Utopia, you are standing in it!

William IV (William Henry; August 21, 1765 – June 20, 1837) was King of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland and King of Hanover from June 26, 1830 until his death in 1837. William was the third son of King George III and his wife Duchess Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz. William succeeded his elder brother King George IV, becoming the last king and penultimate monarch of Britain’s House of Hanover.

William served in the Royal Navy in his youth, spending time in North America and the Caribbean, and was later nicknamed the “Sailor King”. In 1789, he was created Duke of Clarence and St Andrews. In 1827, he was appointed as Britain’s first Lord High Admiral since 1709.

In the Drawing Room at Kew Palace on July 11, 1818, William married Princess Adelaide of Saxe-Meiningen, the daughter of Georg I, Duke of Saxe-Meiningen, and Luise-Eleonore of Hohenlohe-Langenburg. William apparently…

There have been some terrific graphs published recently that tell us much more about both the global energy situation and efforts to reduce AGW than any number of lengthy articles.

All these graphs but one are historical, showing how energy use has changed over time since the start of the Industrial Revolution.

First, some history of our reliance on different types of energy over the last two hundred years. Note that coal usage peaked around one hundred years ago and oil in the 1970’s. But note also how important they remain.

The reason for those changes can be seen in the next graph, which effectively demonstrates the energy content of the different types. It’s interesting to see that Biomass is churning out slightly more energy than ever, but as energy demands have risen it and other renewable energy sources have simply been left behind. Those fuels with higher energy density…

The  Tauranga by-election confirmed  Labour’s slide  in popularity, with  its  candidate,  the  newly promoted Cabinet minister Jan Tinetti, winning only 25%  of  the  vote, 14%  less  than  in 2020.

But Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern didn’t  see  it  that  way.  She  said  Tinetti received one of the better results the party has recorded in Tauranga in a number of decades.

In somewhat convoluted English, she further said:

“I think actually for by-elections, it’s very hard to read into them as someone who’s run in a by-election myself because it’s just simply not the same as in general elections, you don’t often have every party represented, so I’m not quick to read into individual outcomes.”

Tinetti came in with a very similar proportion of the vote to the support Labour received in Tauranga when it became the government in 2017, Ardern said.

But it was difficult to extrapolate too many lessons from…

In a weather-dependent energy world, those lucky enough to get power when they need it are being forced to pay a king’s ransom for it.

Having championed the use of tens of $billions in subsidies to destroy the coal-fired generators that gave Australia its reliable and affordable power supply, Australia’s new Federal Labor government is staring down an angry proletariat, suffering from random power rationing and rocketing power bills.

Labor’s Anthony Albanese campaigned on a promise to slash power bills the moment he entered office. However, in the 6 weeks since he took the reins, wholesale power prices have hit record levels and, accordingly, retail power prices will continue on their relentless, upward surge.

STT has been predicting this very outcome for over a decade.

The hard-green left that occupies Labor’s frontbench reckons that the secret to slashing power prices is even more of the same: expanding further the already…

A previous post, Energy Realities, showed in clear, graphical detail, the status of energy production and consumption, both globally and for two key nations; the USA and China.

In this post I’ll link to a number of detailed reports, all published recently, that provide more context to the graphs presented in that previous post.

But first there are a number of points about the current energy situation that can be taken from those graphs and their data:

• As of 2019, almost thirty years after the Kyoto Treaty was signed, the world still overwhelmingly relies on fossil fuels for its energy needs, from electricity production to transport, to the tune of 87%.
• Renewable energy forms a small percentage of global energy, and the majority of that is traditional biomass and hydro.
• Nuclear power forms an even smaller fraction.
• In the USA, fossil fuel dominance is at 80%, even as coal…

As John Stossel discusses in this new video, few economic policies are as insanely foolish as rent control.

As you saw in the video, supporters of rent control tend to be the cranks and crazies, such as Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

The vast majority of economists, by contrast, recognize that such policies undermine incentives to provide and maintain rental housing.

Who is going to invest in a new apartment complex, after all, if politicians impose laws that ensure it will be a money-losing project?

The video highlights what has recently happened in Minnesota.

I wrote about that mistake last year. Christian Britschgi of Reason also looked at what happened. Here are some excerpts from his column.

Another housing development in St. Paul, Minnesota, is on hold… The reason? St. Paul’s newly-passed rent control ordinance, which Alatus’ principals say is making their once-eager investors skittish about doing…

There are three key points to take away from the recent power debacle in Australia.

First, take a look atthis graphof indexed electricity prices in Aussie from 1955 to 2017. After decades of steady reduction the rise in price has been steep and unrelenting since the start of the age of unreliable power in the mid-2000’s.

Remember this every time some Green tells you that Wind and Solar are cheaper than traditional base load, utility-scale power sources; “cost” is about more than just the Capex of the equipment. It’s about the cost of power shortages, limited growth, potential grid collapses, shorter plant lifetimes (25 years), and the cost of maintaining reliable backup power sources.

Second, note that the Liberal-National’s have been in government duringmuch of this time, including the last nine years just ended. So when Labor and the Left hold them responsible for much…

Australia is yet another perfect example of how to trash a power supply with heavily subsidised and chaotically intermittent wind and solar.

Germany, California and Texas led the charge and Australia’s so-called renewable energy capital, South Australia was amongst the front runners.

SA set the tone with Australia’s first statewide blackout – during a spring storm which saw the automatic shutdown of hundreds of wind turbines unable to cope with gale force winds – and dozens of mass load shedding events, every time the sun set and/or calm weather set in.

The cancer soon spread, infecting the entire Eastern Grid, which connects Queensland, New Wales, Victoria, Tasmania and South Australia.

Over the last week, power consumers have not only been whacked with massive increases in their power bills, they’ve been told to not use power in order to preserve the little that is being produced by Australia’s remaining coal-fired…