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Houston-area residents enter sixth day without power, air conditioning

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Re: Houston-area residents enter sixth day without power, air conditioning

#291

Post by kibwen »

protastus wrote: post #269
gunapologist99 wrote: post #151

In spite of (or perhaps because of) the constant repairs after a major storm every 10 to 15 years, Houston actually has one of the lowest energy costs in the United States: https://www.bls.gov/regions/midwest/data/averageenergyprices... For some real numbers for Houston specifically in the middle of the hot summer months, input 77002 (a Houston metro zip code) into Texas govt's electricity provider search engine http…

It seems that it's cheap because they're cutting corners on infrastructure.

And then go begging for disaster relief and emergency funds from the federal government, so the rest of the country gets to cover the costs. Privatize the profits, socialize the losses.

Re: Houston-area residents enter sixth day without power, air conditioning

#292

Post by standardUser »

chgs wrote: post #255
standardUser wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Texas is a highly urbanized state and a significant number of families don't have the ability to install home solar, so it cannot be viewed as 'minimum requirement' and some other solution is neccesary.

Maybe people could club together and form some form of group which provides that minimum requirement for the whole area. You could perhaps have an equal say in the group, and have a meeting every few years where you elect some people to run the thing on your behalf.

Or the state government could implement a regulatory regime that ensures its citizens have reliable electricity. A feat the other 49 states seem to have mostly accomplished.

Re: Houston-area residents enter sixth day without power, air conditioning

#293

Post by mturmon »

EasyMark wrote: post #131
gunapologist99 wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hurricane Ike was a category 4 that traveled nearly directly over Houston in 2008. (It wasn't a category four when it passed over, since, like all major storms, they weaken as they move inland.) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hurricane_Ike Burying lines, especially in historic areas, is incredibly expensive and not necessarily a panacea either, although it helps. Is it worth it? Realistically, for the millions upon mi…

I think part of the argument is that it’s like that the number of these events will double or trouble, or even become yearly with climate change.

(Not an expert, but try to follow climate science as part of $Dayjob. It’s always hard to write quick summaries in Earth Science, because the system is very complex.)

We have to be careful about what is meant by “these events”.

According to the sources I was able to find [1,2], sea level rise (SLR) is perhaps the dominant driver for the increasing damages from tropical cyclones (TCs). Models show some increase (I’m not finding any support for 2x or 3x though!) in the number of high-intensity TCs, and TC intensification is expected to be more rapid.

But the underlying SLR will make even smaller TCs more consequential - even if the number of storms of a given intensity does not change.

[1] specifically says this. And if you look at the consensus report [2], they spend most of their time discussing SLR, in effect as an amplifier for all the trouble a TC can cause. Only in one sentence in a very long discussion do they claim that TCs are themselves worsening, and the statement is quite nuanced:

“For example, hurricanes are intensifying more rapidly and decaying more slowly, leading to stronger storms extending farther inland with heavier rainfall and higher storm surges…”

So if you interpret “these events” as “high dollar damage TCs”, you are correct. But not in the raw number of TCs of a given intensity.

And you are right that the situation is quite dire already:

“Annual frequencies of both minor and moderate coastal flooding increased by a factor of 2–3 along most Atlantic and Gulf coastlines between 1990 and 2020” [2]

The same source says models predict a 5-10x increase in flood events by 2100, which is truly staggering. The recommendation of the GP commenter (“If you don't like it, move somewhere else”) seems to be poorly informed about how important adaptation will be.

[1] https://science.nasa.gov/earth/climate-change/a-force-of-nat...

[2] https://nca2023.globalchange.gov/chapter/9/, and expand out “key message 1”.

Re: Houston-area residents enter sixth day without power, air conditioning

#294

Post by anonfordays »

freen wrote: post #177
kQq9oHeAz6wLLS wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm struggling to come up with a Democrat run city that demonstrates they govern better than anyone else. Chicago? New York? San Fransisco? Baltimore?

Take any metric you like: child mortality, educational outcomes, hunger, per capita income, media income, purchasing power parity, you name it. Compare those cities to traditionally Republican run states. Try it. There is a very very good reason why the best and brightest leave rural republican areas and move to the big cities: it is better in almost every way we measure human wellbeing.

You cannot compare states to cities.

>Compare those cities to traditionally Republican run states

The South was traditionally ran by the Democratic Party.

Re: Houston-area residents enter sixth day without power, air conditioning

#295

Post by sangnoir »

poikroequ wrote: post #242
dylan604 wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Texas may be unprepared because major hurricanes were uncommon in the past. Maybe, but no. Texas has its history of major hurricanes. While maybe not as popular of a target as Florida and New Orleans, but Houston definitely has as much of a bullseye on it as a trailer park in a tornado. Harvey was predicted well in advance that it was going to be a devastating storm. For days ahead I saw the up to 40" of rain and th…

I just know what I hear. Power outage during freezing temperatures in winter time, and their response? No handouts, pull yourself up by your bootstraps. As if people in a major metropolitan city can just go into the nearby woods and gather firewood. Politics is definitely a factor.

> Politics is definitely a factor.

It's also election year. The state agencies didn't submit the emergency declaration work before the storm hit like they usually did in years past - this is not their first rodeo, so it can't be explained by ignorance.

Also, Houston is Harris county, so not exactly the governor's or legislature's favorite voting county.

Re: Houston-area residents enter sixth day without power, air conditioning

#296

Post by gregw2 »

ggm wrote: post #267
chasd00 wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Berlin also has the advantage, being generous on “advantage”, of being completely rebuilt about 70 years ago.

When did the explosion of Houston's size and city take place? pre- or post 1945?

Some of both but mostly post-45.

The quip is that two things made Houston possible: oil and air conditioning.

Re: Houston-area residents enter sixth day without power, air conditioning

#297

Post by bob1029 »

Molitor5901 wrote: post #243

Deregulation is a terrible idea for life supporting and necessary utilities, power specifically. By deregulating the market, everyone is forced to compete for a finite amount of transmission ability for low profits, each one trying to undercut the other IMO. It completely destabilized the Texas power market. At this point, it may be worth considering putting the Texas power grid into some type of federal receivership…

I don't know that this event is a great example for your argument.

An entirely different energy market model (MISO/Entergy) was also heavily impacted. The Woodlands, Conroe, et. al. are on a completely different grid. I don't get to pick a "retail electricity provider" and I live 20 minutes from people who can. Doesn't seem to matter.

All markets hit by Beryl are approximately the same degree of screwed, regardless of any specific underlying ideologies.

Re: Houston-area residents enter sixth day without power, air conditioning

#298

Post by xyst »

I’m surprised people still live in that area. The aftermath of Harvey in 2017 would have been the eye opener. Yet the area sees a massive influx of residents every year [1]

Any area near coast line is going to disappear over the next couple of decades due to climate change.

[1] https://www.axios.com/local/houston/2024/03/19/texas-populat...

Re: Houston-area residents enter sixth day without power, air conditioning

#299

Post by bsder »

AtlasBarfed wrote: post #245
Molitor5901 wrote: post #243

Deregulation is a terrible idea for life supporting and necessary utilities, power specifically. By deregulating the market, everyone is forced to compete for a finite amount of transmission ability for low profits, each one trying to undercut the other IMO. It completely destabilized the Texas power market. At this point, it may be worth considering putting the Texas power grid into some type of federal receivership…

Texans basically should view grid independent home solar as a minimum requirement. Between this and the ice storm s couple years ago Texas has shown itself incapable of utility grade service. In general I think the disaster resilience afforded by home solar is simply not valued enough by subsidies and incentives policies.

> Texans basically should view grid independent home solar as a minimum requirement.

And then hail punches through your solar panels and you have to pay for that.

If there were a cheap, easy solution, people would have done it already.

Re: Houston-area residents enter sixth day without power, air conditioning

#300

Post by FireBeyond »

dwighttk wrote: post #85
KingOfCoders wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Berlin, 3.645M citizen, everything underground. Houston, 2.302M citizen, ... "gigantic"

When people are talking about Houston they are talking about Greater Houston: 7.5M people over 10,000 square miles https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greater_Houston

This is silly. MSAs have near zero to do with a city.

They are not talking about Greater Houston.

For comparison, let's look at the Seattle metropolitan area (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seattle_metropolitan_area)

It includes Mt Rainier, which NO-ONE in the area would say is "in Seattle".

It includes Bainbridge Island in Kitsap County, same.

Glacier Peak, in the Mount Baker Snoqualmie National Forest, also definitely not "in Seattle".

Mount Vernon, Olympia, North Bend, no-one would remotely call these "in Seattle".

Not even for the purposes of international news and geolocation, they'd be "near" at best.

To my point if you told residents of College Station or Galveston that they were just a part of Houston they’d look at you funnily.

It's just more of our "America is unique, solutions that work elsewhere can't work here", and Texas likes to do that on a state level.

Fun detail, most Texans, and many Americans, believe that the King Ranch is the largest cattle ranch in the world.

Except... it's not. Anna Station in Australia is over six times larger, larger than Israel.

In fact, if you put King Ranch in Australia, it'd only be the seventy-fourth largest ranch in that country.

The reality is far more mundane and depressing: there's a resistance to fixing some of these things because it'd mean acknowledging that mistakes had been made or "your way" of doing things is not the right or best one. And for far too many people, they'd sooner freeze to death than admit that.

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