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Comment by whalee | Hacker News Reader

The main energy export of Texas is natural gas, which is responsible for a significant portion of the decrease in greenhouse emissions in the US[1]. Furthermore, Texas has led the nation for 17 years in production of wind energy, and accounts for 25% of US production[2].

If you are going to act joyful for the suffering of others, you should at minimum get your justifications correct.

[1] https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=48296 [2] https://www.eia.gov/state/print.php?sid=TX

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Maybe you need to read more than just the headlines?

    > Texas consumes more petroleum than any other state. In 2020, the state ranked third by volume in per capita petroleum use, after Louisiana and Alaska.

    > Texas produces more crude oil than any other state and accounted for more than two-fifths (42%) of the nation's production from both onshore and offshore areas in 2022.23 Texas has led all states in crude oil production in every year but one, since at least 1970.24 The state also accounts for more than two-fifths of the nation's crude oil proved reserves and has more than one-fourth of the nation's 100 largest oil fields as measured by reserves.

    > ...because hydraulically fractured horizontal wells drilled in both the Permian Basin and the Eagle Ford shale led to increased crude oil production, a surge in production began around 2010 after more than 25 years of gradual decline.29,30 In 2017, Texas oil production exceeded the state's 1972 peak for the first time.

From your source.

> Texas consumes more petroleum than any other state. In 2020, the state ranked third by volume in per capita petroleum use, after Louisiana and Alaska.

That is the cost of wind. The amount of petroleum needed to make a wind farm is insanely larger, mostly caused by all the miles and miles of wires they need to be insulated.

But go on…

From the same EIA article:

    > Texas is the nation's largest consumer of HGLs, using more than all other states combined. Texas is also the largest consumer of distillate fuel oil, including diesel fuel for highway use, and residual fuel oil.50,51,52 The transportation sector accounts for almost all the rest of the petroleum consumed in the state. The commercial and residential sectors together account for about 1% of petroleum use

Go on...

My favorite counter anecdote is all the Texas refineries working until the last minute then dumping tons of pollution in a haphazard shutdown before a hurricane hit. [1] They could've shutdown slowly, but muh profits were at stake. Texas was built on oil, it's only fitting it ends because of it.

1 - https://grist.org/project/accountability/excess-emissions-te...

By denying global warming and the associated role of fossil fuels, the state government of Texas are the ones acting joyful for what is quickly becoming their own suffering --- as well as others. Without some drastic action, Texas will be almost un-inhabitable in a few decades.

And as pointed out by others, your justifications are the ones lacking.

I'd just keep in mind that the goal isn't to reduce human additions to the carbon cycle, it's to eliminate them entirely. Building nat gas power plants is actually a bad thing, even though they emit less CO2 than coal plants, because their expected service life is well beyond the point at which we need to be at zero.

It’s okay if they can burn hydrogen.

Natural gas still has greenhouse gas (CO2) emissions, even if less than coal, it is however good for air quality at least.

The point above about Texas is probably that their current leaders make claims that reducing greenhouse gases won’t save us from global warming (at this point, no one really denies that global warming and climate change is happening).

They're just exporting natural gas on top of all the crude they can find. Not the revolutionary pivot one would hope for. On top, natural gas extraction is associated with runaway methane emissions, which are among the most potent climate gas. Which we have known for a while, but the industry failed to address this.[^1][^2] It's all cheap talk.

[^1]: https://sci-hub.se/http://www.nature.com/articles/493012a

[^2]: https://sci-hub.se/https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/scien...

I don't have any intrinsic issue with the energy export comment, just curious on the "how?" of it since Texas is a little over 40% of U.S. crude oil production.

Is it just that the spread of production minus consumption of oil is smaller that that of natural gas?

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