Haven’t seen this mentioned anywhere else. Would have expected outraged headlines in Texas newspapers at least. Some of these people were already making over $500k per year. But I suppose it was all done on the 4th on July for a reason. From something called RTO Insider. It doesn’t look like fake news.

Texas PUC Approves ERCOT Board’s 83.9% Pay Increase

Tip O’Neil famously remarked that all politics is local. Jonathan Levy posits that maybe all economics is local, too. A fun read on the unlikely rise of Adam Smith and Libertarianism at the University of Chicago in the middle of the last century.

The Localist

I will let you do your own research on the “flaring” or burning of natural gas by Texas Frackers. One estimate has it at more than all the natural gas used in Texas by industry and consumers. Why is this allowed to continue?

Texas Pipeline Operators Released or Flared Tons of Gas to Avert Explosions During Heatwave

Some critter has been messing around in my yard at night. Nothing too destructive, but I had to put a heavier cover on my small fish pond. Lately somebody has been popping the covers off of the pool skimmers. Decided to see who it was. Used this little wildlife camera.

A somewhat long article by Richard Ford in the Boston Review. The last few sentences explains it.

The admissions scandals are a symptom of a society that pretends that elitism could be democratized—in which what passes for egalitarian struggle amounts to desperate individual attempts to ascend a steepening social hierarchy rather than a collective effort to level it. The demand for an equal opportunity to elite status is almost a contradiction in terms. A better egalitarian goal would be to level the social hierarchy that increasingly reserves a comfortable life to an elite few.

The Harvard Ruling Misses the Point

Aja was one of the first albums I owned. By “owned” I mean I recorded it on my boombox one night when the local FM station played it in its entirety. I must have been all of 11 years old. Still listen to this one. From The Honest Broker.

How I Stopped Hating Steely Dan

Sadly, the Texas power grid continues to be national news. Fortunately, it seems to be holding up under stress of this heat dome. I did not know know that solar doubled in the last year and will double again in the next year. And that seems to be saving our bacon. I know from my own power bills that it’s all about air conditioning in the summer. I am also hearing batteries are ramping up quickly. My understanding is that they are being used for price arbitrage. They charge up when energy is cheap and sell when demand is high and (wholesale) prices high. Sometimes very high. Texas may succeed in spite of it’s leaders. My big question is what happens to all of that solar capacity on sunny days in the spring, fall and winter.

Lots in the press lately about the Wagner Group in Russia, a private army run by a politically connected friend of Putin’s. While everyone in the US shakes their heads, note that we have an identical situation here in the US with Blackwater (now called Academic).

This latest graphic from Visual Capitalist turned up in my news feed. I find it a bit problematic, mostly because it gives a snapshot of averages in a rapidly changing environment. It has always been true that it takes a vast amount of energy to manufacture a modern automobile. It is on par with the amount of energy the car consumes during it’s lifetime. This is confirmed by the graphic, and is more or less the story here. And it isn’t a new story.

But what this graphic doesn’t tell you is the rapid trend toward de-carbonization of the electric grid and various manufacturing industries puts the manufacturing part of the equation heading toward zero emissions, for both ICE and electric cars. This is great. But what you end up with in the long term is electric cars that are 100% emission free, and ICE cars which continue to produce large amounts of pollutants across their lifetimes. So anyone looking at this and thinking ICE cars and electric cars are about the same when it comes to emissions are not seeing the whole story.

Life Cycle Emissions: EVs vs. Combustion Engine Vehicles

Looks like more hot weather for Texas. My concern continues to be the electrical power grid. If the winds die down in the panhandle and west Texas, as expected, there will be a big power crunch. I also worry that blame will be placed on “renewables”. The governor and legacy oil and gas energy producers tried to blame renewables during the Big Freeze two years ago. This was completely false, but this time it will be less completely false.

The real story is the Soviet-style grid management from ERCOT and the ersatz free market approach to energy in Texas. If the electrical grid has been poorly managed, blame the managers, not the electricity providers. I’m looking at you ERCOT and you Governor Abbott and everyone else who has been resisting attempts to invest in Texas infrastructure over the last few decades.

Texas’ scorching heat wave to expand, intensify