Utopia, you are standing in it!

Let’s continue from where I left in previous post about a Newsweek fact check of the claim that “humanity would end by 2023”. This claim was made in 2018 and attributed to James Anderson in a gritpost article. The fact checker made the argument that the gritpost article didn’t correctly report on Anderson’s claim and that the claim was in fact about the polar ice caps, more specifically, that “unless the world stopped using fossil fuels by 2023, the effect on the polar ice caps would be irreversible“.

That seems rather vague, especially after having read the articles that were used by the fact checker. I think he pretty much understated the actual claim that was reported in those articles:

The chance that there will be any permanent ice left in the Arctic after 2022 is essentially zero.

Volcanic eruption
At least they now know about it. In tests, ‘inclusion of the eruptions degraded the model’s predictive capabilities’.
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Simulated volcanic eruptions may be blowing up our ability to predict near-term climate, according to a new study published in Science Advances.

The research, led by the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), finds that the way volcanic eruptions are represented in climate models may be masking the models’ ability to accurately predict variations in sea surface temperatures in the tropical Pacific that unfold over multiple years to a decade, says Phys.org.

These decadal variations in sea surface temperatures in the tropical Pacific are linked to climate impacts across the globe, including variations in precipitation and severe weather.

Accurate predictions, therefore, could provide community leaders, farmers, water managers, and others with critical climate information that allows them to plan years in advance.

“Near-term climate prediction on…

Back in 2013, I shared some research showing how school choice produced good results. Not just in terms of student achievement, but also benefits for taxpayers as well.

Since then, I’ve shared additional research showing how school choice generates good outcomes.

It seems that some lawmakers have learned the right lessons from these studies. Over the past three years, statewide school choice has been enacted in West Virginia, Arizona, Iowa, Utah, Arkansas, and Florida.

In his Wall Street Journal column, Bill McGurn celebrates this wave of victories.

It’s been a good year for Milton Friedman. The Nobel Prize-winning economist has been dead for nearly two decades. But the moment has come for the idea that may prove his greatest legacy: Parents should decide where the public funds for educating their children go. Already this year, four states have adopted school choice for everyone—and it’s…

Sunspots [image credit: NASA]
Nothing better than actual observations to make a forecast change. The sun may have put one over the pundits again.
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Solar Maximum is coming–maybe this year, says Spaceweather.com.

New research by a leading group of solar physicists predicts maximum sunspot activity in late 2023 or early 2024, a full year earlier than other forecasts.

“This is based on our work with the Termination Event,” explains Scott McIntosh, lead author of a paper describing the prediction, published in the January 2023 edition of Frontiers in Astronomy and Space Sciences.

Rural communities are fighting back hard against the great wind power fraud, wherever the wind industry seeks to ply its subsidy-soaked trade.

Wherever wind farms have appeared – or have been threatened – big numbers of locals take a set against the monsters being speared into their previously peaceful – and often idyllic – rural communities.

Their anger extends to the goons that lied their way to development approval – and the bent officials that rubber-stamped their applications and who, thereafter, help the operators ride roughshod over locals’ rights to live in and enjoy the peace and comfort of their own homes and properties (see our post here).

As wind turbines are incapable of generating power on demand and wouldn’t last a second without massive subsidies, there is no ‘right’ place for them. Any power generation source that can’t deliver electricity on demand is pointless, so talk about appropriate…

The economic argument against wealth taxation is very straightforward.

Such a levy is akin to a very high marginal tax rate on saving and investment.

Indeed, it’s quite possible that the effective tax rate would exceed 100 percent.

That definitely penalizes capital formation, which ultimately means workers will earn less money.

There’s also a practical argument against wealth taxation, which is based on the daunting challenge of revaluing assets every year.

There’s a competitiveness argument as well, and that’s our topic today.

Simply stated, rich people are not sheep, patiently waiting to be sheared. If their fiscal torture is too extreme, they will leave.

And this is not just theorizing.

In an article for the U.K.-based Telegraph, Charlotte Gifford reports on how Norway’s higher wealth tax is backfiring.

Mr Røkke, an industrial tycoon with an estimated net worth of Nkr 19.6bn (£1.5bn), is among 50 billionaires and millionaires…

On Wednesday, Liz Truss will use the Margaret Thatcher memorial lecture in Washington to call the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) a “global cartel of complacency” whose high tax policies are holding back growth. I fear she is right.

In particular, Ms Truss will warn against the OECD’s plan for a minimum 15 per cent corporation tax rate for multinational companies, which is due to come into effect at the start of 2024. This plan is both wrong in principle and will be very hard to operate in practice.

To recap, 138 countries have now signed up to a global agreement which is designed to ‘modernise’ the international tax system. The main target is ‘profit shifting’, where companies book profits in jurisdictions where tax rates are lower.

This agreement has two elements, or ‘Pillars’. Under ‘Pillar 1’, the largest and most profitable multinationals will be required to pay…

An important recent decision of the Court of Appeal in England and Wales, Sharpe v The Bishop of Worcester [2015] EWCA Civ 399 (30 April 2015) deals with the issue of the “employment status” of members of the clergy. Is a rector, or a priest, or a pastor, or an imam, an “employee”? If so, who exactly is their employer: the local congregation? the governing board of the congregation? a bishop? the local diocese? These are important issues which are mentioned in the case.The question may be important for a number of reasons: for example, for the rights of members of the clergy who believe they have been wrongly dismissed, or the rights of members of the public to take an action against the church or religious body, which may depend on the whether the cleric is an “employee” or not.

The answer offered in England will not be precisely the…

As documented in Commanding Heights: The Battle of Ideas, Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan saved their nations from economic malaise and decline.

Today, let’s focus on what happened in the United Kingdom.

Economic liberty greatly increased during the Thatcher years.

She deserves the lion’s share of the credit for the U.K.’s economic rebirth and renaissance, but she also had the wisdom to appoint some very principled and very capable people to her cabinet.

Such as Nigel Lawson, who served as her Chancellor of the Exchequer (akin to a combined Treasury Secretary/OMB Director in the U.S.).

Lawson died last week, leading to many tributes to his role is resuscitating the U.K. economy.

The Wall Street Journal‘s editorial summarized his achievements.

…our problems are solvable, as they were a half century ago. One of those crucial problem solvers was British politician Nigel Lawson, who died this week at age 91…

While reading Leopold G. Wickham Legg’s account of the Coronation Banquet in his English Coronation Records, I was struck by the following passage:

On the King’s left hand there are also three tables. At the first sit the “Dukes of Normandy and Aquitaine,” the King’s officers…[1]

I immediately wondered why the Dukes of Normandy and Aquitaine had their titles placed in scare quotes. My curiosity piqued, I did a bit of digging and stumbled upon something rather strange: they weren’t actual dukes at all. Today, we’re going to look at why a pair of fake French dukes attended British coronations for hundreds of years.

English monarchs claimed the French throne from the 14^th century onward. When Charles IV of France died in 1328, he had no direct male heir. The English king, Edward III, was Charles’ nephew through Charles’ sister, Isabella. French law didn’t allow women to…

Since Pope Francis is very critical of capitalism, I suppose it’s fitting that he had a special meeting with America’s crazy-Uncle-in-the-attic, Bernie Sanders.

With my sixth-grade sense of humor, I confess that my initial instinct (perhaps motivated by the famous line from Animal House about “a wimp and a blimp“) was to write about “the Pope and the dope,” but I’m going to be somewhat mature and instead share some excerpts from a very good column by Charles Lane, an editorial writer for the Washington Post.

Here’s some of what he wrote before Senator Sanders’ departure.

Democratic socialist presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) will depart soon for the Vatican… In keeping with Pope Francis’s call for a “moral economy,” Sanders has said he’ll discuss “how we address the massive levels of wealth and income inequality that exist around the world, how we deal with unemployment, how…