Comments by "Doncarlo" (@doujinflip) on "Texas's power disaster is a warning sign for the US" video.

  1.  Ryan Alex  Nuclear and coal were also shut down from extreme cold. And unlike benign wind turbines, they're a bit more hazardous to defrost.
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  2. That's what happens when the political narrative gets dominated by backwards-looking conservatives.
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  3. Red Libertarian policies enabled these failures to cascade into a preventable deadly week-long statewide disaster. Remember this on your next trip to the polls, because it won't be the last time Mother Nature decides to test your infrastructure's durability.
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  4. Yet notice that the entire Eastern Interconnection wasn't taken down. That's the beauty of not going it alone.
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  5. As global warming makes the polar vortex weaker and windier (i.e. dips further south), Texans might need to prepare for colder winters.
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  6. Not to mention a surprising number of Californians already own winter clothes, snow chains, and even *gasp* guns 🤯
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  7. They wanted cheap market-driven power. Well they got what they paid for.
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  8. Fossil fuels and even nuclear don't fare any better, and those valves and pipes aren't so straightforward to safely defrost.
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  9. Republicans say it's "socialist" and "too expensive", saying the market can do better. The Great Texas Blackout finally made a dramatic illustration of what market-driven infrastructure is (in-)capable of.
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  10. China's is more concentrated on the eastern half where 95% of the population resides. America has to serve a customer base that's way more distributed, including bits of Canada and Mexico.
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  11. A warm Arctic means a weaker polar vortex, meaning more meandering southward. So yeah it makes sense that Texas got as cold as Alaska.
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  12. No, lack of cold weather hardening. Pipes and valves (including for gas and nuclear) statewide froze up, and they're not as simple to defrost as wind turbines.
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  13. It costs less only in favorable conditions, and those periods could be shortening as we continue changing the climate. Also try buying those survivor kits when you're first spending $10k+ in due electrical bills and necessary home repairs.
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  14. No, it's more preventative since supply gets reduced when high winds threaten to blow down a major line in wildfire country. Sadly it's becoming more common, and energy storage technology isn't yet at the point where we can reliably and economically store our daytime local solar excess.
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  15. Coolant pipes and valves probably froze, so the reactor was put into idle.
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  16. Republicans hate spending on "socialist" public projects, even on the brain-dead obvious benefits of infrastructure. Unless it's a bridge they can slap their names on.
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  17. Nuclear is expensive and getting more so. Plus there's having to deal with its toxic waste for the next thousand years. No, the future is likely more in hydro soaking the excess renewables during the day, particularly pumped-storage which takes advantage of any elevation difference including old mine shafts.
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  18. No, nuclear is expensive and costs are rising. Then there's a thousand years of toxic waste afterward to deal with. Future likely is more in pumped-storage hydro and geothermal. Also it's fairly simple to winterize a wind turbine, and once made into electricity it actually flows better when cold. Pipes and valves aren't so straightforward to defrost.
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