Politics US Edition (2021-vol 2)

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

18 minutes ago, InsaneCommander said:

Is this legit?

 

If it isn't then it's a very good imitation of Ted.

[ComradeYellow]

Texas disaster exposes what happens when Republicans replace governance with trolling | Salon.com

By any reasonable standard, the disaster in Texas, as winter storms break the backbone of basic utility services and leave millions to suffer, should be the death knell for conservative ideology. It's evidence of how wrong Republicans are on two of their most important beliefs: That climate change is a hoax best ignored and that government disinvestment and deregulation will magically lead to better services as the private sector fills in the gaps. And as many progressive analysts, energy experts, climate scientists, and Democratic politicians have been pointing out, the catastrophe in Texas proves that the U.S. government needs to move swiftly on two fronts that Republicans hate, climate change mitigation and public sector investment in infrastructure.

Baby Steps...

[BruceVC]

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/immigration-biden-administration-admits-first-group-of-migrants-forced-to-stay-in-mexico-under-trump-era-policy/ar-BB1dQdR1

I have always been concerned with the general Democratic approach to illegal  immigration and their  immigration policies in general 

I can understand this current decision in the link but I hope we dont see people rewarded with citizenship or work visas that are just allocated based on the fact " did you arrive on the border with or without papers " 

This tends to set a very bad precedent for other countries grappling with the serious problem of illegal immigration 

[Guard Dog]

Newsmax picks on Biden’s dog

Say what you will about Biden. He is a low watt bulb. But insulting a man’s dog is fighting words!

[ComradeYellow]

QAnon followers still think Trump will be inaugurated — on March 4. National Guard will be ready | Salon.com

"They believe that the United States was turned into a corporation and that invalidated, in their minds, everything that happened after that," Feeld said. "They believe, essentially, that a company was created called the United States of America Inc., or something like that. And that meant that we stopped being a country, like, it broke the Constitution, and made everything after that basically an act of sedition and treason."

Whelp, Qanon may be half correct here 

I still think we can win some of them over to the left.  Once they finally realize Trump's a giant fraud we may be able to pick a few off with the right messaging.

[Darkpriest]

Some text, that might be of your interest. 

Interestingly enough, the author also fits with my expectation for the crash time window. 

https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/two-pins-will-pop-stock-market-bubble

[InsaneCommander]

1 hour ago, ComradeMaster said:

QAnon followers still think Trump will be inaugurated — on March 4. National Guard will be ready | Salon.com

Luckily I don't know anyone from this group. If I did, I would let them know:

[ComradeYellow]

They are very dumb yes, but I won't cancel them automatically quite yet.  We do need a left wing anti neoliberal 3rd party in the U.S.

Edited February 20, 2021 by ComradeMaster

[Gorth]

14 hours ago, Darkpriest said:

Some text, that might be of your interest. 

Interestingly enough, the author also fits with my expectation for the crash time window. 

https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/two-pins-will-pop-stock-market-bubble

Without going into detail about the linked to stuff, I wonder how many people here realize how close the world was to a major financial crisis when when covid hit? It sort of obfuscated that the inverse yield curve had popped all the safety valves and was screaming 'red alert!' a year and a half ago, major financial crisis, probably hitting harder than the 2008-9 bubble crash, within the next year (that was in 2018). Sadly covid may now prevent people from dealing with the underlying structural issues in the economy, because covid will get all the blame for the current situation. Just saying, without covid, the situation would likely very much be the same as it is now. Just without face masks and social distancing.

 

This happened in 2018... (the last time it happened was in 2007 and I think most people remember the years following the GFC) https://www.forbes.com/sites/jimcollins/2018/12/04/the-yield-curve-just-inverted-sort-of-and-that-is-a-sell-signal-for-stocks/?sh=111427a83eaa

[BruceVC]

34 minutes ago, Gorth said:

Without going into detail about the linked to stuff, I wonder how many people here realize how close the world was to a major financial crisis when when covid hit? It sort of obfuscated that the inverse yield curve had popped all the safety valves and was screaming 'red alert!' a year and a half ago, major financial crisis, probably hitting harder than the 2008-9 bubble crash, within the next year (that was in 2018). Sadly covid may now prevent people from dealing with the underlying structural issues in the economy, because covid will get all the blame for the current situation. Just saying, without covid, the situation would likely very much be the same as it is now. Just without face masks and social distancing.

 

This happened in 2018... (the last time it happened was in 2007 and I think most people remember the years following the GFC) https://www.forbes.com/sites/jimcollins/2018/12/04/the-yield-curve-just-inverted-sort-of-and-that-is-a-sell-signal-for-stocks/?sh=111427a83eaa

But their are major differences between the potential Covid global economic crash and events like  2008, 2012 and the great Depression

These events were causes primarily by structural problems within the global financial markets, this Covid economic crisis is caused by an artificial problem which was the global economic shutdown 

I know you talking about pre-Covid, I am just making an important distinction that we need to realize when we rebuild our economies after the vaccines start working and our lives return to normal. We dont want to throw the baby out the bathwater with fearmongering like " we need to change the entire global economic system to fix obvious inequality and inconsistency within our healthcare  systems" 

[Gorth]

4 minutes ago, BruceVC said:

These events were causes primarily by structural problems within the global financial markets, this Covid economic crisis is caused by an artificial problem which was the global economic shutdown

Bruce, not what I meant. I literally meant, the world would be in a situation like 2009 or worse now, *regardless* of covid, because no lessons had been learnt from the 2008-2009 crash. All the warning signs were there for those who are experts in those areas (I sure as heck had never heard about inverse yield curves until reading some articles by people who predicted 2009, and that was back in 2012). And the "problem" is, any lessons that could have been learnt from the GFC 2020 is swept under the carpet because of covid covering everything that is wrong in the financial world atm.

[Darkpriest]

To be honest, initially I thought that Covid would be a trigger for the freefall and bust of various systems. However, I quickly realized, that FED and ECB were just given a green light to pump trillions into the system to keep it going. 

Paradoxically, COVID became a catalyst for record heights, even, when regular street economy is suffering. 

Wait until rent moratorium expires in US. 

Edited February 21, 2021 by Darkpriest

[Elerond]

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/20/us/texas-storm-electric-bills.html?referringSource=articleShare

Quote

 

“My savings is gone,” said Scott Willoughby, a 63-year-old Army veteran who lives on Social Security payments in a Dallas suburb. He said he had nearly emptied his savings account so that he would be able to pay the $16,752 electric bill charged to his credit card — 70 times what he usually pays for all of his utilities combined. “There’s nothing I can do about it, but it’s broken me.”

Mr. Willoughby is among scores of Texans who have reported skyrocketing electric bills as the price of keeping lights on and refrigerators humming shot upward. For customers whose electricity prices are not fixed and are instead tied to the fluctuating wholesale price, the spikes have been astronomical.

 

This is reason why I don't like electric market tied price of electricity, as even in best scenarios it gives quite minor savings compared to fixed price and it is vulnerable to price spikes during disasters that will eat all the savings that you could make in decades in couple days.

And it does disaster does not need even to be that big, like for example machine break down in one of the base power plants (nuclear power plant, or giant gas/coal power plant) can easily cause 1000% spike for hour or two, even when there is ability to buy electricity from other countries during the outage.

[Darkpriest]

1 hour ago, Elerond said:

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/20/us/texas-storm-electric-bills.html?referringSource=articleShare

This is reason why I don't like electric market tied price of electricity, as even in best scenarios it gives quite minor savings compared to fixed price and it is vulnerable to price spikes during disasters that will eat all the savings that you could make in decades in couple days.

And it does disaster does not need even to be that big, like for example machine break down in one of the base power plants (nuclear power plant, or giant gas/coal power plant) can easily cause 1000% spike for hour or two, even when there is ability to buy electricity from other countries during the outage.

To be honest, I find a contract, which does not give a consumer a fixed price, a bit predatory. I can understand higher bills due to higher consupmtion, but the price per unit should be set by the contract without exceptions. Any disaster related spikes should fall onto the operator, so they will either insure against that, or hedge by delivery contracts from other areas/sources. 

 

As for the Texas power issues, they were related to wind farms failing, but the other side of the story is, that those windmilss were not designed and built with 'winterized' option. Question is, why? 

 

[Azdeus]

58 minutes ago, Darkpriest said:

To be honest, I find a contract, which does not give a consumer a fixed price, a bit predatory. I can understand higher bills due to higher consupmtion, but the price per unit should be set by the contract without exceptions. Any disaster related spikes should fall onto the operator, so they will either insure against that, or hedge by delivery contracts from other areas/sources. 

 

As for the Texas power issues, they were related to wind farms failing, but the other side of the story is, that those windmilss were not designed and built with 'winterized' option. Question is, why? 

 

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-02-16/sweden-shows-texas-how-to-keep-turbines-spinning-in-icy-weather

However, investment in anti-icing technologies is often not justified for warmer climates as the systems can have a negative impact on turbine efficiency and is expensive, according to Aaron Barr, principal wind energy consultant at Wood Mackenzie Ltd. The average age of the fleet in Texas is also more than eight years old, meaning they were built when technologies were not yet widely available, he said.

[Darkpriest]

Out of curiosity, @Azdeus, would you know, what is the temperature, where the anti-icing tech is failing anyway? Is it temp and moisture, or exposure time, or both? 

[213374U]

53 minutes ago, Darkpriest said:

As for the Texas power issues, they were related to wind farms failing

No.

https://www.eia.gov/beta/electricity/gridmonitor/dashboard/electric_overview/regional/REG-TEX

http://www.ercot.com/news/releases/show/225369

"As of 9 a.m., approximately 46,000 MW of generation has been forced off the system during this extreme winter weather event. Of that, 28,000 MW is thermal and 18,000 MW is wind and solar."

It wasn't "wind farms failing" because wind provides a small fraction of Texas power (under 10% compared to about 65% for gas in total dependable capacity). It was, in fact, mostly natural gas pumping systems freezing because Texas NG is wet and kept under pressure to run vertical separators at or near the wells. When the valves at the separators freeze, gas simply no longer reaches the compressors (which may or may not be offline themselves) down the line and power plants run out of gas, literally.

Stop lying.

[BruceVC]

9 minutes ago, 213374U said:

No.

https://www.eia.gov/beta/electricity/gridmonitor/dashboard/electric_overview/regional/REG-TEX

http://www.ercot.com/news/releases/show/225369

"As of 9 a.m., approximately 46,000 MW of generation has been forced off the system during this extreme winter weather event. Of that, 28,000 MW is thermal and 18,000 MW is wind and solar."

It wasn't "wind farms failing" because wind provides a small fraction of Texas power (under 10% compared to about 65% for gas in total dependable capacity). It was, in fact, mostly natural gas pumping systems freezing because Texas NG is wet and kept under pressure to run vertical separators at or near the wells. When the valves at the separators freeze, gas simply no longer reaches the compressors (which may or may not be offline themselves) down the line and power plants run out of gas, literally.

Stop lying.

This is true, I was watching a really informative interview on State of the Union and they had Republican senator Michael  McCaul of Texas on who explained 75 % of the total energy the Texas grid uses comes from fossil fuels and those were the pipes that froze, so it wasnt green energy that primarily added to this energy crisis

And this was after the Texas energy companies were advised in 2011 after the last damaging cold spell  to " winterize " their energy grid....so they were warned but they ignored it 

 

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

If I'm not mistaken wind power was actually generating more than expected before the freeze. Most projections reduce wind power because the cold weather typically interferes with them here. But I guess tilting at windturbines is going to happen regardless because of sexual frustration towards AOC or something.

Really the issue is that Texas has an oversupply of energy (artificially cheap thanks to the government) and isn't particularly efficient. This means power is going to be plentiful in optimal conditions, but when we see a steep drop in supply coupled with a rise in demand **** is going to break down. That set of conditions fits extreme weather, and I'd say that is when you most need power to be reliable. This is exacerbated by the Texas electric grid being separate from other US grids which means you can't borrow power as easily. What all this means is that any solution that just tries to build more energy production without looking at efficiency is not going to work and we're going to be ****ed the next time we get hit with a storm. It's not as sexy as slamming down nuclear plants or whatever though so I doubt it's going to happen and most of the people in charge will still be there.

[Darkpriest]

58 minutes ago, 213374U said:

No.

https://www.eia.gov/beta/electricity/gridmonitor/dashboard/electric_overview/regional/REG-TEX

http://www.ercot.com/news/releases/show/225369

"As of 9 a.m., approximately 46,000 MW of generation has been forced off the system during this extreme winter weather event. Of that, 28,000 MW is thermal and 18,000 MW is wind and solar."

It wasn't "wind farms failing" because wind provides a small fraction of Texas power (under 10% compared to about 65% for gas in total dependable capacity). It was, in fact, mostly natural gas pumping systems freezing because Texas NG is wet and kept under pressure to run vertical separators at or near the wells. When the valves at the separators freeze, gas simply no longer reaches the compressors (which may or may not be offline themselves) down the line and power plants run out of gas, literally.

Stop lying.

It's not a lie. First you have failing wind power, then a spike in the power output on the natgas, trying to cover up, and then you get another failure in the grid. 

 

"Ice storms knocked out nearly half the wind-power generating capacity of Texas on Sunday as a massive deep freeze across the state locked up wind turbine generators, creating an electricity generation crisis."

"Wind power failed to deliver it’s expected power – almost 40% of expected power – in part due to lack of winterized wind turbines" 

 

 

 

Natural gas made up the difference, but then suffered from lack of supply from non-winterized delivery

 

I've mentioned, that it's not clear cut, but at the core of it was wind farm that failed big time, and other areas were not in shape to cover for the drop in the winter conditions. 

Key part of the message, is that a lot of infrastructure is simply not cold resistant. 

Edited February 21, 2021 by Darkpriest

[BruceVC]

30 minutes ago, Darkpriest said:

It's not a lie. First you have failing wind power, then a spike in the power output on the natgas, trying to cover up, and then you get another failure in the grid. 

 

"Ice storms knocked out nearly half the wind-power generating capacity of Texas on Sunday as a massive deep freeze across the state locked up wind turbine generators, creating an electricity generation crisis."

"Wind power failed to deliver it’s expected power – almost 40% of expected power – in part due to lack of winterized wind turbines" 

 

 

 

 

Natural gas made up the difference, but then suffered from lack of supply from non-winterized delivery

 

 

 

I've mentioned, that it's not clear cut, but at the core of it was wind farm that failed big time, and other areas were not in shape to cover for the drop in the winter conditions. 

Key part of the message, is that a lot of infrastructure is simply not cold resistant. 

No Dark, its not the green energy that is the biggest contributor to the energy grid. And it wasnt the greatest failure, that was fossil fuels like coal 

[Darkpriest]

1 minute ago, BruceVC said:

No Dark, its not the green energy that is the biggest contributor to the energy grid. And it wasnt the greatest failure, that was fossil fuels like coal 

I do not think that Coal failed at all. What did fail is:

- Solar and Wind due to weather conditions - a lot of it could be predictable, as people managing the grid should be aware that their turbines are not cold resistant. The actual plant production failure caused power to drop. 

- Nat gas overcapcity failed to cover, as a lot of it was also not cold resistant. Technically, they had the capacity in this part to cover for expected wind failures, but the gas pumping infrastructure failed, not the actual process of turning gas to power at the plant. 

 

[Darkpriest]

@BruceVC even in Sweden they had to switch to non-green energy...

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-02-19/why-even-pristine-sweden-struggles-with-green-energy-quicktake

[ComradeYellow]

To meet the China challenge, the US and Europe must look beyond the WTO (msn.com)

The Hill is now a terrible website that's conservative and neoliberal AS F**********. 

@BruceVC and @Gorth should love it.

[213374U]

Haha. So "data" from market watch and financial types to counter official data from ERCOT (you know, the bunch ****ing running Texas' power grid) and the US Energy Information Administration? Much financial. Such informational, wow.

I mean, it's not just that some random financial douchebags are being misleading with those charts -- the ~50% wind drop figure is from feb 9, before the storm even started. You can clearly (to the extent the pictures allow) see that there are similar decreases before, storm or no storm -- this is why the nominal reliable capacity for wind is rated by ERCOT at less than 40%, while gas is supposed to be 100% reliable. Or at least I'm guessing those are the dates in the charts because they are so tiny that it's hard to tell. I'm sure that's not at all on purpose in an effort to obfuscate and mislead, no. It's just an unfortunate side effect from financial types these days not being able to afford more than 56k dial-up so clearer images are out of the question.

http://www.ercot.com/content/wcm/lists/197379/CapacityDemandandReservesReport_Dec2020.pdf

No, "wind power failed to deliver it’s expected power – almost 40% of expected power" is ~false~ because a) only coastal wind energy production was rated at ~40% (with wind from the Panhandle and Other regions being rated substantially lower than that), and b) that figure is not a fraction of the total production but rather a fraction of the nominal total wind power generation in Texas. ERCOT has wind and solar classified as "intermittent renewable", because they are aware of the fact that they are not fully dependable. Which is why, on the other hand, gas is 100% -- not because Texas gets 100% of its power from gas, but because it's supposed to be 100% dependable and not fail when it's cold, cloudy, or not windy enough. 

So no, Texas' problems weren't related to wind farms failing in any way any non-financial type with excessive positions in fossils could possibly conceive. Sean Hannity was lying, Greg Abbott was lying, and you -- you are very much lying. What's funny is that Abbot at least attempted to clarify his comments to Hannity. But here you are, doubling down on the lies.