Utopia, you are standing in it!

Electricity that can’t be delivered as and when it’s needed has no commercial value. Indeed, when the gales rip across the Scottish Highlands and there’s a surfeit of wind power generated, that electricity can’t even be given away. Instead, taxpayers become the ‘buyers’ of last resort; not that they could never be called willing purchasers, and not that any power ever gets delivered to them, or anyone else.

Euphemistically called “constraint payments”, European governments are squandering hundreds of millions of taxpayers’ dollars each year, directing it to wind power outfits, literally paying them to NOT generate electricity, simply because the (wholly weather-dependent) supply they occasionally generate is incapable of matching (wholly human-dependent) demand.

In Scotland alone, since 2010 taxpayers have transferred more than £600 million to Scottish wind power outfits, with the result that around 8.2 TWh of Scottish wind power has been discarded, a quantity that would have supplied…

The next day, after signing the Act of Abdication, the last act of his reign was the royal assent to His Majesty’s Declaration of Abdication Act 1936. As required by the Statute of Westminster, all the Dominions had already consented to the abdication.

Although Edward VIII had signed a declaration of abdication the previous day—December 10, 1936—he remained king until giving Royal Assent to His Majesty’s Declaration of Abdication Act, which he did onDecember 11, at 1.52 p.m., and the Act became immediately effective from that time. Ironically, his last act as king was giving the royal assent to his own abdication.

His brother, the Duke of York, succeeded to the throne as George VI. Instead of becoming King Albert, his given name, he selected the name George to suggest continuity with his father George V. King George VI’s elder daughter, Princess Elizabeth, became heir presumptive.

King George VI of…

Climate Litigation Watch is reporting the ruling by Judge Barry Ostrager ending the case brought by NYAG Leticia James against ExxonMobil.  The loss could hardly be more complete.  The full text of the ruling is here.  The juicy bits are excerpted in italics below with my bolds.

Supreme Court of New York, New York County, the Honorable Barry Ostrager presiding.

Decision After Trial

Nothing in this opinion is intended to absolve ExxonMobil from responsibility for contributing to climate change through the emission of greenhouse gases in the production of its fossil fuel products. ExxonMobil does not dispute either that its operations produce greenhouse gases or that greenhouse gases contribute to climate change, But ExxonMobil is in the business of producing energy, and this is a securities fraud case, not a climate change case. Applying the applicable legal standards, the Court finds that the Office of the Attorney General failed…

On November 16, 1936, King Edward VIII invited Prime Minister Baldwin to Buckingham Palace and expressed his desire to marry Mrs Wallis Simpson when she became free to remarry. Baldwin informed him that his subjects would deem the marriage morally unacceptable, largely because remarriage after divorce was opposed by the Church of England, and the people would not tolerate Simpson as queen. As king, Edward VIII was the titular head of the Church, and the clergy expected him to support the Church’s teachings. The Archbishop of Canterbury, Cosmo Gordon Lang, was vocal in insisting that Edward VIII must go.

Edward VIII proposed an alternative solution of a morganatic marriage, in which he would remain king but Simpson would not become queen consort. She would enjoy some lesser title instead, and any children they might have would not inherit the throne. This was supported by senior politician Winston Churchill in principle…

I had earlier pointed to an excellent interview of Robert Barroon Fiscal Multipliers and Paul Krugman. In a new interview he says the same things – fiscal multipliers are less than one (which means not a multiplier at all) and also lists a reading list on Great Depression.

His take on fiscal multipliers: