Living in Texas, we expect tornadoes. We endure oven like Summers and torrential rains in Fall. We tend to expect our fair share of hurricanes, storm fronts and floods. What we rarely experience is bone-chilling historic cold and ice. But here were are. Single digit temperatures, snow with the promise of more snow, ice covered roads and a power grid that shunned nuclear and gas generation for the "green" alternatives of windfarms and solar. This is virtue signaling on an epic scale and we are learning a tough lesson as a result.
If you drive in the Texas panhandle, once barren rocky scrub land lined by massive wind generation turbines "windfarms" in the vernacular of the day. They inhabit the most populated migratory flyway acting as sky high abattoirs for endangered species. More telling is how many turbines are not turning in even the best of times. More often than not this is not because the wind isn't blowing, but because the actual mechanisms are broken. There are technicians highly paid to climb those towers on a daily basis to fix them. But at some point they stop working. At that point the massive blades are not recyclable and must be relegated to a type of blade graveyard for some future generation to deal with.
This storm has brought attention to the folly of letting legislators use euphemism and memes to generate support for feelgood policies in action. If you've ever seen one of these wind turbine blades up close, it's clear these massive machines are a misplaced application of space and money for little real return. The millions, billions, possibly trillions spent to acquire land, erect towers and maintain them could have been much better spent on more conventional energy options. How much more secure would ERCOT be using natural gas, nuclear, hydroelectric or even coal mined in our own state? Instead Texans let politicians make the sexy choice of wind and solar which is now being proven to be less than adequate for the needs.
This is nothing new. California discovered that with their rolling blackouts during the past summer. How many people have to do without power due to wrongheaded policies pandering to vocal leftists before the rest of us put an end of this? By the way, the photo below is the beach in GALVESTON. In north Texas we have people, including my own kids, whose homes have been without power for most of today. The temperature in my son's home is 55 now. His wife is due to deliver their first child literally any day now. It's too icy for them to make it to our house plus there is no promise we'll have power if they got here.
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