Power Shock: Wind & Solar ‘Transition’ Sends German Power Prices Into Orbit

25 Oct 2019 Leave a comment

by Jim Rose in applied price theory

stopthesethings's avatarSTOP THESE THINGS

Renewable energy zealots keep telling us that wind and solar are free and getting cheaper all the time. Germany puts paid to that lie, as does Denmark and South Australia, which each jockey for line honours in the world’s highest power prices stakes.

No country has squandered more treasure on giant windmills and an endless sea of solar panels than Germany.

For all that wanton environmental destruction, Germans get a meagre 2.5% of their primary energy demand satisfied by wind and solar. And in the mother of all ironies, contrary to the stated aim of the ‘Energiewende’, carbon dioxide emissions continue to rise.

Its nuclear-powered, next-door neighbour, France wins the low CO2 power generation competition by a mile – and makes a killing selling electricity to power-starved Germans, whenever the sun sets and/or calm weather sets in.

All in all, Germany’s (apparently) inevitable ‘transition’ to an all wind and…

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Saez and Zucman are rather blase about the impact of wealth taxes on innovation. Encourage innovation then tax away succesful innovators!

25 Oct 2019 Leave a comment

by Jim Rose in applied price theory, entrepreneurship, income redistribution, industrial organisation, Marxist economics, politics - USA, Public Choice, public economics, rentseeking, survivor principle Tags: , , , , ,

Ripping Yarns: Wind & Sun Can’t Power the World: Never Have & Never Will

25 Oct 2019 Leave a comment

by Jim Rose in applied price theory

stopthesethings's avatarSTOP THESE THINGS

You know we’ve reached peak stupid when adults line up to be lectured by troubled teenage girls on energy and world economics. Greta the Fretter and the lunatics gluing themselves to roads under the banner of the Extinction Rebellion have made the work of the sane and rational so much easier. For a decade or so, the great mass in the middle have mouthed platitudes about doing more for the planet and supporting renewable energy.

The profiteers and rent seekers who’ve done so very nicely over that time, soaking in subsidies, lapping up soft loans and benefiting from tax credits, RETs and the like, pushed and prodded politicians to the extent necessary to establish the greatest financial rort of all time; and the general populace went along with it.

Clever marketing and guilt laden propaganda helped pushed the right emotional buttons and left rent seekers thinking that their world would…

View original post 705 more words

A Gaza healthcare story the BBC chooses to ignore

25 Oct 2019 Leave a comment

by Jim Rose in applied price theory

Hadar Sela's avatarBBC Watch

In early August we noted that work had begun on a sixteen-department field hospital near the Erez Crossing at the north of the Gaza Strip and that the Palestinian Authority was objecting to the project.

“Although BBC audiences are told plenty about the dire state of medical services in the Gaza Strip, they rarely hear about the PA actions which exacerbate that situation such as the longstanding insufficient supply of medications. Whether or not they will be informed of this latest own goal from the Palestinian Authority remains to be seen.”

Despite the fact that the BBC has a staffed office in the Gaza Strip, audiences have indeed heard nothing about the new hospital or the Palestinian Authority’s specious claim that the field hospital was “part of a plan to separate the West Bank from the Gaza Strip”.

Since then the PA’s official media has managed to come up…

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History of Styles and Titles, Part II: Tudor & Stuart Period.

25 Oct 2019 Leave a comment

by Jim Rose in applied price theory

liamfoley63's avatarEuropean Royal History

After 1422 the royal title remained unchanged for almost a century. For these many years the title was, Rex Angliae et Franciae et Dominus Hiberniae (King of England and of France and Lord of Ireland). Numerous amendments, however, were effected during Henry VIII’s reign.

Here are the different ways Henry VIII was styled throughout his reign.

1535–1536
By the Grace of God, King of England and France, Defender of the Faith, Lord of Ireland, and of the Church of England in Earth Supreme Head.
1536–1542
By the Grace of God, King of England and France, Defender of the Faith, Lord of Ireland, and of the Church of England and of Ireland in Earth Supreme Head.
1542–1555
By the Grace of God, King of England, France and Ireland, Defender of the Faith, and of the Church of England and of Ireland in Earth Supreme Head.

After Henry wrote a book against…

View original post 570 more words

Harvard Crimson editors explain to outraged students why the paper asks for comments from attacked people or groups

25 Oct 2019 Leave a comment

by Jim Rose in applied price theory

whyevolutionistrue's avatarWhy Evolution Is True

Because of the curfew in Valparaiso, I can’t go outside after 6 pm, and even during the day the town is dead, with most of the businesses shuttered (perhaps in fear of rioters or because business is slow). In short, I have some time in the evening to post. This will vanish when I board the ship.

And so to the matter at hand.

According to this “note to readers” in the Harvard Crimson, penned by the paper’s managing editor and its president (click on screenshot), Harvard’s students have their knickers in a twist. Why? Because the paper asked the targets of a recent student protest to comment for the story. It was simply the paper’s asking for a response that got the students upset. Read and weep:

Excerpts are indented:

Last month, The Crimson covered a rally organized by campus group Act on a Dream that called for the…

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Decision theory and the doom scenario of climate catastrophe

24 Oct 2019 Leave a comment

curryja's avatarClimate Etc.

by Lucas Bergkamp

Can decision theory help a rational person decide whether to believe in climate catastrophe?

View original post 2,472 more words

Image by Jim Rose

Justin Trudeau Remains Prime Minister But Also Subject to the Caretaker Convention

24 Oct 2019 Leave a comment

by Jim Rose in applied price theory

J.W.J. Bowden's avatarJames Bowden's Blog

Results of the Election        

On 21 October, voters elected members to a minority parliament this week, the fourth in the last fifteen years. In this House of Commons, engorged to 338 members since 2015, a party needs at least 170 to form a majority, though 171 serves as a more practical barrier considering that the House of Commons usually elects a speaker from the governing party; majority governments prefer not to have to call on the Speaker to cast tie-breaking votes in favour of the government as a matter of course. The official standings gave the Liberals a strong plurality but left them 14 MPs short of a practical working majority. The Liberals would therefore need the support of either the Bloc or New Democrats, along perhaps with that of the Greens when the occasion permits.

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Shhh! The case of a British paedophile who was locked up with women is best not discussed on a Massey campus

24 Oct 2019 Leave a comment

by Jim Rose in applied price theory

poonzteam5443's avatarPoint of Order

The question of what process should be followed before people can change the genders recorded on their birth certificates may well have been discussed on Massey University’s Wellington campus.

Trouble is, a bunch of students with firm ideas on the subject and a militant urge to muzzle contrary ideas staged a sit-in and pressed for the university to cancel the event.

Massey’s administrators – anxious to cocoon sensitive staff and students from information or arguments that might offend or upset them – accordingly advised Speak Up For Women to find an alternative venue for its Feminism 2020 event.

The University has received external advice on its health, safety and wellbeing obligations under the Health and Safety at Work Act 2015, and its duty of care to the University community, and has made the decision on these grounds.

The legal advice we have received is that cancellation of the event, as concluded…

View original post 1,286 more words

From humans to asparagus, females are females

23 Oct 2019 Leave a comment

by Jim Rose in applied price theory

fondofbeetles's avatarFondOfBeetles

Many people attempt to undermine the material reality of sex by highlighting weird and wonderful examples of variation in the natural world.

“But clownfish change sex [therefore sex is not objectively defined]”

“But some animals don’t have X/Y chromosomes [therefore the human system is unreliable]”

“But some people have reproductive disorders [therefore sex doesn’t exist]”

Here is my response.

Clownfish. These fish, like many others, are sequential hermaphrodites. In the case of clownfish, a group contains one dominant female and if she is removed from the group, a male changes into a female to replace her. Sex change in clownfish occurs when the testicular tissue of the bipotential gonad is regressed and ovarian tissue promoted.  

How to recognise a female clownfish: She’s usually big. Oh, and she makes large gametes.

Anglerfish. These fish display extreme dimorphism between the sexes. The tiny males permanently fuse themselves to a female, adopting a…

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The Danes are awash in data. Shed a tear for your own job security if there is a death in the CEO’s family.

23 Oct 2019 Leave a comment

Image by Jim Rose

Jennifer Doleac on crime

23 Oct 2019 Leave a comment

by Jim Rose in applied price theory, applied welfare economics, comparative institutional analysis, econometerics, economics of crime, economics of information, human capital, labour economics, labour supply, law and economics, occupational choice Tags: ,

James Heckman on racial wage gaps and racial discrimination by employers

23 Oct 2019 Leave a comment

Image by Jim Rose

We Need More Rapists In Prison, Not Fewer. Why AOC Is Wrong Again.

22 Oct 2019 1 Comment

by Jim Rose in applied price theory

PA Pundits - International's avatarPA Pundits International

By Cully Stimson and Henry Featherston ~

Rep.  Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., recently offered another unusual idea on Twitter: Abolish prisons.

Seriously. The freshman congresswoman wants Congress to pass a law abolishing all prisons. Setting aside the fact that Congress has no authority to require states to abolish prisons, let’s take a look at her idea.

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D.-N.Y., should use her influence to push for sensible ideas, not extreme notions of abolishing all prisons and jails. Pictured: Ocasio-Cortez answers questions from reporters Sept. 24 while entering a House Democrat caucus meeting at the Capitol. (Photo: Win McNamee/Getty Images)

Based on Justice Department numbers, abolishing prisons would set free 182,000 murderers, 164,000 rapists and sex offenders, 168,000 robbers, and other violent felons in state prison.

Ocasio-Cortez might better lead her party to put more rapists in jail by providing federal funds to help states eliminate the backlog of…

View original post 787 more words

MENACHEM BEGIN: A LIFE by Avi Shilon

22 Oct 2019 Leave a comment

by Jim Rose in applied price theory

szfreiberger's avatarDoc's Books

(Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin speaking to the Israeli parliament, the Knesset advocating acceptance of the Camp David accords, March 20, 1979.  Future Israeli Prime Minister, Yitzchak Shamir is seated to his right.)

In exploring the creation of the state of Israel over the last 67 years the dominant figure that emerges is David Ben-Gurion.  The head of the Jewish Agency before and after World War II, Ben-Gurion guided the nascent Israeli state and dominated its politics for decades.  However, another transformative figure emerged during the same time period that many outside Israel seem to avoid giving him his due, Menachem Begin.  Whether speaking about Begin’s leadership of the Irgun and the pressure he placed on the British to relinquish its Palestinian mandate; his political leadership that brought about his election to the Prime Minister’s office in 1977 which fundamentally realigned Israeli politics to this day; or his evolution as…

View original post 2,368 more words

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