Utopia, you are standing in it!

In the fantasy land occupied by green dreamers, the wind is always blowing and the sun is always shining. Not for them the reality of sunset and calm weather. It’s their truth, and they’re sticking with it.

Destabilising grids and power markets, chaotically intermittent and heavily subsidised wind and solar may be beloved of crony capitalists and delusional acolytes, but the households and businesses struggling to make ends meet are less enamoured.

In this crisp little piece, Steven Hayward explains why wind and solar worshippers treat reality with contempt.

Latest from the Dreamworld of Green Energy
Powerline
Steven Hayward
20 February 2022

A core axiom of “green energy” is that it is actually cheaper than fossil fuels, because “the wind and sunlight are free.” The Rocky Mountain Institute argues with a straight face that “the faster the world deploys renewables, the more money we will save in energy costs.” Tell…

This semester I am participating in a reading group with undergraduate students that focuses on the history and prospects for capitalism and socialism. Lately we have been reading Joseph Stiglitz, who has long argued that China’s transition to a market economy has gone much better than the former Soviet Union. Gradual transition is superior to “shock therapy,” according to Stiglitz.

There’s an extent to which this is true. If we just look at economic growth rates since, say, 1995, China has clearly outpaced Russia.

It’s hard to know exactly what year to start, since GDP figures for former planned economies immediately after transition aren’t reliable, but the start date is mostly irrelevant for everything I’ll say here (please play around with the start year in the charts to see if I’m cherry-picking years). 1995 seems a reasonable enough year to start for reliable post-transition starting…

The faux environmentalist is easy to spot: they love industrial wind and solar power and couldn’t care less about the unbridalled environmental destruction they cause.

Faced with the rampant slaughter of birds and bats, he or she initially denies the evidence and then pushes the moral equivalence button, claiming that more birds are killed by cats, cars and skyscrapers. Ignoring the fact that cats, cars and tall buildings don’t kill apex predators like Eagles, Hawks and Kites. And also ignoring the fact that cars and skyscrapers deliver benefits in the form of transport and accommodation that make modern, civil societies possible. Whereas, heavily subsidised wind power delivers nothing but chaotically intermittent electricity and rocketing power prices, as a result.

However, slowly, but surely local environmental groups are waking up. No doubt driven by their increasingly troubled consciences, and the reality on the ground, people with a true concern for…

Ahead of next Tuesday’s Virtual IHR Parliaments, Politics and People seminar, we hear from Dr Donal Lowry of the University of Oxford. On 22 March 2022, between 5.15 p.m. and 6.30 p.m., Donal will be responding to your questions about his paper on the office of Governor of Northern Ireland between 1921 and 1973. Details of how to join the discussion are available here, or by contacting seminar@histparl.ac.uk.

Devolved assemblies in Edinburgh, Cardiff and Belfast have become familiar elements in UK political and constitutional life, especially in an age of Brexit and Covid-19. It is often forgotten that between 1921 and 1973, Northern Ireland possessed, not an `Assembly’ or `First Minister’, but an elaborate bicameral Parliament, consisting of a red-benched `Senate’ and a green-benched `House of Commons’, to which a `Prime Minister’ and `Cabinet’ – all members of the Privy Council of Northern Ireland – were responsible.

Anne became queen upon the death of King William III on March 8, 1702, and was immediately popular. In her first speech to the English Parliament, on March 11, she distanced herself from her late Dutch brother-in-law and said, “As I know my heart to be entirely English, I can very sincerely assure you there is not anything you can expect or desire from me which I shall not be ready to do for the happiness and prosperity of England.”

Soon after her accession, Anne appointed her husband George, Duke of Cumberland, Lord High Admiral, giving him nominal control of the Royal Navy. Anne gave control of the army to Lord Marlborough, whom she appointed Captain-General. Marlborough also received numerous honours from the Queen; he was created a Knight of the Garter and was elevated to the rank of duke. The Duchess of Marlborough was appointed Groom of the Stool…

Lots of coal in Australia
Goodbye landmark. Yet another attempt to use the courts to try to establish the myth that governments can somehow control the climate bites the dust, for now at least.
– – –
An Australian court on Tuesday threw out a landmark legal ruling that the country’s environment minister had a duty to protect children from climate change, reports Phys.org.

Last year’s legal win by a group of high school children had been hailed by environmental groups as a potential legal weapon to fight fossil fuel projects.

But the federal court found in favour of an appeal by Environment Minister Sussan Ley, deciding she did not have to weigh the harm climate change would inflict on children when assessing the approval of new fossil fuel projects.

The Ides of March is the 74th day in the Roman calendar, corresponding to March 15. It was marked by several religious observances and was notable for the Romans as a deadline for settling debts. In 44 BC, it became notorious as the date of the assassination of Julius Caesar, which made the Ides of March a turning point in Roman history.

The Death of Julius Caesar (1806) by Vincenzo Camuccini

Ides

The Romans did not number each day of a month from the first to the last day. Instead, they counted back from three fixed points of the month: the Nones (the 5th or 7th, nine days inclusive before the Ides), the Ides (the 13th for most months, but the 15th in March, May, July, and October), and the Kalends (1st of the following month).

Originally the Ides were supposed to be determined by the full moon, reflecting the…

French election season is upon us. In four rounds of elections over the next three months France will choose their President and National Assembly. The presidency is elected by two-round majority (10 and 24 April), followed closely by the assembly using two-round majority-plurality (12 and 19 June). Predictably, the news media are already starting to suggest that President Emmanuel Macron, while likely to be reelected, might be at risk of losing his assembly majority (e.g., The Economist). Will he?

What is almost as predictable as the media expressing this outcome as a real possibility is that presidents–just elected or reelected–see their parties do really well in honeymoon assembly elections. You can’t get much more honeymoon-ish than the French cycle. The assembly election occurs with approximately 1/60 of the time between presidential elections having elapsed. It just so happens that we have a formula for this.

R_p=1.20–0.725E,

where

Figuring out who was the first King of Prussia or the first King of Bavaria was, is pretty easy given the fact that these kingdoms developed late in European history, early 18th and 19th to be precise. However, there are other kingdoms that stretch way back into history and figuring out who the first king of that nation or kingdom was, is rather difficult and subject to opinion. I am beginning a short series where I will identify the first king of England, Scotland, Denmark, Norway and Sweden. I’m going to do something special with France and also ask who was the last King of the Franks? I may have touched on this before but I will also examine who was the first Holy Roman Emperor?

Alfred the Great: King of the West Saxons & King of the Angles and Saxons.

The reason why it can be hard for historians to determine…

Imagine being so devoted to Planned Parenthood that you volunteer for years, donate professional services and money, and even write a will leaving the organization a major portion of your assets—only to find yourself shunned and the CEO dismissed because of a single taboo word you uttered during a private conversation.

That is Jane Smith’s story. (Note: Smith is a pseudonym.) In this interview, Smith talks about the conversation that led to the firing of a Planned Parenthood CEO and her own ostracism from the progressive nonprofit she had always considered “her people.”

Jane Smith has long studied human flourishing and how people are harmed by injustice and bigotry, especially histories of the marginalized in the United States including enslavement, emancipation, suffrage and civil rights. After looking into similar patterns across human history and cultures, she came to understand racism within the broader concept of caste—systems by which societies divide…

Anne’s final pregnancy ended on January 25, 1700 with a stillbirth. She had been pregnant at least 17 times over as many years, and had miscarried or given birth to stillborn children at least 12 times. Of her five liveborn children, four died before the age of two.

Anne suffered from bouts of “gout” (pains in her limbs and eventually stomach and head) from at least 1698. Based on her foetal losses and physical symptoms, she may have had systemic lupus erythematosus, or antiphospholipid syndrome. Alternatively, pelvic inflammatory disease could explain why the onset of her symptoms roughly coincided with her penultimate pregnancy.

Other suggested causes of her failed pregnancies are listeriosis, diabetes, intrauterine growth retardation, and rhesus incompatibility. Rhesus incompatibility, however, generally worsens with successive pregnancies, and so does not fit the pattern of Anne’s pregnancies, as her only son to survive infancy, Prince William, Duke of Gloucester, was…