Tag Archives: Winter

This Winter, Europe Plunges Into “The New Dark Ages”, by Michael Snyder

It will be dark and cold, too, as Europe won’t have enough energy to go around. From Michael Snyder at theeconomiccollapseblog.com:

Could you imagine being sent to prison for three years if you dared to set your thermostat above 66 degrees Fahrenheit?  As you will see below, this is a proposed regulation that is actually being considered in a major European country right now.  If you have not been paying much attention to what is happening in Europe, you need to wake up.  Natural gas in Europe is seven times more expensive than it was early last year, and that is because of the war in Ukraine.  Over the past few decades, the Europeans foolishly allowed themselves to become extremely dependent on gas from Russia.   In fact, more than 55 percent of the natural gas that Germany uses normally comes from Russia.  But now the war has changed everything, and Europe is facing an extremely harsh winter of severe shortages, mandatory rationing and absolutely insane heating bills.

Things are going to get very cold and very dark all over Europe in the months ahead, and those Europeans that choose to rebel against the new restrictions that are being implemented could literally find themselves in prison

Switzerland is considering jailing anyone who heats their rooms above 19C for up to three years if the country is forced to ration gas due to the Ukraine war.

The country could also give fines to those who violate the proposed new regulations.

Speaking to Blick, Markus Sporndli, who is a spokesman for the Federal Department of Finance, explained that the rate for fines on a daily basis could start at 30 Swiss Francs (£26).

19 degrees Celsius is just 66 degrees Fahrenheit.

If you live in Europe, prepare to dress very warmly this winter.

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EU Official Warns Of ‘Rolling Blackouts’ As Energy Crisis Worsens, by Tyler Durden

It could be a disastrously cold winter in Europe. Too bad they’re substituting unreliable renewables for reliable fossil fuels and nuclear power. From Tyler Durden at zerohedge.com:

Europe’s energy crisis is about to get a whole lot worse as the Northern Hemisphere winter is just weeks away. New risks are emerging across the continent that households and companies might have to scale back on power use or even plan for rolling blackouts.

There is no immediate fix to the energy crisis that comes from the supply side, with Russia’s Gazprom, the largest supplier of natural gas to Europe, only pumping what it has. At the same time, EU stockpiles remain well below trend.

On Tuesday, Prime Minister Mario Draghi said Italy’s government is ready to combat soaring energy prices for households, according to Bloomberg.

“We set aside 1.2 billion euros ($1.4 billion) in June and over 3 billion euros in September,” Draghi said. “We are now taking steps in the budget and are prepared to continue doing so, with particular attention to the most vulnerable.”

“Given the current energy supply system, a blackout cannot be ruled out” across Europe, Minister Giancarlo Giorgetti said, adding that “it’s important to neutralize the impact of increased energy bills on households and companies in the fairest way possible.”

Even before the winter season arrives, cold weather is driving energy prices across Europe to record highs. The massive rally in European gas prices is not diminishing anytime soon. Gas prices at the Dutch TTF hub, the benchmark gas price for Europe, jumped to €100 per MWh, adding more pressure on households who are already dealing with rapid food and shelter inflation.

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Achtung Baby! (It’s Cold Outside) – Germany’s “Green” Energy Fail Rescued By Coal And Gas, by 21st Century Wire

Solar and wind power are great until the sun doesn’t shine and the wind doesn’t blow, like during the dead of winter when demand for power skyrockets. From 21st Century Wire at 21stcenturywire.com:

Barely a week after Davos luminaries met with world leaders and Silicon Valley oligarchs to plot their latest phase of the Great Reset, the underlying provenance of their entire ‘climate emergency’ thesis is still struggling to correspond with reality.

Their much-celebrated “Zero Carbon” agenda which virtue-signaling leaders like Justin Trudeau, Boris Johnson and Joe Biden are currently advocating for – is proving to be a lot more difficult to achieve in reality than it is on their elaborate UN Agenda 2030 Powerpoint slides, computer modeled projections and Zoom calls.

No one is being hit with this sobering reality more than the Europe’s premier green trailblazer, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, whose country is currently in the grips of Europe’s record-breaking freeze this winter.

Stop These Things reports…


Germany’s held up as the world’s wind and solar capital. But, at the moment, the ‘green’ stuff can’t be purchased, at any price.

Its millions of solar panels are blanketed in snow and ice and breathless, freezing weather is encouraging its 30,000 wind turbines to do absolutely nothing, at all. [Note: don’t forget about the constant supply of electricity from the grid that these things chew up heating their internal workings so they don’t freeze up solid!]

So much for the ‘transition’ to an all wind and sun powered future – aka the ‘Energiewende’.

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Winter Storm Threatens Germany’s Power…Freezing Hell Threatens If Already Rickety Grid Collapses! by P. Gosselin

Whatever the merits of solar and wind power, they unambiguously weaken power grids. Germany may pay the price for its infatuation with green technologies. From P. Gosselin at wattsupwiththat.com:

Green energy and COVID-19 lockdowns are playing energy Russian roulette with people’s lives. Perfect winter storm brewing. 

A winter blizzard is set to strike Central Europe, bringing with it the potential to wreak power outage havoc. Temperatures will plummet to as low as -15°C accompanied by bone-chilling high winds. Closed shops due to COVID-19 are leaving citizens unprepared. A protracted power outage would be devastating. 

In the coming hours, a high pressure system situated over Scandinavia and storm Tristan to the south will collide over central Europe and develop into dangerous weather conditions over one of Europe’s most populated regions, North Rhine Westphalia Germany.

There are some major problems with this storm that will test the German power grid stability and even possibly the citizens’ ability to fend for themselves.

Power grid at risk: hours of freezing rain

First will be the band of freezing rain that is forecast across the Ruhr region of North Rhine Westphalia. According to Kachelmannwetter.de, the freezing rain period could last hours and thus lead to heavy weight loads on power transmission structures as ice builds up. Lines could collapse.

High winds – even heavier loads

To make matters worse, high winds will further exacerbate the loads on the already ice-coated power transmission infrastructure – thus increasing the probability of power line structural failure and an ensuing power blackout, which in turn could cascade and threaten the European power grid.

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Solar Minimum Madness: Is Thanksgiving’s Winter Wonderland A Preview Of The Bitterly Cold Winter To Come? by Michael Snyder

This may be one of the coldest winters in a long time, and it may presage several years of very cold winters. From Michael Snyder at themostimportantnews.com:

This week, three major winter storms will batter most of the country with ice, snow and bitterly cold temperatures just in time for Thanksgiving. It is being projected that 55 million Americans will be traveling this week, and so this bizarre weather comes at a very bad time. But of course we have already seen a series of blizzards roar across the nation in recent weeks and hundreds of record cold temperatures have already been shattered and we are still about a month away from the official start of winter. Normally, it isn’t supposed to be this cold or this snowy yet, but we don’t live in “normal” times.

Scientists tell us that solar activity becomes very quiet during a “solar minimum”, and when solar activity becomes very quiet we tend to have very cold winters. And in recent months solar activity has been very, very low. In fact, we haven’t seen any sunspots at all “since November 2”

We have not seen any sunspots since November 2, and at that time they were only visible for two days, and prior to that no sunspots since October .

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November Snow In Texas? Experts Warn Decreased Solar Activity Will Shatter All Global Climate Models, by Michael Snyder

Perhaps the sun has something to do with the climate. We may find out this winter, as sun spot activity vanishes, supposedly a cause of cold weather. From Michael Snyder at theeconomiccollapseblog.com:

Our sun has been behaving very strangely, and this unusual behavior is really starting to affect our weather patterns.  There have been virtually no sunspots in 2018 as solar activity has dropped to alarmingly low levels.  As a result, our atmosphere has been cooling and shrinking, and experts are warning that we are heading for a bitterly, bitterly cold winter.  And even though the official start of winter is well over a month away, winter weather is already sweeping the nation.  As you will see below, a giant winter storm is about to slam into the east coast, but what is happening in Texas is even more unnerving.  On Wednesday morning, the temperature in San Antonio plummeted to just 23 degrees, and that absolutely shattered the old record

“This shatters the old record low of 28 degrees set back in 1916,” the National Weather Service tweeted of Wednesday’s weather. Tuesday night just before midnight, the city hit 28 degrees, breaking the previous record of 29 set in 1907, records show.

Typically, November temperatures are significantly warmer. The average high for the month is about 71 degrees and the normal low is 51 degrees. San Antonio’s average low this year has been comparable to other years, but its average high, a cool 66.6 degrees, has been lower than normal.

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