Utopia, you are standing in it!

Below, please find my opening statement. You can find my full written testimony here in PDF.

Chairman Brown, Ranking Member Toomey and the entire committee,

Thank you for the opportunity to share my perspectives today remotely.

I am a professor at the University of Colorado Boulder and I have studied the use of science in policy for more than 25 years, including a long-term focus on climate.

Unfortunately, key scientific guidance on climate that informs policy– including central bank climate stress testing and U.S. government estimates of the social cost of carbon – has departed from basic standards of scientific integrity.

A main reason for this departure is that climate science has increasingly been enlisted in support of policy advocacy rather than to inform policy debates and decisions.

Today I Have Five Points to Make

FIRST, I emphasize that human-caused climate change is real, it poses significant risks, and…

Leopold III (November 3, 1901 – September 25, 1983) was King of the Belgians from 1934 until 1951. On the outbreak of World War II, Leopold tried to maintain Belgian neutrality, but after the German invasion in May 1940, he surrendered his country, earning him much hostility, both at home and abroad.

Prince Leopold was born in Brussels, the first child of Prince Albert, Duke of Brabant, heir to the Belgian throne, and his consort, Duchess Elisabeth in Bavaria. In 1909 his father became King of the Belgians, as Albert I, and Prince Leopold became Duke of Brabant

In August 1914, when Belgium was invaded by Germany, King Albert allowed Leopold, then aged twelve, to enlist in the Belgian Army as a private and fight in defence of the kingdom. However, in 1915, with Belgium almost entirely occupied by the Germans, Leopold was sent to join Eton College, while his…

The penny is starting to drop for the anti-fossil fuel squad: reliance on chaotically unreliable wind and solar guarantees dependence on fossil fuel.

No bad thing in our view, mind you.

The wind and solar acolyte started out believing that coal was already dead as the dodo and gas would soon follow. However, already 20 years into our ‘inevitable transition’ to an all wind and sun powered future, nothing could be further from the truth.

Indeed – in a ‘drats and curses’ moment for fossil fuel haters – the future for gas producers has never looked rosier.

Sudden and unpredictable collapses in wind and solar output, are increasingly being met by fast start-up diesel and/or gas generators, whether using Open Cycle Gas Turbines or giant ship engines.

They call it “backup”, as if wind and solar were like a car in need of an occasional push start. But, in…

I am passionate about Music, especially Rock. One of my favourite bands is Kiss. When we hear one of their songs on the radio, songs like “I was made for loving you” or “World without heroes” we just sit back and enjoy and don’t give it a seconc thought.

However these songs and so many of their other classics , may have never been written or composed. The two lead men of Kiss Gene Simmons(aka Gene Klein and Chaim Witz) and Paul Stanley (aka Stanley Bert Eisen) are both lucky they were born.

Paul’s both parents are Jewish. He was the second of two children. His mother came from a family that fled Nazi Germany to Amsterdam, Netherlands, and then to New York City. His father’s parents were from Poland.

His mother was born in Berlin, Germany on November 16, 1923. and fled the Nazi uprising she lived for a…

Lady Jane Grey (1536 or 1537 – February 12, 1554), later known as Lady Jane Dudley (after her marriage) and as the “Nine Days’ Queen”, was an English noblewoman who claimed the throne of England and Ireland from July 10 until July 19, 1553.

Jane was the great granddaughter of Henry VII through his younger daughter Mary, and was a first cousin once removed of Edward VI. She had an excellent humanist education and a reputation as one of the most learned young women of her day. In May 1553, she married Lord Guildford Dudley, a younger son of Edward’s chief minister John Dudley, Duke of Northumberland.

In June 1553, Edward VI wrote his will, nominating Jane and her male heirs as successors to the Crown, in part because his half-sister Mary was Catholic, while Jane was a committed Protestant and would support the reformed Church of England, whose foundation…

Germany’s wind power transition has hit the wall: rural Germans are sick and tired of the noise, ruined landscapes and communities; and Germans of all persuasions are fed up with Europe’s highest power prices, which continue to rocket as a consequence of its so-called ‘renewable energy transition’ aka the ‘Energiewende’.

Thanks to massive subsidies and mandated targets, over 30,000 of these things have been speared into every last corner of Deutschland. But, as the team from Jo Nova explain below, the backlash against industrial wind power has brought the German wind industry to a shuddering halt.

Wind power “headed for disaster” in Germany
Jo Nova Blog
Jo Nova
1 July 2021

Is this the future of wind all over the world?

The salad days of wind power in Germany are over. Bad news is rolling in from several directions. Twenty years of hope-n-subsidies has run aground. Profits are grinding down…

Philosophical Liberalism

By Bertrand Russell

(This is Chapter XII of Part I, Book Three of History of Western Philosophy, 1945. Transcribed by Jeffrey Ketland, May 2005.)

————

The rise of liberalism, in politics and philosophy, provides material for the study of a very general and very important question, namely: What has been the general influence of political and social circumstances upon the thoughts of eminent and original thinkers, and, conversely, what has been the influence of these men upon subsequent political and social developments?

Two opposite errors, both common are to be guarded against. On the one hand, men who are more familiar with books than with affairs are apt to over-estimate the influence of philosophers. When they see some political party proclaiming itself inspired by So-and-so’s teaching, they think its actions are attributable to So-and-So, whereas, not infrequently, the philosopher is only acclaimed because he recommends what the…

Countless $billions are being squandered on subsidies to unreliable wind and solar, every single day. Wind and solar power don’t run on sunshine and breezes, they run on a seemingly endless stream of subsidies – without which, we simply wouldn’t be having this discussion.

The merest hint threat of a cut to the subsidies sends rent-seekers into apoplexy and ‘investors’ running for the exit.

The damage done to power grid is and electricity markets is as perfectly predictable, as it was perfectly avoidable.

Alan Moran details the disaster that is Australia’s renewable energy subsidy scam, below.

Why don’t we hear about the $40,000 per household cost of decarbonisation?
Spectator Australia
Alan Moran
25 June 2021

The Irish Times reports that an IMF study of Ireland estimates that the nation will need to spend 20 billion euros a year – or five per cent of GDP – to meet its 2050…