Utopia, you are standing in it!

Green blob [credit: storybird.com]
The Manhattan Institute reckons: ‘By 2050, with current plans, the quantity of worn-out solar panels—much of it nonrecyclable—will constitute double the tonnage of all today’s global plastic waste, along with over 3 million tons per year of unrecyclable plastics from worn-out wind turbine blades. By 2030, more than 10 million tons per year of batteries will become garbage.’

Before then, all that future waste has to be manufactured, largely from mined materials. Is the world ready for this?
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You think those baby unicorns grow on trees? Better think again, says Michael Walsh @ The Pipeline.

“Green” energy, in fact, comes with a very high price tag as this report from the Manhattan Institute makes clear.

As policymakers have shifted focus from pandemic challenges to economic recovery, infrastructure plans are once more being actively discussed, including those relating to energy.

(The evacuation of the wounded from the Battle of Hue` in February, 1968)

For those who enjoyed Mark Bowden’s works such as BLACK HAWK DOWN, GUESTS OF THE AYYATOLLAH, and KILLING PABLO, his new book HUE`, 1968 should be prove to be just as satisfying, if not more.  Bowden relies on the same assiduous research, exemplified by his interviews with all sides of the conflict; American Marines and decision makers, North Vietnamese soldiers and commanders, in addition to civilians caught in the conflict.  Bowden’s fluid writing style along with his in depth knowledge of what transpired in Hue` has created the preeminent account of the 1968 Tet offensive, concentrating on the seizure of the ancient city of Hue`, and the American/ARVN (South Vietnamese) retaking of the city that came at an extremely high cost in terms of casualties and treasure.

Bowden zeroes in on the major players in…

Reports of the ‘death’ of coal have been greatly exaggerated, with the economic powerhouses of Asia – China, Japan and India – building new plants hand over fist.

The pattern across Asia is unmistakable; unreliable wind and solar have been snubbed in favour of coal-fired power plants, with new nuclear plants running a close second.

Don Dears takes a look at the resurgence of coal as the power source of choice in any country serious about delivering reliable and affordable electricity to businesses and households.

Don’t Ignore Coal
Power for USA
Donn Dears
14 July 2020

Don’t ignore coal. Other countries aren’t.

In fact, the new high efficiency low emission (HELE), ultra-supercritical coal-fired power plants are being built in China, Japan, India, and elsewhere.

These power plants operate at very high temperatures and pressures, with an efficiency of 45% HHV. This compares with the existing fleet of coal-fired power plants in…

Oy! I barely started reading Robin DiAngelo’s White Fragility, to the detriment of my digestive system, when I learn that there’s another equally well known antiracist book out there, one that’s just been reviewed by John McWhorter at Education Next. To be sure, he says it is “the better of the two big antiracism bestsellers,” but hardly gives it a ringing endorsement. But I suppose that all of us who are liberals, committed to equal opportunity for all, and eager to understand the antiracist currents of society that have gone ballistic since the murder of George Floyd, should read both of them.

Click on the screenshot to read McWhorter’s review, and you can find Kendi’s book on Amazon here. (For some reason the paperback, which comes in large print only, costs ten bucks more than the hardcover.) You can read more about Ibram X. Kendi here.

(Doolittle and his crew were the first off the deck of the Hornet. L to R: Lt. Henry A. Potter, Lt. Col. James H. Doolittle, SSgt. Fred A. Braemer, Lt. Richard Cole, SSgt. Paul J. Leonard.)

The shock of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor the morning of December 7, 1941 left Americans calling for revenge for the 2,403 Americans who were killed, and over 1000 wounded.    Eighteen ships were sunk or run aground, including five battleships. All of the Americans killed or wounded during the attack were legally non-combatants, given that there was no state of war when the attack occurred.  The American response came in the form of the Doolittle Raid on April 18, 1942 as sixteen B-25 “Billy Mitchell Army bombers” were launched without fighter escort from the U.S. Navy’s aircraft carrier USS Hornet deep in the Western Pacific Ocean, each with a crew of five men. The…

By Tim Graham ~

An MSNBC producer for Last Word with Lawrence O’Donnell left the network in dramatic fashion on Monday, writing a harshly critical open letter on her personal website.

“July 24th was my last day at MSNBC. I don’t know what I’m going to do next exactly but I simply couldn’t stay there anymore,” Ariana Pekary wrote on her personal website. “My colleagues are very smart people with good intentions. The problem is the job itself. It forces skilled journalists to make bad decisions on a daily basis.”

She then quoted an anonymous “successful and insightful TV veteran” who said: “We are a cancer and there is no cure… But if you could find a cure, it would change the world.”

As it is, this cancer stokes national division, even in the middle of a civil rights crisis. The model blocks diversity of thought and content because the networks…

For those still reaching to raise their bat for a half century the Erebus disaster is a relic of history that happened over forty years ago, like the Wahine Ferry sinking after hitting rocks at the entrance to Wellington Harbour another decade earlier also labelled a disaster both events had more rumour than fact about cause and blame. With potential costs to central government corporates spent considerable effort to obscure what happened. With Erebus it was simpler with both the Pilot and his Right seat companion both dead it was not long before Pilot Error gained currency as the Cause.

Because over two hundred and fifty perished on the slopes of Mt Erebus the Government was eventually in the position of reluctantly creating a Royal Commission to investigate. Of course that action is normally set up with terms of reference as to what the government wants as an outcome and…

Irish wind farm [image credit: RTG @ Wikipedia]
Climate virtue signalling comes back to bite vote-chasing politicians, who expected they could dump many of the potentially unpopular decisions on taxes and spending arising from their 2015 law onto a later government. They now have to lay out plans for the next 30 years, long after their mandate to govern.
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Judges ruled the government’s national mitigation plan fell “well short” of what was needed to meet Ireland’s climate commitments, ordering a more ambitious strategy, as Climate Home News reports.

The Irish government has been ordered to take more aggressive action on climate change, following a ruling by the country’s top judges.

In a judgment published today [31/07/2020], the supreme court said Ireland’s existing emission cutting plans fell “well short” of what was required to meet its climate commitments and must be replaced with a more ambitious strategy.

By Pei Gao (NYU Shanghai) & Eric B. Schneider (LSE)

The full article from this blog is forthcoming in the Economic History Review and is currently available on Early View.

HMS Indefatigable with HMS Diadem (1898) in the Gulf of St. Lawrence 1901. Available at Wikimedia Commons.

Since the mid-nineteenth century, the average height of adult British men increased by 11 centimetres. This increase in final height reflects improvements in living standards and health, and provides insights on the growth pattern of children which has been comparatively neglected. Child growth is very sensitive to economic and social conditions: children with limited nutrition or who suffer from chronic disease, grow more slowly than healthy children. Thus, to achieve such a large increase in adult height, health conditions must have improved dramatically for children since the mid-nineteenth century.

Our paper seeks to understand how child growth changed over time…

Last week and with another hat of mine on I was engaged on some case work for the Ministry of Social Development. The departmental officials I was working with were bemoaning the dearth of private rental accommodation in Northland. They said there was an increasing trend that saw private landlords selling up and exiting the market.

And then over at Kiwiblog today a guest post on the Residential Tenancies Amendment Bill being pushed through parliament this week under urgency so I decided to have a look at the Bill. You can access it at http://legislation.govt.nz/bill/government/2020/0218/latest/LMS294929.html Two observations …

Clause 36 amends Section 51 of the principal Act and provides that a landlord may only seek to terminate a tenancy if the tenant has been in at least five working days in arrears the rent over three separate occasions in a period of 90 days.

Clause 37 inserts a new Section…

Having lost the un-loseable election in May last year, an angry rump of Labor backbenchers is keen to ditch the party’s suicidal renewable energy policies, with a view to recovering the ground they lost trying to win the sandalista vote in the inner city goat’s cheese circle.

Australia’s economic future depends, in no small part, on getting the ALP to decouple itself from the lunatic fringes of the hard-green left, and to start thinking about reliable and affordable power, of the kind that fuels industry growth and jobs.

Whatever policies are directed at recovering from the coronavirus lockdown, without reliable and affordable power Australia’s energy hungry businesses are doomed. With rocketing power prices, and an intermittent supply, mineral processors and manufacturers are terminal, and have been for years.

Politicians and academic boffins have been giving lip service to improving Australia’s “resilience” and “self-sufficiency”, resulting in the renaissance of Australian…