Utopia, you are standing in it!

Want unaffordable and unreliable power? Then wind and solar are just the ticket. With their grid on the very brink of collapse, Californians are suffering from rocketing power prices – all thanks to a ludicrous attempt to run on sunshine and breezes.

Even when the sun is shining, the wind is blowing and power is being delivered to those in need, a growing number have no hope of paying for it.

Already paying America’s highest power prices, Californians are watching in horror as their power bills continue to soar.

Robert Bryce reports on California’s renewable energy meltdown.

Blackouts Loom in California as Electricity Prices Are ‘Absolutely Exploding’
Real Clear Energy
Robert Bryce
24 June 2021

Two inexorable energy trends are underway in California: soaring electricity prices and ever-worsening reliability – and both trends bode ill for the state’s low- and middle-income consumers.

Last week, the state’s grid operator, the California…

Well, there is some hope from the subject atleast.

An interesting case of how Christine Exley and Elena Battles are using economics (market design principles) to hemp homeless puppies find homes:

So the hype for 2012 is over.  The committee has given the 2012 prize  to Alvin Roth and Lloyd Shapely “for the theory of stable allocations and the practice of market design”. In a way this paper on knowhow of math and eco was bang on.

Al Roth is ofcourse someone this blog is hugely fond of and has mentioned his research a couple of times. As mostly is the case with Nobel Prizes, I am completely clueless on Shapely’s works which is sad…

The press release says:

Below, please find my opening statement. You can find my full written testimony here in PDF.

Chairman Brown, Ranking Member Toomey and the entire committee,

Thank you for the opportunity to share my perspectives today remotely.

I am a professor at the University of Colorado Boulder and I have studied the use of science in policy for more than 25 years, including a long-term focus on climate.

Unfortunately, key scientific guidance on climate that informs policy– including central bank climate stress testing and U.S. government estimates of the social cost of carbon – has departed from basic standards of scientific integrity.

A main reason for this departure is that climate science has increasingly been enlisted in support of policy advocacy rather than to inform policy debates and decisions.

Today I Have Five Points to Make

FIRST, I emphasize that human-caused climate change is real, it poses significant risks, and…

Leopold III (November 3, 1901 – September 25, 1983) was King of the Belgians from 1934 until 1951. On the outbreak of World War II, Leopold tried to maintain Belgian neutrality, but after the German invasion in May 1940, he surrendered his country, earning him much hostility, both at home and abroad.

Prince Leopold was born in Brussels, the first child of Prince Albert, Duke of Brabant, heir to the Belgian throne, and his consort, Duchess Elisabeth in Bavaria. In 1909 his father became King of the Belgians, as Albert I, and Prince Leopold became Duke of Brabant

In August 1914, when Belgium was invaded by Germany, King Albert allowed Leopold, then aged twelve, to enlist in the Belgian Army as a private and fight in defence of the kingdom. However, in 1915, with Belgium almost entirely occupied by the Germans, Leopold was sent to join Eton College, while his…

The penny is starting to drop for the anti-fossil fuel squad: reliance on chaotically unreliable wind and solar guarantees dependence on fossil fuel.

No bad thing in our view, mind you.

The wind and solar acolyte started out believing that coal was already dead as the dodo and gas would soon follow. However, already 20 years into our ‘inevitable transition’ to an all wind and sun powered future, nothing could be further from the truth.

Indeed – in a ‘drats and curses’ moment for fossil fuel haters – the future for gas producers has never looked rosier.

Sudden and unpredictable collapses in wind and solar output, are increasingly being met by fast start-up diesel and/or gas generators, whether using Open Cycle Gas Turbines or giant ship engines.

They call it “backup”, as if wind and solar were like a car in need of an occasional push start. But, in…