This is truly amazing: we won't see this reported on network nightly news in the United States, but look at the story that is being reported with regard to bone-chilling cold across all of Europe:
- coal, gas and power supply is running short across Europe
- French gas surging to a record as LNG cargoes urgently sought
I find this incredible. The story reads like a tabloid, written by a deplorable, warmist-denying blogger (someone like me); and, yet, it's in Bloomberg.
One really gets the feeling that the majority of folks living in the western world think that there is unlimited storage of natural gas and coal.
Some decades ago, probably in the late 1980's the military spent vast sums of money training/teaching its officers the principles of W. Edwards Deming's Quality, Productivity, and Competitive Position (although the military called it something else and adapted it to the military mission) and then in the late 1990s/early 2000s the military did it again with Lean Six Sigma, again calling it something else and adapting it to the military mission.
Both of those "fads" drove "just-in-time" delivery, manufacturing, inventory. That philosophy drove the large Wal-Mart warehouses one sees across the country: 18-wheelers unloading on one side; 18-wheelers re-loading on the opposite site. Inventory is in and out as quickly as possible; things are kept moving.
Everything in the US -- from pharmaceuticals to ketchup -- has about a 2-week inventory. Any disruption in the supply chain of almost anything, and one can expect to see shortages start to develop.
It's the same with fuel and energy. Folks advocating non-dispatchable renewable energy rely on backup of fossil fuel. I think a lot of westerners think that there is an inexhaustible inventory / storage of fossil fuel. I haven't look in a long time, but gasoline in the United States, has an inventory of about 24 days, fairly long compared to other perishables.
Same in Europe. I assume most Europeans never gave it a thought. They just assumed there were vast storage areas of coal and natural gas.
So, here we go again. Didn't we have these same stories just a few years ago, about Europe freezing? I know it was not that long ago that the British experienced a deadly cold spell and came within 72 hours of running out of coal. In fact, come to think of it, I remember blogging about it, so it wasn't that long ago. [Yes, it was May, 2013, "Britain was just six hours away from running out of gas." Also, Europe may be the only continent in the universe to have to rely on imported energy -- May 18, 2013.]
Now at Bloomberg:
From the rivers criss-crossing eastern Europe to the Mediterranean ports of Greece and France, everyone is hunting for energy supplies.
Blizzards, gale force winds, arctic temperatures and river ice thicker than a house has left the stewards of the European energy business frenzied. Prices of natural gas, primarily a heating fuel, has soared to the highest in more than two years. Blackouts across Eastern Europe caused electricity rates to spike to record levels.
It’s chaotic, but yet familiar. While energy grid operators, producers and traders prepare for winter’s chill every year, they tend to rely on meteorological forecasts that sometimes turn out to be dead wrong. So when a winter that’s expected to be mild develops into an extended deep freeze, a mad dash to meet demand ensues.
“Those who became sure that such a cold spell was unlikely given the overall trend in global warming are like those who get drowned in a stream that averages three inches deep,” said Zach Allen, president of Pan Eurasian Enterprises, an industry consultant in Rhode Island. “The Black Swan is your constant companion.”
January will be one of Europe’s coldest months of the past five years and the chill will linger for at least another two weeks, according to Giacomo Masato, a meteorologist at energy broker Marex Spectron Group Ltd. in London.That's the other thing: people have been told 24/7 for the past 20 year that the big fear is global warming -- forgetting that we are talking about 2 degrees warmer over the next 100 years.
More from Bloomberg:
When Andreas Speer, a commodities analyst at Bayerische Landesbank in Munich, last month looked at the long-range weather forecasts for January, he saw mild weather.
“That’s not what I see when I look out the window,” he said on Friday, referring to winds of 110 kilometers an hour (68 miles per hour) and freezing temperatures. “Models are a waste of time and money beyond three weeks. The cold snap caught people by surprise.”I assume when he saw forecasts for mild weather, he voiced "support" for global warming, and planned accordingly.
Truly amazing:
The scramble for supplies intensified by the end of last year as temperatures plunged. In Turkey, the state-owned gas grid operator asked private power plants to reduce gas demand by 90 percent as Istanbul got covered in snow. France issued its strongest warning that the southeast part of the country had an urgent need for extra gas. Bulgaria, Romania and Serbia last week deployed emergency services to evacuate remote villages where people were stranded without electricity or heat.
As the world’s power brokers gather in Davos, Switzerland, this week, they’ll need to wrap up warm as a low pressure system is forecast to send temperatures to below minus 20 Celsius (minus 4 Fahrenheit). The country may get its lowest seasonal average in a decade, with a mean of minus 8 Celsius across the country.One wonders if the Kennedy grandchildren are enjoying the snow?
I doubt if the Kennedys have read this far, but if any of them have, they can also go ice-skating on the Black Sea -- that's over in Europe. The Black Sea has freezes for the first time in 62 years.
The last time the sea in the Bulgarian resort of Burgas was covered with ice was in 1954.
Throughout the 20th century ice paralyzed this part of the Black Sea area only three (3) times. The Balkan country is experiencing extreme cold. In some areas, the air temperature dropped to -20 degrees Fahrhenheit, or -29 degrees Celsius.And then this:
Harsh winter is associated with global warming. Global warming is felt not only in exhausint heat waves, but even in the strongest cold.I can't make this stuff up.
Perhaps lost in translation.
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Worried About Global Warming?
The Brits Have It Figured Out
