For those wondering what the causes are of Texas blackouts, @JesseJenkins is doing a really good real time analysis of generator capacity and operation. (Short story: we have a natural gas problem in TX). A few additional thoughts to add:

1/ As Jesse notes, natural gas is somewhat unique in that it is both a power plant fuel and a home heating fuel. When cold weather comes, regulators bias in favor of heating rather than power generation.
2/ New England - a region that is both cold and has long been more reliant than others on natural gas for power generation - has had to grapple with this for a long time.
3/ In most of the country, the tightest times for power markets are during hot summer days when demand peaks to run all that AC. In New England, the tightest times are often cold winter days when supply gets constrained as the gas is redirected to heat
4/ Texas isn't used to planning for cold snaps, but they are gas-dependent on the power grid. So they are, in essence, acting like New England right now.
5/ So far, this is just what Jesse said but in more tweets. But there's also another factor at play that bears mention: reliability guidelines.
6/ If you are an electric distributor or provider with responsibility for a given electric control region, you are required to maintain exceptionally high reliability standards. Those include but are not limited to...
7/ ...making sure you can continue to meet demand if your largest single generator goes down and designing a system that provides electricity with 3 - 5 9s reliability (e.g., 99.9% - 99.999% online). See here for details: https://t.co/uWZXJm9jEB
8/ But our gas grid has no equivalent standard. Nor for that matter does our coal delivery infrastructure. That means that as grids become increasingly reliant on natural gas supply, the gas supply infrastructure becomes the reliability bottleneck.
9/ Texas is particularly exposed to this because it is a stand-alone grid. (The US "grid" is really 3 grids: Eastern, Western and Texas. AKA, ERCOT.) https://t.co/CnQcvbcOZW
10/ So while gas dependency + lower pipeline supply reliability standards have the potential to create problems everywhere, Texas' grid structure makes them uniquely vulnerable. The cold snap exposed that vulnerability.
11/ Anyway, that's all I got on this for now. But follow @JesseJenkins for continuing analysis on this week in TX. I definitely will! /fin

More from Society

global health policy in 2020 has centered around NPI's (non-pharmaceutical interventions) like distancing, masks, school closures

these have been sold as a way to stop infection as though this were science.

this was never true and that fact was known and knowable.

let's look.


above is the plot of social restriction and NPI vs total death per million. there is 0 R2. this means that the variables play no role in explaining one another.

we can see this same relationship between NPI and all cause deaths.

this is devastating to the case for NPI.


clearly, correlation is not proof of causality, but a total lack of correlation IS proof that there was no material causality.

barring massive and implausible coincidence, it's essentially impossible to cause something and not correlate to it, especially 51 times.

this would seem to pose some very serious questions for those claiming that lockdowns work, those basing policy upon them, and those claiming this is the side of science.

there is no science here nor any data. this is the febrile imaginings of discredited modelers.

this has been clear and obvious from all over the world since the beginning and had been proven so clearly by may that it's hard to imagine anyone who is actually conversant with the data still believing in these responses.

everyone got the same R
This is a piece I've been thinking about for a long time. One of the most dominant policy ideas in Washington is that policy should, always and everywhere, move parents into paid labor. But what if that's wrong?

My reporting here convinced me that there's no large effect in either direction on labor force participation from child allowances. Canada has a bigger one than either Romney or Biden are considering, and more labor force participation among women.

But what if that wasn't true?

Forcing parents into low-wage, often exploitative, jobs by threatening them and their children with poverty may be counted as a success by some policymakers, but it’s a sign of a society that doesn’t value the most essential forms of labor.

The problem is in the very language we use. If I left my job as a New York Times columnist to care for my 2-year-old son, I’d be described as leaving the labor force. But as much as I adore him, there is no doubt I’d be working harder. I wouldn't have stopped working!

I tried to render conservative objections here fairly. I appreciate that @swinshi talked with me, and I'm sorry I couldn't include everything he said. I'll say I believe I used his strongest arguments, not more speculative ones, in the piece.

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You can add code in these cells and add as many cells as you want

# Importing Libraries

Imports are pretty standard, with a few exceptions.
For the most part, you can import your libraries by running the import.
Type this in the first cell you see. You need not worry about what each of these does, we will understand it later.