For the fans of George R. R. Martin's epic fantasy world, the allusion "winter is coming" has a specific meaning: It's easy to enjoy the good life, but easy living can make you soft, and when hardship comes you're likely to be ill prepared to face it. Martin's world has an uncertain seasonal shift, where summers can last for years, but when winter comes, winter is BAD.
While we don't live in a fantasy world where seasons are uncertain, we in America happened to have faced that very scenario during the period of 2011-2012. Winter didn't come, and now we are enjoying the summer of cheap energy.
In the "winter" months of 2011-2012, temperatures averaged 4 degrees (F) warmer than normal across the entire U.S. Most Northern states - ME, NH, VT, CT, MA, RI, NY, PA, VA, OH, WV, KY, IN, IL, MI, WI, MN, IA, MO, ND, SD, and MT all saw temperatures of ~6 degrees warmer than normal, When the cold didn't arrive, we Americans proved to be just as easily lulled by the good life as the people in fantasy lands.
The most obvious sign of long-summer complacency can be found in the natural gas market, and the breathless optimism of the world concerning cheap energy and diminishing coal usage. Recent whispers by heretofore respectable analysts have seriously discussed the possibility of free methane ("profit could be derived solely from extraction of natural gas liquids and higher-value light hydrocarbons")… and seemingly every environmentalist group is giddy about the near-term abolition of coal power plants in a world of perpetually low-cost natural gas, with headlines proclaiming that natural gas sourced electricity matched coal sourced electricity in the month of April!
The EIA is projecting a cost of only ~$2.55/1000 cubic feet [1mcf]) for 2012, and ~$3.22/mcf for 2013
