Utopia, you are standing in it!

Mark Twain noted reports of his death had been greatly exaggerated. So too, the ‘death’ of coal-fired power.

For years, the wind and sun cult have been bleating triumphantly that ‘coal is dead’. Energy markets, however, don’t share their peculiar worldview.

Thermal coal prices are off the charts, with record demand driving record prices: Australian thermal coal prices hit $US$400 ($548 a tonne) in March, with prices still on the rise. For an energy source that should be suffering rigor mortis, coal is displaying a remarkable resilience.

Newcastle coal sets record as global energy crisis deepens
The Australian
Perry Williams
5 September 2022

One of Australia’s biggest commodity exports has surged to record levels, with the price of Newcastle coal soaring to all-time highs as miners cash in amid a deepening energy crisis in ­Europe.

The thermal coal rose to a new high with Newcastle futures trading above $US440 ($648) a…

Fracking: note the deep shaft
The battle of the crises – energy and climate. One real, one…not so much. Silence continues on the renewables intermittency question.
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The Government’s climate change tsar was told he needs to ‘live in the real world’ after he warned Liz Truss against lifting the fracking moratorium despite the energy crisis, reports the Daily Mail.

Lord Deben said approving fracking would have no impact on energy prices – and urged her to focus on renewables instead.

The Prime Minister is set to end the ban on the gas extraction method today, after pledging to take action during the leadership campaign.

Scotland and Wales still rely on large amounts of gas, but their governments don’t want to be reminded of that as it tarnishes their imaginary climate halos. Arguing that there are no worthwhile benefits to be had looks lame when gas shortages are currently forcing global prices ever higher. If there’s public resistance they will have to accept their energy bill pain for the foreseeable future.
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Britain on Thursday formally lifted a moratorium on fracking for shale gas in England that has been in place since 2019, saying strengthening the country’s energy supply was an “absolute priority”, reports Reuters (via Climate Change Dispatch).

Energy prices have soared in Europe after Russia invaded Ukraine, and Britain is subsidizing bills for households and businesses at a predicted cost of more than 100 billion pounds ($113 billion).

New Prime Minister Liz Truss said earlier this month that fracking –…

Path Lit by Lightning: The Life of Jim Thorpe
by David Maraniss
672 pages
Simon & Schuster
Published: August 2022

“Path Lit by Lightning: The Life of Jim Thorpe” by David Maraniss was published last month and has spent most of its life as a New York Times best-seller. Maraniss is associate editor at The Washington Post and the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of thirteen books including biographies of Roberto Clemente, Vince Lombardi, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama.

Jim Thorpe (1887-1953) is a name only somewhat familiar to most members of my generation. More familiar to me are sports icons such as Earl Campbell, Rickey Henderson and Carl Lewis. But during his own time, and for decades thereafter, the myth and legend of “about five-eighths Indian” Jim Thorpe was widely known. And the story of his life, legacy and resting place has only been settled within…

Cultural differences between countries are quite large, and likely affect differences in economic development. But how did these differences arise in the first place? Consider recent history: it’s not a stretch to believe that Europeans who immigrated to the US were generally individualistic, adventurous, entrepreneurial people who potentially did not fit in well with their existing society; they were possibly non-conformist, less obedient that those who stayed.

Values such as individualism, innovativeness and entrepreneurialism gave these immigrants an edge in the longer term, and this made the US very successful, even relative to Europe. Can such a story apply over the much longer term? Can it explain how cultures diverged thousands of years ago?

The rate of time preference or in other words long-term orientation has been found to be an important determinant of human behavior. Generally, it is associated with better educational outcomes, and even better physical and emotional health. On an aggregate level it can affect differences in GDP across countries.

This post presents a new paper that asks how differences in time preference arose. Clearly, we see substantial variation in time preference across countries, so the question is what caused this.

A few weeks ago there was the debacle of the government introducing one afternoon a bill that would have imposed GST on investment management fees, ministers defending that bill the next morning, but then by lunchtime the policy was gone.

The proposed law change seemed on the face of it perfectly sensible in principle. I even read the Regulatory Impact Statement that was published with the bill, and most of the reasoning and argumentation made sense there too.

But it contained this little section

Perhaps unsurprisingly, those big numbers got a fair amount of media and political attention. As an example, here was an RNZ story

I was a bit curious about this “modelling”, which was not published at the time the bill was introduced. It wasn’t described in the RIS, the numbers weren’t put in any sort of context, they were just baldly stated. Quite probably ministers don’t read…

We have evidence of a sea change against leftist politics, recently in Sweden ousting the long incumbent left wing parties. Boom! Leftists Ousted in Sweden  Next up this month is Italy where a similar change is expected. Italy’s right heads for clear election victory, final polls indicate.

Closer to home, in Canada keen observer Rex Murphy reports in Epoch Times  Poilievre’s Star Rises as the Liberals Fumble and Falter.  Excerpts in italics with my bolds.

There wasn’t much drama to the event.  Ever since the Conservative leadership race was announced, it was clear from the crowds that showed up at Pierre Poilievre’s rallies that he was the enthusiastic favourite, and by a long shot. He did not merely win. He was a rocket. The rest were Volkswagens.

Secondly, he also demonstrated from the first he was serious, by which I mean the tone and substance of his speeches