Imagine my surprise to learn that reverting to primitive, unreliable technologies that civilization abandoned four centuries ago as superior ones came along might NOT have been such a great idea after all.

Historic winter storm freezes Texas wind turbines; millions without power
Nearly half of Texas wind energy production has frozen to a halt

Millions are without power in Texas after a historic winter storm blasted the state over the weekend, creating freezing conditions that have made the roads dangerous and knocking out nearly half of Texas’ installed wind power generation.

Texas grid operators who spoke to the Austin American-Statesman said freezing rain and historically low temperatures caused wind turbines in West Texas to freeze to a halt, knocking out some 12,000 megawatts of energy production. Wind farms in Texas typically generate up to 25,100 megawatts of energy, almost half of which is currently out of production as the state works to thaw out the turbines.

“This is a unique winter storm that’s more widespread with lots of moisture in West Texas, where there’s a lot of times not a lot of moisture,” said Dan Woodfin, senior director of system operations for the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, the nonprofit corporation that manages the power grid. “It’s certainly more than what we would typically assume.”

Um, is this a bad time to mention that, according to the exact same liberal idiots who demanded the useless windmills, we were supposed to all be roasted alive by Climate Change (formerly Global Warming, formerly Global Cooling, formerly “the weather”) before now? That cold, icy winter weather was confidently predicted to be a thing of the past as rising CO2 levels brought Gaia to the brink of destruction, the polar ice caps melted, and temperatures and sea levels alike went up and up?

What we have here is a failure to learn from the deadly disasters Leftist ideas cause each and every time wiser heads give in and let them have their way.

If you are looking at the facts in TX, the obvious lesson here is: stop subsidizing and mandating unreliables–which are often useless when you need them most–and do a better job at managing reliables.

Instead of acknowledging the reality that unreliables can’t keep us warm or powered in the winter–and that the “100% renewable” direction is disastrous–advocates of unreliables are instead implying that no source of electricity can be relied upon, so no need to single out wind.

Dr. Emily Grubert of GA Tech writes: “Let us be absolutely clear: if there are grid failures today, it shows the existing (largely fossil-based) system cannot handle these conditions either.” Really? Ever heard of the Midwest or Canada?

TX is having an electricity crisis during bad winter weather because it did not focus enough on building reliable power plants and infrastructure–because it was obsessed with getting as much unreliable wind/solar electricity as possible. Let’s all learn from this mistake.

Right now TX’s plans include

• 0 new nuclear plants
• 0 new coal plants
• 9.4 GW wind (the existing 32 GW went to 1 GW during crucial times this week)
• 11.9 GW solar (solar was useless much of the week)
• 5.0 GW gas (to handle the unreliables)

These plans should change.

As bad as TX’s plans to “rely on unreliables” are, they are nothing compared to the Biden Plan, which calls for nearly 100% solar and wind electricity by 2035! Everyone should be asking him how the hell his plan would have fared in TX this week.

Actually, we shouldn’t be asking libtards a damned thing. What we should be doing is telling them, very bluntly and firmly. While we’re on the subject of asking about things, though, I have a couple of questions to put: will anybody ever bother totting up the number of Texans who will die because of Leftist folly this week, and will said Leftists ever be held to account for those deaths, in any meaningful way? I’m afraid we already know the answers, sad to say. Which means Tucker is right when he says that we can all expect more of the same from them.

The Green New Deal has come, believe it or not, to the state of Texas. How’s it working out so far?

Well, the good news is all that alternative energy seems to have had a remarkable effect on the climate. Sunday night, parts of Texas got the temperatures that we typically see in Alaska. In fact, they were the same as they were in Alaska. So global warming is no longer a pressing concern in Houston. 

The bad news is, they don’t have electricity. The windmills froze, so the power grid failed. Millions of Texans woke up Monday morning having to boil their water because with no electricity, it couldn’t be purified.

The ironically named Electric Reliability Council of Texas, which oversees the grid, had no solution to any of this. They simply told people to stop using so much power to keep warm. So in Houston, hundreds of shivering Texans headed to the convention center like refugees to keep from freezing to death. Some Texans almost certainly did freeze to death. Later this week, we’ll likely learn just how many more were killed as they tried to keep warm with jury-rigged heaters and barbecues and car exhaust.

Rather than celebrate and benefit from their state’s vast natural resources, politicians took the fashionable route and became recklessly reliant on so-called alternative energy, meaning windmills. Fifteen years ago, there were virtually no wind farms in Texas. Last year, roughly a quarter of all electricity generated in the state came from wind. Local politicians were pleased by this. They bragged about it like there was something virtuous about destroying the landscape and degrading the power grid. Just last week, Republican Gov. Greg Abbott proudly accepted something called the Wind Leadership Award, given with gratitude by Tri Global Energy, a company getting rich from green energy.

So it was all working great until the day it got cold outside. The windmills failed like the silly fashion accessories they are, and people in Texas died. This is not to beat up on the state of Texas — it’s a great state, actually — but to give you some sense of what’s about to happen to you.

Indubitably so, unless and until sensible adults get serious about putting a stop to it. More cold, hard reality from Larry Johnson:

Guess who else is suffering from the blue lip, frozen snot artic temperatures? Electric vehicles–say goodby to Tesla as a reliable companion if the mercury is in single digits. Talking with an old friend in Clarion, Iowa, I had a full belly laugh as he described his recent conversation with a friend who owned a car dealership.

Iowa has been particularly savaged by howling winds and temperatures worthy of a deep freezer. People with Teslas and other electric cars (e.g. Volt) have discovered much to their chagrin that electric batteries do not like the cold. Severe, low temps rapidly drain the batteries of their charge, and the next thing you know you are stranded next to a corn field in a lonely stretch of road. You just have to hope that you kept your cell phone charged to call for help. This discovery is leading many formerly happy owners of the electric cars to dump them as fast as they can get themselves into a gas-fueled pick up truck or SUV capable of plowing through a snowdrift.

I say thank God for Mother Nature. She’s not angry or cruel. She’s just reminding the silly academics and climate change scientists that their prescription for cheap, renewable energy does not work where the temperature hovers around zero and the sun only shows itself during winter for a few scant hours.

While climate change obsession is absurd, it is not funny. People died because wind-supplied electricity stopped working. Women and children died because the loss of power led them to rely on gas-burning stoves that produced carbon monoxide. That said, I am all in favor of the Democrat-controlled states to go all-in on getting rid of fossil fuel power systems and supplies. Why? Let Darwin do his work and rid us of these delusional souls.

Now THERE’S an idea I can really get behind. Far as I can see, if a society wishes to rid itself of the disasters, misery, and hardship caused by Leftists, it must rid itself of Leftists.