I have presented a variety of articles
because there are differing opinions.
It takes time to get all the details.
But ... I think I've done enough reading to state the obvious:
This is obviously the fault of global warming.
Explanation:
Texas experienced serious cold weather energy infrastructure issues in 1989 and 2011.
Preventing that problem from happening again would require spending a lot of money.
But with global warming in progress since the 1970s, it was easy to assume another cold event was unlikely.
People often confuse short term weather with climate, which is the average weather over 30 years or more.
ERCOT decided to virtue signal on climate change rather than 'winterizing' their energy infrastructure.
The biggest change was quadrupling the number of windmills from 2011 to 2021.
Windmills are not very useful during Texas winters when wind speeds are typically lower than at other times of the year.
Wind energy is volatile from hour to hour, and day to day, so you can't count on it when it is most needed.
Money spent on windmills was money NOT spent on reducing the risk of another grid failure under extreme cold (3.2 million Texans were affected by rolling blackouts in early 2011)
ERCOT was also committed to deregulated low-cost energy, helped by avoiding the spending necessary to protect against unusually cold winter winter weather.
That appeared to be a brilliant decision, for about a decade -- from early 2011 through the end of 2020.
And then there was 2021 !
Our planet has had global warming for the past 20,000 years, starting with Canada fully covered by a glacier.
A more recent warming trend was since the late 1600s -- the global average temperature has been up by +1 degrees. C. to +3 degrees C. ( +2 degrees C. is a good guess ).
Climate proxy reconstructions are not precise enough to be more definite.
The Central England weather station supports the +2 degrees C. estimate, but that is only one weather station (the oldest weather station in the world).
The most recent warming trend started in the mid-1970s, with the average temperature up +0.5 to +1.0 degrees C.
More precise numbers, with claims of a +/- 0.1 degrees C. margin of error, don't impress me.
It really doesn't matter whether the correct number is +0.5, or +0.75 or +1.0 C. -- there has been modest global warming since the mid-1970s, and we should have enjoyed it.
But even with global warming for about 45 years, there will still be unusually cold and hot days, and weeks.
Not as many unusually cold days as before, but snow and ice won't disappear any time soon!