Utopia, you are standing in it!

If the wind industry gets its way, it’s curtains for the already endangered Atlantic Right Whale. Taking giant industrial wind turbines offshore threatens whales of all shapes and sizes, including the Atlantic Right Whale.

Whales already have plenty of offshore industrial activity to contend with. However, where oil and gas extraction, international shipping, and commercial fishing have obvious embodied economic benefits, the only economic benefit derived from wind power is the subsidies it attracts. No subsidies. No wind power. It’s that simple.

Which is all the more reason for locals to step in and save the whales.

As this piece from CFACT details below, the Atlantic Right Whale has just won that very kind of support and, up against the bullies, thugs and liars that people the offshore wind industry, let’s call it ‘critical life support’.

CFACT & Public Interest Groups Hire Counsel to Protect Endangered Right Whale from Offshore…

Tom Nelson posted this interview with Ross McKitrick on Big problems with paleoclimate data and land temperature records.  H/T Climate-Science.press.

Ross McKitrick is a Professor of Economics at the University of Guelph where he specializes in environment, energy and climate policy. He has published widely on the economics of pollution, climate change and public policy.  His book Economic Analysis of Environmental Policy was published by the University of Toronto Press in 2010.

His background in applied statistics has also led him to collaborative work across a wide range of topics in the physical sciences including paleoclimate reconstruction, malaria transmission, surface temperature measurement and climate model evaluation.

Professor McKitrick has made many invited academic presentations around the world and has testified before the US Congress and committees of the Canadian House of Commons and Senate.

The discussion is wide-ranging, and I provide below a lightly edited transcript on the main…

Roger Partridge writes:

This week’s third-quarter inflation figure from Statistics NZ underlines what a mess the Minister of Finance and the Reserve Bank have made of monetary policy.

Inflation may have peaked at 7.3%. But talk from Reserve Bank governor Adrian Orr late last month that the bank’s ‘tightening cycle was ‘very mature’ was at best premature.

Tuesday’s announcement of Q3 inflation at 2.2% suggests inflationary expectations are now deeply embedded.

Most economists now predict inflation will remain well above the Reserve Bank’s 1-3% target for the foreseeable future. Kiwi households will endure a lot more pain before it is brought back under control.

In the case of business taxation, the most visually powerful evidence for the Laffer Curve is what happened to corporate tax revenue in Ireland after the corporate tax rate was slashed from 50 percent to 12.5 percent.

Tax revenue increased dramatically. Not just in nominal terms. Not just in inflation-adjusted terms.

Corporate receipts actually climbed as a share of GDP.

And this was during the decades when economic output was rapidly expanding.

In other words, the Irish government got a much bigger slice of a much bigger pie after tax rates were dramatically lowered.

Now let’s look at some evidence from a new study. Three professors from the University of Utah (Jeffrey Coles, Elena Patel, and Nather Seegert), and a Treasury Department economist (Matthew Smith) estimated what happens to taxable income for U.S. companies when there is a change in the corporate tax rate.

In response to a…

Giant lithium-ion batteries are touted as planet saviours, but make sure you’re on the other side of town when they explode into toxic fireballs that firefighters simply can’t extinguish.

On the large-scale, it’s the kind of terrifying Tesla moment experienced by locals in Victoria when one of these lithium-ion wonders went up in flames and literally burned for days, because firefighters are unable to extinguish lithium battery fires – see above and our post here.

At the micro-level, these exciting moments in cutting-edge battery technology are being enjoyed by the owners of all kinds of Electric Vehicles, large and small.

Here’s the team from Jo Nova with a round-up of recent battery meltdowns.

The clean green future where you’re locked indoors due to toxic electrical battery smoke
Jo Nova Blog
Jo Nova
22 September 2022

Just another day saving the Earth from pollution..

Highways were shut for 12 hours…

In a post a couple of weeks ago I outlined some reasons for scepticism about the case for increasing the OCR by 50 basis points specifically at the then-forthcoming OCR review. My point was mostly about the data hiatus – the OCR decision would be taking place almost 3 months after the most recent CPI data and more than 2 months since the last main labour market data. It seemed (and seems) foolish for the MPC to stick to its schedule of review dates, including the long summer holiday it will give itself after next month’s MPS. It remains highly problematic that New Zealand governments have penny-pinched on core statistics and as a result we have such slow and infrequent macro data (we got the September quarter CPI inflation data yesterday, Switzerland by contrast released September month data on 3 October).

But there were also some considerations in the macroeconomics

Crushing power costs and power rationing follow wind and solar reliance, like night follows day. Texas is no exception.

Bullying power consumers to stop consuming power is par for the course; chiselling taxpayers to cover the exorbitant cost of making up for power shortfalls when the wind stops blowing and/or the sun sets, is grist for the mill.

Bill Peacock explains it all below.

Texas Grid Reliability: Gone With the Wind (and solar)
Master Resource
Bill Peacock
14 September 2022

“The solution to keeping the lights on in Texas is … to stop politicians and regulators from micromanaging the Texas energy market. Texas politicians could do this by ending renewable energy subsidies in the state and making renewable companies pay for the costs they impose on the rest of us from their federal subsidies.”

As everyone knows, Texas had the worst blackout in its history during the winter of 2021…