Utopia, you are standing in it!

Credit: University of Liverpool / National Oceanography Centre (Liverpool branch)
The graph looks consistent with mild warming following the Little Ice Age. About 30 cms. or 1 foot of sea level rise in 130 years since 1890 is nothing remarkable. The average duration of solar cycles was longer in the 19th century than in the 20th but that trend is reversing now, with a lot more sunspot-free days per cycle. Climatic effects may follow.
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A study published by University of Liverpool scientists, alongside colleagues from the Liverpool branch of the National Oceanography Centre, has uncovered and analyzed new sea level records from the nineteenth century which show that the increased rate of the rise of British sea level took place from 1890 onwards, says Phys.org.

Nowadays, sea level measurements around the British Isles are made by tide gauges which record digitally and transmit the data automatically.

Prime   Minister  Jacinda  Ardern has admitted  to   the  NZ Herald’s  Claire Trevett  that ”Covid  is  constantly in my mind”.

In an interview  at the weekend, extending  over two pages of  the newspaper, Trevett observed:

“Ardern is  now  very confident in her Prime Ministerial  skin. There is  nothing  tentative  about her  leadership.

“She has admitted suffering from a  touch of self  doubt in the past— but if she, or others, ever thought  she  was  not up  to the  job, the  past year has  dispelled  it  completely. There  is  also optimism in her.”

Trevett  went  on to  assert –

“The  most recent  community cases have been dealt  with, with limited  disruption  to people’s  lives” .

On  that, there  may be  a  question mark.  The  interview  appeared   the  very day  another  community Covid case had  led to  a fourth lockdown of  Auckland.  The  decision had been taken by  Cabinet  on Saturday  afternoon …

Meet the new boss, same as the old boss. Brits are already paying the price for its suicidal renewable energy policies. Under ‘Bonkers’ Boris that price will be positively murderous. His plan to squander a further £50,000,000,000 on subsidies and over-the-market contracts for intermittent offshore wind power beggars belief. And will turn many on the lower rungs into beggars, proper.

Every good socialist reset requires a healthy dose of positive propaganda; especially those involving state-mandated crony capitalism. Which is where Britain’s energy miss-regulator, Ofgem comes in.

Packed with policy wonks and wind industry rent seekers, it’s an outfit as practised in the art of subterfuge as Sherlock Holmes’ arch-nemesis, Moriarty.

The Global Warming Policy Forum launches a Holmes-like attack on Ofgem’s latest effort to keep Brits in the dark as to what’s driving their power prices through the roof.

Ofgem condemned for misleading the public about energy price rises
The…

I very much enjoy political satire, so I appreciate that some topics create endless opportunities for mockery

• Politicians
• Gun control
• Socialism

Heck, I even have a collection of libertarian-themed humor.

Today, we’re going to share some examples of environmentalism humor, starting with this clever (and surprising, considering the source) video from the BBC.

Speaking of Ms. Thunberg, she also is the star of the following meme (she’s also appeared in one of my columns on socialism humor).

The theme of that meme, as well as the one that follows, is that some environmentalists don’t understand that there are costs and benefits for different sources of energy.

And that makes them susceptible to charges of “virtue signalling” and hypocrisy (and maybe ignorance).

P.S. I don’t have a big collection of environment-themed humor, but you can click here, here, here, here, and here for previous examples.

The news on Friday was Biden signing another order, this one restoring the so-called “Social Cost of Carbon” to Obama’s $51 a ton, along with threats to raise it up to $125 a ton.  The whole notion is an exercise in imagination for the sake of adding regulatory costs to everything involving energy,  that is to everything.  A background post below describes the history of how this ruse started and the manipulations and arbitrary assumptions to gin up a number high enough to hobble the economy.

Background from 2018 post: US House Votes Down Social Cost of Carbon

The House GOP on Friday took a step forward in reining in the Obama administration’s method of assessing the cost of carbon dioxide pollution when developing regulations.

The House voted 212-201, along party lines, to include a rider blocking the use of the climate change cost metric to an energy and water…

Not content with depriving the poor of electricity, the climate-industrial complex is determined to “break their will” to heat their hovels and drive their beat up Chevies.

Apparently, the punishment meted out by renewables driven power price hikes wasn’t enough to break their selfish mettle.

Massachusetts Governor, Charlie Baker is a card-carrying member of the climate cult, as is his ever-faithful sidekick, David Ismay.

In a moment of telling candour, Ismay dropped all pretense when he informed a group of fellow travellers engaged in a videoconference that – in order meet Massachusetts’ zero-emissions target – the State’s real target is:

“you, the person across the street, the senior on fixed income, right … there is no bad guy left, at least in Massachusetts to point the finger at, to turn the screws on, and you know, to break their will, so they stop emitting. That’s you. We have to break…

So-called ‘progressives’ are long on moral posturing, but short on human compassion. Enamoured with costly wind and solar, and determined to outlaw every last reliable power source, they couldn’t care less about the inevitable spike in power prices that follows, that disproportionately punishes the least fortunate souls among us.

Letting granny freeze in the dark is a sacrifice that the renewable energy zealot is always ready to make. It’s all about saving the planet, don’t you know?

As broadband Internet took off a decade ago, policy wonks talked about a ‘digital divide’ between rich and poor.

These days – with the recent emergence of ‘energy poverty’ amongst first world nations – a growing proportion won’t have power at all and, accordingly, no hope of connecting their dimly lit homes to the Internet, either.

Where policymakers once saw electricity as a commodity to be provided universally, a literal beacon of light…

Prussia was for many centuries a major power in north-central Europe, based around the cities of Berlin and Königsberg, and rose to particular prominence during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Following its victory in the Austro-Prussian War, Prussia became the driving force in creating a German Empire that excluded Austria (a Kleindeutsches Reich) and in 1871 King Wilhelm I of Prussia became German Emperor.

Following the First World War, after the abdication of German Emperor Wilhelm II who was also King of Prussia and the abolition of the Monarchy, the new Free State of Prussia bore most of Germany’s territorial losses but remained the dominant state of the Weimar Republic. During the Nazi era, the states of the Weimar Republic remained but were sidelined. Following World War II almost all of Germany’s territorial losses were from areas that had been part of Prussia.

Prussia was abolished…

Debbie Ngarewa-Packer’s parents – according to a report in Stuff – delivered some strong mantra to live by.  One of them: “Don’t accept, you push back, be provocative, but always be respectful.”

But what happens when political opponents don’t accept, push back and  – dare we suggest it? – are a mite provocative?

Why, you interrupt their speech and complain you have taken offence as tangata whenua.

Debbie Ngarewa-Packer, of course, is the Maori Party co-leader who now sits in Parliament promoting a political agenda that promotes the interests of Maori.

She has an aptitude for spicing her rhetoric with hyperbole while championing their cause:

“I stand here as a descendant of a people who survived a Holocaust, a genocide, sponsored by this House and members of Parliament whose portraits still hang from the walls.

The aforementioned Stuff report notes she stood for and was elected to the South Taranaki…

The agreement reached between the UK and the EU is as good a deal as we were ever likely to get. I will leave others to comment in detail on the legal and technical aspects, but here are five key points (my personal views) on the economics.

First, it important to be clear about the ‘counterfactual’, or what would have happened if a deal had not been done. Opponents of Brexit like to use a rosy view of continued EU membership as their benchmark. But that ship has long since sailed, if it ever existed at all. It makes far more sense to compare the new agreements to the alternative of ‘no deal’. On that basis this outcome is a clear win.

Leaving with what most agree is a ‘fair and balanced’ deal is undoubtedly good for consumer and business confidence. It provides a much-needed boost to the credibility of…

I have often disagreed with the views of University of Chicago Professor John Cochrane over the paste five years. However, his latest oped in the Wall Street Journal is spot on.

In the oped Cochrane questions the rational for the increasingly common view that central banks should pursue “macroprudential” policies to reduce the risks in the financial sector.

This is Cochrane:

Interest rates make the headlines, but the Federal Reserve’s most important role is going to be the gargantuan systemic financial regulator. The really big question is whether and how the Fed will pursue a “macroprudential” policy. This is the emerging notion that central banks should intensively monitor the whole financial system and actively intervene in a broad range of markets toward a wide range of goals including financial and economic stability.

For example, the Fed is urged to spot developing “bubbles,” “speculative excesses” and “overheated” markets, and then stop…