Quote Of The Day

Following more than 100 inches (2.65 meters, for those of the Napoleonic Persuasion) of snowfall over the past couple weeks, here’s the response:

“We don’t need a reason to expect a lot of snow; it’s Alaska. We put up with all kinds of things that most of the rest of the country doesn’t, and honestly, most of us like it that way.”

No mention of Global Warming Climate Cooling Change©, of course.

Winter:  when “climate” turns back into “weather”.

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:

When Panic Costs Money

The Greatest Living Englishman has turned his ire towards the BBC, and at climate fearmongers in general:

Amazon Prime star has slammed weather forecasters for spreading what he has described as “green propaganda” in his latest column.

The presenter, 63, went on to explain that due to inaccurate weather reports, he and many other farmers and been forced to “take a massive financial hit” for “absolutely no reason”.

Jeremy recalled how earlier this week, weather presenters had claimed “an apocalyptic storm would arrive in Britain on Tuesday night”.

The Former Top Gear host went on to explain how, due to predictions of weeks of “torrential rain and gales”, he had felt forced to harvest his crops even though they weren’t ready because the moisture content was too high.

“Yes, I’d have to pay £10 a ton to dry the grain after it was harvested but better to take that hit than have the whole lot ruined by the storm,” he wrote in his column for the Sun. 

“We worked tirelessly until 11pm and when I finally crawled into bed, utterly exhausted, I noticed that all of my neighbouring farmers were still out here, doing the same thing.”

Here’s what he was talking about:

But:

The ex-BBC star went on to express his outrage when he had expected to see “Armageddon” the next morning only to be greeted by “blue skies and a gentle breeze”.

“So the farmers had brought in their harvest early and taken a massive financial hit that they can’t afford… for absolutely no reason,” Jeremy fumed.

So he lashed out.

“They feel compelled, when it’s warm, to paint their maps dark red and talk about ‘extreme heat’. And similarly, to keep Greta and the snowflake army happy, they need to say when it’s a bit chilly, that we will all soon be buried under a 20-foot snow drift,” he complained.

“They see their weather forecasts now as political weapons. Baseball bats which can be used to beat the oil companies into submission. And they’ll mangle statistics if that’s what’s necessary.”

He then went on to beg weather forecasters to share “the truth” with farmers and to save their “propaganda forecasts” for people who need to “turn the heating down”.

“They think that the constant wrongness doesn’t matter, because a wonky weather forecast only affects people planning barbecues,” he stated. “But to farmers, it bloody well does matter.”

Frankly, if I were a British farmer, I’d subscribe to an actual meteorogical service and learn to interpret the data for myself.

And refuse to pay the BBC license fee, like millions of other Brits are doing.

Climate Change?

Almost exactly 365 days ago, southern Britishland was in the grip of a fearful drought, vid.:

…and of course, pics like the above caused much weeping, wailing and gnashing of British teeth with headlines such as “Does climate change mean that we’ll never see rain again?” and similar twaddle.

Of course, we sentient human beings all know the difference between “climate” and “weather”, so there was NO PANIC!!! amongst us.  And indeed, here we are, a year later:

…because Britishland’s old friend — RAIN — has fallen from the skies again, this time leading to items such as this (sent to me by Longtime Buddy Mrs. Sorenson):

…which in turn leads to things like this, taken in my car yesterday:

I’d gladly offer to trade, say, 25 degrees off our summer for a couple weeks of cooling rain from theirs.

Were it not for non-existent income tax, relaxed gun laws, hands-off politicians, fine BBQ and friendly Texans… I have no idea why I live here.


By the way, in the comments for the original article whence I filched the first two pics, one guy offered the following:  “That drought was in the south.  Up here in the North, it’s been raining nonstop for five years.”

There He Goes Again

…Steve Milloy, that is, using actual data (!) to prove — as he’s being doing pretty much ever since I can remember — that the Eco-Loons are a bunch of lying assholes:

Not a single extreme weather event can be:

1. Factually shown to be unprecedented; or

2. Scientifically shown to be linked to emissions.

This, in the middle of a heatwave both here and in Europe that is nowhere close to what’s happened in the recent past, let alone in the long-ago pre-SUV era when, as he points out, Greenland was once completely ice-free, and had been for centuries.  And even now, as people have been buying more and more large SUVs and trucks:

“No global warming in almost 9 years despite 500 billion tons of emissions.”

You fool, Milloy:  it’s not global warming, it’s Global Cooling Climate Warming Change©.

Maybe at some point some kind of collective — wait, “common”? — sense will kick in, and we’ll stop listening to the climate alarmists and implementing their insane policies.

Just not while we’re being governed by addled fools like Joe Biden and his cabal of watermelons.

Eucalyptus Now

When it snows in Johannesburg

People wandering around in the streets yesterday, bemused, asking “What is this strange white stuff falling from the sky?”

One could say that this is evidence of Global Cooling Climate Warming Change©, but I remember it snowing in Johannesburg (and much harder than in the above) back in 1963, before SUVs.

Yes, I’m that old.  And we just called it “weather”.