In the 21st century, monarchies remain pivotal parts of several democratic countries across Europe, including the UK. In a new book, edited by Unit founder Robert Hazell and Bob Morris, contributors from across Europe consider the constitutional and political role of monarchy, its powers and functions, how it is defined and regulated, the laws of succession and royal finances, relations with the media, its popularity, and why it endures.

Monarchy has a long history in Europe, being the predominant form of government from the Middle Ages until the First World War. At the turn of the twentieth century every country in Europe was a monarchy with just three exceptions: France, Switzerland and San Marino. But by the start of the twenty-first century, most European countries had ceased to be monarchies, and three quarters of the member states of the European Union are now republics. That has led to…

Well, there’s only one letter in the “exchange” so far: from Sarah Haider (co-founder and development director of Ex-Muslims of North America) to Ayaan Hirsi Ali. The exchange will appear bit by bit at the Letter site (click on screenshot below, and you may want to subscribe):

The exchange will not be about Islam, as you might expect (both Haider and Hirsi Ali are vocal ex-Muslims, critical of the faith), but about “wokeism”, which intersected—pardon the word—with Haider’s criticisms of Islam to inspire the coming dialogue.  We all know that although Islam is, in general, an oppressive religion, seeing gays as immoral and women as inferior (this of course is not true of all Muslims), it is still defended by the Woke, who regard criticism of the faith’s tenets as “Islamophobia”. The Left’s defense of Islam is based on one reason only: Muslims are seen as “people of color”…

Snow and Steel: Hitler’s Last Gamble in the West Examined

On November 28, 2014, the Oxford University Press published Snow and Steel: The Battle of the Bulge, 1944-45, an in-depth book about Operation Autumn Mist (Herbstnebel, which can also be translated from German as “Autumn Fog”), the last counter-offensive launched by Nazi Germany on the Western Front and, to date, the biggest land battle in U.S. Army history. It was written by Peter Caddick-Adams, a respected lecturer on military history and defense matters who served in the British Army for 30 years and has written several well-received books about World War II battles, including Monte Cassino: Ten Armies in Hell and Sand and Steel: The D-Day Invasion and the Liberation of France.

In Snow and Steel, Caddick-Adams gives readers an immensely detailed and impeccably researched look at…

by Mercedes Galíndez, University of Cambridge

This blog is based on research funded by a bursary from the Economic History Society. More information here

Seventeen years passed between Edison patenting his revolutionary incandescent light bulb in 1880, and Poul la Cour’s first test of a wind turbine for generating electricity. Yet it would be another hundred years before wind power would become an established industry in the 2000s. How can we explain the delay in harvesting the cheapest source of electricity generation?

In the early twentieth century wind power emerged to fill the gaps of nascent electricity grids. This technology was first adopted in rural areas. The incentive was purely economic: the need for decentralised access to electricity. In this early stage there were no concerns about the environmental implications of wind power.

The Jacobs Wind Electricity…

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
– – –
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.“