60% Of Russia Covered By Snow; Aussie Climate Minister: Don’t Expect Renewables To Provide Grid Stability; + Snow Returns To Glacier National Park, Recalling Those “Glaciers Gone By 2020” Signs
60% Of Russia Covered By Snow
We’ve been monitoring developments: Siberia is now completely blanketed by early-season snow.
A front is dumping additional flakes this week, too, particularly to north and central regions of the Sakha Republic (aka Yakutia), reports hmn.ru.
Heavy snowstorms are on the cards here.
Frosts are expected to harden in the northeast of Yakutia, the largest republic of Russia, from Wednesday. Lows of -30C (-22F), and beyond, will grip certain lower elevated spots with record-challenging -40C (-40F) readings expected in the mountains.
Even during the day, continues hmn.ru, sub -20C (-4F) lows will descend, conditions that are “quite usual” so early in the season.
“It is already snowing almost everywhere in Yakutia,” the hmn.ru article concludes.
“Its height is about 10 cm (4 inches). In the lower reaches of rivers flowing into the Arctic Ocean, including in the lower reaches of the Lena, there is two to three times more snow. And during these days there will be a noticeable increase in snow.”
Aussie Climate Minister: “Don’t Expect Renewables To Provide Grid Stability”
Last year, speaking to concerns of blackouts, Australia’s ‘Minister for Climate Change and Energy’ Chris Bowen called folk who preferred nuclear over renewables “dangerously ignorant”.
You don’t have to worry about renewable intermittency, Bowen said, because we can store electricity like water:
Even as recently as February 2023, Bowen was vehemently rejecting suggestions that his renewable-heavy policies might lead to blackouts.
But he isn’t sounding so confident now:
“I don’t think we can just put all the pressure on renewables for stability and reliability,” said the minister in an Oct 23rd interview on ABC Radio National, who goes on to blame a hot ‘AGW-fueled’ summer to come and, indirectly, a chronic under-investment in coal-fired power plants for his looming policy failure.
“One of the biggest challenges to stability is frankly coal-fired power station outages that were unexpected. I mean we saw a big impact when the Callide Power Station in Queensland went offline a few years ago and is still not yet back online.”
Increased nuclear capacity would have completely eradicated Australia’s blackout concerns. It is a blind roll-out of renewables that is proving “dangerously ignorant”, a roll-out even the minster himself now admits can’t be relied upon for grid stability.
Better yet (i.e. cheaper and quicker), just do an Asia and build more coal-fired plants:
Snow Returns To Glacier National Park, Recalling Those “Glaciers Gone By 2020” Signs
Snow is returning to Glacier National Park this week, with the entire state of Montana forecast an early-season blanketing.
Heavy snowfall has consistently buried the state’s higher reaches for years now, defying all AGW Party prophesies.
Back in late-2019, the National Park Service (NPS) was forced to take down all of its visitor center signs that declared glaciers at Glacier National Park would be gone by the year 2020 due to the ravages of climate change.
With that doomsday deadline uneventfully approaching, the NPS sheepishly pulled all ‘2020 signs’ from its displays after the computer models it relied upon from the early 2000s, which convincingly foretold of unending glacial retreat, turned out to be garbage.
“Larger than average snowfall over several winters slowed down that retreat rate and the 2020 date used in the NPS display does not apply anymore,” said the USGS at the time, an agency tasked with monitoring Glacier National Park.
Roger I. Roots, J.D., Ph.D., noted the signage change in an article for Watts Up With That.
“The Park Service is scrambling to remove the signs without their visitors noticing,” Roots posted on his Facebook wall. “Almost everywhere, the Park’s specific claims of impending glacier disappearance have been replaced with more nuanced messaging.”
Roots continued:
“The ‘gone by 2020’ claims were repeated in the New York Times, National Geographic, and other international news sources. But no mainstream news outlet has done any meaningful reporting regarding the apparent stabilization and recovery of the glaciers in GNP over the past decade.
“Even local Montana news sources such as The Missoulian, Billings Gazette and Bozeman Daily Chronicle have remained utterly silent regarding this story.”
The glaciers at Glacier National Park aren’t going anywhere anytime soon. They are to the added to the ever-growing of AGW Party agenda-driving scare tactics, along with Greenland and Arctic ice, polar bear numbers, coral cover, hurricanes, etc. etc.
All-time record-breaking snowfall hit Montana last winter, as it did much of North America.
According to NOAA, Log Cabin Cafe in Silver Gate, MT –for example– received 853″ of snow during the 2022-23 winter, significantly above the 600″ average, and a new record. Predictably, NOAA blames this record-high total on natural phenomena, such as La Niña, but all we know the convenient one-size-fits-all approach they’d have taken if snowpack was below average.
The day’s other article:
As an Australian cursed with the deficient Chris Bowen and his renewables zealotry, I have to witness close up the train wreck which is coming. Fortunately I am off grid and am not suffering the continuous punative hikes in electricity prices. As long as I can get fossil fuel for my generator when the sun isn’t shining then I am doing far better than my countrymen.
Hey CAP, Did the recent rain over Spain / Portugal do a nasty on you ? por favor just right for autumn crop starting ? Cheers, W.
Strangely enough, Australia of all places is ideally set for a chance to cover power production from renewables *if* sufficient battery and/or hydro storage were created quickly enough. But as stated, old coal plants are limping along, and there still is just not enough renewable production to replace reliance on coal – even *if* there was enough storage to provide power in times of minimum wind and sun.
I guess you could say, there is/was *no* investment in the plant required to cover the time it takes to build enough renewables! – And that there is still a very long time to go to finish building it; which is why it is the folly that it is.
Heaven help any country without the wind and sun resources that AU has.