Utopia, you are standing in it!

A self-induced shortage of reliable electricity generation is the real issue in California but its leaders can’t accept that, for mistaken ideological reasons supposedly related to the climate of the Earth. Instead they create their own problems due to unworkable energy policies, then discover they can’t solve them. Other leaders with similar ideas should take note and learn, but probably won’t, preferring to parrot ‘net zero’.

H/T The GWPF
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Problem is there aren’t enough of these massive batteries to go around right now, says Bloomberg Green.

As the threat of blackouts continues to plague California, officials are pointing to battery storage as a key to preventing future power shortfalls.

Solving Australia’s power pricing and supply calamity means killing subsidies for wind and solar and kickstarting nuclear power, by removing the ban that prohibits it.

As Rafe Champion details below, there are three easy steps that would resolve the current debacle: killing off the subsidies for intermittent power generation; adding a capacity market to the National Electricity Market to encourage the appropriate deployment of capital; and removing Australia’s ludicrous ban on nuclear power generation.

Comparative costs of power
Catallaxy Files
Rafe Champion
13 September 2020

In November last year a group of consultants tabled a report in the NSW Parliament with the results of some elaborate modelling work to generate  the  total System Levelised Cost of Energy (SLCOE) which is defined as —

“…the average cost of producing electric energy from the combination of generation technologies chosen for the system over its entire lifetime, discounted back to today at 6% per annum.“

The University Times, the student newspaper of Trinity College Dublin, reports that an invited address by Richard Dawkins has been canceled. The rescinded invitation was initially tendered by “The Hist”, the University Historical Society, who withdrew it. Why? Because Dawkins’s past statements on Islam and sexual assault might cause “discomfort” to the students. Click on the screenshot to read:

Here’s a summary of what happened, which is almost humorous in the emphasis on “discomfort”—apparently the most important factor in deciding whether a speaker is appropriate (my emphasis):

The College Historical Society (the Hist) has tonight rescinded its invitation to Richard Dawkins to address the society next year.

Auditor of the Hist Bríd O’Donnell announced the cancellation in a statement on her [actually The Hist’s] Instagram page, saying that she had been “unaware of Richard Dawkins’ opinions on Islam and sexual assault until this evening”, adding that the society “will…

That’s right boys, it’s in the ground & it’s powering us 24 x 365.

Faced with rocketing power prices and a grid on the brink of collapse, the Morrison Federal government remains committed to the policies that caused the debacle.

Instead of ensuring the survival of Australia’s extensive coal-fired power fleet and building new High Efficiency Low Emissions coal-plants, the PM and his Energy Minister have selected a grab bag of green-left fantasies, including squandering hundreds of $millions on converting excess wind and solar power to hydrogen gas, pumped hydro and batteries.

The treatment of Australia’s most reliable and affordable generation source – coal – is a mixture of insanity and contempt. And that contempt extends to whole industries and the thousands of jobs that depend upon them.

The Australian’s Greg Sheridan provides a pretty fair rundown on how a notionally conservative government has abandoned not only its principles, but…

In my Social Problems class we’re spending the next few weeks on race, racial inequality, and racial politics. Step one is this lecture on race and racism.

After a tangent on racial identity, idealism and its enemies, I address biology and race, describing the classic racist racial categories in relation to vast human diversity in Africa and the world overall, with discussion of biological evolution and the sources of human variation. Then I turn to the US and discuss social definition and self-definition, race versus ethnicity, definitions of racism and discrimination, and how the Census Bureau measures US race and ethnicity, before summarizing current and projected race/ethnic composition. And I used the new Zoom feature where your PowerPoint slides are the virtual background (which is harder than it looks because your image isn’t mirrored while you speak!).

It’s 35 minutes. The slides are here, CC-BY: osf.io/uafvp. To see all…

I’ve previously written that Keynesian economics is like Freddy Kreuger. No matter how many times it is killed off by real-world evidence, it comes back to life whenever a politician wants to justify a vote-buying orgy of new spending.

And there will always be Keynesian economists who will then crank up their simplistic models that churn out results predicting that a bigger burden of government spending somehow will produce additional growth.

They never bother to explain why they think draining funds from the private sector is good for growth, of course, or why they think politicians supposedly spend money more wisely than households and businesses.

Nonetheless, there are some journalists who are willing to act as stenographers for their assertions.

In a September 25 story for the Washington Post, Tory Newmyer gives free publicity to Keynesian predictions that the economy will grow faster if Biden wins and…

When a person or group cries “Defund the police!”, it could mean several things:

1.) Completely eliminate the budget of the police department, and hence the department itself. This is the demand that the University of Chicago’s #CareNotCops group makes for our campus police, saying they want the University Police gone by 2022.  For a case like this, the police department (PD) isn’t supposed to be replaced with another law-enforcement organization.

2.) Reduce the police budget, spending the extra money either on social-service programs or grants given to minority or crime-ridden communities.

3.) Change the method of policing, for example eliminating no-knock warrants or chokeholds.

4.) Supplement police services with social services, like having psychologists or psychiatric social workers respond to calls instead of the cops. That’s not practical, but some places have “ride along” programs where social workers go to relevant calls (domestic violence, child endangerment) with police. Other…