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David Roberts Profile picture
@drvolts
Feb 24, 2021 • 5 tweets • 2 min read • Read on X
Worth noting: the Texas mess wasn't a "grid crisis." The grid did just fine distributing the power it had available. It was a *generation crisis* -- thanks to inadequately weatherized natgas production facilities & power plants, there just wasn't enough power to go around.
The Texas grid certainly would have benefited from being bigger, from being connected to the other two US grids, but you would need a truly epic amount of line capacity to import enough power to cover that shortfall. Generation failure was the heart of the crisis.
Everyone keeps RTing these tweets, so I'll add to this thread: I wrote a post on all this! See here: volts.wtf/p/lessons-from…
Great thread showing how various sources performed (relative to expectations for both normal & "extreme" scenarios) in the Texas crisis. Weirdly, only solar clearly outperformed (albeit against a tiny baseline).
A graph to give grid operators nightmares.

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More from @drvolts

David Roberts Profile picture
Apr 15
Polls & surveys found that most Americans were amenable to civil rights back in the early 60s, but thought that *other* Americans *weren't*. Sociologists call this "pluralistic ignorance" -- ignorance about other people's views. Now pluralistic ignorance is back ...
... around climate change. A new study found that most people are willing to act to address climate change, but believe that *other* people *aren't* willing. "Respondents vastly underestimate the prevalence of climate-friendly behaviors and norms." papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cf…
Now here's the good news: "Correcting these misperceptions in an experiment causally raises individual willingness to act against climate change as well as individual support for climate policies."

When people find out other people are on board, it strengthens their resolve!
Read 8 tweets
David Roberts Profile picture
Apr 14
One of the main reasons renewable energy is going to triumph in the end is, IMO, not well understood by the general populace, so here's a quick 🧵on it.

Over time, the price of fossil fuels is determined by two forces pulling in opposite directions. On one hand ...
... there's the physical resource itself (oil, gas, or coal), which, all things being equal, will drive costs up. Why? Simple: it is finite and we harvest the easy stuff first. As time passes, we have to dig or drill deeper & exploit lower quality deposits.
This is why "peak oil" has been such a persistent concern over the years -- it's based on the (true) notion that oil is getting harder to reach & refine. But it keeps not happening. Why? Because of the other force: the advancement of the technology used to exploit the resource.
Read 14 tweets
David Roberts Profile picture
Apr 13
Right-wing men: women will not stay with us voluntarily, because we are emotionally illiterate, violent assholes, so as a society we must force them.
I do feel sorry for RW men raised in RW households because at some point they conclude that becoming an interesting, thoughtful, kind person that people *want* to be with is impossible, so they start thinking about how to force themselves on people.
But of course, even if you can force a woman to stay with you, even if you can force social media sites to promote you, even if you can buy up media & force yourself into homes, you can't force people to *like* you & ultimately that's what humans want/need -- to love & be loved.
Read 4 tweets
David Roberts Profile picture
Apr 11
The authors of White Rural Rage respond to critics: "scholars of rural politics bend over backward to avoid saying anything that might reflect poorly on rural whites—even when it means downplaying their own research."

newrepublic.com/article/180570…
I could thread on this subject forever but I just want to make one point: whenever this subject comes up, people who criticize the attitudes & behaviors of rural whites are accused of "looking down" on them. I think this gets it backward in important ways.
What does it mean NOT to look down on someone? Well, to me that means: taking the person seriously, treating them like a peer, an autonomous agent capable of making decisions & being responsible for them.

That's what it means to treat someone respectfully, as an adult.
Read 8 tweets
David Roberts Profile picture
Apr 9
As usual, Rufo's play is obvious here (he always tells). With an AI that can review giant quantities of text quickly, you will inevitably find the kind of picayune citation issues that brought down Gay. It will find stuff of at least that level *anywhere* you point it. But ...
... of course Rufo is only pointing it at black women. Here's how things will/must go: this AI will be pointed at more & more scholars, and then book authors, & then popular writers, & soon we will discover that "plagiarism," by the strict current definition, is ubiquitous.
Then, eventually, we will find our way to new standards -- we will distinguish malicious plagiarism, the uncredited stealing of others' ideas, from the kind of sloppy or irresponsible plagiarism of which Gay (& I'm guessing virtually every other high-output scholar) was guilty.
Read 7 tweets
David Roberts Profile picture
Apr 2
Some fascinating public-opinion research on EVs from Potential Energy. It's worth scrolling through the whole thing but here are a couple of things that jumped out at me. 🧵 potentialenergycoalition.org/wp-content/upl…
First & perhaps least surprising: EVs have been polarized. That cat is out of the bag. Image
This is the most interesting chart -- messages about EVs & who buys them, by party. This really shows the challenge. Most people, from both parties, believe that EVs cost too much & don't go far enough. And what's perhaps worse ... Image
Read 10 tweets

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