Utopia, you are standing in it!

Irish farm [image credit: climatenewsnetwork.net]
Yet another climate folly induced by arbitrary targets. As usual they conveniently forget that most of their so-called ‘greenhouse’ gas is water vapour, which depends on the temperature. There’s so little methane in the atmosphere it has to be measured in parts per billion, but alarmism has taken over.
– – –
In order for legally binding climate targets to be met, and agricultural subsidies to be granted, the number of livestock on the island needs to go down says Buzz.

The size of herds both North and South of the border is being scrutinised. It is likely both cow and sheep herds on both sides of the border will need to be cut – and soon.

Since I just landed in London, it appropriate that today’s column will be based on an article in the U.K.-based Economist.

A recent issue of the magazine included an article lauding the Internal Revenue Service.

Why?

What could the bureaucrats have done to earn praise?

You’ll be amazed to learn that the Economist believes the IRS helped the economy by becoming a vehicle for income redistribution.

I’m not joking. Here are some excerpts from the article.

Despite its awful backlog, the irs has, from another perspective, had a very good pandemic. It has played a critical role in delivering support to Americans. And it has been surprisingly efficient at it. For each of the three rounds of stimulus payments, the irs was the conduit. Within two weeks of Mr Biden’s signing of the stimulus bill in March 2021, for instance, it sent out $325bn via 127m separate…

Introduction 

Democracy Watch touts itself as “the most effective and successful national citizen advocacy group in Canada at winning systemic changes to key laws since […] 1993.”[1] But it has certainly not met with success in its quixotic crusade against the true nature of Canada’s fixed-date election laws. On the contrary, Democracy Watch, the dissolution-chasing advocacy group undaunted by a series of judicial defeats, has now suffered its sixth rout since 2009 and has come one step closer to proving the colloquial definition of insanity as trying the same thing over and over and expecting different results. Justice Russel W. Zinn’s ruling in Democracy Watch et al. v Prime Minister of Canada et al. follows closely on the heels of Democracy Watch v New Brunswick (the Attorney General), where Justice E. Thomas Christie delivered Democracy Watch another embarrassing defeat on 29 October 2021.[2] The…

Our Boris misleading? Where have we heard that one before? The government likes to pretend ‘green’ subsidies are doing people a favour and somehow saving the climate, but they aren’t.
– – –
Net Zero Watch has accused the Prime Minister of being economical with the truth about the cost of renewable energy levies.

Speaking during his visit to India, Mr Johnson rejected growing calls for scrapping green levies on energy bills, claiming that renewable energy “has helped to reduce bills”.

These things are meant to save us from a changing climate but, when the weather turns wild, they can barely save themselves. 50-60m long blades, weighing in at 20 tonnes each, are usually the first item to be shredded and thrown in all directions (the wind industry uses the neutral term “component liberation”).

Then, if serious breezes persist, the whole kit and caboodle hits the dirt; which means all three of those 20-tonne blades join the 90-tonne nacelle (which houses the gearbox and generator) in an exhilarating 100m freefall.

When the wind goes beyond gale force, you can forget about receiving any meaningful electricity. Indeed, wind speeds barely need to reach gale force and these things go into automatic shutdown, as appears on German turbine maker, Siemen’s website – which has this to say about the automatic shutdown of wind turbines when wind speeds hit 25m/s (90km/h):

Nature presents us with…

In 1945, Friedrich A. Hayek published under the title “The Use of Knowledge in Society,” in The American Economic Review, one of his most celebrated essays -both at the time of its appearance and today- and probably, together with other studies also later compiled in the volume Individualism and Economic Order(1948), one of those that have earned him the award of the Nobel Prize in Economics, in 1974.

His interpretation generates certain perplexities about the meaning of the term “knowledge”, which the author himself would clear up years later, in the prologue to the third volume of Law, Legislation and Liberty (1979). Being his native language German, Hayek explains there that it would have been more appropriate to have used the term “information”, since such was the prevailing meaning of “knowledge” in the years in which such essays had been written. Incidentally, a similar clarification is…