By Karen Attiah 5 March 2021 DALLAS, Texas (The Washington Post) – As spring makes inroads down here in North Texas, the impending reopening of the state feels ominously like a death trap. At a Mexican restaurant in Lubbock this week, Gov. Greg Abbott (R)proclaimed that he would issue an executive order to open Texas up “100 […]
By Tom McGinty and Scott Patterson 24 February 2021 (The Wall Street Journal) – Texas’s deregulated electricity market, which was supposed to provide reliable power at a lower price, left millions in the dark last week. For two decades, its customers have paid more for electricity than state residents who are served by traditional utilities, a Wall […]
By Michelle Chapman and David Koenig 1 March 2021 (AP) – The largest and oldest power cooperative in Texas is filing for bankruptcy protection, citing last month’s winter storm that left millions without power, and it is unlikely to be the last utility to seek shelter in the courts. Brazos Electric Power Cooperative serves distributors […]
25 February 2021 (ERCOT) – [The following report is excerpted from the ERCOT slide presentation, Review of February 2021 Extreme Cold Weather Event (pdf), presented by ERCOT CEO Bill Magness to the Texas Senate Business and Commerce Committee House Joint Committee on State Affairs and Energy Resources on 25 February 2021. –Des] Overview of Cold […]
By David Malmquist 24 January 2021 (VIMS) – Sea level “report cards” issued annually by researchers at William & Mary’s Virginia Institute of Marine Science add further evidence of an accelerating rate of sea-level rise during 2020 at nearly all tidal stations along the U.S. coastline. The team’s web-based report cards project sea level to […]
By Suzanne Gamboa and Corky Siemaszko 25 February 2021 SAN ANTONIO (NBC News) – The number of Texans who were boiling their water to make it safe to drink plunged to 3 million Wednesday from 8 million the day before as platoons of plumbers and engineers worked around the clock to repair the countless homes […]
By Laura Sanicola and Erwin Seba 21 February 2021 NEW YORK/HOUSTON (Reuters) – The largest U.S. oil refiners released tons of air pollutants into the skies over Texas this past week, according to figures provided to the state, as refineries and petrochemical plants in the region scrambled to shut production during frigid weather. An arctic […]
By Sabrina Tavernise and Abby Goodnough 18 February 2021 (The New York Times) – Life expectancy in the United States fell by a full year in the first six months of 2020, the federal government reported on Thursday, the largest drop since World War II and a grim measure of the deadly consequences of the coronavirus […]
By Josh Lederman 17 February 2021 WASHINGTON (NBC News) – A devastating winter storm that has plunged Texas into an electricity crisis offers warning signs for the U.S. as the Biden administration seeks to prepare for a future in which extreme weather is a greater risk and America is almost entirely powered by renewable energy. Generating energy is one challenge. But […]
By Cassidy Randall 6 March 2020 (The Guardian) – Across the south-eastern US, trees are unfurling their clouds of leaves after winter. Yet this picturesque and usually welcome development is this year cause for consternation. New data from the USA National Phenology Network (USA-NPN) shows that in parts of North Carolina, South Carolina and northern Florida, […]
