Bill Gates slams Texas governor's explanation for catastrophic power outages

Bill Gates slams Texas governor's explanation for catastrophic power outages

Gates comes out swinging. Are wind turbines the problem here or is it something else?

What do you think?

 

Wind turbines were never the problem.

Republicans (or at least Greg Abbot) saw an opportunity to push the flat earth, drill baby drill, narrative that is so popular with the talk radio right.

It never matters whether it’s true or not with the right wing crowd. Feed them a meme they want to believe, and if it’s false, they will fight to the last breath making excuses, deflection, distortions, whataboutism arguments, and just plain lying, rather than admit that what they had decided to believe wasn’t true.

 

Hes talking out of his ass trying to equate the performance of different types of turbines made by different companies in different regions that have different operational conditions. Bill Gates is not some genius visionary and he never was.

 

Why do we care what he says?

 

They started the problem when they all but a few offshore failed while temps were in the 20's and even though gas and coal increased their output it wasn't until gas supplies fell short and temps hit low single digits yet coal and gas WERE still supplying the lions share of energy. Texas said today that power is back to normal. Now how soon will all the wind and solar power come back and be operational compared to coal and natural gas.

 

Well, why aren't they working? Because of the frozen state they are in from the cold. Yes, they are a problem. They kill millions of birds each year. If those birds were killed by an oil slick, you'd be all over that one, right! The fact is, there were more problems than just the windmills and solar panels covered by snow. Pipes cracked and were unable to get the electricity to work. But, natural gas and coal would have helped a great deal!!! Saved lives!

 

Texas decided to cheap out on the cold weather package and refused to learn from their mistake in 2011. Now, they are trying to cover their butts by blaming green energy.


Texas counties with fewer power outages are not part of state grid

I guess those counties are able to run different wind turbines with different operational capacities because their geography is different than the rest of Texas...

 

Bill Gates slams Texas governor's explanation for catastrophic power outages

Why does Gates's opinion carry any more weight than the anybody else's opinion?

 

Because he and his wife have probably contributed more money to benefit mankind than any other couple in the world.

 

Who cares. Wind turbines failed. Get over it lol. That doesn’t mean they don’t work at all. But they did in fact fail.

 

Didn't natural gas pipelines also freeze up and fail?

I'm curious as to how reducing dependence on wind turbines would have prevented the natural gas pipelines from freezing.

 

Gas kept my house going. Wind turbines didn’t. Simply the reality of the situation.

 

But natural gas pipelines did freeze. That's indisputable. My question is how does reducing reliance on wind turbines prevent natural gas pipelines from freezing?

 

I have a friend in Texas and he said the exact same thing. He basically said when it came time to foot the bill, nobody wanted to do it. Luckily, his power was restored after a few days but so many people are suffering there. I helped after Hurricane Katrina but I'm in no position to help now due to health problems. I donated what I could but just throwing money at something isn't the same as being on the ground and connecting with people and connecting them with resources. This (and all disasters) breaks my heart.

 

I think Gates did not say one word that refuted anything that Gov. Abbott said, though he tried mightily.

 

It's the politics, and a lot of Californians are realizing that Texas is not the Shangri-La they were expecting if they moved there.

 

Bill Gates running his pie hole is a current event? Sorry libs. I don't care what this guy has to say about the subject. He is not an engineer. He is not a scientist. His agenda is certainly not for the little guy or middle class. So [expletive] him.

 

"Comes out swinging" is an odd metaphor to use for a man who looks like the proverbial 98 pound wimp.

 

He is a great capitalist. An odd sort for the Dems to deify.

 

Technically in the case of Texas they were part of the problem. Not the main cause or anywhere close to it but one part of an overlapping series of problems caused by the extreme weather event.

In this case it was an engineering issue. Wind turbines are used quite widely in Northern States to generate power as well but because those States regularly experience cold/icy weather conditions wind turbines there are equipped with heaters designed to prevent the the gears freezing up - which is what happened in Texas. Basically Texas skimped on this feature because it wasn't seen as necessary (and of course it was cheaper). Hindsight is a wonderful thing.

I'm betting any new turbines installed in the State in future will (quietly) have this feature installed.

 

The problem was the freakishly cold weather for which all of Texas power grid was unprepared. Not only did the turbines and solar go down(all of it I think) but thirty to fifty percent of natural gas, nuclear and coal also went down. The fact that natural gas is their biggest power source, the loss of a good portion of it caused the most loss of power to homes and businesses. So no, alternative energy shouldn't be blamed. They just need better insulation. Live and learn.

 

Does Gates need 4 private jets and a 66,000 square ft. house? How many polar bears is he killing with his obscene Carbon footprint.

 

The truths are these: 1) because typically, the summer months are Texas's high-demand energy months (for a.c.), many of their energy plants were already off-line; they didn't have time to get everything started back up.
2) Wind & solar are only a SMALL PART of their energy generation capacity; a lot of other parts of their system failed. This story isn't about wind turbines; it's about the power company saving a buck by not winterizing the equipment.
3) Which makes it also about the state legislature NOT putting the utility under any government supervision, being able to tell them things like, I don't know, "you need to weatherize your equipment for the winter months," maybe (assuming the regulators would acknowledge global warming which, despite the name, contributes to extreme weather of all types, by destabilizing the climate systems).
4) And when the utility's energy production couldn't meet the demand, this is a story about Texas having its stand alone energy grid. The rest of the lower 48 states are part of either the Eastern or Western grids. In fact, El Paso was smart enough, after the last problemmatic, cold-weather event, in 2011, to get connected to the Western grid. So guess what? El Paso never lost their power.

Talking about wind turbines freezing, as being a PRIMARY cause of the problem, was just a phoney excuse which the governor must've guessed would be eaten up, by all those who have an anti-green energy bias. So add, "it makes duping you an easier task, for politicians that have neglected their jobs," to the reasons not to buy into the oppositional mindset against alternative energy sources.

 

They had the time and did so the goal and gas hugely increased their output. Wind was providing over 40% the day before. To spend the huge sums of money to "winterize" for a 30 year event not very practical or pragmatic. Texas is one of three automonous grids, the Eastern Grid, The Western Gird and the Texas Grid all of which are HUGE and there would not have been enough available power from adjoining states to power Texas when they were also going through the freeze. See the other thread with graphs on how the wind failed early yet the gas and coal were able to pick up the slack until it hit single digits and because both had been cut back especially coal there was enough running to keep the grid going.

 

Which thread is that?-- I see a couple about Ted Cruz, and one about someone with a friend in Texas, but not one specifically about Texas power, or Wind. Is it also under Current Events?