'Climate Change' or 'Natural Variation'? Insights from Norway in 2023…

…guess what: it's been raining cats and dogs this year, but it's impossible to consider this 'unnormal', experts™ say

This is a follow-up to my last posting about the establishment of ‘Lysenkoism’ at Statistics Norway earlier this week:

'Climate Change' as 'Paradigm Shift'

Now, for those who live up North as I do, you perhaps noticed that the summer was quite wet, and it more or less rained ever since. If my neighbours’ comments are any indication, it has been quite unusually wet this year.

Predictably, legacy media has missed the mark repeatedly, switching, seemingly seamlessly, between accounts of heat-induced doom, which is ‘a harbinger of things to come’ (Tore Furevik, Director of the Nansen Center, via NRK, 31 July 2023) to the seemingly unending flurry of pieces dedicated to ‘extreme weather event “Hans”’ (irrespective of the fact that more rain fell in the ‘regular’ rainfalls that occurred in early September of this year).

Curiously enough, but very much in line with the establishment of Lysenkoism, which is replacing scientific enquiry at an increasing pace, today there is yet another piece that is quite telling. Writing for NRK on 3/4 Oct. 2023, ‘journos’ Håkon Jonassen Norheim and Einar Espeland, now document the opposite of the heat-induced doomsterism (my translation and emphases):

Check out the difference: Now they have to release water from the reservoirs

This time last year, the water reservoirs in southern Norway were at their lowest level ever. This year, they are so full that in some places they have to drain water. This will help your wallet this winter.

See, it was extremely hot earlier this year, which is, of course, proof-positive of ‘climate change’.

Then it also rained a whole lot, which kinda ‘solved’ this problem within a few weeks:

‘Water storage levels in Blåsjø are now between 70-80%. At the same time last year, it was 40%’, spokesman Lars Magnus Günther of Statkraft told NRK…

‘In the last week of September, water storage levels in Norway stood at 82.8%’.

Blåsjø, which is located in the municipalities of Hjelmeland, Suldal and Bykle, is the largest reservoir in Norway in terms of power production. The energy potential is around 7.7 TWh…

‘There are several places in southern Norway where it overflows or is drained,’ says [Deputy Head of Administration of Lyse Power, Sindre] Ims.

There is no doubt that the situation was completely different last year.

‘This is absolutely fantastic. It's good to get a break from the high prices. This also pays off in the winter. All precipitation has an impact on prices in southern Norway.’

The same is happening in my neck of the woods in rural Vestland: the reservoirs are full, and in many places, operators are forced to release water.

Is this ‘normal’, ‘abnormal’, or ‘Climate Change’?

This, I’d claim, is the US$ 64,000 question, and, to their credit, NRK ‘journos’ Norheim and Espeland kinda at least ask that question (but note the absurdity in terms of header vs. text):

200% More Precipitation

‘This year is quite a contrast to last year, when the reservoir storage rates were around 40% at this time.

‘We've had a lot of precipitation this autumn, but there's nothing dramatic about this. We’re looking at how much water will be coming to the reservoirs in the future and how much we need to withdraw’, says Jostein Eggerud of Aust-Telemarks Brukseierforening [consumer-owner association], which is responsible for the power plant’s regulatory compliance.

According to Eggerud, there has now been 50% more precipitation than in a normal year. Last year, it was 50% less than in a normal year.

I call—BS: you cannot simply add or subtract from fractions, such as percentages. What kind of (innumerate) moron does this?

What’s the Impact on Prices up North?

Things have happened to the power situation in Norway over the past year. This is reflected in the price of electricity. On 29 September 2022, the average price was around NOK 3.5 per kWh. On the same date in 2023, it was around 30 øre per kWh.

1 Norwegian Crown (NOK) = 100 Øre; today’s exchange rate is 1 NOK = US$ 90 cents. In other words, 1 kWh in Norway costs approx. 2-3 cents, which is close to ‘electricity too cheap to meter’.

According to Ims, the price from last year is almost unlikely to be seen again this year: ‘If the weather is dry, we will approach the prices in Germany. If it's extremely dry, we'll have similar prices to Germany.’

On 29 September, the price of electricity in Germany was around NOK 1.26 per kWh. [i.e., four times higher than in Norway]

And What About Germany and Europe?

Head of Analyses at Volue Insight, Tor Reier Lilleholt, says that it is only the amount water in the reservoirs that prevents us from getting higher electricity prices in Norway now.

‘There will be a major bottleneck between European and Norwegian prices. The highest prices in Germany these days are 3 crowns, while the highest in southern Norway are 40-50 øre’, he says. [that is a difference by a factor of 6-8, and it is still quite warm in Central Europe]

‘Prices will be between NOK 0.70 and NOK 1 in the coldest winter months this year and next year’, says Lilleholt, addind: ‘Norway is getting more power from the water reservoirs this year. In addition, Europe has also made itself independent of Russian gas.’ [bruahahahaha, what a moronic statement]

‘The price of electricity itself is at a much more normal level, and it will fall in the next few years because we will have more access to gas and the gas price in Europe will have a ceiling’, says Lilleholt. [I’m unsure what he means by that]

Bottom Lines

Last year, it rained less than this year; this year, it rained more than last year. Can we confidently state that these variations are due to human emissions? Nope, we cannot.

Prices for Norwegian consumers will be less than last year, and if you’re interested, Norway’s Energy Authority has a quite useful website (English version). As of week 39, reservoirs are filled up by 84.6 (in the past 20 years, median filling rate was 82.6%.

Note that in week 38 (end of Sept.), there were ‘negative prices’ for electricity in southern and western Norway (it happens occasionally in the North); put differently, it was more expensive to produce electricity than to use it.

Why did we waste so many efforts on pretending that last year—or this one, for that matter—the weather was ‘abnormal’ or indicative of a ‘new normal’? My ‘favourite’ piece of moronic gaslighting, by the way, was this one:

As Norwegians Cancel Their Summer Holidays 'to avoid the heat', the Power of Agit-Prop is Revealed

So, be that as it may, if energy companies are not seeing anything out of the ordinary, the question is: should we all freak out? I doubt that to be the correct answer, but then again, those who live outside of reality will probably continue to buy into these agit-prop narratives.

Also, if you made it so far, here’s how my neck of the woods looked yesterday: yes, that is a light snow cover on the clouded mountaintops at some 700m above sea level (at 61 degrees North, i.e., southern Alaska). It’s 8-9 degrees Centigrade outside right now—have a good one!