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:
Just a reminder that Mammoths have been found in the northern permafrost totally intact with blooming flowers in their mouths. Indicating that their death and freezing occurred literally in minutes. Mother nature has a nasty habit of pulling surprises out of the hat. She has done such thousands of times all around the world over BILLIONS of years.
Presently I am designing a very expensive home for a client that will be completely off the grid.
The other day he told me he wanted to have wind harvesters on his site and I didn’t comment one way or the other.
FWIW, I’ve long had my doubts about windmills because, well, wind.
Most places just don’t develop enough of it to make it cost effective.
And there are other issues surrounding maintenance on the machines – the guts are way up there.
I sent him a link to this page.
Schadenboner!
https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2024/01/chicago_becomes_a_graveyard_littered_with_corpses_of_dead_robots.html
My wife is a farm girl and renovated our house 30 years ago shortly after we bought it. She insisted on a very large wood stove in the basement and a central stairwell open right up to the second floor, just like back on the farm in her family home built early in the 20th century, but with a coal burner in the basement.
We’ve been using that wood stove for years to supplement our natural gas heat because we get fir firewood from a cottage property, free except for hours with a chainsaw and a sore back.
When our cell phones buzzed with the emergency notice from the Alberta government we easily cut back on electricity usage and had zero fear of freezing.
some people will learn by instruction while others have to touch the stove to learn that it is hot and dangerous. There are far too many people of the latter persuasion running around this world and in positions of power and influence. Unfortunately, they make innocent bystanders touch the stove with them and get hurt as well.
I hope the EV owners learn their lesson once and for all. An electric car might be fine for someone making short trips in a city but they are unreliable and inefficient at refueling.
Is there a way to strand the owners of these glorified golf carts and make them freeze?
JQ
Oh, they will be perfectly capable of stranding themselves.
Voodoo energy can never meet the needs of the baseload.
Can’t remember if I posted this on your site after snowmageddon, but here it is again:
I have relatives in the power gen business in Texas, one of whom wrote start/stop procedures for dozens of plants in Texas, and many other states as well. There are gas pipelines (many of them) originating in west Texas, and running all the way to the gulf coast, many terminating in off shore loading terminals. These lines are tapped all along their length by local municipalities AND power plants. During snowmageddon, most of the solar & wind generation stopped because cold (maybe 9% of the total Texas generation capability). Over the weekend as it got colder and demand for gas increased, cities pulled more gas and they continued to load tankers in the gulf. This extra drain eventually lowered the pressure in the major gas lines such that many plants auto-initiated stop procedures, requiring days or even weeks to restart. Add to that a few coal plants we have left also shut down because they couldn’t move the coal around in the ice. Voila! Snowmageddon! Finally (4 days too late) Governor Abbot shut down the off shore loading terminals. If they have learned their lesson we won’t see that problem again. This last cold snap was no where near as bad a storm, nor as state wide as snowmageddon, so we really haven’t tested the system since 2021.
A minor point, but most useful. Our oldest son snagged a couple of these for us–
https://www.freezemiser.com/products/the-freeze-miser
I installed them (here in Arlington) and ran them trough this now ending cold snap. They happily dripped away, the only ice being on the ground under them.
I live in Idaho. Most of our power is hydro – I’m only a mile or so from a generating plant myself and know of several more wrapped around within 50 miles or so of me (Snake River and others). Plenty of juice. The greenies bitched and moaned to Idaho Power about not having “green” energy sources and (politically) forced them to adopt wind and solar. So up go our electricity prices (that, and the demand from Califuckingfornia). There are mucho bucks (and little to no science, let alone engineering) behind the little green scheme. For a so-called deep red state, most of our politicians are rather woosie. Luckily, sub-zero temperatures and wood stoves (and forests) are not uncommon here – easy to prepare.
we use a pellet stove and have a back up generator. Used the Generator once since buying it last year. The pellet stove is nice but requires electricity to run. I’m on a well so we lose water when we lose electricity.
Good luck, stay warm.
JQ