Utopia, you are standing in it!

The world’s first small modular reactor (SMR) is under construction and, surprise, surprise, it’s energy-hungry China that leads the way.

While China’s love affair with coal-fired power looks like a marriage that will last a lifetime, the CCP is also building nuclear plants, hand over first. And not just the 1,000MW plus industrial-scale reactors it needs to drive its economic miracle.

China looks set to develop the technology to build SMRs at a scale that promises to shake up power generation and delivery, for generations to come.

The World’s First Small Nuclear Reactor Is Now Under Construction
Oil Price
Charles
Kennedy
13 July 2021

China National Nuclear Corporation (CNNC) launched on Tuesday the construction of the first onshore small nuclear reactor in the world, in its efforts to gain a leading position in the modular reactors market.

Construction began on the demonstration project at the Changjiang Nuclear Power Plant in…

`I am pleased to submit my opposition to this unnecessary and insidious legistlaltion as follows.

• This is nothing more than an effort by various groups and the New Zealand Government to suppress speech they do not like or agree with. Free speech is a key cornerstone of Western Society and nowhere should that be more vigorously defended than in New Zealand. It is an indictment on Labour and its Ministers that it appears to be promoting and driving this legislation.
• Freedom of speech and expression is already severely impinged and restricted in New Zealand by virtue of the fact that the two major newspaper companies(Stuff and NZ Herald) will not countenance or publish views that are contrary to the views of the editors, opinion writers and staff. This is further exacerbated by the fact that the current government has paid them taxpayers money to keep solventand their…

Photosynthesis: nature requires carbon dioxide

It’s pie in the sky time again as charity Oxfam trashes various so-called climate pledges, calling them greenwashing. For starters they reckon the amount of land required to fulfil them would far exceed anything likely to be available worldwide.
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Oxfam says governments and companies are “hiding behind unreliable, unproven and unrealistic carbon removal schemes” in order to hit targets, reports BBC News.

Global attempts are being made to reach net zero carbon emissions by 2050.

But the charity claims net zero targets are often a “greenwashing exercise”.

Net zero means any emissions that can’t be stemmed by clean technology in 2050 will either be buried using carbon capture and storage, or soaked up by plants and soils.

The GWPF has produced a 64-page Fair Fuel document. See the Chairman’s Summary on pages 56-58 for a flavour of the many present and future problems with the unplanned rush to EVs, which the ‘rebels’ fear is likely to be a disaster both for themselves and the motoring public. But they’re mixing up carbon dioxide emissions cuts with pollution, which is an entirely separate issue. Such confusion plays into the hands of the so-called ‘green’ activists.
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Tory rebels have vowed to fight the 2030 ban on new petrol and diesel cars, reports The Sun (via The GWPF).

Thirteen MPs urged the Government to think again or face public fury.

The Fair Fuel all-party parliamentary group today calls on ministers to publish a full-cost analysis of what it will mean for the economy to go electric, and how they will slash emissions.

In the course of the 18th century a variety of spas and seaside resorts became popular destinations for busy Georgians seeking cures for a variety of chronic conditions, as well as for relaxation from the dramas of high politics. Dr Robin Eagles, Editor of the House of Lords 1715-90 project, considers the experiences of some of the high-profile individuals who took their holidays at two of the most popular in the late 18th century.

Among the most popular resorts for members of the elite seeking the benefits of sea air during the later part of the 18th century were Brighton and Weymouth. Earlier in the period Scarborough had been the foremost spa town, but in the course of the century it had been steadily eclipsed by a variety of rivals and by the 1760s and 70s the delights of East Sussex were beginning to attract regular holiday-makers. Brighton’s burgeoning…

Neoclassical economics is now bifurcated between Marshallian partial-equilibrium and Walrasian general-equilibrium analyses. With the apparent inability of neoclassical theory to explain the coordination failure of the Great Depression, J. M. Keynes proposed an alternative paradigm to explain the involuntary unemployment of the 1930s. But within two decades, Keynes’s contribution was subsumed under what became known as the neoclassical synthesis of the Keynesian and Walrasian theories (about which I have written frequently, e.g., here and here). Lacking microfoundations that could be reconciled with the assumptions of Walrasian general-equilibrium theory, the neoclassical synthesis collapsed, owing to the supposedly inadequate microfoundations of Keynesian theory.

But Walrasian general-equilibrium theory provides no plausible, much less axiomatic, account of how general equilibrium is, or could be, achieved. Even the imaginary tatonnement process lacks an algorithm that guarantees that a general-equilibrium solution, if it exists, would be found. Whatever plausibility is attributed to the assumption that…

Gina Florio delivers a fascinating talk discussing the relentless indoctrination she was subjected to at Harvard and how she was able to ultimately reject what she was taught. The left’s domination of academia is the source of its power both here and abroad.

In order to ultimately defeat them, the left’s stranglehold on education must be ended. If not, the political fight the defenders of civilization are engaged in will, ultimately, fail. Higher education is now geared to turning out brainwashed graduates who are destroying the country and, by extension, the world.

Elizabeth Angela Marguerite Bowes-Lyon (August 4, 1900 – March 30, 2002) was Queen of the United Kingdom 1936 to 1952 as the wife of King George VI. She was the last Empress of India from 1936 until India gained independence from Britain in 1947. After her husband died, she was known as Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother, to avoid confusion with her daughter, Queen Elizabeth II.

Born into a family of British nobility, Elizabeth was the youngest daughter and the ninth of ten children of Claude Bowes-Lyon, Lord Glamis (later the 14th Earl of Strathmore and Kinghorne in the Peerage of Scotland), and his wife, Cecilia Cavendish-Bentinck. Her mother was descended from British Prime Minister William Cavendish-Bentinck, 3rd Duke of Portland, and Governor-General of India Richard Wellesley, 1st Marquess Wellesley, who was the elder brother of another prime minister, Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington.

Elizabeth spent much of her…

There’s a yawning gulf between what wind turbines and solar panels are capable of delivering and what’s actually delivered. Sunset and calm weather will do it every time.

Terms like “capacity factor” and the “Levelized Cost Of Energy” are bandied about with great scientific certitude by renewable energy rent-seekers.

As to the first, wind and solar advocates always overstate the output of wind turbines and solar panels; and then, only in terms of pointless averages. As to the second, these characters are bound to lie about the true LCOE of wind and solar, as well. The subterfuge is as much about omission as embellishment.

Willis Eschenbach explains the nature of the game below.

The Real Cost of Wind and Solar
Watts Up With That?
Willis Eschenbach
25 June 2021

I keep reading how wind and solar are finally cheaper than fossil fuels … and every time I’ve read it, my…

Hydrogen future? [image credit: cleantechnica.com] The UK’s next problem is that there’s no domestic hydrogen supply, and it will be costly to create one, then (in theory) produce vast amounts of hydrogen from renewables and/or nuclear power. Unless hydrogen for homes is going to be cheaper than electricity then electric boilers, with none of hydrogen’s safety issues and available now, could be a viable competitor in the home heating market if/when gas is shut down.
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It would appear that Boris Johnson’s Net Zero promise to install 600,000 heat pumps per year by 2028 won’t happen after all now that Britain’s big boiler firms have promised households that they will be able to buy cheap hydrogen boilers instead says The GWPF.

The only question is how much the hydrogen that is supposed to heat our homes will cost consumers.

We’ll have to wait for the government’s…

80 years ago on this day, August 4th 1941, Britain’s Prime Minister Winston Churchill set sail across the Atlantic to make history.

Upon Sunday, August 3rd, 1941, Mr Winston Churchill and the Chiefs of Staff travelled by train to the North, where on the following day, and in conditions of the greatest secrecy, they embarked in a battleship.  Five days later, upon Saturday, August 9th, the battleship dropped anchor in a lonely bay off the shores of Newfoundland.  American warships were waiting there with President Roosevelt, who had come so secretly to the rendezvous that the entire Press of America was speculating on his disappearance.  In that desolate bay, which reminded everyone of the Hebrides, with low hills rising mistily in the air, the warships lay at anchor while the two statesmen conducted their conference, the published outcome of which was the Atlantic Charter.  (p.9)

So begins H V Morton’s…