Utopia, you are standing in it!

Shohreh Bayat is an Iranian chess master and an arbiter, or trainer, for FIDE, the international chess organization. Here’s her FIDE profile, in which she wears the obligatory hijab (click on screenshot to see more information on the profile):

But it’s that hijab, or rather the lack thereof, that got her into trouble, but also shows us that she’s one of those brave Iranian women who fights their government’s sexist laws.

Bayat describes what happened to her in this poignant article in the Washington Post (if you’re paywalled, copies are available via judicious inquiry).

Bayat loved chess but also was losing her faith in Islam. And she didn’t want to wear the hijab, which of course is obligatory in Iran, but is also obligatory for women representing Iran overseas. It wound up putting her at odds with her government’s chess federation. As she writes:

When traveling abroad for chess tournaments…

Our new paper on IPCC scenarios is now posted as a preprint. Details below and I have summarized it in a new column at Forbes.

Burgess, M. G., Ritchie, J., Shapland, J., & Pielke, R., Jr. (2020, February 18). IPCC baseline scenarios over-project CO2 emissions and economic growth. https://doi.org/10.31235/osf.io/ahsxw SocArXiv

Abstract

Scenarios used by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) are central to climate science and policy. A recent Nature commentary found observed trends and International Energy Agency (IEA) projections of global CO2 emissions substantially diverging from high-emission scenarios such as RCP8.5, which are often treated as equivalent to ‘business as usual’ in climate research and assessment. Here, we quantify the bases for this divergence by comparing “baseline” (or “no policy”) scenario projections of key fossil-fuel CO2 emission drivers to observations from 2005-2017, and also to projections through 2040 from world energy outlooks. We find most of…

I’m not a big fan of “feminist science”—the idea (promulgated by people like Evelyn Fox Keller and Sandra Harding) that women’s psychology gives them unique insights into nature and unique ways to study it.  But I am a fan of “feminist science criticism”: the idea that women can sometimes point out male biases in research strategies and in the interpretation of scientific results.  And a prime example of feminist criticism is on offer this week on Slate.  Three of its columnists have taken on evolutionary psychology, using as a springboard the Slate article by Jesse Bering that I wrote about a few days ago.

As you recall, Bering highlighted a number of “scientific” studies purporting to show that women have a genetic “rape kit”: an evolved set of behavioral modules that act only during ovulation to reduce the possibility of rape.  These behaviors include increased grip strength, avoidance…

By Larry Bell ~

As we all recognize, access to clean and reliable energy is fundamentally important to countless aspects of our lives, our social and economic communities, and our long-term abilities to live in healthy balance with natural ecosystems.

So, this being the case, can we expect a new so-called “clean energy revolution” — primarily referring to wind and solar — to replace the “dirty old” hydrocarbon industries?

For example, like what happened when hydrocarbon-fueled internal combustion horsepower disrupted buggy whip businesses of the early 1900s — and when flip-phone makers lost out at the dawn of Apple’s iPhone?

Don’t count on such reality-challenged notions regarding hydrocarbon obsolescence occurring anytime soon.

No current energy technology on the immediate horizon has a game-changing potential anywhere nearly analogous to the truly revolutionary invention of the transistor or internet.

Nor, for that matter, has any so-called “alternative” energy source or invention supplanted…

Shouting match?
Is the political element of the climate change debate taking over from the science factors? That seems to be the implication of the opinion piece reported on here.

An excellent new meme has entered the climate change debate thanks to David Harsanyi, writing in The Federalist. In his article he articulates why wide acceptance of catastrophic climate change is failing to manifest: because it comes along with an enormous amount of left wing baggage. He summarises it as ‘leftist malware’.

For those not familiar, ‘malware’ is a term used to describe software that is often harmful or intrusive and usually installs itself on your computer without your consent or knowledge. I can’t think of a better metaphor that captures the essential noxiousness of the climate change movement so neatly.

I’m still a bit under the weather with an incipient cold, but I’m taking zinc lozenges, which do have some science behind them supporting the claim that zinc shortens the duration and severity of colds. At any rate, since I’ve used them I haven’t had a full-on cold for several years. (A confounding factor: I also wash my hands a lot more.) All this is by way of explaining why I don’t have the energy to brain today.

But I will call your attention to three articles on evolutionary psychology that you may want to read.

About 15 years ago, I was known as a critic of evolutionary psychology, mainly because, along with Andrew Berry, I went after what I saw as bad science promulgated in a book about rape being an adaptation (see also here; copy of my New Republic piece available through judicious inquiry). In those pieces…

Labor – aka the ‘Workers Party’ – remains determined to destroy whole industries and thousands of jobs with a 50% RET and a giant ‘carbon’ tax. Business and job destroying policies that helped it comfortably lose the ‘unloseable’ Federal election in May, and which its deluded front bench simply can’t bear to let go.

Australian industry has been a protected species since the Victorian gold rush in the 1850s, cosseted behind an insurmountable wall of tariffs and propped up with subsidies. As the tariffs and subsidies to industries – such as motor manufacturing, clothing and footwear – were slashed in the 1990s, hundreds of businesses and entire industries have disappeared.

Nowadays, mining, manufacturing and mineral processing are being treated by politicians as a class of mangy vermin – fit only for urgent eradication – with a raft of utterly insane energy policies which threaten thousands of small and large businesses…

In yesterday’s Sunday Star-Times another article by their reporter Kate MacNamara shed further light on just how unsuited Adrian Orr is to be Governor of the Reserve Bank, exercising huge public policy and regulatory power still (in large chunks of the Bank’s responsibilities, often with crisis dimensions to them) as sole decisionmaker, with few/no effective checks and balances.  These disclosures should also raise serious questions about the judgement and diligence of the Board who were primarily responsible for Orr’s appointment and are primarily responsible for holding him to account, and of the Minister of Finance who formally appointed Orr, and is responsible now for both him and for the Board.

In this latest in her series of articles, MacNamara draws on the responses to one of several Official Information Act requests she had lodged late last year.  She had sought from the Bank copies of communications between the Governor and…

While one should never consider a possible public health pandemic or human suffering as a good thing, the recent public concern about the COVID-19 coronavirus outbreak has provided us with some positive lessons on risk communications and public health management. While COVID-19 will not in all likelihood be the global pandemic health officials have been preparing us for, it has proven to be a useful “practice run”.

While I suspect this article may be too soon for those feeding from the lucrative trough of alarmism and the need to compulsively resort to precautionary measures, there have been many valuable learnings from this one-month public health exercise.

Here are the Risk-Monger’s Top Ten Good Things about COVID-19.

1. Increased public awareness on hygiene

“Regularly wash your hands … well.” … “Avoid touching objects like door handles, handrails, money, buttons and other people’s mobile phones.” … “Shaking…

Australia’s self-inflicted wind and solar calamity has just got serious; very serious.

Managing electricity grids is a finely balanced affair, requiring the ability to control what goes in and what goes out on a second-by-second basis.

The generation and distribution of electricity was relatively simple when synchronous, dispatchable conventional generation sources (in Australia, coal, gas and hydro) were the only game in town. Now, however, the erratic and chaotic and occasional delivery of large volumes of intermittent wind and solar has put paid to old certainties, and left grid managers struggling to prevent a complete grid collapse.

In this post STT takes a look at a brewing disaster waiting to happen. Precisely what the site has been predicting the best part of seven years.

The first article comes from the Australian Financial Review, which has been a very solid platform for wind and solar industry propaganda over the last decade…