ... this portion of interview:
Why are we able to keep the air conditioners on but not able to keep the heaters on? On the hottest summer day you can imagine, say it’s 105 degrees outside, and you’re trying to keep your home at 75 degrees. That’s a 30-degree difference. If it’s 10 degrees outside and you’re trying to keep your home at 70 degrees, that’s a 60-degree difference. While homes that are built up north are designed to hold heat in, our homes are basically designed to keep heat out and get it out as fast as we can. So, we’re not designed for this.
Rhodes later admitted via Twitter that he hadn't spoken well, that he really meant Texas houses aren't designed for this. Agreed. Although, I think his apology for not speaking better was somewhat CYA.
The real problem is cookie-cutter developers building cheap-ass mini-McMansions in our metro areas. Build the houses 1/4 smaller (or more) and get rid of all the Plano chic extra hips and valleys. Make R-11 or whatever insulation in walls into R-17 and R-17 or whatever in roofs into R-30. Either he knows this and he's a tool or he doesn't and his credentials are suspect.
• Today's Democrats in Tex-ass are going to pretend they as a group had nothing to do with last week's problems. Wrong. The Wall Street Journal kindly reminds us that neoliberal ConservaDem Steve Wolens, aka Mr. Laura Miller, the neoliberal ConservaDem Dallas mayor who wanted to sell WRR and has since shilled for so-called clean coal, and other things, was among then members of the Lege who gave us the particular deregulated electric market we have. (And, didn't object to the Texas grid remaining unconnected from the rest of the country.)
And, while Dems in today's Lege may be less ConservaDem heavy than in the past, they haven't disappeared. As an independent leftist, I won't let Hinojosa et al flush Democrap institutional history down the toilet.
• That said, the WSJ kind of repeats the mistakes of Rhodes .... in saying Texas houses weren't insulated for this. What they're really saying it that Texans (including many ConservaDems) think it their doorknob-given right to waste massive amounts of electricity on air conditioning houses and businesses with skimpy insulation.
• The other real problem, per a reprinted (re-electroned?) Observer story from 2019, is not just winterization of the system. It's a lack of margin and lack of resilience in the electric supply and transmission system, and how climate change is exacerbating this. Coronavirus taught us in our medical supply chain just how important these issues are. And, given the degree of climate change denialism inside the Pink Dome — and, as the story notes, perhaps inside ERCOT — this is going to be a tough issue.
• Ed Hirs, the Cassandra who pointed out the looming problems with shale-based fracking nearly a decade ago, and was quoted in my pied for the Roundup linked below, goes into detail about how this happened. As noted, back in 2013, he said the state has a Soviet-style electric system.
I am pulling two quotes from this. First, this:
“All these free-market Texans go into rapture over competition and deregulation, but the fact is the market is still heavily regulated. It’s not deregulated, it’s just regulated differently.”
Then, this:
Citing Rick Perry’s remarks that Texans would rather go four days without power than kowtow to federal interference, Hirs had this response: “Those are bold words for someone who is not on a dialysis machine.”
And, to riff on Ed? Rich wingnut Texans on dialysis will have a generator and still say "fuck regulation."
• Abbott says he will mandate winterization. Stay tuned to see if he holds the Lege's feet to the fire, and what the fine print says.
• ERCOT CEO Bill Magness, mentioned in that piece, gets a full interview. His picture is in the dictionary next to the word "waffle." Otherwise, the fact that ERCOT is not really climate change denialists, but climate change ignorers, is scary.
• El Paso shows the value of both adequate winterization and of being connected to the national grid.
• When Texas Republicans eat their own, frozen division. Video clip at this Fox page has (or had) Jesus Shot Sid Miller laying down the lumber on Strangeabbott.
• Wayne Christian was ranting about renewables on Friday, Feb. 19, after that big, not so nobly-Platonic lie, had been refuted three days. He later followed up and claimed he had been misunderstood. Well, maybe. I also think that, like Jesus Shot Sid, as a statewide-elected public official and a Rethuglican, this was his "kick Greg Abbott" stance. To refudiate him, he WAS still attacking renewables in the form of claiming Texas spent money just on expanding the grid to fit renewables better rather than on winterization.
Why not BOTH, Wayne?
• The Observer spoke with nine Texans, including a Harris County Jail inmate, about how they survived.
• The Trib did a piece on rural Texans and the freezeout. Personally, I can tell you that "we muddled," and the difference between that and big-city Texas, though not as severe as with COVID issues, was still marked. One issue was that many small water systems froze up, period; trickling or not trickling home water lines was going to make no difference.
• The Observer also offers a peek at the upcoming battle to shift blame in the Lege and Abbottville over the whole fiasco.
• SocraticGadfly offers his take on some of the issues in The Great Texas Freezeout of 2021 with a sports metaphor: "Nature Bats Last 1, Texas Exceptionalism 0."
• Off the Kuff worries that Republicans in the Lege are determined to learn all the wrong lessons from the freeze and the blackouts it caused.
• Tim Boyd and Gary Gates told Ted Cruz to "hold my beer," especially Boyd.
• Andrew Exum reveals the difference between performative governance and actually governing.
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