Utopia, you are standing in it!

Credit: Coal India Limited
As the COP 25 summit ends in disarray, all attempts to stoke up fears of a man-made ‘climate crisis’ are not going well, in some parts of the world at least. Hard to see developing countries turning away from reliable and affordable energy any time soon.

The demand for coal will remain steady over the next four years due to demand from Asia, which comes despite fears of the climate crisis, the International Energy Agency (IEA) said Tuesday.

Coastal areas across Southeast Asia have already seen major floods and seawater incursion linked to climate change, claims Phys.org.

“Global coal demand has rebounded since 2017,” the IEA said in a report.

As readers are no doubt well aware the BBC rarely, if ever, passes up on an opportunity to remind its audiences that certain geographical areas appearing in its coverage are “occupied territories” or “occupied Palestinian land” and that “settlements are illegal under international law”. The BBC’s ‘style guide’ on “Israel and the Palestinians” has instructions for its journalists on the topic – including:

“Israel occupied East Jerusalem in 1967. A law in 1980 formalised an administrative measure tantamount to the annexation of land taken as a result of the 1967 War. The claim to East Jerusalem is not recognised internationally. Instead, under international law, East Jerusalem is considered to be occupied territory. […]

The BBC should say East Jerusalem is ‘occupied’ if it is relevant to the context of the story. For example: “Israel has occupied East Jerusalem since 1967. It annexed the area in 1980 and sees it as its…

Here are key quotes from leaders, experts and activists on the UN Climate Change Conference (COP25) outcome.

Antonio Guterres, UN secretary general

“I am disappointed with the results of COP25. The international community lost an important opportunity to show increased ambition on mitigation, adaptation and finance to tackle the climate crisis.”

Each evening the nightly news seems to zero in on another story that relates to the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS).  We are bombarded with border crossings into Syria from Turkey, the state of the effort by Iraqi forces to retake Tikrit, fears concerning Iran’s role in Iraq should ISIS finally be defeated, the capture of a former American Air Force veteran seized at the Turkish border and extradited to the United States, and yesterday’s brutal attack in Tunisia.  This nightly visual obsession has produced a number of new books on the rise of ISIS and suggestions on how we should deal with them.  One of the better or perhaps the best of this new genre, explaining ISIS, is Michael Weiss and Hassan Hassan’s ISIS: INSIDE THE ARMY OF TERROR.  The book is written in a very straight forward historical narrative that tries to explain how we have…

If, as I do, you’ve lived for almost 25 years 100 yards or so from the old Erskine College you have a fairly good sense of what National was on about in this snippet from their new “Building NZ, RMA Reform and Housing” policy discussion document released yesterday.

Objections to proposals for residential reuse of the old Erskine School site in Wellington held it up for more than 20 years. It involved claims that the decaying buildings had heritage value, as well as the routine RMA neighbour objections. Long after the school closed the buildings were red-stickered by Wellington City Council as being unsafe for occupancy. After two decades of costly objections and delays, development eventually started on the site providing 94 dwellings for families.

The school closed in 1985.  Some of the land was developed decades ago, but the main site is only now getting the first few occupants…

(Hafez al-Assad and son Bashar al-Assad)

In the last few years a number of important books dealing with the Syrian tragedy have appeared.  They all reflect the gruesome nature of how Bashar al-Assad and his family have clung to power as they have slowly destroyed their country by killing over 500,000 people and creating millions of refugees.  Many of these books are journalistic accounts of Assad’s murderous policies or personal memoirs as their authors scream on the written page for the world to listen and act.  Sam Dagher, a reporter for the Wall Street Journal new contribution to this ever-growing list  is his ASSAD OR WE BURN THE COUNTRY: HOW ONE FAMILIES LUST FOR POWER DESTROYED SYRIA which focuses on the generational saga of the Assad and Tlass families, once deeply intertwined and now estranged by Assad’s bloody quest to retain the country that his father seemingly bequeathed to him.

Douglas Murray is only 40 years old, but has already established himself as a neoconservative intellectual and author.  Because of his political views—he’s anti-immigration, a critic of Islam, and a supporter of Brexit—he’s despised by many on the British and American Left, although his SJW credibility is marginally increased because he’s also gay.  I haven’t read any of his previous works, but I am reading his latest book: The Madness of Crowds: Gender, Race, and Identity, which was published in mid-September but already has 182 reviews on Amazon and a 4.8-star rating (out of 5). It was hard to get, too, as there are several people who have already requested it at the University of Chicago Library, and I have but a week to read it.

Click on the screenshot to see the book on Amazon:

Since the book is a critique of social justice warriorism and the authoritarian Left…

Golden Eagle loses its head during wind power ‘transition’.

The polished hypocrisy among those slavish worshippers of wind power is breathtaking. The wind industry is slaughtering millions of birds and bats every year and yet there’s barely a peep from these faux environmentalists.

Sure, as James Taylor points out below, there’s the usual rubbish they dish up about skyscrapers killing more birds than these things, which is hardly to the point (even if it were true, which is doubtful). In any event, apex predators like Eagles, Vultures, Hawks and Kites rarely come to grief by flying into buildings of any description. But it’s these species that are being sliced and diced with complete impunity, all around the world.

When your premise is saving the planet, it’s pretty hard to maintain any kind of ‘social licence’ in the face of the colossal carnage being meted out by the wind industry; in…

The more you think times have changed, the more they remain the same. Amazing econ history is..

I came across this paper by Atlanta Fed econs — Stephen Quinn and William Roberds.  It is  just amazing to note how similar things were way back in 1763.  One had pretty similar financial instruments in 1763 whose drying up led to the crisis. And yes you had pretty similar instis like  Lehman Brothers which did not have access to retail deposits but relied on a form of wholesale financing.