Are we all fucked?

[astfgyl]

The NYT is as propaganda laden as any of them with it's obvious bias so that point goes both ways. They quote the figure as 7%. In fact, how they report it is

Wind makes up just a fraction — 7 percent or so, by some estimates — of the state's overall mix of power generation this time of year.

They quote the minimum possible amount, when a quick search finds me several quotes of 20% on average, (here's one, from my greatest love, the fact-check: https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-factcheck-texas-wind-turbines-explain-idUSKBN2AJ2EI) thus showing their own bias in calling out the other reports. Now, go to the link where they got the 7% figure from and there is a bit of a twist to be found there as well.

Only 7% of ERCOT's forecasted winter capacity, or 6 gigawatts, was expected to come from various wind power sources across the state.

That is where they got it from. After the same page saying this:

An official with the Electric Reliability Council of Texas said Tuesday afternoon that 16 gigawatts of renewable energy generation, mostly wind generation, were offline. Nearly double that, 30 gigawatts, had been lost from thermal sources, which includes gas, coal and nuclear energy.
By Wednesday, those numbers had changed as more operators struggled to operate in the cold: 45 gigawatts total were offline, with 28 gigawats from thermal sources and 18 gigawatts from renewable sources, ERCOT officials said.

That is a fair bit higher of a figure than the quoted 7%, or 6 gigawatts that the NYT uses as the main thrust of their article. 18 gigawatts. Three times more renewable offline than the 6 gigawatts figure that the NYT uses to make their claim. Or to put it another way, "28 gigawatts from thermal sources and 18 gigawatts from renewable sources" makes the percentage of the total loss from renewable sources far higher than their alleged total contribution.

Yes, that makes the NYT piece as biased as fuck and reliant on nobody bothering their hole doing the due diligence and following their link, instead relying on the fact that their readership will be biased enough to lap that shit up, content in the knowledge that they provided a source without checking said source. Watch your own sources of propaganda and check your own clear bias before you attempt to ridicule mine.

So, for a what-if, again, given the quoted figures pointing towards the fact that the wind failed harder than the gas and coal and makes up only a small percentage of the total output, what do you think would have happened if they had been 100% reliant on the wind, as is the environmentalist's dream? They'd have been even more fucked is the answer.

So, the Gript article makes a far better and I would argue less politically driven point than the heap of shit that you pulled from the NYT, in saying that the need to keep the sources diverse is important and the relentless and possibly irresponsible pushing of wind as the main alternative to fossil fuels may lead to supply issues in the future. And I posted it to get the discussion going, as someone who thinks renewables are the obvious way forward given the obvious fact that fossil fuels are finite resources, never mind what they do to our air. But the green agenda is unquestionable apparently and as I pointed out in the last reply it's ironic that the NYT should make the point about keeping politics out of energy supply while shitting all over the point with their own politics. So which outlet is playing on a con here?

That enough what-if-isms for you? I question everything.

You say

The Texas power outage was not related to renewable energy

and that statement is categorically untrue, backed up by a horseshit media source.

[Black Shepherd Carnage]

Fair enough, that last statement was an exaggeration. Renewable energy sources failed in the freeze, but were not the primary reason for the power outage, as the mystery author of the Gript piece (echoing everyone at Fox) tries to make out:

wind cannot be summoned onto the network when needed. Usually, this need arises on a cold winter's night, exactly the time that the wind will not be blowing, and the sun will not be shining. We saw this exact scenario play out in February in Texas, and we saw it lead to deaths and significant suffering.

How's that for propaganda language?

Texas never had a strategy to "summon" compensatory wind power onto the network in the winter, so blaming the outage on wind power not stepping up to save the day is disingenuous, at best. No one was sitting around hoping for gusts of wind in order to prevent deaths and significant suffering; there was a storm they weren't prepared for, and most of the outage was the result of outages from Texas' major power source; natural gas. Not to mention that, one would hope, wind turbines in Ireland would be better designed for coping with colder temperatures, closer to say the ones found in Germany or all over Scandinavia.

Definitely sympathetic to a broader capitalist green con though, such as portrayed in Planet of the Humans, in which I found little to disagree with. Green-washing is big business.

[open face surgery]

Ha. I was immediately suspect of that 7% as well.  NYT  is no better than any of them.

[astfgyl]

Fair enough, that last statement was an exaggeration. Renewable energy sources failed in the freeze, but were not the primary reason for the power outage, as the mystery author of the Gript piece (echoing everyone at Fox) tries to make out:

wind cannot be summoned onto the network when needed. Usually, this need arises on a cold winter's night, exactly the time that the wind will not be blowing, and the sun will not be shining. We saw this exact scenario play out in February in Texas, and we saw it lead to deaths and significant suffering.

How's that for propaganda language?

Texas never had a strategy to "summon" compensatory wind power onto the network in the winter, so blaming the outage on wind power not stepping up to save the day is disingenuous, at best. No one was sitting around hoping for gusts of wind in order to prevent deaths and significant suffering; there was a storm they weren't prepared for, and most of the outage was the result of outages from Texas' major power source; natural gas. Not to mention that, one would hope, wind turbines in Ireland would be better designed for coping with colder temperatures, closer to say the ones found in Germany or all over Scandinavia.

Definitely sympathetic to a broader capitalist green con though, such as portrayed in Planet of the Humans, in which I found little to disagree with. Green-washing is big business.

Ah yeah I don't disagree with what you're saying, and Gript is as biased as any of them. I just thought it was a talking point was all and I follow the editor, John McGuirk on twitter for his not-very-hot-takes so I see links to the stories often. I disregard as many of them as I read to the end. The idea that wind is a bad thing is misguided too but it's not the infallible thing we are led to believe. The Texas thing is politically driven and distorted from both sides. They were trying to do the right thing with using renewables and the fact they weren't designed for such weather is something to learn from rather than disregard the idea and it's a good point that cold countries can make it work just fine

[Black Shepherd Carnage]

As long as you understand that there is a clear category difference between an error that consists of claiming a lower value for something that in reality is the minority factor anyway and an "error" (not to say a totally false narrative) that consists of claiming that the minority factor is actually the sole factor. That is an important difference.

[astfgyl]

I understand the difference and how the media would have led a lot to believe the failure was entirely due to wind energy for political reasons. The NYT is still full of shit though, for political reasons.

[astfgyl]

Saw this video lately (could be in the conspiracies thread too, given the speaker) detailing the next crisis we will face:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jGKkXaMfai4 and then today saw this: https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/top-us-fuel-pipeline-operator-pushes-recover-cyberattack-2021-05-09/ and another source here: https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/security/colonial-pipeline-hack-claimed-russian-group-darkside-spurs-emergency-rcna878

Now I'm not picking on me oul pal Klaus, because there is a thread for that, but his words did get me thinking about how absolutely up shit creek we would all be in such a situation. Humanity could badly do with coming up with some contingency plans for such an event.

Off the top of my head, there are the energy supplies, probably worldwide shipping, food supply chains, banking and access to funds, this forum (oh god no) and basically anything else we can think of. Have the advances in technology and connectivity made us as weak as a kitten worldwide and is the ubiquity of connection the real achilles heel of mankind? Like we are here for a few posts over the wind energy but it pales in comparison with how absolutely and totally reliant we are on the web, and to an increasing extent, the cloud.

Could be Mad Max time very quickly at a collapse of it all. Anyway, that's the problem, but what would be the solutions to such an issue? Growing one's own food is a start but not easy to get enough for sustenance without supplementing it from the shops. Local co operatives/barter groups are all good but if the banking system was to collapse (and with cash not really being a thing, it would be gone in an instant) what does the one in need have to offer as payment? Won't be able to trade the 75 inch telly or the PS5 for anything useful and can't even burn them for heat or eat them. Prostitution would be an option but only any use for some people, etc.

When one really gets down to thinking about it, technology and especially connectivity has us entirely by the balls and were it ever to collapse we wouldn't all be fucked but almost all of us would be. Imagine some fella owns a shotgun and you have vegetables and no shotgun but his family are starving in front of him... wouldn't be great. So what to do? Some sort of regression back to low tech before it's too late is the only way I can see out of it but no way it will happen. What's anyone else's thoughts?

[Bigmac]

You might enjoy this read:

https://lulz.com/surviving-a-year-of-shtf-in-90s-bosnia-war-selco-forum-thread-6265/

Goes into what happens in a SHTF scenario like that.

[astfgyl]

You might enjoy this read:

https://lulz.com/surviving-a-year-of-shtf-in-90s-bosnia-war-selco-forum-thread-6265/

Goes into what happens in a SHTF scenario like that.

Brilliant reading, and I haven't even got it all in yet. The bleakness of it all is astounding.

[Bigmac]

I think the bit where he steals 500 litres of Rakia when a grenade fucks up a distillery, then trades it, is my favorite.

[astfgyl]

My favourite part is all of it. How it turned like that and they hadn't a notion what was coming until the last minute. And I bought a pack of lighters today!

[Bigmac]

Ha ha you're well sorted so!

[ochoill]

That was a lethal read.  Bleak but straight to the point of it all.  Couldn't imagine having to live through something like that.

[Blackout]

Definitely a movie in that story.

[astfgyl]

https://www.irishtimes.com/news/health/hse-cyber-attack-possibly-the-most-significant-ever-on-irish-state-1.4564957

https://youtu.be/jGKkXaMfai4

It doesn't have to actually happen, the threat will be enough for now. Surely some major changes to how we do everything should sort it. Maybe a new normal of some sort..

https://www.weforum.org/projects/cyber-polygon