Utopia, you are standing in it!

March 03,2023

Todd Rokita, AG Indiana, asks in his Newsweek article Why Did The U.S. Solicitor General Flip-Flop on Climate Change?Excerpts in italics with my bolds and added images.

In a case called Suncor Energy Inc. v. Board of County Commissioners of Boulder County, U.S. Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar recently told the Supreme Court that climate-change cases should be heard not in federal courts, but in deep-blue, progressive state courts.  Calling this proposal politically opportunistic would be an understatement.

Sixteen states disagree, as we have made known through a brief
filed by my office. Federal law should govern this and similar cases,
according to legal precedent.

My office always stands for the rule of law and fights for it in the courtroom. This case is no different, as it represents a sharp departure from the Justice Department’s longstanding view that global climate change is a federal issue that belongs in federal…

There’s a stately, almost funereal seriousness to Brit director Guy Ritchie’s first combat film.

“The Covenant,” billed as “Guy Ritchie’s The Covenant” so that it isn’t confused with any horror movie titled that, has little of the antic energy and none of the dark, wry fun of the British underworld pictures that made him (“Snatch”) or that characterized his jaunty “Sherlock Holmes” outings with Robert Downey Jr.

But as we settle into this Afghan War story of an American sergeant (Jake Gyllenhaal), his Taliban-arms-and-IED hunting team and his uneasy relationship with their new interpreter (Dar Salim), we see the movie bend away from genre routine. “Covenant” evolves into a tale that travels from mistrust and disrespect towards loyalty and the debts a soldier collects in combat, a “covenant” that eats at this one GI until he can honor it and repay those debts.

Ritchie’s giving us…

On 14 April the New Statesman published an article which was intended to show that the Irish economy is booming at the expense of ‘Brexit Britain’. This conclusion was backed by some striking graphics, which are still being gleefully shared by the usual suspects.

But it was also baloney. People have been taken in here by what Paul Krugman has called ‘leprechaun economics’ (or, if you prefer, ‘shamrock economics’, with the emphasis on ‘sham’).

The one strong point in the article was that the Irish economy has benefited from relatively low rates of corporation tax. You might normally expect the New Statesman to rail against ‘tax havens’ and ‘profit shifting’, but presumably that would have muddled the anti-Brexit message here.

So no mention either of concerns that the Irish economy has become too dependent on revenues from multinationals, with more than half of corporate tax being paid by

Jonathan Lesser explains in his Real Clear Energy article Why “Net Zero” Is Not a Rational U.S. Energy Policy.  Excerpts in italics with my bolds and added images.

Cost of achieving net-zero carbon emissions would be staggering for neglible climate impact.

Despite Germany’s last-ditch attempt at realism, the European Union recently approved a 2035 ban on gas-powered cars, moving ahead with its “net zero” emissions agenda.In the U.S., the cost of achieving net-zero carbon emissions would be staggering – $50 trillion if the goal is reached by 2050 – as would the demand for raw materials, which in most cases would exceed current annual worldwide production. 

Global critical metal demand for wind and PV

The impact on world climate, however, would be negligible. Emissions in developing countries will continue to increase as those countries’ focus is economic growth for their citizens, not permanent economic misery to…

Subsidising net zero type so-called climate policies in the US is not only enormously expensive but globally disruptive as well, it seems. Climate protection becoming climate protectionism?
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Joe Biden’s flagship green energy policy risks plunging the world into the economic “dark ages”, Jeremy Hunt has warned.

The Chancellor urged world leaders not to put up trade barriers after the US President passed a $369bn package of subsidies to support climate and energy businesses, reports The Daily Telegraph.

Mr Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act has drawn an estimated $200bn in investment since it was passed last year, according to estimates from the Financial Times, and both the EU and Britain have been forced to draw up responses of their own.

It has sparked fears of a new era of protectionism, where economies are closely managed through tariffs and subsidies.

As immutable laws, solar output collapses when the sun sets and wind power output collapses when calm weather sets in (and when wind speeds hit gale force and turbines automatically shut down). No amount of spin doctoring, varnishing or linguistic invention can undo them.

Rafe Champion builds on those laws with his ‘iron triangle of energy realism’.

He starts with the fact that irrespective of the number of turbines or solar panels, there will be occasions when wind and solar inevitably produce nothing, at all. See above – courtesy of Aneroid Energy – the output delivered by Australian wind power outfits to the Eastern Grid during May last year. Spread from Far North Queensland, across the ranges of NSW, all over Victoria, Northern Tasmania and across South Australia the entire capacity of the Eastern Grid’s wind fleet routinely delivers just a trickle of its combined notional capacity – back then…

Isar nuclear power site, Bavaria
Arm-waving propaganda about tiny amounts of ‘carbon’, i.e. vital carbon dioxide gas, in the atmosphere has led to this decision. One obvious problem being that wind and solar energy can’t be stockpiled, or accessed on demand, hence Germany’s newly increased dependence on coal power for its electricity.
– – –
Germany became only the third European country to shut off its nuclear power supply on Saturday when its final three reactors were severed from the grid for good, says The Daily Telegraph.

The end of German nuclear energy, a process begun by former chancellor Angela Merkel after the Fukushima disaster in 2011, came at the same time as the country seeks to wean itself off fossil fuels and manage an energy crisis caused by the war in Ukraine.

A small crowd of pro-nuclear demonstrators turned out in front of the Brandenburg Gate on Saturday…

“I know some commenters here view TV1 as simply the propaganda arm of Labour, but I am not one of them.”

That’s from page 22 of the annual report from JMAD Research (Journalism, Media and Democracy), part of AUT (Auckland University of Technology).

The whole report paints an equally grim picture and although they don’t go into much detail about subscriptions – looking at the proportion of their sample who pay for online access to things like the NZ Horrid – other reports over the years show steady reductions in eyeballs and ears, translating into falling subscriptions, readership numbers and TV and radio ratings.

It’s not hard to accept that the two are connected and that it’s not just about Facebook, Twitter and the rest of Social Media stealing those eyes and ears, combined with Craigslist and TradeMe stealing advertising revenue.

The response of the MSM to all this…

Using other people’s to offload personal guilt is hardly virtuous, but the wind and solar scam has attracted plenty of guilt-laden oligarchs looking to atone for their (often obscene) wealth doing just that – and using taxpayer-backed subsidies to conjure up all manner of new ‘green’ scams, like ‘green’ hydrogen.

Australia’s Twiggy Forrest, is just another blowhard billionaire eager to squander taxpayer’s money. Forrest made his $billions digging up large parts of Western Australia and shipping it to the Chinese, among others.

Wallowing in a mountain of cash from iron ore sales – at record prices – he’s been targeting the renewable energy scam, with over-the-top plans for the mass production of what eager rent-seekers call ‘green’ hydrogen.

Like every well-connected rent-seeking spiv, he recoils at the thought of staking of his cash on his grand green hydrogen fantasy, instead he’s demanding untold $billions in subsidies for something that he…

Or perhaps he’ll issue a protest vote that leaves the Democrats in power, especially in his native California.

The one thing he won’t do is vote for the Republican Party, although to be fair, there’s not a lot of signs that they’re willing to do anything about any of this either, whether in academia where it started and where it’s getting crazier by the day, or in any other part of American culture.

Oh the GOP will certainly take advantage of the Culture Wars, in the same way the Democrats beat the abortion drum in the 2022 Mid-Term elections. But the difference is that the Democrats actually deliver for their voters on these issues when they have power, whereas the GOP just craps on their people once in power (see Party, Tea, 2010).

Still it’s nice to see a very liberal, indeed libertine, comedian come out swinging at this Left-wing…

There was an article on Business Desk yesterday that led with the suggestion that the LSAP losses now totalled almost $20 billion.

As soon as the article appeared I emailed the author and pointed out that the two numbers she was using could not be added together and that the best estimate of the direct fiscal losses were still around $10 billion. We had a few email exchanges and a telephone conversation, by which point she accepted that her number was wrong, but didn’t fully understand why she was wrong (apparently several other journalists were also confused), and indicated that there would be a further article forthcoming, using quotes I (and others?) had provided. I didn’t have the time for anything in depth yesterday but suggested I might write a post today that attempted a fuller and more intuitive explanation.

Unfortunately I didn’t print off the original piece and the…

Popular monarchy is a term used by Kingsley Martin (1936) for monarchical titles that refer to a people, or a tribe, rather than a territory or a nation state. This manner of titiling a monarch was the norm in classical antiquity and throughout much of the Middle Ages, and such titles were retained in some of the monarchies of 19th- and 20th-century Europe.

For example, Alfred the Great was King of the West Saxons (Wessex) from 871 to 886. In 886, Alfred reoccupied the city of London and set out to make it habitable again. Alfred entrusted the city to the care of his son-in-law Æthelred, ealdorman of Mercia. Soon afterwards, Alfred restyled himself as “King of the Anglo-Saxons.” Alfred remained King of the Anglo-Saxons from 886 until his death in 899.

Alfred’s grandson, King Æthelstan (c. 894 – 27 October 939), was King of the Anglo-Saxons from 924 to 927…

From the Emperor’s Desk: As I focus on the issues surrounding Richard III becoming King I will not be addressing the fate of the Princes in the Tower. Although it is a related topic, I view it as a separate issue, for their fate was a result of Richard taking the throne, therefore I will address that in another blog entry in the near future.

King Richard III succeeded to the English throne based on the claims of Titulus Regius. Titulus Regius (“royal title” in Latin) is a statute of the Parliament of England issued in 1484 by which the title of King of England was given to Richard III.

The act ratified the declaration of the Lords and the members of the House of Commons a year earlier that the marriage of King Edward IV of England to Elizabeth Woodville had been invalid and so their children, including…