Natural gas and coal provide the bulk of electricity in Texas, “and that’s the bulk of the cause of the blackouts,” according to Mark Jacobson, director of the Atmosphere/Energy Program and professor of civil and environmental engineering at Stanford University. The helicopter sprayed hot water onto the wind turbine, not chemicals. The only problem? The photo was taken in Sweden years ago, not in the U.S. A viral photo of a helicopter de-icing a wind turbine was shared with claims it showed a “chemical” solution being applied to one of the massive wind generators in Texas. “The experiment failed big time.” “This is a perfect example of the need for reliable energy sources like natural gas & coal,” tweeted U.S. “We should never build another wind turbine in Texas,” Texas Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller wrote in a Facebook post Tuesday. With millions of Texas residents without power this week amid frigid temperatures, some government officials and conservative commentators falsely claimed that wind turbines and solar energy were the main culprits. THE FACTS: Failures in natural gas, coal and nuclear energy systems were responsible for nearly twice as many outages as frozen wind turbines and solar panels combined, the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, which operates the state’s power grid, said in a press conference Tuesday. He returned home a day after arriving in Mexico, calling the trip a “mistake.” Cruz came under intense criticism for fleeing Texas amid dire conditions as numerous media outlets, including The Associated Press, reported on his family trip to Cancun. His office had not responded to a request for comment at the time of publication. In addition to the tweet not appearing on Cruz’s official Twitter account, it also does not appear on the digital archive Wayback Machine, nor can it be found on ProPublica’s Politwoops dataset listing tweets deleted by Cruz. “And the Green New Deal just got another supporter,” a Twitter user who shared the fake tweet wrote on Friday. Multiple Facebook and Twitter users re-posted the false tweet, noting that perhaps Cruz changed his stance on climate change after experiencing the abnormal subfreezing temperatures in Texas. The crisis was held up as evidence that as climate change worsens, government officials need to do more to prepare for more extreme weather. The phony tweet spread on social media this week following an uproar over a trip the Republican senator took to Cancun, Mexico, while Texans grappled with a deadly winter storm. It cannot be found on Cruz’s verified Twitter account, nor is it on websites that track deleted tweets by public officials. The president of the FIA tells The Associated Press the governing body has no interest in signing an early renewal of its contract with Liberty Media and the 10 Formula One teams.
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