Utopia, you are standing in it!

Climate alarmists continue to berate us that the world is doomed and the only ‘solution’ offered is channelling $trillions more in subsidies to intermittent wind and solar. Their calls for ‘immediate action’ really means more of the same: more subsidies for more windmills and more solar panels; which really means the end of reliable and affordable electricity.

Whatever your views on climate change (the apparently existential threat formerly known as ‘global warming’), the idea that trying to run modern, civil societies on sunshine and breezes might somehow prevent it is, of course, a complete nonsense.

One environmentalist who called it out, loud and early, was Michael Shellenberger. As a long-time advocate for reliable, affordable and safe nuclear energy, and critic of intermittent renewables – calling wind and solar worse than useless – Michael combines common sense, logic and reason, in an era when those attributes have become scarce commodities.

Plenty will turn up for the Christening …

A moment’s employment of our critical faculties reveals just why wind and solar will never be meaningful power sources. STT is dedicated to explaining why. But, for the uninitiated, we’ll simply mention sunset and calm weather as the most obvious starting points.

Explaining how readily the naïve and gullible have been taken in by the rent seekers that sit behind and profit from the so-called wind and solar ‘industries’ takes a little more intellectual horsepower, however.

You’d be hard pressed to find a group of people turning up to venerate the moment when a reliable power source – like a gas turbine or coal-fired power plant – is launched into operation. So, why is it that retired school teachers and Uni academics will drive miles out of their way to genuflect in the middle of a field carpeted with these things, with…

As far back as November 1943 the Americans had planned a massive new attack on the German aircraft industry by both the Eighth and Fifteenth air forces. The RAF agreed to join by launching area attacks on the cities in which the aircraft plants were located. The plan was expected to be costly and needed a week of clear weather over Germany, as well as reasonable weather over England and Italy. But the weather over Germany remained miserable for almost all of the first seven weeks of 1944. Until late February the Eighth was able to carry out just two visual missions over Germany, and one of these was partly abortive and the other a lucky accident. The Fifteenth Air Force was tied down, hitting nearby targets in support of the Anzio beachhead, which was in grave danger from a German counteroffensive.

The Eighth continued radar bombing. Some radar missions…

“The press has had little to say about most of the strange details of the election — except, that is, to ridicule all efforts to discuss them. This animus appeared soon after [Election Day], in a spate of caustic articles dismissing any critical discussion of the outcome as crazed speculation: ‘Election paranoia surfaces: Conspiracy theorists call results rigged,’ chuckled the Baltimore Sun on November 5. ‘Internet Buzz on Vote Fraud Is Dismissed,’ proclaimed the Boston Globe on November 10. … The New York Times weighed in with ‘Vote Fraud Theories, Spread by Blogs, Are Quickly Buried.'”

That passage was not addressing the oddities and suspicions of fraud in this month’s election between President Donald Trump and former Vice President Joe Biden.

No, the passage is from a cover story in Harper’s magazine published 15 years ago, about suspicions of fraud in the 2004 presidential election, in which George W. Bush…

Continuing our series on Scotland, Dr Martin Spychal, research fellow for the House of Commons 1832-1868 project, uses Ronald Gower’s diaries to provide some rare insights into mid-Victorian electioneering in the ‘pocket county’ of Sutherland.

If there was a History of Parliament award for ‘constituency most under the thumb of an aristocratic patron’, the Highland county of Sutherland would be a top contender. Following the Act of Union in 1707 a succession of earls, ladies, dukes and duchesses of Sutherland effectively controlled who would represent the county at Westminster.

The 1832 Reform Act, which extended Sutherland’s electorate from 20 life-rent tenants to a mere 104 voters (or around 2% of adult males) did little to challenge this influence. Most of the county’s electorate lived on land owned by the Sutherlands (the family owned 80%…