Monday, December 7, 2009

Another Balmy Day on the Prairies

Just food for thought: It is -26C (-14.8F) right now with a windchill of -31C (-23.8F). I had to send my 12 year old out to the bus stop in this and in an hour I will be walking the 7yr old to school with my 1yr old all bundled up. Now maybe you can understand why some people joke and say 'bring on the Global Warming' when the weather is like this.

It's all well and good to want to change what type of energy people use to heat their homes, but a heck of a lot of big supporters of that live in areas that could never even dream of having weather this bitter. It's 7:20am and the sun is not due to rise until 8:07am so if I had solar panels I would have to hope and pray they had sucked up enough juice from yesterday's 12 hours of cloudy light in order to keep us going overnight and this morning.

Every winter we go through a few days here and there of -45C (-49F) and to be frank, it scares the crap out of me that we could be forced to change our heating systems in the years ahead... what if the 'efficiency' means less heat for those horrible days? If you had a good furnace blasting heat to warm your toes while the bitter chill crept through your walls, would you want to change it for an unproven theory? My friends bought an energy efficient furnace earlier this year and will get a few hundred bucks on their income tax return for the Retro-Fit funding... but it has broken down TWICE (before winter). Their old one, belching out fumes, did not break down one single time in 15+ years. I wonder if they are a bit nervous this winter? I'm not saying they will all break down lol, I'm just relating a story about the only family I know who has gone ahead and dropped a few grand on a new furnace that is more 'Green', only to have it break down on them. Sorry but I don't have a few grand to buy a new furnace, and I quite like my natural gas/electric system. It hasn't let me down yet (knock on wood).

But seriously, why should a person who might get a low of +44F in winter tell me what to do with my life when I have to endure -44F in winter? Who is going to tell me to drive a little electric car through the 3 foot snow bank that is behind my garage right now and the 7 inch deep snow down the entire street this morning? Who has the right to tell me that we should not be driving our big hefty SUV instead? Should I let people guilt me into thinking I am helping to destroy the planet, or should I say 'I would like to LIVE through this winter, thank you very much'?

PS The HIGH today is going to be -24C (-11.2F). Weee get out the sun tan lotion! And before you toss this aside and think 'It's Canada, what do you expect?', I am only an hour from the Montana border, and my friend lived in North Dakota for awhile and said she has never been colder in her LIFE... so it's not just Canada that feels a big freeze every winter!

14 comments:

  1. Hey, that's not fair. You know the rules, only one side is allowed to use anecdotal evidence. And if you keep up this whining, how's Algore gonna pay the 30K/year it costs to keep power going to his house? And how's Pachauri gonna make his round trip weekend visits from NY to India for those all important cricket matches? And who's going to keep people employed servicing all those private jets, limos, and prostitutes in Copenhagen? One must make sacrifices....

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  2. Of course the looney-leftie-greenies will blame these cold temp's on 'global warm...er climate change'.

    I too am an hour from the Montana Border so obviously we live in the same vicinity of the province. It is COOOOLLDDDDD - I would love to see some of those Calgary greenies with their little smart cars get through some of the drifts I saw in some of the neighbourhoods via TV. LOL!!!

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  3. Thx for the laugh Halifax! ps my whole family are actually from down your end (NB mainly). My parents were born in NB and my uncle recently moved from Dartmouth to Saint John. From the pics I've seen it gets pretty brrrrrrrrrrrrrr down that way too ;)

    AlbertaGirl - I'm in MH so I'm guessing you are here or the Bridge ;)

    As a kid, I remember it snowing so much (I lived 5 years in Elkwater/Cypress Hills), that my brother and I had nothing to do in the back yard but sit on top of the swing set - cos that's the only part we could see lol. As a teen in MH, I went to a movie with an old boyfriend and we had to dig our car out when it was over because of a sudden blizzard (then he had to piggy back me to my front door cos the snow was above my knees).

    Winters here have been bitter and nasty for a very long time and I don't see much changing, aside from maybe the amount of snow. My region has been an inland sea, completely frozen, and a freakishly hot desert back and forth over time, long before humans came along, and before they made any real impact because of their small numbers. But can you imagine if they tried to shoot stuff into the atmosphere to COOL it because of this so-called AGW one day? My god - we would be forced to move!

    It was still snowing into the first week of June this year as it is!

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  4. Just checked the weather in Copenhagen: 6C, mostly cloudy, windchill 4C and 100% humidity. Why do they never hold these events in places where there is actually global warming, like Northern Alberta or Siberia? Breaking news, the polar bears are happy and will survive another winter season; ice is forming on the Arctic Ocean as we speak. Cheers, Fern StAlbert

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  5. My friend's brothers are Ice Road truckers based in Yellowknife and they have been freezing their butts off for the past 30 years they have been working - no toasty toes for them yet.

    My bf is working around Edson right now and he texted me last night to tell me how bitterly horribly cold it was. Some of the huge massive water tanks at the rigs were 100% frozen already so they have been working since last Wed to thaw and re-heat them. It takes a LOT of cold to freeze those big tanks.

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  6. Ok, it's cold in the west. Therefore, there's no global warming. Is that the extent of your scientific argument?

    We didn't have a flake of snow in the month of November in the enitre GTA. First time in close to one hundred years. Doesn't matter though, because it's cold at your house.

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  7. Oh yes that is exactly what I wrote, word for word, didn't you see it up top?

    So if Toronto did not have a flake of snow in November, for the first time in almost 100 years, does that mean Global Warming DOES exist? Because it was mild at your house?

    The argument could be tossed back and forth but do you know what I see from your post? I see that 100 years ago, when CO2 emissions caused by man were very low compared to the present, the GTA still managed a November with no snow! HOW did that happen? Your own sarcastic comment showed everyone that this type of warmth in the GTA actually has occurred in the past when man was not belching fumes from the Alberta Oil Sands into the atmosphere - so for that I say THANK YOU :)

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  8. And might I add that my good friend near Ottawa has sent me unbelievable photos the past few years of the amount of snow burying her house. After shoveling, it was piled SO high, she could not actually lift the shovel high enough to dump more on top from the next snow. Freakish amount of snow not toooo far from where you are. But it doesn't matter because it was mild at your house last month :)

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  9. "I see that 100 years ago, when CO2 emissions caused by man were very low compared to the present, the GTA still managed a November with no snow! HOW did that happen?"

    Nearly fell off my chair when I read this! :)

    I don't usually comment on blogs, but that was a wicked comeback.

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  10. TY Rick.

    The thing is, no where in this post did I say that AGW is not real because it's cold in southern Alberta. What I posted about was my personal fear that some of the ideas in the works for cooling the planet could literally freeze some of us to death. The US Pres expressed support of pushing pollution into the atmosphere in an attempt to deflect the sun's rays. Meanwhile, some of us have to endure -40C and below in the winter months so what does that mean for those people?

    I have seen plans to spray (oh crud I might get this a bit wrong) sulphur dioxide into the atmosphere with giant hoses (lol) in order to do work that parrots a massive volcanic explosion. Again, the hope being to COOL the planet. So again, what does that mean for people in my region and further north? It's not like I live in Inuvik and am bellyaching about the cold - I am in the prairies just a hop skip and jump from Montana. What happens to us in the winter if these plans go ahead in an attempt to cool other areas of the earth? YIKES. I better buy myself some real FUR and start mudding up my house and building giant wood and coal fire pits in my house if I hope to remain living here if those plans get put into action.

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  11. Last night i was shovelling the snow off the sidewalk when 6 deer crossed the street from the schoolyard across from my house .I enjoy watching them ,but it was getting chilly enough i was wishing they'd bugger off . Seems like they get a bit braver when it's going to cool off. -36C tonight , Bridge St in the Hat

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  12. Dear Anonymous: You should be praying for Global Cooling - can you imagine all the Alberta refugees that will migrate to the GTA and demand social services and housing from you hard working Torontonians. Instead of economic migrants, we will be climate migrants. Man the Caledonia barricades, we will bring our Conservative attitudes, stylish fur trimmed parkas, skidoo boots, pickup trucks (manufactured in Oshawa) and demand respect for our red meat (food of choice beef), etc. Shoud be quite a sight, you have only a few years to prepare according to the Prince of Wales. Cheers.

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  13. No snow in Toronto, eh. That's good because I don't think we have enough military personnel available right now to clear their streets.

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  14. This is why it was fun to see that the G7 Finance Minister's meeting will be held in Iqualuit in Feb 2010.

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