Utopia, you are standing in it!

The New Zealand Government’s “go hard, go early” response to the COVID-19 pandemic has garnered widespread praise – both in New Zealand and internationally. On March 25, less than four weeks after New Zealand’s first COVID case was diagnosed, the country was put into a state of “Level 4 Lockdown”, reducing social and economic life to a bare minimum. Everyone was instructed to stay at home, except for limited “essential” purposes (in short, supermarket shopping, essential medical treatment, and brief localised exercise such as a walk or a run). All businesses were closed, except for those providing “essential” services. Physical proximity to those not in a person’s residential “bubble” was prohibited.

These measures undoubtedly have been effective, with the country now on a path to eliminate the virus. For that reason, it is perhaps not surprising that discussion of their legal status has been muted. Nevertheless, questions surrounding…

Wind & solar ‘transition’ one giant snow job.

Germany may have led the charge, but other European states merrily followed its suicidal attempt to run on sunshine and breezes. The results have been an unmitigated disaster.

Renewable energy zealots keep telling us that wind and solar are free and getting cheaper all the time. Germany puts paid to that lie: Renewable Energy Transition: Wind & Solar Obsession Leaves Germans Suffering the World’s Highest Power Prices

And, with a looming capacity crunch, Germans will be lucky to have power at all, at any price.

Adding insult to injury, German power prices continue to surge (again) and Germans can expect more blackouts and load shedding as their grid groans under the burden of its suicidal attempt to run on chaotically intermittent wind and solar.

And the symptoms of Germany’s obsession with wind and solar are clearly contagious, as the disease spreads and leaves…

From thehill.com

The tragedy of the COVID-19 pandemic appears to be entering the containment phase. Tens of thousands of Americans have died, and Americans are now desperate for sensible policymakers who have the courage to ignore the panic and rely on facts. Leaders must examine accumulated data to see what has actually happened, rather than keep emphasizing hypothetical projections; combine that empirical evidence with fundamental principles of biology established for decades; and then thoughtfully restore the country to function.

Five key facts are being ignored by those calling for continuing the near-total lockdown.

Fact 1: The overwhelming majority of people do not have any significant risk of dying from COVID-19.

The recent Stanford University antibody study now estimates that the fatality rate if infected is likely 0.1 to 0.2 percent, a risk far lower than previous World Health Organization estimates that were 20 to 30 times higher and that motivated isolation policies.

The U.S. news media have scarcely distinguished themselves in reporting the coronavirus pandemic that has killed more than 54,000 Americans since spreading from Wuhan, China, early this year. Criticism abounds about the substance and tone of the media’s reporting.

Not surprisingly, a Gallup poll late last month ranked the media last among American leaders and institutions in their response to the coronavirus.

Watergate myth will never die

Even amid a pandemic, peddling media myths — those prominent stories about and/or by the media that are widely believed and often retold but which, under scrutiny, dissolve as apocryphal — has proven irresistible to some news outlets.

Familiar media myths about the presumptive “Cronkite Moment” of 1968, the exaggerated influence of the “Napalm Girl” photograph of 1972, and the hero-journalist trope of the Watergate scandal all have circulated in recent weeks.

Their appearance signals not only…

The following is a guest planting by Dr. Yuhui Li. I suggested Dr. Li draft something for this blog about his recently published book. (Note: I was the Ph.D. committee chair for Huey at UC Davis.)

You can buy the book by clicking here, and taking advantage of a discount! You can get 30% off by entering the code, UMCYCLING (for a limited time).

I’m grateful that Matthew offers to post this introduction of my book Dividing the Rulers: How Majority Cycling Saves Democracy. I hope it may interest some fellow political scientists.

The initial thought about the project originated from a debate I had years ago on Chinese social media regarding the choice of political systems. It appeared to me that many people were skeptical about the idea of democracy out of the fear that the majority, at least in theory, could be as tyrannical as individual dictators…

Andrew Cuomo: when one disaster is barely enough.

With the coronavirus pandemic laying them to waste, New Yorkers have plenty to worry about. Now their power supply is under threat, thanks to their wind and solar obsessed Governor, Andrew Cuomo.

At Indian Point (situated north of New York City) nuclear power plants have been providing safe, reliable and affordable electricity 24 x7 to New Yorkers since 1962.

In an astonishing move, Cuomo has determined to progressively shutdown both of the plants, with a combined capacity of 2,069 MW, on the delusional premise that he can replace what he destroys with wind and solar backed up by gas ‘peakers’ – highly inefficient open cycle gas turbines, which are basically jet engines strapped to generators.

The wind cult and renewable energy rent seekers are, of course, delighted with the outcome. However, as Robert Bryce points out, New Yorkers can look forward to…

In 2005, Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans in the US state of Louisiana. The hurricane caused enormous material destruction and about 2,000 people perished.

While Katrina obviously cannot be compared to Covid19 in terms material devastation and death it nonetheless is comparable in terms of the sudden the “shutdown” of the economy.

Katrina was a very clear case of a supply shock. Production facilities were simply shut down. And in the same way as today, it happened from one day to the next.

But nothing really had happened to the fundamentals of the economy – this to a large extent is also the case in terms of the Covid19 around the world.

Katrina was a huge, but very short-lived economic shock

If we look at how things were going for Louisiana’s economy in 2005-6, then you will see that in economic terms, it was a huge negative shock, but the…

NASA’s MSU satellite measurement systems, generate the RSS and UAH datasets, which measure the average temperature of every cubic inch of the lower atmosphere (0-10 kms), which happens to be the exact place where anthropogenic global warming is meant to occur, according to anthropogenic global warming theory.

AUS MAY TEMPS -0.4C BELOW AVERAGE

UAH temperature anomaly for May was almost half a degree centigrade (-0.4C) below the 4o year average!

AUSTRALIA Lower Troposheric Temperature Anomaly 1978-2018

SATELLITES Vs LAND TEMPS

SATELLITES have the obvious benefit of measuring only the atmosphere and the effect that carbon dioxide emissions may be having on the atmosphere. Satellite data is not polluted by UHI (Urban Heat Island effect) – artificial heat generated from city infrastructure; asphalt carparks, airpots, highways, AC vents etc.

UHI (Urban Heat Island effect)

TONY Heller did a survey of the ten oldest stations in New South Wales And Victoria, circled below. Three rural…

This excellent article was contributed by New Zealand journalist Peter Drew who is clearly concerned & wants the word out. Please do share it far & wide. EWR

NOTE: the article has had over 10K views since posting … & 2.5K FB shares. It’s pleasing to see that many Kiwis are awake to what is going down.

By Peter Drew

Jacinda Adern

Prime Minister – New Zealand

Dear Jacinda,

I write this letter as a patriotic Kiwi with best intentions for my country and for the future health and welfare of my fellow Kiwis. You have a very difficult job at this moment in time. There can be no doubt about that.

There is a famous saying. “The first casualty of war is the truth”. Well, from what we are seeing around the world, the first casualty of a pandemic is not only the truth, but also rational thinking. That…

It’s time for libertarian wonkery! My friend Jeremy posted a link to libertarian philosopher Robert Nozick’s Tale of the Slave on Facebook and I guess most of his Facebook friends are not libertarians as it stirred up a bunch of controversy.

If you haven’t read it I’d recommend doing so. It’s only about a two minute read. But nonetheless I will summarize it here.

Nozick starts by describing a typical case of slavery and then in subsequent steps modifies the terms of the slavery to be slightly less bad than the previous step. After a handful of modifications he ends up at representative democracy and asks “At which step did this become no longer a tale of a slave?”.

The intuitive response you’re supposed to have is that it never really stopped being a tale of a slave. The only difference is a matter of degree. This is reminiscent of…

(1918 Spanish Flu Epidemic)

As I sit at my desk and examine the latest Covid-19 statistics and fantasize about what might have occurred had the Trump administration carried out its constitutional duties to care for American citizens instead of fomenting a civil war against democratic governors and denying their role in the current pandemic I am appalled and overwhelmed.  At this moment there are 927,000 cases of people testing positive for the virus in the United States out of 2,790,000 worldwide.  The death rate is 52,400 in the U.S. out of 196,000 worldwide, and each day we add thousands to the total.  Words like mitigation, social distancing, ventilators, and numerous others have entered our everyday vocabulary.  The questions that pervade the news are when we will “open up” the country? what happens if we do it too fast? and what will happen if each state goes its own way?  Writer…