Utopia, you are standing in it!

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How far has the government’s Three Waters policy retreated?

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• Brian Easton writes –

There are plenty of anecdotes which illustrate that the current management of fresh water, wastewater and storm water is failing. But they don’t explain the problem.

The Auditor-General observed in 2019/20, that the amount councils (excluding earthquake-recovering Christchurch) spent renewing pipes and other plant was 74 per cent of depreciation for water supply, 64 per cent for waste water and just 39 per cent for storm water. Councils struggling with funding shortages are failing to maintain their invisible piping; the anecdotal failures are a consequence. Shifting responsibility to separate visible agencies is a remedy. This government deserves credit for at last having faced up to the problem. It gets less credit for its solution.

The government’s first proposed solution was so unpopular and, in my judgement, so flawed that it has announced a retreat. How…

Image credit: steelguru.com
No prizes for guessing why those networks are hard-pressed: step forward ‘net zero’ climate obsession. Lack of reliable electricity supply didn’t happen overnight.
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National Grid is quitting its foray into developing carbon capture and storage in the UK, in a blow to the Government’s net zero ambitions, says the Daily Telegraph.

The FTSE 100 company is abandoning its plans to develop new pipelines in the Humber region to take carbon dioxide emissions out to the North Sea.

Its National Grid Ventures arm is in talks to sell the onshore pipeline project to partners, and has already quit another phase of the project.

Carbon capture and storage is considered key to the Government’s plans to reach net zero carbon emissions by 2050, but is not yet up and running at scale in the UK.

Power plants in the Humber region hoping to start capturing…

In the past, I’ve referred to Switzerland as the world’s most sensible nation.

Does that make it also the world’s best nation?

I actually won’t try to answer that question, but we can say that Switzerland is the world’s most libertarian nation and a role model for others.

At least according to the Human Freedom Index, which ranks nations based on both economic and personal liberty.

Here are the 25 jurisdictions that lead the rankings.

For what it’s worth, Switzerland also was in first place the previous year.

New Zealand, which had been in first place in earlier years, still ranks very high. Estonia is in third place and several other European nations round out the top 10.

The United States, meanwhile, fell to #23, which is disappointing but predictable given the subpar politicians that have governed the nation this century.

But Hong…

Introduction: 

BizNews interviewed veteran climate expert Dr Richard Lindzen, the pioneering atmospheric physicist and former emeritus professor of meteorology at MIT. He recounted events that occurred in the 1980s, which gave birth to the all-consuming climate change narrative that prevails today. Having begun his research on climate change in the mid-70s, motivated by a sincere interest in understanding the Earth’s climate regimes, Lindzen offers a remarkably sensible assessment of the various elements parading as scientific evidence of an impending climate catastrophe. Particularly revealing from his recollection of events is how complicit the media and politicians have been in forcing the disastrous climate change narrative upon an unsuspecting and trusting public from the very beginning.

This recent interview by Richard Lindzen provides a brief and compelling overview sorting out facts and fictions regarding global warming/climate change.  For those who prefer reading, below is a lightly edited transcript from the closed…

Wind industry shills still make ludicrous claims about turbines running on the smell of an oily rag and lasting for 25 years or more, needing little more than a hug from time to time. They never talk about the operations and maintenance costs which – as reported by one Australian outfit Infigen – runs at around AUD$25 per MWh (which undermines the myth about wind power being generated with zero marginal cost).

Then there’s the incontrovertible fact that industrial wind turbines are lucky to have an economic life of anything beyond a decade.

As it approaches its 10^th birthday, a wind turbine has often had its blades, generator, bearings and/or gearbox replaced – see our post here – as well as undergoing routine service and maintenance, the need for which only increases, over time.

As with any industrial machine, operation and time conspire to cause wear and tear of…