Cold weather

A column in the timesonline from the UK mentions that the UK Met service
is saying that statistically this will be one of the warmest winters ever. Of course
that's probably averaging in the southern hemisphere, so even after what seems to
me to be the coldest winter since around 1988, when one of the first times that I walked
out onto the flightline I stepped on a frozen puddle, flipped ass over teakettle and
dropped a tech order book that exploded into 1000 pages of FOD.

Hopefully people will start to come to their senses and ignore some of the stupider
climate change nonsense, like switching to 100% windpower that would lead to
periods like last weeks low temperatures killing thousands of people as they freeze
in their houses. High Pressure = low temp = no wind gives the coldest and hottest
days with lowest available power.

We need to be moving away from burning oil and gas for heat, but what we need to
move to for the grid has to be something that can be switched on and off, not waiting
for the breath of god to turn it on and off. There needs to be an intermediate
compromise that doesn't involve name calling, and a technical plan that is less
of trying to appease an angry Al Gore and more of a detailed look at what is available
and what will be available in 10, 20 and 30 years.

Build more nuke plants, study fusion and advanced storage and hydrogen. Instead of
cap and trade that looks like it will just enrich the Al Gores of the world, I'd put an oil
tax at some level below where prices are today, say $75 per barrel. In the USA I'd make
it an import tax. If prices are high it won't have any effect. If prices go low then low oil
prices won't destroy the economics of alternative energy or nuke power, and in the USA
it won't necessarily destroy the american oil industry again. ( or worse than it is right now)