Cold Reality

In case any of my Readers didn’t get the memo, we just had one of those cold snaps down here in north Texas, where we get a little Arctic air sent down from our neighbors up north.  For three days, daytime high temperatures never went above freezing (32°F Murkin, 0°C for those of the Napoleonic Persuasion), with wind chills (once again, courtesy of the Canuckis) dropping the “felt” temperatures by another ten or so degrees.  Night-time temps?  You don’t wanna know.

I know, I know:  “That’s Minnesota from November through May” etc. etc.  I used to live in Chicago, remember, where I knew all about cold weather.

The difference is that up north, they know how to handle such temperatures, whereas we don’t.  Builders, for all sorts of economic reasons, seldom install double-glazed windows, even for cooling the searing summer temperatures.  (I remember a window guy asking me why I wanted double glazing on the northerly and easterly sides of the house, “cause there ain’t much call for ’em round here”.)  Insulation — wall, roof and so on:  wouldn’t last the first two weeks in Chicago without somebody dying of cold, but it’s perfectly acceptable down here.

All of which is fine and good, until the deadweight of Gummint gets involved.  Everyone knows of the current feelgood fad of Global Cooling Climate Warming Change©, whereby eeeevil power sources such as oil and natgas have to be Done Away With, replaced by the usual unicorn-fueled farts of solar- and wind power generation, and Texas has lamentably not been spared this bollocks.  Indeed, the laughably-named ERCOT institution has failed, every single year, to actually fulfill their remit and guarantee that the electricity supply would remain constant throughout the past decade, and has actually had the temerity to beg Texans to be sparing of their electricity use during summer where (in case nobody has noticed) things get fucking hot outside and in winter (when we get annual visits from the Polar Express or Blue Norther) to varying degrees of severity and duration.

And I shouldn’t have to tell anyone that Texas is blessed with huge energy reserves — oil, natural gas and coal (sadly, very dirty-burning coal, but better than nothing).

We didn’t experience an electricity outage this time — more, I suspect, by luck than by planning and calculation — but honestly, it gets on my nerves that every winter I have to make sure that I can survive a cold spell by laying in supplies of whatever’s necessary to prevent dying of cold.  And I bet there are a whole bunch of fellow Texans who feel the same, or more strongly.

It’s not like this is some unknown, out-of-left-field occurrence, either, because examples of government idiocy and inadequacy abound, such as with our Neighbors To The North:

Ryan Maue is a US weather and climate guy.  From early last week he was forecasting the incoming polar vortex would bring abysmal cold to virtually all of North America.  Unlike climate activists, he’s not an alarmist except when as he jokingly put it, the real ‘climate emergency’ that would unfold would be temperature in the minus 40s — which is the same in Celsius and Fahrenheit — and colder!

That’s exactly what happened in Alberta on January 12, 2024. The polar vortex moved in and settled over most of the prairies and Northern BC and temperatures dropped like a stone. Maue checked in on “our Canadian friends” in Edmonton, reporting on Jan. 12th at 10:30 reporting: “Bit of a struggle today with the temperature. Currently -48°F (-44 C) with a wind chill of -67°F (-55C).”

That’s the bleak reality.  Here’s how it gets even worse:

January 12, 2024, is the day decarbonization died in Alberta.

People with EVs were caught out as the cars couldn’t hold a charge and could only get half the range, as Global News reported.

As Brian Zinchuk of Pipeline Online reported, wind farms in Alberta quietly all went to sleep as temperatures hit minus 30C the night before. Why?  Because in extremely cold weather, infrastructure like wind turbines with exposed blades and internal mechanics way up high face the risk of embrittlement and… shattering. Even though there was some wind, the risk was too great to continue operations, meaning that almost all of Alberta 4481 MW of wind power became useless. About that same time, the sun went down. Meaning that all of Alberta’s 1650 MW of solar power vanished for the night.

Meanwhile, the remaining coal-fired power plants, which have 820 MW maximum capability, have been running flat-out, presently at 817 MW as I write this at 12:14 on Saturday January 13, 2024 — another frosty day in polar vortex deep freeze, with temperatures across the province ranging from minus 40 to minus 50 degrees Celsius.

Last night, a grid alert was posted by the Alberta Electric System Operator (AESO), meaning the system was at capacity. 

And the reason for the crisis?

The magical thinking of climate activists has been to replace fossil-fueled electrical power generation along with fossil-fueled cars and trucks with renewables and batteries instead, including EV vehicles. Furthermore the climate activists also want to decarbonize home heating, by switching from natural gas to electrical heating or heat pumps.

I should point out that, without exception, these so-called “climate activists” don’t have to live with the consequences of their fairytale nostrums.  They live in areas where such catastrophes are unlikely, and in economic conditions which insulate them [sic]  from any unpleasant outcomes.

The whole house of cards that is climate alarmism is falling — not fast enough, mind you, but falling nevertheless — and the only question remaining is how best we can prod Gummint into shit-canning the whole experiment.  (I’d suggest random hangings, but no doubt someone will have a problem with this.)

When even the Germans are starting to wake up

In the meantime, I’m bracing for the next cold snap.  You know, the way Third World countries’ populations have to do when faced with weather extremes.

It’s just unfortunate that I happen to live in a (once-) First World nation.


Incidentally, I’m not the only Texan who feels this way:

True Confession

I was going to do one of those retrospective lists about 2023 — you know, like Dave Barry’s funny take — about “10 Best” or “10 Worst” whatever.

Couldn’t.

In the first place, I couldn’t find a single entry for the “10 Best” — everybody sucked, there are no heroes, and they’re all out to get us.

Okay, maybe this guy:


…but he’s just one guy, and he’s way the hell away in Argentina and not in Washington D.C. where he really belongs.

As for the “10 Worst”… fuck me, where does one even begin?  As Insty so often puts it, I’d need a bigger blog, and trying to whittle down the list of 2023 awfuls to only ten (!!!) would likely take me most of 2024.

Good grief, I could do a 10 Worst People just by listing some perennial Golden Oldies:  Hillary Bitch Clinton and her husband Pedo Bill, Nazi George Soros, Chuck Schumer, Barack The Token, etc. etc.  You get my drift.

But trying to identify the newcomer assholes… sheesh, once again:  where does one even begin?  Hell, some of the Oldies from days of yore wouldn’t even feature today, given that finding the current worst is like trying to identify which rabid raccoon out of the pack of fifty you encounter in a forest is the most dangerous.  They’re all malevolent, all evil, and they’re coming at us from all directions.

As for events:  Ukraine (ongoing), Gaza (new entry), California (ongoing)… see where I’m going with this?

So, no.  No humorous retrospective this year, because frankly, everything and everybody in 2023 just flat-out sucked.  There were no rays of sunshine, no reasons for hope, no worthy heroes, too many assholes and the sooner I can forget about last year, the better.

Feel free to disagree with me in Comments, but be warned that you’d better bring your A-game.

To make us all feel better, here’s a picture of Markie Post:

The late Markie Post.

Not Just No

…but “fuck off and die” no.

I refer here, of course, to this push to make us all give up our regular gasoline-powered cars and replace them with fucking Duracell* vehicles.

Here’s one tale of woe.

And here’s the problematic infrastructure.

So fuck ’em.

Come to think of it, we could always switch to horses, except that those assholes at Peta will probably throw a hissy about that too.

I think I need to go to the range (he said, apropos of nothing).  Those guns aren’t going to shoot all by themselves, you know.


*And I mean no disrespect towards Duracell, who make excellent batteries.  I’m just not going to use them to power my car.

Quote Of The Day

From some guy in Florida:

“If you look back to the Great Depression, the house was only three times the average salary. Now, it is eight times the average salary.  The car was 46% of the salary [back then], the car today is 85% of the salary. And here’s the craziest part:  [residential] rent then was 16% of the average salary, it is now 42% of the average salary.”

I’d love to see the same stats for groceries and electricity.  On the other hand, maybe not.

So What, It’s Only Jews

It’s hard to see how much worse the situation could get:

More than 30 synagogues in Massachusetts were targeted with bomb threats on Sunday, just days after its largest city, Boston, rejected millions of dollars in federal anti-terrorism grant money.

Why did they reject the funding?

The city council rejected the grant from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security in a contentious 6 to 6 vote, with the opposition arguing that giving more funds to law enforcement would “do more harm than good” to minority communities.

Oh well, that’s okay then.  After all, it’s only Jooz who’d be targeted by the terrorists, but of course Jooz don’t classify as a “minority” group anymore because White Rayciss Who Invaded Peaceful Gaza.  Or something like that.

Let Boston sink.

Proper Attire

Oh FFS, this just takes the cake:

British Airways bosses have apologized for telling cabin crew members what bras to wear under new ‘transparent’ uniforms which led to comments from passengers.
The see-through blouses were issued as part of a new uniform, unveiled earlier this year, designed to ‘take the airline into the next chapter’ and for a non-binary crew.
Last year BA relaxed the rules around its strict uniform policy and went gender-neutral to allow male pilots and crew to wear make-up and carry handbags.

Lemme just deal with the low-hanging fruit first.

  • Companies have every right to create a “uniform” policy, and to dictate what does and does not constitute “proper” clothing under that policy
  • the corollary is that if the uniform consists of “transparent” clothing, they also have the right to set policy for “proper” undergarments
  • but if they do specify transparent clothing, they deserve everything that comes to them.

Now for the ugly stuff.

I’m sick and fucking tired of companies feeling that they have to apologize to their employees for bullshit like this.  Were the topic that of terrible salaries, foul working conditions and in short things that deserve corporate groveling, okay;  but for causing hurt feeewings?  Screw that.

But in to the topic at hand.

Nothing would make me question the capabilities of an airline’s crew faster than the whole thing turning into some kind of costume party, with the “men” wearing clown makeup and the “women” wearing no bra under a transparent blouse (although at first glance the latter wouldn’t seem too bad, please consider that the average age of trolley-dollies now appears to be 50, and all seem to have been recruited from branches of the Ugly Tree).

And frankly, I’m not sure I want to see any of the flight crew wearing transparent clothing, given that said crew will likely include girlymen and butchygirls, all of indeterminate gender.

I don’t know why I bother fulminating about this stuff anymore, considering that my chances of flying at all are minuscule, and on any British airline even less than that.

I’d give this one a try, though.