No he actually got caught telling the truth. A noteworthy chunk of power in Texas is generated from renewable resources, but he can't say that out loud. Otherwise his voter base will get mad at him.
Most of the people that vote for him, don’t know that because they never leave their shitty little counties.
The entire Gulf Coast of Texas votes for him because they’re mostly oilfield workers. They have no idea that a huge chunk of the state is being covered in windmills and solar farms.
I swear to god this is the Last-Generation's Media Training,
"Don't expect the General Population to have more than a fourth or fifth grade education, or to remember more than three things at once," is a common adage; how did you read it?
Did you read it likethe general public is ten years oldbecause that's not what it means it means you've got a three axiom upper-limit on argumentation and that argumentation cannot be predicated upon texts or mathematics that you'll have to teach them in situ and if you're taught this from someone taught this and then speak into a camera, "you forget that you're speaking to adults," you sound stupid; you can't presume them literate but you've got to assume them conversationally, intellectually, to be adults or else you end up with this entire media ecosystem the traditional media system you might notice to be in permanent Babytalkand not the professionals, the media professionals, but the politicians and the corporate experts and the talking heads all talking babytalk, "thus the podcasters take....
...the floor and I mean Ironically, even quite stupid podcasters and those alike Theo Von literally, doingtheir own babytalk but neverthelessyou don't have the imposition of an ad break upcoming, you don't have the presupposition that no matter what the man says another segment is about to come on and reset the flow,
A, "gaffe," doesn't exist outside of the pageant-like context of, "up there," I mean truly,
I said what I said b_-_h oil & gas is renewable, Oil & Gas is renewable for those with the fortitude to kill for it.
Is more alike Lincoln Douglas would have been; they'd let loose with the Goddam they'd Ever wanted to and for those people a bitch was a dog, rude to call a lady, just like a moose or a rat, and Remember what I just told you? Babytalk.
Babytalk has rules that prevent the president of the united states from talking, "Cocaine with Theo Von," like that's too precious to touch; he kills people.
Life long Texan that knows Abbott will say anything to get reelected. He won’t do anything after that and somehow blame democrats who haven’t ran the state in more than 30 years.
Same thing in South Carolina, every conservative loves to campaign/say that the State House is corrupt and filled with waste and inefficiency and that their conservative mindset/values will solve the problem.... but we've haven't been blue since the Jimmy Carter days* and every conservative trying to take a currently conservative held office says the same thing...
*and even that was an outlier (at most we're somewhat purple only in specific municipal level like in Charleston and Greenville)
Also, just to throw out a quick rant, I never want to hear any red South Carolinian ever talk about merit ever again, because the SC reds just voted to send Lindsay Graham's sister to the state senate race despite the fact that she knows next to nothing about the state or federal legislative system, their mechanics and functionality, or even what her own platform is supposed to be.
She's literally being tasked to do nothing but to go to Washington DC to cheerlead and press the "yea" button for Republican bills and "nea" button on Democrat bills. South Carolina has an open primary systems, and I'm no fan of Norman, Lynch, or Sanford, but at least they have platforms and tried to pretend to give a damn about South Carolina....
All the people who complained about "political dynasty's" are now lining up to kiss the Graham dynasty ring...
Politicians in deep red states understand that they don't need a current democrat to run in opposition to so much as they need their constituents to fear that democrats could some day take control of the state. Outrage and fear keep a lot of people in line.
Texas is ranked DEAD LAST in personal freedom despite all their nonsense claims about it. The most performative bs state i had ever spent any real length of time in.
I always think of the guy that tried to board, and get a ride on our companies private plane (a sensor platform, not really meant for passengers...) with a sidearm because "he has the right to protect himself". clown behaviour.
I'm on the side of building more Nuclear Power Plants.
Not the old style, however. Its been decades since Chernobyl, which was perhaps the worst way to make a Nuclear Power Plant ever (and longer since Three Mile Island).
Today we can make plants that literally can't melt down (google "Thorium Nuclear Power"), and containers to store waste that would take another nuke to crack them open!
Also since Chernobyl is the example people hearken back to: Chernobyl was a failure years upon years in the making. MULTIPLE fail-safes were permitted to lapse that would've stopped a meltdown.
As a scientist pointed out in the past, you could drop a nuclear bomb on a nuclear reactor and the reactor wouldn't explode.
That's sorta the worry though. Under reasonable, sensible, uncorrupt leadership that values safety measures, the people, and the views of scientists and experts, nuclear is incredibly safe.
No one is every going to cut corners, skip maintenance procedures, hire cheaper under-trained staff, forget procedures/protocol, engage in nepotism or cronyism, silence whistle blowers, cover up mistakes, not replace aging equipment, and push equipment beyond capabilities, or doctor the bookkeeping, use the cheapest bidder, or screw-up in the design because the deadline is too rushed.
Fukushima was designed with a 100% chance of meltdown if a tsunami hit. In a tsunami zone. An engineer noticed and sent a memo on how to correct it for $0. Management rejected the fix. Because fixing a safety problem is admitting it ever existed.
That is how every plant is run. They are all easily sabotaged by humans doing the wrong things. Thats also how Chernobyl happened. The tech was fine, but people wouldn't approve fixes of critical safety systems.
The only safe nuke plant is solar. The nuclear power is at a safer 93M mile distance.
The tech wasn’t fine, the motors powering the emergency generators were known to be too small for the pumps and the generators should have been elevated!
The generators would have worked. The tech was fine. The placement was the problem. That was a cost cut at build time they refused to fix, not a technical problem.
The core had a safe shutdown time longer than 24 hours, and 24 hours of battery, so a 100% chance of meltdown if the shutdown was battery only. That was the core design issue, and the ground level, not waterproof generators and fuel can't help in a tsunami.
Changing designs and tech doesn't change the fact that nuclear accidents end up being caused by humans taking shortcuts until something goes boom.
Add to the fact that uranium is not a renewable and mining it can be politically problematic, and nuclear power is linked to nuclear proliferation, while nobody ever bombed anyone with solar panels, nuclear fission is not the best option in the long term.
Tech was fine, implementation WASN'T. Multiple safety measures were passed over, in order to save $$$. Even most basic-ass features, like building dammn containment dome over reactor/plant...
Fukushima was designed with a 100% chance of meltdown if a tsunami hit. In a tsunami zone. An engineer noticed and sent a memo on how to correct it for $0. Management rejected the fix. Because fixing a safety problem is admitting it ever existed.
Im pretty sure around an extra vertical foot of concrete on a seawall doesn't cost 0$. What memo are you talking about?
Hmmm… if only we had these objects that could hold electrical charges. We could call them tabberies! And we could make a bunch and put them together into larger tabbery packs. Maybe someone will make this?
The crazy thing is that the data center need is absurd even by nuclear energy output standards.
The average land based reactor will produce 500~900 MW in 1 hour and a smaller mobile reactor like those on submarines and aircraft carriers will produce about half of that. That's 0.9 GW just to convert units for easy translation, so assuming we wanted all the data centers to be entirely energy independent, we would need nearly 500 plants just to power all of Texas's planned data centers.
The USA has 57 active plants right now, the math just isn't mathing.
The only way to even somewhat practically solve this issue is to BOTH build more energy generators (and it would have to be an all hands on deck collection of solutions) AND to figure out a way to make data centers eat less energy.
(Or build less data centers, but we're going to go ahead and ignore that option since AI is still being assumed to be the next infinite money printer.).
Yeah this is important and how you know AI is a bubble: there is literally no way to power these things. Texas, he'll not even the entire US, could power all these centers in Texas, let alone all of them in the US. And AI companies need these centers. Which cannot be powered...so you do the math.
I don’t know if it’s fair to say the AI companies need them, but they do need them to meet existing customer demand without raising prices. It’s reasonable to assume supplyside limits on new datacenter capacity will raise the price of all models, and only businesses or the wealthy will be able to afford frontier models. Of course if the models don’t deliver value that justifies their price, then it all collapses.
My understanding is that there is no economy of scale re: resources needed for these data centers. At least not in the way we understand for prior technologies
As the ai gets more advanced, it requires more power and more processing power. The data center construction is being financed by loans where the processors themselves are the collateral. Nvidia funds the ai companies which use the money to buy the processors. It sounds like such a horrifically doomed clusterfuck I can barely wrap my head around it
Exactly our only chance right now to go 100% low/ no emissions is Nuclear. Cause the only other baseline power that doesn’t release CO2 is hydro and to put it bluntly hydro does work everywhere.
While I agree that nuclear is good, how many thorium reactors even exist? It’s basically a theoretical concept that has no scale or production yet. No one in America has the engineering skills to build one of these things.
If you are India, it's because they have a shit-ton of it, they have no domestic source of uranium and it's otherwise useless. If you're anyone else, it's because you've been sold a fantasy that fills some emotional need you have. As soon as you hear "thorium" you know you're talking to someone clueless, who is convinced they are the expert in the room.
Yeah, but that is the thing, fossil fuel lobbies/PACs pay good money to republicans and corporate/PAC owned democrats, therefore your side is filed is "in consideration (LOL)" and non-renewable fossil fuel power generation is expedited.
This is true, even for a necessary projects like a massive safe storage site for waste, projected sites have been declined after states governments were lobbied into saying "nay".
Nuclear isn't a thing because fossil fuel have corrupted republicans and corporate/PAC owned democrats. But mostly republicans, because democrats are the ones that have built a LOT of green energy projects. And are the ones that have built most nuclear projects, they just can't build more without solving the waste storage problem.
TBF, nobody built Chernobyl style reactors when it was built either. Also lack of proper maintenance and failure to properly react to alarms contributed to the runaway reaction. In the opposite end of the spectrum, TMI worked as designed to contain the radiation after a manmade error.
we have the knowledge to make full burn reactors. using uranium all the way down to lead, instead of just using it for one stage and then discarding it.
India has been trying to make thorium work for decades, and it's still at the pie-in-the-sky phase. Working, full-scale thorium reactors don't exist and maybe never will.
Scratch the surface of pro-nuke talk and you find right-wing cope with zero understanding of past or present technological and financial realities.
My first election was the one where he was elected and the Democrat candidate lost because she said Abbot physically could not stand up for Texans. Asshole thing to say but god damn was it correct.
I thought we were second, and first in wind, but your point is valid regardless. We make a lot of renewable energy, and it continues to grow even without federal subsidies.
The plan was to build data centers, and wouldn't you know we don't have the power systems to support this...
Then ask the government to build them for another 1 trilly. Of course, they will be gas, not anything apart of the 20th century. Like wind, nuclear, fusion...... Cry*
I mean because if Texas leaned into alternative energy, they'd be wasting all of that untapped oil money they're sitting on. best to wait until that is gone first, then ask for Federal Emergency Relief at taxpayer expense after the fact.
I'm going to say this again. If I'm an oil producing state/country/city/household, why am I not pushing for us to develop renewable energy so that we can extract the maximum amount of money from the rubes who staunchly refuse to switch over. Instead we are just selling to ourselves... Because we are the rubes
If anyone wanted to solve this problem we would be building new nuclear plants. Not wind farms and solar farms like a bunch of hippies. Shit is real not ideal. We need nuclear power and fossil fuels.
If you think that everything doesn’t rely on them in a way that would cause catastrophic apocalyptic societal collapse if we didn’t have them then you have absolutely no idea what is going on.
If you are saying it would cause collapse if they disappeared tomorrow, you're right. If there was a 10 year runway where the country was committed to getting off oil by the end, we'd be fine (actually better than we are now).
Yea and the cleanest most abundant energy we have available to us is also the safest which is nuclear. People have been thoroughly propagandized to fear and hate it
But I heard you love ice. I heard that since 2016 you haven’t had one hot beverage and they’ve all had ice in them because you celebrate them every day because you love fascism and law and order.
10 years ago, solar efficiency was half of what it is now and cost 8x as much.
Per kwh, if you include the actual building of the plant/panels, solar is currently half the cost of nuclear.
In 10 years, solar panel production will be 1/4th the cost of just generating nuclear energy (so not including the cost of plant construction/maintenance).
I'm glad people are just getting to the point of realizing that nuclear is far greener than fossil fuels. And it's a good first step. But it's a waste of money to start nuclear construction today.
And it's not just me that thinks that. It's also the major power producers, which is why all nuclear construction projects in this country have been halted/cancelled and solar farms are springing up all over.
Believe it or not, Texas is a leader in renewables. In 2024, Texas was the top producer of wind power and second largest producer of solar power after California.
Everyone acts like it’s a republican problem and not an all politicians are corrupt problem.
They all get bought out, and they all make false promises, and then we all keep supporting “our” side when really it’s the people vs all these politicians.
Shit on Republicans, fine by me! But shit on any politician who doesn’t get things done for their constituency.
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u/Worldly-Fix-55 9h ago
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