Utopia, you are standing in it!

Have an election today and the government would bolt in, primarily because of Jacinda’s star power induced by the media’s obsession with her. But the election is six months away and then, I’m picking a change of government.

Wind and large-scale solar are doomed, but the saviour is said to be pumped hydro; paid for, of course, with other people’s money.

Touted by ex-PM Malcom Turnbull and his hapless sidekick, Josh Frydenberg as the Nation’s mega-battery, the heavily-hyped Snowy 2.0 pumped hydro scheme (shelved in the 1970s because it was uneconomic then) has been heralded as the saviour for the Australian wind industry.

The line goes something like this: if we use 3 MWh of wind power to pump water through 27 km of tunnels, over an elevation of 900m, later, when power consumers actually need it, Snowy Hydro could return 2 MWh to the grid.

Never mind squandering 1/4 to 1/3 of the electricity originally generated; never mind that with the inclusion of the $85 per MWh REC the cost of the wind power involved exceeds $110 per MWh; never mind that the owners of Snowy 2.0…

From the Emperor’s Desk: A few days ago I compared the joint rule of Mary I of England and Felipe II of Spain with that of William III and Mary II. Today I’d like to examine the reign of Mary II as co-sovereign with her husband.

Mary II (April 30, 1662 – December 28, 1694) was Queen of England, Scotland, and Ireland, co-reigning with her husband, King William III-II, from 1689 until her death. Popular histories usually refer to their joint reign as that of William and Mary.

Queen Mary II of England, Scotland and Ireland.

Although their father James, Duke of York, was Roman Catholic, Mary and her younger sister Anne were raised as Anglicans at the wishes of their uncle, King Charles II. Charles lacked legitimate children, making Mary second in the line of succession.

William and Mary were first cousins. Her father, James, Duke of York…

by Judith Curry

On the importance of expertise from other fields for COVD19 and climate change.

The tweet below came from Matthew, who may in fact be featured in this documentary. This tells us that Part 2 (the last part) of Ken Burns’s documentary “The Gene: An Intimate History” will be broadcast on PBS tonight. And it will probably be available for free on the show’s website for at least a short while. The broadcast is at 8 p.m. Eastern time, 7 p.m. Central; for other times, consult your local PBS station.

This part is called “Revolution in the Treatment of Disease,” and so will be more medically than historically oriented.  The summary is indented:

Part Two begins with the story of the signature scientific achievement of our time: the mapping of the human genome. As scientists learn to read the genetic code, they grapple with the dangers inherent in increasingly sophisticated and easily available methods of intervening in the very essence of what makes us…

Both Matthew and reader Leon alerted me this morning to a new two-part series (four hours total) by Ken Burns, based on Siddhartha Mukherjee’s book The Gene: An Intimate History. You can watch the first episode (aired on PBS last night) by clicking on the screenshot below. I just learned about it, and haven’t yet watched it, but Matthew—who’s featured in it seven times—has, and has provided a brief précis below the screenshot. I’d recommend watching this at any time, but certainly now that most of us are housebound, searching for videos and other stay-at-home activities, it’s a good substitute for more mindless stuff.

The first episode is called “Dawn of the Modern Age of Genetics”, and has this summary: