Hacker News Reader

Comment by avar | Hacker News Reader

Pretty much all of Dutch society (trains, highways etc.) shuts down every couple of years due to something that would be considered light snowfall further north in Europe.

The temperature in Texas reliably doesn't go below freezing, except in freak weather events such as these. That's why they had water pipes exploding everywhere.

So I think this is analogous to the Netherlands having a week of >40°C weather (>105°F).

Sure, you could blame the government for some of the resulting chaos, but it's also partly the freak event itself.

Most of the people that died in that event in Texas would be alive if they had sufficiently warm clothing. Is that entirely the fault of the government?

View on HN

You’re heavily overstating the effects of weather on Dutch society and heavily understating the frequency and nature of weather events in Texas.

In The Netherlands the worst you’ll typically see is some delays with trains, perhaps a couple of trains (of the many per hour) being cancelled.

In my 30+ years in the Netherlands I’ve never experienced a brownout, much less a blackout. Hell I haven’t even experienced a modest outage. Only once have I heard of a blackout, and that was when a helicopter flew into power lines.

And that’s not even touching on how ridiculous it is that you’re trying to equate being able to stay warm and alive at home with being able to travel, while at the same time trying to blame people for not being prepared for something you claim is rare.

I think some of the blame towards Texas is due to many of their politicians denying that climate change exists. Texas is a major oil producer, and is on the higher end of CO2 emissions per capita. They should probably realize that their once reliable weather patterns are not going to be reliable anymore.

But when Dutch politicians neglect to prepare for extreme weather, they don't have as much blame because they pay lip service to climate change? This seems backwards; failing to prepare for a threat is made worse by you previously acknowledging the threat. The climate change deniers can at least claim to be earnestly surprised; anybody who previously acknowledged the threat already gave up that excuse.

What are you talking about? Freezing weather is definitely not a freak event in Texas. Probably approaching 10% of days in many parts of Texas.

“If they had sufficiently warm clothes”… sufficient is doing a lot of heavy lifting. Besides, if freezing is such a freak event, why do you expect people to prepare and not the government to prepare.

The temperatures in many homes were below freezing for several days. There are normal citizens who cannot survive such an event.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com