Utopia, you are standing in it!

By Paolo Malanima (University «Magna Graecia» in Catanzaro)

The full article from this blog post is scheduled to be published by the Economic History Review

Thomas Hair, “Percy Main Colliery”, Newcastle University Library. Available on Archives Portal Europe

In 2016 any human being consumed every day 57,000 kilocalories (kcal) on the average; but in western Europe he/she consumed more than 100,000 kcal, in USA and Canada 200,000 and in Africa 22-23,000 (Figure 1). The remarkable increase in the capacity to do work, due to the rise in the energy consumption, marked a discontinuity in the course of the World economy and was a decisive support of Modern Growth.

Figure 1. Per capita energy consumption per macroarea in 1820 and 2016 (kcal). Note: WE is Western Europe, EE is Eastern Europe, NA is North America, LA is Latin America, O is Oceania, As is Asia, ME is Middle East, and Af…

Earth and climate – an ongoing controversy
Below are a few quotes from the GWPF article. More discussion with graphics via the link. Is the handbrake about to be re-applied to so-called human-caused warming of the planet, in contradiction of alarmist ‘projections’?

Back around 2014 many people, me included, were commenting on the discrepancy between climate models and observations [writes Ross McKitrick].
. . .
The IPCC itself in the 5th Assessment Report (2013) noted that out of 114 model runs, 111 had overstated observed warming since the late 1990s.

by Judith Curry

My reflections on Climategate 10 years later, and also reflections on my reflections of 5 years ago.

This is an older video, but a very good one. Dr. Richard Lindzen is one of our most respected scientists, and this simple video does a good job of clarifying the situation.

Here’s another (also older) from”Conversations that Matter” with Dr. William Happer, from Princeton University.

Most of the warming, rise of the oceans, all the stuff you hear so much panic about is measured in millimeters. If you don’t have a ruler that includes millimeters look it up. And as to warming:

The world’s 76 best Tide gauges show a mean 0.34 mm per year rise. “negligible acceleration”. There is no sign of climate models predicting sharply warming acceleration or sea level rise.

There are now around 31 different climate computer programs (the serious ones). They put in what we know, and what we think maybe we know, and a bunch of intelligent guesses. And they especially don’t know…

Typical electric car set-up
Critics of fuel power speak of the finite nature of oil and natural gas discoveries. A reminder here that resources are far from unlimited for EVs, in the short term at least. No sign of much appetite for switching to smaller cars either, with SUV demand rising fast.

The current production of a number of critical metals is insufficient for the large-scale transition to electric vehicles.

This is the conclusion of a report by environmental scientists Benjamin Sprecher and organisations Copper8 and Metabolic, reports TechXplore.

As a solution, they advocate more electric car-sharing, cars with a smaller battery and improved recycling.

Small country, big impact

The Dutch Climate Policy aims for 1.9 million electric cars in the Netherlands by 2030, compared to 171,000 at this moment—a growth of more than 1000 percent in less than 11 years.

But according to the report “Critical Metals Demand…

 The strong whiff of “treaty” politicking has accompanied the intense scrutiny of Oranga Tamaraki in recent months, including the Waitangi Tribunal’s announcing an urgent inquiry into the child protection agency’s practices towards Māori children.

No-one, curiously, seems much bothered about the agency’s practices towards other children.

Oranga Tamariki staffers certainly invited closer scrutiny when they tried to take a baby from her mother in Hawke’s Bay in May, a bungled operation that was the subject of a Newsroom investigation.  This prompted howls of outrage, cries of institutional racism and the calling of national hui.

The tribunal’s Chief Judge Wilson Issac  said:

“I conclude there are sufficient grounds for an urgent inquiry into a specific contemporary issue concerning a risk of significant and irreversible prejudice to Māori arising from current Oranga Tamariki policy and practice.”

Karl I (Karl Franz Joseph Ludwig Hubert Georg Otto Maria; August 17, 1887 – April 1, 1922) was the last Emperor of Austria, the last King of Hungary (as Karl IV), last King of Bohemia (as Karl III), and the last monarch belonging to the House of Habsburg-Lorraine before the dissolution of Austria-Hungary.

Karl, Emperor of Austria and King of Bohemia

Karl was born August 17, 1887 in the Castle of Persenbeug in Lower Austria. His parents were Archduke Otto Franz of Austria and Princess Maria Josepha of Saxony. At the time, his granduncle Franz Joseph reigned as Emperor of Austria and King of Hungary. Upon the death of Crown Prince Rudolph in 1889, the Emperor’s brother, Archduke Karl Ludwig, was next in line to the Austro-Hungarian throne. However, his death in 1896 from typhoid made his eldest son, Archduke Franz Ferdinand, the new heir presumptive.

Marriage

In 1911, Archduke Karl…

This is a guest post by Monika Bednarek, a linguist who has extensively analyzed US TV series. She is the author of Language and Television Series and the editor of Creating Dialogue for TV, a collection of interviews with Hollywood screenwriters. She has created a companion website at www.syd-tv.com and tweets at @corpusling.

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The use of swear words in US TV series attracts a lot of attention. There are those who revel in creating mash-ups of swearing, and there are those who monitor and oppose swearing (like the Parents Television Council). Rules by the Federal Communications Commission restrict the broadcasting of profane and indecent speech to the evening and night and forbid obscene speech. But these rules don’t apply to subscription-based television such as cable or streaming services. Elsewhere I’ve looked at how frequent swearing is, but here I want to approach swearing…

“Totally Inappropriate”, proclaimed Auckland Mayor Phil Goff about Shane Jones’s response to an Indian migrant’s complaint about the Immigration Department. But inappropriate to what? Phil didn’t tell us, instead preferring to jump on the current fashionable bandwagon, led by the Indian community, with the wearingly wrong cries of racism and hate speech.

It transpired the Department had declined the migrant’s application to bring in an arranged marriage potential bride he’d never met. The Department declined permission for the excellent reason that the rules required it to do so. Specifically, couples must have lived together for a year before their migration applications can be considered.