Radical Noesis - Thinking outside the box

Europe has been much more sensitive and responsive to global warming. Perhaps this is because it is impacting them more at this point, perhaps because they are just smarter than the U.S. Regardless, the British government has issued a warning that coldest winter in a decade is on its way, and that it could cause an energy crisis. The impending crisis in Britain is linked to the fact that it has only 11 days worth of emergency reserve, whereas other European countries have 55 days.

On might ask why Britain's strategic reserve of natural gas is so very low. There is no speculation I can find. It would be understandable that their petroleum reserves might be low. The EU is shipping 2 million barrels a day from EU nations' reserves to the U.S. The US SPR may also be getting low, though there is little information on how much the Bush administration has been releasing for over a month now. The US SPR (at full capacity) is 700 million barrels of crude oil.

Current natural gas reserves are running low for the US as well - they are off about 7% from the supply a year ago at this time. Continuing problems from the hurricanes are likely to drive that gap higher.

It seems that if the citizens of the U.S. freeze this winter, they will have the company to the staunch Brits. My guess is that the people of Britain will not be too happy about the situation. They may discover that the cost of Iraq and the "war on terrorism" takes its toll in Britain this winter, and those in the U.S. learned with the gutting of FEMA and emergency response in the wake of hurricane Katrina.

Given this, it is little wonder that some might wonder whether some of the noise about the Avian Flu is timed to distract the public (Vive le Canada) from the looming disaster we may both face this winter.