Here! I’ve been dealing with trivial stuff all day involving billing and the post office (the Black Hole of government agencies) and have had no time to right. Enjoy Stephen Fry’s hourlong talk on Triggernometry on why the American Left promoted the rise of the American Right. I’ve been saying that for a long time, […]
Stephen Fry on how the faults of the Left promoted the rise of the Right
Stephen Fry on how the faults of the Left promoted the rise of the Right
31 Jan 2025 Leave a comment
in discrimination, environmentalism, law and economics, liberalism, Marxist economics, politics - Australia, politics - New Zealand, politics - USA, property rights Tags: Age of Enlightenment, British politics, free speech, political correctness, regressive left
Reviewing Covid experiences and policies
30 Jan 2025 Leave a comment
in applied price theory, applied welfare economics, economic history, economics of bureaucracy, economics of regulation, fiscal policy, health and safety, health economics, labour economics, labour supply, law and economics, macroeconomics, politics - Australia, politics - New Zealand, property rights, Public Choice Tags: economics of pandemics

I’ve spent the last week writing a fairly substantial review of a recent book (“Australia’s Pandemic Exceptionalism: How we crushed the curve but lost the race”) by a couple of Australian academic economists on Australia’s pandemic policies and experiences. For all its limitations, there isn’t anything similar in New Zealand. What we do have is […]
Reviewing Covid experiences and policies
Spot on
27 Jan 2025 Leave a comment
in liberalism, Marxist economics, politics - Australia, politics - New Zealand, politics - USA Tags: free speech, political correctness, regressive left
The Energy Storage Fiasco — How Soon Will It Be Abandoned?
27 Jan 2025 Leave a comment
in economics of climate change, energy economics, environmental economics, environmentalism, global warming, politics - Australia, politics - New Zealand, politics - USA Tags: batteries
It seems that the frequency of these spontaneous fires increases with the size of the battery. Can this problem be solved? I have no idea. But it certainly has not been solved yet.
The Energy Storage Fiasco — How Soon Will It Be Abandoned?
Milei Implements Peer Approval for Food
24 Jan 2025 Leave a comment
in applied price theory, development economics, economics of regulation, health economics, politics - Australia, politics - New Zealand, politics - USA Tags: drug lags, food safety
Reason: In a sweeping move to overhaul Argentina’s food trade policies, Javier Milei’s administration officially deregulated food imports and exports on Monday. The reform, outlined in Decree 35/2025, seeks to boost foreign trade, cut bureaucratic red tape, and lower consumer prices. Federico Sturzenegger, head of the Ministry of Deregulation and State Transformation, explained in a post on […]
Milei Implements Peer Approval for Food
The global decline of the left
20 Jan 2025 Leave a comment
in politics - Australia, politics - New Zealand, politics - USA

An interesting chart from The Telegraph via Bryce Edwards. A definite trend since around 2012.
The global decline of the left
Will Australia’s Mandatory Climate Reporting make Greenwashing Illegal?
13 Jan 2025 Leave a comment
in economics of climate change, economics of information, economics of regulation, energy economics, entrepreneurship, environmental economics, environmentalism, financial economics, global warming, politics - Australia Tags: climate activists, climate alarmism

Legal penalties for greenwashing could force Aussie companies to declare their total lack of interest in climate action.
Will Australia’s Mandatory Climate Reporting make Greenwashing Illegal?
Meta dismantles misinformation industry
09 Jan 2025 Leave a comment
in economics of information, entrepreneurship, industrial organisation, law and economics, liberalism, politics - Australia, politics - New Zealand, politics - USA, property rights, Public Choice, survivor principle Tags: 2024 presidential election, free speech, political correctness, regressive left
Mark Zuckerberg announced: In recent years we’ve developed increasingly complex systems to manage content across our platforms, partly in response to societal and political pressure to moderate content. This approach has gone too far. As well-intentioned as many of these efforts have been, they have expanded over time to the point where we are making […]
Meta dismantles misinformation industry
Holes in IPCC Science Revealed
26 Dec 2024 1 Comment
in economics of education, economics of regulation, energy economics, environmental economics, global warming, politics - Australia, politics - New Zealand, politics - USA Tags: climate alarmism

Graeme Weber reports from Australia on the history revealing multiple holes in IPCC claimed “settled science.” His paper is IPCC – Miss/Diss information? shared with me by email. Graeme is an earth scientist, retired consulting geologist and advocate for nuclear energy. His text is in italics with my bolds and added images. Several years ago, […]
Holes in IPCC Science Revealed
New Study: Achieving A ‘Net Zero’ Emissions Policy Would Have A ‘Negligible’ 0.28°C Climate Effect
14 Dec 2024 1 Comment
in applied price theory, applied welfare economics, development economics, economics of climate change, energy economics, environmental economics, environmentalism, global warming, growth miracles, politics - Australia, politics - New Zealand, politics - USA

Cost-benefit analyses affirm it would be better to abandon Net Zero policy initiatives and instead “do nothing” about greenhouse gas emissions. New research finds CO2’s largest possible climate impact is “negligible.” The cumulative expected temperature change in doubling CO2 from 400 to 800 ppm is only 0.81°C at most, and this is “certainly not cause…
New Study: Achieving A ‘Net Zero’ Emissions Policy Would Have A ‘Negligible’ 0.28°C Climate Effect
Reality Collides: Constant Blackout Threat Spells Doom For Wind & Solar ‘Transition’
07 Dec 2024 Leave a comment
in economics of climate change, energy economics, environmental economics, environmentalism, global warming, politics - Australia Tags: celebrity technologies, solar power, wind power

A run of calm nights (particularly during very hot or very cold weather) reveals the utter pointlessness of intermittent wind and solar. And, so it is in the land Downunder. Australia’s hard Green-Left Federal government is doing its best to stare down reality, as its grand wind and solar ‘transition’ unravels. The so-called energy ‘policy’ […]
Reality Collides: Constant Blackout Threat Spells Doom For Wind & Solar ‘Transition’
Wind and Solar Can’t Support the Grid
06 Dec 2024 Leave a comment
in economics of climate change, energy economics, environmental economics, environmentalism, global warming, politics - Australia Tags: solar power, wind power

by Planning Engineer (Russ Schussler) In October of 2025, the isolated small city of Broken Hill in New South Wales, Australia with a 36 MW load (including the large nearby mines) could not be reliably served by 200 MW of wind, a 53 MW solar array, significant residential solar, and a large 50 MW battery […]
Wind and Solar Can’t Support the Grid
Try as they might, the Australian Green party can’t make university education free
25 Nov 2024 Leave a comment
in applied price theory, economics of education, human capital, income redistribution, labour economics, labour supply, liberalism, Marxist economics, occupational choice, politics - Australia, poverty and inequality, Public Choice, public economics, rentseeking Tags: College premium, regressive left
The Australian Green party has proposed cancelling all student debt in Australia, as part of an aim for government to provide “free education for life”. However, free education is not free. In an article in The Conversation earlier this month, Bruce Chapman (Australian National University) makes a case against the claim that cancelling student debt…
Try as they might, the Australian Green party can’t make university education free
Part 3, Australia’s Transition to Renewable Energy
24 Nov 2024 Leave a comment
in energy economics, environmental economics, global warming, politics - Australia Tags: solar power, wind power

Chris Morris is a semi-retired power station engineer in New Zealand who has commented here on No Minister occasionally and on other NZ blogs. In mid 2023 he emailed me about a series of four articles he had written for the blog of Judith Curry in Australia. I published a summary of the key points […]
Part 3, Australia’s Transition to Renewable Energy
Obsession With Unreliable Wind & Solar Drives Punishing Cost of Net-Zero CO2 Delusion
24 Nov 2024 Leave a comment
in energy economics, environmental economics, global warming, politics - Australia Tags: solar power, wind power

Around the globe, the proles are on the march. They’ve worked out that the wind and solar ‘transition’ is the cause of their crushing power bills. In the US, contrary to almost every pundit’s prediction, Donald J Trump stormed home with a very convincing victory, grabbing control of every level of government. Trump’s promise of […]
Obsession With Unreliable Wind & Solar Drives Punishing Cost of Net-Zero CO2 Delusion

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