Rep. Ken Buck Doesn't Know How Anything Works

8 thoughts on “Rep. Ken Buck Doesn’t Know How Anything Works”

1. Texas power grid was ‘seconds or minutes’ from a total blackout that could have lasted months, ERCOT says

   Consider, for more than a moment, what that headline says.  That's like saying Earth just dodged by a hundred miles a huge asteroid.  Ercot managers at 1am were taking last second actions to prevent a catastrophic destruction of the entire TX electrical grid that would have blown out transformers requiring MONTHS to repair.  (I can't help picturing Homer Simpson saying, "Eenie, meenie,minie, moe")

   The fact that no politicians or the media are focusing on this near miss tells me that we are completely unprepared for something like this happening whether from a weather event, solar flare, terrorist hacking, etc.

   How would you survive a loss of electricity for months?

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   1. We have one of the foremost global experts on energy, sustainability, and resilience right here in Colorado. 

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      1. Thanks for the article reference, MB.  Talk about prescient, this was written by them in July, 2020:

         But the threat environment today is rapidly diverging from the situation faced by 20th century grid planners. In addition to unprecedented extreme weather driven by accelerating climate change, myriad other threats pose risks for power systems and the economies that rely on them: cyber-attacks of increasing sophistication, physical attacks on infrastructure, and electromagnetic disturbances caused by natural causes (e.g., solar storms) or malicious attack (e.g., high-altitude detonation of nuclear weapons).

         Any of these threats has the potential to exploit the common-mode failure risks inherent in today’s grid infrastructure, and cause wide-area, long-duration outages unprecedented in modern US history.

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         1. The EMP issue is still alarming a number of national security experts.  Jim Woolsey was talking about it seven years ago (from the 2014 article below) but today is even more concerned about such an event:

            Grid security is one of our greatest national vulnerabilities: An interview with James Woolsey, former Director of the Central Intelligence Agency

            But standing above all is the danger posed from an electromagnetic pulse (EMP). An EMP is generated when a nuclear bomb is detonated in “low Earth orbit” (i.e. a few tens to a few hundreds of miles in altitude over the US). The resulting radiation (not the blast) renders all electronics over the detonation area useless. The harmful waves also travel along power lines, knocking out transformers as they go until the entire grid is shattered. The result is a nation in the dark with no way restart the system and no ability to investigate the type or source of the event.

            An EMP detonation may seem like science-fiction, but it is a real and credible threat to the grid. 

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2. Wouldn't another billionaire tax cut fix this problem? (asking for a friend useless Congressional rep)

   Adam Smith's gentle hand is a stinging rebuke to the carnival barkers of the Freedumb Rider's brotherhood.

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   1. A billionaire tax cut coupled with deep cuts in social security, Medicare and Medicaid, of course.

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      1. . . . don't forget the needed voter suppression, and guns on the floor of Congress, too.

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3. Love the Wittgenstein quote, but I'll dare to speak anyway. Should the new Texas motto be "With Liberty and Just Ice For All?" (except Ted Cruz of course!)

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