Guest essay by Eric Worrall
h/t JoNova – The cold is biting Britain so hard domestic gas use is causing a supply shortage, forcing the British government to ask industrial users to reduce energy expenditure to preserve supply to households.
UK running out of gas, warns National Grid
Perfect storm of freezing weather and supply problems prompts call for more fuel immediately
Adam Vaughan
Fri 2 Mar 2018 02.36 AEDT First published on Thu 1 Mar 2018 19.56 AEDT
National Grid has warned that the UK would not have enough gas to meet public demand on Thursday, as temperatures plummeted and imports were affected by outages.
But the government said households would not notice disruptions to their supply or any increase in energy bills because suppliers, including British Gas, bought energy further ahead. The energy minister Claire Perry said people should cook and use their heating as they would normally.
But experts said there was a strong chance that industrial users could experience interruptions to their gas supply.
Within-day wholesale gas prices soared 74% to 200p per therm after the formal deficit warning, which acts as a call to suppliers to bring forward more gas. It is the first time such an alert has been issued since 2010.
By lunchtime on Thursday the price had spiked even higher, hitting a high of 275p per therm at one point.
National Grid’s forecast for the day initially showed a shortfall across the day of 49.5m cubic metres (mcm) below the country’s projected need of 395.7mcm, which would normally be around 300mcm at this time of year. The gas deficit warning aims to fill the gap, which has since narrowed to 16.5mcm.
“We are in communication with industry partners and are closely monitoring the situation,” the company said.
The UK Government MET office has issued severe weather warnings, such as the following;
Chief Forecaster’s assessment
Widespread snow is expected to develop through Thursday afternoon and evening. Around 10-20 cm is likely to fall widely, with the potential for up to 30 to 50 cm over parts of Dartmoor, Exmoor and parts of southeast Wales. Snowfall will be accompanied by strong to gale easterly winds, leading to severe drifting of lying snow especially in upland areas. Severe cold and wind chill will compound the dangerous conditions, with very poor visibility. Towards midnight, there is a chance of snow turning to freezing rain in places, mainly across the south of the area, with widespread icy stretches making driving conditions particularly dangerous.
Source: https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/public/weather/warnings#?date=2018-03-01
This deep freeze is occurring despite predictions just a few years ago that global warming would cause wetter, milder winters;
National Trust campaign highlights how gardens will look if global warming brings Mediterranean weather to Britain
By David Derbyshire for MailOnline
UPDATED: 19:04 AEDT, 24 March 2010
The apple orchards have been replaced with orange groves, the turf covered over with gravel and the summer borders replanted with cacti.
They may look like scenes from a Portugese holiday, but these images could be the future of the traditional English garden, plant experts claimed yesterday.
The striking images are part of a National Trust campaign to highlight how gardens will look if global warming brings Mediterranean weather to Britain in the next few decades.
…
No word yet on when the UK’s 12 GW of installed solar panel capacity will kick in to alleviate the load on gas supplies.
If indeed there isn’t enough gas, then all those who have been promoting the global warming agenda and advocating for an end to fossil fuels should be the first to be cut off, in accordance to the saying – “Be careful what you wish for, you just might get it.”
Cut off??? How can they possibly be receiving supplies of the dreaded gas in the first place??? Wait….are you suggesting they may be hypocrites?
It was -13 in the wind here yesterday (I’m around 50 miles north of London). But it’s only been for a few days and looks like it will get milder next week. As I type this, I’m watching an old documentary about the hellish cold winter of 1963 in the UK where parts of the country had snow on the ground for 45 days. Many villages were cut off for weeks and the electricity grid failed. Interesting point, the explanation of why it happened sounds very much the alarmists version of why its happening now – the presenter has just mentioned 6 other similar winters in the last century. I guess they also had the same cause despite low concentrations of CO2 at the time.
Roy: I was there in 1962/63. We had moved just before Christmas from London to Romney Marsh in Kent. The house we moved from had burst water pipes and my brother and I skated across the floors to get the last remaining smaller items to transport to Kent. Our furniture, in the lorries (trucks) were held up for 3 weeks. All we had were orange boxes to sit on and our village was cut off for more than 3 weeks. The authorities were dropping supplies from helicopters to stranded villages. It was some experience – one I shall never forget.
I lived through 1962/63 high up on the Edge of the Peak District. As kids, we had the time of our lives. Homes heated by coal (no double-glazing so you learnt to get out of bed and dressed in 30 seconds) and continuous playing in the snow and sledging.
It was so cold we were allowed to wear long trousers at prep school (boarding). Trousers sent from home after the school’s letter arrived so there were a few days of freezing knees to endure.
Yea, I was at boarding school in Suffolk in 62/63. It was brutal.
Rode my Domi 99 motor bike the 6 miles to work at NPL 5 days a week in winter of 63, following the icy ruts in the frozen snow through KIngston, inside London. Younger snowflakes today have no rational grasp of what is or can be real nature at work, versus what they would like reality to be. Whatever happened then we knew would change in time and we coped as necessary until it did. Nobody was blamed much. Just got on with whatever it was.
1963, interesting. That was another example of the triple threat of 1) cold phase ENSO, 2) approaching solar minimum, and 3) declining AMO. Look them up on WUWT reference pages for that time period and then compare to now and the next few years. Also, go buy more blankets and coats for what lies ahead from nature paired with wrong way policy bet.
…forgot to add Corbyn as the 4th factor. He’s capable of making natural cycles much worse for effective impact with wrong way policy bets.
Roy,
At last a mention of the winter of 1962/63. Here’s a couple of my memories:
In December the frost was so severe that the River Dee at Chester froze solid above the tidal weir at Handbridge and someone drove a mini car upriver for at least a mile on the ice and lived to tell the tale!
The frost ended with a severe snowstorm that blew all the snow off the Cheshire farmland into the sunken lanes and also created a 6 foot snowdrift in our garden at home on the Wirral. We dug a snow cave inside this and the drift remained in the garden until Easter.
Here is more nonsense:
Impoverished Puerto Rico Wasted Money on Solar Farm; Now They are Paying the Price
What do you do when a hurricane destroys your solar farm leaving countless people without energy? Do you reconsider the wisdom of building fragile energy systems in a hurricane zone, and maybe build hardened coal or nuclear plants? Nope, progressives never admit defeat for their idiotic ideas. When a progressive finds himself in a hole, … Continue reading
https://co2islife.wordpress.com/2018/03/01/impoverished-puerto-rico-wasted-money-on-solar-farm-now-they-are-paying-the-price/
That happens regardless. Replacing poles is easy, and can be done in weeks. replacing the source of power will take much longer. Poles are inexpensive and low tech. The power source is what matters…and what costs the most. Coal or solar, you lose the poles with both, but you maximize the cost and downtime using solar.
I didn’t say 100% of the Wind and Solar Farms were damaged, some look to have survived. The videos and pictures I posted provide the evidence that many wind and solar farms were in fact destroyed.
Rob, I have never been to PR. Have you? But I read a lot about it. There are surely off-grid rooftop installations. I don’t know how they withstand hurricanes.
” I don’t know how they withstand hurricanes.” They don’t, that is the problem. Funny, gas and oil wells, on land, are virtually unaffected by hurricanes. Starting to see a pattern here.
Untrained volunteers set 3+ miles of wood power poles along a park road and pathway in a day.
Poles are easy to replace compared to solar panels.
Rooftop only works when the mains are up.
As usual, Rob displays his brilliant ability to not understand what anyone else is talking about.
Just a guess, but it’s probably easier/cheaper/quicker to put up new poles & lines (burry them?) than to build new “hardened” coal and nuclear plants.
Like I said, just a guess.
Pure sophistry and speciously stated.
The Santa Isabel wind farm is located on the southern coast of Puerto Rico. Where it was protected from high winds by Puerto Rico’s land mass.
Nuclear, natural gas and coal installations would not be termed fragile in that situation.
Land installed electrical generation facilities with single point hookups into the grid are not “fragile”, especially when compared to wind farms with 60-70 turbines spread over 3700+ acres with every turbine consisting of another ‘connection’ before the two separate wind farm components are hooked to the grid.
That said, Santa Isabel is operating at limited functionality. Especially as Santa Isabel’s owners find out whether their wind turbines are, in fact, undamaged; along with every turbine connection.
Maybe they will know by summertime.
The experiment has been done Rob.
Power is restored within weeks after cyclones in Australia. The coal powered generators remain intact. I live with stand alone solar having ditched the wind generator (useless and killed an owl) and in a location without access to the grid. I live in fear of lightning strikes, having already had to replace one Inverter. Stand alone solar is extremely expensive, difficult to maintain and would not be easy to replace in a third world economy with your roof having disappeared down the road.
The Socialists are busy installing a Venezuelan economy in Australia and South Australia has already shown how difficult it is to restart a grid from wind and solar alone.
Good luck in your renewable Utopia, best learn to sweat or freeze!
mike
March 1, 2018 at 4:28 pm
“Untrained volunteers set 3+ miles of wood power poles along a park road and pathway in a day.”
———————-
Similar volunteer efforts in Belgium produced less than stellar results.
When it was pointed out that the Brits had set nearly six times a many poles, the Belgians merely scoffed and pointed out how much of the poles the Brits had left sticking up.
When those are replaced, the plants can come back on line. Unlike the one surviving wind farm there – which can’t come back on line until it can be “booted” from a real power plant.
@Rob Bradley – the point is that ALL of the fossil fuel power plants (they only have oil and, I think, one NG plant) survived. The MAJORITY of the solar and wind plants did not.
Does no good to replace the distribution system when more than half of your generation is GONE. They could replace the entire network of lines in six months – but it will be years before they can replace the generation with ANYTHING, whether it is reliable technology or “renewable.”
Look, a dead herring! (points at the sky)
Well, for starters, you don’t need to rebuild the coal power plant.
*shakes head in despair* Is this guy trolling me, or being incredibly daft?
Rob Bradley: “They [wind farm] have to wait for the high voltage lines to be fixed.”
What power source is used to fix the high voltage lines?
Poor Rob, he actually thinks getting offensive is a solution to his utter lack of knowledge.
A single person can put up a solar panel? Are you really that ignorant? First off solar panels are heavy, you need some kind of lift, plus you need trained electricians to wire them into place.
Finally, you need to have spare panels on hand before they can be installed.
Hugs, he’s pure troll.
Rob Bradley, I can only assume you are trying to be funny. Or else you have drank so much of the Kool-Aid that you are getting H20 poisoning in the brain.
First, everyone, including you, knows that it is much more time consuming to replace power generation than it is to replace power distribution. A sufficient number of linemen can replace almost all the distribution in Eastern Oklahoma in less than 20 days, as they did in the last major ice storm. Replacing power generation can take almost 2 years – even more most times because there has to be studies done and permission granted by almost every government agency that exists.
Second, everyone, including you, knows that solar power is NOT robust. There are reasons why American solar power plants are built in Nevada and Arizona. Excellent sun exposure, less government regulations and, most importantly, relatively few natural disaster risks.
Now, if you like, I could discuss with you the FMEA (Failure Mode Effects and Analysis) for each type of plant in Puerto Rico, but I am sure you could see it for yourself.
Or maybe you can’t. After all, our American Re-education Camps (Public Schools) have proven to be effective at removing logical thought from the curriculum.
Rob Bradley: Co2 posted about a solar farm destroyed, and you respond that a wind farm survived. Thanks for the link, which tells us they can’t run any electricity from the wind farm because first they must re-energize the “backbone”, not (as you seem to think) because of downed poles and lines (which any other place in usa would have replaced long before now). What do they use to “re-energize” the system, why not the wind? We know the answer, do you?
Rob, please; you know nothing about operation of power systems. You are beclowning yourself.
Your statements, on their face, imply ignorance.
Industrial ones are a lot bigger than home units.
Even you should know that.
The ones I worked with were rated at 5KV in full sunshine. Definitely not something your average DIY’er should be messing with. The smallest of them weighed several hundred pounds.
Rob’s proof that industrial panels aren’t bigger than the panels that he put up is that the panel he put up is small.
Rob, as always, knows nothing about electricity. He assumes that the smallest unit that can be wired together is the panel that he used on his house.
The skill Rob has perfected is his ability to be offended about everything.
Over offensitivity. Berke Breathed, Bloom County. You should check out his panels on Trump from the ’80s. Hi-larious!
How small do those broken solar panels look?
Certainly, not small enough for a single worker working alone.
Must take years for each solar farm to get installed, what with the footings, wires, solar panel direction and angles…
Teams around here just fixed wires, poles, whatever broken by the Nor’Easter that swung up the East Coast.
Teams were typically two workers, driving a high bucket rig that also had a mounted drill for placing new poles.
Total repair, including any needed new poles, several days.
The link you posted had a November 2017 date. Old news.
The current status of the Santa Isabel Wind Farm is partial operation as the owners test the equipment.
I can see the exodus……..soon polar bears are moving to Europe.
Happy first day of meteorological spring.
A little trick folks from an engineer.
I have a 500 watt dehumidifier which trundles now through the day now that it is cold. It reduces the humidity by about 50% to around 30 to 35. At the same time it extracts the energy from the water as it condenses and heats the room in addition to the 500 Watts it uses. Mind you it is just backup for the storage heaters which now don’t have to heat up all that water in the humidity.
Finally it FEELS a lot warmer whatever the temperature is and your clothes are dry so have greater thermal efficiency. I’m happy at 19C now or even less with an extra woolly.
When this cold snap finishes I will revert to just running it at night on economy 7.
Happy warming!
In Colorado, we have to add water to get up to that level of humidity. I target 40% but I wonder what is optimum.
In Western Canada the water from the shower head is absorbed by the air before it hits you unless you are 7’6″. /wink
@John – here in the desert Southwest, it doesn’t even GET to the shower head in the middle of June.
What I love about Phoenix is that in the summer you don’t even need a water heater. The water comes out of the pipes already heated to above 90 degrees fahrenheit. When the sun beats down on the ground with an air temperature of 118 degrees Fahrenheit, the heat goes down at least 3 feet and the pipes are buried shallow because it never freezes in Phoenix.
In June when the shutdown of the Rough natural gas storage facility was announced, the following was included in the FT story.
“National Grid, which operates the UK gas transmission system, said in its annual winter outlook last week that it was confident there would be adequate gas supplies this winter despite the absence of Rough.”
https://www.ft.com/content/68fa2c3e-55ad-11e7-80b6-9bfa4c1f83d2
What do you expect them to say?
“We have no idea what the REAL honest-to-god forecast is, thus we have no idea how supply & demand will match up. We hope everything works out (especially in our gas-heated home). We will feel badly if this is not the case.”
In these two weeks people will die in their homes in Britain. There really are people in the UK who hesitate to boil a kettle for a cup of tea or to fill a hot water bottle, because of the expense of the electricity. They are the old and the poor, and the old will be dying as you read this.
The way it works is, to pay the solar panel and wind turbine owners way over the going rate, the electricity companies charge what is in effect a tax on all usage of electricity.
This raises the price. But the people it hits hardest are those who heat their homes by electricity, and who are on pay as you go meters. These are the poor and the old. These are the ones who will be dying now.
The wicked futility of it is that it isn’t even reducing UK emissions. Not that it would be possible to reduce them enough to make any difference to global emissions, any UK reductions are instantly swamped by increases in China, India etc.
But the UK has signed up to the insane Climate Change Act of 2008, surely one of the most insane laws ever passed by a country, which demands about an 80% reduction in CO2 emissions. So to comply with this, the UK is doing all kinds of expensive things which do not make any difference to its emissions, and do not implement the Act at all, like shipping wood pellets from the US to burn in Drax, subsidizing solar and wind. And which, even did they have any effect on UK emissions, would have zero effect on global emissions because they are in the noise in terms of quantity.
If you want to blame anyone, blame Ed Miliband, who pushed the thing through Parliament. But more than him, blame the Parliament which voted overwhelmingly to pass it. And blame the green lobby, who thought it was too unambitious!
Utter idiocy, taken to the point where lack of thought about the consequences and indifference to them when they are pointed out is wickedness.
In these two weeks people will die in their homes in Britain
======
how many v2 rockets did Hitler have to fire at Britain to kill the same number of people?
only difference is now its Brits killing other Brits.
…and Al Gore made money off of it, too.
Ah, great. Were back to Hitler.
If we must, history shows the 1,500 V2′ landed in England killed about 7,500 people – do the math, and that’s about 5 per V2.
Happy now?
(NOTE: Hitler isn’t freezing Englanders to death in 2018; stupid British politicians are.)
1,402 V2 were launched against England which killed 2,754 people, or just under 2 per launch.
About 10,000 V1 were launched of which 2,419 actually impacted and killed 6,184 people, or about 0.6 per launch or 2.5 per impact.
‘V’ for ‘Vergeltung’ vengeance, an effective terror weapon, much like CAGW.
michel March 1, 2018 at 3:13 pm
In these two weeks people will die in their homes in Britain. There really are people in the UK who hesitate to boil a kettle for a cup of tea or to fill a hot water bottle, because of the expense of the electricity. They are the old and the poor, and the old will be dying as you read this
,………………..
You do realise I hope that boiling a kettle uses less than £0.02 a cup of water for tea probably less than £0.004. I therefore call your comment bs
Ma Nature hits Warmunist fantasies with reality—yet again. Pity that UK industry might be crippled to save lives.
Apart from this current spell of cold weather this winter has not been all that bad. So its worrying that supply is so quickly running low. What’s it going to be like if we get a real cold winter like 1978/79.
When the weather got as bad or worse then this current spell 4 times in the whole season.
Saw this energy shortage coming in 2013 – also wrote about it in 2002.
Even if this is just “weather” and not “climate”, it is incredibly stupid for politicians to shut down dispatchable energy in favour of intermittent “green enerrgy”, which at times like this proves that it is not green and produces little useful energy.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/10/31/blind-faith-in-climate-models/#comment-1462890
An Open Letter to Baroness Verma
“All of the climate models and policy-relevant pathways of future greenhouse gas and aerosol emissions considered in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) recent Fifth Assessment Report show a long-term global increase in temperature during the 21st century is expected. In all cases, the warming from increasing greenhouse gases significantly exceeds any cooling from atmospheric aerosols. Other effects such as solar changes and volcanic activity are likely to have only a minor impact over this timescale”.
– Baroness Verma
I have no Sunspot Number data before 1700, but the latter part of the Maunder Minimum had 2 back-to-back low Solar Cycles with SSNmax of 58 in 1705 and 63 in 1717 .
http://www.ngdc.noaa.gov/stp/space-weather/solar-data/solar-indices/sunspot-numbers/international/tables/
http://www.ngdc.noaa.gov/stp/solar/image/annual.gif
The coldest period of the Maunder was ~1670 to ~1700 (8.48dC year average Central England Temperatures) but the coldest year was 1740 (6.84C year avg CET).
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/hadobs/hadcet/data/download.html
The Dalton Minimum had 2 back-to-back low SC’s with SSNmax of 48 in 1804 and 46 in 1816. Tambora erupted in 1815.
Two of the coldest years in the Dalton were 1814 (7.75C year avg CET) and 1816 (7.87C year avg CET).
Now Solar Cycle 24 is a dud with SSNmax estimated at ~65, and very early estimates suggest SC25 will be very low as well.
The warmest recent years for CET were 2002 to 2007 inclusive that averaged 10.55C.
I suggest with confidence that 10.5C is substantially warmer as a yearly average than 8.5C, and the latter may not provide a “lovely year for Chrysanths”.
I further suggest with confidence that individual years averaging 7.8C or even 6.8C are even colder, and the Chrysanths will suffer.
So here is my real concern:
IF the Sun does indeed drive temperature, as I suspect, Baroness Verma, then you and your colleagues on both sides of the House may have brewed the perfect storm.
You are claiming that global cooling will NOT happen, AND you have crippled your energy systems with excessive reliance on ineffective grid-connected “green energy” schemes.
I suggest that global cooling probably WILL happen within the next decade or sooner, and Britain will get colder.
I also suggest that the IPCC and the Met Office have NO track record of successful prediction (or “projection”) of global temperature and thus have no scientific credibility.
I suggest that Winter deaths will increase in the UK as cooling progresses.
I suggest that Excess Winter Mortality, the British rate of which is about double the rate in the Scandinavian countries, should provide an estimate of this unfolding tragedy.
As always in these matters, I hope to be wrong. These are not numbers, they are real people, who “loved and were loved”.
Best regards to all, Allan MacRae
Yes.
Yes.
They have to get rid of reliable power in order to blame economic collapse on “the corporations” and install a Socialist regime.
The surface winds rule the day, …https://earth.nullschool.net/#current/wind/surface/level/orthographic=8.81,54.18,671/loc=4.457,55.986
Running out of gas? Not likely. The climate explainers have plenty of it.
I guess it all depends on what you are used to. Here in Boston, snow like they have in Buffalo would be a disaster. Having said that, the snow I am seeing that is bringing Britain to a halt would cause a minor delay in a a morning commute here in Boston. Most places would probably not even call out the plows.
Hah! In England they’re still asking themselves where they parked the one snowplow last year!
I recall an early visit to Austria in summer, and asking what the 2m poles topped with black by the side of the roads were for. I was told they are to let the snowplow drivers know where the road is!
On a later visit in winter I saw that all main roads were cleared by 7am,and most side roads by 8am. They take it seriously.
Yes this “snow event” has rather been overplayed in the media. Even in England l’ve known it to get alot worse then this. The dates Feb 79, Dec 81, Jan 87, Feb 91 and Dec 10 spring to mind. But it does look like the UK is in for a cold March.
Regarding all the snow falling everywhere in the world, including locations that rarely ever have snow – such as the Sahara Desert, Rome, etc. etc.
Repeat after me everyone – loud and proud – lefties stand at attention and hoot and shout:
“WE BLAME GLOBAL WARMING!!!”
Need I say “sarc right off”? 🙂
Boston is not far away from the Buffalo-type snows in the current storm moving in. Probably mostly heavy rain in Boston but eastern New York could get up to 20 inches. As you said though, 20 inches for Buffalo.
Boston had a major blizzard circa January 2015 that shut down the city.
https://www.accuweather.com/en/weather-news/blizzard-of-2015-to-shut-down/41180972
Then there were several more blizzards in February 2015, which set the all-time monthly snow record of 58.5 inches.
https://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2015/02/15/snow/2IO1E0ibEJ1PK1sC1wPAyO/story.html
Why do I remember this, way up here in Calgary? Read below:
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2017/01/13/new-butt-covering-end-of-snow-prediction/comment-page-1/#comment-2397292
[excerpted]
A little recent history about Winter weather forecasts:
The National Weather Service (NWS) of the USA forecast a warm winter for 2014-15 and my friend Joe d’Aleo told me in October 2014 that the NWS forecast was seriously incorrect, and that the next winter would be particularly cold and snowy, especially in the populous Northeast. This was the second consecutive year that the NWS has made a very poor (excessively warm) Winter forecast, in Joe’s opinion – and he and his colleagues at WeatherBell have a great track record of accurate forecasts.
…
After that brutally cold and snowy winter, a back-analysis showed that the actual energy used was 10% more than the NWS forecast projection, and just 1% less than Joe’s forecast projection.
(Note: all numbers are from memory.)
So I think we did a good deed.
…
Regards to all, Allan
“Capitalism has failed. Government must take over energy production.”
Guardian headline tomorrow.
Opposition leader Jeremy Corbyn has already called for nationalisation of UK energy production.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2018/02/21/hard-left-british-opposition-leader-nationalise-utilities-because-climate/
Doubling down on stupid and less. Should ask residents of Venezuela and Rhodesia how that has worked out.
Oop, there it is! Ever body cabbage path. Seriously, I thought all of that had been nationalized a long time ago.
Showing your age Rhodesia doesn’t exist anymore it ceased existing in 1965 and as a state of South Africa in 1979 🙂
The UK already has nationalised energy production.
It’s owned by the Chinese and EDF – that’s owned by the French state.
Corbyn argues that letting a foreign state run your energy systems is less advisable than doing it yourself.
Obviously, no private company wants the long-term risks of investing in state infrastructure – except tax dodging pyramid schemes like Enron which don’t help anyone.
Private companies tend not to like investing in property that could be expropriated at any minute.
LdB – “Showing your age Rhodesia doesn’t exist anymore it ceased existing in 1965 and as a state of South Africa in 1979”
Correction: Rhodesia voted in 1923 to become a dominion of Britain (and NOT a state of South Africa). We declared independence (UDI) in 1965 from Britain, and existed until 1979, when the country became Zimbabwe-Rhodesia for a year, becoming Zimbabwe in 1980.
Ex-Rhodie
Rhodesia is a term that was used to describe the former British protectorates of Northern Rhodesia (now Zambia) and Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe). Later Southern Rhodesia declared unilateral independence as Rhodesia.
Both protectorates were economically prosperous countries under British rule, with modern infrastructure and Rule of Law.
And you were correct Ldb when you wrote: “Rhodesia doesn’t exist anymore.” The countries have regressed hundreds of years under majority rule, almost everything that was achieved under British rule has been destroyed, and yet nobody wants to say that because they are so politically-correct.
I was offered a job in Northern Rhodesia circa 1970 – best decision I ever made was NOT to accept it.
Allan – “Rhodesia is a term that was used to describe the former British protectorates of Northern Rhodesia (now Zambia) and Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe). Later Southern Rhodesia declared unilateral independence as Rhodesia”
True, in that Rhodesia, as in the full pre-independence name “Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland”, referred to both Northern and Southern Rhodesia (Nyasaland is now Malawi). However, we were never a protectorate, prior to independence, but a self-governing dominion loyal to the Crown, with a governor, similar to Australia and Canada.
Otherwise, I agree that Zimbabwe is stuffed.
Rob
Hi Metosoft – a minor detail, new to me before today:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northern_Rhodesia
Northern Rhodesia was a protectorate in south central Africa, formed in 1911 by amalgamating[2] the two earlier protectorates of Barotziland-North-Western Rhodesia[3] and North-Eastern Rhodesia.[4][5] It was initially administered, as were the two earlier protectorates, by the British South Africa Company, (BSAC), a chartered company on behalf of the British government.
Allan – “a minor detail, new to me before today”
No Worries…
Prior to 1923 (when we voted to become a dominion), I guess we were a “protectorate”, “owned” by the British South African Company, which in turn was run by Cecil Rhodes. Whether we were in fact protected by Britain at that stage is anyone’s guess. The first pioneers only entered the country (the area then known as Monomotapa) 20-40 years before that.
My initial reply to LdB was a reaction to people re-writing history, and correcting them when possible.
When it comes to issues relating to Rhodesia, unfortunately Wikipedia is not your friend.
Rob Munn
South Africa yesterday voted for a law that permits expropriation of white owned property without compensation.
Within a decade S. Africa will look like Zimbabwe.
Lifehack from an expat:
Move nearer the equator!
Several additional benefits may include:
More friendly people
Better food
Cheaper food
Cheaper housing
Better roads
Cheaper petrol
Less miserable weather
More jobs
More opportunities
Better schools
Better healthcare
Better politicians (just kidding, no chance!)
Frack, baby frack!!!!!! And lay pipe.
Snow in the UK? How odd that is! Would it be naughty to wish for a Frost Fair on the Thames?
The snowstorm which has inflicted itself on England is a mere pittance when set up against winter snows in the Midwestern USA. I learned long ago to be out with the shovel if the snow started around 5PM my time and stay up all night if you have to. Keep the tea or coffee or hot chocolate hot and available, and keep the doors and steps clear.
We’re due for one more snowstorm where I live, but unless it hits tonight, I don’t think it will happen. Just standing watch for it. Lovely day today, with blue skies full of stratocirrus clouds racing ahead of the front, dumping tons of ice into the atmosphere. Should be interesting. Some plants, like my chives in a pot on the front steps, are already pushing their earliest leaves up now.
It looks like that Global Warming has made it to Northern Ohio…It’s snowing here (3 to 5 inches predicted) with gusts of wind up to 40 MPH. I could get the snow blower out but this time of the year its usually better to just let it melt by itself.
the problem of snow is not its actual levels, but how unusual it is.
I waited three hours in Jersey – a very mellow maritime climate – because the ailerons had frozen and the airport had no antifreeze to spray on them.
in 1980 or 1981, my then boss was delayed because Johannesburg airport was closed..by less than an inch of snow. no snow clearance machinery exists in South Africa.
there is less than 2″ of snow here, yet traffic levels are massively down. People really do NOT know what snow is. Certainly not how to drive on it.
they prefer to close and cancel and stay at home.
Just need to bust out that wind and solar. There’d be plenty of energy for errbody around, and some to spare! 😉
No, there is only one shortage in the UK, they have run out of the ability of logical thought.
“Gas is central to our energy-secure future,” she said. “So is nuclear.” … “eventually”.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-34851718
Horse, cart and muppet manure. Now there’s another airhead in charge. Next week’s spin: CO2 exhaling coke snorters didn’t drop ball as gas prices continue to spike. Whoopie-do!
Mahna Mahna …
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2017/dec/29/russian-liquified-natural-gas-shipment-unlikely-remain-uk
https://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/926712/Beast-from-the-East-Storm-Emma-Russia-s-LNG-cargo-gas-tank-The-Yamal-project-Siberia
Actual Climate refugee–
“The Royal Canadian Air Force confirms the CH-146 Griffon helicopter was on its way back to Opalocka airport when its inflatable life raft fell out of the aircraft. The chopper and its crew was in South Florida to train search and rescue squadrons that carry out rescues over waters since its too cold to perform the exercises in Canada this year.”
http://miami.cbslocal.com/2018/02/28/royal-canadian-air-force-life-raft-crashes-miami-woman-hurt/
If you fall out of the boat in Canada they tell you not to take a boat out ice fishing and to walk to shore ’cause the choppers in Florida, eh? Then they drop a life raft on you for some reason!
I am not sure about the United States natural gas industry today, but for decades natural gas companies had standard contracting practices that industrial and commercial customer gas supplies could be curtailed in severe winter weather in favor of keeping consumer housing heat working. The Brits apparently do the same thing.
Education is essential, go to university and get YOUR degree in Stupidity.
The call it a Dialectic Materialism degree.
How can it be that Britain is being caught by an energy shortfall? I thought that wind and solar would be available to pick the slack, except when the skies are overcast there’s none the latter and when winds are light, very little of the former. So what we’re seeing here is the probable future of energy supplies until mid-century or beyond; i.e., not any domination by any single source, but still a strong reliance on fossil fuels.