You expect him to hang out in Texas, its snowing there.
Samm
168
What difference does it make? None of it is working.
The senator from Texas last public communication under his own name was a tweet saying “God bless Mack” which is in reference to “Mattress Mack”" in Houston who’s become known for opening his stores as shelter to the community.
Ted Cruz is such a piece of ■■■■ .
Ted Cruz is such a piece of ■■■■ that the best he can do amidst a statewide republican made crisis is to tweet praise on a real Texan in hopes maybe some of Mack’s positive acts will somehow reflect back and polish the turd that is Ted Cruz.
The best effort the senator can give this week is to say “he doesn’t have an excuse”, click the like button on people doing real work, and then fleeing to Cancun.
Republicans.
dumb logic which has lead to complete shutdown of a national level power grid.
congratulation.
Samm
171
And which, if the atmospheric conditions hadn’t been just so, wouldn’t have happened.
and if the wave was few inches shorter Fukushima would have never happened.
Samm
173
You got it. At some point, the cost to cover the most imaginative scenario forces you to go with a certain amount of risk.
If you build a bridge to met the min risk, that bridge is going to fail.
There going to waste more money repairing, and subsiding companies for loses then it would have cost them to simply upgrade the grid in the first place.
Samm
176
That’s not how bridges are designed. It’s not based on risk. They are designed to carry a specific live load and to withstand specific seismic and meteorological conditions. There are also a ton on safety factors built into the calculations throughout the design process.
Your Fukushima example though is perfect. Seismologists estimated the largest quake possible on that fault and likewise, scientists estimated the maximum tsunami it might produce. Accordingly, tsunami barriers were built to protect numerous cities along the coast. But their height undoubtedly was determined by probability … the probability of a wave exceeding a certain size.
Samm
177
Yep. But that is all part of the risk. And who knows, these weather conditions may not occur again for another 20-30 years … or ever. Those are the kind of unknowns that the people spending the money on big projects have to deal with all the time.
If I had a million dollars I’d be a millionaire.
It did happen. Deal with reality, not ifs.
Allan
tnt
180
One reason they are not winterized is Texas deregulated state oversight so the power companies cheap out on everything.
1 Like
tnt
181
Ted Cruz is in Cancun MX with his family. Just flew down there yesterday while his state suffers.
tnt
182
If you leave these decisions up tot he profit based corps they are gonna cheap out every time.
How much is this disaster going to cost them? Not much in the scheme of things. But the people with the frozen pipes and ruined houses? Plenty.
The state will end up spending tons and the corps will just mop up a little and keep getting rich.
1 Like
Whaaat? The Free Market didn’t regulate itself again? I’ve been told that’s inherent, markets regulate themselves out of their own long term interest.
We used to know there certain things in the public interest you didn’t trust to the free market and private business. Schools, roads, police, water, basically anything in the public interest.
