Utopia, you are standing in it!

I remember the celebration in 2016 when Ireland was commemorating the centenary of the Easter Rising. There had already been events months beforehand. On 20 January 2016. Ireland’s first ever commemorative €2 coin went into circulation to mark the centenary year of the Easter Rising.

The Easter Rising , was an armed insurrection in Ireland during Easter Week in April 1916. The Rising was launched by Irish republicans against British rule in Ireland with the aim of establishing an independent Irish Republic. Of course this event needed to be remembered, because it was such an important step towards Irish independence.

However, fast forward to today, December 6 2021, and you will find there are hardly any events planned. Even though today marks the centenary of an even more important event in Irish history, the signing of the Anglo-Irish treaty.

The Treaty formally ended the War of Independence, set the stage…

Europe’s persistent and ongoing wind drought spells the end for never-reliable wind power and the renaissance of ever-reliable nuclear.

As a consequence of the Big Calm and a total collapse in wind power output across Western Europe and the UK, the Brits have now enlisted Rolls Royce to build a fleet of small modular reactors.

And the French have rapidly unveiled plans to build 14 next-generation nuclear plants, adding to the 56 plants currently operating and providing the French with over 70% of their power needs, at a cost roughly half that being paid by their wind and solar ‘powered’ German neighbours. Long-standing French government plans to shutter its existing plants have been quietly shelved.

The reason that nuclear power generation is back with a vengeance is twofold: the evident impossibility of relying upon sunshine and breezes for reliable power; and the political desire to reduce carbon oxide gas…

The Anglo-Irish Treaty, which resulted in independence for what was initially known as the Irish Free State, was signed 100 years ago today. David Torrance outlines how MPs and peers reacted when asked to approve the treaty at a specially convened parliament later that month.

Despite its significance to the history of the United Kingdom, the Anglo-Irish Treaty – signed a century ago on 6 December 1921 – has had remarkably little attention from historians and constitutional scholars.

Especially neglected has been the UK Parliament’s consideration of that treaty, in marked contrast to considerable analysis of the Dáil debates during December 1921 and January 1922. In accordance with Article 18 of the treaty, its provisions required approval by both the UK Parliament and ‘a meeting’ of those elected to the (devolved) Parliament of Southern Ireland in May 1921.

Parliament was convened on 14 December 1921 for the sole purpose…

It’s a rainy morning in Wellington. There have been crashes on my road to work. The roads are full.

Uber wanted to charge me $84 to get to work by 9am. The usual price is $21. So I’m going to Zoom in for the 9am and come in after that when, I expect, prices will be more sensible. (Assuming I still have a job: missing the 9am might be a bigger deal than I think.)

So: one less road user at the peak of a particularly busy day. I’m sure I am not the only one. If it were desperate for me to be there in person for the 9am, I’d have swallowed the extra fee. Or perhaps been a bit more organised and picked up my car yesterday.

The system is working. Now scale.

The Sun and wind might be free, but wind and solar power are by far the most expensive power sources, of them all.

Diffuse and dilute – entirely dependent on the weather (wind – in the case of wind power, and cloud cover in the case of solar) and, in solar’s case, where the Sun sits in the sky – every MW of wind or solar capacity has to be backed up by a MW of reliable, dispatchable capacity, from either coal, gas or nuclear power (and hydro where that might be available).

Over the years, renewable energy rent seekers have attempted to paint a very different picture; viz, by claiming that wind and solar are ‘free’ and getting cheaper all the time. The accounting tricks employed are fairly obvious for those with the faintest idea about how electricity is generated and distributed.

Donn Dears is one such character. Here…

Good casts

Rumpole of the Bailey is a radio series created and written by the British writer and barrister John Mortimer based on the television series Rumpole of the Bailey. Five different actors portrayed Horace Rumpole in these episodes: Leo McKern, Maurice Denham, Timothy West, Benedict Cumberbatch, and Julian Rhind-Tutt.

His skill at defending his clients is legendary among the criminal classes. The Timson clan of “minor villains” (primarily thieves) regularly rely on Rumpole to get them out of their latest bit of trouble with the law. Rumpole is proud of his successful handling of the Penge Bungalow Murders “alone and without a leader” (that is, as a “junior” barrister without a QC) early in his career and of his extensive knowledge of bloodstains and typewriters. Cross-examination is one of his favourite activities, and he disdains barristers who lack either the skill or courage to ask the right questions. His…

The Reserve Bank has a consultation document out inviting public feedback on the idea – to which they express themselves sympathetic – of the Bank possibly, at some stage in the future, issuing a new central bank digital currency, to which members of the general public would have access (unlike their existing wholesale digital currency – exchange settlement accounts – that only (some) banks currently have).

I wrote a post last week on Barry Eichengreen’s recent seminar for the University of Auckland and some of my own ideas, notably the idea that there is little reason to suppose there would be much demand for such a product (unless subsidised or underpinned by other distorting regulation).

Submissions close on Monday – at the curious hour of 10am. I spent a few hours this afternoon jotting down some thoughts as a submission. No doubt various bankers will make longer, more detailed, and…

How wrong I was, as it turned out, in all my preconceived notions about this journey.
(Remote People, page 97)

After weeks of reading heavy factual and often horrifying history about Africa, it was like getting into a warm bubble bath to read some Evelyn Waugh. He is a wonderful writer, clear and smooth – admittedly with occasional old-fashioned locutions and sometimes antiquated word order which makes you realise he was closer to the Victorians than to us – but he is nonetheless a deep pleasure to read because of his calm, clear, quietly cynical, drily humorous attitude. For his sophistication and style. For his combination of super-civilised manners and bright heartlessness. For his permanent alertness to the absurdity of life.

We sat in the open under an orange-tree and drank chianti and gossiped about the coronation, while many hundreds of small red ants overran the table and…

Notwithstanding the $billions in subsidies directed to wind and solar, their joint contribution to energy demand amounts to little more than a rounding error.

Oil and gas still account for more than 80% of world energy demand and talk about an ‘inevitable transition’ to an all wind and sun powered future, remains just that.

Energy matters, and what truly matters is that it’s available all day, every day, irrespective of the weather. Which is precisely why wind and solar will never amount to meaningful power sources.

Here’s a few numbers from the team at Jo Nova explaining why.

After 26 COP meetings we are a Fossil Fueled World: Coal, oil gas give us 80% of the energy on Earth
Jo Nova Blog
Jo Nova
5 November 2021

This is what Decarbonization Failure looks like:

After three decades of effort, twenty-six glorious international COP meetings, six IPCC reports, and the installation…