Texas blackout

Great video at Climate Town last week. Texas experienced power outages, related to extreme weather. The power grid, all sorts of power plants, all struggling, but that is apparently not what Fox told its viewers–they blamed it on renewables. Anyways, the Texas blackout was an interesting episode of climate change. As a reminder: climate change means that our climate does not just become warmer on average, but the variance of our weather also increases. In this case, something about the polar vortex having become unstable or “wobbly” and leaving its semi-permanent home, the arctic. (cont.)

Great video at Climate Town last week. Texas experienced power outages, related to extreme weather. The power grid, all sorts of power plants, all struggling, but that is apparently not what Fox told its viewers–they blamed it on renewables. Anyways, the Texas blackout was an interesting episode of climate change. As a reminder: climate change means that our climate does not just become warmer on average, but the variance of our weather also increases. In this case, something about the polar vortex having become unstable or “wobbly” and leaving its semi-permanent home, the arctic.

But back to the Texas power grid. The fact that Texas could not import electricity is the result of Texas seceding from the national power grid with the aim of evading federal rules– to “deregulate”. That’s probably also why state regulations do not require operators to prepare for extreme weather. The system does apparently also include a sizable share of renewable energy (at least for American standards), but of course wind turbines were not winterized, just like the rest of the system. Texas previously experienced a similar weather-related outage in 2011 and I suspect since Tucker Carlson somehow managed to blame everything on renewables, nobody will feel compelled to make any changes and we will see similar outages again in the future.